The Unmasking (Dhampyre the Hunter Book 1)

by David Burkhead

  I stood up. I had had some time to think of ways to give them the information they needed while preserving the secret.

  "My name's Dani Herzeg. I work out of Nashville. We think that the murders are the work of a...vampire cult."

  "A what?" A younger officer, mahogany skin and very closely cropped hair, wearing a dark gray pinstriped three-piece suit, asked.

  "A group that believes by bathing in, or drinking, the blood of young people they can grant themselves eternal youth and strength." I spread my hands and shrugged in a gesture meant to suggest that I thought it was crazy too, but what can you expect with cults?

  "It's an idea that pops up from time to time in history," Ware said. "There's the case of Elizabeth Bathory, infamous for bathing in the blood of virgins to preserve her youth. We'll never know if she was actually guilty but she was accused and imprisoned for it."

  "So, what does this mean for us?" Redhead said.

  "The thing to remember is that they think they are turning themselves into vampires. They'll avoid daylight. They'll avoid churches and other hallowed ground." Holy ground did not harm vampires, but it did make them uncomfortable enough to drive them out within a few minutes at most. "We've seen cases of stigmata—their own self-belief being so strong that they'll develop physical inflammation when they're exposed to sunlight."

  "So why do we need you?" Redhead again.

  "I've been studying these cults for years, not only the cults but the specific lore they seem to be centered around. They don't base their beliefs and practices on things like Stoker, Rice, or Hamilton. They have a specific set of very complex beliefs from older texts. I've made a study of that. I can't teach you what I know in time to make a difference, but I might be able to see something, to make a connection, that will point you in the right direction to stop these bastards."

  "She'll be working with me," Ware said. "I'll make sure she behaves herself at crime scenes, but she will need to see them."

  "Shit," Mahogany Skin this time. "That means there are going to be more bodies, doesn't it?"

  "Probably," I said. "Almost certainly."

  "That's why you need to get out there and wrap this up, before any more people get killed," MacKenzie said. "But, yeah, there probably will be."

  A collective groan rolled through the room.

  "I'm counting on you, Ms. Herzeg," Ware said. "Anything you can do to help."

  "I'll do my best." I meant it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I sat through the rest of the briefing in the squad room. Ordinary crime was not my concern and the police seemed quite competent to deal with it.

  Redhead, I heard her name was Janice Tanner, was talking about a gang altercation in the Wholesale District.

  "The victim has been identified as Danny Smalls. He had a history a mile long starting in juvie," Tanner said, "He's know to be a member of Twenty-First Street. What he was doing this far outside their known territory, I don't know. According to witnesses, the group Smalls was with rolled up in a van. They hit another group which we have not identified. The two groups exchanged shots, leaving Smalls dead and several wounded before the remainder of the other group fled the scene. The men in Smalls' group shoved the wounded, their own and those of the other group into the van and then departed, leaving Smalls' body behind."

  I looked up at that.

  "Excuse me," I said.

  "Thank you, Detective," the lieutenant said. "Blake?"

  I caught Ware's eye and held up a hand. "Excuse me."

  "Lieutenant?" Ware said. "I think our consultant has something to say."

  MacKenzie scowled. Tanner shot me a look of pure hatred.

  After a moment, the lieutenant nodded. "Ms. Herzeg? You have a thought?"

  "Yes, sir," I said. "Detective Tanner said that this gang, Twenty-First Street, was operating out of its normal territory?"

  "Are you questioning my...?" Tanner stopped when MacKenzie held up a hand.

  "Their normal territory is quite a bit farther north and east. Twenty-First Street, as the name implies."

  I nodded. "I don't doubt what the detective said. In fact, I think it's important, particularly when added that they took their rival's wounded with them."

  "How so?"

  "The cult wants blood. They want blood fresh from living bodies. Perhaps they're using this Twenty-First Street to collect bodies for them to drain."

