by John Conroe
“My other half? You mean Tatiana?” I asked.
“Of course! It is why you both are here! You really do not remember?”
“How could I remember what I didn't ever know?” I said, thoroughly frustrated.
He snorted. “Because it was all your idea in the first place!”
I didn't know where to begin with that. My head was reeling from too much information, as well as the circular nature of his thought pattern, not to mention a serious lack of sleep and food. I gulped down the rest of the burger while I thought. Maybe it was time to change the subject.
“Barbiel, you are an Angel, am I correct?”
He started to laugh, hard enough that it took a moment for him to recover.
“I am sorry, Christian! I am not laughing at you, just that you of all would ask that! Yes, that is what I am! Hah!” he said, enormously amused.
Something suddenly occurred to me.
“Wait, aren't I tainted now? By the demon blood?” I asked.
“Christian, I told you ... all is as Yahweh wishes. But I am very happy that you did not succumb to the Taint. You must always force it to your control,” he said. “Is it greatly horrible? The demon blood?”
I took my time answering, pausing to eat another burger while I pondered his question.
“It makes me short tempered, sometimes, and it is prone to cause violence. “
“Painful, then?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No, that's the problem. When I let it out, when I open the cage door for it, it feels...good...powerful...enjoyable!” I shuddered at this admission.
His face was serious and he nodded. “Yahweh said that this is the greatest burden that you face in this service. I do not envy you.”
Footsteps clattered on the pavement and I looked up to see Gina heading our way. She was locked on me and didn't appear to notice Barbiel. We both watched her walk up and take a seat on my left side.
“You getting enough to eat?” she asked.
“Ah ... yeah. I was getting shaky there for a while.”
I took a big slurp of shake to show her I was packing in the calories.
“This one is very special, Christian. It is interesting how you and your other half...er..Tatiana, Tanya, draw the special ones in,” Barbiel said from my right side. Gina didn't seem to hear his words.
“According to Adler,” she said, “we'll be heading to the airport in a minute or two, so you might want to come back to the car. You wouldn't want to walk back to New York.”
“Okay, I'm coming,” I said, standing up as she did.
“Remember Christian, I will be at any church, temple, synogogue, cemetery or holy ground that you might step into or on,” Barbiel said, starting to fade before my eyes. “If you need me, I'll be there.” And just like that he was gone.
“You okay? You look like you saw a ghost,” Gina commented.
“Yeah? Well, churches have that effect on me.”
* * *
The flight back to the city was uneventful, I spent some of it contemplating Barbiel's words and my own sorry state but most of it thinking about Tanya. The helicopter was too loud for a cell phone call, but I could text.
C: Are you there?
Nothing happened for about ten minutes, then my phone vibrated in my hand, snapping me out of a mental self beating.
T: Whr R U?
Tanya tended to write very full, complete sentences. This abbreviated version spoke poorly for her mental outlook.
C: Heading back from Vermont.
T: Couldn't feel U.
C: Too far away.
T: Couldn't feel U right after IT.
It took a second, until the realization struck: she hadn't been able to feel me right after I blasted Reyes.
C: Oh.
T: L says link damged or week after UR blast.
The misspellings and poor structure of her writing really bothered me, but I was relieved that she was at least having a text conversation. It's possible that the impersonal nature of texting was actually a benefit in this case.
C: That is probably true. Should be okay as more time goes by.
T: Maybe. Not sure.
C: Tanya, I'm sorry!!!!! I'm an idiot!!! A moron! Really, really, really stupid! I should never have doubted, even for a second. I left you...ARGHHHHH! I love you!
My phone stayed quiet for such a long time that I was about to send a second text when she wrote back.
T: We R broken, r'nt we? Both broken. I have to go. Sorry.
C: We can fix! Don't go! You have nothing to be sorry for. None of it is your fault. My fault, all of it. Tanya, we can fix this! Please!!!!
She didn't respond for the rest of the trip. The Blackhawk dropped us off at Downtown heliport and I was on my phone as I left the helipad.
“Hello Chris.”
“Lydia, how is she?”
“She's not great, but who would be. Listen, you need to give her some time. Keep the texting going. That's the first I've seen her respond to much of anything. But not now, she's resting again.”
Her voice sounded weary.
“How are you doing Lyd?”I asked.
“Well it's never boring! I should have let you kill the bastard when you wanted to,” she said.
“I've thought about that a bit myself,” I admitted. “But mostly, I keep thinking about the awful look I gave her, when she hadn't done anything, and then I left her!”
“Yeah well, I've been doing some hind sight looking of my own. Probably should have told you about Benders.”
“Benders?”
“Like Reyes. Bend people to their wishes. Nasty stuff.”
“Lydia, I want to see her.”
“Give it a few days, Chris. She's not ready to see you yet. Try texting again. It lets her decide if she's up to answering or not. She'll get there. Her grandmother and mother are here now. They'll help.”
I could see Senka , Tanya's 'grandmother', who was also one of the two remaining vampire Elders left in the world, helping her. But her mother, Galina? I couldn't quite picture that ice queen being of much use. Maybe she had depths of emotion I wasn't aware of. I wouldn't put money on it.
