Authors: John Conroe
I grabbed some jeans and a
tee shirt and my North Face Jacket, ducking into the bathroom to change and brush my teeth. I threw on my favorite hat, a Springfield Armory black ball cap emblazoned with the words ‘Fear No Evil’. Of course it means something different to me than to most people.
When I came out, the girls were looking curiously around my tiny studio pad. It’s small, but bright, with a high ceiling, hardwood floors and a clawfoot tub in the bathroom. That tub had soaked many a bruised and sore muscle during my short residence. Two big windows look out to the Northeast, and I get a great view if I step out on the fire escape. My place is uncluttered, as I have a minimalist approach to possessions. Just one leather chair, a futon that doubles as my bed, flatscreen, compact stereo, dresser, small bookshelf, and several lamps. A small table just outside the tiny galley kitchen doubles as a desk, and I had two chairs that went with it. One of my walls was hung with a Native American rug, in deep reds with the silhouette of a standing bear. Another bear, this one a large soapstone fetish from New Mexico, stood guard over the apartment from the bookshelf. I have no Native American heritage, but I had decided as a child that my spirit guide animal would be a bear. We were both loners and fighters, at least that’s how I looked at it. I don’t know how the Great Bear felt about it, as I never gave him the option to say no.
The girls looked up as I came out, their curious expressions changing quickly to smiles, and we headed out.
If you had told me that an Adirondack north -country kid could be reasonably happy in the Big Apple, I would have laughed in your face. But my neighborhood of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn is really pretty nice. It’s mostly single- family homes with a five-or six-story apartment building sprinkled here and there. Lots of small trees line the street and there are tons of restaurants, bars, gyms and small shops. Brooklyn is the most populated borough in New York City, with a population of right around two and a half million people. Our building, on the corner of Bay Ridge Boulevard and Eighty-third Street, is a prewar elevator building, and the owners keep it up to date and very clean. Still, I miss my forests.
Chico’s is a small corner restaurant run by a flamboyant bundle of energy who looks Hispanic, but sounds Italian. The owner was behind the counter, wearing a hot pink tee with his own name across the front, and he greeted the girls by name and me with a nod. Chico’s is a seat yourself kind of place, so we found a booth and settled in. Rich coffee and bacon smells were driving me crazy. I made sure that I got the seat that faced the door, not leaving enough room for either of them to slide next to me. The waitress swung by and brought us coffee. During the walk over, we had all decided on omelets, so we ordered immediately. I ordered two three-egg spinach and cheddar omelets, toast with peanut butter, and a large orange juice.
“Hungry much?” Kathy teased, her eyes mock wide at my order.
“Starving!”
“Sounds like you’re craving iron too. Spinach? Six eggs? You do look a little pale today, you
’
r
e
not anemic are you?” Kathy asked. I remembered that she was a nutritionist at Sisters of Mercy Hospital. Paige worked for a television production company.
“Er.. not that I know of. But I haven’t been eating right, with the job and all. Too many donuts.”
They laughed and the topic changed to plans for the day. “We thought we’d go to Owl’s Head Park today. Wanna come.. along?” Paige asked.
This was the part I hated. The rebuff. When I took up Hellbourne hunting, I pretty much gave up on friends, and particularly girlfriends.
I had had exactly one date in my life. The end of eighth grade, I finally got up enough courage to ask Mary Chauffey to go out. Shy, smart and pretty, Mary was universally liked, but for one reason or another hadn’t dated many of the class boys. I had crushed on her all year and when I asked her to pizza and the movies, she had said yes. The date had been great. She had the same sense of humor that I did, but we were both too shy in school to display it. On top of that, she was very intelligent, conversant in a lot of the science subjects that I liked. I learned later, she had studied those topics just because I liked them. The real problem came three days later when I was banishing a minor house demon in Ogdensburg. Just before I tore the vile thing from its roots and threw it to Kirby, the Collector, it whispered her name to me. Then it was gone, plucked from the air by Kirby’s shadowy claws, hauled back to Hell. I sat in the dark house for thirty minutes, horror struck. It knew her name. The implications were immediate and horrific.
