by Martha Woods
“Are those blueberry donuts?” Vincent asked, eyes locking onto my desk as soon as we stepped over the threshold and entered my office. “I’ve been craving those for a while, mind if I…”
“Hands off!” I yelled, sprinting forward just after slapping his hand downwards, grabbing the first donut that I saw and sinking my teeth in without even thinking about it. I don’t know how they did it, how much they cost or what favors they had to do to get these, but whatever it was definitely earned them a raise or… really anything that they wanted, few things were as good as finally getting that one thing that satisfies your craving so immediately and so fully.
“If you were so desperate for a donut… I could probably have gotten some of them for you.”
“Mm-mmm,” I moaned around a mouthful of filling, “They’re only open from nine to five, even if the nights have been getting earlier and longer, that’s still nowhere near the time for you to be outside safely. I’m not gonna let you get burned to a crisp over some donuts.”
“Fair enough,” He said, taking one of the donuts and sitting in one of the seats off to the side of my office. “Do you have anything that you want me to do? Whatever you need me to do to help, I’m open to it.”
“Hmm…” One glance at the tall stacks of files on my desk was enough to have me dreading what was to come, the other employees had definitely listened to my request to have everything they had on the convoy delivered. I just hoped that it was all useful and not a thousand weather reports all saying the same thing over and over again. “I have a feeling that I’m going to need a lot of coffee if I’m going to make it through all of this, would you mind...?”
“Of course,” He said, giving a mock bow and stepping backwards out of the room, “One cup of my finest coffee, coming right up.”
I rolled my eyes, flipping open the first file and collapsing backwards into my seat. “Sometimes I miss when you didn’t have a sense of humor...”
* * *
The coffee was definitely what I needed to perk me up, especially after the first file turned out to be so dry that you could start a forest fire with it. It was a bad start to the night, but after that first file it was like I’d struck gold, and if that cup of coffee hadn’t done its job waking me right up then what I found in between the lines definitely would have.
Unusual activity three states away, a rash of mysterious animal related deaths, but claw marks not resembling any of the local wildlife that even lives on this side of the country, this had the beginnings of a genuine mystery. I hadn’t had one of these since I’d been an investigator, and I’d only had one case where it looked like animals might have been involved in the death. It turned out that the killer was strapping on gloves with claws attached and slashing the victims to bits, he’d even tried to take Rick out with them once we’d found him.
God, this city really was strange now that I thought about it.
Anyway, that had turned out to just be a crazy guy in half a costume, but this… I didn’t have to be a genius to know that something felt distinctly paranormal about all of this, and it wasn’t just the gut instinct that had so rarely led me wrong over the years. The attacks were leading in a straight line more or less, how the local authorities hadn’t picked up on that I would never know, but the wounds showed signs of actual animal related damage, which was vastly different from what I’d seen before.
The killer that I’d caught had been strong definitely, you had to be to overpower and kill twelve people with your bare hands, but the bodies had always been recognizably killed by human hands. Slashed to hell, but there was no overextension of limbs, no heads taken off or crushed by sheer force, no innards that had been partially eaten, it was all so very… slasher movie villain in nature. These bodies weren’t showing that, they looked like they’d been proper mauled, something with bear like strength had come at them and come at them hard, there was hardly anything that you could recognizably call a human being anymore.
Looking at some of the photos, I was glad that my craving had been for blueberry and not raspberry. I didn’t need the image of red filling being squished out of a delicate little container.
But that was definitely interesting, if what had killed these people hadn’t been human, and it couldn’t have been human, not with the strength needed to take apart a body like that, then what was it exactly? The first thought was werewolves, as bad as it made me feel, but that couldn’t be so, not with how hard they were trying to stay out of trouble and reach out to other clans across the country. And even if they had been roving the forests and killing people, this just didn’t fit their M.O. Werewolves were brutal fighters and were capable of violence so extreme that it would make Leatherface wince in sympathy, but they weren’t very big on eating what they killed. For a werewolf the fight was all about the fight, once they’d killed whatever it was that needed killing they were more than content to leave it where it had fallen, and while there had of course been exceptions over the years they were hardly the rule.
Vampires were out as well obviously, their interests lay in the blood rather than the meat, if there was no sauce so to speak then there was no point in continuing the dish. I loved Damon and Vincent, but if their powers required them to eat people then I definitely wouldn’t let them near my neck, and likely wouldn’t quite be able to share my bed with them. Take it from someone who spent years dissecting bodies, organs stink something fierce.
Witches and hunters went without saying, sure we had to use organs for rituals sometimes, but we preferred animal, and we also preferred not partially digested. I would hope that it would be obvious that I wouldn’t be down with that, but there we go, now you know for sure.
