by Lelana Croft
The glow of the dashboard lights softly lit his chiseled features as we pulled into my driveway. He parked the car with the headlights facing the door, but left it running as he got out and opened my door.
“You’re all right, Scarlett,” he said as he helped me out of the car. He leaned down and kissed me on the cheek before returning to his side and getting in.
I made my way up to the porch and unlocked the door, waving to him as he backed up. Closing the door behind me, I watched as the lights faded away into the darkness.
The light over the stove softly lit up the room enough for me to see through the open, empty house.
I could really feel my exhaustion from the emotional and crazy day, and all I wanted was to crash.
I yelped out loud when Adonis startled me by jumping up on one of the barstools and yawning.
“Hey, Adonis.”
He looked at me with sleepy, slanted eyes as if to tell me I was late with his cream. I laughed and shook my head as I took the clean saucer out of the dish rack and poured the cream into it, sliding it over to him.
Making my way upstairs, I pulled off my boots and collapsed on the bed, not even bothering to take off my clothes.
“Hey, Hobbs…how was your weekend?”
Hobbs peered up at me over his reading glasses from his paper-strewn desk and shrugged. I let out a little chuckle.
“Well, I figured out how our Jane Doe was drained.”
He followed me into the slab room as I pulled her out from the cold storage. Taking her wrist and flipping it over, I pointed out the tiny hole in the middle of the tattoo.
“Well, how about that? How did you manage to figure that out?” he asked, looking at me as if I had something up my sleeve.
“TV. I was watching something and half asleep when I saw a drug addict that was hiding their needle marks within their fresh tattoos. So, I came by and took a look and found it,” I said, trying to sound as convincing as possible.
He shook his head and humphed.
“What I don’t understand is why? If it’s the vampires that are doing this, why don’t they just drain them like they normally do? I know what that is and I can adapt. How do I explain this to her parents? This girl wasn’t into drugs. Hell, she wasn’t even sexually active.”
I could feel Hobbs struggling with how to come up with cause of death and an explanation that would fit the truth, but also not cause too many questions that he couldn't answer.
“Can you put the cause of death as unknown, but tell the parents the truth off the record?” I asked.
Hobbs sighed heavily. “I could, but I have to keep detailed records, so that if this becomes a pattern, we can track it. With technology today, we are required more and more to put in every little detail, so that things can be compared. It's actually a good thing and has helped to catch several serial killers, but when it comes to the supernatural stuff, it can get tricky. I’ll call one of my buddies who’s been doing this a while and find out how he lists them. In the meantime, I still need to figure out what to tell the parents.”
I thought about his dilemma. I couldn’t imagine having to tell someone that their child had been drained of blood and not know why.
“I’m not sure what to tell you. Maybe natural causes? Some strange, rare genetic disease or something?” I suggested.
“I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, we have a new one in locker twelve that needs to be done,” he said as he hung his lab coat on the rack and left the room.
Pulling the body from the cooler, I pulled back the sheet and looked at the gentleman lying peacefully underneath. Men were actually a little harder than women. Women normally wore makeup, so it was easy to replicate what they did. With men, you had to make them look normal and like they weren’t wearing any makeup, so it was a harder task.
I was just finishing up the gentleman when two more senior women were brought in. I could tell it was going to be a busy Monday.
I sent a text over to Miles to ask him if I could come by later and look through the database. He replied by telling me yes, after hours would be best.
The rest of the day was filled with trying to create makeup masterpieces and doing paperwork. I was ready to go by the time six o'clock came around.
My phone dinged. I pulled it out and read the text.
{You hungry?}
It was Miles.
{Yes, but I want to get started.}
{Okay, I’ll meet you there, but might be running a little late. Just wait for me.}
{Roger that}
I wondered what he was up to.
I finished up and turned out the lights before heading upstairs.
“Night, Ruby,” I said as I passed her on my way out the door.
“Good job today, Scarlett. Hobbs really appreciates you.”
I smiled and nodded and stepped out into the cool evening air.
Normally at this time of day, it’s still warm and muggy, but it looked like a storm was brewing. The clouds to the west were swirling and the wind was picking up.
Great…nothing better than trying to get home in the rain on a scooter.
I hopped on and made my way to the other side of town where the newspaper office was. It was downtown in a strip where the doorway was tucked under the second floor of the building. There was a red and white striped awning that helped to cover the front glass and shield it from the hot sun of the day. I managed to pull under it, just as it started to rain.
Walking up to the door, I reached up to open it, but it was still locked. Miles hadn’t made it there just yet.
I looked at my phone.
6:05
Pulling up the weather app, I looked at the radar and saw a huge storm heading our way. It was a big blob of red and purple on the radar screen.
I was just about to text Miles when his car pulled up out front. He grabbed what looked like takeout bags and ran under the awning, running his fingers through his damp hair and making it look even more sexy than it already was.
