by DC Malone
“That thing… no,” Tomás said. Botchlings, the unturned, whatever you want to call them, they’re horrific things, yes, but they are nothing to fear. It is a sad thing, but when they do crop up, they are given the mercy and cast out of mind as quickly as possible.”
“Given the mercy?”
“Put out of their misery,” Hiram explained.
“Oh… that creature back there didn’t look like it would make that an easy prospect.”
“No, it did not,” Tomás agreed. He leaned against one of the alley walls, looking uneasy. “But this, apparently, isn’t your typical unturned. If I understood Ada, she believed them to have been created on purpose.”
“With the blood of The First,” I said.
Tomás’s eyes flashed, but he seemed to calm almost immediately. “Yes. But that is not a matter for discussion with outsiders.”
“I think we’re beyond that point, Tomás. Anything you know might help me figure out what’s going on here. It might even help me stop it.”
“No,” he replied flatly. “I have helped you at the cost of my own dignity and Ada’s life. Under normal circumstances, just hearing the phrase blood of The First from your lips would have been enough to seal your fate.”
“But these aren’t normal circumstances,” I pressed. I’d made a habit of pushing my luck all evening, and I didn’t see any reason to give it up. “Whoever is controlling the revenants are killing your kind as well as mine. Linus, Ada... do you have anyone else you care about? Because they could be next.”
Tomás took a lightning-fast step forward and made a bloodcurdling sound that was part growl and part hiss. Hiram jerked back with a squawk of surprise, bounced hard off the opposite wall, then dropped to the dirty pavement below.
I expected the outburst—was goading him into it, even—but it still took all of the willpower I could muster not to flinch away from him.
“Gods!” he said, deflating when he saw his posturing wasn’t working on me. “You are far too stubborn for your own good.”
“It’s gotten me where I am today.”
“I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten you killed.”
He had a point, but now wasn’t the time to dwell on it. “So… care to explain about this sacred blood angle we’re dealing with?”
“What makes you think it’s sacred,” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, killing people for just saying the words, that kind of ultra-secretive behavior. It all kind of screams sacred idols and forbidden cult knowledge. No offense.”
“To be fair, we vampires have been known to kill over far less. But, in this case, you are not far from the mark. The blood of The First is more akin to the Ark of the Covenant than an actual sacred object, or so I thought. Since my rebirth as vampire nearly seven centuries ago, I have mostly considered The Blood as a figurative thing—the spark of creation, say.”
“But if it was used to create those revenants…”
“Yes, then it would have to be quite real, and it would have had to have fallen into the hands of a madman.”
“Is it what it sounds like?” Hiram asked. “The actual blood of the first vampire?”
Tomás sighed, seemingly resigning himself to saying more on the subject than he would have liked. “Supposedly, yes. But its importance lies in more than simply its provenance, you see. It is said that The First was the most powerful vampire there has ever been. It is his blood that is responsible for all subsequent vampires, but with each generation of the newly turned, the original potency is lessened by some degree.”
“So, each new vampire is weaker than the last?” I asked.
“Minutely, but yes. That is not to say we are not still highly formidable beings, but the ensuing millennia have seen the introduction of vulnerabilities that were not seen in The First, or even the other very earliest vampires he created. They were not vexed by the light of the sun, and a blade or stake through the heart was of little consequence.”
“Let me guess, they could also turn invisible at will?” I asked.
Tomás shook his head. “That I do not know, but I would not be surprised. In that purest form, we vampires would have been awe-inspiring.”
We had begun to move steadily along the alleyway between the buildings and were now exiting onto a quiet road to the rear of the shopping center. It had to be well after midnight, and the sleepy suburb of Mirehurst was as dead as poor Linus had been.
“So, what happened to that first vampire guy?” I asked as we crossed the street to an empty bus stop. “If he was so powerful and immortal, shouldn’t he still be lurking around in the shadows somewhere?”
Hiram gave me a stern glare for my flippant tone, but if Tomás was offended, he didn’t let on.
“I doubt anyone knows,” Tomás replied. “Like I said, before today I thought the whole thing was a kind of myth. An exaggeration, at the very least.”
“That’s just great, then.” I kicked at the bottom of the bus stop bench. It made a poor outlet for the frustration I was feeling. Tomás may have filled in a few of the blanks, but that new information didn’t make things any easier. “What exactly are we going to do? If that high-octane vampire blood was really used to create those revenants, then what you’re saying is that they are invulnerable killing machines that will basically live forever. Where does that leave us?”
“Where does it leave us?” Tomás arched an eyebrow. “It leaves the two of you here, at this bus stop. The bus doesn’t run at this hour, so I would suggest you call a cab and get far away from here while you still can.”
“But—”
“As for me,” he continued. “I have done my Ada’s bidding, and you are in some relative safety for the moment. If you choose to pursue this madness, then that is your prerogative, but I will not fall victim to those creatures like Linus and Ada.”
He sped off in a dark blur before I even had a chance to try to convince him otherwise. Tomás was gone, and so was our only connection to the world of vampires and anyone who might know more about the revenants.
