Graveyard Shift

by Michael F. Haspil

  “You are correct. Their plans did not work to their expected long-term effect in most of mainland Europe. I don’t know why. Perhaps many Europeans had too much history with vampires to replace it with the glamour of a few Hollywood films and TV shows. A generation ago, maybe two, vampires were still monsters in Europe. Yet you cannot deny that their tactics worked exceedingly well in this country.”

  “And Chakalarov felt he needed to spill this all to you—a self-proclaimed vampire hater—out of the kindness of his heart? I’m not buying it.”

  “I was not the only one he was in contact with. There were others; he called us the seeds of a human resistance. For understandable reasons he kept our identities secret from one another. The true purpose for all this was much darker than anyone supposed. That’s what he said. He’d had a change of heart.”

  Roeland reacted to the look on Alex’s and Trent’s faces. They were incredulous.

  His speech grew more frantic. “These things were not staged to garner support for increased vampire rights or to help their integration into society! Those were certainly side effects beneficial to their cause. But the Reveal was a precursor to a greater conflict. Some kind of race war the vampires are planning. They will use it to upset the established order of things in a bid for global power!”

  It was Trent’s turn to interrupt. “So every single vampire is in on this?”

  “Don’t be stupid! Chakalarov said he had been a member of an organization thousands of years old. He called it something…” He paused, brows furrowed as he tried to remember.

  “… a confraternity! They had been planning and waiting for just such a moment. When the Hemo-Synth products became a reality, they seized the opportunity and set their plans into motion. Chakalarov himself had been in charge of mustering their propaganda efforts. He had once been one of the advocates of a race war. Once it started, they would turn as many humans as they could. Their numbers would swell exponentially. They would tip the balance of numbers and subdue humanity beneath a vampiric yoke. But he changed his mind when he saw how vampires could in fact adapt and become members of everyday society. When he actually saw humans and vampires living side by side, he reconsidered. He was going to try to stop it. He wasn’t alone. There were others. Together they were trying to avert the conflict his own hand had helped set into motion.”

  “Hold on,” Trent said. “You’re talking about them mustering some kind of global vampiric takeover, right? If not all the vampires are in on this, they don’t have the numbers. In this country, the government reports what, just over a million documented vampires? A lot of those are youngbloods.” Trent looked to Alex for confirmation.

  Alex nodded; that jibed with what he knew. Even if estimates were off, the numbers were close.

  Trent continued. “I mean how can they start a war? They’d be royally outnumbered. How are they going to get normal vampires who want to live as part of society to take part in this scheme? To start preying on humans? To get all the nocturns to join them, they’d have to somehow reestablish a state of affairs where humans and vampires were again at each other’s proverbial throats. And we’re not talking a couple of riots inspired by your shenanigans, right? I mean, you’ve said it yourself. For most folks, vampires are cool now. People know them now, a few threats aren’t going to get people, you know, the average Joe, to run out and start staking sangers.”

  Alex thought about the goth girl this morning and wasn’t too sure about Trent’s assumptions.

  Roeland shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  For the first time since he’d started speaking, Roeland was lying. Alex was sure of it. All the air in the room turned to cement. He started getting a lumpy “oh shit” feeling in his stomach. The tainted Hemo-Synth, the blood frenzies—Alex knew.

  In these terms, it was obvious. He glanced at his watch, hoping Marcus would arrive soon. He hoped he’d had the good sense to check the messages Alex had left on his phone.

  Trent continued. “That’s convenient. I’m telling you, from over here, it doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s the truth!”

  “Sounds good to me. Go on,” Alex said.

  Trent turned to Alex. His face bore a “you’re not buying this shit, are you?” look. Alex hoped Trent would think it was part of an interrogation technique and just go with it. Alex was starting to think not only that Roeland Jaap was the real “Abraham,” but that he was telling the whole truth and nothing but. This did not bode well.

