by Steve Niles
“Well, I can tell you that it’s highly unlikely that…put it this way, he’s not the kind of guy who gets sick.”
“Dude is sick.”
“Mentally, no doubt. But not physically. I can’t guarantee it, and you should still see a doctor and get a blood test soon. But I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine.”
“You know who it is?”
“I know what he is. I’ll know who soon enough. Like I told you, he’ll be dealt with, so no one else has to go through what you did.”
“Did he…did he do this to any of the women in those other houses? Those people he killed?”
“Mitch?” Dane was clueless.
“No. None of the victims showed any signs of sexual assault,” Mitch said. “Of course we don’t know what he did with the ones he took away.”
“And none of those have been found,” Dane added. “Until you, Ananu.”
“Hooray for me,” she said, sounding as if she would have been happier not being found at all.
Dane covered her body again and worked his way down her legs. He poked and prodded, bent her knees, turned her ankles. No evident injuries there. All in all, considering what she had been through and with whom she had tangled, she was in remarkably good condition—physically speaking, of course.
Mental and emotional states were harder to gauge. She seemed tough, able to take things in stride. Maybe having your family members killed one by one did that. But how she would feel a day from now, or a week, or a year? Anybody’s guess. She certainly wouldn’t come out of this unscathed.
“Is there anyone else you want to contact? Boyfriend, other close friends, anything like that? I don’t think it’s safe to let the world at large know that you got away, but if there’s someone special…”
“I spent most of my time with Mrs. Waylons,” she said, her eyes downcast. The way she said it sounded lonely. “Not seeing anyone right now. My friends can wait.”
“I think that’s for the best.”
“When do we get out of here?” she asked. “Please.”
He examined her arms. More bruises, especially around her left bicep and right wrist, but no broken bones. “Not until dark,” he said. “It won’t be safe until then.”
“What? Dark in this neighborhood is—”
“I know, Ananu. Believe me. But we have other things to worry about than whatever thugs might be roaming around. As soon as it’s dark, we’ll get you someplace more comfortable.” He had an idea about that, although he hadn’t brought it up to Mitch yet. “Someplace safer.”
“You’re the boss,” she finally replied. “Least, you act like one.”
“Let’s just assume I am, for now.” He straightened his spine, rose from the floor. “You take it easy for a while. Sleep if you want to. We’re not going anywhere, and you’re safe as long as we’re with you.”
“I wish I knew why I believe you, Dane.”
“It’s good enough that you do.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Try not to worry about it.”
He left her and returned to Mitch, who sat at the top of the stairs, looking out at the warehouse beyond. Watching the door, Dane quickly realized.
“She okay?”
“No major damage that I can see,” Dane said. “If there’s any internal bleeding, I can’t tell. And of course the assault, that’s the worst part. I was able to pull off some minor hypnosis, so she’ll play along, at least for the time being.”
“Motherfucker has to pay,” Mitch said.
“He will. We’ll make sure of that.”
“You still think you can find him?”
“I’ve got his scent now,” Dane said. “I’ve seen some of his stooges. I’ll find him.”
“Good. I want to be there when you do.”
“Maybe. It depends.”
“On what?”
“On what you think of this. Ananu needs someplace to lay low, somewhere safe and protected. Do you think she could go to your place?”
Mitch’s head swiveled toward him. “My place? It’s not much.”
“She doesn’t need luxury, she needs security.”
“I don’t know.”
“If you’re not comfortable with it, Mitch, that’s okay. We’ll figure something out. I just thought that it would be a good option. The killer doesn’t know who you are. Nothing personal, but after last night he’ll be looking for me, not you. I’d be around as much as I can, when I’m not out looking for him, and we can lay in some heavy artillery, just in case.”
“How heavy are we talking?”
“Shotgun’s a lot more effective against vampires than a nine millimeter,” Dane said. “You can blow the head clean off with that, or liquefy the brain. Either one does the trick.”
“As long as we’re not shopping for a howitzer or something.”
“I wouldn’t turn one down, but a shotgun should do.”
They sat in silence. Behind them, Ananu’s breathing slowed, settling into an even rhythm. She had fallen asleep after all.
As the hours passed, Mitch napped a little and woke up hungry. Ananu probably did, too, although she didn’t say anything about it. Dane had been famished ever since being in that bloody foyer.
He controlled the hunger, the urge. He was used to that. When he did feed, he would drink deep. Until then, he refused to attack those who depended on him, and there undoubtedly wasn’t anyone else around to pick from.
Finally, the light streaming through the door faded. The block of white they could see outside went gray, then black.
“Can we go now?” Mitch asked. “Looks dark out.”
“I’m sure as hell ready,” Ananu said. She sat upright, back against the wall. She had tied the ribbons of her nightgown into something that kept most of her covered, and by belting the robe with a strip torn from its hem she successfully hid the rest. Dane thought she was a beautiful young woman, although he would rather have seen her body under better circumstances.
“Sure,” Dane said. “I think it’s fine now. Ananu, I can carry you.”