I went to school the next day and broke up with her. It was truly awful. She had really liked me and I trashed it. But the alternative was unthinkable. Her older brother and his friend jumped me several days later. The fight lasted twenty minutes and the cops, called by a housewife who was witness to the whole thing, broke it up. We were all pretty beat up, but the brother had a cracked rib, his friend lost a few teeth. My face and body were black and blue for a month. Because the witness had seen them jump me, I didn’t go to jail, but if I had been on the social fringe before, I was a true outcast from then on.
So I had to turn Paige and Kathy down easy.
“Aw, I’ve something I have to do today. It’s gonna take me most of the day.” I wasn’t lying. I would be lucky if my project didn’t go into nighttime.
“Really, all day? Isn’t this your first day off in like forever?” Kathy asked. Paige didn’t say anything but I saw a flicker of disappointment cross her face.
“Yeah I know. But it’s a commitment I can’t break. Believe me, I would rather not do it.”
“You know Chris, you work way too much. You’re like, never home.” Kathy was still carrying the conversation, but her tone was crisp.
The waitress brought our food and I tucked in. The girls started a two-way conversation that excluded me, punishment for not accepting their invite. I understood. I was being a jerk and they knew it. Hell, I had been rebuffed myself, just last night.
We finished breakfast and I excused myself, receiving a cold goodbye from each of them. Better that way.
Back at the apartment, I got set for the day. Changing into running clothes, and equipping my runner’s chest pack, I paused to consider the events of the previous night.
Vampires were real. Not that big of a shocker to someone in my line of work. But there were a thousand mysteries around Plasma’s resident coven.
First, Tatiana was obviously Galina’s daughter, but how did that happen? Was Galina turned after Tatiana was born? Did she turn Tatiana?
The other vampires treated Tatiana very deferentially. At the same time, the hulking Arkady had been genuinely afraid of the tiny girl vampire, when she had protected me. Which was also a puzzle, why had she interceded? But the number one question had to be the mystery of the Hellbourne’s interest in Tatiana. Galina and Vadim hadn’t contradicted my theory that it had wanted the young vampire’s blood. Why would it want
her blood? Why did Galina have
our clothes burned to destroy her blood? It all revolved around the quiet raven haired vampire. Truth be told, she hadn’t been far from my thoughts since I woke up.
I shrugged into the Civilian Labs chest pack, which was packed with my badge, wallet, cash, cell phone and issue Glock 9mm and one spare magazine of ammo. Helbourne are tough, but a hollowpoint bullet in the brain will ruin their day. Tying up my Asics, I headed out at a jog.
My plan was to patrol the area around Plasma for the day, evening and night if necessary. The Hellbourne would be back, all I could hope was that it happened within the next twenty-four hours. I was a little concerned about my ability to fight. By best estimation, based on the dizziness, cold shakes and lack of mental focus last night, Tatiana had drained me of something like fifteen percent of my blood supply. Oddly, I wasn’t appalled by that. She had needed it to survive.
I should have been terrified by it. Despite her sudden anger at me the previous night
I hoped she was all right. Her beautiful face hung in my mind’s eye, her expression vulnerable and innocent. Idiot! I shook my head to clear and focus. My arm was completely healed and I felt good, really good in fact. My vision, hearing and sense of smell all seemed extra crisp. And as I started to jog, my legs felt great and my breathing was steady and even. It made me wonder about the small amount of blood she had made me ingest.
Plasma was on Third Ave., about ten blocks north of my apartment. The smells from all the restaurants immediately drove me crazy. It was like I could almost pick out the individual spices and foodstuffs. The single best part of living in the City has to be the incredible array of food. Turkish, Thai, Japanese, Chinese, Scandianvian, Hungarian, Russian, Italian, German, French, Jewish, Middle Eastern, you name it and I’ll lead you to the restaurants that serve it. If gambling was Gramps’s vice, food was mine. Gotta have something to fill in for all the sex I wasn’t ever going to have. And with my workout schedule, I burned it off as fast as I ate it. Although, it did strike me as odd that I was already hungry forty minutes after that huge breakfast I had scarfed down.
