Drew D'Amato:Bloodlines:02

by Drew D'Amato

  “Who is that?” Pacami asked.

  “My boss,” Henderson said. “Silverado Bandini.”

  “Henderson!”

  “He knows mine, might as well know yours. We are all in the same boat, but I don’t think these two mortals are a threat.”

  Bandini paused on his end of the line to process Henderson giving away his real name, before he spoke again. “Well, since you know my name, may I have yours?”

  “Father Humprhey and my nephew Duke.”

  “Okay Father Humphrey and Duke, you are correct in your assumptions. I will be honest with you, but I think you are not being honest with me. I have some questions with your account. Set my mind at ease, answer my objections. First, why would Vlad, one of the evilest creatures to ever roam this earth suddenly decide to want to become a human again?”

  Pacami looked to see if Vlad would respond to this insult. He was calm.

  “This wasn’t a sudden decision. Vlad had been tired of being a vampire for a while, but he didn’t want to do it until he was sure his brother Radu was dead. He told me he killed him last week in Romania. Besides, he didn’t think it was much of a risk at the time because he believed he had the blood also. Should he regret his decision, he could just become a vampire again.”

  “Well that’s the second problem I have with your tale. We had a transponder on the urn the blood was in. We found the urn and the blood was destroyed. What did he really drink, or is he still alive?”

  Pacami couldn’t come up with a quick response. Vlad helped him out.

  “Could it not be possible that Vlad and his men knew of the transponder and destroyed the urn to make you think they destroyed the blood?” Vlad said. Vlad had no idea of the transponder. If I kept the blood, the Crusaders would have followed us all throughout Europe. That decision did save our lives, not damn them.

  “I also don’t appreciate your accusation that I would be working in league with this vampire. I helped him out only because he asked for a noble thing,” Pacami said. “How could I not remove the power of a vampire if I am able to? And I only came here to meet with your man for another noble reason. I wanted to inform you that there are no more vampires on the earth. I wanted to warn you in case you planned to do something with the Blood.”

  “What would we plan to do with the Blood?” Bandini asked from the phone.

  “Maybe make some vampires to fight them, but all you would be doing is creating more vampires. Everything your force has been against.”

  “Well thank you for relaying this information to us. So may we please have the Dark Bible now?”

  “Not until we actually see the Blood of the Betrayer destroyed. What reason now do you possibly have to keep it?”

  “Well this would be hard for me to do since the Blood has already been destroyed.”

  Pacami and Vlad felt a strong push against their stomachs.

  Pacami’s mind raced. He thought he had been quick the entire time. He had gone over some of the possible objections the Crusaders might have on the flight over with Vlad, but he played the codex information close to his chest. He couldn’t translate it, but he had seen some of it before. It was the same symbols, same pattern. Now though he had nothing. He knew they still had the Blood. He felt sure of it. He was skeptical originally of Vlad’s persective of these men. Pacami felt that if he was younger, like recently out of Vietnam, and had been asked to join this order he would have signed up, too. And given his life for the cause.

  However, after actually meeting one of them, everything vibed the way Vlad had described them. These men were opportunists. They were not men of the cloth like Pacami, they were more like dirty cops. Their badges weren’t bought off with cash, but with the power of being on the job, being a Crusader. Connections in almost any jurisdiction, above the law, and hunting town the toughest bad guys. Anything can be bought. Business could not be done with men like this on just good faith. They had to have something over on them. They had the Dark Bible but that was not enough for them give in to the request to show them the Blood. The negotiations were over. Apparently, Vlad felt the same.

  WHOOT! WHOOT!WHOOT!WHOOT!WHOOT!

  Vlad put five silenced shots into Henderson’s head from the gun in his left hand. Henderson’s body and his chair fell backwards.

  “Henderson!” Bandini screamed. “Henderson!”

  Vlad grabbed the BlackBerry off the table with his right hand. “Bandini, your buddy is dead and I have his phone. I have all your numbers.”

