“Oh yeah? You can’t handle this shit, trust me,” Renny snarked, playing with her. “Yeah, we will see about that, won’t we?” She must have hung up, because he hit the power button on the phone and handed it back over.
He put his hand up; he wanted nothing to do with it. This had to be a hoax, some joke being played at his expense, but to what end? Why go through all this trouble? He was nobody, and not worth this amount of effort. It had sounded like his wife, but anything could be mimicked electronically these days, all the information they needed pumped from social media and regurgitated back at him. Maybe his own need for her to be alive was fooling him into thinking it was possible. “I’m good, thanks.”
“She will call back.”
“I’m not sure I’ll want to answer when she does,” he confessed, and it wasn’t lost on him how tragic that statement was. “I need another cigarette.”
Renny laughed, “I bet.” The pack resurfaced and within a short span they were both sucking on the end of a cigarette butt; two clouds of smoke rising into the humid night. “The only way we can track her is by keeping her on the phone. I know how hard it is, hearing her voice again, hearing that twisted shit she has to say, but we can’t put an end to all of this until we know where she is. You have to keep her talking.”
A phone rang, giving him a start, and Renny apologized as he pulled a different phone out and put it to his ear. “Yeah? I know, Speedy. I just told him that. Well, we figured she’d stay in town. That the best we got? Well, it’s a hell of a big area man, no way we can just roll through there and happen to come across her. We need to narrow it down. No, he did good. You can tell Naomi to back off, I can the shit she’s talking in the background. All right, we’ll be in in a few. I know it’s late, but call in a pizza, I’m fucking starving. Been staking this man’s place out all night and Ezio refused to—okay. Thanks.”
The last time he’d eaten the sun had been up, he could remember that much, but whether that was sometime the day before or even the evening before that, he couldn’t remember. Either way, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich hadn’t been overly filling, so the mention of pizza immediately made his stomach growl.
It was not lost on his host. Chuckling, Renny slapped him on the shoulder, “guess I should have asked what you wanted, huh? You probably won’t care for ham and pineapple; quite a few bitch about it. But Naomi can’t stand it, best way to keep her from woofing it down before you can get hands on. Just whatever you do, don’t get anchovies. Ezio loves the shit out of them and we end up smelling it most of the night.”
“I could eat the ass out of a dead rhinoceros,” he quoted, the man smiling once more.
He expected a confused look, a weird smirk, and a shake of a head. Instead, Renny laughed and said, “think you and I are going to get along. Think the last movie Naomi saw had a flying horse and a girl throwing rainbows out of her arse. Ezio is more of a gamer. And Speedy rarely takes his eyes off a computer monitor. Though, if you are into MMO’s, he’s your guy. Nothing worse than going vampire hunting on a raid night, let me tell you what.”
He smiled and shook his head, “Not much of a gamer these days, too busy with work, and then, you know, all of this. Hell, I don’t know how you’re going to get a pie out here anyhow, everything is closed,” he commented, trying to distract himself from the conversation he’d just had with his dead wife; it wasn’t working.
“Yeah, we pay the manager to keep it open all night just for us. He likes the extra cash and their employees don’t bitch about the overtime,” the man grinned, flicking his cigarette and staring at the stars.
“It sounded just like her, and then it didn’t,” he commented, going over what she’d said and trying to pinpoint when that shift had happened. Was it the forced tears or the lies? Maybe it was just the fact that she kept insisting that he come home, without asking about his welfare past the opening greeting. Amanda would have insisted on knowing everything, would have pushed to get those secretive emotions drug up to the surface and exposed; it was how she was built.
Renny nodded. “She has access to all that Amanda knew, all that she was, and she is good at mimicking who she used to be. She had a lot of practice at it. Yet, things still fall through the cracks. If you hold out long enough, pressure her, she’ll eventually show her true colors. The one thing these things don’t have is patience. Which is ironic, when you think about it. Longer lifespans and all.”
