Nighter

by Magdalena Kozak

  “He bought the blood?” Vesper understood now. “That’s why you wanted me to provoke him. The cops got his info, and thanks to that, you will know who he is, and set observation on him.”

  “We’ll put a whole system in motion,” the captain stated. “We have to get to the dealer. Because, think...” he turned to his friend and staring at him, tensed, before he continued, “where do they get blood like that from? It must be really potent; I don’t doubt that. Brewed with pain and fear... that dude’s eyes looked like stoned barracuda. And, how do you think they make something like that?”

  Vesper shook his head slowly, answering the question in his mind. Motherfuckers, he mouthed.

  Nidor turned back to look at the road. He turned right for Emów, and then to the forest on one of inconspicuous, sandy roads. The car rolled over potholes mercilessly.

  It was near dawn.

  They didn’t speak until they reached the familiar buildings housing the Third Section of the White Intelligence of Internal Security Agency.

  ***

  Vesper lay on a waterbed in his room, staring at the ceiling. The blinds stuck tightly to the window, not letting the murderous glow get into the room. Velvety darkness reigned and created a soft, cozy paradise. It was home. The best one he’d had so far.

  But the young nighter couldn’t sleep, tormented by uneasy thoughts.

  The beginnings of his vampire career were somewhat... weird. He didn’t expect that, or at least not exactly that.

  Nidor was all right, he couldn’t say anything bad about him. Vesper liked him a lot better than his former training officer. Luckily, he rarely encountered Morawski, whose real name was Umens, who didn’t get in his way, being always busy with his own duties. He’d only had a presentation with the whole team, going over key topics.

  Once he saw his former room colleagues: Maria, Wojtek, and Staszek. They nodded to him politely, and went their way immediately. He didn’t even have time to ask what their real names were. He couldn’t feel them either. He wasn’t sure whether they were human or not, and they didn’t seem thrilled to keep in touch. Oh well, it looked like they’d finished their assignment, and had no need to be friendly with him anymore.

  The other nighters treated him politely, quite friendly even. They answered all his questions, and showed him how to use different weapons. If he had a problem, he could turn to any of them for help, and none refused him. But there was still an impermeable barrier between him and the rest of the team. He wasn’t one of them and he clearly felt it.

  It had nothing to do with traditional army hazing. Nobody tormented him with overt exertion, they even slowed him down if he played too much. He woke up early, as soon as it got dark, by choice. He ran around the forest for hours, couldn’t get enough of his freshly acquired physical ability. He could finally endure large distances, mile after mile, lightly and swiftly, without feeling tired.

  He ran, jumped and climbed without effort, heartbeat steady and calm, and his breath sped up only slightly. It filled him with unbelievable exultation, like a feeling of never before known freedom. Truly, he’d died and was born anew.

  But he was still not fully happy. Something was eating at him, and lurked around the peripheral of his awareness. He still felt in limbo between two worlds.

  He’d already left the other, human one, but hadn’t fully arrived in this one yet. And he still didn’t know how to find his place within it. So he accepted his colleagues’ reservation calmly, too shy to ask some questions. Only now, after returning from Moonwalker, he understood where that unavoidable alienation came from.

  He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t a vampire killer.

  He wasn’t a killer at all.

  He’d never taken anyone’s life, whether they deserved it or not.

  He realized that his moment to kill would come for him, too. In the space of a month after waking up, he hadn’t displayed a shred of desire to lunge at and murder anyone. Only now, when he stepped out among people, he felt real hunger, the blood’s call. Suddenly he heard the muffled growl of a hunter crouched within, excited, because he’d finally spotted his victim.

  On top of that, he realized that at Moonwalker, he’d felt a small taste of who he’d really become. Or who he was becoming more each day.

  And he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be like that.

  But he had no other choice. Not anymore.

  So he stared at the ceiling, searching for answers to questions he couldn’t properly formulate.