  “Crusaders don’t keep their numbers in their phones.”

  “Well this guy was a collector. It is apparent from before that he doesn’t care about giving away identities, and I swear to you as I live and breathe, I see the time of this phone call counting up, along with your number, your name. He even has a picture of you on it—salt and pepper hair, grey eyes. Now ask yourself this, you have no real idea who the FUCK I am, or what I look like. We are willing to give you back this book. All you have to do is destroy the Blood in front of our eyes.”

  “Okay, okay, listen,” Bandini was stalling.

  Vlad walked out of the backroom with the gun in one hand and the phone in the other. Warburton locked eyes with him. He didn’t hear the gunshots, but he heard the chair and Henderson’s body fall. He started his way to the backroom, but Vlad quickly put the phone on his shoulder and with his new free hand gave him the universal index finger pause sign.

  Bandini got back on. “We are going to destroy the Blood but we haven’t done so yet. We planned on doing a ceremony to destroy it. All of the Crusaders will be there.”

  “It better be soon.”

  “It is, Saturday night.”

  “What time?”

  “11:01.”

  “Where?”

  “St. Peter’s Basilica.”

  Vlad froze. He expected Bandini to set up some type of trap. He didn’t care. He would slither out of it and get the Blood. He planned for that, but this wasn’t the case. This wasn’t bullshit. If it was a set up, Vlad felt sure any other place on earth would have been chosen over the Basilica. They would not trap someone in the holiest of holies and risk anything happening to it.

  “Count us in.”

  Vlad hung up. Warburton started again toward the back room.

  “Hold on Warburton. You go in there and spread you fingerprints and DNA and you are in a whole world of hurt.”

  Warburton looked over Vlad’s shoulders and saw Henderson and what was left of his head.

  “Bloody fuck, what am I going to do?” Warburton asked. “There are traces of me out front.”

  “So what, it is a store, not a private residence? There are hundreds of fingerprints up front. This place is in the middle of Heathrow and the Tower Hamlets. When did you leave work to get us?”

  “Quarter to three.”

  “Good, so then you got here about 3:20, and left after ten minutes. The police will just be concerned with the fingerprints back here.”

  Vlad walked back into the backroom. Warburton stayed a few feet from the door. They were able to talk and see each other. Vlad threw Henderson’s phone on the table. He then released the clip of the smoking gun.

  “What are you doing?” Warburton asked.

  “Making sure I used the regular rounds.” He held up a lead bullet. “And I did.” He threw the gun and the clip on the table. “I’m also leaving the fingerprints the police will care about, even though it’s a dead end.”

  Vlad then took out the silver rounds of the other gun, pocketed the ammo and threw the gun and empty magazine also on the table.

  “It’s hard to transport guns to another country. What’s the quickest way to Ireland?”

  “Train and ferry ticket. The London Bridge station is the closest one.”

  “Good take us there.” Vlad started to walk out.

  “Um, Vlad aren’t you going to take his phone?” Pacami said.

  “Why, they probably have some way to triangulate it with all their resources. Besid
es, it’s got nothing we need.”

  Pacami looked at the screen of the phone. There was just a number and the length of the call. No name, no picture.

  “Then how did you know what he looked like?” Pacami asked.

  “He’s the man of my dreams.”

  SEVEN

  1

  Vlad told Pacami about the dream with Radu he had a few nights ago as they rode on the train toward the Holyhead Ferry that would take them to Dublin.

  “So I just assumed he was represented by the guy with the badge,” Vlad said.

  “Interesting dream. Someone was trying to speak to you,” Pacami said.

  “I thought He didn’t get involved Father.”

  Pacami smiled and sat back, relaxed. He let the sound of the train move along in his head. It dawned on him that he was now a criminal. Prints will be dusted, witnesses will make statements. Pacami had no delusions that they were in too deep, and there would be no happy ending. He had been through war, he knew it was preposterous to hope for happy endings. People died, not every likable cast member survived. A happily ever after was not tangible. What was tangible though was victory. They had to defeat Radu and the Crusaders too.

