by Cas Martin
He knew all about the man in the suit.
He knew he was one of them.
9
Monica stared out of the window of her apartment as the city stretched out below. The river was faintly illuminated by squares of light from the windows of buildings on the other side. Dennis had called her two hours previously and informed her that the meeting had been set up for the next day. He'd repeated Elizabeth's 'take it or leave it' offer, and in response she had told him to reschedule any conflicting indoor appointments set up for the afternoon. She'd thanked him, wished him goodnight, and then set herself to contemplating this sudden shift in events.
Of course, she'd made it her mission to find out everything there was to know about Elizabeth when she became the head of the family. That the other woman had set out to challenge her came as no surprise.
It was certainly an odd state of affairs, as far as she could tell. According to all sources, Professor Hastings had taught nothing to his daughter in person, yet she seemed to have a natural instinct for what she was doing. It was almost as if she was destined to take up the role. Despite her upbringing, Monica had never given much credence to the concept of destiny, not until lately. After she had become the new leader of her people, she had begun to realise there really could be other forces at work. She considered the reasons why she was so keen to meet Elizabeth. Self–preservation certainly, but she was also intrigued by the woman. She had applied herself with a dedication and skill that had got her further than anyone else in a shorter space of time. It was something Monica could relate to. If rumours were to be believed, she had already avenged her father's death, killing the monsters that had murdered him. She pitied Professor Hastings and his daughter; she knew those creatures well and loathed the fact that they were frequently considered the same as her.
From the height of the penthouse, the city looked peaceful and still. The thickness of the glass kept out the sirens that screeched through the city at all hours of day and night. Down below was a world of pain and death and she was glad that she could shut it all out, even if just for one night.
10
Elizabeth was relieved to see David already seated at the café by the time she arrived. He'd chosen a table in the corner, a good spot that offered him a view of the entire room. It seemed her father had even included a little surveillance work as part of his training. He was reading a newspaper with a half empty cup of coffee close to hand. Elizabeth noted the bag at his feet and wondered just what kind of magic tricks it contained.
Elizabeth had thoroughly researched for this meeting in the short time available. She had bought a suit and the ladies briefcase told the world she was every inch the high powered business woman. It wasn't her usual look, but she could just about carry it off. Most importantly, it put her on a more level playing field with the woman she was about to meet. She scanned the café for Monica and once she was satisfied that she was yet to arrive, took a table three down from where David sat. Closer to the wall, but out of the sunlight that broke through the window. Elizabeth glanced at her watch. She was ten minutes early. She wasn't sure whether or not that gave her any kind of advantage. The waiter came over and she ordered a cappuccino, all the time resolutely avoiding eye contact with David.
At five past one, Elizabeth stopped playing nervously with the pendant around her neck and chanced another glance at her watch. Perhaps she had been wrong to call Monica's bluff. Maybe a lunchtime meeting was too hard to pull off.
And then she was there.
'Miss Hastings I presume?' Monica extended her hand with a bright smile. Elizabeth stood and placed her palm against the other woman's. 'Monica Carletto. Pleased to finally meet you.'
'Likewise.'
There was a silence while the waiter came over and took her order. The two women discretely eyed each other. Monica Carletto looked like she was in her early thirties, but Elizabeth knew appearances meant nothing.
'I see you've brought backup,' smiled Monica, indicating towards David with a slight nod of her head.
'How could you tell?' Elizabeth was impressed but she tried not to show it. She thought he had been the epitome of discretion.
'I've seen him before. He knew your father I believe.'
'He did.' Elizabeth was pleasantly surprised by Monica's direct approach. It made things easier. 'Did you know my father too?'
'Not personally, I'm afraid. By reputation though, most certainly. He was a highly respected man.'
'I'm surprised to hear you speak so well of him.'
'Please don't tar us all with the same brush. Your father and my predecessor had, how can I put it? A good working relationship. I was hoping that we could have the same.'
