Of Noble Chains (The Ventori Fables) (12 page)

Zia came up beside the Father and looked down at the body.  She knew she was probably supposed to gag as Aeryn had, or feel her stomach sink, but none of that happened; she felt fine.  She had seen worse, even.  But she wasn’t about to admit that to anyone.

The woman before her was pretty, Zia noticed.  She was in her late forties, with short, greying brown hair and pale skin.  On her neck she had a few scars, almost like bite marks.  Zia hissed, “She’s a vampire!”

“Good deduction!” Aeryn’s muffled voice called out from behind the doors.  Zia glanced over at him but quickly returned to the vamp before her.

“Yes,” Father Killian agreed, “each victim had come in with a mild case of blood poisoning; there was a bad batch delivered to one of the hotels down south.  When they came in they were treated and about to go home when suddenly they just…died.”  He covered the woman with the sheet and moved on to the next.  He pulled back the next sheet, revealing a young man, no older than Zia.  He had similar scarring on his neck and chest.

“So?” Zia couldn’t stop herself from asking.  “They’re just vampires.  Does it really matter how they died?”  She turned to Aeryn.  “And why are we here anyway?  What about the other case?”

“It’s a favour for the Father,” Aeryn called back, “we’re still working both cases.”

“They might have been Specters, child.”  Father Killian sounded as if he had no patience left in him, “but they were not evil.  They did not
kill
anyone, and they did not deserve to be murdered.”

Zia held her tongue, not wanting to insult Father Killian further; he had been the one person on her review board that had wanted to allow her into the Tracker program.  Instead she sighed and asked, “How do you know they were murdered?”

“They were getting better,” Father Killian’s voice almost sounded like a whimper and Zia realized it was because he couldn’t stand to see anyone get hurt, not even a Specter.  “They were almost free to leave when someone took their lives away.”  The Father stroked back the boys hair, his touch barely there.

“Someone killed them long before now,” Zia whispered, staring at the scars on the boy, “but—“

“It only happens at night, you know,” he continued, “when they’re awake.  They must have been so scared, to know they were going to die.  They might have been Specters, Kehzia, but they were not
monsters
.”

Something about the way he had said “to know they were going to die” struck her.  Suddenly her view of the boy changed; he wasn’t a vampire anymore, she didn’t see him attacking some helpless human.  Suddenly she saw him in his hospital room, reading a book when something came in and killed him.

“Do you know how they died?” Zia asked quietly.  Father Killian covered the boy with the sheet, not moving down to the other two bodies.  She didn’t ask him to look either, not wanting to put him through that again.

“Blood loss,” he told her, moving back to take the woman’s arms into his gentle hands.  He revealed rope burns, markings from being strapped down to something.  “Three of them had been tied down somewhere and their blood was drawn out…I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”

Zia swallowed her fear and questioned, “What about the fourth?”  Father Killian looked into her eyes then, as if deciding what to do.  He glimpsed over to Aeryn, who only nodded his head before the Father moved to the fourth body.  Slowly, he lifted the sheet, and Zia almost screamed.

She couldn’t tell if it was male or female, if they were old or young, nothing.  They had been torn apart, sucked dry from whatever had killed them. A flashback to how she had last seen her brother shocked her mind, and she stared down.  Father Killian put the sheet back over and brought Zia away from the bodies.  She wasn’t sure what her expression must have looked like, but the Father didn’t seem to like it.

Father Killian took Zia out into the hallway with Aeryn, holding onto her arms.  She quickly pushed him away, insisting that she was fine, but Aeryn wasn’t so sure.

Her face was paler than normal, but it held no emotion; even when she had stared down at the mutilated body, she hadn’t even flinched.  It worried Aeryn, made him wonder why she wasn’t doing something a little more…normal for a girl her age.  But she hadn’t even blinked at the bodies, or gagged like he had at the smell of the place.  He wondered how she had reacted when she found her brother’s body in a similar condition.

It was hard to imagine that she had been the one to find her brother’s body, she even said that there was a Caster there.  Not that anybody cared; she was a teenager, so obviously what she saw was her imagination.  Aeryn wondered just how much she could remember from that night.  He would bet everything was burned into her mind.

“Any ideas hotshot?” he asked her, trying to get a feel for what she was thinking.  The three began walking back to the elevator when Zia said, “Can I see their rooms?”

“Of course,” Father Killian pressed the elevator button and the doors opened instantly.  They stepped inside.  “They were each in nearby rooms on the Specter floors.”

The ride up was quiet, with Aeryn and Father Killian risking peeks towards the young Ventori.  Neither of them could figure her out, and this was the opposite of what Aeryn had planned.  He had wanted to bring her here for another case to work on, but to also show her that Tracking wasn’t always night clubs and protests.  He had planned on her running out of the hospital, maybe in tears.  But all she did was tuck her short hair behind her ears, and count the floors as they rode towards the sky.  Donataen really hadn’t exaggerated about his sister.

Upstairs the Specter wing was quiet, only a few rooms were now occupied after the most recent death.  Zia stood and observed the private room of the first victim, the woman.  She didn’t bother to learn their names, she honestly didn’t want to.  It was bad enough she began to pity them for such horrid deaths, but she didn’t want to see them as having humanity too.

