Graveyard Shift

by Michael F. Haspil

  “The blood is the life,” Alex added.

  “Yes, the blood is the life. Do you know this is not the first time I’ve tried this scheme? I’m not even the first to try it. Others tried to make similar religious orders of like-minded nocturns—during the Reformation, the Great Schism, after the Inquisition, and here, in the New World. We swore oaths, gave offerings, and prayed. We all forswore the taking of human life and consumed only animal blood. It was so hard, Alex. I cannot even convey. Our nature drives us back to making humans our prey. Some think that is proof of our damnation, that God has forsaken us. Myself, I see it as a test of faith. Animal blood allows us to survive, but not to live. After a time, years, decades of torture, it wasn’t enough—it isn’t enough. Every single one of us relapsed and reneged on our promises, broke our vows, and fell again.”

  Aguirre opened the wall locker and took out a small bottle of Sangri. He tossed it to Alex.

  “Untainted, that is literally a Godsend to us, Alex. There’s something in the key ingredient, in the A-PFC4, that helps us to suppress the urges, allows us to get by on Hemo-Synth. The craving for human blood is still there; but we can manage it through discipline and faith. I can tell you that on the good days, I hardly notice it at all.”

  “So where are you going with this?”

  “Just reminding you how the entire balance of the new world, the world as it is now, relies on the product within these little bottles. My sect actively tries to avoid taking human life. Other nocturns, the real vampires, won’t be so discriminating should anything happen to this supply.”

  “Yeah, and the FDA knows this. They keep a pretty tight control on the production of all synthetic-blood products.”

  “Bear with me.” Aguirre put his hands out, imploring Alex’s patience. “As you can guess, the FDA is not the only organization closely monitoring the status and supply of synthetic-blood consumables. Blood clubs are no secret. While they are enough for nocturns, there are always our darker kin, the true vampires, who want no part in the consensual process. They loved the chase and the hunt, the rape, and the kill. It is they who love the thrill and taste of fear. What you uncovered last night was a form of fear-blood factory. I can be sure of that much from your description. But I’ve never heard of one that large or run by humans.”

  “It’s some powerful stuff. I saw the effect it had on Constance, Marcus, and Zorzi.”

  “Yet Constance had the harder time of it. Marcus and Zorzi are seducers. They don’t take pleasure in the thrill of the chase, in the kill. Constance, well, without disclosing too much, once, she was a true vampire. It wouldn’t be hard for her to slip back to her old ways.”

  And now she’s the one we’re supposed to trust as a buffer to Lelith?

  “That stuff, the fear blood, it’s some kind of gourmet stuff to you guys. I figure, some elitist clients are paying top dollar for it. The blood trade isn’t that different from the drug trade, Lopé.”

  “But what if it is?”

  “What do you mean? We knew about the new blood stock, that’s why we were leaning on Filip. We figured he knew something. Turns out he was right in the middle of it.”

  “Assume for a moment, Alex, that Filip wasn’t selling his stock to many customers, as you would expect in your ‘drug dealer’ model. What if he was selling it to just one?”

  “What do you know? Come on and cut the crap. Make your point.” Damn him, Aguirre loved his riddles and mysteries.

  “We’re still putting pieces of the puzzle together. What we know is that there is a very small clientele for this fear blood. Perhaps even just a single client. Even more curious, we think that those random bottles that showed up on store shelves and resulted in blood-frenzy incidents were not random at all.”

  “So they were a screen to lower suspicion on something else? That makes sense if you’re trying to hide a deliberate murder—”

  Aguirre interrupted, “Or test a product. Your department tested the blood, yes?”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t heard the results beyond that it wasn’t pure human stock and it had a high adrenal content.”

  “They need to test it for a form of methamphetamine. It’s in small amounts, but you must remember nocturn physiology is significantly different from human.”

