Underground Vampire (20 page)

“Hungry?” she asked.  “I am.”

“Good,” he answered, taking her
hand, “standing around in the rain is hard work.”

“Get used to it, we need to close
down every supplier serving them.”

“The smart ones are already on
their way out of town.  When they read the Times and see what happened,
they will be gone.”

“Hope so,” she said, “it will make
our job easier but we need to make sure.”

“Tomorrow I’ll drive by the other
shops and let you know.”

“Anyone still open we will verify
that they are legitimate, otherwise ….”

“Yep,” he said, “I’m on it, let’s
eat.”

Nasty flakes of snow blew down
Yesler, heralding the arrival of a southerly storm. Better than thirty-three
and sleet, thought Arabella, clenching her Burberry to her throat to block the
ice from her neck.  The worst of all possibilities was hammering cold
driven by wet gusts off the Sound.  With any luck, the snow would be light,
not amounting to much, so when the melt came the streets and sidewalks wouldn’t
be deep in slush.  

Jesse slogged beside her, his face
bent into a double-breasted pea coat woven so tight the wind couldn’t
penetrate.  She liked the way he looked in the blue, so deep it was almost
black, with the two rows of metal buttons.  She’d found it in a second
hand store in Fremont and snapped it up when she realized it was US Navy from
many years ago and made of Melton cloth.  

Right now, he’d folded the collar
up and bent the lapels about his neck and face so he had the visage of a
fighting man from long ago standing his watch on the deck of a destroyer in the
North Atlantic.  She took his arm so he could properly escort her on the
slick walk way and leaned into him as he broke the gusting wind.  For the
moment she was content to shelter next to him, admiring the way he bent to the
task without complaining.

Leaving the apartment had been acts
of will on their part, her cozy warm apartment conspiring to keep them inside
watching the white caps building as the ferries with their dainty Coast Guard
escorts plowed through building swells.  They’d watched the sky go from
gloomy rain to low clouds pregnant and black with moisture and watched as the
temperature veered to freezing.  

They talked about going back to bed
declaring the day a personal day, laughing at the thought of the Queen’s
employment benefit package.  Arabella said, “Could you imagine the
Vampires forming a union and going on strike?”  She’d laughed so hard she
rolled off the couch onto the floor at the thought.  Finally, Jesse said,
“Why don’t we go out and show the flag?  Then we’ll come back, order some
Chinese and watch the storm.”   

Now they were hacking about the
downtown perimeter established by Prunella, a blockade about the Underground
meant to keep Oliver and his minions penned in, isolated, alone and hungry.
 After Arabella closed down the blood centers and visited the bars and
taverns about the Underground informing them that going forward they would have
a Vampire on staff to make sure no unauthorized recruitment would occur, the
noose about Oliver had tightened.

The last step was stationing troops
at the known exits from the Underground to interdict any Vamp coming to the
surface.  Guard duty was the most boring action any soldier could draw,
and it was no different for the Vampires assigned to the job.  Tedious
time requiring long and boring hours, it was showing results as the Queen’s
forces slowly plugged each exit, confining Oliver and his recruits to a shrinking
perimeter.  The problem was keeping Vampires awake, alert and
focused.  Young and inexperienced Vampires drew the tedious duty, and some
learned the hard way the nature of the task.  Two had been surprised and
killed, an unfortunate incident with a bright side, she thought, as the others
suddenly took the job quite seriously.

Most of the Underground exits were
of necessity hidden in alleys or basements or somehow obscured so that the
comings and goings of Vampire commerce remained anonymous. Over time, the Clan
had worked to protect and disguise their access points, in some cases going so
far as to purchase a convenient building to ensure uninhibited access and
privacy. 

Throughout the downtown were
sprinkled old buildings housing decrepit businesses that never seemed to have
customers.  Periodically the commercial real estate office of the Clan
would close one business and reopen another to divert attention.  Their
brokers maintained an office, showed properties and, on occasion, went to
receptions at the Board of Realtors.  In that group they fit right in and
no one noticed, so long as the commission checks cleared.  All Vamps were
schooled to flash in and out so Humans didn’t notice a pattern, get nosy and
investigate.

