by Drew D'Amato
SEVEN
1
The men got back to the Hilton a little bit before sunset. No one said much on the ride from the castle. Everyone had their own thoughts to process as the sun started to set over the rolling Transylvanian countryside. Once they got to the hotel though they got to work. Michael checked them in under his fake ID. Malachi oversaw Deacon and Andrew as they painted the special silver paint on the ammo and then lubed up the bullets. They dried them on wax paper. They would be ready in a few hours and then they would load them in their guns.
They had gotten two rooms—suites—each with two beds and a couch. Jericho, Michael, and Vlad planned over the tactical side of the attack in the other room. They would strike at nine in the morning, sure by then it would be daylight and the Radusons would be sleeping. It was still a gamble, a big one, but after what they had been through at the airport, and the vision Vlad received at his old castle, he felt destined to come out on top.
“Should we go out and hunt tonight?” Jericho asked.
“How about we attack Boris and his men?” Michael asked. “I’m sure they were responsible in one way or another for a few deaths.”
“No, we are not going out to hunt,” Vlad said. “This is his land. There is too much of a chance we might run into some Radusons.” Vlad looked out the screen door onto the balcony. He himself had been tempted to go out and fuel up on some blood before the big day, but he realized there wasn’t a point to it.
“Master, I understand the risk, but do you expect us to go to Radu’s house and kill him while low on blood?” Jericho asked.
“Radu’s house is the key word,” Vlad said. “Blood won’t have any affect on us tomorrow. We will be in his house uninvited. We will be humans, remember.”
Jericho and Michael nodded, they understood.
“Now, being human means a lot of things, but one thing you cannot forget is that you will no longer have your vampire quickness. You will not fire your guns as quickly, aim as quickly, or shoot as accurately. More importantly, if they are up, and they are out of the sun, they will still have their abilities.”
“So if they wake up, we are pretty much destroyed,” Michael said.
“That’s why this is a very dangerous mission. Suicidal, I think Malachi called it.”
Vlad walked off and made a whiskey neat from the minibar. The rest of the night the men tried to avoid thinking about the mission, like it was some kind of bad luck. Vlad recommended that they actually get to bed, since humans performed better if well-rested.
As Michael tried to fall asleep on the couch of their room, with Vlad and Jericho in their beds, he contemplated just killing Vlad right then. He had three reasons not to. The first was Radu, who would be upset. Killing him then would have been like killing him two weeks ago. Radu would be upset and feel cheated of the chance of watching his brother die. Then he wouldn’t keep up his end of the deal. He would probably kill Michael, too.
The second reason was the actual process of doing it. If he did it now he would have to worry if any of the others noticed him. They would all be human, but so would he. Five to one is not a good exit strategy.
The third reason was that tomorrow really wasn’t much of a risk. Vlad would be a human. His sharp ears, his perfect vision, his quick hands—all of that no longer at his disposal. And Michael would still have his powers. Radu expected him, invited him. It would be all too easy to sneak up and kill him from behind if he had to. There wasn’t a risk, tomorrow was a definite. Michael went to sleep after his heart stopped racing from his nerves. Tomorrow was a big day.
2
James wasn’t sure how long he would be in Europe for this trip. Most times his employer gave him some idea, but this time they left him with a vague idea of about a week. There’s a lot you can do in Europe in a week. After they landed, Jericho called and said they wanted to depart from Munich in a few days. There were some things for him to do, but he couldn’t get drunk, and he had to stay close to the plane. He knew from past experiences, his employer could want to leave at a moment’s notice.
James went back to the airport the day after the attacks. The place was in chaos, they had no leads, and the story he heard was crazy. Apparently the security video footage had been damaged, a circuit shorted in the security room. It was unviewable and then destroyed. He was interrogated by the Border Guards about his passengers. He told them he had been working for them for five years. He didn’t know too much about what they did for a living, but they did have money. He said they were good guys, never any problems up to this point, and also pointed out that he landed and they disembarked a few hours before the attacks.
They had started to allow planes to take off and land in the morning. James had to wait. The airport was backed up since it closed down for a few hours the night before, and there were much more important flights ahead of him. He got clearance late in the afternoon and by night he was moderately drinking some beers at Unionsbrau Pub and Brewery in Munich.
He had befriended three Germans—one guy and two girls—at the bar when two men in suits flashed him some badges. The three Germans walked away when they saw the badges come out. The men said their names were Clerc and Bodmer. They worked for Fedpol and needed to show him the footage from the airport.
“I thought that footage was lost?” James asked.
“That was just something we told the press so the attackers thought they got away,” Clerc said.
“Okay, but why do I need to see it?”
“We think the men behind the shootings might have been your passengers.”
James had a tough time swallowing that. He started to get scared. Did this mean that I could be held responsible too?
“Look, Mr. Whitmore, we know whatever these men were up to, you had no involvement in. You are their personal pilot, nothing more. That is the only way you are associated with them. Don’t be nervous, all you can do is help. You’re not in trouble.”
“Fine, how can I help?”
“Why don’t we go back to your hotel? We have the footage set up over there.”
