The Gathering, page 27
“Maybe gathering information?” Barbara mused. “Or maybe she has a specific interest in Nathan?”
“That I don’t know.”
Barbara considered. There was something else that Beau had said:
“Kids used to go missing from Deadhart all the while back then.”
“Is it true that kids have gone missing from Deadhart before?”
“Not on my watch.”
“I’m talking a long time ago, maybe thirties, forties, or even earlier?”
He shifted in his seat. “I heard stories. Mostly loose tongues in the Grill, talking about the good old days when they could hunt the Colony.”
“Beau mentioned Rita’s aunt—said she disappeared when she was a little girl.”
“Look, it sounds harsh, but kids were often neglected in small towns like these back then. Left to run wild. Got killed by bears or lost in the woods. If a kid fell in the river or down a ravine—their body might never be found. Rita would tell you the same.”
Barbara nodded. “But what if it was a vampyr? Maybe our killer has been killing for a lot longer than we realized?”
His face creased. “I don’t know. There’ve never been any murders like Todd or Marcus before.”
“That you know about.”
“True, but what about the long gap?”
Barbara considered. “The reason most serial killers don’t get caught earlier is because they move around. They count on someone not joining the dots. But often they have a favorite place. A killing spot they return to. That’s usually what gets them.”
“Well, we know Nathan recently returned to Deadhart, and he was here when Todd was killed.”
He was right. But somehow Nathan didn’t strike Barbara as a serial killer. Usually they were smart, organized, good at covering their tracks. Unless the aggressive-drunk act was a double-bluff. She thought about Mowlam again. The good looks. The easy charm. The feeling that his persona was all snake oil. Something else lurking just beneath the slick surface.
“Kurt Mowlam is another recent arrival,” she said.
“But he’d only have been a kid back when Todd was killed. Barely in double figures.”
“Unless he’s a vampyr?”
Tucker let out a long sigh.
“Okay…so who do you want to talk to first?”
49
Athelinda didn’t remember being turned.
Occasionally, fragments of her human life would come back to her. Sunlight. A strange sensation of warmth, which she thought might be joy or love. Music sung in a soft, lilting voice.
Afterward, there was darkness, violence and blood. Many turned children didn’t survive for long. They were killed by their own families out of shame, or abandoned, left to fend for themselves. Athelinda had been lucky, in a way. After she had killed her mother—an act of impulse and unreason she still occasionally felt pain about—she had been found wandering the streets and taken in by a traveling freak show.
This was back in seventeenth-century England, where child vampyrs were still curiosities, especially beloved of aristocrats and royalty. She had been dressed all in black, placed in a coffin in a cage, and people would gasp in breathless terror as the pretty blonde child drank the blood of small animals.
But then the puritanical, religious movement began to grow. To be entertained by vampyrs was seen as evil and satanic. Vampyrs were seized and culled. Athelinda had only narrowly escaped with her life after some of the other performers took pity on her and smuggled her out.
She had found herself on a boat to another country. The journey lasted weeks. And then a sickness descended. Most of the others on board didn’t make it. Athelinda arrived with a ghost ship of corpses and made her escape before anyone found out that many had been drained of their blood.
The new country was vast, busy and full of human stench. The streets bustled with people, carts and horses. America. A place Athelinda had heard talked of, often in a state of wonder.
But Athelinda found nothing wondrous about its mass of filthy streets, the chorus of coarse voices or the vampyr heads displayed in shops. She walked by night till the buildings and bustle of bodies lay far behind her. Now she had her freedom, she wished to preserve it.
For a long while she traveled alone, keeping to the forests and wilderness on the edge of towns. She taught herself to build a basic shelter and to hunt to survive. Not just animals. Any creature who ventured into the wilderness was fair game for her.
She made her way farther and farther north, following the darkness and the cooler weather. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, she met other vampyrs. Initially distrustful, they had formed a loose alliance and began to travel together. To her surprise, Athelinda realized that she found comfort in others of her kind.
In the way that most colonies grew, they added more members, and Athelinda became an unofficial leader. She was one of the oldest. She was also fierce and brutal. Being turned so young, she had less humanity to ease the edges off her bloodthirst and fury. But she also learned that such desires needed to be controlled. Murdering humans was seen as barbaric among other vampyrs. It reinforced the view that they were beasts and monsters. More to the point, it was bad for the colonies. Dead humans attracted unwanted attention.
Athelinda learned to curb her desires. Mostly.
For a while, their colony was nomadic, traversing the country by horse and cart or boat, but like all creatures, the urge to put down roots, to create a more permanent home, grew. Somewhere they could build a community and be left alone. That was how they found themselves in the mountains here. Cold, dark and isolated, away from the human hunters. The local Dghelay Teht’ana population had accepted, or perhaps respected, them. The “night walkers,” they called them.
The Colony built their settlement from scratch. Cut trees, sawed wood. Relationships were formed, children and then grandchildren born. Athelinda mellowed. They had found a home where they could live, untroubled.
