Bloodlines (The Guardian of Empire City Book 1)

by Peter Hartog

  Chapter 24

  “Yes, I know what time it is.” I stood near Crain’s smoking remains and shook my head at the sight, immediately regretting it as my face throbbed. “You know I wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t important.”

  “Detective Holliday, I cannot simply leave my girls,” Stentstrom admonished me in his singsong voice. “Shayna and Lucy are on a very strict schedule, and any disruption to their training regimen, however minute, could prove disastrous. The Poodle Club of Empire City Grooming Competition is scheduled for mid-November, and I’m certain you can appreciate the salutary effects a good night’s rest has on the body.”

  “I completely understand,” I replied, squeezing the bridge of my aching nose with two fingers. “But I need you to get here right away. There’s been a break in the case, and I’ve got bodies. Or what’s left of bodies.”

  “That sounds like something the coroner-on-call Doctor Cohen can perform for you,” he continued in the same tone.

  “Doctor, I—"

  “There is simply no need for this interruption at such a dreadful hour.”

  “But Doctor, I really—"

  “After all, why bother establishing work hours if anyone can call at any time—"

  “Gilbert, these are very special bodies.”

  Silence.

  “Oh,” he whispered conspiratorially. Suddenly, the image popped in my head of a googly-eyed Stentstrom creeping around his living room stalking assassins and unicorns.

  “My apologies, Detective,” he continued in breathless excitement, shuffling about. A door closed with a loud thud amidst a fanfare of indignant barking. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

  “I’m forwarding images right now to your private box,” I added, working the virtual commands on my phone. “This needs to stay off the books. There’s a lot going on right now, and I need time to sort it all out. I want you to have a head start before anyone from ECPD starts asking questions.”

  “I’ll be there within the hour,” the medical examiner said. “Now girls, don’t you worry, Daddy will be right back.”

  “Ping me when you get here.” I ended the call, exhaling a heavy sigh.

  “Front doors secured,” Deacon said in passing, breaking into my thoughts. “That bouncer was gone, but there were a couple of gawkers outside. Told them to skedaddle, club’s closed due to a kitchen fire. Should give us a little time before anyone tries anything. You call Mahoney?”

  “He’s ten minutes out,” I replied, rubbing the back of my neck to massage taut muscles full of tension. “Was monitoring channels, heard the noise and figured it was us once he checked EVI for my location.”

  EVI had informed me that several 911 calls were made minutes after Crain’s fiery crash to the dance floor, which meant ECPD, fire and emergency would be here soon. I needed Mahoney here to pull his weight, take charge and keep everyone off my ass for a while. I didn’t want the specific details getting out through EVI on the main ECPD feed. The sinking suspicion there were “ears” listening in on anything she transmitted was something I couldn’t ignore. I needed the time and freedom to delve into this further.

  If the mayor and DA wanted results, I couldn’t just hand them a half-eaten shit sandwich.

  Hey Mr. Mayor. Listen, turns out there really are vampires. We lit a few on fire at this nightclub. I think they’re part of a conspiracy involving weird genetic experimentation that is linked to the murder in some way, but we still don’t know who’s doing it, what was done, or why. Anyway, we’re about to look for their lair, so if you don’t hear from me, send in the Marines because we’re probably dead.

  Yeah, that’d go over like a stale fart at a job interview. Hell, it sounded ridiculous even to me, despite what we just went through.

  “This is one fucked-up case,” Deacon chuckled while lighting a cigarette.

  “With a lot of moving parts,” I said. “Let’s consider what we think we know. Crain hired the mercenaries. Whatever fallout caused by Vanessa’s murder included the bad breakup between Crain and his mystery boss, and Julie and Orpheus. I think Julie hoped Crain and his gang would eat us. With us dead, the investigation gets put on a temporary hold, and Kraze is on ECPD’s shit list. Either way, bad times for Crain and company, and good times for Julie and Orpheus.

  “Normally, that would’ve put Julie and Orpheus at the top of the suspect list. But why would Julie be in the alleyway at the time of Vanessa’s murder? For plausible deniability? Of what? What did she and Orpheus gain from all of this?”

