He looked at Zander, then me, as if debating on whether or not to answer. He sighed. “What the hell.” He looked around for a chair, then settled on the couch. Zander sat behind his desk, and I took my usual chair to the side when I would normally take notes. “Why would a guy who doesn’t want to be found park in short term parking?”
Zander smiled. “That’s exactly what I was thinking last night. He could have parked in long term, and nobody would have found that car for months.”
“Instead, he parks in short term and gets discovered within days, almost as if he wanted to be found,” finished Jansen. He leaned toward Zander. “Now here’s something you shouldn’t know.”
Zander leaned forward, as did I.
“I had them pull the footage after I heard about the break in, and as I’m sure you don’t know, he picked up something from a locker.”
“What was it?” asked Zander.
“Looked like new ID and a ticket, contained in a briefcase.”
Zander leaned back in his chair. “You know, Detective, if I were a young up and coming detective like yourself”—Jansen harrumphed—“I’d be asking myself, who put that briefcase in the locker?”
Jansen smiled. “You’re not as dumb as I give you credit for.” He leaned back again. “I just so happened to have had the same thought, and had the footage checked. Two days before, someone entered the station, put the briefcase in the locker, then left the station.”
“Did you get a shot of his face?”
Jansen nodded. “Yes.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Who the hell was it?” I exploded.
Zander waved me down, and Jansen laughed. “Because it’s you, my dear, I’ll tell you.” He paused for dramatic effect. “His business partner, Ian Graves.”
Zander’s jaw dropped, as did mine. It was almost disappointing. All of our strange and wild theories were just shot down with one discovery. If the business partner provided the new ID and ticket, then that means he knew McKinly was fleeing, helped him flee, which meant he was in on it, which meant they both were in on whatever wrongdoing was under investigation, and that meant this was nothing more than a guy fleeing the law. Not a kidnapping, not some vampire conspiracy.
This sucked!
I looked at Zander and could tell he was disappointed too.
“You both seem shocked.”
Zander had recovered more quickly than me. I closed my jaw. He shrugged. “It’s just a bit of a shock. So it would seem that our missing husband is simply in the wind, fleeing from the law.”
Jansen nodded. “It would seem so.” He stood up. “I’m outta here.” He pointed at Zander. “And keep out of trouble. I can’t keep covering for you.”
“Is that what you were doing?”
“Hey, if I hadn’t of intercepted the call on that car of yours, you’d be dealing with a dozen uniforms.”
“Like I said, Detective—”
“You have no idea what I’m talking about.” He shook his head and smiled. “Have a good one, Zander.” He nodded at me. “Miss. I hope your mother recovers soon.”
I nodded and followed him from the office, closing the door behind him. I returned to Zander’s office to find him stretched on the couch. “So what now?”
“What time is my interview with Graves?”
“You’re still going through with that?”
“How else are we going to earn the money?”
“I thought we didn’t need money?”
“I didn’t get rich by passing it up when it was just sitting there for the taking.”
“But aren’t we wasting our time?”
“I’m not so sure. Besides, Mrs. McKinly still wants to find her husband. And we still haven’t explained what happened to her at the club, and why he stopped bowling, and why he put tinted windows in his car.”
“She stepped out like bored housewives do sometimes, he stopped bowling so he could defraud his investors, and he has combination skin and was told to avoid sunlight!”
“First, you watch too much Desperate Housewives, and second, he defrauds his investors on Tuesdays and Thursdays only, and third—well, I don’t know what to say to that. What the hell is combination skin?”
“Dry and oily,” I said, reviewing his answers. He did have a point on that second one. “Okay, fine. Your appointment is at four.”
“That early?”
“Ha ha. It’s the latest I could get.”
“Fine, I’ll be there.”
“I emailed all the details to your phone. Do you want me there?”
“It’s an office building. What could possibly go wrong?”
I frowned.
“Besides, don’t you have mid-terms or something?”
“I can study after your meeting.”
“Don’t worry, visit your mom, spend some time with your dad. He’ll appreciate it.”
I growled. “I hate it when you’re right.”
He winked.
“Three hundred years of experience.”
I spun on my heel and walked away. “Call me if you need me.”
TWENTY-TWO
I took my car to the meeting, but decided it was best to flip the plates to a set of very dirty stolen ones—hard to read on a security camera. I don’t know why, I just had a bad feeling.
Bankers were the worst bloodsuckers out there.
My first hint there was something wrong was when I entered the lobby of the office tower. There was the distinct smell of vampires. I stopped and looked about. It was strangely deserted, but then it was Sunday. But the smell was there. A lot of them had been here. And recently. I sorted through what I was smelling, picking out the smells, the tastes, searching for someone familiar, and then I found it, and I felt the bloodlust surge through me.
Lazarus.
He had been here. There was no mistaking it. And it had been recently, within a week. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. I entered an open elevator, and pressed 13. The doors closed and I went straight up, no stops. The doors opened and I was almost overwhelmed with the stench of my kind.
This was a trap.