Normally she didn’t pull guard duty
but the call from the Mansion that Prunella was unavailable roused her from her
apartment. They had bundled up and headed out determined to make a day of it;
after all, they did enjoy each other’s company.  It was important to show
the flag and, truth be told, she didn’t mind the cold and liked the front line
troops.  It was simpler than the politics of the Mansion and to the point,
find the enemy and kill them. Crossing over, she headed toward the Transit
tunnel dig.  

“Tearing down the Viaduct was the
single biggest improvement to the City,” she said, surveying the giant machines
devouring the structure like insects at a carcass.

“Oh, it wasn’t so bad,” Jess
mumbled from deep within his jacket. 

“Aside from being a death trap,
seismically unstable and ancient, it is execrably ugly.”  

“Execrably?” he replied. 
“Sorry, way too cold for execrably.”

A dishwater dirty curtain
separating the city from the waterfront, the Viaduct was ugly the day it went
up.  From the water it was East European/Soviet design massive, unsightly,
utilitarian, dated from birth.  From the land it served to create a
spiritual slum along what should have been some of the most desirable real
estate in the City, dooming a vast swatch of the City to purgatory.  From
her window it was a dirty, never-healing scab blighting the view.

 The construction project had
become a maze of trucks, demolition equipment, rubble and traffic barriers,
with every scrap of empty land fenced, secreting miscellaneous rubble, material
and foreman’s shacks.  Mysterious signs were everywhere.   Holes
were dug, abandoned, filled and refilled, then dug again, maybe to have
something to do; maybe to propitiate geoengeneering   deities. 
The mess stretched along the waterfront with no discernible organization, a
city-sized remodeling project.  The area proved impossible to interdict
and Oliver’s boys had taken to forcing their way out, popping into construction
digs, appearing out of the gloom, attacking a lone sentry, then disappearing
into the confusion.   

The farther down 1st they went, the
closer they got to Arabella’s favorite printmaker, an Asian shop specializing
in Japanese artists.  Since the stadiums were built and the crowds came
the area had slowly revitalized with restaurants and galleries drawn by big
spaces with low rents.  Then the hipsters christened it, SoDo, making it
safe for Windermere matrons to slum. 

SoDo proved difficult to guard, as
the lack of retail shops made loitering Vampires obvious, especially in this
weather where no one was outside.  Flecks of snow stuck to Jesse’s watch
cap, adding a festive look to his otherwise strong face as he trudged
along.  Perhaps it was the walk, maybe the swirls of snow and the sense of
freedom with him, the shop fronts filled with art, pottery from Japan with the
aesthetic she craved that distracted, interfering with her radar so she missed
the warnings.

She nodded to guards, some sitting
in nondescript cars others less lucky, dressed like bums harboring in alleys.
 Closer to the big dig, small businesses and supply houses gave way to the
construction with material and equipment haphazardly thrown about. The
combination of the late afternoon and stormy clouds darkened the street and the
lights came on without doing much good.  Telephone poles loomed overhead
with cables and power lines providing a lattice in the gloomy air.  

Arabella searched for the next
guard without success and pulled Jesse behind a pile of concrete traffic
barriers stacked beneath the overpass.   Disturbed that there’d been
no Vampires for the last few blocks she searched carefully looking for
something amiss to justify her sudden anxiety.  Traffic thundering above
masked sound while shadows and night darkness obscured her vision.  

Jesse put his hand inside his
jacket feeling for the gun tucked into his jeans while she regretted not
bringing a blade.  Motioning him to stay put with his back against a
pillar, she moved into the dark directly beneath the overpass.  She could
feel the dampness of the fresh dirt on her and taste the depths in her nostrils
as she moved closer to the dig until she was at the edge of a pit and the
unmistakable odor of the abominations struck her in the face.  

Turning to warn Jesse, she was
struck in the face as the Vampires dropped onto her.  Stalactites hanging
beneath the overpass, they fell upon her without a sound and smothered her
under flailing arms and kicking legs.  She went down scrambling
desperately to avoid sliding into the pit as the mob grabbed and poked, pulling
her closer to the edge.  

So close was the mob that none were
able to direct a killing blow and, as they continued to drop and mob her, they
became so densely packed that, while she couldn’t strike them neither could
they her.  The numbers were telling and while none could deliver a fatal
blow, the combined damage of their nails driven into her flesh sapped her
strength until one was finally able to rake her neck savagely, damaging an
artery.  As her blood pumped the mob lost focus, distracted by the smell,
failing to finish her.