And they did, for almost two hundred years. But it couldn’t last. Humans were like a plague. They infected everywhere. When huge copper reserves were found in the mountains, men and their machines followed. The Colony was driven from its settlement into the woods. But that wasn’t enough for the humans. Next came the hunting parties. They raided on the brightest of days, when they knew the Colony was most vulnerable. They killed, tortured and captured those they thought they could make use of. Like Athelinda.
She found herself at the mercy of men’s desires and depravities. Chained, in a child’s bedroom. Pink ruffles and cuddly toys. They dressed her in a gingham frock with a lace petticoat that itched, and white ankle socks that made her feet sweat. Her long blonde hair was tied up in two bunches.
“Pretty as a picture,” Bonnie, the toothless hag who ran the whorehouse, would cackle, blowing pungent cigar smoke into Athelinda’s face.
“Now you make nice with your daddies when they come.”
Athelinda did not make nice. But she didn’t fight either. Bonnie took pleasure in punishing those who stepped out of line. She would remove fingers, eyes and sometimes limbs for transgressions. Athelinda had heard that she once hung a girl from a pole outside for seven days straight, not quite letting her die. Eventually, she slit her open from throat to pubis and hooked out what was inside her with a hot poker. Punishment for getting pregnant.
Athelinda wasn’t sure if it was true. She heard these stories from the servant boy who brought her sustenance and cleaned her wounds. The boy liked to talk, and she listened, storing the information. In her own way, she was fond of the boy and only occasionally considered killing him.
While most humans looked alike to her, she began to recognize the faces of her visitors. Some were more palatable than others. Rough, but bearable. But there was one who even Athelinda feared. Good-looking with a thick head of fair hair, sharp blue eyes and a tall, lean physique. His smile was easy, but his eyes were dead. Athelinda recognized evil when she saw it. She’d seen those desires reflected in her own eyes.
The first time he visited her, he brushed her hair and then choked her with his belt. The next visit, he brought a knife. Another time, he used flame. He always had a new torture, each more extreme than the last, in order to derive his pleasure. And each time he knew she would be waiting, for she would not die.
On the worst day, Bonnie had to call for a doctor. Through a fog of brutal pain and blood, Athelinda was vaguely aware of their conversation:
“Just put her down.”
“No, she makes me good money. Joseph pays well. We need to keep her.”
“Then it will take time. I can give her drugs, for the pain. But there’s no guarantees. The scars should heal eventually…at least on the outside.”
Athelinda had spent weeks in a drug-induced fever dream. Screams, pain, visions, more pain. She had cried out for her heart to be pierced, for sweet release. But then, eventually, her body had begun to heal, the fog of pain had lifted.
The first face she was aware of was that of the servant boy.
“You’re back,” he said.
She had struggled to speak. The boy handed her a glass of thick, viscous blood. She had drunk it greedily.
The boy regarded her curiously. “The man, he hurt you badly.”
“Why do you care?”
He shrugged. “If it was me, I’d want to kill him.”
“Maybe I will.”
“How? They’ve taken everything from you. Your teeth. Your fight. Your colony.”
She glared at the boy. “You mock me?”
“No. I want to help you.”
“Then fuck off.”
He nodded. “As you wish.”
He rose and walked to the door, closing it behind him.
Athelinda pushed herself up. Something lay on the table beside her bed. A box of matches, with a small scrap of paper underneath. She picked it up.
Just two words, scrawled in Vampyric: Birnen heo.
She frowned. How did a servant boy know Vampyric?
She looked after him curiously. Then she read the note again. A smile spread across her face.
Birnen heo.
Burn them.
50
Mowlam’s house was small and shabby, the clapboard blistered and warped, the front door dirty and peeling with old paint. Snow had coated the windows, making it impossible to see inside.
“You sure this is it?” Barbara asked.
“This is the address.”
“Dalton sure did move up in the world.”
“In more ways than one.”
A rusty Toyota was parked outside. But the house looked empty. Felt empty. The windows were dark, despite the failing light. No noise of a generator or steam from a heating system.
Barbara stared at the house, something inside her thrumming. A feeling. A bad feeling. She knocked on the door, loudly. They waited. No response.
She reached out to knock again then changed her mind and tried the door handle. Unlocked. She glanced back at Tucker. “Seems like people could save themselves a lot of money on locks around here.”
She pushed the door open. “Mr. Mowlam? Police. We’d like to talk to you.”
Silence. Barbara reached for a light switch and flicked it on. The house was pretty much a two up two down, with a staircase bisecting it.
Two doors led off the hall. Barbara pushed open the one on the right. Two things struck her straight away. The overwhelming smell of weed and the fact that the room had been trashed. Sofa cushions slashed, drawers pulled out, contents scattered, lamps tipped over, coffee table smashed.
“Whoah!” Tucker walked in behind her.
“Yeah,” Barbara said.
“Someone was looking for something.”
“Maybe.”
Barbara wasn’t so sure. Why tip the lamps and smash the coffee table? In Barbara’s experience, when people searched for something, they didn’t slash the sofa cushions and yank out drawers. That was just for the movies. Normally they were more methodical—and who the hell hid anything in sofa cushions? Searches tended to involve phones and computers. This looked more like someone wanted them to think the room had been trashed in a search.