“My hotel?”
“Yeah, how do you think we found you?”
“Don’t you guys have like a headquarters we can go to? Something more official than my hotel room?”
“Fedpol is the Federal Official of Police of Switzerland,” Bodmer said. “We have no offices here in Germany. The footage is on a zip drive, we just need a laptop to show it to you. We can either go back to your hotel, or go all the way back to Switzerland if you’d feel more comfortable there.”
“No, no, we can go to my hotel.”
James went along with them. It made some sense to him, but it still seemed way too casual for something this important. He suspected something odd about these men with badges.
Clerc and Bodmer had both taken Bandini up on his invitation to join the Crusaders. Bandini told them they would fake both their deaths and give them a new identity soon, but there was too much going on right now to start that train rolling just yet.
3
Within a few minutes the three of them were back at James’ hotel room. It was a typical hotel room: one bed, TV, desk, window, and a bathroom. James put his keycard in the door, opened it, and found two new additions to his room. A laptop hooked up to the flat screen TV in the room, and Bandini.
“James Whitmore, I am Alan Andolini. These men work under me.” Bandini stuck out his hand and James shook it. James felt ambushed.
“Why are you in my room?” James asked.
“Well, we weren’t sure you were at Unionsbrau. The consigliere recommended it to you, but you could have been anywhere. So while my men looked for you, I stayed here in case you came back.”
James was uncomfortable. Bandini noticed that.
“I understand you might have some doubts about accusing your employer of being a terrorist threat, but let’s watch this video first. Come sit on the bed, I have the video hooked up to your TV.”
James sat on the bed. A
small part of him was scared at the unprofessionalness of this entire experience, but played along nonetheless. Bandini queued up the video and it played on the flat screen.
James couldn’t believe what he was watching. It was the Geneva Airport, it was the shootout, but it seemed as if half of the people firing their weapons were invisible men. He saw objects move, knives thrown, but who ever was doing the attacking wasn’t there. It’s as if a few men decided to have a battle against air. After it finished Bandini shut it off.
“What do you think?” Bandini asked.
“That had to have been tampered with. That’s impossible. You could have just deleted whoever was really fighting and now you want to pin it on my boss. This shit proves nothing.”
“Or it may prove that your employers are in fact vampires.”
“What?” The shock in James seeped through his face. This was ridiculous.
“Mr. Whitmore, you have already correctly assumed that this was not normal procedure for police authorities and you are right, because we are not them. We are a group called the Crusaders, and we hunt vampires.”
Before James could get out a second what, he was lifted from the bed by both Clerc and Bodmer and thrown to the ground. His hands were shoved behind his back and handcuffed. Bodmer was twisting a silencer on his gun.
“Now, Mr. Whitmore,” Bandini said. “We want your help.”
James had flown for the US Air Force and performed some missions in Afghanistan and the Middle East immediately after 9/11. He was prepared for torture and questioning. He was not prepared for the absurd.
“Do you hear what you are saying, vampires? You guys have seen one too many movies. If you want money from Vlad tell me, at least I could feel that I’m dealing with sane people and not you crazy sacks of shit.”
Bodmer cracked James in his jaw. He felt a tooth come loose and blood filled up in his mouth.
“I know this is a hard thing to swallow,” Bandini said.
So’s your own blood, James thought as he spit out the thick red liquid in his mouth.
“James, do you have any pictures of Vlad or his men?”
“No.”
“Did you ever hang out with them in all the time you have worked for them?”
“Never.”
“So you can’t really argue our claim.”
“Of course I can. There are no such things as vampires, you crazy fuck.”
“Mr. Whitmore,” Clerc started. “When I was first presented with this information I believed just the same as you did. And maybe I had the advantage of knowing for sure this film had not been tempered with unlike you, but witnesses have also reported men disappearing after they were shot. The evidence is there, they are vampires.”
“This is preposterous,” James said in defiance. “I’ve seen Vlad all the time during the day. When we landed in Geneva it was daylight. The sun kills vampires.”
“Some vampires burn up in sunlight, others just lose their powers during the day. Vlad and his men belong to this latter group.”
James stopped and thought to himself. He had not once feared for his life when he was with Vlad. He also had never seen Vlad involved in anything bloody. They never brought some dead bodies on the plane, he never saw any fangs, nothing, in all those years. He was actually the best boss a private pilot could ask for. He paid him more than handsomely for the few times he actually had to work. He had wondered over the years where these men went to when they traveled. What they did in their free time, how Vlad really had all this money, why all these men always were dressed mostly in black. They could be…
No, that was preposterous. Vlad and his men have been great to him. They were not vampires, they were not monsters. These men were crazy, these men were sick, they were the monsters.
“James, this is a list of the people who passed through customs who came in on the flight you piloted. Have you ever seen these names before?” Bandini put the list in front of James face.
He looked at the white printed paper. His plane number 5632H he recognized, but the names next to it, he didn’t. Paul Cryer, Vance Sheen, Carl Soddenburg, Tyler Murphy. Who the hell are these people? James also knew there were ten of them on the flight. Why were there only four names on this list?