  Tanner jumped to her feet. "This is my case. You can't just waltz in and..."

  Again MacKenzie held up a hand. "It's still your case, Janice. But if you come across anything that suggests Ms. Herzeg's theory has merit, you will report it to Sergeant Ware."

  "But sir..."

  "Dammit, Janice, do I need to remind you what happened at Riley? If you get anything that can help us catch the perps, you will report it."

  "Yes, sir." She sat back in her seat, looking sullen.

  Ware smiled. "Easy, Janice. You know me. I'm not going to steal your credit. I know you don't like having a civvie poking into our investigation but she's my problem. Think of her as a...source and let me worry about keeping her nose out of where it shouldn't be."

  "Okay, James," Tanner said. "If you say so."

  "Besides," Ware flashed a feral grin. "None of us want Homeland taking over, right? I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason they haven't is because we have her. I don't know why, but that decision was made pretty high up. So, think of her as a magic talisman keeping the Feds off our backs if it helps."

  I suppressed a smile. Ware's words were true, so far as they went.

  Tanner's face relaxed and she smiled. "Strangely enough, it does. All right, James. I'll give you everything I've got."

  "That's the spirit," Ware said.

  "And that's what I want from all of you," MacKenzie said. "Don't be shy about sharing anything that might have relevance on the ritual murders. We don't want any repeats."

  The detectives discussed several more cases, but I did not note anything connecting them to the vampires. At the end of the briefing, Ware locked down his computer and stood up. I stood up with him.

  "You wanted to see the video footage from the hospital?" He said.

  I nodded.

  "Let's go."

  Ware led me into a room in the building's basement. Filing cabinets and shelves made the small room seem even smaller. A young man, maybe mid-twenties, sat at a table staring into a computer screen. The man had dark brown hair, shoulder length, and olive skin. He wore a scarlet polo shirt, khaki pants, and black hi-top sneakers. He tapped at the keyboard with thin, almost delicate fingers.

  "Ah hah!" the young man stabbed down at the keyboard. "Gotcha!"

  "Hey, Tommy," Ware said. "What's up?"

  The young man, Tommy, looked back over his shoulder. "Oh, hi, Detective. Somebody's been trying to hack the department system. Sergeant Anderson asked me to look into it."

  Ware sighed. "That's not your job, Tommy."

  "No, it's not my job," Tommy grinned. "But it's the job I applied for."

  I watched the byplay with some amusement. Ware and Tommy were clearly friends, not just co-workers.

  Ware pulled up a stool and pointed one out to me. "You got that hospital video for us?"

  "Sure," Tommy twisted and dragged over a laptop computer. "Give me a second."

  I sat on the other stool and watched Tommy plug the large monitor into a port on the laptop.

  "It's amazing." Tommy tapped at the keyboard, entering a password. "Those have got to be some of the best fakes I've ever seen."

  "Fakes?" Ware asked.

  "Come on, Detective." The screen flickered to life as Tommy made additional entries on the computer. "You saw it. That has to be the smoothest CGI I've ever seen. Then to..."

  Ware put a hand on Tommy's shoulder. "Ms. Herzeg hasn't seen the footage yet. Let's let her see it without any commentary first, hmm?"

  "No spoilers," Tommy said. "Got it."

  The video started.

  I had seen t
he results, so I had a good idea what to expect but watching it happen still made my gut clench. Four vampires entered the room. The first one grabbed one of the nurses by her smock. Her mouth opened as if to scream but one look by the vampire into her eyes silenced her. The vampire shifted a grip to her shoulder with one hand, to her upper arm with the other. He pulled. The shoulder joint popped. Skin and muscle tore. The arm came free in a shower of blood. The video camera was no better resolution than most, but my mind filled in the detail. While no sound would escape the woman's mouth—the vampire's mental hold would see to that—she would feel the agony of tortured flesh. The vampire switched his attention to the other arm, then the legs. Somewhere during this, long before the vampire twisted her head from her torso, the woman died.

