Busted!
I answered. “Hey, Zee.”
“Hi, Syd. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
“Yeah, well, you know.”
“Uh huh. Just so you’re not worrying. I’m going to get my car, visit your mother, check on the Beast, then get some sleep.”
“What makes you think I was worrying?”
“Oh, I don’t know, four generations of experience with the women in your family?”
I frowned. I was never going to get away with anything working for him. “Okay, Zee, but if you need me, you call.”
“I will, now get some rest. Big day ahead of us.”
I yawned. “Okay, g’night.”
“Good night.”
I killed the call and put the iPhone down. He could be BS’ing me, but I decided it was best to take his word for it. I yawned again and was asleep in moments.
THIRTY
There it was again. There was no doubt about it, I had a tail. A late model, black Ford Taurus. I had seen him at least half a dozen times since I picked up the car, and after the number of twists and turns I had done, there was no doubting his purpose.
But the real question was how did he keep finding me? I had definitely lost him on several occasions, and there was no way he would have been able to guess where I was going. And there was only one answer to my question.
I had been tagged.
They must have somehow tracked back how I had arrived for the meeting with Graves. What really made me nervous now, was how far back had they tracked me? With the right access, you could tap the city traffic cameras and in theory trace me all the way back to the office.
And Sydney.
It was time to put an end to this.
I slammed my brakes on, shoved the car into reverse, and hammered on the gas. With my arm across the back of the seats, I turned my head and looked through the rear window as I raced toward my tail. He came to a stop, but judging by the size of the whites of the eyes I was staring at, he was panicking.
This wasn’t a vampire.
I slammed into him, my reinforced rear bumper shredding his front end, deploying his airbags and probably causing about ten grand of damage easy. I put the car in first, and pulled forward a few feet, then climbed out. I marched toward the driver side door, the occupant still trying to battle the airbags, and hauled open the door, the locks having opened automatically with the impact. I tore the seatbelt from its socket, then dragged the nearly senseless man from his seat and out onto the road.
Scratch that. This was a boy. Maybe nineteen or twenty. Crazy hair, goatee trying to make himself look older, but just a kid. In other words, he looked almost my age.
I wrapped my fingers around his throat, and squeezed.
“Why are you following me?”
He was still coming to his senses, but his eyes began to focus, and suddenly he seemed to snap out of it. “Hey, what the hell are you doing?”
I squeezed a little tighter. “I repeat, why are you following me?”
The man gasped, his hands flailing at my arm, unable to break my iron grip. “Left front pocket. Wallet.”
I wasn’t going to fall for that. If he knew I was a vampire, there could be a stake in there, waiting for me to reach in and poke myself with it. A short exposure wouldn’t kill me, but it would be enough to incapacitate me for a few minutes. Long enough for him to get away, or long enough for him to stake me properly.
“You get it.”
He reached down with his left hand and pulled out his wallet. Flipping it open, he revealed an ID card.
Richard Messina, PhD
Defense Criminal Investigative Service
Department of Defense
I eased my grip. Slightly.
“Why the hell is the D-O-D following me, Mr. Messina?”
“Because I know who and what you are, and I need your help.”
Something wasn’t sounding right. I? Why ‘I’ and not ‘we’? I eased up a little more.
“What do you mean, ‘I’?”
“I mean me, I know what you are. Or at least I think I do.”
“So you’re working alone?”
“Yes.”
“And what do you think I am?”
He looked away, almost ashamed to admit it. I squeezed a little harder and he yelped. “A v-vampire?”
He didn’t sound convinced.
“And just what would make you think a crazy thing like that?”
“We had surveillance set up on that office tower you jumped out of yesterday.”
“Jumped out of? Doesn’t sound like me.”
“There’s no denying it. I’ve seen the footage. It was you, and you survived. And from what I saw on the cameras we planted in that office, those were no ordinary office workers you were confronting. That was something straight out of the movies.”
This could be bad. If this kid had seen it, then others had, and there would then be evidence of our existence.
“You saw the attack?”
He nodded.
“Who else?”
“No one.”
My grip tightened.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I’m serious,” he gasped. “It was my turn to monitor, the other guys went for lunch.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
He blushed. “Because nobody takes me seriously. I’m nineteen and have three university degrees. No old dude likes to be told he’s wrong by a kid.”
“Three degrees, huh?” I loosened my grip. “Some sort of prodigy?”
He nodded. “That’s what the experts say.”
“So why the military?”
“DCIS recruited me when I was sixteen. Offered me all kinds of cool assignments, cool research opportunities, and lots of money as a civilian contractor.”
“But they don’t take you seriously?”
“Not my coworkers. My bosses do, but not on something like this. I knew if I said anything they’d just laugh me right out of my contract, claim I doctored the footage or something, so I just saved it off on a USB key, replaced the footage with static, and when they returned, told them about you jumping out of the building, and how you must have somehow disabled the cameras.”
