The Pilgrims of the Damned: A Vampire Thriller, page 8
“Would save us all a lot of time and effort,” the Detective said. “He worked for Templar International. You know it?”
Miles nodded. “Little bit.”
“Big-time private security place,” the Detective continued as if Miles hadn’t said anything. “They look after a lot of rich and famous people. We went there to ask about Stuart, you know, before the boss told us to drop it. Model employee. Everyone really surprised he would ever hurt anyone, must have been all the trauma from having cancer. It’s sad when some people can’t talk about their problems. Wife and kids left him too, very sad. Anyway, we have nothing to show you, do you have a warrant? Please leave and contact our lawyers in future.”
“Judging by your chat with your boss’s boss, he has friends in high—or low, depending on your point of view—places,” Miles said.
“I think you’re spot on there,” the Detective said.
“What’s happening with the guard now?” Miles asked.
“He’s being held without bail until we can get him before a judge, which should be in a day or two. Unfortunately, his lawyer is making loud noises, and there’s a possibility if we can’t get something to stick involving his part in Heather’s murder, we may have to cut him loose.”
“Can I talk to him?” Miles asked.
“Officially? Hell no.”
“Maybe unofficially then,” Miles said.
“I’ll see what I can do,” the Detective said with a shudder, and offered his hand to Miles. “In the meantime, I’m going home. I’ll let Amelia know what’s going on with Patrick. I wish you all the luck in the world. Get these bastards, because whatever they’ve gone to Maine for, it can’t possibly be good.”
“I’m going to do everything in my power to make sure we get them,” Miles said.
Detective Hauser nodded a goodbye to Amelia, got into his vehicle, and drove off.
“So, what do you think?” Amelia asked when they were alone.
“I think Sam needs to come tell us what he found out,” Miles said with a smile.
“Who’s Sam?” Amelia asked.
“That would be me,” Samuel said as he walked out of the darkness behind the burned-out neighbours’ house and strolled over to Miles and Amelia.
He wore a checked black and red suit, white shirt, red waistcoat, and matching tie, along with dark brown shoes and a black fedora that had a peacock feather in it. He was a tall, thin man with dark skin and several earrings in both ears. He looked as if he’d been created explicitly to wear the items of clothing he had on, as though he’d just stepped off a catwalk in Milan.
“Sam,” Miles said, hugging his friend.
Sam removed his hat, revealing his short-cropped black hair, and nodded hello to Amelia. “My name is Samuel Austin.” He removed a badge from his inner coat pocket, flashing it to her. “I’m with the FBI, but mostly I’m here because I’m a really old friend of Miles’s.”
“What are the FBI doing here?” Amelia asked.
“Mostly wonderin’ how Miles here managed to get himself neck deep in shit,” Samuel said, turning to his friend. “Again.”
Chapter Seven
Miles, Amelia, Church, and Sam all travelled back to Heather’s house, where Amelia had immediately gone to make coffee. Miles let Church out into the sizeable garden, which she set off exploring while Miles and Sam sat on the decking.
“So, this is a dead woman’s house,” Sam asked. “I get the feeling your journalist friend finds that weird.”
“I think she’s having difficulty adjusting,” Miles said, not bothering to correct the use of the word friend. He still didn’t quite trust Amelia, she was a journalist, after all, but he did find that he enjoyed her company.
“On the subject,” Sam continued, “what the good goddamn hell are you doin’ with a journalist?”
Miles gave Sam a more in-depth run-through of his position and what the plan was. Sam didn’t interrupt once, just sat and listened, occasionally nodding.
When Miles was done, Sam said, “House Idolator. So, they’re lookin’ to move back up to being one of the Great Houses. They lost their spot a long time ago, but they’re always lookin’ for a way back. What do you think of their plan to make a more direct route through Augusta and Waterville?”
“I think it’s a good plan,” Miles said. “Mostly.”
Sam laughed. “Mostly? That one word is doing a lot of work there. What do you really think?”