“Why even bother mimicking her at all? I mean, why even show up at the apartment? She could have gone anywhere she wanted, done anything she wanted, and I never would have suspected a thing. If she is as you say, then there’s plenty of unsuspecting people out there for her to feed on, why is she so focused on me?” he asked, not truly giving in, but starting to at least consider the possibilities. “She wasn’t a picky eater, when she was alive, that is.” That phone call had shaken him to the core and even though he masked his pain through failed attempts at humor, there was no denying that something really fucked up was going on. He wasn’t ready to say the word vampire, but it was bouncing around in the back of his mind.
“They tend to be obsessed with people they knew in life, whether it’s due to their former bonds or if it’s a part of their sadistic nature, we don’t know for sure. Hookers go back and kill their pimps, boyfriends eat their girlfriends, and quite a few go after their parents. It’s very non-discriminatory and each case is unique. As strong as your connection was with her, the level of love the two of you shared, I would have been surprised if she had moved on. It’d be like having a song in the back of your mind, constantly driving you nuts until you play it and get it out of your system. Which was why we were all camped out at your place, the odds overwhelming high that she would return,” Renny explained, standing upright and starting to move towards the front of the Humvee.
The gravel beneath his feet crunched as they walked forward, the lights from the nearby house finally coming into view. It looked like an old plantation house which had been recently renovated. It had two stories, the white-gray paint looking weathered and untouched, but there were electrical lights illuminating several of the dozen draped windows. The porch light was modern, its orange glow giving the place a welcoming aura about it, despite the cast iron door and bars over the windows. It looked to be well fortified, and several rooms were dark, not from a lack of light, but from light gray shutters that had been installed at some point in the recent past.
“We are members of the Legacy Foundation,” Renny explained as they moved onto the cobblestone walkway, the short grass slightly overgrown but not overly abundant with weeds, as most of these places were known to be. “They have properties all across the world. We never know where we’re going to be from one week to the next, what roost we will be nesting in. We rolled in about a week ago but haven’t really been here much. There’s no set amount of time that needs to pass before they rise again. Sometimes it’s a week, other times it’s been a few hours. It requires round the clock surveillance and if we’re not Johnny-on-the-spot, people die.”
“Every time I hear one of you say that, it’s messed me up. She died a week ago, how did you know to be here?” he asked. He was not fully invested in any of this, but he didn’t want to discuss what had just transpired; the phone call was still giving him the creeps.
“Speedy has an algorithm that monitors coroners’ reports for specific criteria. Your wife’s autopsy report sent up some flags and we were on the plane from Baltimore immediately after,” Renny explained as he walked up the steps to the front porch, his body turning as he pitched his cigarette into the yard. “We’ll get our asses kicked if we smoke inside. Ayana gets a bit testy about it.”
He dropped his on the ground and crushed it with his foot, his mouth feeling a bit dry, a nasty aftertaste assaulting his taste buds. “Think you promised me a drink.”
“I sure did,” Renny answered, opening the black iron door and pushing the inner one open, a hand out to gesture that he should go insid
e.
“The police didn’t mention anything odd about her autopsy,” he commented, then shook his head, “you’d think that if she were a vampire, having her insides taken out and inspected might put a hamper on her rising from the dead. They take out the brain, weigh the heart, crack open the ribs. Wouldn’t she have woken on the table screaming? Or did it all just heal up after they sewed her back together?”
They entered the foyer of the house, the walls painted in a bright white coating that reflected the light from the chandelier overhead. There was a closed door on either side and the chamber that he was in opened up into a much larger room. There was a winding staircase just to the left, leading to the floor above, and he would hate to think what would happen should he trip and fall down something as narrow as that. Just looking at it made him feel claustrophobic.
It was like stepping onto the set of Gone with the Wind and he wondered why a group of vampire hunters would choose to take up residence in a place like this. What was it about the Victorian era that seemed to just scream vampire? Lestat, Claudia, and Louis would feel right at home here.
