by steve higgs
Ambrogio
Okay, so he was upset about the fire at the clubhouse and blamed me for it. The guy wanted to kill me, scratch that - he wanted to bathe in my soul, which sounded more than a little homoerotic. I wondered exactly what bathing in my soul entailed? Anyway, since he already wanted me dead, I doubted I could make him much more upset.
I paused briefly to wait for the dogs who were now sniffing at something underneath a hedge. My guess was there would be a rabbit hole beneath the brambles they had caught a whiff of.
Before I could consider what Ambrogio meant by threatening to take one of mine the phone rang in my hand causing me to drop it.
The number was a mobile, so it was very possibly a client calling.
‘Blue Moon investigations, Tempest Michaels speaking. How may I help you?’ Polished.
A moment of silence on the other end and just when I was going to repeat myself the person spoke. ‘Hello, Mr. Michaels. I think I need to meet with you. I need your help.' A woman's voice. Young. Local accent.
‘Of course,’ I replied agreeing. ‘Can you tell me what this is pertaining to?’
‘Um. I was at the fire last night.’ she said, leaving her answer hanging in the air for a bit. ‘I escaped okay, but my boyfriend was taken by the police.’
‘It would be inappropriate for me to discuss the case over the phone. If you want to meet, I can make myself free today. Perhaps you should tell me your name.’
‘Sorry,' she mumbled. She sounded scared and confused more than anything else, so I softened my voice and tried to coax some information out of her.
‘I was at the fire last night too and I got arrested trying to help your friends get away from the fire. Were you hurt at all?’ a simple question to get her talking.
‘No. No, I wasn’t. I think I was just lucky though. My boyfriend Nigel went out ahead of me and tackled a man with a crowbar so that I could get away to our car. He said he would meet me at home, but he never turned up and then my friend Sophie said he had been arrested with lots of the others.’ She took a breath and continued. ‘Then I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the police station and they said he would not be released yet as he was being questioned in connection with The Vampire Murders. Then my other friend Becca, who is not a club member said she heard they found human blood and that was why they were all being kept by the police.’ She was beginning to blurt, and I could not keep up. I didn’t even have a pen to hand out walking the dogs as I was, but then she ended with a question as if she had just had a thought that dominated everything else, ‘Oh my God, has Nigel actually been drinking human blood?’
Wow. That was a question. ‘Why do you think he might have been drinking human blood?
Silence for a few seconds.
‘At the club, we drink cocktails that are supposed to be blood. It is fake stuff of course made from corn syrup and food colouring, that sort of thing. We put vodka in it, or something else to make them alcoholic but then our Master, that’s the true vampire the club was founded by, well he showed up for the first time ever. I say ever, but apparently, he started the club over one hundred and fifty years ago but has not been seen since then. So anyway, he showed up a few weeks ago and everything became weird. I mean weirder than usual,' she said when I didn't respond.
I was trying to process all this at speed. I needed to meet this girl and anyone else from the club and it needed to happen soon. I put my hand over the phone and quickly called to the boys to turn them around. The walk would have to be shorter than originally intended.
‘I need to meet you. Where are you now?’
Interview with a Vampire. Tuesday, September 28th 0927hrs
The young lady was called Angela Barclay. I offered to go to her, but she wanted to meet at my office instead. I was now waiting for her to arrive.
A fresh tea was cooling on my desk in its little cardboard cup. I had a kettle and supplies in the office but had felt drawn to the chance to have Hayley smile at me this morning. Typically, she had not been in, but rather than admit I was only there to see her I had ordered a tea anyway.
My phone rang then. It was Frank's number. ‘Good morning, Frank.,' I answered.
‘Hi, Tempest. Is Poison with you?’
‘No. Should she be?’
‘Well, it is half past nine and she has not turned up for work. I can’t remember her ever being late before and I last saw her heading off into the night with you.’
‘Oh. Well, we only walked about one hundred yards and then I left her.’
