Branoc asked, “What’s that?”
“I chit-chatted with Harold about what you told him. How did a human militia group develop such a poison against the vampires? It would take knowing old alchemical recipes and testing on vampires over centuries to weed out the proper poisons from the non-performing products. Humans, even if backed with scientific skills, would be unable to complete that kind of dangerous work. Imagine having to capture a hundred or more vampire test subjects to prove effectiveness?”
“But what kind of vampire would consider this or even do this to other vampires?”
“A dangerous one,” said Branoc.
We wandered around the facility again before meeting with the CEO, Karoldine, and Memphis to wrap up. Without any new ideas or clues, we left.
Karoldine watched from the lobby windows as our car disappeared on the road. She brought up her phone and typed in the text, “Memphis, please check on the status of the aerosol project at the Genomics division. And good job today with our visitors.” Then she typed a second one to Jorg, “They found nothing. They are still unsure of the source.” She straightened the rubber mat that skewed off its regular position revealing the corner of a Gothic letter “C”. The mat covered the original plant’s name poured into the floor using solid bronze, “The Cinnabar Chemical Corporation of Connecticut – Founded 1880 – Premium Mercury Materials Manufacture”.
-:- Nine -:-
“What are those?” I said as Garin appeared out of the brush.
“You said you wanted to learn the way of the sword.”
“Sticks?”
“Unless you want to risk getting cut. I don’t want to lose my head either – I’ve notice you’re kind of dangerous.”
“That’s funny but alright. Give me one.” Garin handed me one of the sticks. He had shoved on a ring about the top of the handle area and tied a steel nut to the bottom end. The top of the wooden sword tapered down to a blunt point.
“Grip it in your hand like this.”
“I know that much.”
“No, like this, closer to the guard … Good, now feel the balance in the weapon. How the weight behind your hand makes the tip seem light and feathery.”
I could feel that. I nodded.
“Now put your sword out. No like you mean it.” Garin backed up and swung his stick around in the air in dramatic flourishes and then he closed on me. I held my stick out and he batted it aside only to touch the tip of his stick against my collarbone. “Don’t let me bat it aside.”
I put my other hand on the handle of my sword as he came again.
“Now you’ll be too stiff. Sure if I bat it you will be less likely to let me through, but I might attack like this.” He lunged and the sword went low. I couldn’t catch his sword and he touched my leg. “I’m moving at slower than a human speed. Up again. And stay on the balls of your feet.”
I held my sword up with one hand, balancing my other arm back. When he came in again I struck his sword and then hit it the other way until I opened his stroke and I lunged, catching his sleeve.
But his sword came around and nestled against the skin under my chin. “Progress. Such a beautiful face.” He smiled. “Again.”
We practiced and I slowly saw how he trained me in minute steps. A lot of balance on my feet and the need for that balance to be effective in striking. He showed me how to watch his intent by keeping track of his hips and feet.
“You cannot be where your feet are not.”
“You sound like Yoda.”
“Uncle Tremper told me that. It’s an old saying in the family. The point is look through this line from my chest, crossed with my hips, and down through to the floor. After paying attention you’ll naturally begin to predict where your opponent will be. Now, again.”
We worked for hours. Garin came out of the woods with a turkey and had that on the fire for me. I didn’t realize my level of hunger until the fresh meat smoldered on the spit. We practiced with the wooden swords while the bird cooked. Branoc laughed at my techniques and turned the spit.
“Garin, take over on the bird and let me work with Anna.” Garin tossed the sword to Branoc. The detective caught it in the air and stomped over at me. His strikes came furious and fast from every direction but I started deflecting a few of them. He flashed away and returned with a willow switch in his other hand. “Now let’s see how you do against a pair of swords.”
I blocked one sword only to be hit with the switch across my legs. Or I stopped both but he spun them around and hit me with the two sticks. Or knocked me with his boot. Then he showed me how to anticipate and predict a two sword holding opponent.
Garin increased the complexity by returning with an additional wooden sword and the two of them attacked me.
“A lot to learn but you’re a natural at this.”
“Thanks. My bruised arms and legs don’t agree though.” Garin tore off a hot chunk of the turkey for me and handed it to me lying on a wide leaf. “I am self conscious with you two sitting there watching me eat this.” I took a bite, “A little crispy on the outside and tender inside. This is really delicious.”
“We’ll have to get napkins next time,” Branoc said. Watching me from the other side of the fire.
I wiped my forearm across my mouth and found a lot more juice than I thought. “Sorry, I’m a little piggy.”
Garin held a cup of pop for me, “No need. We’ve neglected to feed you for too long. The protein will do you good after our sword training.”
“You make it sound as if I’m your goldfish.” I set the pop down, hot from riding too long in Branoc’s car, but safer than drinking water out of a stream.
“I did drag you out of the river.”
“She fell in the river?”
“Ah, no.” I shot Garin a mean look but I couldn’t hold it long from melting into a grin. I took another bite of turkey to hide that.
Branoc moved his foot and shifted his weight on the ground where he sat, “I see. Playing while I’m out doing work.”