Finally, I stopped and grabbed a shawarma sandwich from a Middle Eastern place. Hot spicy beef and lamb strips in pita with tahini. Yum. I ate it in five bites while running, the spices bursting on my tongue.
Plasma occupied an unassuming two- story brick building, with almost no exterior features of interest. Before I got near it, I swung down a side street and ran a circuit behind it on Fourth Avenue. I couldn’t see the back of the building, so I stopped running and walked down an alley between a news store and kosher deli. As I walked, the thought struck me that the vampires probably didn’t
live
in the club. The Demidovas were sure to have a big expensive residence someplace, but I didn’t have a clue where. Suddenly panicky, I visualized the Hellbourne breaking into some huge brownstone and slaughtering Tatiana as she slept.
Idiot, I hadn’t even thought it through. Now what the hell was I gonna do. Oddly, I flashed to a memory of Gramps teaching me about survival. We were with the Search and Rescue group that he helped regularly and he was instructing me in how not to panic. “What do you do if you’re lost, Chris?” He had asked. One of the other guys, a local sheriff’s deputy, had chimed in, “Drop your pants and start to jerk off! Someone’s bound to see you!” When the laughter had died down, Gramps had pushed me for an answer.
“Stop and take stock? Then prioritize?” I said.
“Very good, Chris. Always prioritize. Think your way out. Use your big brain. Not your little brain, like Steve over there.” He said, pointing to the deputy.
So I thought about the Demidovas and who might know where their house was. Michel St. James was a freelance society reporter, whose articles appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and half a dozen other publications. He sometimes hosted a cable station show of similar ilk and that was how he knew Paige. I met him one night when Kathy and Paige threw a party. A couple of acquaintances had crashed the party and were giving Michel a hard time. Abrasive and condescending, he had an irritating effect on people. Coming back from a house “cleansing” I interrupted the unpleasant scene and threw them out. It would be worth a phone call. 411 had his number and he picked up on the third ring. “Hallo, theeeese is Michel.” His accent was very affected. “Michel, this is Chris Gordon, Paige and Kathy’s neighbor.”
“Yes, I remember,” he drawled nonchalantly, but I could hear curiosity in his voice.
“I’m trying to get to Galina Demidova’s place and I wondered if you knew the address.”
“Why would
you
be going to Galina’s place?” His voice was a subtle mix of condescension, disbelief and wariness.
“Look, I am supposed to do some security work there and none of the other guys that are working are picking up their phones,” I lied. Michele knew I was a cop, and it would make perfect sense for me to be acting as security. Certainly there could not possibly be any other reason. It was also a not too subtle reminder of my help with his own security.
“Weell, of course I’ve been to her place. Brooklyn Heights, Willow Street if I recall. Let me look it up.”
I hailed a cab while he rustled up the street number. No way was I gonna run all the way there. Not enough time. I told the driver Willow Street in the Heights and then Michele’s fake French accent came back on the cell.
“Ett is 119 Willow, Christian.” I thanked him roughly and hung up, repeating the number to the driver, whose name was Ismahel, according to his cabby card.
The Demidova residence was a five story brownstone in the glitzy, nose in the air neighborhood of Brooklyn Heights. There was also a basement below street level. It probably went for four to six million and must have had over seven thousand square feet of space. I had the taxi drive past it and then got out on the opposite side of the street, eyeballing the place for detail. The front would be well guarded, as would the back.
A vision hit just then. A deck, a French door and a bland reflection in the glass of the door. I broke into a jog and ran around the block. Of course, the house was located right in the middle of the block, giving me the longest possible run to get behind it. Immediately, I spotted the deck, on top of a bump-out from the first and second floors. The deck was likely accessed from the third floor, but I could see how easy it would be for a demon-ridden meat shell to climb the exterior, after first getting into the first level’s walled garden space. Discreet security cameras were visible to my trained eye, but the human security guards would not likely notice the Hellbourne. Not wanting to get shot, I pulled my badge from my chest pack and dangled it around my neck. Then I studied the garden wall.