  “Meth? You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I were, Alex. We suspect the high adrenal content of the fear blood masks the different taste or simply makes the nocturn victim ignore it. The methamphetamine boosts the euphoric effect of feeding on the fear blood, ten-, maybe a hundredfold.”

  “So this is a hell of a recreational drug. It’s going to put the blood clubs out of business.”

  “No, Alex. Any nocturn who drinks this would experience euphoria initially, but then they would lose all control. The need to glut themselves on blood would overcome any rational thought.”

  “And bam! You’ve got blood frenzy.” Alex sighed, as if they needed more shit right now. “Do you have any proof?”

  “You are holding it, Alex.”

  Alex stared in shock at the bottle of Sangri in his hand. He was momentarily at a loss for words.

  “What? How?”

  “We have operatives throughout the city. This particular bottle was retrieved for us at great risk from the Lightbearer Society’s new headquarters.”

  “Haley House?”

  “It is secluded, and is known for secret passages, caches, and bolt-holes. It even has a distillery and winemaking equipment left over from the Prohibition days and the Haleys’ aborted foray as vintners. We suspect the Lightbearers are using that equipment for making these illicit and very dangerous blood products. We suspect Lelith is serving a new master. We know he’s there, but he is keeping his identity closely guarded.”

  “Any idea why they’re doing any of this? Why didn’t you tell Marcus about this before?”

  “Well, primarily because we did not know about it when I last spoke to Marcus. That might have been for the best. We suspect that the other Ancient in the city is more than likely behind this. Everything is circumstantial. You know how territorial our kind can get and that increases with time. Marcus might have tried something on his own and played our hand too soon.”

  “Like we did last night. We might have screwed up your entire op.”

  “I do not think so. Our source brought this to us last night. Not long after Marcus departed as a matter of fact.”

  “And you were just tending your garden, without a care in the world. You’ve got ice in your veins, you know that?”

  “I have a responsibility to my flock. I cannot give them any impression that something may be wrong. You have no idea how close some of them are to relapse. If they lost confidence in the Hemo-Synth, they would lose all hope. Besides, there is very little a humble priest can do against such forces.”

  “Secrets and more secrets. Okay. Who’s your source? I need to talk to him.”

  “I’m afraid that’s quite out of the question. That individual has already taken a tremendous risk.”

  “Damn it, Lopé, no one’s going to go for this. I just turn up with a bottle of tainted Sangri and we’re supposed to go kick in doors at Haley House and take down the Lightbearer Society? Do you know how many power players Lelith is in bed with? Figuratively, if not literally. That’s not going to happen. Even if she didn’t have her talons sunk into every major politician, it’s not going to happen. I need to worry about due process, warrants. There are rules now.”

  “Are there? All that is necessary for evil to triumph is that good men do nothing.”

  Alex shook his head at the situation. “Don’t lecture me. You can’t play me like some damned asset and throw a guilt trip my way. You can’t just wash your hands of this. This isn’t my problem. What about when one of your people guzzles down a pint of this shit?”

  “We’re screening all the product that comes in here. Now that we know what we’re looking for. The real danger lies out there. There is some hope we may have discovered t
he plot before its completion. There haven’t been widespread incidents. Perhaps they don’t have enough to do what they want. They might be stockpiling it until they can put enough out there that it would overwhelm any human capability to counter its effects. It is literally in your hands now, Alex.”

  “Thanks for that.” Alex reflected on potential options; all of them were dreadful. He’d wasted enough time here. He needed to get back.

  “Do you have any idea what they’re trying to pull off here?”

  Aguirre shook his head. “We’ve been trying to figure out the angles on this. I’ve got nothing concrete. They don’t trust our asset enough to let them in on whatever the big picture is. I don’t need to lecture you on vampires and their secrets. There are some pet theories floating around out there. My personal favorite is that we’re witnessing a power player trying to make a bid to corner the artificial-blood market. Causing incidents that would sow distrust about competing products? And then when the time is right, they can release their own ‘guaranteed’ safe product. There’s millions of dollars at stake there. That makes the most sense to me. But there are some who think it might be some kind of pseudoterrorist false flag, engineered so the Lightbearers can gather more power. We just don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s comforting.”

