He grabbed her small limp body and carried it over to a large wooden chair with discolored leather straps. The chair looked like something off death row. All function, no form, and blemished with stains that were best left unconsidered. He dumped her into it, drawing a small low moan from her, and began to tighten the straps around her thighs and ankles.
The massive door screeched open again. An effete man, androgynous features bordering on feminine, strode in with an air of someone accustomed to owning the place. He made a disgusted face at the smell of the room and took off his business jacket. He shook his head after a quick look at the girl. He hung his jacket on one of the many savage-looking hooks on the wall, hooks that weren’t for jacket hanging. He rolled up the sleeves of his peach-colored shirt. He, a specialist in his trade, considered the girl more closely, “Hmm, I thought you were supposed to be professionals. That face is going to cost you. At least a thousand I should think.”
Stan exchanged a glance with Pete. Pete muttered something under his breath but went on tightening the straps on the chair. They creaked with tension.
“Her arms are a little skinny for the straps. She’ll just wriggle out of ’em.”
Stan opened a drawer below the top surface where he had been laying out the tools and grabbed a bag of long black plastic ties.
“Zip-tie ’em then.” He tossed the bag to Pete.
Pete slid them tightly over her wrists and the chair’s arms. He pulled them taut, enough to draw thin streaks of blood.
“We’re sorry about that. But she was a fighter.”
“Can’t be helped. Her sleeping through this is a problem, however. It affects the final product and that won’t do. Wake her up.”
Stan dug around in another drawer on the cart. This one broke the trend of organization and brimmed with assorted junk, tape, and supplies. He pulled out smelling salts and waved them under her nose.
Her head snapped up. For an instant her eyes were wild and unafraid. Stan stepped back reflexively. Then her eyes focused as she came back to the world and recognized her situation.
He wheeled the cart next to the chair, and with the flourish of a waiter presenting the finest desserts, he revealed the tools he had been laying out. There were scalpels, pliers, needles, surgical tubing. The sight brought another moan from the girl. Her eyes were wide with terror. Good, that was a start at least.
“No. Please, no,” she started to sob.
“Oh please, no tears yet, sweet child. We’ve not yet begun,” the specialist said.
“I’m out of here,” Pete said. “Don’t have too much fun.”
Pete left the room, the door clanging shut behind him. Stan wished he could follow him. He hated this part. But in an hour or so it would be over and he’d have some cool cash to help him forget.
The specialist picked a scalpel off the cart. The girl squirmed in the chair. The straps and ties cut deeper into her flesh but did their job of keeping her still.
“Don’t worry, my dear. We always start small.”
He dragged the blade of the scalpel almost tenderly against her hand, leaving a cruel line of crimson in its wake. She gasped. The gasp turned into a scream. Then the scream turned into a rasping almost choking sound as she began to buck and strain against the straps.
At first, it looked to Stan as if she was trying to pull free, but with more energy than he would expect considering the ordeal she had already been through. Quickly, he realized she was having some kind of fit.
“What did you give her?”
“We didn’t give her shit. Maybe she’s epileptic or something?”
“You don’t screen for that sort of thing? Her blood will be useless!”
Stan didn’t hear the specialist’s comment. The girl was shaking so violently now that it looked as if the chair might actually come apart. He stepped in and slapped her across the face.
Her eyes snapped open, yellow, feral, almost glowing—eyes that didn’t belong to a teenage girl or anything remotely human.
He yelped and jumped back, nearly tripping over his own feet as he flew for the door. He had to get the hell out!
“What? What’s the matter?”
“She’s a thrope!” Stan’s throat had constricted in terror, choking the words meant as a warning cry into a strangled croak.
Stan reached the door. Almost against his will, he turned his head back toward the chair and the girl. The specialist apparently hadn’t heard him, or didn’t care. The idiot was still there!
The specialist leaned in to get a closer look at the girl. She was still screaming, and the longer she screamed the lower in pitch and more bestial-sounding the noise became. Then it became a low growl, and a tongue that he couldn’t believe would even fit in her mouth strained and wriggled forth, seeking purchase.
Stan could hear cracks and pops. Things were shifting under her darkening skin. The restraints on the chair creaked and strained, then snapped, one by one, the zip-ties first, then the leather.
Her hand shot out, lightning quick, and struck the specialist in the abdomen. He gave out a sharp surprised cry and then fumbled with the slick gray-red ropey mass that spilled out of him.
Stan whirled his attention back to the door and pulled at it. It didn’t budge. He groped clumsily at the lock, panicking. There were terrible sounds, slurping and crunching, coming from where the girl had been, but he didn’t dare look back. Then the chair, or rather what was left of it, smashed into the wall next to him and showered him in splinters.
“Open the door, for fuck’s sake!”
* * *
Outside the room, Pete sat in a chair with a shotgun across his lap, acting as gatekeeper. Opposite him, another man sat and gaped at photos in a thoroughly used bondage magazine. Pete laid his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and tried to get some sleep. He heard muffled sounds coming from inside the room. To hear anything through that door meant that it had to be loud as hell inside.
“This one’s making a racket early.”
“Why don’t you go in there and tell her to keep it down?” the other man muttered.