“Sorry I’m late. I figured I’d grab us some dinner while we’re researching.”
“We’re researching? So, you’re planning on helping me?” I joked.
He chuckled as he turned the key to the door. Just as he opened it, the tornado sirens began to go off.
“Quick! Inside!”
Chapter 21
We both hurried inside as he locked the door behind us.
“C’mon, let’s head down to the basement,” he said and I followed him to a doorway at the back of the main office. He flipped on the light and we made our way down a wide set of carpeted stairs.
We landed in a wide-open room that had a couple of those poker-type of tables and chairs, a TV off in the corner, and everything else a standard break room would have, except it was way more upscale than any break room I'd ever seen.
“Nice!” I said as I plopped down onto one of the leather rolling chairs.
“Yeah, I figured if I was going to keep the people I hired, I wanted them to feel comfortable on their break. Or if we were working overtime, that there was a place to come and relax. There's actually a couple of small rooms over there with twin beds for people who need to rest. Beer?”
I nodded as I looked over toward the back of the room. There was a nice comfy-looking couch and two doorways off to the side.
“So you let your employees sleep on the job?” I giggled.
“If they need it. We’ve had days in the past where there was breaking news, and we had to get certain things out before deadlines. Instead of sending people home and hoping they'd come back in time, I set it up so they had a place to rest and take a nap. I’ve also had some women who were pregnant and needed to take breaks and rest. It was just easier for them and me, if they had a place here.”
“That’s very generous of you. I’ll bet you’ve never had anyone quit.”
He laughed a little as he opened my beer and set it in front of me.
“Well, I wouldn’t say that. It takes a
certain kind of person to stay in the world of reporting. You have to have a certain kind of mentality. Writing news can be boring for some and stressful for others. Especially when bad things happen. September 2001 is a good example. We still had a big readership then.”
I looked down at my beer and began to peel off the label. I imagined working and reporting all the bad things every day could take its toll on people, if they didn't have the ability to separate it from their personal lives. 2001 had taken a toll on everyone in this country, no matter what walk of life you came from.
“I took the liberty of ordering for you. I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I picked a couple of different things. You do like Chinese food, I hope?”
I smiled and nodded and took a drink of the beer. It was cold and refreshing.
Miles began pulling the food boxes out of the paper bag when the lights flickered and then went out, putting us in total darkness.
I leaned back in my chair and waited for my eyes to adjust, hoping there was some kind of light that would help me to see. My vision was okay in total darkness, but I had to give it time before I could see outlines.
The power going out allowed me to hear and what surprised me was the total silence. I couldn’t hear anything, not even Miles breathing.
“Miles?” I asked into the darkness.
There was a long pause.
“Yeah, sorry…I…let me get some candles. Just sit tight.”
I heard some rustling and a few doors open and close. “Oh, here they are.”
There was a flick of a lighter and the orange glow flared as he lit the first candle.
“What were you doing?” I asked. He hadn’t immediately rushed to get the candles and I couldn't see him in the pitch black.
He lit two more candles and sat them on the table before walking over to the cabinet to get a couple of plates.
“I was…You were…” he stammered and sighed. “I was looking at you. You’re so beautiful and when the lights went out, you were glowing. I had to force myself to look away. It's like you were giving off some kind of ethereal glow or something.”
I could feel myself blushing, when my attention was distracted by a huge gust of wind that came through and rattled the windows upstairs so hard that I thought they would break.
“Wow, that wind is something. We’ll be safe down here, right? I mean, I can fight bad guys, but tornados are a little bit of a stretch for me.”
He laughed and it broke the tension.
“I’ve got steamed vegetables, garlic chicken, Mongolian beef, and sweet and sour pork. I figured one of those would be suitable.”
“All of them actually. I’m not picky when it comes to most food.”
He smiled and handed me a fork as we dished out the food onto our plates and began to eat by candlelight.
“Did you tell Hobbs about the needle mark?”
“Yeah, I didn’t tell him that it was you who found it, though. I don’t want to get fired within my first week. I told him I'd seen on TV how junkies would hide their needle marks by getting tattoos. Not sure if he believed me or just didn’t want to ask any questions.”
“I like Hobbs. I’ve met him a couple of times before. Seems like a genuine guy,” Miles said with total sincerity.
“Yeah, I think he is. He was lamenting about how to tell the parents. I mean, it must be hard to lie to the parents when you really want to tell them the truth. But I don't think most people want to hear the truth. Too bad you can’t glamour them and make them think they’d never had a daughter,” I said, my mind wandering.
“Oh, that doesn’t work. I’ve tried it. It’s easy to glamor someone about something current because it effects short-term memory. But when you start trying to erase long-term memories, it gets really tricky. Ever hear of people getting amnesia? Believe it or not, most people don't actually have it. They’ve been glamoured to forget their entire past. But it doesn’t stick. Memories start to come back, and then something triggers after a while and they remember everything, including how they got the amnesia to begin with,” Miles explained.