“I don’t suppose you have any good news to add to this dumpster fire of a mess?” I said to Hiram.
“As a matter of fact, I do,” he said, pulling his phone from his jacket pocket. “I have the number for the cab service saved in my phone.”
Chapter 17
It was closing time at Francie’s by the time Hiram and I pulled up in the cab out in front of the bar. I hadn’t checked the time since we were left at that bus stop in Mirehurst, but Francie seldomly finished up with the end of the day stuff before a quarter past two, and I could see her putting the finishing touches on the bar’s exterior locks as we crossed the sidewalk over to the building.
She looked over at us as we drew closer. “You two… together. How bad is it?” Francie looked tired, but it was the kind of tired you got from a long day working behind the bar. I wasn’t sure what kind of tired I was, but I was willing to bet I didn’t carry it off half as well as she did.
“I feel like you’ve been asking me that a lot lately,” I said. “But… it’s pretty much the life and death, monsters and vampires kind of deal we usually have going…”
Hiram didn’t bother to comment, which was somehow far worse than his typical pessimistic bluster.
“Alright, then,” she said, reversing what she had been doing with the door locks. “Let’s get you two inside before whatever foul thing that’s after you has a chance to interrupt your nightcap.”
I wrapped my arm around Francie’s shoulders as we walked into the bar. I hated preventing her from getting away from this place and getting some much-needed rest. But after everything I’d seen that day, the prospect of going back to my apartment alone wasn’t something I was ready to entertain.
“You don’t look as sick as usual, Hiram.” Francie steered us onto a couple of stools and took up her customary place behind the bar. “You finally getting your sea legs for my girl here?”
“Hardly, but I may be beyond the point of
caring. After the things I have gone through tonight, a bit of sour stomach and the spins are the least of my concerns.”
Francie dispensed Hiram’s seltzer and whipped up my G&T with all the effortless precision of someone who had done the same thing every day for many years. If she even registered the fact that she was performing a task, it didn’t show.
“Well, I got to see Lonnie do that weird thing he does with his elbow no fewer than six times today,” she said, pushing over our drinks. “So, if you want to talk about things that make you feel weird inside…”
“We got to see the end result of a botched vampire that was made into an unstoppable monstrosity with the blood of the first vampire that ever existed.” I took a sip of my drink, then grinned up at Francie.
She pursed her lips and nodded. “Okay, yeah, that probably beats the Lonnie thing.”
“Hey, yours is good, too. The guy can get pretty gross.”
“I don’t need your pity disgust,” Francie said. She hooked a thumb toward Hiram. “And how come this wet blanket got to go on the adventure, while I was stuck behind the bar all day? I would have liked to see vampires and monsters…”
“Did I mention the part where I was forced to relive the thing’s gruesome decapitation of the vampire we went to visit? Front row and center for the whole… show.”
“Yeesh… maybe the bar wasn’t so bad after all.” She pulled over a stool on her side of the bar and sat down. “So, I guess that means the case is progressing, then?”
“I’m not sure I would say it’s doing that exactly.” I watched Hiram bring his glass to his lips for the fourth or fifth time. He didn’t look to actually be drinking from it, and I wondered if he was a little more shellshocked than he let on.
“I mean, we now know there are, or were, vampires involved. And we know what that creature is… but it still feels like we’re at a roadblock. The pieces don’t add up to anything that makes sense to me. Like, why was the Congregation trying to prevent us from pursuing this thing in the first place?”
“Maybe there are some vampire bigwigs in the Congregation that were trying to keep it quiet?” Francie suggested.
“No, that can’t be it,” Hiram said, looking up for the first time in several minutes. “There are no vampires in the Congregation. They stay far away from our affairs, and we’re asked to do the same for them.”
“Kind of like a mutual noninterference pact or something?” Francie replied.
“A little more mutual on their side. They are a reclusive lot, as Meredith can attest.”
“How exactly can they get away with that? I thought the Congregation sort of watched over its people… like a kind of governing body or police force.”
“That’s not exactly what the Congregation does,” Hiram said, “but I take your point. Vampires aren’t the same as the Gifted. As far as I know, they do not interact with the Source in any way. If their powers or abilities are beyond what can be explained by genetics or biology, then those things spring from another source entirely, so to speak.”
“Jeez, how many kinds of freaky things are out there?” Francie asked. “No offense to the present company, of course.”
Hiram shrugged. “There aren’t so many that your average Norm is likely to run into something other every night of the week. But there are enough that you’ve very likely heard of several real accounts over the years. For every dozen or so reports of Jim or Billy Bob’s encounter with sasquatch or the Jersey Devil… at least one or two are true.”
“Huh, good to know. I have an uncle who has sworn for years that—”
“Hold that thought for a sec, Francie,” I said, turning to Hiram. “She made a good point.”
“I did?”
“Yes, you did. Vampires or no vampires in the Congregation, they’re still covering for them. They have to be. If they didn’t have a clue about what was going on, then they wouldn’t have been trying to steer me off the scent. And they wouldn’t have tried to cut off Hiram’s research before it even began.”