Honestly I’ll be the first to admit that though I’ve met a lot of paranormal beings by now, I’m far from the most qualified to be able to pick one type out from a line and say without a doubt that one or the other had done this or that, and compounding that is that aside from what seemed obvious to me that this was paranormal involvement, I had absolutely no idea who or what could have done this, or for what reason. Hell, when I thought about it for more than two seconds I didn’t even know for sure whether this was someone from the convoy or someone that they were running from. The patterns and locations certainly seemed to match up from the information that the werewolves had passed on, so it was highly likely that it was one of the two, but what am I supposed to do with that? It’s also abundantly clear by now that just because a paranormal kills someone doesn’t necessarily mean that the person was innocent, these victims could all be hunters on the warpath and I would have no way of knowing until I looked at the bodies myself. I was not going to take a trip three states out just to look at some rotting corpses all for the purpose of seeing if they might have deserved what had come to them or not.
But the truly strange thing was that for all the tracking that the werewolves had done, none of them had mentioned any form of vehicle or horse, no form of transport other than their own two feet and the will to cross any border for freedom or otherwise. When you looked at the map and saw the amount of ground they had covered, the time that they had covered it in and the fact that they had supposedly done it all on foot, well you had a very interesting picture indeed. What normal creature could travel fifty miles in one day by foot? What normal creature could follow that up the next day by doing another forty?
That’s what was bothering me about this more than anything, it was the sheer level of what we didn’t know for sure, we didn’t even know if we should get a defense or a welcoming party ready, that’s how woefully underprepared for all of this we are, what the hell are we supposed to do if they really are coming out in force to attack us for whatever reason? When you thought about the potential reasons they would have none of them really made all that much sense, unless you counted sheer hatred as a reason all to itself, which honestly I’ve learned not to discount.
But the amount of time that we had to prepare ourselves… that was really bothering me, especially wh
en you looked at the map and saw just how erratic their movements were. One day they had barely managed to travel two miles, probably plagued by fatigue after what had no doubt been an arduous journey up to that point, then the next they had gone thirty, no breaks until the sun had gone down and they’d made camp for the night. The werewolves hadn’t approached, knowing that a fight was likely and not wanting to give up their positions, but they had confirmed that it was the same people that they’d been tracking all along. When something moves like that, so randomly that it almost manages to lose the attention of werewolves, who can sniff out damn near any animal in existence, how are you supposed to build a reliable timeline to work with? For all I knew, with their movements they could be here in two weeks or they could be here tomorrow, it’s hard to understate just how alarming that is when you are dealing with a potentially hostile situation.
“Everything going alright?” Vincent asked me, sliding another cup across the desk and sitting opposite me, “You’ve been staring a hole so fiercely through that file I was almost afraid you were going to burn a hole in it.”
“I’m fine I… I’m fine.” I shook my head, massaging my temples and giving my eyes a rest from the strain of reading. If it wasn’t one thing bothering me it was another lately, eye strain from late nights reading was the last thing I needed. “If you were me, what would you do?”
“Me?” Leaning back in his chair, he considered his actions carefully before shrugging. “I have no idea. I would probably warn everyone to be on their toes, but I don’t know if I would welcome whoever it is or warn them away, it’s hard to tell with these things sometimes until they’re standing right there in front of you. Honestly if I was you I would probably… do what you’re doing.”
“Great,” I groaned, taking the cup in my hands and warming my hands, “I need another option and I’m told that I’m doing everything right, I don’t know if I should be worried about that or not.”
“I would take it as a compliment, but I know these things differ from person to person.” Vincent reached forward, taking another donut for himself and grunting in satisfaction. “These really are good, that’s a perk of your job at the very least.”
“I got donuts at the precinct too, but there I had to deal with catcalls and rampant corruption.” I looked around me, scanning the paintings on the walls and the plush leather of the seats scattered around the room. “Compared to that, I’d say that this is just about heaven, late night work and all.”
“It’s not like you don’t enjoy it either,” He said, tapping his index finger against the top of the stack, “You can grumble all you want, I know that enjoying something won’t stop that, but you can’t deny just how much you love this.”
“What can I say? I was just born to be an investigator it turns out, you can’t argue with what you’re supposed to be after all.”
“No,” He said, “No you can’t. But if your name is Damon… you certainly can try.”
I flipped the file closed, it was obvious that this particular part of the conversation was going to take a little while. “What do you think it is that’s bothering him so much? He flips between happy and depressed without any warning, like he’s always battling with one or the other, it’s got to do with his condition right?”
“It’s very likely, though I wouldn’t rule out more human issues either, just because you technically aren’t human anymore doesn’t mean that you forget what it is like to be a human, warts and all. You remember how to love but… you can also remember what it is like to feel loss, to have that emptiness gnaw at your insides so much that you’d be willing to do anything just to tear the sickness out of you and crush it in your hands.” He looked like he was speaking from experience, and being as long lived as he was I don’t doubt that he’s felt that many times over. “If someone who is depressed becomes a vampire, they don’t suddenly become cured of it overnight and decide that their new reason for living is feeding, that’s not it at all. You’ve seen how much some of us moan about living forever, can you imagine what that does to someone who can’t bear to stick around for one more day?”
