by Gwynn White
Girard knew Greg wasn’t just trying to deflect a Guardian’s curiosity. He was being truthful. The impulse was understandable. Girard knew very few vampires who hadn’t healed at least one human they came to love or feel responsible for. It was too dangerous now, though. Such actions were best left to a more accepting history, when miracles were taken as events to be celebrated rather than studied. The impulse to fix a broken human was as much a part of vampire constitution as the heat they generated. Many thought it was an evolutionary imperative, one that made their coexistence with humans—or rather, their parasitical existence through humans—one that humans accepted as a species. For them, one member might be lost, but many could be healed.
It was only a theory, though. And those theories were unprovable, that part of history a murky chapter too far back in time to fully unravel. And also, heretical.
“I understand,” Girard said to stop the flow of words. “And in all other respects? Family connections and so on.”
“He’s a fine fit. Only a grandmother and she’s in a memory care facility. Alzheimer’s. We’ve been informed that his parents may or may not be alive, but the mother abandoned him as a baby. They’re out of the picture.”
“We’ll arrange the transfer straight away then. Be ready to accommodate that.” Before he could go further in making arrangements, the phone in his pocket buzzed with Borona’s ring tone. “I’m sorry, but this is important.”
Without further explanation, he answered the phone and moved to the other end of the room. “What do you have?” he asked by way of greeting.
“You’re going to want to get home, Boss. You were right.”
“About which part? There being more bodies missing or the fire?”
“Take your pick. There is something seriously messed up going on. You’re going to have to see it for yourself.”
It was rare to hear this kind of excitement in Borona’s voice, and not the good kind of excitement either. Girard turned to glance in the doctor’s direction, but he was politely refraining from showing any sign of hearing the conversation, though he probably could. Girard needed to get out of this hospital and back in the car where he could speak freely. It wouldn’t do to let this sort of thing get out. The last thing they needed was a rumor-fueled vampire panic. And that would happen. Fear of discovery was something they lived with at all times. It was easy to spark that anxiety into fear.
“I’ll call you back in a few. And I’m on my way,” he said, then hung up the phone.
When he joined the doctor at the bedside, Greg asked, “Everything okay?”
“Fine. Just Guardian business,” he answered, knowing that would stop any further questions.
A thought had occurred to Girard while he was on the other side of the room, stirred by the sight of the doctor’s wrist when he reached out to check the patient’s IV regulating machine. He would need to handle this gently, but it definitely needed handling before he left this room. As a Guardian, he had a responsibility to all vampires.
“Greg, let me see your arms.” He said it softly, but firmly.
The doctor looked down as if embarrassed, but pulled up his sleeves to reveal his lower arms. The inner surfaces of his forearms—where the skin was thin and the veins and arteries visible—were almost completely covered by pale dots. Like the ones they all carried on their palms, these were places where the whip-ends of tentacles could protrude. The difference was that these weren’t heat-shedding tentacles, but ones used for healing. The fact that he had so many pale spots spoke to an incredible number of healings. The more often a vampire healed others, the more of these tendrils they grew. Girard had a few of them. This man had dozens upon dozens.
With a sigh, Girard took one of the proffered arms and pulled the sleeve higher, exposing even more of the pale spots above his elbow. Letting him go, he asked, “How old are you? How long have you been in this body?”
Greg met his eyes with some surprise. “You don’t know? I thought the Guardians knew everything about us.”
“No, even for me there are too many to keep track of. I’ll remember now, though. Answer the questions.”
“This is my only body. I’m one hundred and thirteen, as of last month.”
That was a surprise. The man didn’t seem so young, but then again, did a human with grey hair seem young? They didn’t. It was an artificiality to assign the label of youth to a vampire with so few years. It was all relative.
Examining Greg anew, Girard saw the tell-tale signs of a body born with a vampire already in place. The lack of childhood scars, that tiny bit of extra height that came from delayed maturity, the missing sun damage usually present on almost all humans who reach their twenties. This also explained his need to care for humans. This vampire had not yet had to change bodies, not yet had to face the inevitable truth of his existence. For him, life was still like it was from birth. Different, yes, but the mirror still showed him the face he was born with.
“You’ve healed a lot of people to carry that many tendrils. You know the rules,” Girard said at last.
“And I follow them. I never heal those who might be tested. I try to heal those who don’t even know they’re sick yet. I go on missions every year to places that have little medicine and work there. I’m very careful.”
He nodded, not saying anything more. If nothing else, Greg would exercise greater caution in the future, not wanting to risk being told to stop entirely. And Girard didn’t really want the young vampire to stop. Not really. He sighed, which only served to make his hunger stronger. He had a great many hours in the car until he got back to the compound, and he would have to wait until then.
Free-range feeding was not something a Guardian should engage in.
Greg must have noticed, because he touched Girard’s sleeve and said, “You smell of age. Do you require feeding?”
Girard shrugged. “You know how it is, stress makes us need more. I’m fine.”
Pulling a small vial from the pocket of his white coat, he offered it and said, “Why wait? I meant to offer you refreshment anyway.”
