Dark Vigil

by Gary Piserchio

  “Did you see my sister?” were the first words out of her mouth.

  “Thanks, I’m doing okay,” he said.

  She stared, her lips pressed together, trying not to throttle him.

  “I didn’t see her.”

  She sat back. “Goddammit. What happened?”

  “The demon attacked me.”

  “Sorry,” she said, changing the tone of her voice. After all, he was trying to help. In a softer voice, she said, “What happened?”

  “I went in and looked around. There were three vampires there sleeping, or whatever they do during the day, and then the demon charged me. Before I could move it was pulling me into a—a box, I guess. It was, Jesus, it was eating me. I couldn’t get away.”

  She put her hand on his arm, then realized he wouldn’t feel it. “You’ve sacrificed a lot. I apologize for being so abrupt.”

  “It’s okay. I can’t imagine how I’d feel if my family was—well, I couldn’t imagine it.”

  “You have family in town?” she asked, forcing herself to calm down and stop being an ass.

  “No. I lived here by myself, but since the attack, my sister and folks were out here for nearly a month. They finally had to go back to their lives in Indiana. They’re pestering me to move back there so they can take care of me.”

  “And are you? Going to move back?”

  “I don’t know. I hate the thought of being a burden. Hate it.”

  She nodded. “That’s heavy shit for a family.”

  “Yeah. But who knows? If I go back, maybe it’ll give them better peace of mind.”

  “Definitely.”

  He looked at her for a moment, then said, “I’ll go back and look for your sister.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But if she’s there, what are you going to do?”

  “Probably get myself killed, but I have to try and save her. You’d do it for your sister. Right?”

  “In a heartbeat. Maybe I could do more than just go look for your sister.”

  “Such as?”

  “Diversionary tactics. Have some of my cop buddies—”

  Calico shook her head. “No way. The vampires would tear them apart.”

  “Maybe they could just be a presence outside. Get the vampire’s attention.”

  “No. Now will you give me the address? Who knows, maybe I can sneak in and get my sister out without waking up the sleeping vampires.”

  “I’m—I’m sorry. It’s just too risky. You’d be killing yourself. Or worse. What if they turn you into a vampire?”

  “That’s my concern.”

  “I don’t know. Let me think about it. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

  Calico left without saying another word.

  It was late afternoon when Calico got back to the hotel. She sat in front of her laptop trying to figure out how to find Lorcán’s nest. Frustrated with her lack of results, she DMed Lizzi.

  Need to find the vampire’s nest in Kansas City. His name is Lorcán. See if you can find any likely locations.

  The reply came back within seconds:

  On it!!!

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Lizzi felt giddy, recognizing the excitement as the same from when she’d been a kid and an adult asked earnestly for her help. She sat in her second-floor motel room, having changed motels twice so far. The motel was up in Thornton, a small city north of Denver, but part of the metro area.

  She started with obvious searches for the name Lorcán, then narrowed the search just to Kansas City. Nothing turned up. Pursing her lips, she looked for an uptick in murders in the city.

  She found a strange one where a homeless person had been killed, his body never found, but a lot of blood left at the crime scene. Linked to that were stories about a rash of homeless disappearing from the area. All of it happening in a somewhat small area of downtown Kansas City.

  Then she stumbled upon a story about a homeless woman named Ginny who swore to the reporter that one of her buddies had been killed by a vampire. A tall, well-dressed man attacked her friend and “drank him dry.”

  A week ago, Lizzi would have filed that article away as a potential incident for someone in her group to investigate when they got the chance. Now it flashed like a red light with a claxon blaring.

  Bingo.

  Would the vampires kill by their nest? That didn’t seem likely, but what did she really know?

  Not much.

  You got that right.

  She dug deeper on the one known murder and the disappearances, finding more specific locations for each. She marked any address she found on Google Maps and initially eliminated those locations from her search for the nest.

  Around nine, she went to McDonald’s and brought the food back to her room. Finishing the fish sandwich and fries, she went back to work. There was a fire in her to do well. The thought of letting down Calico caused an anxious ache in her gut.

  She reached out to Eric from the paranormal forums. He worked for the county tax assessor in Ohio. Within an hour he was searching for properties owned by Lorcán or any similar name throughout the four counties that intersected Kansas City.

  Lizzi kept digging into reports of murders or strange happenings. She came across a police detective who’d been paralyzed from the chest down but couldn’t remember how it’d happened. There was no associated car accident or other known incident. He’d simply been found broken on the street. She added that to her tags in Google Maps. They created an almost-circle. She DMed Eric and told him to look inside that bullseye.

  Lizzi woke to the sun peeking through the room’s window. Her laptop was still on her lap, but she’d fallen asleep leaning against the wall behind the bed. Her still-injured back was frozen, and it took some acrobatics to get out of bed and go the bathroom.

  It was nearly eight in the morning. Dammit. So much wasted time. She went back to searching for unusual events in Kansas City. An hour later Eric messaged her. He’d contacted the tax assessor’s offices for the four counties. There was an unusual assessment in the Jackson County part of Kansas City. A building built in the late ‘20s—the assessor, a real talker, told Eric about the mob money used to build it—had been vacant for several years and then was bought with cash almost a year ago.