‘I thought you were seeing her home?' he said, clearly a little upset that I had not. I had not thought about it until now. Should I have seen her home last night despite my parent's predicament? Should I have taken her with me for safety?
I pondered that briefly and came to three conclusions. Firstly, Poison was a strong, independent woman who did not need a man to get her home safely. Secondly, I had a suspicion that had I escorted her to her door she would have dragged me through it and shagged me senseless and I was not sure I really wanted to pursue the undeniably attractive, but most definitely half my age, sex strumpet that I would continue to bump into on a regular basis no matter how the event went. Thirdly, had I turned up at my house with Poison in tow, wearing muddy spandex and sporting face piercings, my mother's head would have rotated clean off her shoulders.
‘Frank, I left her when I got the call from my parents to say they had been attacked by Ambrogio. Poison said go. So, I went. I expected her to grab a cab from around the corner and be in her house before I got to mine. I had no idea what Ambrogio might try next and expected him to still be hanging around outside. My mother said that he would not enter the house even though he intended to kill them, and they were right there. Why is that?'
‘He could not go into the house, Tempest. He is a vampire, even you must know the basic lore. He is stuck outside until invited in.'
If Ambrogio believed this nonsense as fervently as Frank did, he had probably stayed outside of his own volition rather than step over the threshold and burst the bubble on his own fantasy.
‘Anyway, Frank,’ I moved the conversation along, ‘Poison is a big girl and did not need me to escort her anywhere. Why the concern?’
‘Well, she isn’t here, and she isn’t answering her phone and I had hoped she was with you.’
I heard the door open at the bottom of the stairs and light footsteps cautiously begin to make their way up. ‘I have a client, Frank. I'll pop around when I get done, but drop me a text if she wanders in. Everyone is late for work sooner or later.'
‘Ok, Tempest,’ Frank replied with some resignation.
Was Poison with me? Frank clearly thought I was far more stud-like than I am. A shadow appeared outside the frosted glass and a distorted silhouette followed it as the visitor reached the top of the stairs. I jumped up to open the door, checking my watch as I went: 1016hrs.
‘Angela?’ I enquired of the young woman outside. Her hand was raised as if to knock on my door, but she lowered it now and nodded her head.
‘Please come in and take a seat. Can I get you a cup of tea? Or something else?’
‘A tea would be lovely. Thank you.’ She took a seat where I had indicated, in the window where I could come to sit with visitors rather than sitting imperiously behind the desk.
Angela Barclay was dressed for office work. If she had been dressed like a vampire last night, all trace of that was now gone. I had studied her face briefly when I opened the door and had seen no sign of the facial piercings favoured by everyone else I had met from the vampire club. Her make-up was basic eyeliner and a bit of lippy. If she was wearing anything else, it was good enough that it looked natural. A grey pencil skirt and short heels and a baby pink, plaid jumper over a white collared shirt completed her look. Her outfit was such that she could be working in any one of a million different offices. She was slim, bordering on skinny, but was probably mid-twenties and quite pretty.
‘This started with you cal
ling me to help you, so let us please go back to the start and you tell me what it is that you want me to help you with.’
‘This is all about The Brotherhood of the Dead, I guess. That is why I came to you. I only got involved because my boyfriend was so into it and to start with it was fun in a sexy, dark, mysterious kind of way.’
‘Okay.’ I said, setting a cup of tea on the table in front of her. I turned to grab a chair and notepad and sat down just across from her. ‘Please continue.’
‘It was just a fun club where we would meet up and have a few drinks and everyone dressed up as vampires. Some of the guys were quite geeky and played vampire-based boards games, or they would watch vampire horror flicks and every week there was a discussion about the world of vampires - who had found new evidence in the news of crimes that had not been solved and were clearly the work of a vampire, that sort of thing. The senior members though would talk about being converted into vampires and they collected club fees, which I thought just went to rent of the clubhouse or something like that. I didn't pay, Nigel paid for me, but I found out the membership fees were quite expensive, ten pounds a week and there are over one hundred members.'