  “So where in the Vatican do they want to meet?” Pacami asked.

  “St. Peter’s.”

  “My God, right there at night. What could they be planning?”

  “I don’t know, but it doesn’t sound like a double cross. They would plan that somewhere they wouldn’t mind if bullets were fired. This sounds like they had had this event planned, like some kind of ceremony.”

  “How can we trust them?”

  “I expect some sort of subterfuge when we get there, but we will have our own, too.”

  “But what if they don’t have all of the Blood there? What if they kept it in some cottage off Lake Como and we risked our lives for some wine?”

  “All we need is some of the real Blood to be there. As a vampire we can interrogate and fine out the truth if there is any more of it left.”

  “And what if they don’t bring any of the Blood?”

  “Not going to happen. There might be some more of it somewhere else, but I’m sure there will be some of the real Blood there. They wouldn’t have all this pomp and circumstance for some fake wine. We will have to interrogate them to find out. The more I try to map out what we have to do, the more it becomes obvious to me that we won’t be able to bring the Blood to Malachi. The Blood will have to be drunk as soon as we can get our hands on it. Are you still willing to do this?”

  “Yes,” Pacami said hesitantly.

  Vlad looked down at Pacami. “Are you nervous?”

  “God, yes.”

  “Fear will help you do what you have to do.”

  Pacami looked down and saw Vlad was rubbing Jasmine’s glasses again. He was going to say something about it, but then thought better.

  “So if the meeting is Saturday, why are we going to Ireland now?” Pacami asked.

  Vlad looked into Pacami’s eyes. “Don’t worry Father, we have time.”

  2

  Bandini dropped an anonymous tip to the local authorities about a possible homicide at Favorite Things. Sure enough the MPS found the late William Henderson in his back room, and sure enough by the end of the night Bandini was able to get his hands on a copy of the police report. There were hundreds of fingerprints, mostly found in the front room of the place, and Bandini paid no attention to them. He also paid no attention to the six prints of police officers found in the place. It was a store and policemen were allowed to browse, too. In the report, no police officer came forward and said they had been in the store minutes before the murder, so whoever that third person was, Bandini did not believe it was not a cop. An upstanding officer of the law inside the place would have noticed the murder, noticed the two men running out of the back room, or learned of the crime soon after and contributed what they could to the report. Bandini felt whomever Henderson assumed was a cop, was actually an accomplice with these men posing as a cop. Bandini did not consider the third alternative—a legitimate cop working with these men who had the Dark Bible.

  Bandini ignored all those cop prints, including Warburton’s. All he cared about were the two sets that were found in the backroom aside from Henderson’s. Neither was found in a data base anywhere. Pacami’s had been taken when his was drafted, but those records have long been lost. With Interpol and the FBI having nothing, it only deepened the mystery of these men.

  He learned from the report one cell phone was found at the scene—Henderson’s—and he also learned there were no numbers or photos stored on the phone. So how the hell did he know what I looked like, and how the hell did they get their hands on the Dark Bible? He had been very tempted to call Radu and get to the bottom of what really happened with Vlad and the Dark Bible. He concluded that the house in Romania was Radu’s and not Vlad’s. This priest was an American, Vlad probably set up base there. He still wanted to question Radu as to why he misled him that they had killed Vlad. But those answers would not be worth the questions. Questioning Radu would require him to also give up this valuable information about the Dark Bible, the priest, and that Vlad was actually dead. He couldn’t risk getting Radu involved, and letting him learn about the ceremony planned for Saturday. Whatever information he wanted to get from these men he would have to get it himself. He took a risk letting these two men know about Saturday night, but it was a risk he had to take. He had to meet these men, and get his hands back on the actual Dark Bible. Besides, he would make preparations so that this group of men would not get the drop on him. Every Crusader in the world would be at the Vatican come Saturday night. The advantage would be theirs.