'It sounds like an interesting proposal, but I'm not sure what you want from me.'
'To discuss our options. I believe that we can be very useful to each other.'
'And here I was thinking we were natural enemies.'
'A reasonable assumption to make, but entirely erroneous.'
'Please enlighten me.' Elizabeth was cynical, but she thought she knew what Monica was trying to say. Elizabeth just wasn't entirely sure she was comfortable with the concept. She tried to buy more time by taking a slow, thoughtful sip of coffee.
'I know you've done your research Elizabeth. To use a painful example — please forgive me — it should be clear the creature that killed your father, and people such as myself, are as different as night and day.'
'Apart from a few fairly significant features.'
'Calling us all,' Monica seemed to lose her composure briefly, glancing around at nearby tables before lowering her voice, 'calling us all vampires is just so Nineteenth Century. That's like putting you with the apes and calling them human too. I'm sure you'd admit that you share some similarities with them just as I do, but they're still pretty far behind us on the evolutionary scale.'
'So you are saying that the monsters that killed my father are simply not as advanced?' It seemed like a weak excuse to Elizabeth.
'In the crudest possible terms, yes. I don't doubt that they've deliberately chosen to stay in the position they're in. When I discovered you'd had your revenge, I was hardly outraged. Rather pleased for you, in fact. Like I said earlier, your father was well respected by my people.'
'You have to understand Miss Carletto, I'm not privy to all the boundaries which separate your different clans.'
'Family is the correct term. Clan is considered too primitive. As is tribe. Our own version of political correctness,' she laughed. Elizabeth found herself smiling in response, against her wishes.
'Families then. But the fact still remains there are many, many things I don't fully understand yet. So I'm going to be sceptical until I have proof otherwise.'
'You and I have more in common than you realise Elizabeth. We're both reluctant players in this game. Becoming part of it was not our choice. It was a destiny. A destiny that was determined by the death of your father in both cases.'
'How is the death of my father responsible for your destiny?' Elizabeth sensed the woman sitting opposite her was telling the truth, as certain as she could ever be when relying on gut instinct. It was also illuminating, as if the gaps in her father's notes could one day be filled. She had been struggling to find answers on her own in Europe for far too long, and if Monica could help then Elizabeth was going to let her.
'Your father was in a position I think I can safely say no other man has been in. He made us all his life's work. More importantly, he strove to understand us. That's more than most people do if our paths chance to cross. Fear is, of course, a natural response, but one which your father didn't succumb to. Mankind has always been drawn to mysticism, though without ever truly understanding why. All sorts of things that seem to be part of some latent collective memory, if you will.'
'I think I've heard that somewhere before.'
'I wouldn't be surprised; it was your father who coined the phrase in relation to us. Our common ancestor that we share.' Monica s
miled kindly. 'Which leads me, in a round about kind of way, to why I wanted to meet you today. Your father's journals.'
Elizabeth visibly paled, instantly on her guard once more, suspicion oozing from every pore. Monica understood at once. She held up a palm in defence. 'I don't have your father's journals. But I assume you are here to look for them? Maybe we can help you in your hunt for them.'
'So they could be in your hands? I don't think so.' Elizabeth started to stand to leave, annoyed with herself that she had been lured like this.
'Actually, so they could be in your hands. Please, hear me out.' Monica placed her hand on Elizabeth's arm. It was unsurprisingly strong and Elizabeth fought the urge to pull away. 'We live in a tightly ordered world. Each family has many secrets. Not just traditions and customs — which I might add are mainly for show — but also our own very real share of mystical knowledge. We are careful to protect that information. Only the highest members of each family are told, just to make sure it is passed on, and they are bound to keep it to themselves. The families do not mix their knowledge Elizabeth, it would be far too dangerous.'
'Dangerous?' Elizabeth settled back down in her seat, reluctantly giving Monica the opportunity to explain herself.
