User319 logged in to a secure data terminal and put in his password. The alert was almost instantaneous. Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or IAFIS, flagged a print as a C7—a classified print—only ten minutes ago. Detective Katrina O’Hara, partner to Kenny Johnson of the Seattle Police Department, had been waiting at the Seattle Fingerprint analysis labs for most of the morning for a hit off the print recovered by Detective Johnson.
The man, User319—known only as Agent Void of the CIA—picked up a phone and spoke only a few words to the husky voice on the other end.
“Send a recovery team. We have a C7 print in Seattle. Evidence to be contained.”
He was standing next to a window that overlooked a warehouse. Several long buildings of steel and stone walls sat silently, the words HIGH SECURITY posted all around them. Guards with assault weapons patrolled in teams of three on every corner of the high security area in Virginia. He did not have to explain what had happened to the assistant now standing behind him, for it was obvious. The agent they sent to the hospital in Seattle had failed, and had gone black.
“He left his print,” the man said. “How could he be so stupid?”
“It’s being taken care of,” Agent Void told him.
“It shouldn’t have to be. Make this go away.”
The clock on the wall above his desk read fifteen minutes till noon, and the groggy sounding man had just left his office. Agent Void sat at his clean and tidy desk and rubbed his face in his hands, trying to think of something he could do. If he could have turned back the clock over his desk, he would have. If he could go back and do it all over again, he would. When he had joined the CIA almost a lifetime ago, he was young and eager and thought he could do good in the world. But he wasn’t ready for the truth to be laid in front of him in this way.
Agent Void wasn’t ready to become the man they wanted him to be, cold and emotionless. He had tried to help them last winter. He had tried to help Jack and it almost exposed him, exposed his intentions to “The Group.”
“The Group” were a bunch of powerful people and businessmen who were trying to direct certain events in the country. They had power that reached up to the highest levels in the country and their reach seemed to be never-ending.
Agent Void knew he was lucky the last time, but this time his life could be in jeopardy. He wasn’t ready to risk it all. Not yet. Not until he was sure.
Chapter 15
11:00 a.m., May 6
The late morning blazed with blue skies and the colors of spring, but none of it was for us. Sunlit beauty washed over the land and seemed to be for the people of that town, and that town alone. My life was stark and felt out of sync with everything around me.
Kenny sat next to me and I knew something was wrong. He wouldn’t speak of the turmoil of fears and terrors that plagued his thoughts and I hated that. I hated when he would just stop talking. He was too much like me in too many ways. We always had to talk about things. If there was something wrong with the other, we wanted—no, we needed—to help. But now he was not talking to me, and that lack of action, of effort, spoke volumes to me…
Something bad was going on with him, and it was killing me that I couldn’t help him. Kenny was shutting me out. Even though there had been times in our history together when he had closed himself down to me, it was not normal. Every silence spoke to me.
I stared out the window of my truck as we pulled to the curb of the Collins home in Toledo. Neighbors tended gardens and arranged pots in windowsills and mowed their small patches of green grass. I felt helpless, broken and gone, but I tried to fight off the apathy. Soon Kenny and I climbed out of the truck, and the doors shut behind us with a pointed thud. We walked up a small stone path that led to a house that was more of a large shack. Peeling green paint flaked off of the window sills and door frames of the one-story home, and I knocked on the door of the Collins’ dilapidated house.
For a moment I had lost myself in what I was doing. My mind pulled into my body and I was completely tired and pained. Then I was back before the creaky door which opened for us and a young woman stood before Kenny and me with a questioning expression on her face.
“You must be Harvey Collins. I’m Tim Anderson and this is Detective Kenny Johnson with the Seattle PD. Ranger Wilkinson sent us over. We wanted to ask you some questions about your brother Tommy.”
Harvey was young—no longer a girl, but a little too immature to be a woman. She had short, black hair cropped just below her ears and a thin face to match her athletic body type.
She held firm at the door, an untrusting look in her eyes that had suddenly turned cold. Harvey looked us up and down. “Let me see some ID.” she said skeptically, and Kenny pulled out his badge and ID for her.
“Here you go.”
Harvey examined it very carefully, looking at every detail, and I had to wonder—even if there was something fake about it, would she even know the difference?
“Come on in,” she told us and pulled the screen door open.
“Is that your truck?” Harvey nodded in the direction of my Ford F150.
“Yeah.”
“Nice ride,” she said to me. She seemed sincere.
Her home was much like most of the houses in that small town, I imagined. Old shag carpet released small clouds of dust into the air as we walked in and every square inch of the walls, from floor to ceiling, were occupied by every sort of knickknack and collectable you could imagine. Old-timey magazines were stacked in hazardous towers and leaned against weak bookcases that were packed with cheesy romance novels. I wondered if this house was actually her grandmother’s house, because that was the impression that I got.
We seated ourselves at two wooden chairs at a round oak table and began to talk.
“So if Tommy’s not due back from camping for a while, how do you know something’s wrong?” Kenny asked her right off.
