“Sorry. I didn’t mean to question your abilities.” Roach meant it, though he knew he did not sound convincing. Dekker was the best chief medical examiner the department had, and never misinterpreted forensics evidence. “What about the young man killed in the last car?”
“Gunnery Sergeant Thomas Napier. Recently returned from his second tour in Iraq. A highly-trained combat veteran. Whatever attacked Sergeant Napier snapped his neck like a twig, shattering every bone in it and practically turning his head around.”
“So he didn’t die from his gunshot wounds?”
“Napier didn’t have any gunshot wounds.”
“More than a dozen shots were fired, and none of them hit Napier?”
“Eighteen shots were fired,” said Dekker. “At least, that’s how many shell casings we found. Each a .40 caliber from one of two unregistered Glock 23s. There were no bullet wounds on Napier.”
“Then where did the bullets go?”
Dekker shrugged. “I wish I knew. We never found them. The police and forensics team searched every square inch of that train car, but found nothing. No rounds were imbedded in the car walls, seat cushions, anywhere. And no windows were open or shattered, so the bullets didn’t exit the car.”
“So, what happened to them?”
Dekker paused, uncertain if he really wanted to answer. “I have an explanation, but it’s one I’ll never admit to publicly.”
“Fair enough.”
Dekker momentarily broke eye contact with Roach, but quickly reaffixed his gaze. “The only explanation I can come up with is that all eighteen bullets hit their target or targets, and that the target or targets escaped before the police showed up.”
“If I bring that theory to the mayor he’ll have us both locked away.”
“I know that.”
“The Metro’s surveillance cameras didn’t show anyone other than Matthews and Miss Monroe getting off the train after the gunshots were fired.”
“I know that.”
“And I don’t care how large or hyped on narcotics you are, there’s no human that could take eighteen .40 caliber rounds and walk away.”
“I know that.” Dekker paused. “But I never said that the target was human.”
Roach refused to even consider that possibility. “Is that all?”
Dekker nodded, so Roach dismissed him. When the door closed, Roach leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He sighed. Common sense told him not to bother arresting Matthews or Miss Monroe. Once again, forensics cleared them of being directly responsible for the murders. Only the security camera video linked them to the scene of the crime, and that showed an apparently injured Miss Monroe being escorted off the train by Matthews. The case would never make it pass a grand jury. Hell, even he no longer believed they were responsible for the deaths aboard the Metro, though they were mixed up with it somehow. Roach could hide or ignore the facts, but that did not make them disappear. Bone fragments found at a crime scene associated with Matthews that were over three hundred years old. A ten-year-old boy who swore he had been attacked by a monster. Two corpses from the Metro melee butchered by something inhuman. And the likely existence of something that could take eighteen hits from a Glock 23 and still walk away from the area undetected. Roach desperately wanted to ignore these facts, because to consider them would lead to answers he did not want to contemplate.
Reality, however, also warned him that he would not be able to ignore the truth much longer.
* * *
AN INTENSE PAIN SLICED THROUGH TONI. She sat up in bed, contracting her chest muscles to relief some of the agony. It coursed through her veins and ran through her organs like rivulets of fire. She clenched her teeth, fighting back the urge to cry out. After a minute that felt like an eternity, the burning subsided. Leaning back against the propped up pillows, she sighed.
Over the centuries, Toni had suffered numerous injuries. Failed stakings. Gunshot and sword wounds. Burns, including one incident when she had been nearly incinerated by hunters in a vicious battle in Vienna in 1756. In Rennes during the French Revolution, she came within moments of extinction as a victim of the same Reign of Terror that, ironically, she used to mask her feeding. But never before had she experienced pain like she did now. Not even when she had been turned during Ion’s orgy of sexual deviation and torture.
Pulling aside her dressing gown, Toni gently ran her fingers across the eighteen entry wounds. The agony cut through her body, but she continued to examine the scars. Toni had no idea what type of bullets the hunter used to cause such damage. Probably coated with holy water since it was one of the few things that could inflict such agony on a vampire. When she first escaped from the subway into the sewers, she noticed wisps of smoke and the stench of charred flesh coming from the wounds, accompanied by a burning sensation. Usually her wounds regenerated within an hour. Not these. They left jagged scars that refused to completely heal, leaving her chest permanently and hideously disfigured.
What felt even worse than the pain and disfigurement was her failure to kill the huntress. She had challenged Ion’s leadership in front of the coven, promising to accomplish what he could not. Instead of returning home triumphant with the bitch’s head as a trophy, Toni staggered back bruised and defeated. After the humiliation she had inflicted on Ion, she loathed to think about the retribution he would enact upon her. As she had pointed out to him, in retrospect unwisely, he had grown less tolerant and more cruel in recent years.
A noise at the door attracted her attention. Ion stood there, arms folded across his chest, a smug look of satisfaction on his face. Their eyes locked. Fear and apprehension welled up inside Toni. She wanted to look away but fought back the urge. Instead, she braced herself for the inevitable.
The inevitable never came.
Ion’s stern features softened, reminding her of the master who had been her lover and mentor right after she had been turned. When he spoke, his voice carried a tenderness she had not heard in decades.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like shit.”