The enormity of the planation house really hit home. His apartment building wasn’t this big. How could they even afford a place like this? The upkeep had to be expensive, especially if no one was ever really there year-round. It wasn’t like they had jobs. Then again, he knew nothing about them; he was making assumptions on limited knowledge and that was dangerous when dealing with people with automatic weapons and an urging to kill your wife.
The walls may have been freshly painted, but other that and the modern electrical appliances, it looked scarcely lived in and undecorated. There were no paintings or murals, no fancy drapes, statues, or busts; it was very utilitarian.
Renny had opened the door on the right and was looking at him expectedly. “Big place? I know. I’m not here often and haven’t fully explored it myself. Never seems to be enough time. We show up, do the job, and then move on to the next with very little downtime inbetween.”
The room he was being led into vastly contrasted with what he’d seen so far; it was hacker heaven. The walls were painted black, making everything within seem darker than it actually was, and the furniture was either black or chrome as well, nearly disappearing in the soft glow of the half-lit floor lamps. A large fridge was on the left wall with two microwaves on the counter beside it, looking heavily used and implying that the actual kitchen was rarely occupied. A sink was filled with dishes, the cupboard overhead revealing bare shelves unhidden by the forgotten open doors.
Centered in the large room was a U-shaped computer desk with nine monitors, the main display looking to be a 52” plasma. Speedy was sitting in a chair that was decked out with all the niceties; neck pillow, lumbar support, foot rest, and it looked like it could recline as well, giving the occupant the ability to take a nap without ever getting up.
Probably doesn’t help the sore ass much though.
There were a series of monitors on the wall on the right, dark for the moment, but looking to be used for presentations. The couch on the opposite wall looked to be regularly used, clothes littering the floor between it and a door on the far corner, which was probably a bathroom; a newer addition as the room looked added onto not built into the original structure. If he had to guess, Speedy probably never left this room unless on urgent business, and probably even rarely then.
“Oi keep pingin’ ‘er cell but Oi tink she tuk de battery oyt,” Speedy told them without glancing their way, his fingers flying over a keyboard as he moved from one screen to another.
He couldn’t make out what the youth was working on, it just looked like terminals and coding, nothing really visually interesting.
“She’s getting help from someone else. A fledgling wouldn’t be overly concerned with us being able to track her. Someone with experience is feeding her advice,” Renny said, walking over and putting a hand on the back of the youth’s chair. “We got a line on who that is yet?”
“If it were dat easy, we wouldn’t really nade de lassy den wud we?” Speedy returned, sparing him a brief glance and a nod. “Sorry aboyt yisser troubles mucker, wish we met under better circumstances. Den again, Oi only ever meet new people in times loike dis, stuk wi’ dees blokes jist aboyt every second av every day. Whaich wud be gran’, if we ‘ad a lady less av a—,” the boy paused to glance around, trying to make sure it was just the three of them, then continued, “wanker than de wan we ‘av.”
“I’m sure she’s been called worse than a wanker. Though, that’d likely get you slapped around a bit,” Renny laughed. “No one enjoys her nickname better than she.”
“Nickname? As in ya’ll are Seal Team Four and everyone as code names like Tex or Artic Tiger?” he jested, trying to make light of the situation.
The man’s eyes narrowed as he returned the stare, the smile dropping a bit.
They really do see themselves that way. Holy shit, who am I dealing with here?
“I’ve seen things that will make a Seal piss his pants. Demonic entities that will make the strongest man scream and instantly go insane. There are worlds beyond this one and even the hardest refined metal will break under the constant buffeting winds of chaos,” Renny told him in a severe tone, his voice sounding almost mechanical. Then suddenly it wiped away, like clouds instantly dissolving into nothingness and the smile reformed, “we call her Reina Perra.”
His look of confusion made the other man chuckle.
“Queen Bitch.”
“Oh.” That’s about right, actually.
“Speedy, can you throw up Mrs. Crawford’s autopsy report? Thanks,” Renny said as the large monitor on the right turned on, a couple of pages appearing on the screen before them.