I did some quick mental math and came up with over fifty thousand pounds a year.
‘So, what was the money for?’ I asked.
‘I asked Nigel that and he said that we were paying fealty to our Master and he would soon begin turning his loyal servants into vampires. I thought he was joking, but he wasn’t. We had a fight about it and he got very upset at my questions and said that if I didn’t believe in vampires then I should just get out and never come back because he would be the first to be turned.’
‘When was this, Angela?’
‘A couple of weeks ago. I apologised in the end and we went to the clubhouse afterward.'
‘So, the club is paying money to their master vampire as a display of loyalty. What else?'
‘Well, like I said, it used to be all sex fantasy stuff and games and talking and drinking, like it was some kind of specialist bar, but then it got more serious and then started getting scary. About a month ago Nigel got really excited about an email he had received. He said it was from the Master. I thought the Master was just a made-up person. There is, or rather was, a big oil painting on the wall in the den which was supposed to be of the master. I figured it was just a painting someone had gotten hold of.’ She stopped to take a sip of tea and then kept the mug in her lap, both hands wrapped around it. ‘Ambrogio had emailed Nigel and was asking him to perform certain tasks.’
‘Like what?’ I interrupted.
‘Hold on I need to explain something first. Ambrogio is the club’s master, but no one had ever met him. Then, completely out of the blue, Nigel started getting emails from him. He was so excited. Nigel thought it was special treatment, that he had been selected and his time to be turned had finally come.’
I was making notes while all this went on and underlined mass-delusion twice. ‘So, you were telling me about the tasks Nigel was given.’
‘One of the tasks was to watch you.’
I snapped my head up at that point.
Ordering my thoughts quickly, I asked, ‘When did that start?’
‘A few days ago. After the thing with Demedicus. Nigel said he had to make sure you were watched because you might spoil Ambrogio’s plans. Then there was someone else he had to watch and the senior guys from the club they were all taking it in turns.’
‘Who else were they watching Angela?’
‘It was you and then people connected with you. I didn’t hear names. I wasn’t trusted to be involved, they were doing Ambrogio’s bidding and that was all I needed to know Nigel said.’
My head was spinning with all the information. ‘Hold on, Nigel is not a very vampire name, Angela. Does your boyfriend go by another name ever?’
‘Yes. He calls himself Obsidian Dark most of the time.’ Another piece slots into place.
‘Ok, so what else did they do?’ Angela seemed suddenly like she believed she was saying too much. Revealing facts that might get her boyfriend or others into trouble. Sensing this, I pressed him, ‘Angela, I am not the police. What you tell me can’t be used as evidence but if Ambrogio is murdering people and you don’t tell me what you know he will just go on doing it. Worse yet for you, if Nigel is involved, he will be counted as an accomplice and you will be considered equally guilty because you knew what he was up to.’ I had no idea if that would happen. However, I guessed that she would not know either and would be suitably terrified by the prospect to start spilling all the beans.
Angela seemed to think about that for a moment. She took a sip of tea and continued speaking, ‘They collected his coffin when he arrived here from Italy. They were given specific instructions on where to collect it from and where it was to be taken to.’
‘And they did it?’ I asked incredulously. I caught myself then, I could not afford to question their motives or suggest they were wrong at this stage if I wanted to get more information from her. ‘Sorry, Angela. That was rude of me. Do you know where they collected it from and where they took it to?’ If she knew the destination, I would have a place to check out.
‘Nigel would not tell me. He said it was better if I did not know. I do know that he collected it from a port though. At least I think that's right. They used his van to collect it and the satnav was for an address there, lockup connected to an importer.'
I thought about that for a moment. ‘But you don’t know where he took it?’
‘To his crypt, I guess. But I don’t know where that is.’