  The other vampires moved through the room, repeating the first's actions with the other occupants. Then three of them began working their way through the treatment rooms, pulling out the patients, the children and...

  I wanted to look away. I didn't. Those victims, those children, needed me to watch. They needed me to see everything in the hope that something, some small detail, might lead me to their tormenters, might give me the opportunity to wreak vengeance on their behalf.

  The first vampire did not join the others in their torment of the children. Instead, he began arranging the bodies in the pattern I saw when Ware took me to the scene. Partway through that task he looked up at the camera. He darted from the room. A moment later the screen went dark.

  "My God," I whispered.

  "You see what they did," Tommy backed up the video to the moment before the vampire darted from the room. "They just start arranging the bodies then they staged the one going to take out the guard at the security desk and shut down the camera. Poof. No need to exactly match the filmed pattern with the final pattern. And a justifiable reason for the break making it easier to hide the fake."

  "What makes you so sure it's a fake?" I pointed. "That looked pretty real to me."

  "Oh, it's a good fake, but come on. It's a lot harder to rip somebody's arm off than they make it look. An old punishment was to rip people apart with horses like that but one man tearing off another's arm like that, let alone legs? Can't be done."

  I smiled. "Yeah. Good point. But sift it for any detail you can find though. If they're going to go to that much trouble to make it real, they might have slipped in something we can use."

  Tommy looked over his shoulder at Ware. "Detective?"

  Ware nodded. "Do it."

  "But it's fake."

  Ware smiled. "Even their lies can tell us something."

  We left the building and headed out for lunch. In the car, Ware shook his head.

  "He saw. That was no fake. I don't think the technology exists to make a fake that good, not in the time they would have had to put the actual victims into the video."

  I shrugged. "That's how most people react. Monsters aren't real. They know this. So, they come up with explanations, something to explain it away." I put a hand on his arm, where it lay on the center console between the front seats. "That's why you surprised me. You not only accepted, you had pretty much figured it out on your own."

  "You familiar with Doyle?"

  "Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame?"

  "That's the one." He eased the car to the right in preparation for exiting the interstate. "'When you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.'"

  "Most people would put vampires into the category of impossible."

  "Most people are idiots. And I say that as a seasoned cop who has dealt with a lot of people."

  I laughed. Ware was nice to be around when he loosened up on the professional reserve.

  "So," he continued as he turned onto the street. "Most people will explain away what they see, but what about the others?"

  "You know those crazy conspiracy theorists. Monsters among us. Aliens. Bigfoot and the Bat Boy's love child?"

  "No...You're kidding."

  "Most of them are crazy," I admitted. "And some of them are deliberate disinformation. But a few? A few have seen something they can't, or won't, explain away." I shrugged. "Most of those learn soon enough to keep their mouths shut. There are never many of them. The monsters work to keep the secret. So, a few true sightings getting lost in a sea of insanity are easy enough to ignore."

  "They aren't being very secretive now," Ware said.

  "No. They're not. And that worries me."

  He pulled into a parking lot. I looked up and recognized the chain. An all you can eat buffet restaurant. No better than average food, perhaps, but plenty of it.

  "I've seen the way you eat," Ware said.

  I chuckled. "I appreciate it."

  We ate. I reveled in the ability to walk and to carry my own food. Such a simple thing that you don't appreciate until you lose it for awhile.

  The restaurant was too noisy for private conversation, so we chatted again about minutiae. Ware did not care for football or baseball, but he was a die-hard Pacers fan which left him bereft since the season did not start for another two months. I twitted him that the Grizzlies were just the better team. He threatened to arrest me on the spot for such heresy.

  I was pretty sure he was joking.

  Pretty sure.

  He paid, and we left.

  "I've got to get back to work," Ware said. "Where can I drop you? Back at your hotel?"

  I shook my head. "Nearest Enterprise, I think. I need a new rental and I've probably burned my bridges with Hertz."