  “You will figure something out, Alex.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “I have faith in you.” Aguirre opened a drawer in the desk and took out a small silver crucifix about the size of his palm. He handed it to Alex.

  Alex looked at it incredulously, “You’re joking, right?”

  “God has faith in you to do the right thing. Do not spurn His aid.”

  Alex sighed and put the crucifix in his pocket. This was no time to get into a debate on theology. Aguirre wasn’t one of his favorite people right now.

  “Faith will always prove useful.”

  “I’ll walk myself out.”

  25

  Ma’at. It meant a myriad of things in Old Kemeti. Truth, Balance, Justice, Morality, Law, Harmony, Order. It was the latter that Menkaure now craved the most. He drove as quickly as he could back to the Nocturn Affairs Section. The tainted bottle of Sangri rattled gently in the center console as he wove through traffic. As Aguirre’s information sank in, he allowed his thoughts to stray, the better to let his subconscious digest the new data. Once again, things were changing too quickly.

  Since he’d awoken in the mid-1800s, it seemed Ma’at was constantly in short supply. The world had given itself over to Ma’at’s ideological counterpart, Isfet. Chaos. Certainly, the last century had been proof of that much. Destruction on a scale previously unimagined formed a new order of its own. This century didn’t seem to be headed on a much better course. Volatility, uncertainty … change was now the new status quo. How anyone expected to bring stability to a nation when the government changed more often than Menkaure’s own had conducted cattle counts was beyond him. It was something he’d never grown to accept about the new order of things. Power to the people. But when had the people known anything about power?

  He thirsted for stability; but he wasn’t likely to get any. Constant change appeared to be the one thing he could count on not to vary.

  And now he couldn’t easily shrug off what he’d seen in Aguirre’s church. Vampires with souls. It bothered him and drove his thoughts to consider the state of his own spirit.

  The dispatch radio squawked something he knew he should be concerned with. He ignored it.

  How would his heart fare now, balanced on the scale against the feather of truth? How many of the Forty-two Declarations could he honestly cite without betraying himself?

  Well, he hadn’t stolen any cultivated land yet. So that was at least one out of forty-two.

  The radio squawked again, this time calling him by name. “Detective Romer, Nocturn Affairs assistance required at the Ponces.”

  Roberts must’ve told someone he was the only NA guy out and about. “The Ponces” was the name of a luxury rental apartment complex in Coral Gables. Alex was just a few minutes away.

  He needed to get the Sangri to the lab. He needed to brief Roberts on what Aguirre had told him. He didn’t need to be chasing what was likely to be another crap call.

  In spite of his better judgment, he reached for the radio handset. “Romer. Passing U. of M. now. I’ll be there in about five. Out.”

  * * *

  He pulled up to a group of beige apartment buildings laid out like a campus. Two large towers that looked like they’d been designed by a Frank Lloyd Wright protégé dominated the property. Fountains blasted clear water high into the air amid immaculate tropical landscaping.

  Alex stepped out of the SUV and into a cool mist that spread from the fountains. He had to admit it felt magnificent and helped take the edge off the heat. The whole place felt more like a resort than an apartment building.

  A uniformed officer, who’d been waiting, jogged up to him. “Detective Romer?”

  Something was off. The man was entirely too calm given the call for Nocturn Affairs support.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re Nocturn Affairs, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. She’s through here.” The officer hardly waited to see if Alex was following him and stepped off toward the lobby of the nearer tower.

  Alex quickened his pace to catch up.

  “What exactly are we dealing with?”

  “Homicide. But we don’t know if she’s one of yours or not. We’ve got a bus on the way, but figured we could use you to take a look-see. I mean, if she’s one of yours she might not be dead, right?” The man gave off a nervous laugh.