  Eric had contacted the buyer and found they were the broker for the real buyer, who they refused to divulge. When he asked if the buyer’s name was something like Lorcán, they’d hung up on him.

  Feeling a mixture of triumph and relief, Lizzi sent the address to Calico.

  It doesn’t make up for what you did.

  Lizzi nodded, in full agreement. But it was a start.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Calico Googled the address and used the satellite and street-map view to look at the building. She requested an Uber and had them drop her off two blocks from the building.

  The streets were busy with people in business wear, so it was a workday—she’d lost track of what day it was and didn’t care enough to check her phone. It was past rush hour, but the sidewalks bustled with people, and the streets surged with a non-stop flow of cars. It was a cacophony of sounds and the pungent aroma of exhaust and Starbucks.

  She walked toward the building and stopped as soon as it came into view. It was an old boxy building of grimy red brick. She stood there and watched. After twenty minutes she’d noticed that despite all the pedestrian activity, people constantly entering buildings all around her, no one entered the front door of that building. Otherwise, there was nothing remarkable about it.

  She walked closer. Would Lorcán have security—maybe something as simple as posted guards? And more importantly, was the vampire still in Denver? Keeping to the far side of the street, she walked around the building. It was big, being half a block long and half a block wide. She looked down the alley to a single back door. That would be her access point if she could get it open. The windows were no good as all the ground-level ones had bars covering them.

  Not sure what else to
look for, she headed back to the hospital.

  Detrick Palmerroy frowned at her. “I’m sorry. But I just can’t give you—"

  “I know where it is,” she said, rattling off the address. The look of shock on Palmerroy’s face confirmed it for her. “I’m here to ask for help with reconnaissance. I’d like you to just peek inside and let me know what I’ll be up against. If I’m not asking too much.” She didn’t try to keep the sarcasm out of her voice at his lack of help thus far.

  He sighed and nodded slowly. “I’ll help. I don’t like it at all, though.”

  “I don’t need you to like it. But I do appreciate it. I’m going in tomorrow morning. Let’s meet outside the building at 9 A.M. That okay with you?”

  Another sigh and another nod. “I’ll see you there.”

  “Thanks.” She turned and left, not wanting him to waste his time trying to talk her out of it.

  Back in her hotel room, Calico lined up all the rowan stakes on the bed. If she faced the three vampires, she’d need more than the four stakes the vest could carry.

  Calico slid on her calf-length boots and tried sheathing a stake inside the boot top next to her calf. It was too tight a fit.

  She dumped everything from her luggage and removed the longer nylon straps used to hold contents in place. She tied straps to each calf and slid in two stakes in each setup. She jumped and ran in place. One of the straps immediately fell off. She fiddled with knots and tension until she got them to stay.

  Calico looked at herself in the mirror.

  “You can do this.”

  She narrowed her eyes, looking at her beautiful long curly hair. It had been so easy for Lorcán to grab it and hold her. Fuck. It wasn’t conducive to fighting. With glistening eyes, she stripped naked, got her scissors, and went into the bathroom. Her heart pounded and tears rolled down her cheeks. She loved that wild red mane.

  “Goddammit,” she whispered, grabbing a hank and cutting it off. With trembling hands, she kept going until she finally had more-or-less a pixie cut not all the different than Tabby’s.

  She took a shower and sobbed.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Calico woke up at six in the morning. It was a shock to see herself in the mirror without her hair. Dressing, she put on her black jeans and boots, tied the straps on around her calves and inserted the two stakes along the side of each calf. Over a black t-shirt, she snapped her black nylon vest into place, which fit a bit like a corset, and slid in four stakes. She put on Tabby’s jacket, gliding her hand over the leather.

  “Let’s do this, Tabs.” She zipped it up to hide the stakes and pulled on her biggest set of sweatpants.

  Outside, the early morning sunlight was a shimmering golden halo around the downtown buildings. Lorcán’s place was two miles away. She walked to work out the nerves.

  The city bristled with rush-hour commotion. It was a good distraction as she focused on keeping her breathing normal and her heartbeat in check. By the time she got to the building, she felt almost relaxed. Leaving the hotel, she’d been electric, on edge, ready to explode.

  At the end of the alley, standing outside a closed Indian restaurant, she studied the back door as best she could. She’d need a crowbar at least, assuming even vampires locked their doors against unwanted visitors. Googling hardware stores, she found one not too far away.

  As nine o’clock approached, she stopped on the corner where she was to meet Pomeranian, but the ghost cop wasn’t there yet. Calico danced in place to keep working out the nerves and keep herself loose.

  “Hey, there.”

  She sighed with relief, afraid he might not show, and turned to find Myron, one of the cops from the hospital. He was big, six-something, and solid. His black hair was cut so short it was a shadow across his dark scalp. What was Palmerroy thinking having him come here?

  “You need to get out of here,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, Palm told us you were planning to break into a building this morning to look for your sister. We can’t let you do that.”