  “Chakalarov was going to get us—me and the other members of what he called the resistance—he was going to get us proof. Something happened. I don’t know what. He went months without speaking to us. He was traveling all over the world under the auspices of the Lightbearer Society, so we explained away his lack of contact.

  “Then he reached out to me. He actually called me on an open line, breaching our established protocols. He was panicked. Something had happened in their covert organization—in the vampire conspiracy. Chakalarov’s faction was losing. He needed to meet with me. I was the nearest one to him at the time. He was going to give me definitive proof of the vampire conspiracy, so that I could pass it on to the appropriate authorities. He told me he would be in touch with the location and that I had to be on the next train to Bosnia. I did as he ordered.

  “When I arrived, I received instructions from someone I believed to be Chakalarov to meet him in a churchyard in the dead of night. I felt this was unusual. After our initial contact, we had always met in public places, just after nightfall, so that humans and vampires could mingle without attracting attention. I brought members of my team with me.

  “Chakalarov was already dead when we arrived. We saw them staging the scene. They must have heard us. They attacked. I lost two good friends that day. We killed one, maybe more, as we made our escape. The next morning locals discovered Chakalarov’s body. There was no evidence of the other bodies or of any proof he was to pass on to me. I wanted to probe into the investigation, to discover what the local police knew. But if there really was a vampiric conspiracy, I could not afford for them to know who I was.

  “I wrote an anonymous letter to the local police to tell them what had really occurred. I provided details only an eyewitness would know. I included a code word for anyone wishing to make future contact.”

  “Let me guess, ‘Abraham.’”

  “Yes. That is how it began. Except that I read in the press that there had been multiple letters, some claiming responsibility for the murder. I had been lumped in with these. That was not the last time this has happened.”

  “So this is just a big mix-up?” Trent asked in amazement. “You’re innocent. You’re not the Nocturn Killer.” He was almost laughing.

  “I am innocent of Stanislaw Chakalarov’s death.”

  Alex sat in silence, contemplating what he’d just heard. It reminded him of the way they used to run ops during UMBRA. Trent might not have known. Trent was an analyst, not a field man.

  “All right. Let’s say I believe you. About Chakalarov’s murder anyway. We’ll see about the rest of it. About the other vampires you’ve killed, were they just random, or fit to some pattern, or what? ’Cause you know, you’ve kind of got us stumped there.”

  “Roughly a month after the murders in Sarajevo, I was contacted by another vampire. Not in person. He called me only once. From then on, we’ve communicated through a series of dead drops. He was an associate of Chakalarov, a protégé, and that is all he would tell me. He was discontented with how the succession had progressed in the Lightbearer Society. Within the vampiric conspiracy, the faction that wanted a race war, Lelith’s faction, had won. They’d purged most of Chakalarov’s people. Those lucky enough to still lurk about believed that Chakalarov’s mistake had been that he had made himself too visible. This vampire was entirely more cautious. It was his plan to invent the so-called Nocturn Killer, a serial killer that the media would unwittingly bolster. That kind of sensationalism sells papers and ratings.
He would feed me the identities of key members of the vampire conspiracy and I would assassinate them. We built up the identity of ‘Abraham’ so the press would highlight the story and we could capture the public’s short attention spans.”

  “But you did some freelancing, too, right? Like the job last night?” Alex asked.

  “Yes.”

  Trent stayed on the original line of questioning. “You say you were working against the race-war guys. But your manifesto, it seemed to say just the opposite.”

  “That’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. That was not my manifesto. Parts of it were. Parts of it were not.”

  “Explain.”

  “I felt the world needed to know what was happening, what the stakes were, everything I’m telling you now. Humans needed to know about the threat they lived with. And I wanted to let the vampires know that they should be afraid. I wrote it all. I sent it to multiple media outlets, I used the identity of Abraham, since by then it was famous. No one would listen to Roeland Jaap. People would listen to Abraham. I had misunderstood the media. No one published it. No one even mentioned it.”

