by Ian Hall
“She’s here, Lyman.” Her voice was low, almost a whisper.
I turned. “Who?”
“Miranda. The bitch who tortured me in Atlanta.”
I waited for her to mention the stripping of her nails, the removal of her teeth, but nothing else came.
“Mandy, you can’t touch her here.” I looked up and around the room. The cafeteria looked quiet, only five people, and none near us. I looked again for cameras. Nothing. “We’re under scrutiny twenty-four seven.”
“Revenge. Served cold.”
“Yeah, very fucking cold, Mandy.” I’d grown kinda mad at her, I mean, okay, she’d had her nails torn out, and her canines ripped from her mouth, but I thought we had moved on so much. “You try anything here, you’ll never get Chris back. You might not even get out alive.”
Mandy sat back in her chair, arms folded. “How’s Mary-Christine?” she asked after a while.
“Way too soon to tell.”
“Mama Muscat?”
I gave a grin. “By her bed.”
So we sat in the corner and finished our food; a couple of uniformed Helsings in a building of white. Then I got an idea.
“How about some shopping?”
That made her take notice. “What?”
“I’m pretty tired of these clothes. It’s a military uniform, and I never really signed up.” I stood, all animated, hoping to elicit the same response.
“What you got in mind?”
“Hell, we requisition some company vehicle, take our company credit cards, and get some new duds. Have a long hot shower, and change into them. I’m not a fucking soldier, Mandy.”
“What’re you going to find open at three in the morning?”
“It’s Chicago, for goodness sake. There’ll be something open.”
She put both hands on the table and pushed herself upright. When she raised her head, she smiled broadly. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
Miranda had stared at me for far too long to have not known who I was. But, she chose to play it off, adopting an authoritative air while keeping a notable distance.
“You can’t be in here,” she’d clipped, “medical staff only. You’ll have to wait outside like everyone else.”
I left. For Reynolds’s sake, not for the Helsing doctor’s. I wanted him patched, healed, and nursed back to health. Since he wasn’t vampire, I had no doubt black ponytailed Miranda would look after him. So, they bought themselves a little time; nothing more.
After that fun exchange, I then had the pleasure of Lyman staring me down like some retarded child he was trying to teach trigonometry to.
“The Forrester Effect. Why did it not kick in for Jackson?”
How the hell was I supposed to know? Back at the time, I’d whisked my foster brother’s body up to the mountains, I hadn’t yet fallen in with the Helsings, had never heard of the Forrester Effect, and had no clue old vampires were all supposed to turn to dust. So no, Mr. Know-It-All Lyman Bracks – it didn’t really strike me as strange when Jackson Cole’s body didn’t disintegrate right before my eyes. In fact, it seemed perfectly normal.
Lyman made up for his jerk moment though. A little retail therapy on the Helsing dime turned out to be a real treat. Of course the only place you can go at three o’clock in the morning to buy clothes is Wal-Mart. You’d be surprised how many vampires hang out there in the wee hours; or maybe you wouldn’t, come to think of it.
They eyed me and I them. This one dude with bristly hair and a collage of tattoos covering arms and chest took particular interest in me. But, nobody seemed in a mood to start anything. I didn’t get that wicked Blanche vibe too much; just some low-key undead out to kill a few hours before sunup. I wondered just how prevalent the vampire community was in a city the size of Chicago.
We got back to the medical center and Lyman took off toward Mary-Christine, and me to find Reynolds. I pit-stopped at the nurse’s station and got greeted with the customary Helsing distain for my existence. A portly woman with a pile of bleach-blonde curls pinned haphazardly around her head looked me over with utter disgust on her face.
I didn’t give her the satisfaction of pissing me off. Letting my mother’s years of “kill them with kindness” training finally kick in, I addressed the rancid hag with all the courtesy I could muster.
“I’m looking for Frank Reynolds.” Sweet smile.
“What’s your relation to Mr. Reynolds?” she quipped back.
