A Vampyre's Daughter

by Jeff Schanz

  Catalina was a mildly charming vacation spot, less traveled than the usual haunts in Los Angeles because of its remoteness and travel time to get there. It had typical touristy things like a street market along the pier, restaurants, shops, and a bar or two. Brandt had gone there as a kid on a school trip and wasn’t impressed, but as an adult, it would probably seem different. And considering it was closer than the mainland, it might just be a good destination. The question was whether he should regroup there and then keep going to the mainland, or stay there a few days and feel out his followers? He didn't think seagoing gangsters would risk a shootout on a tourist island. And if he saw them following him, he could alert the coast guard that a group of pirates was chasing him. If the Coast Guard boarded them and found all the weapons they stockpiled… well, that might just end the problem.

  Brandt shook his head. It was really too bad. Catalina was close enough that Lia could’ve gone there and done a lot of the things that she always wanted to do. If she only had a boat herself, she’d be able to do some of that stuff on her own and not feel as caged up. She’d even be happier than she had been on his test sail.

  Brandt folded the map and made sure everything else was placed properly back on its shelf. As he exited the library a thought was hitting him. As he rounded the hallway corner, the thought was growing. He reached the stairwell and looked back at Lia’s lab room. The candles were burning inside, and she was engrossed in comparing something to a page in a book.

  She doesn’t think she’ll find a cure, and she’s still determined. She’s so hopeful to be human, ASAP.

  The bad guys hadn't followed him tonight. He had looked over the water on numerous occasions the past few days and saw nothing more interesting than a cargo ship or two, a couple of different fishing boats, and the one yacht that hadn't come back. Maybe the bad guys weren't coming. And even if they did, maybe Brandt had more time than he thought. He smiled to himself and turned back to her room.

  “Hi,” he said.

  She looked up. “Hi. Did you find what you needed?”

  “Yeah. And I saw there’s an island about eight hours from here that’s closer than the mainland. It has a population, shops, restaurants, hotels. Easier to get to.”

  “Sounds delightful,” she said. “I wish I could go with you.”

  He shrugged. “Which reminds me, I wanted to give you a gift before I go.”

  “That’s sweet.” She looked puzzled for a moment. “But there’s nothing here to give me. You don’t have to…”

  “I want to. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Ok. What is it?”

  Brandt grinned and prepared to be hugged.

  Lia came into his room and woke him extremely early the next morning. It was still dark outside. Brandt always hated starting the day when the night owls were getting ready to go to bed, though he did it countless times in the Army. It only took a minute for him to clear the cobwebs.

  Lia was wired like she had drunk multiple cups of coffee. She wasn’t even trying to disguise her anxiety. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she babbled, “but you said we needed to start this early in order to have enough time once we get there.”

  “Mmm hmm,” he said rubbing his face. “Yes, we need to get going in the next hour.”

  “Ok,” she said. “I didn’t want to seem too anxious, but…”

  “Lia, it’s ok. It was my idea. I want to do this.”

  “I know, but – but it’s so much trouble. If you changed your mind…”

  “Lia,” he said a little sharply. “We’re going. Now go get your bag.”

  She nodded, shaking with anticipation. “Ok. What do I bring? Will the women laugh at my old-fashioned clothing? Will the men look at me strangely?”

  “The men will definitely look at you, sweetie. But let’s just say they will be looking past your clothing. It won’t matter to anyone but yourself.”

  She nodded enthusiastically. “Ok. I’ll go pack.”

  “Gimme a break. You already packed last night.”

  “Yes, I know, but I think I’ve changed my mind. Ladies probably wear clothing that shows off skin now. I can wear things like that at night, I suppose. Maybe I have something that will do.”

  “Bring several things. We may have to stay overnight depending on how you feel.”

  “Ok. I’ll pack several things.”