“So why are you here now?”
“I’ve researched you, Mr. Varga—”
My grip tightened.
“How do you know my name?”
He grabbed at my wrist with both hands. “Look at the passenger seat of my car.”
I pointed my finger at him. “Stay put, and don’t forget your position in the food chain.” I let go and stood up, leaning in. There was an iPad lying on the floor of the passenger side. I picked it up and climbed out of the car, putting the tablet on the roof. I motioned for him to get up, and Messina scrambled to his feet, massaging his neck.
“That’s quite the grip you’ve got.”
“You’re lucky I used my hand and not my teeth.”
He gave me half a smile and stood beside me, turning on the tablet and opening a file. It had a page of personal information about Zander Smith, Private Detective. And as he flipped through the pages, each of my identities for decades flipped by, different names, different agencies, different locations, some with pictures, some without.
“How did you get this?”
“The power of computers, the paranoia of terrorism.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Messina nodded. “Lazarus and his group were flagged trying to purchase weapons—a lot of them—on the black market. My group caught wind of it through Echelon.”
“Echelon, you mean that computer system that listens in on all of our communications?”
“The very one.”
I shook my head. “What a horrible era to be alive in. Habeas Corpus be damned.”
Messina shrugged. “It’s the only era I’ve got, and don’t mix up an overzealous law enforcement and intelligence apparatus for the US Military. CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, NSA. They aren’t us. They’r
e the ones making your everyday life a little less free.”
I liked him. He got it.
Messina pointed back at the file. “We were able to tie him to the weapons purchase attempts, and actually got a bead on some of his people making a small purchase. We traced them back to Detroit.” He stopped and looked at me. “Something is going down there. Something big.”
“Any idea what?”
“Well, that depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether or not you and your friends—”
I cut him off with a finger and a growl. “Never call them my friends.”
He nodded, slightly shaken. “Sorry. It depends on whether or not you and they are vampires.”
This was the leap of faith. I could deny it, and just walk away. But he might have valuable information. And besides, nobody would take him seriously anyway.
“Yes.”
A huge grin spread across his face and he raised a knee, slapping it. “That’s so unbeeffenievably cool!” He clapped a few times, rocking back and forth on his heels. “This is so amazing. I mean, a vampire! Me, standing here, talking to a real live vampire.” He paused. “Or are you actually dead?”
I shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
He spun around on his heel, then bent over and grabbed his knees. “Oh, wow, this is too much.”
“Finished?”
He looked up at me from his bent over position. “Just a little light headed. This is like totally amazing. It’s like meeting one of the Avengers, but like, cooler ’cuz it’s real.”
“Okay, snap out of it, you’ve got your answer. Now what’s the ‘something big’?”
He took a deep breath and stood straight. “Sorry.” Another deep breath. “Through proxies it appears Lazarus has been buying up abandoned factories, warehouses, homes. Detroit’s population has dropped from nearly two million to less than eight hundred thousand, much of that in the past ten years. There are entire areas of that city that are abandoned, or no-go zones. It’s a perfect place for Lazarus to lay low in, and if he’s got that ten billion that went missing, he could pretty much do whatever the hell he wants.”
“If the government is concerned, can’t you just go in and wipe them out. Wood by the way is the key, or take our heads off.”
“Stake through the heart?”
“Nope. Just sustained contact with our bloodstream by anything made from wood, and we’re dust.”
“Why wood?”
“What do I look like, a scientist?”
He looked at me. “Mister, you look like the oldest, wisest man I’ve ever met. And I don’t doubt for a second that if you wanted to know something, you would make it your mission to learn it.”
“I may be the oldest you’ve met, but there are older. Much older. Lazarus is the oldest, if we are to believe him.”
“How old?”
“Slightly over two thousand years.”
Messina whistled. “You and me have to sit down one day and talk about where you and your kind came from.”
“It’s a terrifyingly inspiring story.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“You’ll have to hear the story to understand.” I pointed back at the file. “Do you have a list of these places he’s been buying up?”
Messina nodded and pulled up another file. I quickly read the list, committing it to memory. “This is a list of the properties. But here’s the thing.”
“What?”
“Echelon intercepted a communication today, that was sent through a voice broadcast service.”
“What did it say?”
“Just three words. ‘We are legion.’”
I felt my heart thud. We are legion. The implications were terrifying.
“I see you’re familiar with the bible quote.”
I nodded. “And he asked him, ‘What is thy name?’ And he answered, saying, ‘My name is Legion: for we are many.’”
Messina nodded. “I think he’s trying to form an army of vampires.”
“If that’s true, he must be stopped.” If he created an army of vampires, concentrated in one place, thousands could die. Tens of thousands. Christ, hundreds of thousands.
Something twigged.
“You said he used an automated system. How many calls did it make?”
“Three-thousand-one-hundred-seventy-two.”
“Oh my God.” It was too much to imagine. “They weren’t all vampires, I assume.”