  “Well, it was published eventually. The Standard Bearer picked it up.”

  “Yes and no. When Arthur brought me the edition, I was furious. Whoever had written this new manifesto had absolutely read mine. Some passages were the same, word for word. But entire new portions had been written. Those were calling for humans to prepare themselves for a race war! The exact opposite of what we wanted.”

  “You’d been compromised. You had to see that.”

  “I see it now. How else would you have found us?”

  “I agree,” Alex said.

  There was a loud and insistent rap against the one-way mirror. Both Trent and Alex stood.

  “Give us a second, Roeland. We’ll be right back.”

  They walked out and closed the door behind them. Trent was furious. “This guy is spilling his guts, and they interrupt us. Most of it is conspiracy-nut bullshit, but he’s talking! This better not be the damned DA.”

  Marcus walked out of the back room to greet them. Alex looked at his watch. He was stunned to see it was nearly eight o’clock.

  “Alex, I received your messages. I agree with you, Aguirre’s news is not good.”

  “Trent, you go back in there. You feds have point on this anyway.”

  Trent stood puzzled. “Wait, you and Marcus are still partners?”

  “Don’t read anything into it. It just worked out that way.”

  Trent laughed. “You really expect me to buy that? Right. Go do whatever you have to do, Alex. I don’t need to know. Shit, I don’t want to know. Those bastards told me UMBRA was over.”

  “It is.”

  “Sure it is.” Trent smiled and winked. “Go do what you have to do.” He opened the door and went back into the interview room.

  “Let me grab my piece and then we can go.” Alex headed off down the hall. Marcus matched his pace.

  “Wait till I tell you what a shitty day I had. I was cooped up dealing with crazies the whole time and just when it gets interesting you show up.”

  “I’m sorry to ruin your fun. As you said in the dozen or so messages you left, the situation, at least according to Aguirre, is dire.”

  Marcus’s complexion was flushed. His eyes showed that telltale blood-filled look of having fed. It was a good bet he hadn’t been binge-drinking synth blood.

  “Yeah, and wait until I tell you what old Abraham back there just told me. By the way, where the hell have you been?”

  “With Constance.”

  “Hitting blood clubs? Do I want to know where?”

  “No.”

  Alex had the good judgment to leave it at that.

  31

  8:52 P.M.

  Alex drove the Explorer toward the industrial park in Wynwood. They planned to meet a few other patrol officers with police cruisers a few blocks from the blood club. On the way, he summed up his discussion with Aguirre.

  “I think it’s more than strange you didn’t mention anything when Filip was going on about the Pack. Might have been a little important?” Alex asked.

  “I did not think it was relevant. Besides, Aguirre has his theories and I have mine,” Marcus said. “The order has known about the existence of a therianthropic secret society for hundreds of years. Save for only one other organization, it is the one we have the least information on.”

  “You’re saying ‘we’ again, like you’re still in the order.”

  Signs of unrest and detritus littered the streets. A couch burning on a street corner. A crowd of youths hanging a vampire in effigy from a streetlight. If they were lucky, things wouldn’t boil over tonight, but there was no chance that would last until the end of the week.

  “A slip of the tongue,” Marcus continued as if everything were normal.

  “How about you slip it a little more and actually cough up some info? In case you haven’t noticed, clock seems to be ticking,” Alex said.

  “Despite what Aguirre thinks, I don’t know very much about them. I always devoted my expertise and knowledge toward other pursuits, for obvious reasons. What I know is that they go by different names, ‘the Pack,’ ‘the Pride,’ or other names along those lines, as appropriate. They cannot be infiltrated, again for reasons that are rather obvious. And they are extremely secretive. Occasionally we catch a whiff of their activities, but it’s no use diverting our attention and limited resources to try to intercept them. They are elusive. In any case, historically, our paths rarely intersect. I would share more if I knew it, Menkaure, but I believe they are a distraction and are not relevant.”