'Well, ancient lore has it that there is a bigger mythology, greater than all of the families, greater than all of humanity. As long as we are kept fragmented, then it is safe. Well, dormant at least. But whoever brings it together will hold great powers, more than you can possibly imagine.'
'Sounds a bit far-fetched to me.' To Elizabeth's surprise, Monica burst out laughing.
'I'd heard you were cynical, I like that. I like that a lot. In fact, if circumstances were different, I'd ask you to come and work for me at MaxiData. We need more people like you.' As if reminded that there was another world going on around them, Monica checked her watch. 'I don't blame you for having doubts. You entered our world only very recently, I keep forgetting that. You could quite easily have dismissed your father as a crazy old man, but you didn't. Because a part of you, somewhere deep down, knew that it was true. You've seen now just how true it is.'
'I know. What surprises me is the fact that nobody else seems to.'
'My people have been consigned to the realms of popular fiction and teenage TV shows for a long time. What makes you think that people are going to start believing in us now?' Monica laughed again, but this time it was harsh and brittle. 'But anyway, whether or not you believe in it, your father certainly did, and so do we. You'll have the chance to judge for yourself. I hope. Your father had a highly privileged status. He knew of us, yet was not one of us. He researched. He studied. You know for yourself he made plenty of notes. But the really dangerous stuff? I believe he kept that in his journal. They were his ideas you see, not the hard facts that he put in his notes. His pet theories. From each and every family. Stuff that none of us could dream of knowing. People like me, well, I wouldn't want to know. What I already know is too big for me. But there are people, on all sides, who are crazy enough to want to bring it all together.'
'You make it sound like Armageddon.'
'It could be for all I know.'
'So how come it hasn't happened yet? My father's been dead for a while.'
'From what I guess, and you must remember that this was all before my time, your father never actually completed his theories. Obviously there is a piece, pieces hopefully, of the puzzle still missing. Whoever has them must be close though, if you are here. Those journals have been underground for years. I wish you'd called us in earlier.'
'Okay, I'll make a confession. I forgot about the journals myself until recently.' Elizabeth didn't add just how recently. 'When I started this, I was completely alone. David, my chaperone over there, is a man I only met yesterday. There was no reference to the journals in the rest of the notes. I simply forgot they existed.' She raised her palms in a helpless gesture.
'I can't believe you've done so much of it on your own,' sighed Monica. 'I can't believe your father didn't prepare you for any of this. No offence.'
'None taken. He just didn't want this for me. He wasn't to know that it was just meant to be.'
'Well, whatever it was that got the Professor on his chosen path, it's in your blood too.' Monica broke off and fished around in her handbag, taking out a business card.' This has my personal number on it. Please keep it somewhere safe. The last thing I want is to be constantly accessible to a bunch of crazies. And I mean that in the context of our discussion and MaxiData Corp work. You'd be surprised,' she rolled her eyes. 'But I'm serious, anything we can help you with, I will put my people entirely at your disposal.'
'How will they like that?'
'Not much, some of them. I'll be seen as consorting with the enemy. You don't quite have your father's respected status yet. But I know things they don't. They won't think about the bigger picture. For centuries there has been fighting within the families, each hoping for supremacy. It happens from time to time, but not in any truly long-lasting way. The equilibrium is maintained. I have a responsibility, first and foremost, to protect my people. If this is the way to do it, then my conscience is clean.' She stood up to go, placing a twenty dollar bill under her cup.
'I can see why you're a successful businesswoman,' Elizabeth stood up too, extending her hand. As she did so, Monica caught a glimpse of something shiny and gold around her neck. She recognised it at once.
'The Pendant of Lazarus. And I can see why you're such a good hunter.' She smiled once more, turned and left, and was lost within the crowd the next time Elizabeth looked.
11
David had watched the lunchtime meeting take place with an unshakeable sense of unease. Elizabeth was new to the scene so she couldn't be expected to know how it all worked already, but she seemed to be deliberately flouting some long established rules. Strange thing was, Monica Carletto seemed to be doing the same thing. Probably some female solidarity thing, he guessed.