  3

  Pacami knew the reason Vlad brought the cremains of Jericho with them was so that he could be buried next to his family. He didn’t understand at first that it meant that they had to physically do it. Once he got a look at the 17th century graveyard though, in the witching hour of 3 a.m., he realized asking for cremains to be buried alongside an over three hundred year old existing grave might arise some suspicion.

  When the Ferry took them to Dublin they did not stop moving, even though the entire trip—train and ferry—had been about seven hours. They rented a car and drove three hours into Northern Ireland.

  “I thought Jericho was Catholic,” Pacami said on the road as he noticed they were going to cross into Northern Ireland.

  “He was, and this land was also Catholic centuries ago. When I told you I made Jericho my first vampire because he was a great warrior, what war do you think he fought for? But the Protestants won and Jericho’s homeland became part of Northern Ireland. His loved ones stayed in Monea though, and that’s where their graves are.”

  Monea is a small village in the Parish of Devinsh, in the county of Fermanagh, that was in Ulster, the northernmost province in Ireland. Ulster was the province that was hit with the most bloodshed in the Irish Rebellion of 1641. Jericho, as a child, experienced most of it first hand. Protestants and Catholics massacred each other right out in the open. He had grown up in Monea. He remembered as a young boy when Rory Maguire tried to conquer Monea castle from the Protestants. Rory failed but Jericho swore when he was old enough he would fight for his Catholic brothers against the Protestant invaders—and he did. He joined at the tail end of the rebellion in 1649 at the age of fifteen and fought in the last three years of it, killing his share of Protestants. However, the Protestants were successful thanks to the leadership and ruthlessness of Oliver Cromwell and his New Model Army. By the end of the Rebellion a third of the Irish population—including civilians—had been killed. But not Jericho. He would go on to be a legend in Monea for his superior fighting skills, and when the English army tried to hunt him down specifically after the war, the townspeople helped hide him. The English army had too much pride to think some lanky eightteen year-old was the true Protestant Slayer. But the townspeople knew. They kept him safe, because he was far too valuable of a fighter to lo
se to the English. They told stories that Daniel O’Connell—which was Jericho’s human name, and why Vlad had used that family name when he met Jasmine—was a beast of a man, a monster, the Protestant Slayer. The title and legend of him stayed with him even when he became a family man. This was how Vlad learned of him when he got to Ireland after he killed Judas in 1666. This was why he was the first vampire Vlad ever made.

  Pacami followed behind Vlad as they walked up the trail to St. Molaise cemetery in Monea. As Pacami looked uphill, the image of Vlad dressed in all black in the middle of the purple sky looked like a lesion from the plague. He followed behind, into the black death.

  For some reason Pacami felt safe initially with this idea of going with Vlad to fight the Crusaders. But he thought about his first impression of Vlad, a flying, all-powerful vampire—a super-anti-hero. But now the last two days he realized Vlad was just a man. He noticed his stride, it wasn’t as quick, it wasn’t as smooth. He looked tired, weak, and vulnerable. He had his wits, but not much more. Tomorrow night they would be walking into a trap of some form. To his credit though, Pacami didn’t fear more for his own death, as he did for the mission’s failure.

  Vlad wasn’t nervous. He had a plan.

  As Vlad walked up the trail he tried to remember her grave. He thought back to the first time he ever came up here with Jericho.

  4

  The year was 1807. All of Europe, including Radu, was entangled in Napoleon’s quest for the world. Vlad felt it was safe then to carry-through on his promise to Jericho of one day going home. To learn how his family ended up.

  In the seventeenth century it was easier to travel across the ocean, than to learn of specific information from across the pond. At first Jericho wondered, What they were up to? But once the century turned, he started to wonder, How did they end up? Vlad felt bad Jericho did not have his closure, but going back to Europe seemed such an unnecessary risk. Vlad had no way of knowing the state of the European vampire underworld, and any location might be a risk.