The Homecoming Masquerade

by Baum, Spencer

  Gia always referred to them using the forbidden word. Vampires. Nicky liked that. She liked that the two of them could say the word over and over again in defiance of the unwritten rule, and nobody told them to stop.

  “But we know that when the vans roll out of here, they are full of slaves,” Nicky said. “Can we follow those vans and ambush them on the highway?”

  “That used to be part of the Network’s strategy,” Gia said, “but the vampires came up with a solution. Every one of those vans has a bomb underneath it. The drivers are programmed to detonate the bomb if the van is threatened. The vampires know that we want to save the people inside, so they’ve arranged for all of them to be killed instantly if we try to intervene.”

  “What about the Farm itself? Why don’t we just run in there and get those people out?”

  “Because the vampires have protected the Farm in the same way. The supervisor is programmed to blow the entire Farm to kingdom come, killing every innocent person inside, if the Network or anyone else tries to break in. They don’t care if the slaves in there die. They’ll just get more. That’s the difficulty we’ve run into. Even when we have successfully freed a group of slaves, they just get replaced. The vampires consume the same number of humans regardless. If they lose some from their mansions or from the Farm, they just go get more off the streets that day. That’s why we’re no longer focusing on liberation efforts. Now we’re thinking about the big picture. We’re gathering intelligence and trying to learn if the vampires have a weakness we can exploit.”

  “There has to be something we can do,” Nicky said. “What if Frankie and my dad are in there?”

  “They aren’t in there,” said Gia. “People off the streets never stay for more than a few days.”

  “Then where can we look next?”

  “There are hundreds of vampires around the world,” said Gia. “We’d have to stake out every mansion, one by one.”

  “I’d like to do that,” Nicky said.

  Gia took a minute before answering.

  “Okay. We can go on a little field trip,” she said. “But I can’t leave my post just yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Melissa Mayhew runs a side business out of the Farm,” said Gia. “The Network has intercepted some emails suggesting that one of her clients is on the way, and he’s bringing guests. My job is to be here when he shows up.”

  That night, Gia saw who they were looking for. Just as the sun was going down, a black town car pulled up at the Farm and three men stepped out. Melissa Mayhew came out to greet them.

  “This is where it gets interesting,” Gia said. “The rest of the Samarin clan doesn’t know about these nighttime visitors Melissa hosts on the Farm from time to time.”

  The first man to step out of the car was short and stout, with a face that glowed bright red in the compound’s spotlights. The second had a long black beard and wore a white robe and headpiece so that everything but his face was covered. The third was a beanpole of a man in a blue suit.

  “Those first two are Merv Tremblay and Sultan Amir,” said Gia. “Merv is one of her best clients. The Sultan is new. So is the tax accountant.”

  “Tax accountant?”

  “Don’t you think that man in the blue suit looks like a tax accountant? Not at all like the others – it’s weird. These men who do illegal business with Melissa, they have this look about them, like they’re just waiting to find the next person they can crush, like they don’t want to be rich so much as they want to be powerful. The tax accountant doesn’t look like one of them. What do you bet he’s just some assistant for the other two or…”

  Gia didn’t finish her sentence, for at that moment, Melissa came down on the tax accountant like an attacking cobra, moving with such swiftness Nicky barely saw it happen. One minute Melissa was shaking hands with the Sultan, the next she was on the tax accountant, her fangs deep in his neck, his body going limp.

  It was the first time Nicky had ever seen someone die.

  “Well, I guess that explains why he didn’t look the part,” Gia said. “He wasn’t one of them. Probably someone who was causing trouble and got brought along so he could be disposed of.”

  Nicky watched in horror as a team of children came out and lifted the dead body onto their shoulders, carrying it into the compound like little pallbearers. Once the body was gone, Melissa led the other two men inside.