Bandini saw the realization on James’s face.
“Listen James, all we ask is that you let us know when they plan on departing, and let us on the plane before hand. We will take care of the dirty work. We will take care of them. You will have nothing to worry about, and you will be paid handsomely for it of course.”
Betray Vlad. He couldn’t do that. Vlad was his friend. Vlad was great to him. He had to admit to himself something was dirty about those strange names, but vampires? This was just far too crazy. Vlad was rich. Rich people had enemies who wanted money from them. That was who these creeps were, and maybe that was why Vlad had to use these aliases. To avoid bastards like this. James had to laugh.
“What’s so funny?” Bandini asked and bent down next to James.
“Loyalty is a virtue of mine. And if you think showing me a film with the true attacker on it deleted is going to get me to betray a friend…well, you underestimated the loyalty instilled in members of the United States Armed Forces.”
“Oh, I’m sorry James. I hoped for your sake you wouldn’t say that. You see, loyalty is also one of my virtues, and you underestimated my loyalty to my cause.”
Bandini stood up and nodded to Bodmer. Bodmer aimed his silenced gun and shot James dead between his eyes.
EIGHT
1
The Carpathian Mountains ran through Romania like a reverse capital G. In the middle of this letter lay the Transylvania Plateau. Near the bottom of this plateau—the bottom of the reverse G—rested the city Sibiu and a few miles south of that was the commune Sadu, where Radu’s mansion was. His house was against the base of the Southern Carpathians. The mountains could be seen in the background from the front of his house. His home was a state of the art two-story mansion with an interior surround sound system, high-end entertainment centers in a few of the rooms, expensive furniture, and a basement like no other basement in the world.
The sun was potently bright. It was a little after nine in the morning and the sun was working its power. Radu and his men had to be asleep by now. Up in a tree above the cement fence for the house Malachi looked for any sign of movement. He saw nothing and gave a signal.
Vlad climbed over the gold plated, spiked fence. He went to the controls of the gate and opened it.
Jericho, Andrew, and Deacon stood in a circle just outside of the house next to the black Toyota Land Cruiser Malachi had rented that morning. (There were no Cadillacs available.) The three of them waited for Vlad to get the gate open. Michael stood a few feet away from the rest of the group. With his hand in his pocket he sent a blank text to Gabriel. He didn’t have to say anything. Gabriel knew the text alone was a sign that the barbarians were at the gate.
“Michael, get ready,” Jericho told him.
Michael screwed on the silencer for his gun. It was not his .357 magnum. He, Jericho, Malachi, and Vlad left their signature guns at home not wanting to have to dispose of if need be. Instead they all had .9 mm Berettas with them. They had the more powerful machine guns slung over their shoulders that they would just use in case any type of fight developed.
Malachi jumped down out of the tree. The vampires cocked their guns and got ready. Vlad stood on the other side of the opened gates with a welcoming smile on his face.
“You men ready to fight?” he asked as the five of them walked in.
The house was wide in the front, about sixty feet. A six-car garage made up half of the first floor, in the front of the house. The group walked to the base of the front stairs and looked up at the mansion.
The mansion, an egg yolk color, had white trim on the outside. The outside had a Mexican style to it.
“Are we sure this is Radu’s house?” Deacon asked.
“I’ve always known abo
ut it since he moved here,” Vlad said. “He tried to trap to me to come here once, knowing I would be human if I did. They will be sleeping, but be prepared. Jericho, take care of the alarm.”
Jericho walked to the right side of the house and sat down in front of the panel box on the outside. From his back pocket he took out a hex screwdriver and used it to take off the four mounting bolts that held the cover to the blue metal box in place. He took a second to examine the bus bars of the panel, essential to killing an alarm. The bars were metal striped and ran down the panel horizontally.
With new technology came new intelligence. When house alarms came into existence Vlad and his men knew they had to figure out how to break them. Jericho got his information from an old electrician who wired their alarm in Santa Barbara. Normally electricians didn’t tell strangers how to break into a house and cut the alarm, but with a few tricks of Jericho’s mind he could have gotten the man to reveal that he had fantasies about his cousin.
Jericho located bus bar number 1, the bus bar for the door. The bus bars were a series of gadgets that monitored the different openings for a house. Bus bar 1 was almost always the front door. He then found bus bar 2 which probably was a window somewhere. Jericho took out the terminal nuts for bars 1 and 2. With electrical spoon connectors he took out two pieces of jumper wire. He connected from bus bar 1 terminal to bus bar 2 with the jumper wires. The connection had been made. The pulse that went through to let it know if there had been a disturbance in the front door had been rerouted. The signal from the front door would now go to the second bus bar, and the system would not notice when the opening for the first bus bar was disturbed. The circuit was sent somewhere else and now they could enter the house.
“It’s done,” Jericho said as he walked back to the group.
“All right, let’s go,” Vlad said as he walked up the stairs.
He grabbed the doorknob. He turned the knob expecting that to be enough to open it, but with the sun shining down on him he had no vampire strength. It was humbling to realize how weak he would be without this vampire strength.