From the moment he had spotted Monica out of the corner of his eye — taking care to make sure he didn't turn his head to allow any reaction to show on his face — the hairs on the back of his neck had begun to bristle. It was an unpleasant feeling, but one he now got whenever one of them was nearby. He had slowly, with a deliberate sense of unhurriedness, turned the pages of his newspaper, his eyes peering over the top to see if she had brought any kind of entourage with her. There seemed to be none. That was odd; Carletto the businesswoman usually seemed to have a PA surgically attached to her hip. Perhaps it was too much to expect for them both to make it out into the midday sun. Logic screamed out to him that this should be a trap, but it wasn't. His eyes scanned the passing crowds and other patrons of the café, but nothing set any alarm bells ringing.
Ten minutes in and it looked as though the two women were getting on like a house on fire. They looked a little too cosy for his liking, none of the respect and rigmarole that the Professor had needed to go through to have a meeting with the revered Giordano family. Especially its head. David wondered what the old boys' network would make of this. Despite keeping a low profile since the Professor's death, he had not been entirely idle over the years. Monica Carletto had been head of the family for a little while now, but for some reason she still hadn't been able to fully stamp her authority on it. David didn't know all of the traditions, but he did have contacts within the family, all of whom reported that there were a significant number who felt they'd somehow been cheated by the system. Even Monica had apparently doubted she should be in the position of responsibility at first. She may have been a highly successful leader in the outside world, but for many years she'd appeared to actively shun the family. It was the twenty-first century and young people had busy lives, no time for old traditions. She wasn't unusual in that respect. But it certainly hadn't marked her out as next in line to the throne. Those who had been excellent prospects for the leadership now had nothing, while older members remained disenchanted with a leader they barely knew and certainly didn't respect. Tra
dition dictated that they couldn't challenge her leadership, or they invariably would have done so by now.
Either way, David suspected they would have no idea that she was here, being all pally-pally with the daughter of Professor Jonathan Hastings, a man they had respected and feared in almost equal measure.
One day, Elizabeth would find out what life had been like for them all before her father's death. Until then, he was happy to sit back and watch how she played it.
12
Jack LeTraub had the same routine, every day of the week, Monday through Friday. It was always performed with clockwork precision, come hell or high water. Every afternoon at 2.45 he would leave his apartment, always nodding politely to the security guard on the door, to begin his afternoon jog. Headphones jammed firmly in his ears, he felt safely cocooned from the rest of the world. Skipping his way down the steps outside his building, he turned left and began to pick up speed, jogging at a medium to fast pace for two blocks. At that time of day, there was seldom anyone to get in his way. Two blocks from his apartment, the buildings gave way to a glorious expanse of green and Jack sprinted this part, taking the path directly through the park, beginning to build up a sweat.
The other side of the park was far more suburban than his concrete towers, and he slowed back down to a fast jog as he followed the footpath back down to the university. On hot, sunny days, the lawns outside the main building would be filled with students, lying on the grass, surrounded by text books. To Jack, they appeared to be a throbbing mass of intellect, although he knew the reality was probably a lot further from the truth. On cold days, the winter afternoons of his routine, the lawns would be bare, maybe an occasional student, wrapped in a scarf, hugging a clutch of books to their chest.
Rainy days or fine, the university grounds held little to detract from his run. Further along the road, the university gave way to the suburbs proper, and before long Jack would be running alongside the local high school. Here, halfway through his run and his ritual, he would slow down, catch his breath, and move past the school at a pace that was little more than a fast walk. By this point, the blood would usually be pounding in his ears alongside his music, and sweat soaked his clothes like a greasy stain down the front and back. By now it was always 3.15. Jack would hear the bell and know that it was time to think about picking up his pace again. Occasionally, he would fail to do this in time and find himself surrounded by conversations and shouts that somehow penetrated his earplugs in a way that no other distraction on his tour could.