“One of the drawbacks to being a vampire. We’ve become so immune to pain that when we get badly hurt the agony is unbearable.” Ion unfolded his arms and crossed the room, sitting beside her on the bed. “What happened?”
“I’d overpowered the huntress and was about to turn her when the hunter showed up. He fired at me with a pair of pistols. Each bullet burned like fire. I got away as fast as I could and made my way back here.”
Ion attempted to open her nightgown. Toni stopped him, embarrassed to reveal her disfigurement. Ion clasped her hands and gently placed them by her side. Pulling aside her nightgown, he examined the wounds. When he touched one of the scars on her right breast, Toni winced.
“Holy water.” Ion closed the nightgown. “Same thing happened to my master back in Kiev in the 1600s. An Orthodox priest had coated his saber with it and tried to cut my master’s head off. The burning went away after a few days. The scar on his neck never did.”
“So now I’m a deformity.”
“Not to me.”
Toni averted her eyes, suddenly ashamed of the way she had treated him earlier.
“Weren’t you able to separate the hunters?” Ion asked.
“I did. Vladimir and Ilescu kept the hunter occupied in one car while I went after the huntress. He must have gotten wise and came to save her.” Toni looked at Ion apologetically. “You were right. I never should have quest…”
Ion placed two fingers on Toni’s lips, silencing her. “Don’t apologize. We both underestimated these particular humans.”
Ion stood and headed for the door, stopping in the middle of the room. “Come with me. The coven is waiting. They want to know you’re all right.”
“I’d rather just rest, if you don’t mind.”
Ion held out a hand and spoke with a gentle firmness. “Just for a minute.”
Bracing herself against the pain, Toni slid out of bed and adjusted her nightgown, then
joined Ion in the center of the room. He took her right hand in his and placed his left arm around her waist. Moving slowly, Ion escorted Toni out of the bedroom and down the hall to the stairwell landing overlooking the foyer. The entire coven waited. Most stood on the stairs, with a few in the central hallway below. Upon seeing Toni, they growled in unison. The accolade lasted several seconds before Ion raised his hands to call for silence.
“As you can see, your mistress is alive and well. She was wounded in battle with the hunters. But, praise Satan, she will recover soon.”
More growls. Ion again raised his hands for silence.
“We have learned a valuable lesson these past few days. A lesson paid for with the lives of many of our brethren. Several of our numbers have fallen to these humans, and last night our mistress almost joined them. These humans are not like the others we have encountered. They are smart. They are strong. They are determined. But they will not prevail!”
A growl of ascension rose from each blood-soaked throat as Ion stirred the coven into a frenzy.
“We are vampires! We are superior to these humans in every way. We can heal our wounds after battle. They can not. We can increase our numbers by feasting on the living. They can not. Their mortality makes them vulnerable. We will no longer hide in the shadows of the night out of fear of these insignificant creatures.
“The hunter may be cunning, but he has a weakness. He cares for these humans, and will put himself in danger to protect them. If the hunter wants to be concerned about these pathetic little creatures, so be it. We’ll exploit that decency.” Ion hissed the last word.
“The next time we face the hunters, we will take them down once and for all.”
8.
SALEM. A SMALL TOURIST TOWN on the coast of Massachusetts north of Boston. Two hundred years ago, Salem had been the most prominent and influential seaport in the United States. It had been the first American city to establish trade relations with China and most of Asia, and its most prosperous merchant, Elias Haskett Derby, became America’s first millionaire. In later years, an unheard of official in the city’s Customs House would leave his bureaucrat endeavors behind and follow his passion for writing, eventually becoming known to the world as Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Yet Salem’s greatest claim to fame rested with a disturbing incident back in 1692—the infamous Witchcraft Trials. Two young girls, Betty Parris and her cousin Abigail Williams, had spent a long winter engrossed with listening to stories of witchcraft and practicing divinations of fortunes with Tituba, a slave Betty’s father had purchased while in Barbados. In February, Betty and Abigail began accusing local women of tormenting them through spectral visitations. Historically it had never been proven whether the girls actually believed their allegations, or were agitated by the stories told to them by Tituba, or were just bored and looking to bring some excitement to this joyless Puritan town. In any event, they set off a hysteria that eventually witnessed two hundred citizens jailed for witchcraft. Before the madness ended nearly a year later, nineteen people were hanged as witches, four accused Salemites accused of witchcraft died in prison, and one man who refused to testify was crushed to death under a pile of rocks during questioning.
Ironically, while virtually nothing from the era of the trials remained in Salem, the allure of the supernatural attracted tourists in droves. In a macabre twist on the “build it and they will come” theme, the locals provided enough makeshift attractions to draw in the crowds. An old church converted into a museum that displayed artifacts that may have been similar to those used by people who lived around the time of the trials. Another old church, the basement of which had been transformed into a paper mache version of what someone envisioned the jails used to detain accused witches may have looked like. History had been distorted to turn human misery into profit, while the truly supernatural aspects had been buried and all but forgotten.
It seemed only fitting that Salem would be home to Harold Reese.