Girard glanced at the tiny vial with its shiny, black cap. The vaguely gray liquid inside was clearly highly concentrated, which meant it was high quality. Girard could almost smell it now that he could see it and a tickle at the back of his throat urged him to take it. Palming the vial, he said, “I guess there are advantages to being in a hospital.”
Greg smiled. “Not really. It’s from the blood bank nearby. Humans don’t actually need what we need when they get a transfusion. Spinning out what we eat doesn’t hurt anything. It’s quite an operation they have going over there.”
“I’ll bet.” Girard glanced at the vial, feeling that tickle in this throat intensify.
Greg nodded toward the glass and said, “You should wait until you get to a bathroom or something.”
“I’ve got to leave anyway. Thank you for the meal, though. I’ll have a much more pleasant drive back to the compound. Someone else will be handling the transition more than likely, so I’ll expect you to accommodate whoever it is. And,” he paused, nodding toward Greg’s arms, “I’d be extra careful with your behavior. Not everyone will be so understanding.”
Girard detested eating in restrooms. It felt dirty to him, like he was licking the bathroom floor, so he waved off the offer and left Greg to his patients. Out in the parking lot, Girard glanced around for anyone watching. Between the heavily tinted windows of his back seat and the general lack of humans around, he figured he’d be safe for the five minutes or so that he needed.
The tickle became a series of sharp pains and the temptation to open his mouth to make room was strong. Sliding into the backseat, Girard spun the cap off and opened his mouth. A half-dozen thread-like tentacles darted out, seeking the vial he held up near his mouth. As they plunged into the neck of the vial, one by one, Girard felt almost immediate relief. A cessation of hunger first, then a sense of immense well-being and finally, awareness and strength. The little appen
dages were efficient, sliding along the inner sides of the glass to absorb every single molecule of food inside.
Within a few minutes, the vial wasn’t just empty, it was clean. As clean as if it had never been used at all. It was even sterile. He capped it as the parts of himself that fed retracted, threads of familiar pain radiating as they settled back into the flesh of his throat. Girard always watched the process—as much as one can anyway—but most vampires didn’t. Perhaps it unsettled them to see this part of themselves. For Girard it was a moment of connection between the part of him that was him and the body he wore.
Even Borona and Lila fed privately, and when Lila fed, she held the vial at her lips as if drinking, giving her feeding appendages only the room they could make inside her mouth for their work. He had never seen her—the real her—aside from the last time she’d taken a new body. Even then, she’d not asked about herself, about her appearance. Girard wasn’t sure if it was shame or simply an unwillingness to accept that they were not human when it came down to it.
Girard sat back in the seat to enjoy that first flush of food. All the colors were brighter, the textures more enchanting, the sensations of the seat he sat on more intense. Feeding like this provided a boost much different than they received from feeding on a human directly. Free-range feeding took so long and was inefficient. It was a bit like drug use, he often thought, or perhaps like pain medication. In a lower dose spread out over time, medicine managed pain, but didn’t make anyone high. Taken in a higher dose or in the absence of pain, it brought euphoria.
This was like a really, really big dose.
He closed his eyes and enjoyed the high.
9
Borona was so eager to share his findings that he met Girard at the entry to the Guardian complex. That alone said much about whatever it was that he’d found. The big man towered over Girard by every measure, but in a way, it was nice to see him so excited about something. Even his hair was a mess…and Borona was almost obsessive about his hair. Girard wasn’t entirely sure the whole man-bun was working for his friend and co-worker, but he wasn’t going to be the one to tell him that.
“You know how you told me not to hack government systems anymore?” Borona asked as they walked through the complex toward the computer lab. When Girard rolled his eyes upward, knowing what was coming, Borona hurried his words. “I had to this time. You asked for the info and I wanted to get it for you. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s yours.”
Raising an eyebrow, Girard shook his head. “Who did you hack?”
“Only ATF.”
“Only?”
“Yeah, the rest were state level. Nothing federal. That’s okay, right? I didn’t poke around anywhere else except that file. I promise.”
Was this an argument worth having? Probably not, at least not now. The Council had cracked down on the Guardians’ rather liberal use of computer breaches as a method of information gathering. While everyone liked the comfort of knowing that there was no mention of their species inside government agencies—and there most certainly would be if the vampires had come to official attention—no one wanted the potential exposure of their species if the breaches were tracked to the Guardians.
It was a conundrum.
But it was also a conundrum for someone else to deal with. Bureaucracy had its upside. One of those was the ability to pass the buck. Girard would gladly utilize that upside now. He had more important things to do.
“Never mind that. Just show me what you have.”
Borona opened the door to the lab and hurried past Girard to get to his station. He really was excited. Usually, he was much more polite, holding open doors for his elders and waiting for their lead.
His array of screens blazed to technicolor life and Girard winced a little at the change in light levels. Rolling up a chair, he plopped down and prepared to be baffled, a not too infrequent occurrence when it came to Borona and computers.