She pressed her hands against the wall, forcing herself to her feet. “I can walk,” she said. “I did earlier when I had to pee.” She had gone to the farthest, darkest corner of the platform for that.
“I’ll hold your hand on the steps,” Mitch said. “Just in case.”
“That’s a good idea,” Dane said. He went down first, hurrying so that his weight would be off the staircase before they stepped on. He waited near the bottom for them, then preceded them to the door. “It’s not far to the car,” he told Ananu. “Just out and around the corner.”
“Okay, whatever. I’m fine. I could use a pizza or something. Maybe a nice big T-bone. But I’m fine walking.”
Dane went to the corner first, looking around to make sure the way was clear. When he didn’t see any of their attackers from last night lurking around, he beckoned them on.
They reached the corner, Mitch a half step in the lead.
“Crap,” Mitch said.
“What?”
“On my windshield. I got a ticket. I guess we’re lucky it didn’t get towed.”
Dane allowed himself a smile. If that was the worst that happened…
He had just taken another step when a ray of light stabbed him. He felt it, painful, slicing into him like a blade. A full spectrum beam then, with the same UV balance as daylight. 50,000 lux, he guessed, or thereabouts. Dane leaped away from it, toward the car.
Thunder split the silence and a hail of bullets chewed the pavement, tore into the side of the warehouse, and blew out the windows of Mitch’s cab.
8
FBI SPECIAL AGENT Dan Bradstreet watched the assault through night-vision goggles from a rooftop across the street. Snipers lay on their bellies on both sides of him, sighting on their targets and firing away.
On the street below, another team had emerged from a trailer with Colt Commandos, blasting seven hundred rounds per minute at the targets. Lead sprayed a
round the target vehicle and shell casings clattered wildly to the ground like metallic rain. Dan could just hear them over the roar of the weapons fire.
Finally, a team inside the building he stood on top of trained high-intensity TRU-UV beams at the targets through open windows. These weren’t something available on the open market, but had been designed and built especially for Operation Red-Blooded by a little shop outside Cleveland. The op was the shop’s only client, and millions in black-bag money had made their way to it over the past few years. The TRU-UV lights approximated the direct rays of noon sunlight and had proved fatal to vampires in both testing and field operations.
Dan hadn’t had much time to put this particular op together, but he had gotten pretty good about pulling things together on the fly. Bloodsuckers didn’t tend to advertise when they’d be out and about, after all. And although he could find and eliminate a nest nearly every night, if he wanted to, that wasn’t the current mission. Tonight was considerably more complex.
Sometimes it was about quieting those who might talk about vampires, who might stir up the masses. Fear was a potent political weapon, after all, and had to be used carefully. The wrong person raising a vampire alarm at the wrong time could take the teeth (he smiled at the mental pun) out of an announcement saved for when it would do the most good.
Let people worry about terrorists for now, his immediate supervisor had told him once. If that fades, then we can play the undead card. Until then we keep it quiet, and we try to keep the bloodsucker population under control.
This particular situation had been brewing for some time. As long as Savannah’s citizens thought a human serial killer stalked them, a legitimate purpose was served. It kept them off guard, a little nervous. People kept their doors locked and didn’t go out as much at night. Why this would be remained a mystery, since the killer had always attacked people in their own homes, and locks had proven no deterrent whatsoever. Dan didn’t waste too much effort trying to understand why people acted the way they did, though—he did what he was told, and saved the psychology for trying to figure out how to use what he observed against them.
Because working against people—as they would perceive it—was really working for them. That’s what the government did. It worked for people even when they would really rather it didn’t.
Dan had guessed early on that the Savannah serial killer was vampire, not human. His superiors had since reached the same conclusion. Hence he and an Operation Red-Blooded strike team were dispatched to Savannah to take care of things if the news threatened to become public.
From the looks of things, they had already reached that stage.
A vamp and two “nons” (Operation Red-Blooded parlance for non-vampire) had walked out of that warehouse together, one night after significant undead activity had been observed in the neighborhood. Action was demanded. Dan had given the order.
He couldn’t tell yet if any of the targets had been hit, but he didn’t think so. He hadn’t seen anyone go down, although it was possible that one or more had been wounded but escaped around the corner, beyond his field of view.
He grabbed the radio on his belt, clicked the button. “Get some weapons and two of those portable TRU-UVs around the other side and cover that door,” he ordered. “If they’re already back inside, move in slow and easy. I don’t want them walking out of there.”
“Roger that,” came the response. In just seconds, he saw agents on the move. Like Dan, they wore blue windbreakers with FBI emblazoned across their backs. With his neat brown hair and his college linebacker’s build, Dan looked like J. Edgar Hoover’s wet dream of an agent, and no one who saw him would doubt that’s what he was. Local law enforcement had been alerted to tonight’s raid, and well warned to stay clear.
If he had been asked, however, the Bureau’s current Director would not have known what Operation Red-Blooded was. It had been developed far above his pay grade, as an interagency task force dedicated to the one specific issue. Dan didn’t take orders from the Director. Under certain circumstances, though, it was possible that the Director would take orders from Dan. Alternatively, he would very seriously regret not having done so.