Bigger, sweeter smile. “He’s my friend, mentor, father figure, practically my priest.” The bitch rolled her eyes. Big mistake. “Maybe you’d be more interested in my relationship to you. You see – you’re the helpless, fragile human, and I’m the fucking vampire.”
Before the nurse could hoist her bulk from the chair, a hand grabbed me by the elbow and shuffled me off to a quiet corner by some elevators. Howard Weeks. It wasn’t even six a.m. and the guy was already back at work; or maybe he’d never left. Hard to say – he always appeared to be wearing the same gray suit.
“You can’t go around threatening the staff, Miss Cross. That’s not going to grant you any favors around here.”
His usually-neutral face twisted into an appalled expression. I couldn’t tell if he was angry or embarrassed. I put myself in check, unwilling to lose Howard Weeks as an ally; for whatever that was worth.
“I’m sorry,” it was my second apology to the man in less than twenty-four hours, “but your staff is pretty uncooperative; I keep asking for information and getting shut out.”
Weeks finally let go of his hold on my elbow. “I’m sorry for that, Miss Cross – truly. These are Helsings, people taught to abhor vampires since birth. You’ve got to cut them some slack while they’re adapting to this… unique… arrangement.”
Okay. They don’t seem to have any problem adapting to me putting my ass on the line for them. But, I didn’t say that to Weeks.
“All I want,” I said instead, keeping my tone calm and measured, “is to see Frank Reynolds; if he’s not as good as family to me, then nobody on earth is.”
“Understood, Miss Cross. I’ll make it happen.”
Then I pushed my luck a little further.
“I’d also like to know what happened to Chris – the guy I asked you about earlier.”
His response was cryptic at best, guarded at worst, “That situation is still being looked into; once I have an answer, you’ll be brought into the loop.”
As much as I wanted to storm through the medical center and tear it down to the foundation, I maintained my cool. No amount of hissy fit was gonna get me to Chris any faster; for the moment I was at the Helsings’ mercy. And so was Chris.
At least Weeks was good on his word about Reynolds. Five minutes later, Nurse Fat Ass personally escorted me to his room.
He looked terrible. Face drawn, complexion ashen. Tubes and wires everywhere. The patch covering his shoulder wound was sunken in; a hunk of muscle obviously missing. I wondered if Dr. Miranda wasn’t nearly as skilled at putting patients back together as she seemed to be at taking them apart.
“Has he woken up at all?” I asked.
The nurse sighed as if the obligation to speak to me was more than she could tolerate. “He will survive,” she said, as if his existence was a personal inconvenience to her. “But the chances of him recovering a hundred percent…” she shrugged non-committedly.
“Good ol’ Helsing medicine strikes again.”
She stomped out in a huff. Good.
Alone at last, I cupped my hand over Reynolds’s.
“Don’t listen to that bitch,” I told him. “If they can’t save you – I will.”
No Change
I found Mary-Christine in the same condition as before. No change; mother still by her side. I felt kinda awkward when my phone rang. Howard Weeks.
“Mister Weeks.”
“Can I have a word, Lyman?”
“Sure, when?”
“Right now, my office.” He hung up.
I left Mary-Christine’s room without delay, but didn’t really hurry. I gave myself as much time to think as possible. Why would Howard Weeks want to see me? What had we done? What has Mandy gone and done? Oh crap.
Howard sat behind his space-age desk, and welcomed me warmly. “You’ve cleaned up.”
“Yes, the camouflage did nothing for my skin. Plus, we were a bit uncomfortable as soldiers.”
I sat, he sat. He arched his fingers, I began to worry.
“I have a problem, Lyman, and it’s very delicate.”
I had learned much over the last year, and ‘shut up and listen’, sat high on the list.
“And it involves Miss Cross.”
I shuddered inside, but still held my tongue.
“She insists on seeing a Chris McDonald, but I’m afraid no one has been identified as such.”
“I saw him on the plane,” I began, but Howard held up a hand.
“This man,” a face appeared on the screen behind him, “is being treated for various ailments, not least the huge amounts of rage and coagulant in his system. If he had been human, he would be dead.”