“I think there’s more to it than just making Augusta safe,” Miles admitted. “Waterville is a desolate wasteland now. Clear out any outlaws who are dumb enough to call it home, clean it up, and move in. I don’t see an issue with it, although if that’s the case, why wasn’t it done already? Augusta is apparently clear of desolate these days, at least those on the surface. I heard there’s a lot of them trapped underground. So anyone trying to clear that place out is going to need an army. A lot of body bags for them. You know anything else?”
“From what I know,” Sam said, “a few desolate get out here and there, but there are a lot of them under the city. If House Churchy starts doing renovations, they’re going to unleash a goddamned horde back onto Maine.”
“House Churchy?” Miles asked with a slight laugh. “Seriously.”
“The House of Faith,” Sam said, in mocking tones. “Praise the vampire gods and their ways.”
“Miles mentioned about the desolate trapped underground before,” Amelia said from the doorway as she carried out a tray of empty cups and a large pot of coffee. “They that big of a problem?”
“Yeah,” Sam said. “Maybe a few thousand desolate, if I’m honest. There’s a bunch of old caverns under Bond Rook, they go deep, and there’s a lot of them. Used to be an archaeological dig down there because they found some old stones all under Maine, no one could figure out what they were for. Now no one wants to go look at them again.”
“Stones?” Miles asked.
Sam nodded. “I remember hearing about them from someone, can’t remember who. Apparently one of the scientific groups working there found them. Anyway, while the initial outbreak was at Blue Hill, there were several secondary outbreaks. Augusta had a laboratory in the caverns; it’s how the desolate spilled out into the city so quickly. When the Assembly and US government sent people to clear it up, they just left the multitude of desolate still in the caverns where they were and sealed it up. Too dangerous to go into those caverns to hunt desolate.”
“And they’re just sitting there?” Amelia asked as Miles poured coffee for everyone. “How do they feed?”
“The desolate go into a cocooned state if left without sustenance for long enough,” Sam explained. “If there’s enough desolate in one place when the process starts, they sort of cannibalise one another. It makes whatever survives bigger, tougher, meaner. No one is going to want to go down there and see what’s waiting for them. It would be suicide, even for vampires.”
“I didn’t know that,” Amelia said.
“I only found out about it last year when I fought a cocooned bastard for the first time,” Miles said, thinking back to the time in Templar International when he along with Charlotte, Church, and Rosa had fought one of the giant desolates that had been kept inside a laboratory there.
“Vampires and humans are all good, but we don’t share everything,” Sam said. “Leavin’ desolate alone is a bad idea for a lot of reasons; it’s why I have my job at the FBI, after all. But getting down into those tunnels under the city would be next to impossible, and blowing the place to hell could release more somewhere else. Safer to just monitor it all.”
“What is it you do?” Amelia asked.
“Officially, I am a liaison to House Phalanx and the Assembly,” Sam said with a flourish of his hands. “Unofficially, I’m put out of the way, so I don’t get under the skin of the House Phalanx First Lady.”
“You don’t get on?” Amelia asked.
Miles sprayed his mouthful of coffee all over the decking.
“You could say that,” Sam said with a glare Miles’s way.
Amelia looked between Sam and Miles.
Sam sighed. “First Lady Töregene of House Phalanx is a wise and even-tempered woman.”
Miles stared at him.
Sam’s sigh was longer than the first. “I killed her First Captain. He was a bully, a thug, and I didn’t go through the right channels to duel him. I just challenged him in front of the whole court. I knew he wouldn’t back down, wouldn’t be able to live with his dented pride, so he accepted. And he died. Töregene understood what I did, and why, and that’s why I got to keep my head. Instead, she would rather I was out of sight, out of mind. Which is a short way of explaining why I’m back in America as a liaison, until such time as she lets me back into court.”
“Am I allowed to ask why you challenged him to a duel?” Amelia asked. “If that’s too personal, I’m sorry… I just don’t know much about vampire politics. I don’t think anyone not a vampire does.”