“He checks in every day by cell. He emails photos and stupid videos too. But I haven’t heard anything from Tommy in over three days now.”
“Well, maybe he can’t get cell reception.” Kenny offered.
“He’s got a smartphone that uses the internet on his computer,” Harvey corrected him.
“Wow, that’s unusual,” I said.
“Tommy’s really big on camping and hunting. He’s always out at remote sites. So my uncle got him that phone. I’ve tried calling the two other guys with him, but neither one of them is answering.”
“What are the other friends like?” I asked.
“He is definitely the mature one of the group. They have all been friends since high school, but the others just won’t grow up.”
“Could it be he’s just having fun and forgot to check in?” I asked her.
“He wouldn’t do that. Our parents are gone now. It’s just my brother and me. We keep pretty close tabs on each other.”
I could see the concern in her eyes and understood that her parents were no longer living. I felt for her. If someone I loved was missing, I would do all I could to get them back too.
“Can I see the pictures he’s sent you so far?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Harvey said and brought them up on her computer.
“That’s Tommy,” She brought up a frame on her screen. Then she played a video. It was Tommy talking to her like he was making a documentary just for her.
“Hey, Sis! It’s day six now. Still fishing out at Cowlitz Ridge. I’m fine, keeping safe. Don’t worry, okay? Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Can you email what you have to me?” I asked her.
“Sure. What’s the address?”
“[email protected].”
She clicked several keys rapidly before speaking again.
“Done.”
“We’ll check this out,” Kenny told her.
“Well, wait! That’s it? You’re just going to leave?”
Harvey stood up quickly, her body language protesting. Her arms were folded across her chest, her eyes s
tern on us as we got ready to go.
“Yeah, this is a police matter now… And I must ask you—please don’t go looking for him alone. Let us take care of this. We don’t want to have to go a find you too.”
We walked out of her home and the slamming door behind me told me all I needed to know. She hated us already.
“What do you think?” I asked.
This scenario curdled Kenny’s sensibilities. It was his nature, his training and his professional practice to always tell the truth. In no way did he ever want to slip into the behavior of the low-life cop we could all be. He didn’t like this sneaking around protocol. Kenny didn’t say anything right away. My anxiety grew as we climbed into my truck and I kicked the engine over.
“I think we need to find those boys, Tommy and his friends. They may have not been taken by vampires, but any human could be capable of just as much evil as any vampire. If we find the boys then we find the vampires… But I have no idea how to even begin to hunt them down, Tim.”
“That, my friend, is why I am here. Come on. Let’s get going,” I told him as we backed out of Harvey’s driveway.
“I think the answer is right here for us,” I held up my laptop computer and showed Kenny what I meant. His eyes widened. Then I tucked it between us and pulled into the street.
Chapter 16
10:45 a.m., May 6
Her eyes blurred and Fabiana tried to drift off again. Tree branches cracked like guns going off, and in the distance a crane lumbered and struggled with its weight as it moved a load of steel beams off of a container. A forlorn horn rang in the morning wind and seemed to set the pitch for a percussion of screeching and clanging that appeared never-ending and that made Fabiana uneasy. She lay in the dark of her mind when another spirit came to her. She didn’t know if she had the strength again. She didn’t want to deal with another angry spirit. She didn’t want to hear the violent judgment of another one of her victims.
“Poor baby.”
Fabiana heard the voice of her father in her mind. Then she saw him standing before her. Fabiana’s eyes fixated on him and time seemed to stop. She was assaulted by a multitude of feelings. Her father had been the most important man in her life when she was a child. He had raised her alone in Hispania only to lose her to the calling of the blood collectors. He was a good man, always there for her whenever she needed him. And then she took his life.
Even after thousands of years, the guilt she felt was just as crushing today as it was on that devastating day so long ago. But he was not there to torment or give his child guilt. He was there to love her. For he had always loved Fabiana. From the first day that his wife announced to him that she was pregnant, and from that day to all the rest, he had loved Fabiana fiercely. Even when she stood over him to take his life, he had loved her unconditionally.
“Father… is that you?”
“Fabiana, you look just awful,” he told her, and his tone was teasing and loving.
“Let me hear it then, Father. Go ahead.” Fabiana choked back a sob.
“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.
“You are disappointed,” she told him. “You never thought I would turn out this way. I am a weak excuse for a daughter and your heart is broken. Am I close?”
“Not at all, my child,” he told her and he had love in his eyes. “You are doing the right thing, Fabiana. What you are doing is brave. You are not being crazy, you are being practical. You are human now. You are no longer that creature of the night that took my life so long ago. Fabiana, I am so proud of you. You wanted something good to come from what you became. And you made it happen.”
“What?” she asked, almost in disbelief. “But I was cursed!”
“Those ghosts do not always see things the right way. They do not understand that there were going to be hard choices for you. You did what you had to do to get the job done, to end the evil… Yes, you were cursed. But you, you had the power to turn it into a gift, to use it against them.”