‘Will Nigel tell me?’
‘I don’t think so. He is really invested in what he is doing. He really thinks Ambrogio is a vampire and will be able to make him into one as well. That is why he is doing all this.’ She fell silent for a few seconds, then she sniffled loudly and put her hand to her face to hide that she had begun to cry. ‘Will he get into trouble?’
‘Yes, Angela. I think that he is already in trouble.’ I was thinking to myself that if Ambrogio was The Vampire then Obsidian/Nigel was very probably a knowing accomplice. Who else at the club was involved?
I moved to my desk to snag a box of tissues from it. I offered the entire box to Angela as her face was now a mess. When I agreed that her boyfriend was probably in trouble, she had given in to wracking sobs that shook her whole upper body and not in a pleasing way. Mascara was now smudged, and tears had left visible tracks through the now visible foundation on her cheekbones.
‘Angela, who else at the club is involved? You said there were several of them taking it in turns to do different tasks like watch me.’
‘At every meeting, the senior council would disappear for a secret ceremony, at least that is what it was called. The clubhouse had a back room that they could go into and lock, but I don't know what they were doing in there and Nigel would never really talk about it.'
‘How many of them, Angela?’ I pressed.
‘Six, including Nigel,’ she answered without her needing to think about it or count them in her head. ‘The Senior Council has six members and they were all involved in performing whatever tasks Ambrogio had.’
‘I need names, Angela. Can you write them down for me, please? Both their vampire name and their real name if you know it.'
I handed Angela the pad in front of me but turned it to a new sheet so that she could not see what I had written. Her arms twitched a time or two as if in indecision, but she took up the pen and began to write.
The list looked like this:
Obsidian Dark Nigel Havers
Brandeis DantoRick
Draven Parrisno idea
Karayan KrystolSarah Gaine
Thanatos AngelusLouis Richmond
Keith TeethKeith something
I laughed when I got to Keith Teeth as he had the least vampiry and most ridiculous name I had ever heard. Perhaps that made him slightly less of a loser than the rest of them.
‘Is there a rank
structure? Which one of these is the leader?’
‘I think they are all equal,’ replied Angela, sniffing as she did. ‘If there was a leader it was never discussed or announced, but I think Nigel pretty much took over when Ambrogio started contacted him. Mostly the others just seemed in awe of him.’
‘Did they not delegate any tasks to other club members? You know, lesser errands like watching me and reporting on what I was doing, or fetching and carrying stuff for Ambrogio?'
‘I’m not sure,’ she said after a pause to consider it. ‘I was not asked to do anything, but each of the Senior Council had at least one acolyte that performed tasks for them.’
‘What sort of tasks?' I asked as I was writing acolytes in big letters.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said again.
‘Think please, Angela. This could be important.’
Angela fidgeted in her chair for a while, her hands in her lap clenching and unclenching. She took another tissue and blew her nose once more, the sound loud in my confined office.
‘I really don’t know. Sorry,’ she decided finally.
‘Was Demedicus an Acolyte?’ I had a vague theory forming.
Dreadfully, Angela nodded that he was.
Vampire Killers part 2. Tuesday, September 28th 1122hrs
Angela finally left my office at 1122hrs, leaving me with a far better picture of what had been going on. The police were not looking in the right place. I was not sure they were even looking really, and I was certain they did not understand what was going on.
Angela wanted me to help her boyfriend. However, I doubted there would be much that I or anyone else could do. I suspected that he was at least guilty of knowing that Ambrogio was killing people.
Before she left, I had asked her a couple of final questions, ‘Demedicus was found to have human blood from one of the victims on his clothing. If Ambrogio is killing people and only the Senior Council can get hold of it, how do you suppose he got some? Could it be that he found out what it was because of his close ties as an Acolyte?' I was fleshing out ideas in my own head not expecting Angela to know either way. She surprised me though because she knew the answers exactly.