  ***

  Nidor leaned over the window and looked around the area. Emów’s pine forest was preparing itself for spring. The grass didn’t lay pathetically on the ground, and swollen bush buds planned to burst with green any day.

  It was twilight. The sun was finishing up blinding the world with bright, purple rays of sunset in a navy-blue sky.

  “Vesper!” the nighter called out in semi-whisper, looking around. Vesper! he repeated in his mind, eagerly.

  The one who called out hung himself from the roof, upside down, keeping his face at Nidor’s eye level.

  “Yes?” he asked. “What’s going on, Mr. Captain?”

  “There you are,” Nidor sighed, leaning away slightly. “I thought you were running in the forest again.”

  Vesper pushed away with his hands, and flipped half a salto in mid-air. But instead of gently falling to his feet, he slammed into the ground quite badly, and rolled across the courtyard. He got up immediately with a sour expression. He dusted the sand and dried leaves off of himself.

  “Right,” he muttered. “I’ve had enough running. Now I’m practicing jumping off the roof. I’m not really getting it.”

  “You don’t push the ground enough,” the other explained pretentiously. “Look!” He jumped out the window in one swift move.

  He stood across from his colleague, flashing him a little superior grin.

  “What is flying?” he asked, like a teacher quizzing the student at the blackboard.

  “A form of telekinesis,” the adept answered rapidly. “Just like you move objects with your mind, here you have to use the surroundings. Push away from the ground, a building, anything, as long as it’s powerful enough. Otherwise you will push away that something.”

  “Exactly,” Nidor said. “You won’t push off a match box, it would fly first.” He smiled. “So you have the theory down pat. Telekinesis too, you’ve been moving larger things quite well. So what’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know,” Vesper stated broodingly. “Maybe the precision? I have to push not just off the ground, but the wall too, and it’s hard to control a few things at once... or it’s the timing. Am I doing it too early or too late?”

  Nidor soared up, and landed on the roof softly.

  “Come on,” he said. “Come, come up, kiddo.”

  Vesper bit his lip, concentrating on the wall. He soared half a yard up, then lost his balance, waved his arms, and fell to the side. He fell, rolled swiftly. Then swore, hit the ground with his fist, and stood up with a very displeased expression.

  “I’ll use the classic method for now,” he growled angrily. “I have an anti-talent for flying.”

  He walked up to a ladder leading to the roof, and started climbing.

  “Patience,” Nidor said. “You just have to learn it, that’s all. As far as I know, nobody is born with that ability.”

  He waited for his friend to join him, observing him from under lowered lids.

  The sun was still shining with its last rays.

  “Come on, get moving,” he said, when Vesper has finally climbed to the roof. “Go.”

  They stood at the roof edge. Both looked down.

  “Hmm,” Vesper said uncertainly. “So it’s like this. I push off the roof, control wall closeness, let gravity work, and then just above the ground I push off it heavily...” He stomped his feet and leaned as if for a dive.

  “You think too much,” Nidor said and pushed him brutally.

  Vesper flew down, desper
ately waving his hands and feet in the air. Suddenly, instead of hitting the concrete pavement, he bumped off, as if pushed away with an invisible force. Then he lightly touched the ground.

  He straightened up, his face bright with happiness. He looked up at his friend, still standing on the roof.

  “Oh,” he said casually. “So it’s just like that. Don’t overthink it, just push away, so I don’t face plant. Oh.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Nidor said and pushed off the roof, made a triple salto and landed lightly, right next to Vesper. “Just like that,” he said nonchalantly.

  The youngster’s face fell.

  “You’ll learn that in in time too,” Nidor laughed, patting his shoulder. “Okay, enough playing around, I have news for you,” he added seriously.

  “Something about our case?” Vesper asked with interest.

  “Yes,” the captain nodded. “But let’s go inside, I’m hungry. We’ll eat something and talk. Get a move on, man!”

  “Man!” the other one snorted right away. “Really...” He shrugged in ostentatious disdain.