I blushed, but reached for more meat. My hunger kept ripping chunks from the bird and I kept eating until I had too much becoming drowsy. Why didn’t I learn? But I also didn’t fill up on mashed potatoes and Thanksgiving stuffing.
“You ate more than I thought you would.”
I waved my hand, “That’s quite a complement. Binge turkey eater.”
“You needed it.”
“Now I don’t feel so good.”
“Garin, roll her into the tent. I think we’re done for the evening.”
“Hey, how about after training tomorrow morning you take me into town. I should check with Marilyn. Maybe she knows a little about these companies. She’s always good for rumors.” Then I yawned and the darkness claimed me.
-:- Ten -:-
“Hi Marilyn!” I said as I pushed through the office door. Garin and Branoc followed me, carefully watching the sidewalk behind us for any followers. We had parked discretely down the street tucking the car carefully in an alley. I walked past the office work station Marilyn kept open for me and expected Marilyn’s usual “Hi Anna!” response but only silence greeted me.
Marilyn’s swivel chair lay tipped over through the doorway to her office, its casters reaching at her desk like a vicious claw. I rushed forward. Her front desk, that she used when meeting with clients, tipped forward with its front edge pressed hard into the carpet. Her computer screen resting on her back desk glowed showing an unfinished document. File drawers yanked out of her desks sprawled onto the floor vomiting their bright white paper contents across the dark emerald carpet. Blood splashes marked the keyboard dangling off its rest, soaked up by folders and spilled papers, and ran across the desktop to the floor. Marilyn’s arm with her jeweled watch and death-relaxed hand poked from under the blood smeared debris.
My mouth gapped. I sensed I should scream yet no sound came out. Shock. Branoc rushed passed me blocking my view as he surveyed the scene.
“No. I want to see.” I pus
hed at the investigator. The folders covered her like a blanket. Patent literature and references. Sticky notes, paper clips and color-coded hanging folders sprawled around her. I moved a mound of paperwork and saw her face. Marilyn, my boss and friend, looked up to the sky from vacant eyes, her mouth open in a last scream that had been ripped viciously from her throat by deeply thrust vampire fangs tearing at her flesh.
“No. No. No.” I gripped the folders. My knuckles white and tendons bunching my skin. “A vampire.”
Garin pulled me away, “Not long ago.”
“How long?” I demanded.
“It doesn’t matter. Probably this morning,” Branoc said. He crouched down, pushing away folders and papers from her body. Other gashes showed their presence on her arms and legs and torso. He didn’t tell me her attacker had been vicious and dragged out her death. I guessed from his posture. Branoc said, “They killed her and dumped the papers out to hide evidence or disguise it as a robbery. Anyone else worked here?”
“Two other lawyers and a few paralegals.” I glanced to the hallway, “Their offices are upstairs.” I watched Branoc stalk toward the door, “They’re dead too aren’t they?”
“A guess. We’ll know in a moment.”
Garin released me to follow Branoc, “I saw jewelry on Marilyn’s wrist. Unlikely a pure robbery?”
Branoc nodded.
Papers floated in the corners of the carpeted spiral stairs to the upper offices. The highly polished wood banister creaked under our hands as I pulled myself up the steps between Branoc and Garin. The banister kept me upright along the stairs to fight against the pull of misery in my thoughts about Marilyn. We reached the upper floor and found more papers sprawled through the four doorways into the hall.
The first three offices sat empty except for bloody drag marks like dead or nearly dead bodies taken to the farthest office. The blood marks became wider and more profuse with additional bodies. The last office showed a mess of blood and shredded body parts. Violence I had never seen before. And people I worked with, had gone to social events with, which had taught me nuances in the law. Four dismembered bodies cast about the room but only three heads piled in the corner by the trash can. As if the once a week janitor might take them out with the recyclables.
They sheared the heads into chunks and rearranged the pieces like a child playing a gruesome game swapping craniums, hair tuft toupees, different noses and ears and chins. I could not pull my eyes from the heads. Such over-the-top-violence that my mind could not register any of it. Garin nudged me aside to unhook me from the horror.
I noticed how the tidy shelves of old law books in their fancy bindings choking three walls of shelves in the room had been pulled to the floor. Other bunches of the volumes showed hack lines from powerfully driven sword strikes. Trimming the law, splitting the cases, cutting the court notes. A fancy shoe and ankle severed above the top of their sock pushed against some books on a shelf like a book end. Another bookend sat on a different shelf made of chopped arm sections. A candy bowl overflowed with bloody digits. One on top lay chalky white as bone and as wrinkled as a raisin, sucked dry of any fluids. Intestines hung like crepe paper pinned to the ceiling.
Garin said, “This is more than marauding vampires strung out without Massai.”
“They meant for us to find this.” Branoc looked around at the display.
“They left this for US?” I swooned, brandishing my hand across it all, “What do you mean? If not for us they would still be alive?”
“Possibly.”
“This is what I might do as a vampire?”
“Humans can do this kind of thing too. It’s not as if vampires alone do this business. But yes. Driven vampires short on food can create vile wanton destruction.”
“This is more than just hunger, Garin.” Branoc picked up the bookend foot to see the angle of cut.
“Might they not show up at the slaughterhouse if they starved instead?”