* * *
Roma met us at the squad's offices, debriefed us and sent us home with orders for me to take the next day off and rest. Great! Now I would have a clear twenty-four hours to rake myself over the coals and wonder about Tanya.
Oddly, I was able to fall asleep, but after only three hours or so, I woke back up. The rest of the night was tossing and turning, with only bits of fitful sleep. I finally got up and made breakfast and a big pot of coffee. About five-thirty, I called Gramps, knowing he would be having breakfast.
“Hello?”
“Gramps! It's Chris! How ya doing?”
“Chris? Chris who? I don't know any Chris, do you, Len?” he asked his top hired hand, Len Lafluer.
“Well now, I seem to recall a scamp named Chris, but he left and moved on,” Len said in the background.
Len Lafluer had been with my Gramps for longer than I've been alive. I think they knew each other in
the Marines, and when Len had shown up on Gramps’ doorstep back when my dad was a boy, Gramps hadn't wasted a second taking him in.
Len was the kind of guy that every good farm seems to have – rock solid dependable, capable of any task and always there, but sort of in the background. Average height, skinny, but strong as hell, Len could deliver a calf, fix a tractor or fence a pasture. And he was a really deft hand at skinning anything that needed skinning. As a matter of fact, Len had been my first knife instructor. First as a sad, orphaned eight-year-old, I had gotten my first knife from him, a Schrade folder. Made me give him a penny for it, which is the old country way. Give a friend a knife and you may 'sever' the friendship, sell it to them for a pittance, and they stay true.
Later, when I had begun to train to fight Hellbourne, he taught me the secrets of knife fighting and years later when Tanya had begun to coach me, she had been impressed
with my technique.
“Yeah, sure! Let's beat a guy when he's down,” I complained.
“Down, huh? What's got ya down, boy?” Gramps asked.
I laid out the story, avoiding using any words like vampire, werewolf, angel, Directorate of Anomalous Activity, Special Agent or any other catch word that could trip a National Security Agency computer watch program. One never knew when old Uncle Sam might be listening in. Hell, Duclair had probably ordered my phones tapped from the helicopter.
Gramps listened without a word, letting me get through the whole thing. When I finished, he thought it through for a moment, then spoke in his deep rumbling voice.
“Well, that about sucks, boy! But listen, I'm not gonna tell you to stop beating yourself up, because I know you're gonna no matter what I say. And I know you're gonna give that wonderful young lady of yours some time and space, but you're also gonna stay close for when she's ready. But I will tell you to watch that snake oil federal lady, 'cause she's absolutely liable to come after you,” he said. “You still got those tools I left you?”
He was referring to my father's .44 magnum and the shorty pump shotgun he had left with me last fall.
“Of course!” I said.
“Well, keep 'em close. You might be needing 'em.”
We chatted about the farm and the adjoining farm that we had bought in January. Gramps had dialed back his own operation to just a small herd of dairy and beef cows, and still planted corn, mostly to sell to other local farmers for feed. I think he kept farming the little that he did, just to keep his men employed. I also know that he sold the feed corn at greatly reduced prices, his way of helping other local farmers. He certainly didn't have to farm at all, his income assured from a very healthy investment portfolio. The farm we had bought had been an investment as well, and he told me he was renting the fields to another local farmer for hay and looking for a tenant for the farmhouse. Deftly turning my attention away from myself and my troubles, he made sure his detailing of the small bits and pieces of life in the North Country was surprisingly therapeutic. I finally let him go so he and Len could get their regular chores done; even a small farm is hard work.
* * *
I spent the day on my own chores. First I looked up cop stores in the area and located one that sold vests like my ruined one. That wasn’t hard to find, everything imaginable is available in the city.
I cleaned up my gear, did laundry, checked over my guns (I didn’t trust Duclair’s people to not mess them up), did some bill paying and, of course, ate as much as possible.
That evening I was able to get Tanya to text some more, nothing too dramatic, just inconsequential conversation about what was on television, what I was eating, things like that.
Finally, I went to bed after she indicated she was going to look at some business stuff, which I took to be a good sign.
Chapter 15
I was up early and out the door, bored with sitting around. I ate breakfast on the way, picking huevos rancheros from a Mexican place near the subway entrance. They served the food wrapped in a flour tortilla for commuters on the go.
I beat everyone but Olivia into the squad’s offices. To my knowledge, nobody ever got in before Olivia.
My office is also the copier and file room, which is what happens when you’re the last to be recruited. I didn’t mind, ‘cause I didn’t spend much time there and if I had a lot of paper work I would spread it out on the conference room table.
I worked on my report to Roma. Our group couldn’t really file regular reports on our cases. Oh, we filed reports, but they were works of literary fiction, totally divorced from the truth, as the real story wasn’t ever fit for consumption by the unknowing. We also filed our own reports, internally, on a secure system of Chet’s design. The system was stand alone, disconnected from any other computers and had layers of security, including biometric identifiers and advanced fuzzy logic software that would ask you a series of questions based on your username. The questions were specific to each user and the code was sophisticated enough to never ask the same question twice. At the end of the layers of security sat a nasty computer worm designed to completely erase the hard drive in the event of a severe breach.