  “Merv Tremblay frequents Melissa’s vampire fantasy camps in South America,” said Gia. “He’s probably taking the Sultan along on his next trip. Together, they’ll pay her at least a million bucks, money that she’ll pocket directly rather than give to Daciana for dispersal among the clan. The vampire fantasy camps are one of her businesses. Illegal human trade is the other.”

  Gia went on to explain how the Network had learned from years of watching the Farm that Melissa wasn’t just giving her progeny to other vampires. Some of her slaves, particularly among the population that was brought in off the streets, were brainwashed and then sold to wealthy humans.

  “Obedient wives for rich men who don’t like their women to talk back,” Gia said. “A hard-working, compliant labor pool for your sweatshop. Melissa brings them in, hypnotizes them for a specific purpose, then sells them for a mint. The rest of the clan doesn’t know a thing about this. Transactions like the one we’re seeing tonight are done in total secrecy. They only happen at night, and there is a very small client list made up of the wealthiest humans on earth.”

  “Do you think it’s possible that Frankie got sold off?” Nicky asked.

  “No,” said Gia. “A boy his age is someone they want in the mansions. They’ll get a couple good years of work out of him before he’s ripe.”

  It made Nicky sick that someone would think of Frankie this way, that the vampires saw him not as a person, but as a piece of meat.

  When Merv Tremblay and the Sultan left the Farm, Gia and Nicky left their post and drove after them, trailing their black town car all the way to Tampa. The car drove into the airport and the two men boarded a private jet. From the parking area outside the concourse, Gia made note of the make and model of the plane, the departure time, and the course heading, and sent that info to her superiors at the Network. Then she started the car and took Nicky to their next destination, Melissa Mayhew’s South Florida mansion.

  They staked out Melissa’s mansion for a week, trying to get a view of every slave in the place. Then they moved on to another mansion, then another. Through the winter, into the spring and summer, they went across the country, setting up shop at a safe distance from every known vampire residence and looking to see who was being held inside. Sometimes they got clear views through the windows. Sometimes they had to wait until a slave came outside to take out the trash or tend to the landscaping. They took pictures of every face they saw. Gia sent those pictures to the Network who used facial recognition software to try and identify the slaves.

  They stayed in safe houses with Network sympathizers. Gia introduced Nicky as if she were already a Network operative, as if the mission they were on was official Network business. Their hosts not only provided shelter, they also provided food, clothing, gas money, companionship. They had a Thanksgiving feast with their hosts in Boston. They celebrated Christmas with their hosts in Philadelphia.

  And all the while, Gia was teaching Nicky how to be a spy. Nicky learned how to use line of sight to see without being seen. She became hyper-aware of her surroundings, learning how to take detailed mental photographs of everything and everyone in her vicinity at all times. Already skilled at blending into a crowd from her years as a jackal, with Gia’s help, Nicky learned how to become completely invisible.

  In addition to the skills of a spy, Gia taught Nicky the history of the conflict between vampires and humans.

  “There was an uneasy balance that existed for centuries,” Gia told her one night in Richmond, Virginia. They were in the guest house of an estate owned by a wealthy patron of the Network, sitting o
n the floor in front of the fireplace. “The vampires have always had the power to enslave us all, but their own in-fighting and strange customs kept them in check.”

  “But then something changed,” said Nicky.

  “It was Daciana and Sergio,” said Gia. “They changed everything.”

  With the light from the fireplace dancing across her face as she spoke, Gia told Nicky the story of a seminal moment in the history of the conflict.

  “It was some time in the late 15th century,” Gia said. “A young vampire named Daciana Samarin, having just broken her bond and killed her ex-lover, fell in love with a nobleman from Andalucía. His name was Sergio Alonzo.

  “She made him a vampire, the first bond that she chose for herself. But with Sergio, something went wrong. The bond didn’t take. Sergio was an aberration, a kind of vampire the clans in Old Europe considered taboo. He was a Libertine.”

  “What’s a Libertine?” Nicky asked.