“You think that he could be depressed?” I didn’t want to admit it, but it had been on my mind long before he’d ever been turned into a vampire. The life that he’d lived was a hard one, and having to deal with the betrayal of so many of his friends, then needing to kill a good number of them can’t have been good for his mental state. There was nothing weak about depression either, it could hit you no matter how strong or how weak you considered yourself, that’s why it was so horrible. Whatever it was that you thought you were prepared to do to stop it from taking you over, you were wrong, if it wanted you, it would get you.
“If he is depressed, then I think that we need to have a very rough discussion with him, I don’t want to make him feel cornered but… it’s not fair on us either if he won’t even let us in to try and help him. If he can’t even stick around for four hours while we are sleeping together, how can we hope to trust him to let us give him the help that we want to give him?”
If I was lacking for answers as to what to do with the convoy, I was positively stumped as to what to do with Damon. I liked to think that I had all the right answers for everything, that had been my job for so many years after all, but when it came to the people in my life that I cared about I had a complete blind spot. The signs for what to do could be right there in front of me, and if they weren’t spelled out clearly I would probably miss them completely and end up doing the complete wrong thing. The thought of accidentally fucking up and making things go wrong in the worst possible way between the three of us was… well, it didn’t even really warrant thinking about, not when I could think about how much care I was going to put into not doing that. Vincent and myself were smart, we would figure out what to do sooner or later.
But perhaps sooner would be much better than later, especially with what I saw coming down the hallway towards us with all the urgency of a speeding bullet. A very unexpected, very disheveled speeding bullet.
“I need to talk to you two!” Damon yelled, flinging himself through the door and collapsing sideways against the chair. “I looked… all over the apartment… took me a while to remember that you would be here…”
“Damon!” I shouted, finally snapping out of my moment of dumbfounded realization and standing to my feet, “What’s wrong? Are you ok, did something hurt you?”
“No, no nothing like that,” He gasped, slipping backwards into the chair Vincent offered him with a grateful nod, “I’m sorry that I left like I did, but I remembered a potential lead that I’d heard in the last few weeks about some strange shit going down, and then I remembered what you’d said about that convoy coming into town, and suddenly it all started to make a little bit of sense…”
“What sense?” I asked, “Damon, what did you find?”
He grinned, wagging his finger in the air for emphasis and looking between the both of us. “I found the guy in charge, and he wants to meet.”
Chapter 3
Now that… that couldn’t be right.
“What do you mean you found the man in charge?” I asked, “You went all the way out to the convoy by yourself?”
“No, see that’s the genius of it all, he’s right here in the city, pretty much right beneath our noses this entire time.” He snapped his fingers, letting out a breath of excitement that seemed to energize his entire being. “I’ve had drinks with this guy once or twice over the last couple of weeks, I knew something felt kind of weird about him but now I know for sure what it is, he came right up to me as soon as I came through the door and sat down, like he knew the reason that I was there.”
“How do you know it’s him in charge? How do you know that he’s connected with the convoys?”
“Because he just straight up told me, without any prompting or questioning he just got right down to it and asked me for help. Said that he knew who I was, knew who you were, and knew that we had spotted the convoys coming into
town. With all that going on and me not getting a single word in, I think it’s safe to say that he’s on the level.”
“That’s… pretty bold of him, you don’t think this could be a trap? If he knows who I am then I wouldn’t exactly rule it out.”
“That’s true, but if he knows who I am then he knows what I am now. It would honestly be insane to just walk up to a random vampire in a paranormal bar and admit all this stuff without making sure that they can trust you first. For all he knew I could have just ripped his head off without even thinking about it, but if he was willing to take that risk I’m willing to give him a degree of trust, especially after what he told me about why they’re coming here.”
Getting more comfortable in his seat and finally feeling his senses coming back to him fully after what was no doubt one hell of a run, Damon leaned forward and looked over each of the files that I had laid out in front of me. “He didn’t tell me the whole thing, said that he wanted you to be the first one to hear all of it, but from what I gathered things are looking pretty shaky for them. They’re definitely running from something, something bad, and sooner or later it’s going to catch them even if they keep moving.”
“But why here? Why not some other city or… another country even?”
“He heard from some friends about what we’re doing down here, how we’re bringing together humans and paranormals into one big happy family, how we offer protection and sanctuary to anyone who is willing to offer the same. That sort of thing is pretty tempting when you’ve got danger crawling down your back at all hours of the day.”
“He must have come ahead of them to make sure that the rumors were true,” Vincent said, “It’s incredibly impressive that he managed to make his way into the city without us knowing about it, either we need to ramp up security or he really is just that good. If it’s the latter then… I can safely assume that he’s not here to kill any of us, he likely would have done it by now, or at least attempted to.”