  She zipped through the door and disappeared down the hall. Brandt shook his head. Ever since he told her he was taking her to Catalina, she had packed and repacked her bag several times. He knew he was doing the right thing. As long as she was careful, she could experience many of the things she had always wanted and in only one day. He could spare a day. And he thought he may be able to spare more. Certainly not the safest course, it didn’t feel reckless since the imminent danger felt less imminent at the moment. He knew it was a bad thing to let your guard down, but he would stay vigilant and keep a careful eye out. And if the bad guys followed, they’d be showing their hand and Brandt had a plan for that.

  He got up, stuffed his meager possessions in his backpack, and went down to Lia’s room. Her previously packed bag was empty, several items of clothing were strewn on top of her bed, and she was stressing in front of her closet. She pulled out one of her lacy Edwardian dresses and sighed. “They’re going to laugh at me.”

  Brandt decided to help. He found a white turtleneck shirt that looked like it would show off her figure. “How about this one?”

  She shrugged. “It was my mother’s. She wore it when she went on outings in the country.”

  Outings? “Well, this is an outing,” he said.

  She beamed. “Right,” she said. She folded it and put it in her bag. She picked out a tan skirt that looked similar to the one she had on last night, but perhaps a little longer. The white shoulderless top she wore last night was also hanging up. She touched it and he nodded. It was placed in her bag. “Better than a potato sack?”

  “A bit.”

  Brandt was back in the little trawler’s wheelhouse, this time steering the craft away from the safety of the island. The boat had passed its test with flying colors just a few hours ago, and he felt confident in its ability to get them to and from Catalina. In one day, he would give Lia more of the things she wanted than she had gotten in the last fifty years. And when he brought her back to her own island, he’d be able to leave feeling that he had at least done something worthwhile for her.

  They had been sailing for an hour in the dark. The sky was a pale blue-ish grey that lightened slowly with the impending sunrise, which was another hour away. Brandt had kept a watchful eye for anything that might appear behind him, any kind of dot on the horizon to indicate someone following them, but he saw nothing. There had been a cargo ship once heading out into the deep ocean, heading for Japan or Hawaii, probably. But that was all. So far, so good. He’d look again in another few minutes.

  Lia wore the turtleneck he had picked out, which flattered her shape as expected. She brought a large-brimmed tan and white hat, more decorative than her usual one, and looked like something Southern Belles would wear to the Kentucky Derby. She had bounced around the boat for a while, just as she did before, and briefly settled onto the little bench in the wheelhouse, watching the vast expanse of watery terrain flow past. It didn’t seem to matter to her that this part of the trip was the most boring, with no real landmarks and only water to stare at. She looked blissfully content.

  The tedium of steering straight wore on a few more minutes and then Brandt got the idea to let Lia try it. She was nervous at first, but he showed her how easy it was. The key was to judge the wind direction, and if a turn was steep enough that the wind would hit the opposite side of the sail, then she’d need to allow the rigging to loosen, then retighten when the sail came around. The rest of the seaman’s basics she already knew from reading, of course. She lit up like a sixteen-year-old given the keys to a Ferrari.

  She did perfectly fine u
ntil the wind died a little. Brandt helped her complete a few tacks to get into a better wind alley, then he took over again.

  He started humming a tune as he drove. Because they woke up exceptionally early, he only managed a few hours' sleep and was trying to keep his brain active.

  “Why don’t you sing instead of humming?” asked Lia.

  “My singing isn’t that good. Besides, you made fun of my singing.”

  “I don’t mind,” she said. She drew her shoulders up and looked guilty. “I was just teasing you. I like your singing.”

  “You really have no taste,” he said. But he obliged anyway. He sang the tune that he had started humming. “We come on the sloop John B. My grandfather and me. Around Nassau town, weee did roam. Drinking all night. Got into a fight. Well, I feel so broke up, I wanna go home.”