I couldn’t help thinking of Mary-Christine’s fate. “That’s Chris.”
“In fact, it’s actually Norman White from Baltimore.”
“What?”
Three different IDs flashed momentarily on the screen. All said the same thing; Norman White.
“We’ve verified it now from these three data sources, we’re certain.”
“But we know him as Chris McDonald; he’s got family in Harris. There must be some mistake, Mister Weeks.” I sat for a second. It seemed that Howard now played the silent game.
I lost.
“So why can’t Mandy just be allowed to see him? That would placate all her anti-Helsing emotions right now.”
“White is in a new laboratory downstairs,” Weeks began. “Very top secret, very hush-hush, very, very important to the security of the planet. Never mind Miss Cross’s frail sensibilities.”
“And this is why?”
He leant forward on his chair. A picture appeared behind him. Another. Another.
“These are people who show the same basic signature as White. Unfortunately, we never brought them to the laboratory alive.”
I sat for a moment. “I think I’d like Mandy to hear about this, sir.”
“It’s the very toppest secret.”
“And you don’t trust her?” I began to get testy.
“It’s not that we don’t trust her, but she can be influenced by other vampires.”
Ah, now the full reason for the mistrust was shown. I smiled. “Mister Weeks, Mandy could only be ‘influenced’ by the vampire that turned her; Alan McCartney. He is now dead. Mandy killed him.”
“Ah, yes, that’s the general consensus.”
Despite Howard’s taking Mandy on board, I felt he hadn’t grasped the level of her commitment. “Mandy saved the whole Helsing army on Tuesday night. Do you know that?”
Weeks shook his head, suddenly interested. “This has not been reported to me.”
I told him the whole story.
Once I’d finished, Howard got instantly on his phone. He harangued his minions, then got a hold of Mandy.
To his complete credit, she sat by my side in minutes and had been brought thoroughly up-to-date with the Norman White thing.
“Miss Cross, you were close to Norman-Chris when he was in Harris?”
“Yes, relatively. I mean, we were in the middle of some serious crap down there.”
“Did you recognize Norman-Chris as a vampire at that time?”
Mandy looked surprised by the direction of the questioning. “No, he wasn’t a vampire, definitely not.”
The three IDs came back on the screen.
I read them for the second time, and noticed the dates. 1987.
“That’s impossible,” I said. “Chris is no older than twenty. And even that’s a stretch.”
“And he wasn’t a vampire.” Mandy looked a bit sheepish. “In the middle of the battle at the farmhouse, I turned him to keep him alive, and to give me some control.” She looked from me to Howard. “He wasn’t a vampire before that!”
“But the IDs say otherwise,” Weeks said. “And we have much more information if you need it.” Weeks stood. “Follow me.”
We filed out of the office, and headed back to the laboratories.
“We have worked with a few vampires in our time.” He spoke softly as we traversed the corridors. “There is a special kind of vampire, very rare, but the trend seems to be increasing. They’ve undergone a special training called the ‘Path of the Wraith.’ They’re supremely difficult to detect, even for other vampires. Now, we’ve worked with a few of these characters before, but never actually had one alive on our slab, so to speak. Every time we captured one of these people, we didn’t get them back to laboratory alive. Norman is the first one, perhaps kept alive by the rage drug in his system. These ‘wraiths’ always involve an old vampire’s influence.”
“Tomas Lucescu,” I offered.
“Exactly. He fits the bill very well, and they involve careful manipulation of the victim’s mind and body. So careful, so precise, that even a vampire, right next to them, can’t tell they’ve already been turned.”
I looked at Mandy, but she seemed in deep thought, even as she followed Weeks.
We came to a new door, which he used a different card to open. Inside was the same layout as the other labs, but in this one were three very solid-looking beds. Three bodies were strapped so thoroughly to them, only half their skin showed through the thick wide straps.
“You’re not taking chances,” I offered.
Mandy moved to the window. “I thought you only had one; Chris?”