I pressed the button for the lobby, then repeatedly pressed the button to close the doors. Finally, after what seemed like minutes, but were only seconds, the doors began to close. I glared at them, willing them to go faster. They inched toward each other, almost closed, almost securing me, when a set of painted nails jammed between the doors, stopping them. The safety mechanism kicked in, and the doors reopened, revealing half a dozen people, all in business attire, standing there.
All with teeth barred.
“Don’t bother reaching for your sword, Mr. Smith.”
The vampires split, and a man, a human, walked between them, toward me. “I’m Mr. Graves. I believe we have an appointment.”
I looked at him, debating whether or not to pull my sword, and take my chances. But if there were six in sight, how many more were there out of sight. Right now they seemed in control of themselves. If they weren’t, Graves wouldn’t have stood a chance. But why were they being deferential to him? I had never seen a vampire show respect to a human. It made no sense.
“Perhaps we could meet elsewhere.”
He smiled, and flicked his hand. The six future dust-bucket fillers walked away. He held the door open. “This way, Mr. Smith.”
I stepped forward, warily to say the least. I put my hand on the door, and he stepped back. Poking my head out, I surveyed my surroundings. No one was within twenty feet, and all were going about their business. A mix of humans and vampires, working together, in an office.
As equals.
It made no sense.
“Come with me, and perhaps I can answer some of your questions.”
I doubted that.
He held his hand out, pointing down the hallway. “This way.”
“After you. I insist.”
He chuckled, and led the way. I followed at a distance, my hands in my pockets, e
ach gripping a stake. I passed office after office, each with one or more people working in them, some vampires, some humans. Only the vampires looked up, sniffing the air as they did. Nobody made a move.
He opened a door at the end of the hall, and stepped inside, holding it for me. I followed him. He closed the door behind me, and I quickly surveyed the room, making certain we were alone. He took a seat behind his desk, and motioned for me to take a seat.
“I’ll stand, if you don’t mind.”
He smiled. “Of course.” He leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. “You’ve got questions.”
It was a statement. It was an understatement. There was no end to the questions I had. But I was here for a purpose, and I decided to take that tact, and see how it flowed.
“Janice McKinly hired me to look into the disappearance of her husband.”
“Yes, she called me to let me know.”
“Do you have any insight as to where he might have gone, and why?”
“No idea.”
“Yet you bought him a ticket to Detroit.”
He smiled.
“You’re very direct, Mr. Smith. I appreciate that.” His fingers parted for a moment. “Yes, I did buy him a ticket.”
“With new identification.”
He nodded, his fingers again parting.
“Was Detroit his final destination?”
He shrugged. “That I cannot say. I merely helped him escape.”
“Escape what?”
“The SEC of course. What else might he want to escape?”
What else indeed! “Why is the SEC investigating?”
He sighed. “Well, I guess I can tell you, since it will be made public tomorrow morning. Apparently”—he said it in a way that made it sound as if he didn’t believe it—“Clayton has stolen almost ten billion dollars of our clients’ money.”
I couldn’t stop my eyebrows popping up on that one. “That’s a lot of money.”
“It is.”
“But you don’t think he did it.”
“I didn’t say that. If he didn’t, why did he run away?”
“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps because he’s working in a building full of vampires.”
Graves frowned. “I see you don’t mince words.”
I turned toward the bank of windows lining the corner office. I palmed my phone, pulling it out of my pocket without Graves seeing it.
“I’ve never been one to shy away from the truth, when it is known by everyone in the room.”
With one hand, I activated the phone and with my thumb, activated an app.
“The truth then.”
I slipped the phone back in my pocket and turned back to Graves. “That would be nice for a change.”
Graves smiled. “The truth is, Mr. Smith, you have stumbled upon something you shouldn’t have.”
“And what is that?”
He spread his arms, as if to encompass everything around them. “The first human-vampire partnership in history.”
“Don’t fool yourself.”
He chuckled. “And why is that, Mr. Smith?”
“You’re just a walking snack pack to them. Once they have what they need from you, you’ll be dead.”
“No, Mr. Smith. I’ll be undead.”
“Ahhh, they’ve offered to turn you.”
He nodded. “Yes.”
I quickly walked toward the desk and leaned on it, my face only inches away from his, and bared my teeth, letting the bloodlust loose slightly. He recoiled before recovering. I stepped back, calming myself. “Is this really what you want, Mr. Graves? Immortality might sound great, but it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Graves gripped the arms of his chair, trying to put on a brave face. “Immortality is everything. It’s what mankind has been seeking since the beginning of time. How to live longer. How to live better. Little did we know there were thousands already among us that had achieved the goal.”
“The curse.”
His eyebrows narrowed. “You may call it a curse. I call it a gift.”
I shook my head. “You’ll learn. In time. If you can’t control the bloodlust, the life you will lead won’t be much of a life, you’ll be consumed by it, you won’t even know who you are. Eventually, your partners”—I pointed toward the horde I was sure stood on the other side of the door—“will kill you to protect themselves.