“A big line like Communist Russians waiting for bread?”
“Yes. Like that. Not this. Or attempting to send a message.”
“Immortality has its price,” Branoc said. I saw their blood lust rising in him and Garin. I’m sure the bloody bits created quite an odor here. “The other choice is the long slow suicide of dying old and weak.”
“Not much of a choice.” I could not be safe even with them.
“That’s why one cannot be a vampire until after twenty-one when you can make the choice. Kind of like getting your wisdom teeth.”
“Not really.” I walked toward the door, “I’m going downstairs. Nothing here is helpful.” My two vampires followed me back into Marilyn’s office. I looked at the mess of papers. I righted a tipped over drawer and begin filling it with the nearest folders. I found a few that should be in another drawer and started a new little stack. “Garin, get me another drawer.” I filled both of them and then got another drawer started. “I sorted files for Marilyn when I first started working here.” I left the bloody papers in their own stack not sure what to do with them. I’m detached and distanced about it. Maybe a layer of shock. I know the blood soaked documents will adhere and be inseparable later. Some data sits on the servers; so much of this could be recovered, but not everything. “Hey!”
“What Anna?” Garin asked.
“The folder on Vermilion Genomics is missing.”
“Maybe it’s under the desk?” Branoc lifted the corner but none of the papers lay there. Another dark pool of blood and still sticky-damp splatters against the desk face.
I could not find the folder in my empty office either. We looked upstairs. “You wouldn’t know someone took the file unless you worked here and maybe only because I actually filed everything earlier this summer,” I didn’t appreciate my much less complicated life then.
“What’s important about the file?”
“That’s why I’m concerned it’s gone, why would that folder be taken?”
“What was in the file?”
“Documents on some patent work Marilyn worked with them on, contacts at the research facility and members of the Bank of Draydon.”
“What could they want with that?”
Garin said, “Depends on how meticulous Marilyn had been with her product or process notes. She might have recorded details they didn’t want released or someone else thought as competitive intelligence they might use for their own research.” He pulled my shoulder, “Anna, do you remember what details might be in there? Like what they worked on?”
I remembered, “Something about aerosolization of liquids. And a cross-patent licensing agreement to a company called Advanced Aura Coating Technologies.” I looked at Garin, “Where do I remember that company from?”
“Paint manufacturers?” Garin wheeled around, “Like I used on my car? They made that nano-technology paint additive I detailed my car with to get the color changing moonlight paint.”
“Maybe the file is on the server.”
Branoc looked at the paper files, “The office uses a file storage server?”
I went to my office and logged into the network terminal system and the file server. Everything seemed fine. I searched for Vermilion Genomics and Advanced Aura Coating Technologies. “Nothing is coming up.” I checked another company I remembered and that file came up as I expected so I knew the computer system worked correctly.
Garin said over my shoulder, “Let me take a look.” I switched seats and he glided through the file system. He ran a few command line orders and the server churned with deep file searches. Nothing came up when the cursor reappeared. He tried a shorter search term and still the cursor reappeared with no output. “They wiped the file system of that data too.” He opened another terminal window and ran additional instructions. The computer churned. “This will give us a list of files deleted in the last twenty-four hours.” He pressed enter and the computer responded with a list of document files.
“None of those are associated with the two companies.”
&nbs
p; Garin said, “Then they did a thorough job, going in and not only deleting but purging the files. They maintained selectivity without erasing everything so it might take longer before any investigation.”
Branoc said, “We need to go to this Advanced Aura Coating Technologies place. Garin, do you remember the address you got your paint from?”
-:- Eleven -:-
“Doctor Tremper Edwards, would you like some tea? I made a fresh batch of green – bursting with healthy anti-oxidants.”
Tremper noticed the burnished tint on the young administrative assistant’s hands that sharply rounded her slim wrists like pink gloves. The cute curvy blond kept her hair pulled back in a tight bun like a surgeon and wore a snugly sleeved blouse that could not drag loosely across anything. Her black pants hugged her shapely legs not to show them off but he guessed to avoid brushing against her shoes, dragging on the floor, or accidentally swishing against a chair or table leg. He noticed street shoes set precisely in a covered boot tray that differed from the low hard heels she wore curled under her chair. She might have yet another pair in her car that she exchanged as an additional layer of protective separation. A small sophisticated air purifier hummed nearly imperceptibly near the side of her workspace. He would have described her cautions as excessive but this plant worked with virulent strains of the common cold virus. Aggressive varieties easily transmitted on the most unlikely surfaces. Always a good idea to wash her hands frequently. “Yes, I’ll have some tea. Thank you.”
“Pick a chair and I’ll let Doctor Peters know you’ve arrived. He shouldn’t be long. We’re not that large of a facility.”
On the wall hung the facility’s logo Rhino Laboratories Of Livix, Inc.
“There’s been a new building added since I worked here.”
“That wing went in about ten years ago. You worked here? How long ago? ”
Tremper looked at her fresh young face. He wanted to say before your birth and probably before your parents wed and maybe before they dated but he didn’t like being an impolite vampire. “Oh, I retired over thirty years ago.”
The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3) Page 24