The Pilgrims of the Damned: A Vampire Thriller, page 27
“And you’re all here for?” Thomas asked.
“We have a lot to get through,” Carol said, removing a tape recorder from her pocket and placing it in the middle of the table. “It would help if you walked through everything that you’ve encountered since arriving in Maine?”
“Didn’t they already tell you?” Miles asked.
“They did,” Carol said, pressing record. “Now I’m asking you to.”
Miles walked through his time in Maine; he left out not liking the Commander in Brunswick, and the fact that he thought Maine was weird, but did add about the desolate hole they’d found before arriving in Falmouth.
“Why do you think there was a hole in the shop?” Bethany asked when Miles was finished.
“Testing out the equipment, I imagine,” Miles replied. “You’ll probably find a few holes in out-of-the-way places they could get to.”
Bethany made a note on a pad of paper in front of her. She was the only one making notes on that side of the table, and for some reason Miles found it unnerving.
“Any more questions?” Miles asked.
“You said this Stuart Murphy could use his staff to channel magic,” Rosie asked. “And he teleported. Have you ever seen anything like that before?”
“No,” Miles said. “You?”
Rosie shook her head.
“Anyone here seen anything like that before?” Miles asked, looking around the table.
No one moved or spoke, but several people shook their heads, including Amelia, who continued to look unnerved by the news.
“Anyone here ever seen a desolate behave oddly?” Miles asked, and noticed the slight twinge in Bethany’s eye. He pointed at her. “You have.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Bethany said.
“You know, I’ve come a long way to help Thomas over there bring his pilgrims to your city,” Miles said. “I’ve killed some desolates and a werewolf, and I’ve been covered in gore more times than I think is healthy. That desolate giant wanted revenge on me because I killed its friend. I assume its friend, maybe it was its mum, who knows. And you have seen something like that before. So, you’ve asked me to be open and honest, and now you are going to repay that kindness with an open and honest discourse of your own.”
“And where is Dr. Davies?” Thomas asked.
“Missing,” Bethany said after sharing a glance with her colleagues.
“How?” Miles asked. “Where?”
“That’s not something I can discuss at this time,” Bethany said, immediately looking back at her notes.
“Come on, ladies and gentlemen,” Miles said. “Stop making this weird.”
“We have had an unusual amount of desolate activity,” Carol said.
“Define unusual,” Miles replied.
“We were aware of House Idolator’s plan to make a safer and quicker route from Kittery to here,” one of the men beside Carol said. It took Miles a moment to remember he was called Eric. “Waterville is no longer there. It was destroyed after the fall. But we’ve been clearing it out in an effort to make it into a fort, or a base closer to Augusta.”
“But you haven’t been in Augusta,” Miles said.
“No one goes to Augusta,” several of the people said at once.
“People who go there don’t come back,” Carol and Eric said. Carol continued, “We’ve all heard the stories about it. Brunswick told us that it’s not safe there.”
“No one?” Amelia asked.
“No one,” Carol repeated.
“We’ve been told that by a few people now,” Miles said. “You believe Brunswick?”
“We have no choice but to trust one another,” Carol said. “They say they’ve sent people who have not returned. Vampires. Told us it’s unsafe to go there.”
“How long ago did they say this?”
“Few months,” Eric said.
“You were saying about Waterville?” Miles said.
“We went to clear it out and found some ruins beneath it,” Carol said.
“Ruins?” Miles asked.
“Old tunnels and the like,” Bethany said. “Really old, but also strange. The tunnels were made out of this black stone.”
Miles remembered the same stone being in containers back under the tunnels beneath Falmouth. There was a possibility that black stone was in abundance all over the state, but to find old ruins made from the stuff did have Miles wondering what the werewolves and Stuart were looking for.
“Anything else?” Amelia asked.
Several of the people opposite Miles shared glances with one another. “We found steps that went down into a cavern,” Bethany said eventually. “We sent a team down to see what was down there; the team included Madison, Theo, and Dr. Davies. All returned without problems that first time, but after that Dr. Davies started to become obsessed with getting back down there, with mapping out the tunnels, of finding artefacts. He’s not an archaeologist.”
“What’s he a doctor of, then?” Miles asked. “Drest said he’s an expert in magical energy, but that’s about it.”
“He’s a cardiologist,” Rosie said.
“A vampire cardiologist?” Miles asked. “Seriously?”
“It’s not as funny as you think,” Bethany said, sourly.
“You’d think it was pretty funny if you’d just had the last few days I’ve had,” Miles assured her. “So, Dr. Davies is missing at that site? That about sum it up?”
Everyone nodded again.
“What actually happened to the doctor?” Miles asked.
“When we first arrived there, at the ruins, the desolate weren’t there,” Rosie said. “We were mapping out the top floor of the ruins when they arrived. A horde of them. We managed to get out, but Dr. Davies was left behind. We only just escaped with our lives; we didn’t even know he was still down there until we were outside of the city. We’ve been working on trying to figure out how to get back inside, but there are too many desolate.”
“How long ago?”
“It’s been three days,” Rosie said.