Finishing up my detailed recap of the rogue werewolf incident, I stored it on an encrypted thumbdrive and then brought it out to Olivia to be inputted into the secure system. Only Olivia, Roma, Gina or Chet had access to the system. Finished with her upload, Olivia wiped the drive clean and returned it to me with a smile.
“Thanks ‘Liv”
“No sweat, Chris. Listen, are you okay?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Well, if you need anything…you know…any help or anything at all, just ask. Okay?” she finished with a shy bob of her head. We’re a small unit and personal issues are hard to hide, especially when they involve the freaky part-vampire demon hunter guy. I’m sure most small units are the same.
“Thanks Olivia, but I’m okay, really,” I said.
The outer door opened and Roma entered, followed by two large, dark suited guys. All three looked surprised to see me and Roma was especially ill at ease. It didn’t take calculus to figure something sketchy was up.
“Ah Chris, you’re already here. Well, I didn’t expect you in this soon, but here you are,” he said with an awkward pause. One of the suits cleared his throat. Roma continued, “Right, well, come with me, please. These officers want to speak with you.”
He flashed a strange little glance at Olivia and then led me through the inner door, the two serious looking guys careful to follow me. Really large, serious looking guys. A pit was forming in my stomach. These guys had the air of Internal Affairs about them and the stares they were directing my way were not friendly in the least.
We entered Roma’s office and he immediately settled behind his desk, a most unusual move. Roma always conducted conversations in the small four-chair sitting area in the front of his spacious office.
The Inspector indicated I should sit in one of the two chairs in front of the desk and when I did, large guy number one moved to stand at the side of the desk, his back against Roma’s floor-to-ceiling bookcase. I could feel the other one looming behind me with obvious menace. I arched one eyebrow at Inspector Roma, who looked back at me apologetically.
He cleared his throat and began, “Chris, these officers are with Internal Affairs and they are investigating some allegations. Serious allegations.” He looked at the suit by the bookshelf, in effect, giving him the floor.
Built like a linebacker, with a bad comb-over, IA number one started to speak without introducing himself. “Officer Gordon, you are facing two separate sets of complaints, all stemming from the last several days. The first is from a family on Eleventh Street in Brooklyn, alleging that you broke into their house and assaulted the husband, breaking his wrist and hand in four places. Dispatcher records indicate a patrol car was called by Special Situations to the residence in question, where the officers interviewed a terrified family – the Larouch family. Eye witnesses place you at that scene.
The second set of charges originate from five individuals who claim you attacked them in Owls Head Park three nights ago. All five were hospitalized with serious injuries. All five have positively identified your photo. Comments?”
I just looked at him for a moment, my mind reeling. I looked back at Roma, a question on my face. He shrugged without answering. “Inspector? What’s this all about? The Eleventh Street call out was documented by the squad. Hell, Detective Velasquez wrote the report herself.”
In a demon case like that, we invariably wrote the report as a domestic disturbance. The street patrols knew damn well that something much stranger would have occurred to bring out Special Situations and so they help corroborate the reports. For a complaint to be filed as an unprovoked assault, something must have been changed. Someone must have changed it.
“Chris, the reports indicate that Mr. Larouch came in and filed this complaint yester
day afternoon.”
The IA goon spoke again: “The incident report filed by the patrol car officers doesn’t mention anything about Detective Velasquez.”
My brain was running in overdrive, trying to figure out the part of the puzzle I was missing.
“The five gang members in the park attacked me. I was just defending myself. You really think I could attack and beat up five guys? They probably got most of those injuries in a territory squabble.”
“Did you file an assault report, Officer?”
“Er..no, there wasn’t really time. I had to be at the Downtown heliport for a joint case with Homeland Security. Agent Duc …” I petered off, my brain turning the image of Briana Duclair around Three-D in my head. She was the missing piece. She was the reason for the complaints and changed reports. It had to be her!
“Officer Gordon, our investigations have already turned up enough information that we can press charges against you. A hearing will be set in the near future. You should retain legal counsel as these charges are serious felonies if you are convicted. In the interim, you are hereby suspended without pay, till this matter is decided either way.”
His voice left no doubt which way he thought it would go.
“We will take your badge and weapons now!”
Roma was looking down at his desktop, unwilling to meet my eyes. He smelled of fear, like he thought I might explode or something. I was devastated to discover his lack of backbone.
I stood up, a little fast, enough to startle all three. I took a deep breath and centered myself, then pulled out my credential case and threw it on the desk, next drawing both Glocks and setting them down gently.
I ignored the IA goons, as that's all they were, but I focused on Roma, who was having a great deal of trouble meeting my gaze.
“So that's it? The sum total of your support?” I asked, crossing my arms and waiting.
“Well Chris, there is really nothing I can do,” he answered, ashamed.
I had no doubt that Duclair was behind this, but I had expected some fight out of the Inspector.
“Seeing as how the Special Situations squad doesn't exist as of today...there isn't anything for him to do,” said the comb-over guy, with an unpleasant smirk.