“I had a… relationship with a man which the First Captain decided was inappropriate,” Sam said. “The First Captain was a bigot. It happens, even among vampires, although less so now. And it’s definitely not something you would do openly, but like I said, the First Captain was a bully. And now he’s dead.”
“And your gentleman dalliance?” Amelia asked.
“Works for the new First Captain,” Sam said. “A lady who was very happy with her promotion. This was fifty years ago now. I was sent to America to stay here and work with the FBI to help improve vampire-human relations. Mostly, I work with a team to hunt down the desolate. Occasionally, we work with the Assembly to track rogue vampires. We’re good at our jobs. I’m very proud of the work we’ve done. Also, no one on my team is bothered whether I have sex with men or women, or both, or neither. I think that works out well for all concerned.”
“I didn’t mean to pry,” Amelia said.
“Yes, you did, you’re a journalist,” Sam replied with a warm smile. “But I don’t mind. You should ask Miles about that time he had his own… dalliance, with the First Lady of House Nebula.”
“We should not,” Miles said, frowning.
Sam’s grin suggested the mischief he was happy to impart should he be given the chance.
“I also didn’t know you knew about that,” Miles continued.
“FBI, baby,” Sam said.
Miles laughed. “You work on that a long time? Didn’t know the FBI kept track of my exceptionally short-lived love life.”
Sam chuckled. “I heard from someone, who knows someone, who may have been drunk. It’s not like it’s illegal for an Arbiter and a House Lord or Lady to engage in… whatever dirty little things you and First Lady Adile did.”
“Please stop talking,” Miles begged.
Sam laughed. “I’m just messin’. Anyway, moving onto more serious matters. Namely, this man Stuart Murphy you’re both keen to find.”
“You found out something about him?” Miles asked.
“He worked for the CIA, along with Liam White,” Sam said. “He did some bad things that are not taught about in history class. He made some people go missing, made some other people take the blame. None of it was official, you’re aware. Stuart left the Company, or Agency, or whatever you want to call it. Went to Templar and continued his shady work. Only now there was no CIA bureaucracy to keep them in check. Liam White was the same. These are not good men, Miles. These are the kinds of men who do horrible things and are never held accountable for their crimes. These are the kinds of men who should not be allowed to breathe the same air as everyday humans.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” Miles asked.
“Liam was in a unit in the CIA called the Helsings. Want to guess what those fuckers did?”
“Hunt vampires,” Amelia whispered.
“The lady got it in one,” Sam said.
“And Stuart went to vampires to ask them to make him one?” Miles asked.
“I don’t think they were killing vampires for any political ideology,” Sam said. “They just got paid well to do it. They became experts at it. If you’re going after them, they ain’t gonna be going down easy. Not just because there are some definite links to the Magistrate.”
“What kinds of links?” Miles asked.
“The kind they went to great lengths to hide,” Sam said. “But they exist. Liam is friends with several members, and from what I’ve heard did some off-the-books work for them. I’ve got a friend still looking into them; hopefully I’ll learn more soon.”
“How good were Liam and Stuart’s people?” Miles asked, and sighed before he finished the sentence. “The Helsings.”
“I assume you don’t approve of the name,” Sam said with a wry smile. “And they were very good. Highly trained and motivated to do whatever needed to be done to finish the job. When I looked into them, I was told to do so quietly and without making waves. I met Liam before all of this, before he left the company to go to Templar. It was only a brief meeting, and it was several years ago, but he was a very intense man.”
“Can I ask something?” Amelia asked, looking between the two vampires before she said, “What are the vampire gods you were talking about?”
Miles and Sam turned to look at her.
“Wait, is that nae common knowledge?” Miles asked. “I forget what the humans—and I guess witches—do and don’t know.”
“If it’s common knowledge, I’ve never heard of them,” Amelia said.
“You want this one?” Sam asked Miles.