  “Beats the shit out of me,” Deacon replied.

  “Crain’s villainous soliloquy confirmed two very important things,” I said. “He didn’t know who murdered Vanessa, which I believe, and he tabbed Orpheus with stealing her corpse, which he believed. Either the body held some other clue that we’d missed, or the bad guys didn’t know either, and were afraid it might.”

  “And don’t forget there’s a third party involved now,” the Confederate pointed out.

  “Yeah.” I nodded soberly. “Somebody else murdered Vanessa to steal her blood. But who? And why?”

  The sick feeling that I was some pawn being manipulated around a chessboard by an invisible hand was really pissing me off. I’d be damned if I let that continue for much longer.

  My window of opportunity was short. I needed to make some moves of my own.

  Deacon wandered over to talk to Besim and Leyla. The young hacker clutched one of Besim’s crumpled, colorful handkerchiefs in her hand. She nodded at whatever Deacon was saying, then looked gamely over at me with a tremulous smile. I returned it with an encouraging one of my own and a wink, although inside my mind was awhirl with what the Insight had revealed to me about her.

  Then there was Deacon, and his convincing impersonation of an avenging angel. The purity of the light that had surrounded him still blinded me. What was he, and why was he here? And I didn’t even want to think about the Vellan.

  I stared at the charred corpse of David Crain.

  Angels and vampires.

  Jesus Christ.

  “You okay, Doc?” Leyla asked in a soft voice. I hadn’t noticed her approach.

  “I should be asking you that,” I replied.

  “He…it…really beat you up,” she said, and ran a chilled hand down my face.

  “Yeah, but I’ve had worse.” I tried to sound brave. “You remember that time Ivan and his bratva jerks beat the shit out of me at Eddie’s? That hurt a lot worse than this.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Leyla laughed. “I helped Eddie clean up the mess. You bled all over her nice, dirty floor.”

  I hugged Leyla close. She lay her cold head against my chest. My tender ribs cried out in pain, but nobody heard.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you, kiddo,” I whispered into her hair. “That’s a promise.”

  Her hug tightened, but I didn’t mind. “I know.”

  “And I should never have brought you along.”

  “S’cool,” she sniffled. “You needed me here tonight, Doc.”

  I wasn’t convinced, but squeezed her hard and then let go, giving her a sad smile.

  “Holliday, finish up, ‘cause we’ve got work to do,” Deacon called. Both he and Besim stood by one of the doors leading to the back of the nightclub.

  I hesitated mid-step.

  “You think leaving him…err…‘it’ here is a good idea?” I nodded in the direction of Crain’s corpse. “What if it, you know, gets up or something?”

  My experience with the undead was unsurprisingly limited.

  “Then shoot it harder.” Deacon flicked his expired butt away with a grin. “Relax, Holliday. He ain’t goin’ nowhere.”

  I decided to trust the professional.

  “Stentstrom’s on his way,” I announced as we rejoined Deacon and Besim. “He’s discreet, and I need him to take out the trash before the rest of ECPD crawls over the place and contaminates everything.”

  Despite the beating I took, I felt remarka
bly good. My body ached, especially my nose and jaw, but my mind was clear.

  “Smart,” he said, surprising me.

  Before I could say anything, Deacon pushed through the door. I handed a pair of gloves to the girls and tossed another to Deacon, who pointedly ignored them as they bounced off his chest and hit the floor. Leyla retrieved the gloves and gave them back to me with a shrug.

  “Fine, don’t touch anything,” I instructed him.

  Deacon snorted but said nothing.

  We followed the short corridor leading past two doors marked as bathrooms. It ended at a small commercial kitchen with a cooking surface, several fryers, two prep tables, a large double sink with hoses suspended from the ceiling, a dishwasher, and a walk-in refrigerator. The area reeked of burnt food and old cigarettes, with layers of grease caked on all the surfaces. Packed shelves and cabinets lined one of the walls, while half-filled serving trays and a mountain of unwashed dishes and cutlery lay in piles around the sink.