  He got through that song and started in on Styx's “Come Sail Away,” but forgot the lyrics halfway through the song. It was just as well because in front of the bow came the sun. Lia was transfixed. Sunrises were located on the opposite side of her island. Though it was hazy in the distance, the effect was still dazzling. She tilted her hat down, watching under it with rapturous attention. After the sun was halfway up, she ducked down into the cabin. “I'll try to nap in order to keep my energy up for being in the sun on Catalina.”

  “Ok,” said Brandt.

  Before she disappeared she gave him a beautiful, bright smile.

  All worth it.

  He drove on for another hour by himself. Lia eventually came back up and lay sideways on the bench with her legs and feet tucked into her skirt. The sun was blocked by the front of the wheelhouse, so she would be safe there most of the trip if she liked.

  “I can’t rest,” she said. “I’m too excited. Tell me a story.”

  “Ok. A horse walks into a bar,” he started. “The bartender asks, ‘Why the long face?’” He stared at her waiting for a reaction. None came. She just looked eager. Brandt sighed and shook his head with a smirk. “Never mind. Something else.”

  He stared briefly into Lia’s neon blue eyes and wondered when he might ever get used to her sweet innocence. The answer was: he wouldn’t. She wasn’t going to change, either. A century had gone by, she still was who she was, and it worked for her. Everyone was who they were and some people knew what that meant. Lia knew herself. Brandt knew himself. And though he knew more about her now, she barely knew anything about him.

  “I don’t know what you’ve been through, but I understand that it has shaped you, just as my past has shaped me,” she had said last night. Maybe it was time.

  Brandt closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. “I never told you that story you asked me about. About Pakistan.”

  “I would love to hear it, but you don’t have to.”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just not pleasant.”

  “I’d like to hear it.” She tucked in her arms and waited expectantly.

  He had kept the story from himself as much as from anyone else. But it was time. So he told her.

  CHAPTER 24

  I already told you about us following the insurgents to this village just over the Pakistani border, and we knew they hadn’t left, and we were pretty sure they didn’t know they had been followed. But they had expected to be.

  They paid villagers, old men, and boys to casually hang around the entrance gate of the village to see if anyone was coming down the road. There was only one road in an out, not like it mattered, everything was traversable with Army vehicles, but they were expecting the Americans to do what we always did: Ride down the official road with a convoy of MRAPs, Strykers, and Hum-Vees. We tended to use the roads because they were the easiest to sweep and check for IED’s. And nobody wanted to get their axle sunk in a sandpit or bog that aren’t too easy to detect on open ground. Plus, mines could be anywhere under sand. They knew us. Americans had tendencies and we were predictable in most cases. Except, this time we weren’t.

  We held up in the mountains for two weeks. Everything had run out on us: rations, water, patience. We had been trading shifts, looking through binoculars for the leaders of the insurgent group, figuring they lived there and were hiding in plain sight. But they hadn’t ventured outside since we had arrived. There were three places that could be considered compounds and we scanned them regularly. It was monotonous.

  I told you the story about us making forays into the farm for food, and we also made scouting trips at night around the compounds to see if we could see or hear something new. We had two soldiers that understood some Urdu and Pashtu, one was fluent, and we took at least one of them on each trip. We overheard a few useful things. Mostly they talked about opium.

  Apparently, that was the big deal. The reason everyone was there was to process opium. There were some farms somewhere else for growing the plants, but this village was the front for the processing and packaging. And they answered to some big-shot, foreign dude they called The Russian. He didn't live there, just supposedly flew in once and a while for a personal inspection. And apparently, he supplied these village goons with the insurgent team that went out and destroyed the competition, and also harassed the Americans to leave. It wasn’t about the Taliban, or Islam, or even patriotism. Just money and drugs.

  And these assholes had their fingerprints on multiple bombings all over Afghanistan. They had murdered or maimed hundreds of innocent people and put dozens of soldiers in either hospitals or morgues. I knew a couple of the guys that had been hit. One had to have facial reconstructive surgery just so he could talk and eat. The other lost both legs, part of his left arm, and damaged internal organs on his left side. He would need to carry an external waste bag with him for the rest of his life. In the end, after three months of depression, he shot himself in the head.