“The other two are so deep in the rage drug, we can’t tell. They’re not testing ‘vampire’ yet, so we’ll give them time to come down first.”
“They’re both kids from the Harris High.”
“Yes, they’ve both been identified as such.”
“Just kids,” Mandy said wistfully, but her eyes were on Chris.
I walked up to the metal slab they had Chris bound to. He appeared positively lifeless. Turning him and snapping his neck should have bought me minutes – not hours, and sure as heck not days – before he reanimated. So, either he lay somewhere “in between”, like Weeks hinted, at or I’d really killed him. A shallow but steady rise and fall of his chest assured me I hadn’t.
“Tomas Lucescu?” I asked without turning around.
Lyman answered, “Bald Eagle; Alan told me he was the head guy.”
Good to know.
Finally, I broke my eyes away from Chris – if only to sting Lyman with hard glare. “And just when did Alan tell you this?”
“In the barn. Right before you got there.”
“Why’d you wait ‘til now to tell me?”
That’s when Lyman got snooty, “Maybe my mind was occupied with little things… like my crazed, possibly dying girlfriend.”
I conceded his point, but not graciously. “Fine. Whatever.”
He turned his attention to Weeks. “Have you been able to make any sense out of the journal Mandy recovered from Eagle… uh, Tomas?”
Weeks puffed out his cheeks and nodded. “An intricate mind, that Mr. Lucescu. From what we gather he had interest and aptitude for both the scientific and the metaphysical. He’s obsessed with creating the perfect vampire; charismatic, physically beautiful, intelligent but malleable…”
I nodded. “Chris was all that.”
“We’ve also conducted a bit of research on the subjects Mr. Lucescu selected for his study. Not only were they exceptional in their physical attributes, but each possessed talents that set them apart from their peers.” Weeks pointed to the girl. “Miss Tan has an exceptional aptitude for the musical arts – classical piano, strings, winds, you name it. While our Mr. Guidelle here is a remarkable athlete in his own right.”
“Why would those qualities
make them better vampires?” I asked aloud; the question even sounded stupid in my own ears.
“Mr. Lucescu’s theories concluded that a master – such as he considered himself to be – could actually absorb the qualities of a subordinate vampire under his control. In essence, adding their victims’ ‘life energy’ – Lucescu’s words, not my own, mind you – to his, and therefore increasing the master’s… I believe he called it – omnipotence.”
I looked from Weeks to Lyman, who looked deep in thought.
“C’mon… you’re not buying this crap? That’s just lame! If that were true, he wouldn’t be walking around like some hairless rat; he’d suck somebody’s blood and magically grow hair,” I said.
Lyman sounded as logical as ever. “It doesn’t matter if I believe it, Mandy; apparently Tomas Lucescu does.”
“Okay. Fine. That at least explains why he was stalking the Harris kids, drawing their pictures n’ all that creepy stuff. But, what’s with all the quasi-vampire nonsense?”
Weeks responded, “The first part merely dictates why Mr. Lucescu chooses his particular targets, Miss Cross. His ultimate intentions, I’m afraid, are far darker.”
“Utter control,” said Lyman. “On a scale Amos Blanche couldn’t even fathom.”
“Correct, Mr. Bracks,” Weeks confirmed with a grave nod. “Control of will and thought.”
“Just like Alan did to you; Alan was Tomas’s student,” Lyman told me.
Wow, at last the penny dropped.
“A damn fast learner, too,” I replied spitefully. “He got into my head deep enough, that’s for sure.”
I turned back to Chris. “Wonder how far he got with you.”
“It may not have been Alan at all; for all we know, Chris was Tomas Lucescu’s bitch the whole time.”
I spun on Lyman.
He latched my wrist in mid-strike. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. All I meant was…”
I yanked free. “I know what you meant; just a really shitty way of putting it.”
Weeks looked at me like a time bomb that might go off any second.
“Miss Cross,” he addressed me tentatively, “your assistance to the Helsing’s cause has been nothing short of invaluable; although I’m aware sometimes our attitudes don’t reflect such sentiment.”