“Vampires, as you know them, come from a group of individuals known as the Dusk,” Miles said. “Those of us who were turned from human to vampire by them are known as the Dark.”
“The Dusk brings the Dark?” Amelia asked. “That’s it, right?”
Miles nodded. “It was never a particularly original idea even five thousand years ago. Anyway, the Dusk were twenty vampires, or creatures, or whatever they were, and their blood made the first vampires. If you’ve been turned by one of the first vampires, you’re usually more powerful than those who proceed you. The level between first turned and five hundredth isn’t particularly large, but it is there. So the Dusk made a bunch of vampires, and in roughly five hundred BCE, they nearly all just up and disappeared one by one. No one has any idea where they are or why they left.”
“Can’t people just ask the Dark members?” Amelia asked.
“None of them know,” Miles said. “There are only a few Dark members left in the world, and none of them remember. I know because I spent a year when I was First Librarian trying to figure out how a bunch of vampires could go missing and no one know about it. When you get to the thousands of years old part of life, you tend to spend a lot of time asleep, in a sort of vampiric stasis. It’s suggested by some that the Dusk are all in deep sleeps across the world, or maybe they all got so old that they simply died. People have come up with some weird theories over the centuries.”
“And this leads to House Idolator, how?” Amelia asked.
“They think the Dusk are all gods,” Sam said. “That they brought vampires to this world, and with their job done, they went off to live their lives in the reward of the afterlife. However, one day, when we need them most, they will return.”
“House Idolator are pretty much the only people who believe any of this nonsense about gods and the Dusk,” Sam said, mockingly. “They think that their bloodline gift is based on their faith and link to the Dusk. That their faith, quite literally, gives them power.”
House Idolator’s bloodline gift was the ability to use their vampiric energy as a physical manifestation. They could create shields or weapons with it that were capable of withstanding, or dealing, an incredible amount of force. A lot of them believed that this power was linked to their faith in their religion, although Miles was unaware of any actual proof that this was the case. Unfortunately, the manifestations didn’t last long, but while they were active, they were a formidable weapon.
“You don’t approve?” Amelia asked Sam and Miles.
“Couldn’t care less,” Miles said. “Believe whatever you like. But some in House Idolator have a tendency to look down on those who don’t believe as they do. There’s a part of the House whose sole job is to try and bring people to their way of thinking. Not to bring them into the House itself, that would be sacrilege, but to convert them to spread the word among the Houses.”
“Does that work?” Amelia asked.
“Some Houses are more tolerant than others,” Miles said. “Drest is tolerant of the individual people, but less tolerant of House Idolator’s wish to spread their word. You tell him the Dusk were gods to be worshipped, and not doing so makes you a heretic, and there’s a good chance he’s going to punch you.”
“What are your thoughts, Sam?” Amelia asked.
“On House Idolator?” he asked, with just enough venom to make sure Amelia and Miles knew exactly what his thoughts were. “Holier than thou bullshit artists. If they want you here to document the pilgrimage, you can be damn sure they want to try and show the world just how holy they are.”
“You think they’re going to try to convert me?” Amelia asked. “I haven’t been to church since I was seven. Not about to start now.”
“You, no,” Sam said. “They don’t care about you. But that piece you write—about their pilgrimage, about their holy land—you’d better believe they’ll try to use that as a recruitment drive. They care about the possibility of new initiates to their House. They lost their status as Great House because the First Lord believed that no one else could become a member without a bunch of hoops being jumped through. The new House First Lord, he wants to bring their numbers back up, and that means recruitment.”
“I’m not going to write with any kind of bias about the pilgrimage,” Amelia said with a touch of irritation that anyone might think otherwise.
“Oh no,” Sam reassured her. “They’ll want it as a warts-and-all kind of piece. Only those truly committed to their cause will read it and think, I want some of that. I don’t know for sure that’s what they’re thinking, but House Idolator is always looking for a way to spread the word of Heavenly Dusk.”