“I’ll check upstairs,” Tucker said.
“Okay.” And although Barbara didn’t think the house was occupied, she added, “Be careful.”
There was a small kitchen in an alcove off the living room. It was hard to tell if this had been disturbed as the space was already strewn with half-opened packets, moldy cups, tins and dirty crockery. She looked around, wondering if she was brave enough to actually touch anything, just as Tucker emerged back downstairs.
“Find anything?” she asked.
“Nothing seems to be disturbed up there. Our friend, Mowlam, doesn’t carry much baggage. Few sweatshirts and jeans in the wardrobe, toiletries in the bathroom. Found these in the bathroom cabinet.”
He held up two large baggies—one full of green weed, the other white powder.
“I’m guessing that isn’t smelling salts and seaweed,” she said.
“Nope. Plus, there were some OxyContin in there too. Maybe he has a bad back or…”
Or Mowlam is fond of his pharmaceuticals. Something else that linked him to the Doc.
“Okay,” she said, stepping over some broken glass. “One room left down here. Let’s see what else we’ve got.”
They crossed the hall. The bad feeling ratcheted up. Barbara placed a hand on the door handle and pushed it open. She flicked on the light.
“Shit!”
Bad. Bad. Bad. She took in the scene. The room was set up as some kind of studio. Inks and a tattooing gun sat on a table. Flash art adorned the walls: anti-vampyr, white-supremacist, Helsing symbols. These were mixed with brutal photographs of dead vampyrs, beheaded, eviscerated. Sturdy storage cases were stacked along one wall. A cabinet held a gruesome display of vampyr artifacts. A woman’s hand, a heart preserved in a jar, a skull crafted out of vampyr teeth and another skull, which appeared to be prepubescent.
In the center of the room was a large chair, similar to the type you sat in at the dentist’s.
Kurt Mowlam reclined in the chair.
He’d been shot in the head and a stake had been driven through his heart.
“Taking a wild guess, I’d say we’ve found the Doc’s accomplice,” Barbara said.
“Yeah,” Tucker replied. “Shame someone else found him first.”
Barbara wondered how this had gone down. Although the living room was trashed, it didn’t look like the scene of a struggle. The destruction had come later, after Mowlam was dead. It looked likely Mowlam had known his killer and let them in. They had walked into his studio and the killer had pulled a gun. Why? To shut him up. To send a message? The shot to the head would suggest the former—an execution. The stake through the heart suggested the latter. Hoisted by his own petard, she thought.
Tucker walked over to a small computer desk in one corner of the room.
“What you got?” Barbara asked.
He held up two phones. The screensaver on one looked like the cover of some kind of heavy-metal band. Mowlam’s, she guessed. The other showed a beautiful portrait picture of the Doc’s house and icy lake.
“Dalton’s phone,” Barbara said.
“So, Mowlam was in the Doc’s house that night.”
“Or his killer was—”
“Well, at least we know where Marcus got his tattoo.”
Barbara remembered Mowlam talking about the book club. A way to befriend the kids and influence young minds. Did Marcus stay behind some nights, talking a little longer? Was that how Mowlam had twisted his mind, maybe the other boys’ too?
“I think Stephen knew about this,” she said.
“And Jacob?”
“Possibly. Probably.”
Tucker sighed. “Okay.”
Barbara looked around the room again. The vampyr artifacts. The body left out on display. The Doc’s phone in plain sight.
“Anything about this strike you as a bit too…convenient?”
“How d’you mean?”
“It’s like someone wanted us to find all this,” she said. “We got our accomplice and mystery tattooist. I’m willing to bet somewhere around here there’s a key to the Grill.”
Tucker turned and picked up a key from the table. “Like this one?”
She sighed heavily. “We got the person who locked me in the freezer. It’s all been laid out for us. Everything neatly tied up.”
“Yeah.” Tucker looked around. “We’ve still got one big loose end, though.”
“What?”
He nodded to the body splayed on the tattooist’s chair, brain matter and blood pooled thickly on the floor beneath.
“We haven’t got a damn clue who killed Mowlam.”
51
They processed the scene as best they could. Numbering and photographing everything, bagging up evidence, dusting for possible prints and collating DNA. Not that Barbara had anywhere to send it while the weather kept transport grounded.
That just left Mowlam’s body.
“He can’t stay here,” Barbara said.
“So, where do we put him?”
They stared at the corpse. Barbara wished she could find some sympathy, some sorrow. But looking around this studio, at all the artifacts of hate, it was difficult. Sometimes, you really did reap what you sowed.
She sighed. “He’ll have to come back to the Grill.”
They used garbage bags to wrap Mowlam up. There wasn’t much they could do about the stake sticking out of his chest, like he was some kind of human popsicle.
Tucker pulled the truck around the back of the house. They loaded the body into it and drove to the Grill. Darkness had descended and the street was deserted, but Barbara didn’t want to take any chances. They drove down the side of the Grill and manhandled the corpse in through the fire escape. Once inside, Barbara opened the walk-in freezer, and they laid Mowlam on the floor beside the table where Marcus lay.
