Three of the vampires fell clutching their faces, and the fourth dove for cover. Vampiric constitutions notwithstanding, bullets to the head hurt. A lot. They were out of the fight for now. The fourth vampire peeked from his cover behind a shelf. Alex shot at him through the shelf, but couldn’t be sure if he’d hit. All the gunfire had ruined his hearing. Everything sounded muted and dim. He hopped backward to the stairs, shook the remaining jacket sleeve off his arm, and made a run for it.
He’d have a couple of seconds before someone would be after him. Then he corrected himself. He’d been underestimating these idiots the whole time. He gave them the benefit of the doubt and fired another burst blindly toward the bottom of the stairs. The vampire with the chain ran right smack into the hail of bullets. The bullets hit his upper chest and neck before the vampire went down coughing and sputtering.
Alex took the remainder of the stairs two by two, hopped across the narrow hallway, and bounced into the first room upstairs.
There was no one there, just the body of Filip’s assistant, two gunshot wounds in his head, and another vampire, clearly dead, his body broken in unnatural ways. The window was smashed out, undoubtedly where Marcus had thrown the other vampire out onto the car. That still left … how many?
They must be down the hall in another room.
He moved to exit the room. He stopped near the doorjamb and peeked his head out, snapping it out and back.
A bullet snapped through the drywall, millimeters from his face. He dove away from the door, his mind still resolving what he had seen on the landing in that split second. Two more vampires came cautiously up the stairs, the fates of their comrades still fresh in their minds.
Sure he had joked with Marcus and Zorzi about missing the “good old days,” but right now, he wasn’t missing them much.
His mind worked quickly. He moved over and grabbed the corpse.
“Hey, buddy, looks like you’ll be able to do some good after all,” he whispered into its ear as he picked up the body around the chest and half hefted, half dragged it to the window. He pressed the body high over his head and heaved it outside. Then he backed up away from the window. He barely heard the body hit the car. He hugged the wall with his body and clutched the MP5 like a lifeline.
Almost immediately, one of the vampires was at the door.
“He went out the damn window!”
The vampire peeking into the room forgot caution and ran right through the room to stare out the window. Alex hoped the other was rushing down the stairs.
Alex stepped out from his position flush against the wall and fired a burst into the back of the vampire’s head. The loud roar ended in a muted clack. At such close range, the vampire’s skull blossomed in a flower of carnage and gore. Alex knew he’d killed him. There was only so much damage a body, any body, vampiric or not, could repair. For a youngblood, that kind of wound was fatal. The vampire’s body kept walking; it jerked in awkward steps, eerily looking as if it were trying to maintain its balance. Then it, too, toppled out the window.
Alex took a quick glance at the submachine gun in his hands. Its bolt was locked open, and wisps of smoke rose dreamily from the hot metal.
He pulled the magazine out just to be sure. Hoping against hope for a jam of some kind. Nope. Empty.
He had to get down the hall.
He heard shouting coming from downstairs.
“Leave ’em! Come on! Let’s go!”
“Take the other car!”
He heard the muted tinkle of broken glass. Where the hell was Marcus?
He moved quickly to the room at the end of the hall, brandishing the empty machine gun in front of him in false bravado. If he ran into anyone else, a bluff was all he had to defend himself.
He passed the broken body of another vampire, hands still clutching the ruined throat that Marcus had ripped open. The guy was twitching feebly. He didn’t have much time left. Alex reached the closed door at the end of the hall and tried to hear what was going on inside the room. He heard Marcus’s voice.
“… stop being stupid. Don’t you hear the fight is still going on? We need to get out of here.”
Now Alex heard sirens. He had the answer to why the other vampires were leaving. Backup. Took them long enough. In any case, he’d better get through that door; if any of them stayed around, he’d be better able to wait them out in there. He hoped Marcus was still armed.
He opened the door cautiously and took in the scene. Filip was in the corner, beaten and bloody, with a shotgun pointed at Marcus.
“Friendly coming in,” Alex announced.
Filip shouted at him, “Stay the fuck back!”
Alex stole a glance behind him. “What the hell, Filip? I’m not staying out here with those other assholes running around.”
He eased the door open and stepped slowly inside. He closed it behind him, making a show of being more worried about what might be outside. It was hard to do, turning his back to Filip with a shotgun, but he hoped the ruse would work. If not, he was counting on Marcus to be damned fast.
Marcus spoke up: “I think it might be over. I can hear our backup arriving. You’re safe, Filip.”
“Bullshit. What about you? Huh? What about him?”
“What? Marcus? You can’t be serious.”
“They could have sent him to kill me.”
“And what, they sent in the B team downstairs to rough you up, so we can come in to rescue you from them but then kill you? Filip, think straight, does that make sense?”
“Nothing they do makes fucking sense, man.”
Alex tried to lighten the mood. He needed to get that shotgun out of Filip’s hands. He turned to Marcus. “He’s got you there. You don’t make a lot of sense.”
Marcus nodded; his eyes never left Filip.
“There’s something real big going on. Shit, I don’t know what I’ve got myself into.”