“Or, you will get control of it, and you will live like the rest of them, meal to meal, the hunger constantly there, and your memory, perfect, will let you relive every one of your kills, every innocent person’s life you took to satisfy that uncontrollable hunger that never goes away. Your life will become one long memory of horror, that will change you into a person you despise, that terrifies even yourself.
“You’ll want to die, you’ll want to kill yourself, but you won’t. Because you’ll have done so many terrible things, you’ll have learned the truth of who and what you are, that you’ll be petrified of death, to face God’s judgment on the life you ended up living. You’ll be terrified that the true immortality is an eternity burning in Hell for the horror you inflicted on man, for your own selfishness, for your own pursuit of immortality.
“Oh yes, you may call it a gift, but considered yourself forewarned. In time, you will come to know it as the curse it is. If you know what’s good for you, what’s good for your soul, you’ll stop whatever it is you are doing here, and walk away now, before it’s too late.”
I heard clapping, then a row of folding doors opened, revealing a boardroom with at least a dozen people sitting around the table, and Lazarus, standing at the head of it, a huge smile on his face as his hands smacked together. “Very good! Well done!” he cried, continuing to clap. “You almost made me want to kill myself!” he laughed. The others around the table laughed with him, but he remained the only one clapping. He motioned toward an empty chair at the other end of the table. “Won’t you join us?”
“Yes, please do,” said one of them whose back was to me as they spun in their chair so I could see them. But my nose had already told me. Jan Kovacs, the one I had run through with a pitchfork, the day they had fed on my beloved Kristyna.
“We insist,” said another, turning. I glared at Lukas Baal, another of the faces burned into my memory.
Instantly I felt my heart quicken, my body fueled by the bloodlust. The skin of my gums drew back, my incisors bared, my eyes burned red. My hands, still in my pockets, gripped the stakes tightly, and suddenly, before they could react, I pulled my hands out, as fast as I could, unleashing the wooden daggers. Kovacs reacted quickly, spinning his chair, but Baal had taken a more arrogant pose, his legs spread, planted firmly on the floor, his arms wide on the arms of the chair, his head held high.
His entire chest exposed.
He started to spin, but the stake impaled itself in his chest, the fibers of the wood reacting with the virus in his blood stream, causing him to immediately break down into the pile of dust time dictated he should be by now.
The second stake ricocheted off the back of Kovacs’ chair, and the entire room erupted. The dozen remaining vampires jumped to their feet, teeth barred, their bloodlust in full swing. I rushed over, grabbed Graves by the shirt, scratched his face with my nails, drawing blood, then threw him into the midst of the frenzy. If he truly wanted to see what it was like to be a vampire, he should get the full experience.
The anger, the bloodlust, fueled by the smell of Graves’s freshly exposed blood, had him set upon in an instant.
“Halt!”
It was Lazarus whose voice brought order to the chaos. Everyone froze, including me. The swarm withdrew, Graves’s bloody corpse still writhing on the boardroom table, puncture wounds all over the body. Lazarus reached forward, grabbing Graves by the face, and pulled the bloody mess toward him. He leaned over, looking down at the man’s face.
“Is your job here done?”
The man moaned. “Yes,” he whispered.
“Then everyth
ing is set? You have fulfilled all your obligations?”
Again he whispered, “Yes”
“Then we no longer have need of you.”
He shoved Graves by the head, sliding him back down the table. The swarm looked at the moaning form, then at Lazarus. He flicked his wrist. “We are finished with the humans. Kill them all. I don’t want any turned.”
The swarm set upon Graves as Lazarus rounded the table, approaching me. I whipped another stake at him, but he caught it in midair and tossed it aside. He was within ten feet of me now. I drew my sword, but the frenzy had finished, and the dozen who had just fed, jumped from around the table, and surrounded Lazarus. I backed away slowly, but there was nowhere to go.
“So that story you told me, it was all lies.”
He shook his head. “On the contrary, most of it was true. I lied about only two things. One, that I was a changed man. That is merely a persona to facilitate my plans.”
“And two?”
“I spoke of Malchus in the present tense.”
“You mean—”
“I fed on him, like I have a thousand others. Now I am the oldest, the most powerful.” He lowered his head, glaring at me. “And I’m tired of hiding.”
I eyed the door I had come in, and it opened, three vampires standing there, a body lying on the floor, their mouths covered in blood. I looked down the hall and I could hear the terrified screams of humans as their coworkers turned on them, revealing their true nature. Whatever had been promised them, was not to pass.
There are things far worse than dying.
Lazarus looked at me from amongst the swarm. “Enjoy yourself, Zander Varga. I must go now.” And with that he swung around, and walked to the back of the boardroom, and through another door.
The swarm surged toward me.
And I made a split second decision.
I pulled my gun, whipped around and charged at the windows. I squeezed the trigger as fast as I could, the safety glass splintering, weakening, but not breaking into the shards the movies would have me expect. I hit it full force, continuing to fire. The weakened glass, along with the force created by my speed and my body mass bent the glass panel, causing it to pop from the frame, and out into the late afternoon sky.
Turned (Zander Vargar Vampire Detective, Book #1) Page 13