  “A kind of vampire gigolo, if you will,” said Gia. “Had Sergio been normal, he would have bonded with Daciana and the two of them would have fallen madly in love for decades. But with Sergio, there was no bond to be had. Sergio was defective. He was a Libertine, a vampire that doesn’t bond. And according to their custom, it was Daciana’s responsibility to kill Sergio the minute she realized he was different.”

  “But she didn’t kill him,” Nicky said.

  “No, she didn’t. She took pity on him, knowing that doing so would make her an outcast among her own kind. She helped him escape, and they both became fugitives.”

  “But Daciana is here now, in America, right?” Nicky said. “I’ve heard of her.”

  “Daciana lives in Washington, yes,” said Gia. “She and Sergio both. They came to America together some time in the early twentieth century. Daciana found her place in the underworld, and by the 1940’s, she was a feared mob boss in New York.”

  “But now she’s not a mob boss, is she?” Nicky said. “She’s in the government.”

  “Is there a difference?” Gia said. “And no, Daciana is not in the government. She is the government. Sure, there’s a president and congressmen and governors and judges and the like, but all of them answer to Daciana in the end. She and her clan allow the people to elect whomever they please and delude themselves into thinking they are free. But the minute an elected official takes office, he belongs to her. They all do. All the power players in America belong to her, and if not to her, then to whatever immortal lives closest, and all the immortals answer to her.”

  “How did she go from an outcast to a mob boss to--”

  “To queen of us all? It’s a good question,” said Gia. “The answer is Sergio. With Sergio, Daciana figured out a way to game the system. The two of them have worked together to break all the old rules and create a new world to their liking. The key is Sergio’s ability to create a new vampire whenever he wants.”

  “Because he doesn’t bond,” Nicky said.

  “Precisely. For all the rest of the world, a new vampire is only created within the sacred rites of a vampire bond. For a normal vampire like Daciana, it’s the only way they can do it. They have to be in love to make a new one of their kind, and for a vampire, love is serious stuff. A typical vampire bond is fifty to a hundred years of passionate love, followed immediately by passionate hatred.”

  “Passionate hatred?”

  “In Europe, when a vampire bond comes to an end, it is customary for the weaker of the two to run away, knowing that its lover has now become its enemy. Sometimes, the weaker vampire is too slow to act, and is killed.

  “This little quirk of their kind, more than anything else, is why their numbers stayed small and steady for centuries. But Daciana changed all that with Sergio. Not only did she allow him to live even though their bond didn’t take, but she arranged for him to use his unique talents to their mutual advantage. Sergio makes a new vampire every year, a vampire to whom he has no sort of bond whatsoever. And because Daciana is Sergio’s maker, all the vampires he makes are part of her bloodline.”

  “How many vampires has Sergio made?”

  “Seventy,” said Gia. “Every single vampire you and I have seen was either made by Sergio or is the bond of one of Sergio’s creations. Every vampire in America is part of the Samarin clan. That is why Daciana is the most powerful woman in America, and the Samarin clan is the most feared in the world. No other clan out there can approach their numbers.”

  “What other clans are there?”

  “Just the old clans, in the Old World, stuck in their old traditions. There are the Dillingers in Europe. There is Fu Xi and his small and splintered family in China. There are clans in Australia and Africa and Central Asia whose numbers are so small that they are hardly clans at all. These vampires are disgusted at what Daciana has done, but there is nothing they can do about it. Not unless one of them is lucky enough to create a Libertine, and smart enough to keep it alive, like Daciana did.”

  For Nicky, the story of how Daciana Samarin took over America only served to heighten her sadness. It was the explosive growth of Daciana’s clan that made it necessary for the vampires to steal innocent people off the streets, to grow a population of slaves to take care of their needs and serve as their food. If their numbers continued to grow, then more innocent lives would be lost. More children would be stolen away in the night, never to return.