“First you’ve got to make this right, Filip. You know how? You have to tell us who you’re in bed with.”
“Shit, just trying to make a buck, man.” Filip wasn’t listening.
Alex decided to try another tack.
“Filip, you tell us who you’re dealing with and Marcus and I will make sure you never get screwed with again.”
Filip looked at him. He was getting through with the revenge angle.
“The meat in the cooler, it’s human, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, man. Shit. I wasn’t going to sell it out of the store. I just said that to get you out of here.”
“I know that, Filip. You’re not a bad guy.” Alex noticed Marcus standing statue-still. He was doing his thing where he could almost make someone forget his presence. He hoped it would work. He needed to keep Filip’s attention on him.
“Who was that meat for?”
“It’s a special order.”
“For vampires?” Alex doubted it. That didn’t make sense.
“No. I don’t know.”
“Come on, Filip. You have to help us out here. If we’re going to bring payback to the guys who did this, we need something.”
“The Pact,” he whispered, as if just saying the words would bring dire consequences. He seemed even more scared, if that was somehow possible.
“What?”
“I don’t know, man. That’s all. They weren’t the guys who did this anyway.”
“Yeah, that’s right, these guys were vampires. Who are they, Filip?”
“They’re fuckers from that club I told you about.”
“Yeah, that club, we went to check it out.”
Filip lifted the shotgun away from him. “Damn it, Alex, I really fucked up. I really fucked up this time. I just sent you down there to give them some shit, you know. They were coming around making all kinds of threats and talking shit. So I wanted to let them know they’re not the only big dicks in town. You know, send a message that I got friends, too.”
Filip was calming down. Alex decided to let him keep talking.
“You guy
s hadn’t been gone three hours when these assholes came back. Roughed up the customers and killed one of the girls back in the storeroom after doing God knows what to her. I could hear her screaming. Then they went to work on me and Mitch, telling me that they’d given me a special privilege in dealing with them. And that I’d violated a trust by sending you two down there.”
“Who are they?”
“I got nothing, man. This guy Nico runs with them. He’s another juice dealer. He’d been trying to move on my shit for months, then all of a sudden everything is cool and he wants to deal with me. They said they were going to kill all of us slow, except me. They said…”
“Do you have a name, Filip? Think. Anything.”
“Yeah, they kept saying Mr. Ziggy or something. A fucked-up name, Lugosi or something. I don’t remember. They said…” Filip broke up. He lowered the shotgun to his side. Alex took a hesitant step toward him.
They could hear people shouting instructions over a PA downstairs.
“Cavalry is here, man. Put the shotgun down.”
Filip snapped it back up and pointed back at Alex.
“No! They said, if I didn’t off myself, they’d hunt down, torture, and kill my whole family!”
Alex quickly glanced at Marcus. A thought flickered across his mind: If those people were behind that torture chamber they’d found, then Filip’s family was already dead. The look on his face must have given it away.
“Aw no…” Filip moaned. The shotgun moved up.
“Marcus!” Alex screamed, trying to rush forward.
The ancient vampire was nearly across the room when the shot fired and blew the top off Filip’s head.
Marcus stopped, standing over the slumping corpse, a fine mist of blood and brains raining down on him. He stuck his ring finger in his ear and jiggled it around while pumping his jaw up and down.
Alex looked at him. “What happened to that Ancient speed? You could have cleared the room and grabbed the gun easy. Did you trip or something?”
Marcus stared at him. “What?”
Alex couldn’t even hear himself talk, just the ringing in his ears. Besides, for now, there was nothing more to say.
18
3:40 A.M.
Alex was tired. They had three hours and change until sunup, and he doubted that he was going to do anything else tonight. He was looking forward to the daylight. He needed to recharge. His body was stiffening and the skin was beginning to look taut and drawn over his limbs.
He sat on the rear bumper of the crime scene unit’s van, and drank from his thermos. Someone had brought him a wet towel and he was able to clean up his head and his hands, but his clothes were a complete mess. As the synth blood coagulated, his clothes had become heavy and gummy. Changing out of them was rapidly approaching “Number 1” on his to-do list.
There’d been a delay in how long it had taken for the lieutenant, the crime scene techs, and other responders to arrive. Alex and Marcus had been left in the dark as to why their crime scene was suddenly playing second fiddle. Then they’d found out why. Someone had hit a blood club across town and left no survivors. From the rumors he’d heard, it might have been Abraham, and he might have left behind a crime scene worse than the one in the torture chamber, though Alex found that hard to believe. Zorzi and Garza were taking lead on that case. The new kid was having a whopper of a first day.
Now Alex was waiting for the guy from Internal Affairs Section to call him back in after he’d had his look around. Constance was with the medical examiner investigating the bodies, both human and vampire, that littered the inside. She was having a hell of a night, too, trying to micromanage every little thing. It was one of the many things Alex didn’t like about her.
Marcus paced near the front of the store. They’d been told to stay apart. IA didn’t want them to get their stories “straight.” Just one more thing Alex preferred about the black ops world.
