“Jerk,” Ruth said frowning.
“I’ve been called worse. I’ll text you later... unless of course I get lucky.”
“Jerk,” Ruth repeated.
Derrel pulled the take-out bag from his mini fridge. “Here. Heat this up for three minutes. It will change your world. Seriously, it’s the best pot pie I’ve ever had.”
When Ruth did not immediately reach for the bag, Derrel set it down in front of her then began to stuff things into his laptop bag.
“A pot pie? Do you really think I can be distracted by a pot pie?”
“It’s not just a potpie. It’s a Que-T-Pie, and you are not coming.”
Ruth ramped up into full sales pitch mode. “Please, take me. Two sets of eyes are better than one. I can totally help.”
She did not whine, which Derrel was grateful for, but she did pout. And Derrel had to admit that it was a sexy pout; she must have practiced it in the mirror to be so good at it. A combination of innocent and sultry; she could open an acting school that specialized in just that facial expression and make a fortune.
Derrel shook his head to focus.
“Absolutely not going to happen.”
He caught a flash of something else cross her face, replacing the pout for just a fraction of an instant – concern, mixed with anger.
Strange.
Derrel focused on Ruth’s features more intently, but whatever he thought he had seen was gone, firmly replaced with the sexy pout. She did not say anything else; she just watched him gather his things, her eyes following his every move.
Derrel paused at the door. “Look, whatever I get tonight we will go over tomorrow. You can help me sort through and connect any dots that need connecting. I promise.”
Ruth rolled her eyes.
“Have a great night,” Derrel said, smiling. He paused. “I know I will.”
Ruth’s face went blank, and then she laughed. The laughter froze Derrel in place. It was not a ha-ha-funny laugh. No, it was a deep, knowing laugh.
She gave him a little wave.
Derrel turned then walked briskly to the elevators.
Ruth’s laugh trailed after him, mocking him, until the doors of the elevator slid shut.
CHAPTER three
Derrel followed the directions the monotone GPS voice from his phone provided to an industrial park in Marietta. He parked then verified the address. This was the place. A generic-looking cluster of small warehouses with small nondescript office fronts. The offices faced the parking lot Derrel was standing in. It was the kind of place where you would find a small plumbing company or print shop. But the ladies had been clear that they were throwing a dinner party here... weird. Why not at their house, like he thought. It almost felt deserted. There were no other cars in the lot, and the only noise came from the early evening traffic a few blocks over.
Derrel checked the charge on his phone, popped an Altoid into his mouth, then ran his fingers over his hair. “Enough waves to make a sister seasick,” he whispered as his fingertips traversed the hills and valleys of his short, faded hair.
The intense attraction he had felt earlier in the day began to stir in his chest. His journalistic instincts were piqued, but the desire to see the ladies, to be on the receiving end of their sexy, flirty attention, was the overriding emotion driving him forward.
Derrel crossed to the office door with the correct suite number. There was no signage on the door – nothing to indicate that it was the headquarters of Que-T-Pies. He cupped his eyes then peered through the glass. It was an empty reception area: no furniture... just bare, white walls, cheap gray carpet, and a door on the far side of the room, presumably leading back into more offices and the warehouse.
Strange.
Derrel located a white button next to the door then gave it a push. After a moment, the door buzzed and clicked. Derrel waited a moment then, after no further instructions came, pushed on the door. It swung open silently. Derrel stood in the open doorway. He could not explain it, but he suddenly felt apprehensive, as if he was standing at the mouth of a cave instead of an office in the middle of a busy city... a cave whose dark recesses hid... what? Some unseen, unnamed danger? Was his intuition sending him a warning signal?
Ridiculous, Derrel chided himself. He stepped into the office, letting the door shut behind him. Again he paused, waiting for someone to show up and escort him back. After a minute, Derrel decided to push forward. He crossed to the interior door, which was unlocked, then he passed through into an equally generic and drab hallway. Derrel could now hear music – techno.
Wonderful, he thought, rolling his eyes.
Derrel followed the music to the end of the hall, where he pushed through another door into the warehouse proper. The Que-T-Pies buses were parked to one side of the large space.
Derrel shivered.
The thumping bass of the music vibrated the floor under his feet. The warehouse had been divided into a bay for the buses on the left and what appeared to be an additional office space on the right. The music was pouring from the office space. Derrel slowly approached the door that led into the office area, and the apprehensive feeling crept up the back of his neck again.
Get over it, bruh!
At that point, knocking seemed ridiculous, but he knocked anyway. It was crazy; nobody would be able hear a thing over the music. Derrel reached for the doorknob, but the door flew open to reveal a grinning Chioma... a very wet and very naked grinning Chioma.
Derrel’s eyes grew to the size of grapefruits. She was magnificent. The perfection hinted at their first meeting was confirmed. Chioma’s skin was flawless; her firm body perfectly sculpted.
Derrel emitted a shocked squeak.
Chioma reached out then grasped his arm in a steel grip.
“M. Derrel, you’re late,” she purred.
Chioma yanked him into the room with such force that his feet left the floor. Derrel started to squeak again – she was frighteningly strong – but the sound died in his throat when the room she pulled him into swam into focus.