Having learned his lesson in his
first foray into the Underground, Jesse habitually carried a flashlight with
his gun.  Running across the debris he flipped the switch, hitting the
Vampires dead in the face with 2000 lumens.  Temporarily blinded, several
tumbled into the pit while the others shrunk back in agony. Continuing forward,
he pulled his pistol and shot three in the face. Reaching down, he grabbed the
collar of her raincoat and reversed, dragging her back toward the street.
 Stopping, he trained the light on those still standing until they dropped
into the pit, unable to withstand the light.

Dragging her body behind the
barriers, he called to her as he unbuttoned her coat.  Unresponsive, she
laid still, blood still oozing from the wounds to her neck.  Pressing with
his hands, he tried to staunch the flow without choking her to give her body a
chance to repair itself.  He’d seen how quickly she recovered and, aside
from the gunshot when they first met, he’d watched her repair combat wounds
with rest and her will.  

He waited but she did not
revive.  Checking, he found her pulse erratic and her heartbeat weak.
Having no idea how much damage she could survive, he had no way of judging her
injuries and no way to get her to the physician.  Without thinking, he
bared his arm and using his penknife cut into his wrist, producing a few drops
of blood.  He held his wrist over her lips, clenching his fist to force
out the blood and watched as the drops fell onto her lips. At first she did
nothing, no response to the warm drops, then tentatively her tongue tasted a
drop, then another, and he pushed his wrist to her mouth and she began to lick
and suck at his cut vein.  

The flow grew greater as she grew
greedy, pulling life from him and into her.   Turning, he saw scaly heads
sticking from the hole.  The night people recovered from the light were
gathering for round two.  He wedged her body between a pillar and barrier
as best he could, then charged the Vampires boiling out of the hole, light in
one hand, gun in the other.  All boys who want to be cops secretly want to
John Wayne the bad guys, heroically defending the Alamo, singlehandedly holding
the fort against the Hun.  None actually get the chance and most satisfy
the urge abusing citizens chained to the ground. 

As he ran towards the horde he
screamed into the cold night, blasting the horror with photons and bullets till
they wavered, then fell back to the ground, disappearing into the depths. 
He stood at the edge firing down as they crowded into the channel they’d opened
until he was alone. Concerned about the noise and light he ran back to
Arabella, frantic to get away before the police arrived or the vampires
returned.

In his absence she’d dragged
herself to the roadway, her sweater stained with blood and dirt, torn and
ripped in the attack.  For a fleeting moment he thought how angry she
would be that it was ruined, then he dragged her back behind the barrier, knelt
by her head and cut himself again, thrusting his wrist to her lips.  She
drank, an involuntary response, until pushing him away she said, “No, never
will I drink from you.”

“You must, we have to leave and
you’re too weak to walk.”

“No,” she said, “one moment and
then I will be strong enough.”

Easily pushing her arms aside, he
again put his wrist to her mouth and she drank his life.  He could feel
electricity as his blood entered her and her force flowed into him.  A
serenity overcame him, and he grew comfortable laying on the rough cold concrete. 
They might have stayed that way, wrapped in each other had the patrol car not
come to investigate and shined its light above them, shattering their peaceful
illusion.  Moaning, she pulled back, the harsh light burning her eyes; he
stood fumbling for his badge, fumbling for an explanation. 

The two patrol cops walked forward,
wary in the night.  They both reached for weapons as behind him Arabella
stood, her lips crimson, hair wild and crazy, flecks of blood on her pale and
beautiful face.  They began to scream the contradictory commands that get
so many people shot when she stepped forward, seizing one then the other with
an implacable vision, telling them it was nothing, ordering them to
leave.  Holstering their weapons, they returned to the car and drove off
befuddled, wondering what they were doing here under the overpass in the cold
and blowing wind.

Taking her phone Jesse called the
physician, describing her wounds, as they stumbled toward her apartment, a
couple walking off too much wine on an afternoon.  He met them at her door
and tended to her, commenting that the wounds were deep and dirty. 
Jesse’s field first aid had saved her, and when the doctor left they talked
long into the night.