"Amphetamines. I take it for my ADD."
That explained a lot. No wonder he had wilted so quickly.
"I don't think that's a wise idea." Steven looked a question at him. "Listen, you're going on very little sleep, you've had a traumatic experience, you’re stressed and scared and then adding amphetamines to the mix. Not a good combo. You are begging for problems." Steven thought about it for a moment and nodded. He threw the pills back in his bag.
"Dude, who are you?" Steven was looking at him. He had seen the man do some strange, bizarre things tonight.
"I told you. It's one of those things I can't talk about." Alec looked outside.
"Screw that, man. I know too much already. I don't think you telling me this is going to change my life one way or another. I’m way in over my head. I don't know why you didn't just let them off me and save the other vampires from having to do it."
Alec thought for a moment.
"First off, my name is Alec Carson. Not Michael."
"Yeah I kinda got that back when we were picked up by the cops," Steven said smiling.
"You told Vic you weren't a vampire, but I watched you fight them tonight and escape. And you jumped four stories from the hotel. If you aren't a vampire then how did you do those things?"
Alec sighed. "You can't tell anyone what I'm about to tell you."
"Or what, they'll kill me," Steven smirked.
"I'm half vampire and half human." Alec let that sink in.
"Say what?" Steven looked like he didn't believe Alec but he was more awake now and interested in what Alec had to say. “You’re some sort of human-vampire hybrid?”
So Alec explained to him what had happened. He hoped he wasn't making a huge mistake doing this. But like Steven said, he knew too much already and there was no way to make him forget it. What would this hurt?
"Unbelievable," Steven said shaking his head and looking at Alec. "Half and half."
"Yeah." Alec kept peering out the window at the street.
"What did the one scary vampire dude mean when he said, 'The Devil sends his regards'? I'm not going to lie, man, that freaked me out a little."
"I don't know exactly what it means.” Alec explained a little about the Devil without giving too much away. Steven just whistled.
To change the subject Alec asked, “How did you get dragged into all this?”
Steven laughed. “Vic, Chris and I went to high school, then college together.”
“Were you and Vic friends?”
Steven shrugged. “We were when we were younger. We used to hang out at each other’s house and play computer games and hack into the public library for fun and rearrange the information for the books.”
“So he knew you were into hacking?”
“Yeah, when we were fifteen or sixteen we started a ‘hacker’s club’. It wasn’t anything major, just something to play around with. We’d encrypt files and send them back and forth to each other to see who could crack the other’s code. Vic was okay, but I had a knack for it. It’s almost like I can see patterns and decipher them.”
“So when Vic needed someone to crack Senator Taylor’s code on his computer he abducted you.”
"Mentioning that," Steven leaned over and pulled his backpack to him and pulled out a laptop. "Look at this."
Steven flipped the computer open and it came on. He typed in his password and then pulled up some files. Alec came over to him, looked at the screen and started reading. He frowned.
"Where did you get this?"
"Off of Senator Taylor's computer. Vic hacked it but there were some files he couldn’t open which is why he dragged me into all this. While we were held hostage, I read up on the information that Vic had found and the algorithms that were running on the encrypted files."
"I hate to sound stupid, but what the hell is it?" Alec was looking at a bunch of legal jargon that made so sense to him and there were several other pages open that showed numbers, files and proposals.
"It's a bill that Senator Taylor got passed several years ago for the government to build blood-borne pathogen labs all throughout the U.S."
"Okay," Alec said slowly, "I'm not seeing the bigger picture obviously."
Steven chuckled. "This is only part of it. You need to see all of it to fully grasp the significance of the rest." Alec nodded and Steven pulled up several other documents.
"This was the part that confused me at first. The facilities that were set up were set up to collect blood, not test it. I didn’t understand it, not at first anyway. So, I dug deeper and I found out that these blood collection facilities were then distributing the blood throughout the U.S."
It clicked then in Alec's head. "To the vampires. Silas told me something about a mutual agreement they had with the government, but he wouldn't say more. This must have been what he was talking about. I don't think I'd reveal this to anyone if I were you."
Steven shook his head. "I'm okay with that part. But look at this." He pulled up another set of documents.
"This column here is the money that is coming from the government. This column here is money going to the facility." He pointed out the columns and sat back. “This is what Vic found.”
"Wait, this doesn't add up," Alec said confused. "The facilities aren't getting all the money."
Steven nodded. "That's right. Part of it is being diverted to two different accounts, one of which belongs to the good Senator."
"So, he's stealing money."
"Correcto," Steven said and stretched.
"Whose is the other account?"
Steven shrugged and shook his head. "Not quite sure about that one. It looks like it's going to a facility of some sort but I couldn't find any information about it and the good Senator wasn't nice enough to document it for us." Alec starred at the information but couldn’t really decipher a lot of it.
"And on top of that," Steven typed on his keyboard and pulled another document up, "here is the list of doctors, researchers, lab-techs, all the people that work there. Not a one of them exist. Well, they did but they're dead now. They used fake names and socials. That money is going straight into the Senator's pocket."
"Senator Taylor is playing a dangerous game. He's stealing from the government and from the vampires."