In the UMBRA days, this would have been a win. Not a big win, admittedly, since they were still in the dark and had lost an asset that produced a lot of intel. But when bad guys were down and the good guys were still standing, black ops folks didn’t ask too many questions. There’d be time enough later for finger pointing. Nowadays they treated cops like perps just for doing their jobs.
One of the forensic technicians walked over to the van, holding some equipment.
“Detective?”
“Yeah? They ready for me?”
“Don’t know. I think they found your weapon.”
“Well, that’s good. I had no idea where the hell it went.” Alex stood up and started walking toward the bodega.
“They’re going to need some time with that weapon before they can clear it.”
“They don’t need to. Bastard knocked it right out of my hand. Didn’t even get a shot off, like some damned noob.”
“Well, I think you did a hell of a job in there. You two against…?”
“Eight or nine? I don’t know.” Alex’s thoughts drifted back to the action when the vampire had grabbed him. He’d gotten sloppy. If it hadn’t been a youngblood … He vowed it wouldn’t happen again.
An awkward silence passed between him and the technician.
“You know,” the technician said, “some of the other guys, they’re not really cool with the whole Nocturn Affairs thing.”
Alex nodded. Constance was talking to Marcus while the Internal Affairs guy loitered nearby.
“I just wanted to say, you guys are okay in my book. I mean you did a hell of job in there. They should give you a medal.”
“I don’t think they give out medals for goat ropes like this.”
The technician looked a little crushed.
“Didn’t mean to come off so hard. I appreciate the thought. Just have a lot on my mind.”
Alex walked away as the technician opened the side door of the van to put away his equipment, and came within earshot of Constance and Marcus. They spoke in those damn hissing vampiric whispers no one else could make out. His footsteps on the broken glass gave away his approach. They cut off their conversation and watched him. It was probably nothing, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that they didn’t want him to hear what they were saying.
“So, who’s got my piece?” Alex asked.
Constance gestured at one of the crime scene techs, who brought the pistol to him. “This is quite the mess, Alex.”
“Tough night. As if the earlier ten-ninety-one wasn’t enough.”
“I may have to pull you two off this, until some of this blows over.”
“What?” This surprised even Marcus.
“Blows over? What the hell?”
“Constance,” Marcus said, “this was a front run by our longtime CI. He provided us with a tip earlier this evening and was—”
“I’ve heard it. And you mean to tell me that you had no idea that this CI of yours was connected to the chamber of horrors we discovered earlier?”
“I swear to you we did not know,” Marcus said.
“And no idea he was moving this kind of product, both human and vampire?”
Marcus was quiet this time. Alex felt he needed to speak up. “Look, he had documentation for all of it. Besides, he’s got to move some product if he’s going to maintain any cred, right? Come on, Constance…”
“Lieutenant,” she corrected.
Alex glared at her. “Are you shitting me? Listen, you deal with Boy Scouts if you want to cross the street, not if you’re trying to catch the bad guys.”
The guy from Internal Affairs decided to interrupt them. Alex hadn’t bothered enough to remember his name.
“And that’s why I’m looking into it. Didn’t I ask you to wait outside?”
“I asked him to come,” Constance covered for him.
“This isn’t the Wild West, Romer. I don’t know why you and your partner think you can flout procedure. There was significant loss of life here tonight. And I’m not sure you two didn’t do everything you could to instigate a c
onfrontation.”
“Are you for real? You’ve got our statements,” Alex said.
“And they’re full of holes. Why didn’t you wait for backup? Your CI committed suicide? Maybe you were cleaning up a problem you were afraid was about to turn on you?”
Alex balled up his fists. He’d had just about enough of everyone.
“You have about two seconds to walk away,” Alex said.
“And now you’re threatening me?”
Marcus stepped between Alex and the investigator. He faced Alex.
“Let it go,” Marcus said, making eye contact with Alex. “We’ve had enough excitement for one night.”
Alex wanted to smash the man’s face. The insolence! The thought of that man speaking to him like that. To him! He should leave and let the vampires and thropes deal with the lot of them.
Constance talked to the Internal Affairs officer. “Let’s call it a night? I assure you, you’ll have their report by this afternoon. And we can continue the investigation when we’ve all settled down.”
IA sneered at her. “Have it your way. Your little bureau is getting off to a hell of a start. Your unit is full of cowboys, and you may not care, but you’re going to get good people killed. Who the hell decided to give you assholes your own bureau? God help us all.” Without waiting for a response, the man stormed out the front.
“That didn’t help things, Alex,” Constance said.
“We’re not the bad guys here. What, we’re going to wait for every dotted ‘i’ and crossed ‘t’ before doing something? We should be kicking in the doors to the club right now.”
“Hold on.” Marcus stopped him. He turned to Constance. “There is no time to do things tonight. This coming evening, we need to hit that blood club. Hard. We must force our way inside.”
“Nothing tactical,” Constance said.
Alex shook his head. “There’s probably an Ancient inside!”
“And you have no evidence of that except Marcus’s instincts.”
“That’s good enough for me. Or do you want to clear it with Lelith first?”
Constance glared at him. “It’s not good enough for a warrant.”
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