“So why don’t they just tell someone then? I mean, if they realize that they never had amnesia and were glamoured instead. Why don't they just tell someone?” I asked.
“Think about it…you’ve been in basically a new brain for however many years with amnesia. Things start to come back to you, then a flood of memories comes back, revealing the truth. If you then start telling people that your memory was wiped by a vampire, what do you think would happen?”
I hadn’t thought about it that way. Humans don’t like things like that. They’d lock people up for being mental if they started screaming that they'd been taken over and their memories were wiped by vampires.
“Oh…” I said.
“Yeah…I know it’s sad, but it is what it is. And no vampire is going to go out of their way to prove that a human is right. They'd rather that person be put into an insane asylum, so the secret stays a secret as much as possible,” he said.
“But it’s not really a secret. I mean, everyone knows there are vampires. It’s common knowledge,” I said.
“Yes, but people don’t want to acknowledge that. People want to keep on living without knowing that there is something lurking in the dark. It makes them uncomfortable.”
I nodded as I shoved some garlic chicken in my mouth.
“Man, this is really good. Who’d have known that such good food could be found in a small town. First, there was Stella's and now this.”
He nodded and continued to work on the sweet and sour pork.
We finished our food and cleaned up, putting the leftovers in the fridge.
“Well, I guess we’re kinda stuck until the power comes back on,” he said as he slid back into his chair and gave me a look that told me exactly what he was thinking. I felt a twinge deep inside as my body reacted to his stare. I pulled out my phone to see if I could pull up the radar. The wind had died down and it sounded like it was just raining.
Miles leaned forward on the table toward me. I looked up into his eyes as the candle flickered, giving him an eerie glow. I could feel him trying to glamour me.
“That won’t work on me, and I thought you said you didn’t use that on people anymore?” I said as I leaned back in my chair and gave him the side eye.
“I was just seeing if it would get a reaction from you, or if you could feel it.”
“Yeah, I can feel it. But not like you think. It doesn’t mesmerize me or anything like that. It just feels like a power struggle and…?”
Just then, the lights flickered and came back on, sending an awful fluorescent glare over both of us as we squinted.
I blew out the candles and stood up, making my way upstairs as Miles followed.
“Stop staring at my ass,” I said sarcastically.
“How can I do that? It’s right in front of me?” he laughed.
We looked out the window and while everything looked windblown and lots of leaves and branches were down, nothing seemed to be broken. I went out front and picked up the orange demon that had blown over and put it back on the kickstand before coming back inside.
Miles had turned on a couple of the computers and began booting them up, so we could begin our search.
“So how do you think we should tackle this? I mean, if we want to find something from ages ago, I’m pretty sure the database doesn't go back that far.”
I wasn’t sure how far back data was kept or how it was stored.
“Actually, you’d be surprised. One of the projects that has been put in place is the scanning of all microfilm of all newspapers across the country. They go into a centralized database and are searchable by keyword. So, if you search for Marilyn Hastings, you'll find any article that was ever written with her name on it. The only problem is, what if she didn’t always go by that?”
I nodded. He was right. If Marilyn went by any other name, I’d need to figure out how to make the connection. If I couldn't do it this way, th
en the only way would be to fully memory walk her corpse. That would take time and energy that I couldn’t use with the monitor cuff I was wearing. And I don’t think The High Council would allow me the freedom to pursue this at the moment.
“Well, let’s see what we can find for now. It might lead us to other things later. Can I print the articles I find?”
“Sure can,” he said as he walked over and showed me how to print something that I found.
I spent the next two hours scouring everything I could find and printing them off. There were tons of articles about how she'd helped the town to stay alive, gave money to many different organizations, and even funded a new cemetery. From all outward appearances, she was an upstanding citizen, but none of them had any kind of photo.
Then, I found an article from 1966 that had a photo of her and a few other people. I printed it off and showed it to Miles.
“She looks exactly the same in that photo as she did the night she came into the morgue, before she became a mummy. Exactly!” I chimed, feeling as if I’d just discovered the Ark of the Covenant.
“Well, we’ve determined now for sure, that she’d obviously found a way to outlive everyone. But that doesn’t explain how she died, and how she managed to stay alive so long,” he said, handing the printout back to me.
I began to read the caption of the photo, and realized I had stumbled onto something that I didn’t expect.
“Wait…listen to this…” I said, sitting down before reading it out loud. “Special thanks to Marilyn Roche and Martin Hastings for their contribution to new hospital wing.”
“Marilyn Roche?”
Chapter 22
We both sat there for a moment to let it sink in.
“So fifty years ago, Marilyn wasn’t a Hastings. I’ll bet that she married Martin. Looking at this photo, he had to have been in his late forties here.”