He walked over and began reading, his eyes flowing over the standard measurements and details, looking for anything abnormal. He couldn’t see anything, but then, he wouldn’t know what to look for even if there was anything amiss. He was no pathologist and never had any inclination to be. “What am I looking for?”
“Nothing that you or anyone else would notice. On it’s own it’s nothing, but when weighed with other factors combined, it points to the fact that your wife was drained of her blood shortly before her death, her body discarded like a used Capri Sun,” the man said, the visual in his mind giving him a shiver. “Your wife’s death was declared to be natural causes. She suffered a massive heart attack, which they surmised killed her before she even knew it was happening. But in reality, she died of hypovolemic shock. The sudden loss of blood caused the heart to stop when it didn’t have enough fluid to keep it pumping. It wasn’t sudden, she felt every second of it, and these two tick bites they noted on her neck? Those are fang marks. If the pathologist knew what to look for, he’d have called this a homicide, but people don’t see what’s in front of their own eyes, their beliefs blinding them to the truth.”
She felt every second of it. His heart was breaking.
“Sorry,” Renny apologized. “Got wrapped up in what I was telling you that I forgot the sugarcoating. You do this enough, you start treating it like an everyday occurrence and forget there are actual people on the other side of this.”
“No, you did it on purpose, to try and make me see the truth. I’ve been reluctant to believe anything ya’ll have been telling me and you’re using shock and awe to snap me out of it,” he declared, turning away from the death certificate and looking at the hacker nearby. “So, you have these findings show up on a report, your algorithm or whatever sniffs and picks it up, and you immediately hop on a plane to go hunting for vampires? Couldn’t it have just been a coincidence? How do you know for sure that’s what she is? There has to be a host of scientific explanations for her current state, for the cause of her death, what exactly is supernatural about any of this?”
“When we get alerted to a situation like this, we have to be quick about it. Whether we end up chasing our tails over nothing doesn’t matter,” Renny told him as he walked over to the cupboards, pull
ed down two glasses and a bottle of the promised bourbon. “Vampirism is a highly contagious virus and once a new host is created, things can spiral out of control extremely quickly. If we aren’t there to contain it when the first host rises, it can spread like a plague, rabid and devastating. And if for some reason we miss it and don’t get there in time, the local vampires usually take action on their own, as it draws too much attention to their hunting grounds, forcing them to move on if things get too hot for them. It is rare that a fledgling runs rampant through a city without a master’s leash around its neck. Which probably means your wife is an accidental conversion. They would have kept her contained during her formative weeks otherwise.”
“Accidental conversion? How you do accidentally make someone a vampire?” he blurted. This conversation was absurd to begin with, but the assertion that his wife’s transformation was a mistake, a freak act of nature, was over the limit. It was like saying a rapist accidentally put his dick in his victim. They were just walking along, slipped, and whoops, sorry about that.
Yeah right.
“’Owl up, incomin’ call,” Speedy spoke up, interrupting Renny’s answer as the man handed him a glass of bourbon.
The sound that erupted from his cellphone instilled fear in his heart; it was the tone his Facetime made when he got a video call. He did not want to try talking to her face to face; his strength would fade completely.
“You need to pick it up,” Renny told him firmly, his eyes steady, a hand reaching out to grip his shoulder. “We need to track her, and we can’t do that without your ability to keep her on the phone. The strength of your bond will cause her to think irrationally, spend longer than she needs to talking. Her urgency to kill you is a weakness we need to exploit.”
He downed the glass of bourbon then looked at his phone, his wife’s picture displayed on the screen, his heart breaking at the thought of the monster that had replaced her reaching out from the grave to talk to him. In the deep recesses of his heart, he needed to remember, this wasn’t her, this wasn’t the woman he loved. He could not allow this thing destroy the memories he cherished most dear. He would not learn to hate the love of his life.
Legacy Sanguis Page 5