Blood. Lots of it. And bodies.
The room was tiled, floor to ceiling, like a sauna. A large drain was centered in the floor. The need for the copious amount of tile and the drain was immediately obvious: ease of clean up.
The average human body contains anywhere from a gallon to a gallon and a half of blood, and it looked as if there was at least three or four bodies worth of blood splashed around the room.
Damilola also naked, was in the process of cleaning herself up. She stood in the midst of multiple showerheads – one in the ceiling and two at torso level. The water blasting her perfect curves from multiple angles was very efficient in sluicing off the layer of blood and gore that covered her body.
Ini was finishing off her... meal? The pretty nurse-doctor from that afternoon lay slumped in Ini’s arms, Ini’s mouth hungrily sucking at a gash in the unconscious woman’s neck.
Ini was a messy eater. Some of the blood escaped, spurting out from between her lips. She growled in pure contentment as she drained the life from the woman in her arms.
Derrel had a moment of clarity where he was able to take in the entire scene. There were several more bodies lying discarded around the room, and Derrel knew instinctively that they had all been drained of their blood in the same manner as the young woman Ini was eating. The room was humid and smelled of sweat and blood. A taste like wet, dirty pennies filled Derrel’s mouth, and he gagged.
This is not real.
This can’t be real. It’s some kind of art-performance thing.
It has to be.
Derrel choked out a giggle, then his eyes rolled back, and his knees buckled. If Chioma had not had a grip on him, he would have gone down... hard.
“Whoopsie-daisy,” Chioma said.
She easily bore his entire weight one handed. She kept him on his feet, using her other hand to pull his lolling head upright. “Wakey, wakey, M. Derrel. The fun is just getting started.”
De
rrel heard the words but could not process them. His whole body felt as if it was melting. Bones, muscles, and organs... nothing felt solid. The room around him melted into a red and white smear. He knew that Chioma was talking, but the sound was muffled as if he was underwater. He was moving. Was he walking? No, his feet were dragging uselessly across the floor. Chioma was half-carrying, half-dragging him out of the kill room.
All those bodies... all that blood. Chioma, Damilola, and Ini... they’re... they’re muderers! Cannibals?
Derrel’s mind fought against him. It refused to accept the word. But there was no other explanation... no other way to describe what he had just witnessed and no other name by which to describe the three sexy women.
Vampires.
The ladies of Que-T-Pies were vampires.
CHAPTER four
Derrel realized that they had stopped. At some point, Chioma had tossed him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry then lugged him up a set of stairs. They were still inside the building; Derrel was sure of that. He tried to focus on his surroundings: a dark room, no windows, and one door. His uncooperative eyes made it hard to see details. In the gloom, he could just make out a pattern of odd geometric shapes.
Chain-link fencing... it was chain-link fencing. But a fence inside did not make sense. Chioma tossed him. One moment, he was hanging upside down from her shoulder, trying to calm his spinning brain, and the next moment, he was tumbling in midair. Chioma had thrown him the way a regular person would toss a bag of garbage into a dumpster. Derrel pinwheeled his arms and legs, searching for purchase. His flight through space ended abruptly when his body smashed into a cinderblock wall. The impact knocked the air out of his lungs. Derrel crumpled to the concrete floor, heaving for breath. A metal bang brought his gaze around to Chioma. She stood smiling on the other side of a chain-link fence door.
A kennel.
Derrel was in a dog kennel.
“You need to stop being such a big pussy, M. Derrel. Maybe try some deep breathing exercises to help center yourself.” Chioma illustrated her point by taking in a few deep breaths, eyes closed and hands gesturing in and out. “Like that.”
“What... why... what...?” Derrel’s brain was still in freak-out mode, and completing a coherent sentence was impossible.
“Whah-whah-whah. Come on, M. Derrel! You can do better than that.”
Derrel looked away, frustrated.
“No? Okay, maybe later, then.” Chioma turned to leave but then stopped short; she peered back at him over her shoulder. “By the way, M. Derrel, if it makes you feel better, you’re free to scream your pretty little head off. No one will hear you.” She flashed her big, sexy smile then closed the door.
Derrel was not sure how long he lay there in the dark on the cold concrete – ten minutes, an hour, two hours? However long it was, it was long enough for his mind to finally start calming down. He had accepted the fact that Chioma, Damilola, and Ini had murdered at least five people, because that’s the number of bodies he had counted in the kill room. Of course, there was no doubt in his mind that this was not the first time the three of them had done this. The number of victims could be in the hundreds. But he could not go there – not yet; he had to deal with only the current facts.
“Hello?”
Derrel jerked upright then scuttled back into a corner of the kennel. The voice had been real, he was sure of that, and it had come from the darkness to his left.
“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to scare you.” It was a soft, female voice.
“Who are you? What are you doing here?” Derrel demanded. But his voice sounded weak and frightened even to himself. It could be one of them just messing with him, but he had not heard the door open, had he?
A face appeared from the darkness, the light from under the door just enough to illuminate her features.
Azza Anjai.
