by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
Tessa nodded.
“Do you know who?”
Tessa nodded again. “A drug dealer named Marco. He and I have been enemies for a long time. He’s a former lover. And suffice to say, I don’t like his chosen profession.”
“You know where we can find this Marco guy?”
“No.”
“Got a last name? An address?”
“No. Williams, have you ever settled a case, solved it, by bending the rules?”
“Honestly? My partner is Tony Flynn. And he has some strange way of looking at the world. He thinks we work for good.”
“What’s so strange about that?”
“I guess I didn’t explain it right. He thinks we work for Good with a capital G. And we fight against Evil with a capital E. Like there’s some battle going on we can’t see, can’t name, can’t touch, can’t fathom. But it’s there. Like a war. And we’re on the front lines. So yeah…we bend the rules. We’re smart enough to not get caught. Smart enough to do it only when it counts, like if a kid’s involved…or we’re running out of time and someone’s gonna die.”
“Well, to solve this case, you’re going to have to bend the rules. You’re going to have to trust me. And you’re going to have to shut your notebook and not write most of this shit up.”
Williams stared at Tessa. She knew he was sizing her up. Like Flynn, he was going to use his instincts to tell him if this was a good idea. Thankfully, Tessa passed some intuitive litmus test. After a few moments, he nodded his okay.
“All right. I’m going to assume there’s some weird shit going on here.”
“My friend Hack had helped me track down the origins of Shanghai Red.”
“Goddamn. I thought by taking down that warehouse—and nearly costing Flynn his life—we were through with that shit.”
“Not quite. Not yet.”
“You watch yourself. Tony’d kill me if I let anything happen to you while he’s laid up.”
“I’m a big girl, Detective.”
“I can see that.”
“And I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t doubt that, either. But be careful anyway.”
Tessa nodded. “I’m the executor of his estate. He wants to be cremated. The details are with his attorney. Adam Stern. Has an office down in Greenwich Village. They went to college together.”
“His body won’t be released until we do an autopsy.”
The fury in her belly turned icy cold. First they desecrated his body by killing him. Next the ME would rip him open from chest to pelvis to figure out how he died. They’d take his brain out and weigh it. Poor Hack. She gave Williams a hug goodbye and, with one backward glance at Hack, Tessa turned and left the apartment.
Stepping out into the night air, she looked up at the rooftops. Somewhere, out there, was Marco. And this time, either he would die…or she would.
Two nights later, Hack’s body was released from the medical examiner’s office and transported to a crematorium. The official cause of death was multiple stab wounds on the neck—he had bled to death. They had gotten his jugular vein. The hanging had just been an extra bit of theatrical flair.
Tessa tortured herself by looking at the video clip on her laptop over and over again. She sent a copy to Williams. Eventually, she knew the only peace would be found at the altar. She chanted and prayed, and she tried to find solace in her belief that Hack was in a better place. Not so much a place, but a state of being where there was no pain.
She had visited Flynn, who tried to console her, but she felt a need to be alone. Jorge, Cool and Lily were solicitous. They left her to her own thoughts. And to her preparations. For the next two nights, she trained relentlessly.
Tessa’s loft had once been barren, without living space, like most converted lofts in Manhattan. Architects and designers had worked to construct walls and living space, dividing up the massive floor plan into a living room area, a kitchen, three bedrooms, a dining room and bathrooms—plus her royal-size closet. But in back of one living room wall, accessible only through a door recessed into paneling, was Tessa’s do jang, her training room.
There, samurai swords she’d brought with her from Shanghai were mounted to the walls, gleaming displays of metal that were literally priceless. Most of them had engravings, said to bring the samurai power, strength or honor.
The wooden floors were polished to a sheen, allowing her to practice her lightning-fast moves again and again, until she and her sword or dagger moved as one. She would go to this room every day, anxious to maintain her prowess.
She was well fed. Though she hated thinking about that part of her power, in truth, she had to feed in order to be strong. And strength she needed, as well as her decision making, her reflexes, her completely honed instincts.
Tessa took one of her swords from its holder on the wall, and then from its sheath. Beheading Marco was one way to kill him. Then she’d strike him through the heart.
She had researched vampires, but had found so much fiction mixed with fact. Sunlight, for sure, could kill them. But silver bullets were questionable. Garlic—she ate garlic all the time. Crosses to ward them off? Again, it was belief. She had once faced down a vampire and hurled a cross at him, only to watch him shrink in horror as it touched him. Over time, Tessa came to discover there were bloodlines of vampires sired from different parts of Europe, and even one line originating in what was now Moscow. She believed genetics—or sire lines—accounted for the variations in strengths of vampires.
Tessa moved with her sword, slicing through the air until the weapon was a blur. She moved tirelessly, her muscles taut. She practiced until she was sweating and exhausted. Then she returned the sword to its place on the wall. She exited her secret room and went and took a shower. As she washed her face, she shut her eyes, and the vision of Hack returned to her mind. She scrubbed hard at her skin, as if trying to wash away the ugliness of all she had seen in the last two weeks. In her long lifetime.