After landing at Logan International Airport, Jessica rented a car and drove to Salem. The city harbored a charm that she found pleasantly surprising, especially when compared with the frenetic energy of Washington. Salem seemed to have maintained much of that famous small-town New England charm. Hell, what the local radio station referred to as heavy rush hour traffic would be comparable to a Sunday morning commute back in the District.
Finding Salem State College was easy, for it lay astride the coastal road linking Salem and Beverly. Jessica had driven only a few miles outside the city center when she came upon the college. Being late in the afternoon, she found street parking near the campus library. The campus was small, so she easily located the History Department in the Sullivan Building, the original red-brick schoolhouse that once served as the college’s only building when the institution had been known as Salem Teacher’s College.
If finding the History Department had been easy, finding Reese’s office proved more of a challenge. Jessica checked out all three floors as well as the basement, without success. She considered asking at the chairperson’s office, but decided against it, not wanting to attract any attention to herself. Instead, she asked one of the students who she found sitting alone in a classroom.
Jessica followed the student’s directions down to the basement where, in the northwest corner of the building, she found an underground corridor connecting Sullivan Building with the nearby Administration Building. With beige tiles and florescent lights hanging from the ceiling, the corridor reminded her of a well-kept subway station. A deserted subway station, for Jessica realized she was the only person in this part of the campus. Two locked metal doors on her right provided access to the boiler room and a janitorial closet. A single door made of wood and opaque glass sat recessed into the wall on her left. Jessica walked down to it. Painted across the glass were the words: Prof. Harold Reese, History Department.
Bingo. She knocked on the door. No response. Maybe he was in class. She knocked again, this time a little harder.
“Come in.” The voice from the other side sounded distracted.
Turning the knob, Jessica opened the door and stepped inside. Ten feet wide and thirty feet long, the office appeared commonplace for any college campus. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves lined both walls. Books pertaining to Medieval or Renaissance History filled each shelf, the rows occasionally interrupted by a framed photograph of some European cathedral or by an inexpensive souvenir. At the far end of the room sat a wooden desk two yards wide and piled high with magazines and term papers, some of which spilled over onto the worn leather easy chair pushed against the left edge of the desk. Though a string of florescent lights ran the length of the ceiling, they remained off. The only illumination came from a dust-covered banker’s lamp on top of the desk and a small window near the ceiling that allowed in a minimal amount of sunlight.
Reese sat at his desk, his back to the entrance, turned slightly to his right so he could work on a computer mounted onto a small end table. He appeared to be in his late-thirties, with reddish-brown hair and matching beard. The glare from the computer screen reflected off of a pair of amber-rimmed eyeglasses. He wore khakis, a white shirt that desperately needed to be ironed, and a necktie bearing a painting of Chartres Cathedral and with a poorly-tied knot skewered to one side. He reminded her of a Hollywood version of an absent-minded professor.
Though he had just invited Jessica in, he remained engrossed in his work, seemingly oblivious to her presence. When he did not respond after a few seconds, Jessica slowly moved deeper into the room to attract his attention. Nothing. She stepped a little closer, moving to the right to be in his line of sight.
“Excuse me, Doctor Reese?”
Reese looked up at Jessica, momentarily disoriented. He obviously had forgotten that he invited her in.
“Are you Doctor Reese?”
It suddenly dawned on Reese. He stood to greet Jessica, sending onto the floor a pile of papers that was resting on his lap. Reese hesitated, looking between the sca
ttered papers and his visitor. He finally opted for politeness over cleanliness. Stepping toward Jessica, he extended his hand.
“Yes, I’m Doctor Reese. Well, actually, Professor Reese. I’m still working on my doctorate. You must be Miss Reynolds.”
“I am,” she said hesitantly, gently shaking his hand. “But how did you know…?”
“Drake called and warned me you’d probably be dropping by.”
“Oh.” Jessica did not hide her disappointment. “And I suppose he asked you not to talk to me?”
“On the contrary. He asked me to answer all your questions.” Reese collected the papers from the leather easy chair and placed them on one of the few free spaces left on his desk. He motioned toward the chair. As Jessica sat down, Reese bent over and picked up the papers he had dropped. He stood, looking around for a place to put them, and finally opted for the top of a row of books on the nearest shelf. Turning back to Jessica, Reese spun his chair to face her and sat down. “What do you want to know?”
“To start, why is Drake Matthews suddenly being so generous with information? I’ve been trying to talk with him for a week, but he keeps closing me down.”
“You’ll have to ask him that. I assume he’ll eventually grant you an interview. But he wants you to talk to me first.”
“Why?”
“Because if you don’t believe what I’m about to tell you, you’ll never believe Drake’s story.”
Jessica knew the story Reese would relate would be questionable. Probably fanciful. From everything she had learned from the Washington and Boston Police, Reese straddled the line between sanity and delusion. Considering everything she had learned in the past week, however, right about now Jessica would believe just about anything Reese told her.
Taking a small notebook from her pocketbook and flipping it open to the first blank page, Jessica leaned back into the chair. She crossed her legs to form a makeshift table. “Okay. So what do you want to tell me?”
The Vampire Hunters: Book I of The Vampire Hunters Trilogy Page 17