  "There's one not too far."

  Ware dropped me at the rental office and waited until he was sure I would be able to get a car. Good of him.

  A few minutes later I pulled out in the new rental, a Toyota Yaris. While I could have spent Matei's money on a Cadillac or other luxury car, the truth was I had always preferred smaller cars.

  I had spent a few extra dollars to get a car with GPS. While I could have navigated with my phone, having the GPS on the dash and my phone in hand was sometimes more convenient.

  My first stop was one of the big box home improvement stores. Several purchases later I sat in the store's parking lot, searching the Internet on my phone.

  Matei had left me on my own for getting armed. And working with the police meant I did not dare acquire an illegal gun however noble my motives.

  There was one exception to federal gun laws, however. Firearms manufactured in 1898 or before did not count as firearms under federal law. They were antiques. If I could find someone who had one for sale, say a .44 Russian or an old top-break .38 Smith & Wesson, I could arm myself legally.

  I blinked at one of the search results. I wondered how I had not known about that. The Indy 1500 Gun and Knife Show and it was starting this evening.

  Somebody there would have something I could use.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I paid the entry fee at the show and walked past the gauntlet of police onto the show floor. The place was packed. I squeezed between two men, one with a knapsack hanging empty from his shoulder—he no doubt intended to fill it with goodies from the show. The other had a rifle slung with a sign hanging from it describing it as an 1891 Argentine Mauser and asking a price that nearly made me giggle.

  Gun shows didn't only sell guns. They sold many things that gun enthusiasts might also be interested in, including things like war memorabilia, reloading supplies, and...

  The first table I spotted sold blades. Mostly blades. In addition to blades, it had T-shirts. I liked the one featuring an aged Clint Eastwood pointing a rifle at the Grim Reaper that said, "Get off my lawn."

  But what caught my attention was the beautiful Claymore standing in a rack. I shook my head. Gorgeous it might have been, but I did not think I could justify the purchase to Matei. Still, the vendor looked like he had a pretty substantial collection. Some of it was display junk. But there seemed to be a lot of good steel there too.

  I worked my way to the rectangle of tables. A tall m
an, the proprietor I presumed, about six feet or six one stood in the center talking to a customer. The customer was looking at a katana. The proprietor was slim, with short-cropped hair and a mustache. He had that look that said "military" and wore a black T-shirt and black cargo pants.

  I took a position next to the customer and used the opportunity to look at the sword he held. I could see striations in the metal that indicated folded steel, actual carbon steel instead of cheap stainless. The customer asked a price and the proprietor named one then offered a discount.

  As money exchanged hands and the proprietor fit the sword into a box, I raised a hand slightly. "Excuse me?"

  The proprietor looked at me. "Be with you in a minute."

  I waited until he finished boxing the sword and passing it to the previous customer.

  "How can I help you?"

  "Yeah, do you have anything, decent steel with silver inlays?"

  "Oooh," he said. "You're only going to find that in high end custom work. I don't have any and I've never seen anything like that here at the show."

  I was not surprised. Still, it had been worth a try. I looked down at the items he had on display.

  "What about that one?" I pointed to an ornate Bowie, turquoise and fake silver in the handle with a desert scene engraved in the blade. "How much?"

  He named a price. I nodded.

  "Will that be all?"

  I was about to say it was when I stopped. In a locking case, nestled among a number of other blades, I saw a narrow dagger, the blade with the swirling pattern of folded steel. The guard was a simple curve of brass, elegant in its very lack of ornamentation. The handle was of bone, the end of a long bone all in one piece with the end of the bone serving as the pommel. I could have sworn that dagger called to me. "How much is that one?"

  The proprietor named a price. I grimaced.

  I could never justify the piece to Matei. Steel, no matter how good, was no use against vampires. I sighed. "Can I get two of the cowboy bowies?"

  "No problem."

  "And that one," I pointed at a folder that looked like a good general-purpose knife."