  Besim wrinkled her nose at the sight. She’d been quiet since bringing Leyla down to the dance floor. I glanced at her, but she appeared aloof and composed as usual.

  “Where’d everybody go?” Leyla asked, looking around.

  “They must’ve bolted after the screaming started,” I supplied, doing a quick circuit of the kitchen.

  The cook had failed to shut off the burners before fleeing the scene. Turning a couple of knobs did the trick, otherwise we would’ve had a real fire instead of the story Deacon had fabricated outside.

  “That way.” I pointed to the left where another short corridor led to what I presumed was Crain’s office. We followed it past a storage room to a closed door at its end. Besim paused in front of the storage room door, while Leyla and I continued to the office.

  “What the fuck are you doing, Holliday?” Deacon hollered from the kitchen.

  He leaned against one of the tables with arms folded across his chest.

  “It’s what we police-types like to call ‘looking for clues,’” I retorted, irritated by the question. “Shake down the premises, go through his sock drawer, locate the virtual workstation, and mine it for information. You should try it sometime.”

  “I get that,” he replied amiably. “But I doubt a vampire’s gonna hide its secrets inside an office, do you?”

  Scowling, I tried the door handle and found it unlocked, with the room beyond lit.

  Crain’s office was small and organized. A bank of closed-circuit holo-monitors was arranged in a neat row along one wall near the ceiling. I didn’t see a potted plant, holo-frame, personal items, or even a coffee mug with “Blood-Sucking Asshole” on it. The office contained all the surface trappings, but none of the lived-in feel one would expect from an occupied space. The monitor feeds displayed the front entrance, a back exit attached to the kitchen, the bar, the mezzanine, dance floor, both bathrooms, the check-in counter, kitchen, and different angles of the stage. The desk contained nothing worthwhile, just scraps of useless junk. The chair bore an impression in the seat cushion, so someone came in here to monitor things at least.

  Leyla plopped down before the workstation, powered it on, and manipulated the holo-windows. I took a seat opposite her and stretched out my legs.

  “Work your magic, kiddo,” I said as a wry smile spread across my face.

  See what I did there?

  The workstation’s screens flashed in front of me but winked out before I could get a read on them. Leyla worked faster than I could keep up. The speed with which the screens appeared and departed made my head swim. After several minutes of this, she shut it down.

  “Nothing here, Doc,” Leyla announced, sounding more annoyed than defeated. “It wasn’t hard either. His security was crap. I hacked the entire system, front to back, and even went looking for hidden drives, backdoors and caches. Didn’t find a thing. It was just messages from vendors, budgets, food and beverage orders and expenditures, payroll, tax forms, upcoming events, and a lot of junk mail. Everything you’d expect from a legit operation. I guess Crain was the world’s most boring vampire.”

  That was unfortunate, but unsurprising. Crain had to maintain appearances.

  “What are you hiding here, Crain?” I muttered in frustration, staring at the walls of the small office.

  “Excuse me, Detective Holliday,” Besim called from the hallway. “I believe there is something here you should see.”

  “I’ll keep digging through his box,” Leyla announced as I disentangled myself from the chair. “Maybe I missed something.”

  I nodded once and left. Besim hadn’t moved from her position before the storage room door. Deacon came down the hallway to see what was up.

  “There is a particular scent emanating from behind this door,” Besim said. “However, there are too many variables in the way. I attempted to identify it from here but was unsuccessful. And I did not wish to open the door in case certain…undesirables…lurked behind it.”

  Deacon and I exchanged a look.

  “We’ve made plenty of noise already,” I observed, drawing the SMART gun, “but it doesn’t hurt to be careful. Marko’s still at large.”

  I tried the door knob. It was locked.

  For the second time in as many nights, I picked it with my handy-dandy set of tools. The door swung open, revealing a darkened room. Several metal shelving racks held containers of kitchen supplies, extra flatware and cutlery, pots, pans, three mops, a couple of brooms, and a partridge in a pear tree.