“So, Boss, basically it went like this. I saw an ATF jacket in one of the social media shots a few days ago, after the fire marshal was already done with their main inspection. That says something suspicious went on and they know it, but just don’t know exactly what it was. They called in the feds. I managed to get the initial report from the Fire Marshal’s database, and there were no typical signs of explosion or arson, but—and this was interesting—there appeared to be multiple sources for the fire.”
That got Girard’s attention. “Wait. More vampires?”
Borona tilted his head as if tentatively acknowledging that possibility. “Maybe, maybe not. The problem is that all the fires seemed to originate at or near older portions of the electrical grid inside the building. The building is old, like I told you before, and it’s been upgraded a bunch of times. Even so, old wiring and junction boxes from the first build were never removed because it would have been a construction nightmare. So, it’s a puzzle for them. They couldn’t determine if something happened in that old wiring, like maybe it hadn’t actually been disconnected, or if there was arson or something that had a source they couldn’t test for. In cases like this, with so many deaths, they usually call in the big dogs at some point.”
“Okay, so was it the wiring or whatever?” Girard wished Borona would get to the good parts and skip all the technical stuff. He didn’t push though, except to push himself for more patience. Borona’s work was thorough and it was demoralizing when that work wasn’t appreciated.
“Nope, but also yep. Let me bring up the images.” All the screens shifted to depict close ups of burned things that Girard couldn’t readily identify. “This was all stuff under the stage. Their latest upgrade was so that they could have electrical outlets on the stage itself, like around the floor and what-not. All those other things are music stands, instrument cases, speakers, and the like. They stored pretty much everything under there.”
“Okay…”
“Yeah, well see these melty bits? Here, here, here.” He pointed at various images, and while it didn’t look like anything special, Girard nodded.
“Well, ATF took one look at that and called it a cascading power malfunction that was actually sourced at one overload location. It’s believable if you’re human, but I know better. These melted parts tell me that possibly three individuals started the fires and if that’s true, then it must have been on purpose. And there’s no accelerant, which means vampire heat, but I’ve never seen a vampire that could do this. These two sources were under the stage at either end, this third one was at the main junction near the big doors. There’s the possibility of two or three more, but I can’t be sure. It really did cause cascading failures once it got started, but the position of these two is a little convenient. Both are near the rear exits, one into the school and the other the fire exit.”
Girard didn’t need to understand what the pictures showed Borona with such clarity. The words were enough. Three vampires old enough to cause that kind of fast and furious fire? Possibly six? A vampire as old as Girard could…with enough time and concentration…set pulp paper or cotton cloth on fire. By the time he’d turned five hundred, he could start his own campfires as long as the tinder was dry and finely shredded. That was considered a true feat amongst vampires. How old would a vampire need to be to set fire to stone and brick?
“You’re sure? Absolutely sure?”
Borona spun in his chair to face Girard, his expression both excited and nervous. “I’m not sure, but I’m almost sure. That building was filled with old wood, from the stage to the floor to the bleachers. Most of that was covered in nicely aged varnish. It would have gone up like…well, like it did. Whoever did this knew what they were doing.”
“But why? What would be the point?” Girard asked. To cover a disappearance, there were easier and far less flashy methods available. Even a fire in a backyard clubhouse or empty building might be enough. Why this, especially considering how much attention it would garner.
Borona held up a finger and that light returned to his eyes, the li
ght of discovery. “I figured that out too.” Spinning back toward the monitors, all the images changed and this time, it wasn’t hard for Girard to understand what he was seeing. Each image depicted the crushed and nearly burned away remains of those who had lost their lives.
“All of these remains are from the area near the stage. The initial reports questioned the reason for so many bodies in the center of the space. Logic dictates that they should be clustered near an exit. The ATF report concludes that they must have been overcome by smoke or heat as they ran from the front exit—which was blocked by fire—to the rear exit. They can’t actually determine cause of death, of course, so it’s really an assumption based on how clustered the remains are, sort of like they huddled up against the fire.”
“This is horrible. Truly. You don’t think that’s the case though?”
With a shake of his head, the big man replied, “No way. Given the heat and that it took a long time for them to dig past all the collapsed walls, most of the remains were burned almost to ash. Masonry crushed what was left. Some long bones, like these here, and skull fragments remained. What interested me was this. You see how these two are piled up on each other. You can tell by the vertebrae. The bottom one had a few more bones intact than most and the arms are flung out to the side. That’s not natural. If someone falls on you, you grab them or push them off. Not this one. The legs and arms are outstretched. This person was dead or entirely unconscious before this other person fell on top of them. And the one on top has an upper arm bone under the vertebrae. That’s a really uncomfortable way to fall. No one would fall like that if they were awake. I’d say that person was dead when they hit the floor.”
“Why? For what reason?”
Borona looked over his shoulder at Girard as if surprised he hadn’t figured it out for himself. Then his eyebrows quirked up and he said, “Because whoever set these fires killed these people first. The fire wasn’t just to disappear. It was to cover up a massacre.”