“Naw, that ain’t my bag. Fuckin’ ’em’s one thing, that shit is something else entirely. I want no part of it.”
Then something hit the door.
Hard.
The impact made both men jump.
“What the hell?”
Another loud bang and the top hinge popped out with a loud, almost comical, ping.
Pete backed away and racked the slide on the shotgun.
Something smashed the door again, and this time it swung open, off kilter, the bottom scraping a deep gouge into the floor.
Now Pete could see into the room. There was so much blood, and there were other things, parts of things.
Gore.
An explosion in a slaughterhouse.
“Are you shitting me?”
The other man pulled a pistol from his waistband. “A bomb?” His voice was a shallow whisper.
Pete shrugged.
Using baby steps, the man stepped across the threshold, crouching, pistol at the ready. He stood, started to lower the pistol, a puzzled look on his face.
Pete let out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
The man started to say something but a black shape in tattered clothes and moving way too fast hit him from the side. It slashed into his neck as he screamed and gurgled on his own blood.
“Oh shit!”
Pete fired the shotgun, indiscriminately hitting both figures, racked, and fired again.
The thing left the dead man, his head lolling to one side, nearly ripped from his body. Arterial flow pumped over the slickening tiles.
The shotgun had done no damage. It just got the thing’s attention.
Pete tried to back up, to buy time to get another shot. He racked the shotgun again and then stared dumbly at it as the thing snarled and swatted it from his hands.
He started to scream, but was cut off by more pain than he’d e
ver known. He dimly thought that the thing was some kind of half animal. By then he was drowning in his own blood.
5
8:50 P.M.
Alex drove the dark blue Explorer out of the parking garage turned makeshift motor pool. He waved at Lopez, a human who was on desk duty after being injured, and then pulled out past the AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY BEYOND THIS POINT sign and into the street.
It was the first true darkness of the evening. The “magic hour” had given way to night a little while before, and the dim light that seeped into the violet edges of the sky had just winked out.
He hoped he could make it back into the center of the city before the first night rush hour began. The economy had shifted dramatically in the last two years. It created more jobs, more money, more opportunities, and sadly, more crime. Shortly, mobs of folks would be crowding the choked streets. Most folks would be heading in to work for the night shift; others would be prowling for prey. Miami had always had a reputation for being a place that never slept, but now it was true.
Alex looked at his watch. If he was lucky, he might make it to Aguirre’s church before services.
Aguirre headed a church for vampires seeking redemption from God through purification of the flesh and denial of their vampiric tendencies. Marcus had been stuck there all day, quizzing Aguirre for intel, and no doubt being served up a sanctimonious helping of religious mumbo jumbo.
Aguirre was their lifeline to the many networks that were no longer friendly to Marcus or Alex. They’d done their share of bridge burning in UMBRA for the NSA. Never mind that the government had forced their hands, or that the monsters they were hunting were truly evil, even by vampiric reckoning. Too many insiders wouldn’t trust them now. They needed Aguirre.
Still, being cooped up in that place for an entire day would have left Marcus in a foul mood. If he hadn’t fed, then his mood would be downright nasty. Alex couldn’t be sure what Aguirre’s regimen was these days. It would be best if he had some Hemo-Synth on hand to placate Marcus, just in case.
He saw a convenience store on one of the cross streets. He pulled the Explorer in, got out, and noticed a small gathering of people near the front door. Six of them, all young men. They were agitated and he couldn’t make out what they were looking at. As he got closer, he could see they were huddled around a newspaper and their conversation became clear.
“Those bloodsucking bastards! When are people going to stop this shit?”
“They don’t stand for this kind of stuff over in Europe. Over there they’d have already staked half these motherfuckers.”
Alex got right next to them and glanced at the paper over one’s shoulder. The story was about the morning’s blood-frenzy attack. The second one. The one Alex hadn’t stopped.
So much for keeping it out of the press.
He walked into the store. An old black man was minding the counter. He was watching Lelith give a press conference on a tiny old-style TV set imprisoned in a locked Plexiglas box. That set had probably been in there since the store had been built. Lelith looked radiant, her pale skin a sharp contrast to a mane of red hair that no doubt took some hairdresser an hour to set right. She wore a dark power suit that hugged her figure and accentuated her sexuality. Matching boots came up to her knees. She looked like a supermodel turned movie star turned CEO who was a dominatrix on the side. Alex had to hand it to the Lightbearer Society. They’d have been hard-pressed to find a better spokeswoman to extol the benefits of being a vampire. Of course, it was all bullshit, but Joe Bag-o’-Doughnuts didn’t know that.
Alex nodded to the old man and headed back past all the snacks and soft drinks. He found some Sangri and Hemotopia on one of the end caps. They’d come out so quickly after the announcement of the discovery of A-PFC4—the scientific name for the key ingredient in Hemo-Synth—and the Reveal, that there had been accusations of insider trading. Whether through bribes, intimidation, or worse, those allegations had gone away shortly thereafter. Alex happened to know that vampire shell companies owned both distributors for Sangri and Hemotopia. It just seemed that no one cared to do anything about it.