“A horde?” Thomas asked.
“A literal horde,” Bethany said, removing ten photos from the rear of her notebook and passing them over to Miles, who picked them up. He started to flick through them one at a time.
The desolate were indeed milling around a collapsed hole in what looked to be the basement of an old building. “What was the building?”
“It was just an old house,” Bethany said. “Legend says it was haunted.”
“So, under the haunted house was an old set of ruins,” Miles said. “When was the last photo taken?”
Rosie slid over a larger photo. “This was taken twelve hours ago.”
Miles and Amelia looked down at the photos showing a literal horde of desolate standing around the hole. When he was done, Miles slid the photo down to Thomas.
“Damn,” Thomas said. “These are hundreds and hundreds of desolate. Possibly well over a thousand.”
“Since the doctor went missing, more and more desolate have moved into Waterville,” Carol said. “We’ve tried to get a rescue team together, but we don’t know where the desolate are coming from, and we don’t know how many there are. These desolate are different from the others—they’re more durable, stronger. Almost smarter. We don’t know why.”
“Any giants?” Miles asked.
The inhabitants of Bangor traded horrified glances.
“Guess not,” Miles said.
“There are giants?” Carol asked.
“Aye,” Miles said. “Two less of them now, thankfully.”
“So, Dr. Davies could be trapped underground in old ruins, with no way to get out because the desolate have made Waterville their new home,” Amelia said. “Have the desolate gone into the ruins?”
“We don’t know. I personally sat in a foxhole watching the desolate for eight hours,” Bethany said. “I took the photos from there. Not one of them entered the ruins, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t.”
“How do you know he’s still alive?” Amelia asked.
“We can’t leave someone behind,” Carol said. “Can’t leave them to the desolate. The last anyone saw of him, he was alive. And the Doc is smart and capable, and we need to keep the faith that he is fine.”
“That’s why you’ve got people outside of here gearing up,” Miles said. “You’re going to go to Waterville and try to forcefully get your doctor back.”
“That’s the plan, yes,” Bethany said.
“Are you all high?” Miles asked, looking around the room. “The more people you send in, the more likely you’re not all coming back.”
“There’s a second entrance,” Bethany said.
“Where?” Miles asked her.
“It’s along Sebasticook River,” Bethany explained. “You’d need to be able to swim down and under the tunnel for about five hundred meters in pitch black conditions. We considered having a diver go in there, but there’s a lot of jagged edges, and with almost zero visibility, it’s just not safe.”
“And you know this how?” Miles asked.
“We sent a remote toy submarine down there with a camera on it,” Bethany said. “Before the doctor went down, we managed to map out a big chunk of the upper levels of the ruins. There’s a part that’s submerged; the tunnel comes up there.”
“What did the submarine find in the ruins?”
“We don’t know,” Bethany said. “The submarine stopped working a few seconds after it made it through. The feed just went dark. We were going to be put an expedition together but there are too many desolate outside of there now.”
“So you were going to swim in there?” Miles asked. “That sounds problematic.”
“We can’t just leave him,” Bethany repeated, raising her voice slightly before apologising.
“Okay, let’s say he is alive,” Miles said. “Best-case scenario.”
“We have no way of knowing where he is,” Rosie said softly, placing her hand on Bethany’s and squeezing slightly. “No way of knowing how many desolate are in there, if any. We were going to send a small team into the water to get in and try to find out, but we don’t even know if they could get out again.”
“If they can get in, they can probably get out,” Miles said. “Somehow. Any chance this doctor has made it deeper into the ruins and found another exit?”
“It’s possible, but we’ve had no contact,” Carol said.
“What are you thinking?” Thomas asked, as Miles studied the photos.
“I’m thinking I’m going for a swim,” Miles told him. “You need help, we need help, and the longer the doctor stays in there, the bigger the chance he becomes lunch. If I do this, we need help finding a group of deeply unpleasant murderers. I don’t want to have to search all of Maine for them—the more eyes, the better.”
“If you do this for us, whether the doctor is alive or not,” Carol said, her voice wavering slightly, “we’ll help you however we can.”
“Can’t very well refuse that,” Miles said.
“Anything else?” Rosie asked.
“Yeah,” Amelia told her. “Also, Commander Bailey is working with the Magistrate. He may have fabricated how dangerous Augusta is to keep people away.”
“Seriously?” Xavier asked. “He’s never been the most pleasant of people to deal with, but what could they possibly be keeping secret?”
“No idea,” Miles said. “After I’ve got your doctor back, we’ll figure it out.”
“House Idolator wants to reclaim it,” Thomas said. “And I can’t imagine that the Commander would be thrilled about that if he’s using Augusta for his own ends.”
“His behaviour has worsened over the last few years,” Xavier said thoughtfully.
“His hate for vampires?” Thomas asked.
“He has made it known that he dislikes our influence in the state,” Rosie said.
“Maine is weird,” Miles said. “It’s gotten considerably weirder since I was last here, and frankly, the people are the weirdest of the lot.”
“Something is off here,” Bethany agreed sadly. “And none of us know what it is. Bangor is mostly a safe town, but… we’re worried it won’t stay that way.”