Dan could almost taste the single beer he would allow himself tonight, after this op was over. Thanks to overwhelmingly superior firepower and the element of surprise, that cold one was now very soon in coming.
When the first lance of UV light speared him, Dane threw himself to the ground behind the car, counting on that to block the rays. He hoped. At the same time he shouted out to warn Mitch. “Back inside!”
He glanced back and didn’t see Mitch or Ananu clear the corner. That was good. Unless it meant they had already been cut down by crossfire from another direction.
Glass sprayed over him from the car’s windows. The light beams danced around, looking for their target. Dane felt his flesh smoldering where he had already been stabbed.
Whoever had attacked had come well prepared.
Dane waited until the lights had moved off his immediate area and scrambled back toward the corner.
Bullets ripped into him, through him, as he ran. They hurt, no doubt about that. But they wouldn’t kill him, unless they blew his head off, destroyed his brain, so he pushed though the pain and made the corner.
As he did, he saw Mitch shoving Ananu back into the warehouse. The ex-cop stayed by the door with his Smith & Wesson. Against the din of the automatic weapons fire, it looked almost comical, like a toy. “That’s not going to do much good,” Dane hissed, rushing up to him.
“I know,” Mitch said. “But you told me to leave my howitzer at home.”
“I thought I told you that you wouldn’t need it at home.”
“Same thing.” Mitch looked at Dane for a second, as if reconsidering an earlier opinion. “Who the hell’s out there? Cops?”
“No such luck.”
“Then who? Who’s got that kind of firepower?” He paused. “Feds?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Dane said. “But that’s more likely than locals.”
“Why would they want to kill us?”
“If we could figure out the answer to that one, we’d probably have the who.”
“I got a question,” Ananu said from deeper inside the warehouse. “What are we gonna do about it?”
“We’ll have to get out of here a different way,” Dane said.
“You just happen to have a car parked somewhere handy?” Mitch shot back. “Because my cab sounds like it’s being put through a shredder right about now.”
“That’s a good idea,” Dane said.
“Fucking up my car’s a good idea?”
“No, calling a cab is.”
“You’re joking, right? I don’t think now’s the best time.”
“Use your cell phone and call someone. Anyone. Give an address three or four blocks from here.” He pointed away from where the fire had come from. “That way.”
“And how do we get there? If we go out to the street, they’ll kill us.”
“If we go out through the door.”
“You see any other exits?” Mitch asked.
“I’ll worry about that. You catch us a ride.”
Mitch dragged his mobile phone from his pocket and opened it up. Dane went back toward the door, looking outside from the shadows.
Besides the huge rolling doors at the front of the building, facing onto the street, this was the only way in or out. Since the attackers appeared to be well organized, they probably knew that, too. Because of the layout of the building, with this door around a corner from the street, it wasn’t vulnerable to attacks from the street or the buildings on the other side. But a small ground force could come in and make things very unpleasant for anyone trying to hole up in the warehouse.
Dane didn’t see their new attackers yet. He expected they wouldn’t be long.
He hoped this physical fact would protect them. Because anyone looking at the building would know there was only the one door, they would hav
e focused their attention on the street side. By leaving out the back, Dane believed, they could slip away unseen.
All he had to do was make a new door. What could be easier?
Ananu huddled by herself in the middle of the big empty warehouse, arms wrapped around her chest, clutching her own shoulders. Her green eyes were large, full of fear. With her lips parted, Dane noticed a chipped upper tooth, a triangular wedge knocked out of it, just right of center.
Dane had promised to keep her safe and the first thing he’d done was to walk her right into the middle of a firefight.
He gave Ananu a nod that he hoped was reassuring and went to the back of the building. Its shell was made of thin steel around a skeleton of four-by-fours. The walls, like everything else, were covered in mold and mildew.
This would be noisy, but there was no getting around that.
He closed his hands into fists, opened them, flexed the fingers a couple of times. Then, fingers held rigid, straight out in front of him, he drove them through the steel wall like ten hole punches. Feeling air on the other side, he closed his hands around the wall and pulled down.
It felt like trying to handle fire barehanded. As a human he would have broken his fingers with the first move. But he was stronger now than he had been then. Much stronger. Beads of bloody sweat popped out on his forehead. His shoulders screamed.
He tore the wall, steel bending and curling behind his hands.
A minute later, he set the section he had ripped out down on the concrete floor. It left a gap a little more than two feet wide and five feet high.
“Lady and gentleman,” he said. “We have a door. So then…do we have a ride?”
9
“DO WE KNOW no one’s gonna shoot at us if we go out there?” Mitch asked, looking scared half out of his mind.
“Not until we go out there,” Dane replied. “But unless they heard me making the door and figured out that’s what it was, they wouldn’t have any reason to think we could get out this way.”
“I reached a friend who’s going to swing by, about six blocks from here. It’ll take him about twenty minutes to get here, though,” Mitch said.