Something was off here. Everything was marked down. He picked up three bottles of different blood types of Sangri with large 75% OFF stickers on them and headed up to the counter.
“Having a sale?” Alex plopped the bottles down on the counter.
The man looked down at the bottles then looked back up at Alex. His second glance held more scrutiny.
“Aw, what’s a young brother like you messing with that stuff for?”
Alex shrugged. “Why’s everything marked down?”
“We’re not going to carry that stuff anymore. Folks around here … well, they don’t care much for the kind who buys it.”
Two of the younger men from outside came into the store. Alex heard one comment to the other when he noticed what Alex was buying.
Alex pulled out his wallet to pay the cashier and one of the men swatted it out of his hand. It landed on the floor, open and facedown. This guy was taller than Alex by a head and, given Alex’s slim frame, must’ve thought he was easy pickings. He chested up to Alex.
“Hey bro, go buy your blood shit somewhere else, sanger!” the man shouted, volume apparently tied directly to his bravado.
So that’s what this was about.
The men outside couldn’t have helped but hear their friend.
He should make this guy eat some teeth. He looked over the man’s shoulder at the four others and decided to take a different tack. He could easily handle them, but there was no telling what the night held in store. He needed to conserve his energy and it was an additional mess he just didn’t need right now.
“Do I look like a vampire?” Alex looked him right in the eye.
The man stared at Alex, a dumb look flashing across his face. Alex had shaken his expectation; sometimes that was enough.
“Then, why are you buying that shit, man?”
“For a friend. Oh, and you might want to think about a thing or two.”
“Oh yeah?” The man stepped closer to Alex, invading his personal space. He came just short of physically bumping into him. He could smell the beer on his breath. The man was back on high ground now; by Alex’s own admission, he was guilty of dealing with a vampire, and that apparently made him fair game.
“Yeah.” Alex bent down and recovered his wallet. He held his jacket as he stood so the man could get a good look at his badge.
“You might want to think before bothering a cop.”
The other man, the first guy’s backup, hastily backed to the entrance.
“Oh man. I’m sorry, I didn’t…”
Alex didn’t let him finish. “And you also might want to think, if you’re harassing vampires buying fake juice, do you really want ’em going for the real stuff?” He paid the cashier.
The cashier took the money from Alex and handed him the bag.
“Think about it.” Alex brushed past the man, nodded to his friends at the entrance, and walked back to his Explorer. If that little encounter was any indicator about how the rest of the city felt, tonight wasn’t going to be pretty.
6
9:05 P.M.
For Filip, the cloak of night did not just signal the transition from day; it heralded a transfer, a change of thought and ownership, a shift of attitude. It was an almost palpable thing, oppressive, hanging just beyond the bright streetlights, waiting for the opportunity to smother the city.
Night in parts of Miami had never been what you could call safe. Now you needed eyes in the back of your head. Night was when everything, everyone, blended. During the day, you only dealt with humans for the most part. Now everyone would start to move about and mingle, and you couldn’t even be sure who you’d be dealing with until they asked you for what they needed. Be it some vamp blood for whatever use, some human blood to shake off the plastic taste of the artificial stuff, or maybe some drugs to stave off the cravings for a little while. It was exciting, danger
ous, and full of possibilities.
Filip’s father had been a Tonton Macoute for Baby Doc Duvalier. He’d had a lot of stock in that lifestyle, and then, overnight, it was over. They’d barely gotten out of Haiti. The experience had taught Filip to always have a backup plan.
Filip’s specialty was possibilities. His world boiled down to delivering potential, and the more exotic it was, the higher the price. He’d started in with coke in the late nineties, gotten busted, done enough time to earn cred. He got out and rebuilt some wealth on designer drugs, mostly X and higher-end weed, selling Rolls and Krippie to the club crowds and tourists. Then he’d diversified, got mixed up with some human trafficking, girls from Eastern Europe and the islands. That’s how he’d found out about the vampires. They made for good customers. And he found he could make good bank selling their information to government types who were in the know. Post-Reveal, the government money was gone.
Now he’d branched out into other products, with a much higher profit margin. Many of the nocturns were loaded, and that’s where the real money was. All of them had a blood habit that was more demanding than any coke fiend’s dealer could dream of. They weren’t going to shake that shit and they couldn’t OD.
His many commodities put him in a unique position. He dealt with everyone without prejudice. He was an equal-opportunity exploiter. As far as his world was concerned, people boiled down to three kinds: “saps,” normal humans; “sangers,” vampires; and “thropes,” the shape-shifting bastards who could turn into animals. You’d be a complete moron if you trusted any of them.
Filip knew he’d dealt with the first two categories, but until recently, he didn’t think he’d ever met a thrope. How could you be sure? Those poor sick bastards looked and acted like everyone else, until they went off their meds. The next thing you knew, something would set them off and you’d have a rabid bear, or wolf, or big cat tearing up some bar or club or school.
He was sure his new customers had something to do with thropes. They wanted an awful lot of meat. Meat you couldn’t just stroll into your local megamart and buy. They paid extremely well and asked even fewer questions than the sangers did, which was fine with Filip.
Graveyard Shift Page 5