“For revenge,” she sighed, feeling guilt creep back in.
“No, for justice… I know how scared you were. How frightened you still are.”
“Whatever is… in me… Father…it is evil. I can still feel it.”
“Yes, I know. The road to salvation is a long one, my child, but one you will conquer. And I have no doubt that if anyone can make it through, it is you, my lovely daughter.”
“What if it is stronger than me? Look at me! What if Kenny is right?”
“Kenny can never know how strong you are. Because he is weak. Look at what they have done to you, locking you in here. He is terrified. You have to go on without them. Without Tim. You have what it takes. And you have to stop the rising.”
“Even if it kills me?” she asked in almost a whisper.
“Make my death mean something,” her father said softly. “I’m counting on you, Fabiana. Do not let anyone get in your way, not even Tim.”
Then he was gone and she was alone once more.
Fabiana’s eyes searched the room, but the serene and peaceful feeling of her father was now gone, as if he had never had been there. But her mind seemed a little clearer now. Being in this place was hard, but she knew that Tim did it out of love for her. He wanted her to get better. It wasn’t some form of locking her away as her father would have her believe, and in her heart she truly knew it. She could feel Tim. She could feel that he was getting close to something. Something dangerous. That scared her quite a bit because she felt so helpless. It was not a feeling Fabiana could ever get used to.
Then she was seeing Tim in her mind once more, but it was not Tim exactly. It was more of a vision than seeing his thoughts—a vision of events that hadn’t occurred yet. Fabiana couldn’t take her eyes off of him. Images flew at her from all directions. Voices raised in anger were filling her thoughts and explosions of gunfire boomed into the night sky. Tim was crying out for Kenny. He was panicked and fighting for his life. There was nothing she could do to stop it. His first impulse had always been to fight and it was going to get him killed.
Fabiana wiped her eyes and stared straight ahead, once more feeling the eyes of strangers invading her privacy. She could never quite put her finger on where they were watching her from, but she sensed it and couldn’t ignore it. But they could never break down the powerful walls of her mind either. In there, she would always be safe from their spying, unrelenting eyes. She hated them with an almost childlike fury. Fabiana despised the doctors, the nurses, and, of course, the government agents that always seemed to show up. She really had no genuine pity or concern for them. She might even kill them. But then she dismissed such thoughts as absurd before they could take root in her. Fabiana needed to redeem herself in her father’s eyes. To move forward.
Chapter 17
12:00 p.m., May 6
My attention was everywhere, my body on alert. I hadn’t been dulled yet by the weight of my life or career—or lack of one, for that matter—unlike my partner, whose thoughts were despondent and erratic. Kenny seemed unable to concentrate on any one thing. I had never known him like this. He was so nervous, as if he was becoming frightened by his own shadow, and I had never—not once—ever seen or heard of him acting in such a manner as what I witnessed that hazy afternoon.
We sat at the little diner in Toledo, if that is what it could be called. We composed our thoughts at a short table of cheaply designed Formica, my laptop computer in front of me and a milkshake in front of Kenny. He had given all the attention he had in him to that shake. His eyes were closed as he drank it down and I could see he was enjoying it.
“Man, this is good,” he told me, slurping away.
“Tim, you have to get one of these. It’s real ice cream! Not like that shit we get in Seattle.”
My eyes were fixed onto the computer screen and he stopped looking at me, stopped waiting for my comment and returned back to his shake. I was investigating the history of the area. Over the last few months I had become quite adept in researching
an obscure area and uncovering the past behind it.
“For years, people have kept vanishing from this area,” I began, breaking the silence.
“But in 1982, eight hikers disappeared. Look, the papers called it a coyote attack. And it happened before, in 1959, and again before that in 1930. Now, I think we have a group of vampires who have lived in this area since the ‘30s and this is their little feeding ground,” I told Kenny as he finished his shake.
“But there are no vampires anymore. Your girl made sure of that.”
“Okay, watch this,” I said as I turned the laptop around so we could both see. I got ready to play the video that Harvey had emailed to me.
“I downloaded that guy Tommy’s video from his sister’s email. Okay, check this out.” The video was of Tommy in his tent. It was obviously at night and the only source of light was his flashlight that must have been sitting on the floor.
I slowed the video down and a shadow quickly appeared behind Tommy and then was gone just as fast. I had no idea what that shadow was. The shadow seemed to move really quickly, darting in and out of existence, but it appeared to have arms and legs. It could have been a man. I would have called it a bear, but in this part of Washington it could have been anything. But not knowing what light sources they may have had out there, we could not know for sure what it was at all. But it didn’t look good from where I was sitting.
“Play that again,” Kenny said, suddenly interested.
“That shadow appears in only one second of time. Whatever that thing is, it moves really fast.”
As Kenny watched the screen again, he really focused on it, trying to see what made that shadow. Of course he couldn’t see it. No one could, not from that video, but he was suddenly interested.
The Blood Born Tales (Book 2): Blood Dream Page 10