Derrel recognized her from the pictures Ruth had dug up. Azza was in the kennel one over from his. Derrel slid forward closer to the chain link to get a better look. She, like the other three, had changed drastically. If Derrel looked closely, he could still see the teenager she had been, but whatever process had turned Chioma and the others into super models, Azza had been involved.
“You’re Azza.”
Azza blinked in surprise. “How do you know my name? Are you with the police?” She sounded hopeful.
Derrel shook his head. “No. I’m a reporter. I’m doing... was doing a story on the... um, pop-up restaurant scene.”
“Oh.” Azza looked down, defeated. “It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. At this point, they’re probably unstoppable.”
“You know what they are?” Derrel still couldn’t bring himself to say the word vampire out loud. “What they’re doing to people?”
“Yes, I helped create them.”
Derrel’s mouth fell open. He started to slowly slide back into his corner.
“It’s not like that. I’m not like them. Something went wrong. None of this was supposed to happen.” Azza was almost crying. “They were my best friends, and now they’re monsters. We were just trying to help, you know... be a positive force in the world.”
Derrel looked over his shoulder at the door, straining to hear anything. What if this was some kind of trick? Maybe Azza was the leader of this psycho gang of people eaters? Maybe this was all part of the game? Maybe they liked to play with their food before they ate it?
And if that was true?
What could Derrel do about it? If he was going to die, at least he wanted to hear the story first. Despite his current employment, he was a real journalist at heart. He had to know.
Derrel turned back to Azza. “What exactly were you guys trying to do that would cause this?” He waved his hand in the direction of the door and the three women beyond.
“We – all four of us – are scientists. We—”
Derrel cut her off. “I know this part. You’re all a bunch of genius Georgia Tech graduates. But how do you go from that to what I saw downstairs? They are, you know, they’re...” Derrel had to say it. To make it real, he had to say it. “They’re vampires.”
Derrel slumped down, dropping his head into his hands. Even though he had been able to say it, he still could not believe it. Vampires were real. How many of them were out there walking around, preying on an unsuspecting population? If there were three, there had to be more, right? And how did the Que-T-Pies ladies walk around in the daytime? Wasn’t there supposed to be rules that even vampires had to follow?
“Oh, they’re not vampires.”
Derrel’s head snapped up.
“At least, not in the traditional sense.”
“Traditional sense?” Derrel was incredulous. “They are eating people; drinking their blood. There are countless books and movies that all agree that is pretty much the definition of vampire.”
“Well, a better classification would be Ejeje – blood witch.”
“A blood what?”
“A blood witch, or a person who uses blood magic to do things that would be considered supernatural,” explained Azza.
“Blood magic? Like hocus-pocus, abracadabra shit?”
“If you consider hocus-pocus stuff to be things such as energy manipulation, which includes telekinesis, levitation, and mind control, then yes.”
Derrel’s brain reeled again. He had just started to accept the idea of vampires, but now… magic?
“I don’t understand. How is something like magic—real magic—kept a secret?”
“That’s a good question. We stumbled on it by accident ourselves. Chioma found an old alchemy book at a garage sale...”
“A garage sale,” repeated Derrel.
“I know, right? But yeah, that’s where it all started... a two-dollar book from a garage sale. We were just goofing around, following one of the spells in the book. It was a game... you know, a hobby. It was something to help our minds decompress from our daily routines.”
Derrel scooted forward, caught up in the story.
“We couldn’t follow any of the spells – not exactly anyway – because some of the ingredients have no modern equivalent. So we used our knowledge of science to make substitutions. We chose things that seemed appropriate and, well, it worked.”
“What worked? What did you guys do?”
“It was a spell to make our fingernails long, sexy… and unbreakable.” Azza held up her hand, wiggling her fingers. The nails were long and perfect; they looked just like Chioma’s nails. Azza then dropped her hand to the concrete and used the nail on her index finger to gouge a small groove in the cement floor.
Derrel’s eyes nearly bugged out of his head. He leaned over to get a closer look. Azza dug a second groove next to the first.
Whoa.
“If you can do that then can’t you just... you know...” Derrel rattled the chain link, “rip this fence to pieces?”
Azza shook her head. “It’s complicated.”
“What’s complicated? You could get us out of here, and we could call the FBI, or the Navy Seals, or the Fruit of Islam, or somebody.”
“I tried to escape; it didn’t work. The three of them are different; the magic did something to them that it didn’t do to me.”
“But now there are two of us; we could try again. I’ve got a car right outside,” Derrel pleaded. He did not want to die in this warehouse, and he was pretty sure that was exactly where things were headed.
“It won’t work. The little bit of magic I could do has been dampened.” Azza held up her hand again then pointed out a thin silver bracelet around her wrist. “This is stopping me from accessing the little power I have. I can’t get it off, and I’ve tried everything.”
Derrel’s argument died in his throat as the door banged open. He spun around to see Chioma, Ini, and Damilola framed in the doorway.
Ini spoke first. “Oh, good. You’re up.”
“And look, ladies,” Damilola chuckled. “It seems our dear M. Derrel has been putting the moves on Azza.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Derrel caught Azza moving backward into the farthest corner of her kennel.
Q-T-Pies (The Savannah Swan Files Book 0) Page 3