"Yep."
"Remind me to never get on your bad side," Alec said laughing.
"There are several more things." Steven started typing again.
"What? There's more? How much more can this one guy get into?"
"Our friendly Senator has been making several large payments to someone named Vincent VonBell every single month as well."
Alec's eyes nearly bugged out of his head when he heard that.
"I take it you know who this VonBell dude is?"
"Yeah," Alec said trying to make sense of all of it.
"Care to fill me in? I couldn't really find all that much about him on the Senator’s computer. Just an email address and some emails back and forth but nothing about who he is."
"Let's just say he is a vampire of note."
"Ahhh. Another one of those things that you'd tell me but then you'd have to kill me." Alec opened his mouth to say something but Steven laughed and waved it away.
"He's been paying him large sums of cash for awhile now. The Senator is meticulous with his note-taking and documents it all. Mentioning, this is how Vic found out about the vampires and their aversion to silver and the sunglasses 'trick'."
What Steven pulled up and showed to Alec was an email from Senator Taylor to his son dated January of this year. It was very vague on the Senator's part using phrases like 'you know who I'm talking about' and 'the others'. But it was Chris's that were interesting. He used the word 'vampires' multiple times and asked his father how to contact them and protect himself from them. Senator Taylor's email instructed Chris what worked against 'them' and that he would not give the young man the contact information and that Chris was to stop as
king. According to the email during his Christmas visit, Chris had overheard them during a business meeting and wanted to know more. The Senator stated he physically couldn't talk about the subject due to something that had been done to him. His son had responded with 'do what my therapist told me, write it out. Talking and writing are two different processes’.
"So you think Vic found out about how to protect himself from the vampires from this email?"
"Yeah. The Senator seemed to take his son seriously when he asked about them. It was really odd."
Alec bit his lip, thinking. "But what in the world possessed Vic to kidnap Chris in such a public place and demand to speak to the vampires? Didn't he think they'd kill him? And where in the hell did he get the semi-automatic weapon and explosives from?"
“I’ll get to the weapons in a little bit. Now, what I’m going on is the information that Vic found and how Vic was when I knew him back in the day.” Steven looked at Alec to make sure he understood. “Vic never could stand a secret. It would drive him crazy if he couldn’t figure out one of the codes I sent him. He would work on it day and night until he figured it out or I gave him a clue. I think that Vic knew something was missing from his brain. When he saw these emails, and Chris with the vampire chick, I think it clicked something in his head.”
"So a part of Vic knew there was something missing and knew that the vampires were involved?"
Steven nodded his head. "I think so. I think things weren’t adding up in Vic’s mind and then he saw this it flipped some sort of crazy-switch in his head.”
"So then what? How did you two end up at the Hillman-Hines?"
“Vic and I have a chemistry class together on Thursday nights…last night. I noticed that he was acting strange and very unfocused. After class he asked if we could speak privately. Once we were alone, he placed a rag over my face and I passed out. When I woke up we were at Senator Taylor’s but no one was there.” Steven shrugged his shoulders. “I was in hand cuffs and Vic was dressed in his black get-up, downloading stuff from the Senator’s computer onto a thumb drive.”
“So he kidnapped you and took information off the Senator’s computer? Where did he get the gun and explosives?”
“As we were getting ready to leave Vic pulled up the Senator’s itinerary. He couldn’t get to the Senator so he looked up where Chris was and saw he was at the Hillman-Hines, meeting someone. Before we left Vic said he needed to pick something up and went over to the Senator’s closet and opened a secret door there. Man, there were guns, explosives, tactical vests and all kinds of crazy shit in there. Vic said he’d found it while searching the office the time before. He grabbed what he needed and dragged me unwillingly to the Hillman-Hines.”
Alec just shook his head.
“Vic was totally paranoid the whole time, asking if we were being followed or if I’d seen someone behind us. I thought he was having some sort of bad trip or psychotic break. I tried talking to him but he just kept saying they were after him.”
“The vampires?”
“Yeah, that’s what he said. He said he was dreaming about them and they’d been following him and watching him for a while. Seems he was partially right. Now he’s dead.” Steven looked like he was going to cry.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Alec said not knowing what to do.
Steven wiped his eyes with the back of his arm. “He said they’d been waiting outside his house every night for him to come out. I tried telling him if it had been vampires they would have just broken in.”
"Actually, vampires have to be invited in. They can't just break in."
"Good to know," Steven said wide-eyed. "Anyway, Vic said he’d tried talking to the Taylors but they wouldn’t listen to him. So, he said he’d decided to do something drastic. He found out Chris’s schedule, and decided to get some answers directly from the vampires with Chris as his hostage.”
"But why so public a place?" Alec asked confused. "Wasn't there a better place and way to do it?"
Steven shrugged. "He wasn't in his right mind. He was seeing people follow him, he couldn't sleep, and he kept going on and on about this tightness in his head that he blamed on the vampires. I guess he felt like he had to do something. He told me while he was questioning Chris and the vampires I was supposed to hack into the information taken from the Senator’s computer as proof against the Taylors. I guess he figured if the vampires figured out what Senator Taylor was up to, they might let Vic live since he’d helped them out.”