Stepping out of the shower, she dried her hair and pulled on silk pajamas. It was only eleven p.m., but she couldn’t bring herself to descend the elevator to the club. She couldn’t see all the life going on as Hack’s body awaited burning.
She poured herself a glass of red wine, and she was about to settle in to watch television when she heard someone knock on her door. Instantly wary, she leaped up from the couch and peered through the peephole.
Excitedly, she flung open the door. “Welcome home, Flynn,” she whispered.
“Tess,” he said hoarsely.
“Should I be angry with you? What are you doing out of the hospital?”
He pulled out a small bottle of pills. “Amazing what a few painkillers can do. Now don’t go being all worried. They were gonna let me out in a day or so anyway. So I just did an AMA.”
“AMA?”
“Against Medical Advice. I signed myself out. You gonna let me in, or does a wounded man have to stand on your doorstep all night?”
“Oh my God, come in!” She wrapped her arms around his neck and hugged him tenderly. “Where does it hurt?”
“Everywhere. Let me get over to the couch.”
She ushered him in and settled him on the couch, even taking a soft velvet throw and putting it on his lap, fluffing the pillow behind him.
“A man could get used to this treatment!”
“Yeah, well, it’s only because you’re wounded, Flynn,” she teased. “Can I get you something to drink? Some water? Something to eat?”
“No, Tess. I’m okay.”
His eyes were glassy from the painkillers, and he was still very pale, but it was such a relief to see him out of the hospital bed, out of the stupid plain blue gown, freed from IVs and tubes.
She kissed him softly on the lips. He kissed her back, hard.
“I can see the hospital didn’t take everything out of you,” she said softly, leaning back in to kiss him again.
Then Flynn put his hands up. “I have to talk to you, Tessa. It’s a good thing I’m on pai
nkillers or I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’d just let sleeping dogs lie.”
She had known, in her gut, that this conversation was coming. It had been coming since they had their first kiss, because there was no way they could move on in their relationship otherwise.
“Williams…he was knocked to the ground, shot. But before I was hit, I know what I saw.”
“Flynn, it was crazy in that warehouse. So much was happening all at once. You can’t be sure of anything. Add to that, you’ve been on morphine for a week.”
“Don’t try to gaslight me, Tessa.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s an old movie term. It means don’t try to convince me I’m crazy.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Yes, you would. Doesn’t that mess with your karma?”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the photo from Gus. He set it on the table, wincing as he leaned forward.
“I’ve already seen that photo.”
“So tell me the truth about it. I thought vampires couldn’t be photographed.”
Tessa exhaled slowly, quietly. “You’re high on painkillers.”
“I know what I saw, Tess. I’m a detective. One of the reasons I’m good at what I do is my power of observation. I saw you fighting those guys. I saw you flying through the air. I saw those things—whatever the hell they were. I saw it all, Tessa. That woman in the picture is you.”
Tessa fought the urge to run from the room, to dash out on the fire escape to the roof and leap to another building, feeling free in the moonlight. There was a full two minutes of silence between them. She stared down at her hands while she gathered the inner courage to see this conversation through to its conclusion.
“Some of us can be photographed,” she finally said quietly.
He grabbed her hand, as if urging her on.
“I was born in London in 1880….” She glanced at him, but he wasn’t looking at her with disbelief. His eyes said, Go on. Tell me.
“Marco was my husband. I met him when I was a young widow. I was lonely, bored, hated my social role. He ingratiated himself with my family, with all of London. I was swept away by the talk of a deceiver, a snake. By the time I understood who and what he was, it was too late for me. I had been turned, completely and irrevocably, into what I am. I hate even the word…vampire.”
“It’s a good thing I’m medicated. Tessa, I want to know everything, and at the same time, part of me doesn’t want to know everything. Jesus…you’re immortal. You’ll live forever. Just as you are now.”
She nodded.
“You can’t grow old.”
She nodded.
“Can’t go near crosses?”
She shook her head. “That one’s a myth. Some of us can’t. None of us can go in sunlight. We live in the world of the dead. Darkness.”
Flynn winced and leaned forward, sinking his head into his hands. “I finally find the woman of my dreams and she’s…not mortal.”
“Technically, that’s true.” Tessa tried to make him laugh. “But I was mortal at one time. Completely.”
“Well, why couldn’t I have met you then?”
“Because your great-grandfather wasn’t even born. You weren’t so much as a twinkle in your father’s eye.”
“All kidding aside, this means you—”
She nodded. “Yes.” Her voice was now barely audible. “I kill people.”
“I don’t know if I want to know any more.”
“Look…the Buddhism. The unadorned office. I try to stay connected to my humanity. I know this all sounds crazy—”
“You don’t know the half of it. I saw those workers. They weren’t human. What were they? Are you like them? How can you seem so fucking normal?”
“They aren’t fully turned. They’re slaves to Marco. Slaves to the drug trade. I’d rather die myself than end up like that.”
“Then how can you do what you do?”
Tessa thought back to the girl she once was, a girl who ran in the fields of Willow Pond, devoted to her father and mother. The question Flynn asked resonated inside her.
“Haven’t you ever taken the law into your own hands?”
Flynn nodded. “Charles Moreno.”