  Yes, never to return. Although Nicky wasn’t yet in a place where she could say it aloud, deep down she knew it was the truth. With every mansion they visited, every new set of slaves, Nicky allowed herself to inch towards the realization that she was on her own now. They weren’t going to find Frankie. They weren’t going to find her father. As they got farther along in their journey, Gia explained why the task was so difficult.

  “Their eating patterns are irregular. For a vampire, feasting on a human is a very emotional act. If a vampire is in a mood, he might eat four slaves in one night. If he is busy, days might go by without him eating anyone. And at any given time, a vampire’s slave population covers a wide range of ages. Children like Frankie, newly off the Farm, get put into the slave population to work. They won’t be eaten until they turn eighteen. During that time, Frankie may get moved all over the place, depending on which vampire needs some ripe, ready-to-eat slaves, and which one needs some helpers.”

  “You’re telling me we aren’t going to find him,” Nicky said.

  “I think he’s gone, Nicky. But we can keep looking for as long as you’d like.”

  And so they did. A year came and went, and still they were looking. They headed west, staking out the mansions of “the younger, less powerful members of the clan,” as Gia called them. Nicky was amazed that, even as they got to more remote, rural parts of the country, Gia knew where to find people to help them at every stop. In Indiana they stayed with an elderly woman named Barbara Huffington, who cooked them a delicious breakfast every morning. In Pennsylvania, they set up shop in the spare bedroom of a funny fellow named Patrick Hall, who had a terrible pun for every occasion. In Minnesota they stayed with Alvin Green, a comic book enthusiast and computer hacker extraordinaire. Ordinary people with ordinary lives, all of them willing to risk everything for the cause, all of them deferential to Gia and Nicky, treating them like heroes on a secret quest to save the world.

  Along the way, Gia taught Nicky all the things a Network operative knew. Fencing, martial arts, history, ballistics, languages, archery – somewhere along the way, the Network began to take great interest in Nicky and Gia’s cross country trip. Not only were the two of them amassing huge stores of data on every vampire’s mansion, but a new operative was being made. As Gia sent back all the photos they took of the slaves trapped inside each mansion, all the notes of how each vampire behaved in their home, the detailed timelines of the comings and goings of each vampire and the guests they received, she also sent reports on Nicky’s progress.

  “I’m telling them you are the fastest learner I’ve ever seen,” Gia s
aid. “We’re expecting big things out of you, Nicky.”

  “Big things, huh?”

  “That is, whenever you’re ready to call off the search.”

  Nicky was ready after they finished their tour of California.

  Maybe she’d just missed it at their earlier stops. Maybe she was lucky, or maybe Gia was protecting her. Whatever the reason, Nicky saw much more death during their run up the California coast than she had seen on the rest of the trip. She saw a vampire named Alexander Chapman bite into the neck of the young girl who opened the car door for him. Alexander drained the girl dry then left her corpse in the driveway for the other slaves to clean up.

  She saw a vampire named Bernadette Paiz leap down from the trees and kill one of her slaves as the poor guy tended to her flower garden, letting what blood was left in him fill the flower bed when she was done.

  She saw a vampire named Lena Trang, sitting out on her balcony, reading a book in the moonlight. One of Lena’s slaves stood behind her for more than an hour, as if commanded to do nothing but stay present until Lena got a craving for a midnight snack. When the moon was at its apex, Lena put down her book, fed on her slave, then threw the corpse into the bushes below and went back to her reading.

  It changed Nicky to watch this. She imagined Frankie as that slave in the flower garden, her father as the body just pitched over the ledge. She developed a hatred for the vampires, a hatred for the world they had created.

  And she knew it was bigger than her. Bigger than the people she had left behind. Every day, throughout the world, hundreds of innocent people, people like her father, like Frankie, were sucked dry, killed by some ever-living monster that fed off the lifeblood of others.

  Her desire to rescue the people she loved had become a desire to avenge them, and she told Gia she was ready to stop their search.

  “I’m ready to join the Network full-time,” she said. “If I can’t rescue my family, maybe I can prevent others from suffering their fate.”