“They did that?” Francie asked.
“Yes…” Hiram tapped his fingers against the rim of his glass.
“Could the vampires have infiltrated the Congregation, do you think?” The connection was there, but I still didn’t have enough pieces to see the full puzzle.
“To what end?” Hiram asked. He was still tapping on his glass with a distant look in his eyes. “Vampires and the Congregation haven’t ever had any dealings I’m aware of, but it was my understanding that that was their choice, not the Congregation’s. If vampires wanted in, they likely could have done so for the asking.”
“I don’t know, then,” My drink was empty, but it hadn’t done much to take the nervous buzz out of my bones. “Something’s going on with the Congregation and something’s going on with the vampires… There is a connection.”
“What if we’re coming at this from the wrong direction?” Hiram continued to stare through Francie, to somewhere near the back wall of the bar. “You’ve been quick to pin the blame on the vampires—”
“Yeah, that’s because I saw Ada use that thing to kill Linus…”
“True,” Hiram continued. “But she also said she was given dominion over the revenant. That was the phrase she used.”
“So? What are you getting at?”
“Someone had to give her that control. Who was it?”
“I’d assume it was another vampire,” I said. “Someone a little higher up on the totem pole maybe.”
“Well, we all know what they say about assumptions…” Hiram’s tone morphed into that insufferable professor’s voice that he pulled off so well.
“Yeah, yeah, it killed the cat or whatever.”
“No, that’s… not—The point is, maybe Ada’s control wasn’t coming from a vampire source. We still don’t have the foggiest why these revenants were even created in the first place, so who’s to say that someone with some pull within the Congregation isn’t behind it? Wouldn’t that make the most sense for why they’d want to keep it quiet?”
“But how would this imaginary person or group have done it?” I asked. “They’d have needed the blood of The First… which I would have thought to be a distinctly vampire-owned item.”
“Not necessarily. Tomás thought it was made up, until Ada mentioned it. It seems to me that the stuff could have changed hands many times over the millennia.”
“The Congregation…” I said, twirling my glass around on the slick wooden bar top.
There was no doubting that someone associated with the Congregation knew more about what was going on; I’d pretty much known that from the start. The problem I had was the same problem you got when dealing with any faceless, quasi-corporate or governmental entity. Where was I supposed to start?
I couldn’t very well go and knock on Mr. Congregation’s door and ask him a few questions. I had dealt with several people who worked for the Congregation—all the way back to Anders. Heck, even I worked for them, now. But I had never met someone who was an actual part of the Congregation or even had real access to them. In my mind, the whole group was just a bunch of old dudes sitting around a table, exchanging secret handshakes and wearing silly robes. And for all I knew, that was exactly what they were.
But even if I didn’t know where the fish lived, it didn’t mean I couldn’t throw a line out and see what bit.
“You’ve got a look,” Francie said. “And it’s not a good look.”
“I don’t look good?”
“You know what I mean… It’s the look you get when you’re about to do something stupid or reckless.”
“So… pretty much how she always looks,” Hiram smirked.
“Hey!” I feigned touching him with one of my sick-inducing hands, but secretly I was glad to hear him back to his ever-snarky self. “And I’ll have you know that what I’m planning on doing couldn’t be more responsible or ordinary.”
“So, what is it then?” Hiram asked.
“Tomorrow morning
, I’m going to call Luka and give him an update on the situation—let him know what we’ve found out so far.”
Hiram narrowed his eyes. “That’s all?”
I grinned. “More or less…”
Chapter 18
Between more or less, I was going to lean kind of hard on the more side of things. But what semi-pretend PI for the supernaturally gifted worth her salt wouldn’t?
I stayed at the bar after Francie and Hiram left, and I spent less time on the cot than it took me to drag the thing out and set it up. The time I should have spent sleeping was occupied instead by a constant stream of intrusive thoughts. Every roaring engine from the street outside became the battle-cry of an enraged revenant storming in to finish what it started back at Linus’s house. And as the night wore on toward morning, and no invisible monsters popped up, my thoughts began to turn toward my impending call with Luka and how it might play out.
On the sidewalk in front of Francie’s, I watched the India ink sky lighten to the color of a freshly blacked eye. I waited another handful of seconds, then pulled out my phone. It was ten minutes after seven, and sunrise was as late as I was willing, or able, to wait to make the call.
I tapped his number, then listen for Luka to pick up. If he was like every other sane person in the world, his phone was probably still on silent. But I thought I could get rid of some of the ants crawling over my skin by at least leaving a message.
“Meredith?” Luka’s deep voice boomed out of the earpiece before the line even had a chance to ring.
“Uh, jeez, were you waiting with the phone in your hand, or what?” I was so surprised that I nearly forgot why I was calling.
“What can I help you with?” he asked, ignoring my fluster.
“I, uh, wanted to update you on, you know, the case.”
“I understand, give me fifteen minutes. I will meet you in front of your office.”