  “Have they ever worked in league with vampires before?”

  “Not that I know of. You know how vampires react to thropes and vice versa. That would be highly unusual.”

  Marcus seemed detached. He gazed absently out the window. Alex could tell he had other thoughts on his mind.

  “So it’s just coincidence that Filip was supplying human meat to some of his customers and fear blood to others?”

  “It has to be coincidence,” Marcus said. “Perhaps Filip’s people were simply being efficient and not letting resources go to waste. If the Pack had discovered the source of their meat, I suspect it would have gone even worse for Filip. Besides, I’m not entirely sure about the use of human meat to stave off the effects of the Curse. Despite what Aguirre believes about such rituals allowing thropes to control their animal selves, there is no evidence to support that. You’ve seen the UMBRA data and know it as well as I do.”

  “Yeah, but it’s been a while since I looked at that stuff. I had my own problems back then. I still do. I do remember running across reports that the Nazis were trying to get thropes to control themselves or seeing what stressors they could introduce to force the change. I don’t think it went into many details.”

  “Well, regarding the Pack, there are other theories,” Marcus said.

  Alex stopped the Explorer. The street ahead had turned into a parking lot. He hit the lights and siren for an instant and dodged down a cross street. As he did, he saw the source of the obstruction: A large mob of people had gathered and was blocking off the end of the street. He guessed it was at least several hundred people, but then they were out of sight.

  “Are you seeing this?” Alex asked.

  Marcus remained silent.

  Alex took the hint. Somebody else’s problem right now.

  “Okay, so what are the other theories?”

  “There are some in the order who believe that the members of the Pack represent a different breed of therianthrope. Creatures who are not simply shape-shifters who change on a given cycle, but who can change at will. Some believe they may be an entirely different species, somewhere between animal and man.”

  “The Luperci,” Alex said.

  Marcus looked surprised and impressed.

  “Where did you learn of this?”

  “Aguirre,” said Alex, “but he didn’t say
much more. Said I really needed to hear the details from a Roman, whatever that means.”

  Marcus laughed. “Aguirre is not without a flair for the dramatic.”

  “So what’s the deal? Who are the Luperci?”

  “Historically, as far as the mundane world is concerned, the Luperci were Roman priests that officiated during the festival of the Lupercalia. The name means ‘the brothers of the wolf’ and the Lupercalia was a festival to celebrate the story of the Lupercal, the cave on which Rome itself was founded.”

  “Okay, yeah, I’m with you. I remember the story that Romulus and Remus were abandoned and then suckled in a cave by a she-wolf … holy shit.” Alex let the information sink in. “But that’s just a myth, right?”

  “As mythical as you and I.”

  Alex simply sat in silence for a moment.

  He still had a feeling Marcus wasn’t telling him the whole truth, but for now, this was enough.

  “Anything else you need to tell me? I’d like to not run into this club in a few minutes half-cocked and not knowing what the hell is going on.”

  “I, for one, need to let this other Ancient know he cannot enter my city uninvited and unannounced without repercussions. I may not have my old resources but I still have my pride and reputation.”

  There it was. Marcus looked out for number one, as all vampires did. So until he settled this business with this Ancient, the Pack and everything else peripheral to it—the case, Roeland Jaap—would take a backseat. Miami could burn and Marcus wouldn’t care. Alex shook his head. There were few things as convoluted and frustrating as vampiric politics.

  “So anything we can do to disrupt their plans is just a bonus at this point?” Alex asked.

  “Not at all,” Marcus said. “A race war will not benefit anyone. I have a hard time believing that is the actual goal. Roeland Jaap, for the few minutes I observed him, did not make a positive impression.”

  “Yeah, he’s a nutjob. But, what if he is telling the truth? His story is so nuts it’s likely to be true. You have to admit, we’ve heard stranger.”