  Okay, I made that last part up.

  Still, nothing unusual about the room’s contents. I flipped on the light. A single fluorescent bulb came to life, buzzing happily, and illuminated the room. Besim moved past me. With deliberate steps, she made her way to the opposite wall where a mop sat inside a metal bucket with wheels. The shelving ended a foot from the wall. Hands at her sides, she studied the mop with an unreadable expression on her face. I was about to say something when Deacon shot me a look and shook his head.

  “Here,” Besim announced. “There are chemical agents at play. They are below, but not far. And I hear the sound of machinery.”

  “That could be the boiler,” I said.

  Besim looked over her shoulder at me, raising a critical eyebrow.

  “No, Detective,” she replied. “This is something else.”

  As I made my way back down the hall toward the kitchen, I called out to Leyla to join us.

  A few moments later, we were downstairs inside a dank and murky boiler room. The machinery dominated the space with rusted piping that penetrated the concrete foundation, running along the ceiling and down the walls. Although the pipes appeared to be the original copper, the chiller, boiler, air handlers, heat exchanger, water heater, tanks, and pumps were all new.

  “A shit-ton of equipment for just one nightclub,” Deacon commented. “Why would a dump like this need all that?”

  I stepped to the far end of the room where I spied a small metal panel installed in the wall, hidden behind a thick copper pipe.

  “Let’s find out.” I grinned, pushing the white button.

  A door-sized panel of false concrete detached itself from the wall and slid silently to the side.

  “Going down?” I uttered in a sepulchral voice.

  Chapter 25

  The elevator door opened.

  Nothing with big nasty teeth leapt at us, and I took that to be a good sign.

  With both hands on the SMART gun and a round in the chamber, I crept from the elevator and into the lit corridor. My breath ghosted before me in thin puffs. The air was thick with mildew. A dank chill settled into my bones, and I shivered.

  “Clear.” I nodded once to the others.

  The elevator was set in the middle of a long, slate-gray corridor of worked concrete. A continuation of the thick, rusted pipes from the floor above snaked along the length of the wall starting at shoulder height. Condensation dripped from them into small pools here and there. Small bulbs in metal cages were interspersed evenly alon
g the ceiling, providing plenty of light. Other than the faint buzzing from the bulbs, silence reigned here like a tomb.

  “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes,” I murmured low. Goose bumps flocked on my skin.

  “Doc, you’ve got some serious issues,” Leyla snorted quietly from behind me.

  Grinning ghoulishly, I stuck my tongue out at her and moved to the right. As Besim and Deacon edged away from the elevator, the consultant tilted her head to the side, listening for something, her eyes closed. After a moment, she faced left, opened her eyes, and gave the empty corridor a speculative look. It stretched a good twenty feet, then veered right.

  The Insight had been quiescent so far, but that didn’t make me feel better.

  “What is it, Besim?” Leyla asked in hushed tones.

  “I am not certain,” Besim replied tentatively, her brow furrowed. My unease boiled as she turned back to me, concern written on her face. “Detective, I—"

  She paused in mid-sentence to stare at something past my ear.

  I followed her gaze. A pinpoint of red light flickered at the far end of the corridor. Its source was a small security camera, wedged into the upper right corner of the wall, just above the pipes. I whipped my head around to discover its twin in the opposite wall.

  Both faced our direction.

  My hackles rose.

  “Shit.”

  Just then, a door swept open around the corner from the first camera, followed by men’s voices and the snap and click of weapons being readied.

  “Holliday!” Deacon hissed. He placed himself protectively before the girls, truncheon in hand.

  “C’mon, c’mon!” Leyla mashed the elevator button in the wall panel, blue eyes round as saucers, but the door refused to open.

  Besim looked expectantly at me, a calm expression on her face.

  “Tactical,” I ordered.

  An instant later, the three-dimensional HUD of the SMART gun appeared in my vision. Back when we’d encountered the cleaners, I had forgotten about the combat-guided assistance the SMART gun provided.

  Not this time.