  “Old language habits,” Nidor said. “Come!”

  He turned around and jumped in through the window, and disappeared into the room. Vesper watched him uncertainly. He finally pushed off, jumped. He didn’t fly half as well as the older nighter. He barely made it to the window, and landed on the sill, grabbing the frame to keep his balance.

  “I’m never gonna fucking learn that,” he growled through clenched teeth.

  ***

  They both sat in Nidor’s room, sipping ruby liquid from tall glasses.

  “So far it’s going well,” the captain said. “Technology office got us billing info for our stoner friend’s phones. Land line and cell.”

  “If he’s smart, he’ll buy prepaid, or just a calling card,” Vesper noted immediately. “He won’t use his phone to call the hot number. And the billing would be useless...”

  “Of course, we had to send an observation unit after him,” Nidor parried. “Guys are watching him day and night. If he uses a phone booth, we’ll find out where he called. And compare it to billing and check if it’s a new number.”

  “Oh,” the youngster said appreciatively. “You can get it off the phone booth, too?”

  “Simple,” the other shrugged carelessly. “It is a phone apparatus with a number. Each booth has a billing code. You ask the operator to give you the card number that was used at a particular booth at a given time. Then you check all the numbers dialed with that card. Usually you have a match at the first or second try... I mean, the guy doesn’t buy a card to call his mommy. He has a cell for that.”

  “Okay, fine,” Vesper swallowed. “But the other phone can also be prepaid, without personal information.”

  “You must have slept in training.” The officer sighed painfully. “You can locate the cell within a few-yard radius. If three towers catch on it, you draw the lines between them, and you get results, and that’s enough. You know where the guy is. As long as he’s using the given provider at that time.”

  “All right,” the youngster livened up. “And once we have him in some public area, like a store, we call the number. Hey it’s Kaz, oh, sorry, wrong number. Brief, but enough for the observation team to see who picked up. Click, click photos and after him. And so on, following the thread. ISAs will do most of the work for us.”

  “Exactly,” the captain smiled, pleased. “And then we’ll take care of it ourselves, in our time, and our way.”

  Vesper looked at him carefully.

  “Learn to use a gun, kiddo,” the other one said suddenly, in a harsh tone. “Dealers have connections with renegades... I mean, I doubt that any of them would prance too close to such a hot story. To high of a risk for them. The dealer himself probably doesn’t taste his product, so he shouldn’t be too dangerous. But one way or another, since you’re going on a mission, you have to be careful.”

  The youngster nodded thoughtfully. Both fell silent.

  “Okay, so I’m off to the shooting range,” Vesper said while getting up. “They gave me PSG-1 to start. They want to make me a sniper, can you believe?” he said, incredulous.

  “They’re right,” Nidor said, looking up. “We all started with that. Clean, elegant, and from a distance. You are not fit for face-to-face killing yet. You shouldn’t familiarize yourself with natural blood too much. And forget about things like a knife, for at least few years. You could scar yourself mentally, screw yourself over totally.”

  Vesper got serious immediately. He recalled the teenage couple in Moonwalker, and his sudden, urgent hunger.

  “That’s right,” he admitted quietly. “It could be tough.”

  He left, closing the door behind himself. Nidor looked after him.

  “You’re doing great, kiddo,” he said quietly. “They had to chain me in the Bunker so I wouldn’t go crazy in the beginning.”

  He got up, walked to the window, and stared at the moon shining in the sky. He recalled the time he woke up for the Night himself.

  ***

  The world watched through a round scope with a plus sign across it has a completely different dimension.

  It divides all beings living in it to wolves and sheep, predators and victims.

  Vesper watched this kind of world while lying on a roof of one of Warsaw’s suburbs’ villas. He’d spread his black coat on the grayish surface, and positioned himself comfortably. He pressed his PSG-1 to his shoulder. He leaned the gun on a tripod, hooked up a twenty-bullet magazine to it.7.65x51mm NATO... from this distance, it would rip apart even steel.