  “Yeah.” That explained the lack of tension. A dead vampire, or even one mostly dead, didn’t engender the circus-sideshow atmosphere of a vampire on a blood frenzy. Still, someone had managed to take down a vampire?

  They crossed into the lobby, and the lavish decor momentarily pulled Alex’s thoughts away from the scene. A homicide in these surroundings felt utterly incongruous, and the decor made Alex’s own condos appear squalid by comparison.

  “Hey, how much do you figure the rent is in this place?” Alex asked.

  “I heard it’s like three grand or so.”

  “Seriously? A month? Damn.”

  Alex needed to step up his game if he was going to stay in the real-estate market. Then again, he only rented out the rest of his building because he didn’t have a use for all the extra space.

  They stepped from the lobby into an inner courtyard with a large swimming pool. Patio furniture and lounge chairs peppered the pool’s surroundings, and there was a large community bar, which was currently closed. Another uniformed officer faced a small crowd.

  The first officer continued, “I swear, I’ve vacationed in worse places.”

  “Heard that,” Alex said.

  “Enrique,” the officer called out to his partner, “Nocturn Affairs is here. You get anything?”

  The other officer, Enrique, stepped away from the crowd and toward them. “Nah. You know how it is. Nobody saw nothing.”

  “Who called it in?” Alex asked.

  “Anonymous.”

  “She’s over here.” The first officer led Alex to the covered body.

  Alex pulled on some gloves from his pocket and knelt next to the body. He pulled back the sheet.

  “Ah. She’s just a kid.”

  A young woman lay beneath the sheet. She had black hair, and wore goth-style makeup and a stereotypical Wannabe outfit, probably from Hot Topic. Her skin was pale enough that he knew she hadn’t been out here sunbathing. If she was a day over twenty, Alex was going to lose a bet. A wooden stake jutted up from her chest.

  She was no vampire. But he went through the motions for the other officers’ sakes. Checking the length of her canine teeth, looking at her eyes. Rigor hadn’t even begun to set in yet. That couldn’t be right.

  “She’s a sap all right. Not one of ours. When did t
his happen?” Alex asked.

  “We caught it about an hour back,” Enrique said.

  “Wait, so you’re telling me that residents of this fine establishment brought her out here in broad daylight and yet were still so convinced that she was a vampire they staked her down and killed her?”

  “Looks like. Maybe a reprisal for the family thing this morning? Maybe tied in to Abraham?”

  Alex scarcely heard what the young man said. “Then this city is fucked.”

  “You said it.”

  Alex felt the anger rising within him. “And nobody heard or saw anything? That’s horseshit.” He stood and raised his voice so he could be sure that everyone in the crowd, and anyone else who might be watching, heard him.

  “We’re gonna want heads on this one. We’re gonna have people up in here tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. We’re gonna be in everyone’s shit twenty-four/seven until someone says something. Someone saw. Someone knows. And if I have to come back and personally burn this shithole to the ground myself, we’re going to get answers.”

  He had to get the Sangri in and brief Roberts now more than ever. If citizens were beginning to rationalize behavior like this, there was no telling what would happen when the sun went down. He snapped the gloves off his hands and headed for the lobby.

  “Hey, where are you going?”

  “To try and get ahead of things for a change. And hopefully to keep incidents like this from becoming the norm.”

  26

  12:14 P.M.

  Alex barreled into the squad room expecting a hive of activity; instead, a tomb-like atmosphere greeted him. Even though this was the Nocturn Affairs Section and they did most of their work by night, there was usually something happening during the day, someone typing up a report, following up on a lead, something. He knew Roberts was here.

  “Captain Roberts?”

  No answer. Alex went over to the office and saw Vince Roberts on the telephone, jotting down notes. Roberts looked up, saw Alex, and waved him into the office. Alex walked in and sat down.