Alec thought about that. Victor had done the vampires a service in exposing Senator Taylor’s thefts. He just wished he’d had found a better way to ‘help out’.
"So what was the other information Victor found?"
Steven started typing again and pulled up a file.
"He found this. It's an encrypted file. I haven't been able to break the encryption. I was working on it during the whole ‘hostage crisis’ but I haven’t been able to crack it yet. I'm not sure what is in it, but it's a pretty big file."
"You know, it's not completely Victor’s fault. Vampires know that they shouldn’t compel a person to forget whole days much less weeks. It messes a person up. Unfortunately, it took its toll on poor Victor."
Alec looked outside. The sun was finally starting to come up. He could just make out the street outside and the building across from where they were was beginning to take shape in the gloom. Finally, they could rest. He slumped to the ground beside Steven. Marcus and Silas would just be settling in for the day so that gave Alec time to hopefully come up with a plan.
"Yeah tell me about it. He went bat-shit crazy and could have killed us all."
“Actually, when I got ahold of the gun Victor had been carrying the safety was on the whole time. I don’t think he wanted to kill anyone really, he just wanted answers and didn’t know how to get them.”
“I think he wanted to kill Chris. The explosives Vic made him wear and the ignition switch worked just fine.”
"Shhh," Alec said holding up his hand. He had heard glass break upstairs. Not just one, but multiple sounds of someone breaking in.
"Dude the sun is coming up the vampires have finally gone back to their coffins. Hey do vampires actually sleep in coffins or is that a Hollywood thing?"
Alec was listening intently. He could hear movement upstairs. It was slight, but the boards were old and damaged and creaking slightly. Thankfully, he’d been burning blood most of the night and seemed to be holding it together okay.
"Come on," Alec said pulling Steven up.
"What? I'm tired," Steven said leaning back against the wall.
The stairs on the far side of the room creaked and both men fell silent and turned slowly in that direction. Quietly, Steven reached down and grabbed his backpack. Alec unzipped it and pulled out the semi auto and held it ready.
With little warning several black figures hurtled off of the stairs and in the direction of the young men. Alec opened fire filling the small space with bullets. There was very little room for multiple vampires to maneuver and Alec scored quite a few hits, unfortunately none of them fatal.
Steven backed up slowly to give Alec space to work and suddenly hit something that hadn't been there a second before. A hand snapped around his neck and started choking him. He fought and clawed at the hand to no avail. He couldn't breathe and he was starting to see spots in front of his eyes. Steven reached into his pockets with shaking hands and grabbed the crosses that Alec had given him. He slammed a handful of them against the hand of the vampire choking him. Instantly he was released and could breathe again.
The vampire withdrew slightly holding his hand against his chest. All Steven could see was the man's blue eyes. And they looked crazy, pissed and deadly all at the same time. From behind him, Alec yelled, “Duck!," and as soon as Steven moved, Alec opened fire on the vampire. The man's tight black shirt became riddled with red as the bullets tore into his chest. The vampire was thrown to the ground violently.
Before he could move again to stand up, Steven grabbed a silver cross and stuck the long end of it into one of the bullet wounds. The cross wasn’t that big but it was enough to slide grossly into the hole. The vampire instantly began to scream and writhe on the floor in agony. It was awful.
Alec had shot bullets until he was out and was now using the body of the gun to block the swords being swung at him. He blocked several blows at once and ducked another. He found an opening and slammed the butt of the gun into the face of one of his attackers. He didn’t make the same mistake that he’d made earlier in the hotel. He’d been holding back then out of habit. Now he used all his strength and speed to his advantage and felt the man’s face give under his attack. Thankfully the vampire’s skull didn’t explode or Alec thought he would have vomited on the spot, instead the vampire dropped clutching his ruined face.
Alec was confused. The sun was coming up. Why weren’t the vampires in their rooms hidden away from the light so they could attack again at a later time? Instead here they were pressing their attack with the sun almost in the sky. Wasn’t that instant, agonizing death for a vampire? Who would want Alec dead to the point of risking his own life to make it happen? Alec caught another blow with the gun in his hands and felt it shear in half from the strike. Now he was left with two halves which he used to block blows and slam into any opening he could find.
Steven couldn't keep up with what was going on with Alec, and could only hear the clash of sword on gun. He wanted to do something but didn't know what. He'd just get in Alec's way if he joined the fight. Then it occurred to him.
Steven quickly went over to one of the windows and started yanking boards free. Some of them were nailed down pretty tightly so he looked around for something to use. He reached down to the writhing vampire on the floor and pulled his sword out of his sheath. Talking about insult to injury. He started hacking at the boards with the sword until the window was clear.
As soon as the boards were cleared, sunlight filled his half of the room. The vampires facing Alec threw their hands up before their faces to block the light. The one lying on the floor wasn't so lucky. The sunlight was shining directly on him. His hands instantly began to blister and turn red. The skin around his eyes was also affected and he screamed even louder and his head started drumming against the floor like he was having a seizure.
Shadow Born: Book 1 of the Shadow-Borne Chronicles Page 21