Messina shook his head. “No, every one I’ve checked so far seems to be an average, everyday American. Every single one of whom made travel arrangements after receiving that phone call.”
“For Detroit.”
“For tonight.”
“If he turns three thousand thralls tonight, Detroit could be lost. They’ll need to feed, and if he doesn’t want them feeding off of each other, he’s going to have to set them loose.”
“It would take him a hell of a long time to convert that many, wouldn’t it?”
I shook my head. “No. He’s got at least forty other vampires working for him. They just need to bite the victim for a few minutes. That’s enough to initiate the turning.”
“So if we say one victim every five minutes per forty vampires, that’s two-hundred-forty an hour. It would take almost half a day.” He snapped his fingers. “Or he just has the first batch help turn the next batch, and so on. Exponentially faster.”
“I see you need a schooling in vampires, but there’s no time. I’ll just say this. A recently turned vampire is uncontrollable until his hunger is satisfied. He will feed and feed and feed until the hunger subsides. Until it does, he can’t think straight. Those who are turned over that time can’t be used to turn any others, because the moment they are let loose on someone, they’d suck every drop from their body.”
“So he has to set them loose.”
“He’ll not only have to set them loose, but separately.”
“What do you mean?”
“He can’t just kick them out the door every five minutes and say, go eat. They’ll just hang around and chow down on each other. He has to physically separate them, have them feed on at least one, if not two, humans, then they can be controlled.”
Messina shivered. “Humans.” He looked at me. “You don’t think of yourself as human anymore?”
I shrugged. “I’m not sure. Some days, I feel perfectly human. Others, not at all.”
He looked at me. “I don’t know how you do it. How you maintain control. Immortality has always been the endgame of medicine, and you’ve achieved it, but at a terrible price.”
“You have no idea.”
“No, I don’t, and maybe someday you’ll share that with me, but”—he jabbed his finger at his watch—“we’ve got little time. Do you have any suggestions on how to prevent this from happening?”
“Deploy thousands of troops armed with weapons that can fire wood.”
“We don’t have any weapons like that, nor do we have the manpower. This is a battle that will need to be prevented.”
“Actually, you do have the weapons. Bows and arrows. Traditional bows and arrows. The arrows have to be made with wood.”
“We still don’t have the manpower.”
I stopped and leaned toward the kid. “Listen, Rick—can I call you Rick?” He nodded. “I don’t think you get it. If he turns over three thousand thralls into vampires in one day, and peppers them around Detroit, you are at war. This is not a little battle that will be forgotten after Lady Gaga debuts her chicken suit, this is a game changer. If we lose Detroit, we lose the country. If we lose the country, we lose the continent. If we lose the continent, eventually, we lose the world. Humans will be hunted to extinction, then those vampires that remain, will feed off of each other until there’s nothing left. This is God’s vengeance on mankind. This is Armageddon.”
“God’s vengeance? What kind of nonsense is that?”
“You don’t get it, do you? Why do you th
ink vampires exist?”
“Genetic mutation, obviously.”
I took a deep breath. “How familiar are you with the Bible?”
“Fairly. My folks were believers, I’m not.”
“I’m going to give you the dime novel version. Malchus had his ear cut off by Simon Peter during the arrest of Jesus. Got it?”
“Yes, I remember the story. Jesus healed him.”
“Exactly. Malchus was one of the high priest’s guards. During the high priest’s interrogation of Jesus, Malchus slapped him, and Jesus questioned him as to why.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“When Jesus died, earthquakes shook the Earth, the sky grew dark, and the veil at the temple was torn in two.”
“Yeah, I saw Passion of the Christ.”
“But one more thing happened.”
“What?”
“Malchus was visited by an angel, and told he would be cursed until the Second Coming.”
“Listen, this is all very biblical, and I’m sure you believe—”
“Stop!” I yelled, pointing my finger at him. “Listen and learn something! Malchus visited his best friend, terrified. But he had an uncontrollable hunger, and attacked his friend, then the entire family. The women escaped while the men tried to fight him off, but only one survived to tell that story.”
“And who was that?”
I could tell he still wasn’t taking this seriously.
“Lazarus.”
The expression on his face changed. “How do you know this?”
“Lazarus himself told me the story several nights ago. And apparently he found Malchus again seventy years ago. Malchus never fed again, instead controlling his hunger with animals. It was Lazarus who created the vampire plague. He killed Malchus, and is now the oldest of us all, and wants power. He’s tired of hiding, and wants complete control.”
Messina was quiet now, his eyes distant as he processed what he had just heard, now that it appeared he was taking it seriously.
He sighed.
“I’d be laughed out of my contract if I said this was God’s vengeance for the death of Jesus.”
I opened my mouth to say something but he raised a finger, cutting me off.
“But I believe you.”
My turn to sigh. “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?”
Turned (Zander Vargar Vampire Detective, Book #1) Page 17