“You had any dealings with the werewolves?” Amelia asked.
Everyone shook their heads. “We didn’t even know they were a thing in this state until you told us.”
“Okay, one problem at a time,” Miles said, feeling the conversation lose focus. “Rescue the doctor first, then we can deal with anything else.”
“What equipment do you need?” Carol asked.
Miles considered it for a moment. “He can’t get out the top way without having to go through a horde of desolate, so why hasn’t the doctor swum out the way you get in? And if he’s not affected by Maine’s weirdness, how far into the ruins has he gone?”
“We don’t know,” Bethany said.
“I know, I’m just thinking out loud,” Miles told her. “I need a way to get him out of there, through that water tunnel if he’s in no state to get out himself. He’s a vampire, so I’m not concerned about him drowning, so worst-case scenario, I can just drag him through the tunnel.”
“You’d have to made sure he didn’t snag on the detritus under there,” Carol said.
Miles considered the problem. “Might have to use telekinesis to push him along. You got a collapsible stretcher, something I can drag or push, that folds up small and doesn’t leave a big footprint?”
“We can arrange something,” Carol said.
“Any reason the doctor didn’t use the tunnel to get out?”
“He probably didn’t know about it,” Eric said. “We only found it after when we were searching for ways in.”
“I assume the fact that he hasn’t waited for morning, when the desolate would all go into hiding, and just left is a problem.”
“They might go into the ruins to hide,” Bethany said. “We’re not entirely sure. It’s possible he just doesn’t want to risk it, if he isn’t aware what the UV level is.”
“This is getting better and better,” Miles replied.
“Anything else?” Carol asked.
“Heat blade,” Miles said. “A shotgun with incendiary rounds, specifically one that won’t fuck up when it gets wet. The last one I used ended up in a pool of blood, and it wasn’t so useful after that.”
“We can arrange that, too,” Carol said.
“Stab vest,” Miles said. “Some clothes that should I need to tear apart to turn to my beast form won’t leave me naked. Blood pouch, two or three, in case the Doc hasn’t eaten and is weak. Three days isn’t long to be missing in some ruins, but if he’s hurt, he might need the blood.”
“All of that can be done,” Carol said, as Bethany made more notes.
“The pilgrims can help should any desolate attack,” Thomas said. “We’d like to be able to do that, if you’d let us.”
“We’d be happy for the extra hands,” Carol said. “Though hopefully it won’t come to that.”
“Church will stay here,” Miles said.
Church banged under the table, and several of the council members looked under, as Church extricated herself and stood next to Miles.
“That’s a…” Bethany said.
“Big dog,” Miles said. “Aye, I know. This is Church. She’s a genetically enhanced Doberman, and she’s about as smart as everyone in this room. She’s also staying here, and will be protecting Amelia. Who is definitely not joining me on this incursion.”
Amelia held up her hands. “This one is all yours.”
“I would advise people don’t try to poke the large dog,” Miles said.
“You’re looking my way,” Bethany said.
“Whenever I see a doctor’s eyes light up when Church is involved, just as yours did, I like to put the warning out there,” Miles told her.
“Warning received,” Bethany told him, a shade icily.
Miles wasn’t overly concerned; he’d met people who liked to prod and poke things they didn’t understand, and Bethany looked like a prodder. Better to get it out of the way now than come back and find several people with fewer limbs than when he’d left.
“Glad we all understand one another,” Miles said. “How long before you can get everything together? How long is the drive to Waterville?”
“About two hours usually,” Carol said. “The roads aren’t great, but we have some all-terrain vehicles that make it in good time.”
“Get one of them prepared,” Miles said. “Thomas’s familiar will be my driver. He going to be okay with that, Thomas?”
“Arvid will be fine,” Thomas assured him.
“Excellent,” Miles said, clapping his hands. “I’m going to sleep for a few hours, and have something else to eat, and then I’ll be good to go rescue your doctor.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Miles woke when it was still sunny outside. Church was already up, sitting in front of the door, watching him. He checked the UV levels, which said zero. Considering the time of year, that was another odd thing to add to the ever-growing list.
“What?” Miles asked.
Church let out a slow whine.
“I know you want to come, but you can’t,” Miles said. “I wish you could, I do.”
Church pawed at her nose.
Miles got to his feet and walked over to Church, kneeling before her as she rested her head on his shoulder. Miles stroked Church and they sat like that for a few minutes before Church sat back.
“You’ll be with Amelia,” Miles said. “And when we’re done, we’ll go back to Scotland, and I’ll get you a nice steak.”
Church pawed Miles in the chest slightly.
“I promise,” Miles assured her.
Church let out a slight whine, and Miles kissed her on the top of the head.
“I’ll be safe,” he whispered. “I’m just going for a swim and a little light exploration.”
Church snorted as there was a slight knock on the door.
Miles opened the door after Church moved to the side, and Amelia stepped into the room. She held a large rucksack. “Just wanted to come say bye before you left,” she said, before looking down at Church. “You ready to be roomies for a day or two?”