“Who’s that?”
“Guy who kidnapped a girl and buried her alive in a bunker beneath his house. Tortured her while his wife was off shopping, at work. Tortured her every chance he had to get down there. A motherfucker in every sense of the word. I could smell the guilt on him. I hurt him. And I’m not sorry I did.”
“What happened to the little girl?”
“She got a lot of therapy. Her name was Annie. She saw a shrink twenty-four/seven for over a year. Lived in a hospital. Then she saw somebody three times a week. Moved back home. But I didn’t hold out much hope she’d ever be sane. Then she sent me an invitation to her high school graduation. She’s going to go to St. John’s. Wants to be a lawyer. Defending kids. That’s what she wants to do. I have to hand it to her…she made it.”
“And what made Charles Moreno different from some of your other busts? The ones where you didn’t take the law into your own hands?”
“His eyes.”
“What about them?”
“They were hollow. Dead. He could have cut that little girl’s heart out and eaten it for breakfast as if it were no different from brushing his teeth. He didn’t feel guilty about it.”
“Remorseless.”
Flynn nodded. “I remember watching him on the witness stand. How he said he was actually trying to help the little girl. He knew she was being abused at home, he said. He was offering her refuge. Lies would trip off this guy’s tongue like he was Satan himself.”
“Maybe he was.”
“I thought Buddhists didn’t have a Satan.”
“We don’t. We don’t have a heaven and a hell either. But we believe in evil acts. And the man you describe was evil.”
“Through and through.”
“And the people I kill are, too.”
“How do you know?”
“After a hundred years…I can just tell. I can smell the deceit on them, the lies. I can see it in their eyes. I go after dealers, pimps, batterers, rapists. But fighting drugs remains my focus. I have a code, Flynn. Not unlike a cop’s code.”
“So the dealers who’ve disappeared from the Night Flight Club—can I assume they’re…?”
Tessa nodded. “Yes, you can. And I don’t think I’ve looked back for a moment. Maybe a moment, but not for much longer. If I have to be who I am, then I’m going to make sure I take with me those who deserve to die.”
“And how is this guy Hack that Williams told me about…how is he all mixed up in this?”
“Hack didn’t deserve to die. Hack’s brother was a meth addict. He and I met on a drug Web site and soon found we had a common interest—fighting the drug war.”
“And your interest in this war?”
She pulled the locket out from beneath her sweater. Opening it, she showed Flynn the lock of hair from Hsu. “I loved a man once. He was young…in some ways a boy. But I was there, in Shanghai. I saw the opium addicts—we called them ghost people—shuffling, confused. Hsu died of an opium overdose. Sometimes, when I think about it, I think he may have committed suicide just to be free of the burden.”
“Did you kill the person who gave him the opium?”
She shook her head. “No. But I burned down his poppy fields. And I knew then that drugs had the power to ruin humankind.”
Flynn let out a long sigh.
“What?”
He didn’t answer.
“What, Flynn?”
“How many vampires are out there?”
“A lot. I think New York draws them. They can be anonymous here.”
“And most of them aren’t like you.”
“Right. Most are so consumed by bloodlust, so hungry for blood, that they’ll fly into a frenzy, kill anything that moves. They see themselves as undead
, and it tortures them. Then, when they can no longer live with what they have become, they give in to that soullessness. They kill more easily, more hungrily. They lose any sense of their old humanity.”
“Part of me wants to say this whole conversation, this whole night, is a morphine dream…. But I know what I saw. I also know I’ve run into a vampire before.”
“When?”
“Years ago. I was first partnered up with Alex. We were investigating a homicide. Two hookers found dead, blood drained from them. They’d been tortured first. No one cared. They were found in a loading dock. City went on the next day…‘just two hookers’ is what everyone must have thought.”
“But you thought different.”
“Yeah. First off, I thought maybe it was done by someone who thought he was a vampire. So that was one theory I had. But there were surprisingly few clues, and I was half tempted to just figure…two hookers. Until the mother of one of them came to the precinct.”
“And what did she say?”
“She had a picture of the one hooker before she came to the Big Apple. Pretty, pretty girl. Cheerleader. Long blond hair, apple-round cheeks. She’d gotten into the life to support the drug habit of her boyfriend, the mom said. First, she was a high-priced call girl.”
“So how’d she end up in the loading dock?”
“It was at the height of the AIDS crisis. She went from high-priced call girl to emaciated hooker, turning tricks in cars down by the waterfront. I felt like I had to solve the case to give that mother peace of mind.”
“Did you solve it?”
He shut his eyes and shook his head. “No. But one night, Alex and I were checking out the scene of the crime. A lot of the time killers return to the scene. A compulsion makes them do it. We see some hookers. The usual traffic…johns pulling over to negotiate blowjobs…. And then I see this guy. Dressed all in black, standing on the roof of the building opposite from where the two hookers were killed. So Alex and I get out of the car and start looking for a fire escape that will get us up on the roof. We climb up there and the guy just vanishes.”
“What do you mean ‘vanishes’?”
“It was like, one minute he was there, and the next he was shrouded in fog…and then gone.”