  He waited, looking through the optic scope, at the front door of the building across the street. He squeezed his weapon with hands clad in the thinnest, black leather gloves, resting his pointer finger on the release. He just waited to move it, to bend it quickly in one decisive motion. One that would send unexpected death ahead.

  He waited for the moment when he would become a predator irrevocably and irreversibly.

  Nidor crouched right next to him, squeezing Wintorez in his arms. He didn’t like western weapons, but he loved the special, armor-piercing SP6 bullets he could shoot out of the Russian rifle. As he cynically said, hardly any vampire wouldn’t lose his head for it.

  They both froze. As if the other didn’t exist at all, as if they were part of the surroundings, maybe a vent on the roof, or maybe a stack of rubbish blown in by the wind. They didn’t feel, they didn’t think, they didn’t exist. Only the target existed, hidden behind a door locked shut.

  The sky in the east began to lighten up a little bit; dawn was approaching in huge steps. Soon, the sun would come up and bathe them in a flood of murderous ultraviolet. It would be time to get going. Human observers would take their place, and the nighters would hide out in an improvised base nearby, staying on constant alert. But they would return in the evening, and the next one, and the next... In the end, the target would come out from his hole.

  Suddenly, the door twitched, and opened. The snipers set up on the roofs tensed expectantly. They sent a silent signal to the assault unit, hidden in a van nearby. A man wearing pajamas walked out onto the porch, yawning carelessly. He glanced at the pinkish sky, nodded and went back inside, the door closed behind him. Silence fell again.

  Vesper moved his head from the rifle, and glanced at his colleague questioningly. The other just nodded briskly, obviously carrying out a lively, telepathic conversation. He finally glanced at the youngster.

  “It’s all clear,” he sent him the explanation. “He’s got a feeler. Don’t answer me in your mind!” he warned hurriedly. “You’ll start transmitting so loud, half of Poland will hear you!”

  He made a short, summoning gesture with his hand. Vesper let go of his rifle immediately and crawled up to his friend.

  “That was a human,” he whispered. “Right?”

  “A feeler,” Nidor replied quietly. “He can feel us. A very rare gift... we thought there were only a few like that in the world. We
didn’t expect him here, and serving a small fry. So we know why the target didn’t stick his nose out tonight.”

  “He knows we’re here?” Vesper muttered excitedly. “I mean us, nighters?”

  “For sure,” the captain stated seriously. “The feeler can only recognize killers. He wouldn’t recognize a Viner for example... unless she had someone on her conscience.”

  Karina’s face, the Viner from the bar, flashed in Vesper’s mind in a split second. He smiled briefly at the memory of her, but became serious again immediately, bringing his thoughts back to reality. There would be time for pleasure later. Maybe one day.

  Nidor was in a middle of another conversation. Vesper could only watch, forbidden to answer the rest of the unit this way.

  “The guys are leaving,” Nidor said in the end. “They’ll wait a few miles further away, out of the feeler’s reach. We’re staying alone.”

  Vesper threw him a shocked glance.

  “I’m a hider,” the other explained briefly. “And you... Well, you’re not a killer yet. He won’t feel you. You’re staying here, alone,” he started explaining a new plan. “I’m going down now, you will cover me. As soon as he moves, we’ll get him. If he tries to escape in a car, shoot at the driver and the engine. I will block them from the ground until our guys show up.” Nidor looked him straight in the eyes. “All clear?”

  “Yes, sir!” Vesper answered excitedly.

  “Okay, then see you on the other side!” Nidor lifted himself slightly, crawled to the roof’s edge, and jumped.

  Vesper watched after him, repeating the words in his mind. What other side did he talk about? Suddenly he understood, and licked his dried lips.

  Predator’s Rubicon. Right in front of him. So... alea iacta est?

  He moved back to his weapon, settled himself comfortably, and once again observed the area through a circled plus of the optic scope.