  “Wait, what? He told you that?”

  Two more men approached.

  “You need to come with us, ma’am,” said Jerry, the one who had clumsily offered to show her the city. Jerry was also a big guy with a thick neck, and his blond hair razored short. Both looked ex-military.

  The third guy reached out to shake her hand. He wasn’t as tall and muscled as the other two, but he had a steel grip and his thinner neck was corded with muscle. “I’m Lieutenant Evers. We have people on the force who are experts in hostage and kidnapping situations. We’ll do our damnedest to get your sister out of there. If she’s there. Palm wasn’t sure.”

  “Wow,” she said, stunned. “I can’t believe he screwed me over.”

  “He’s saving your life and your sister’s,” said Myron. “If your sister and the kidnappers are in there, you would have gotten both of you killed. This is serious.”

  She didn’t say anything. She knew how fucking serious it was.

  “He contacted us earlier this morning. Our captain is putting a task force together.” Then Jerry frowned. “Didn’t you have long hair the other day?”

  Myron stepped forward, a look of concern on his face, and held out his hand, palm up. Probably a practiced look to get people to stay calm. But did he really expect her to take his hand?

  “Can I have the crowbar, please?”

  She’d forgotten she had it. “You don’t understand,” she said as she handed it to him, but didn’t say more. They certainly wouldn’t understand if she told them about the vampires and the daemón.

  Unless.

  “Palmerroy!” she said curtly. He’d be here to watch the fun.

  “Now, Calico—that’s your name, right?—he did the only thing he could do when you told him your plans. It was the right thing to do. I mean, seriously, what were you going to do once you got inside?”

  She was tempted to show them the rowan stakes. They must have thought this was insanely hilarious. Petite girl charging in to save her sister from big bad kidnappers.

  “Palmerroy!” she said again. “Goddammit. You know when they go in there they’ll be slaughtered. How can you let them do that? They’re your friends.”

  She figured the men thought she was just cursing him in absentia—or that she was nuts.

  “Show yourself, you coward.”

  The bemused, look-at-the-little-girl-getting-all-angry looks on their faces disappeared. If they had any doubts about her sanity, they were gone now. But it didn’t matter. Too many lives were in the balance, with one of them being Tabby’s.

  Jerry put a hand on her shoulder. “Okay, now, let’s—”

  She didn’t mean to shove him, it was just a reaction to her frustration and anger, and she certainly didn’t mean to shove him so hard he went airborne and sprawled on the sidewalk five yards away. Jerry came up fast, looking pissed and confused. The other two men just looked confused, Myron raising an eyebrow.

  Lieutenant Evers put his hand out toward her but didn’t touch her. “I understand how emotional this is for you right now, but we’re on your side.”

  “Palmerroy,” she said, ignoring the man, “how can you—”

  Palmerroy whispered in her ear. “I had to, sorry.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Evers said, “I understand that this is stressful.”

  “Shut up,” said Calico.

  Palmerroy whispered, “You going by yourself would be suicide.”

  “And sending your buddies in is a good idea?”

  The cops, the three corporeal ones, stepped together a few feet away and started their own whispering. Jerry mentioned loudly the need for a psychiatrist.

  Palmerroy continued, “I’m hoping I can think of something better by the time they’ll be ready to enter the premises.”

  As the three cops talked, Calico backed up slowly, keeping her eyes on them.

  She whispered, “Fine. I get it. But until then, can you please go see if my
sister is in there? If she’s still okay?”

  There was a pause, but then he said. “I’m going.”

  She could only assume he had left, so she backed up more quickly. Myron glanced at her and broke off from the conversation. “Stop right there.”

  She bolted. Maybe with a little luck she could lose them. When she got to the end of the block she risked looking back. She expected them to be right behind her. But they weren’t. Were they strolling after her? She turned the corner and cut diagonally across the street and into an alley. She stopped at the opening and looked back. Where the heck were they, what was taking so long?

  Finally, Lieutenant Evers ran into view and stopped, followed by Myron and Jerry. All three cops breathed hard as they looked up and down the street, discussed splitting up to look for her, and then doing just that. She ran to the end of the alley and doubled back.

  Calico felt confident she’d lost them, though they must know she’d come back to the building. She had to get in quickly before they could stop her. As she approached the back entrance, she kept an eye out. Stopping at the door, she said, “Palmerroy, you here?”

  There was no answer from the incorporeal cop.

  The old metal door didn’t have a handle, but rather a metal plate raised along one edge for fingers to slide under, along with a keyhole. It was locked.

  “Your sister is on the third floor.”

  Startled, she jumped. Palmerroy appeared.

  “Lorcán is here, too.”

  “Fuck. Maybe I can sneak past—”

  Palmerroy shook his head. “It’s too late. Lorcán is with her and—I’m so sorry—but they’re preparing the same ritual they used when the demon attacked me.”

  Images of her sister spun through Calico’s head. Tabby smiling as she destroyed yet another heavy bag in Mom and Dad’s basement.

  Laughing as she lapped Calico on the track at the junior high school.

  Looking scared when she hit Calico too hard.