  We gathered the information we had and went back up to our mountain camp, and decided we needed to get things rolling. We gave ourselves an ultimatum of three more days of recon, and if we hadn’t seen what we needed by then, we were going to force the issue. At that point, we were willing to risk our lives being sloppy in order to kill these bastards.

  Day One of our ultimatum started out odd. This kid, maybe nine years old, came across our lower sentry on the mountain path. The kid had a goat with him which he was taking back home, he said. Said it ran away. The sentry brought the kid to us so we could figure out what to do with him. The kid got intensely excited. He said he wanted to go to America. He saw a Clint Eastwood movie once, and loves Americans, “Bang bang.” We didn't know if he was lying but he was only like nine and seemed sincere. He told us he did lie earlier about the goat. He said his father gets stoned and beats him, and the kid wanted to escape to the mountain for a little while, so he just took the goat for a walk and lied to his father about chasing it down. Two of the guys said we had to hold the kid or tie him up, but the rest of us couldn't fathom that. We told him we were looking for a criminal who hurt our friends and we wouldn't hurt anyone else in the village. So we let him go and told him to be quiet. We gave him the last MRE we had,and a pack of gum, and promised we'd take him to America if he kept quiet. He grinned like a maniac and said he would, then went down into the village.

  We had a sniper with us that we called Teller. His real name was Will, and he got a reputation of shooting an apple out of a guy’s hand one day back in Afghanistan. Will had been paying a girl in town for sex and kinda liked her. One day, he’s up on a roof and sees an Afghani about to visit his girl, so he shoots the basket of apples the guy was carrying. The shit exploded, the guy runs off pissing his pants. Everyone thought it was a hilarious story, but it’s probably bullshit. Stories get passed around and enhanced as they go. Anyway, Will got called William Tell because of the apple thing. That eventually got bastardized into Teller. And there you go.

  So, Day Two of our three-day window and Teller was scoping out the village street with his sniper rifle and finally sees our guy. He couldn't get a clear bead on the guy, and even if he did, we didn
't think just shooting that guy would be enough. If we took out our number one, and everyone else hunkered down afterward, some other guy would assume the duties and step up into leader role, and we'd have given away our position for nothing. We wanted everyone, or at least a big enough group, in one place to blow them all to hell. So we watched where the guy went and kept track. He went in and out of three places. One of the places seemed like it might be the processing building. We had seen a lot of villagers go in and out of it before. Made sense. So we figured we’d wait until our guy went in with his associates and we’d blow the shit up. Explosions happened all the time in drug processing plants, right?

  So, Day Three comes around and something big happens. A helicopter lands outside the village. Whoever The Russian is, he got out of the chopper with a bunch of his own gun-toting goons wrapped in black headscarves. Young guy, long hair, expensive suit. Looked like an asshole. So, he meets with our prime target, and then all the top dudes go into the processing building that evening. It was too perfect. We were going to get all our top targets and an international drug czar all in one hit. The world would thank us, even if it wasn’t one bit legal.

  No one would ever know but us. We had a quick meeting and our captain asked if we were alright with not reporting The Russian’s death to our superiors. We all agreed. We didn’t want to get any shit. Even if ninety-nine percent of everyone would thank us, there may be some asshole that could make legal trouble. Better to just do it, and conveniently forget about ever seeing The Russian. How he died would just be a mystery.

  Squads like ours are small, and usually it's just a sergeant like me who's in charge. But because we were doing off-the-books jobs, and needed higher authorities on the scene to make big decisions quickly, we had both a captain and a lieutenant, besides me.

  We drew straws to see who would be on the three-man team to go down there and do it. Captain Jarrell was a given and then two others. One guy needed to set charges and the other guy would watch his ass. In the end, it was me and a guy we called Bony.