“What are we looking for?” Aeryn asked, leaning in the doorway while Father Killian stood awkwardly in the center of the room.  He kept folding and unfolding his hands together, as if the killer was hiding under the bed.

“I don’t really know,” Zia confessed as she made her way to the window.  It appeared normal, no scratches or broken glass.  It didn’t open either, being strictly there for aesthetics.  “Right now all I’ve got is that the killer most likely came in through there.”  She thrust a finger in Aeryn’s direction.

“Anything else?” mocked Aeryn, watching as she bent down by the bed to peer under it.  There was nothing else in the room to tell her anything; nothing mind blowing anyway.  There was a bed, a swivel hospital tray and a bathroom.

“She wasn’t killed here,” Zia looked to the ceiling but found nothing helpful there either.  “Let’s look at the other rooms.”

  When she went to walk past Aeryn the Father asked her, “How do you know they were not killed here?”

She turned to face him.  “No bindings anywhere.  She was taken somewhere else to have her blood drawn.”

The other rooms held just as much evidence as the first, and the last one had even less after being cleaned by the hospital staff.  Father Killian informed them that the death wasn’t being looked into by the Ark Guard, since it was a vampire and therefore not their problem; and other Ventori had no interest in stopping someone who was killing Specter’s.

“Are there any security tapes?” Zia asked the Father as they stood in the last room.  “We might be able to see something on them.”

“There are,” Father Killian said, turning to leave the room, “I will look into getting them for you.”

“Thank you,” said Aeryn and the Father left the room quickly.  Aeryn faced Zia, her eyes still wandering around, searching for anything that might point her in the right direction.  “You’re forgetting something.”

Zia peered at him.  “I am?  What am I forgetting?”

“Where were the bodies found?” Aeryn smirked and came into the room, the first time he had actually walked inside for any of them.

“I thought they were found in their rooms?”

“But were all of them?”

“No…?” Zia questioned, unsure of what he wanted her to say.  Aeryn shook his head.

“The boy was found in the staircase,” Aeryn explained, “not in his room.  Don’t assume anything for cases, it’ll come back to bite you.  Sometimes literally.  Anyway, do you have any idea what could have done this?”

“I have a theory,” admitted Zia, “I think it’s a vampire.”

Aeryn held back a smile.  “A vampire killing vampires?  Sounds like a bad movie twist.”

“Well that’s my theory,” Zia was insulted, just a bit, “they’re called Crusnik’s, or Black Angels.  They’re vampires that feed on other vampires.”

“Crusnik?” Aeryn sounded like it wasn’t even a word but Zia knew better; she was certain he knew better too, and this was only a test.  “Those are a little rare for these parts, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Zia shrugged, “but that’s my guess.  What do we do next?”

Aeryn raised his eyebrows, surprised maybe, that Zia would even ask him a question.  But she had decided that this was out of her hands, and that he was her mentor for a purpose.

“Let’s look at some video footage.”

There was nothing useful on the tapes.  They all conveniently went black after midnight, when the attacks occurred.  But much to Aeryn’s surprise, Zia theorized that if it was a Black Angel doing the killings, then it would most likely come back tonight after midnight.  There were two more victims of the poisoned blood, and since the attacks had happened every night since the vampires arrived, they would most likely happen again.

So Aeryn told Zia to wait with Father Killian while he went off on his own again, only after telling her he would retrieve his
reduc-chains.  Now, Zia sat with the Father in the small chapel of the hospital, waiting for nightfall.

There was a soft light staining the altar a mosaic of blues, greens and yellows.  There were only six benches for people to sit on and pray, something Zia didn’t quite understand.  But the two other people in the chapel looked desperate, clutching their hands together as they spoke to their God.

“It must be hard to understand,” Father Killian said quietly beside her, “how we pray to a God that many do not believe to exist.”

“I believe in Gods,” Zia said back, eyes on the elderly woman two seats ahead of her, “that’s why I’m here today, isn’t it?”

“But it is not quite the same for humans,” Father Killian shrugged, his robe barely wrinkling from the movement.  “We have many religions, many Gods, so many cultures that believe in so many different deities.  Ventori all believe in the same beings.”  He looked down at his hands and entwined them together, eyelids lowering.  “You must think us crazy to fight over it.”

“I guess,” Zia relaxed a little on the wooden bench,
pews
, she thought they were supposed to be called.  The cross that loomed over her from near the candled altar seemed ominous, as if its presence was allowing someone to watch her.  “I don’t see why everyone can’t be right.”

That caught Father Killian off guard.  His eyes opened quickly and his hands fell to his legs, an astonished expression upon his face as he peered at Zia.  She quickly said, “Sorry, I guess you of all people don’t want to hear an outsider’s opinion.”

“Not at all,” said the Father, “everyone is entitled to their opinion.  What do you mean?”

Zia pulled her lips towards her teeth and confessed, “Well…why can’t everyone be right?  I mean, why can’t I have my Gods, the spirits that my ancestors prayed to, and you have your God, that created you and your world?  I heard of a place across the waters that believe in a deity that has multiple arms, so why can’t they exist too?”

Father Killian smiled, as if listening to a child speak their mind.  But Zia
was
a child compared to him, with his grey hair and crinkling eyes.  Soon he pondered, “It is a nice thought, for everyone to be right.  That after death everyone would go to their own version of Heaven…or Hell I suppose for some.  It is an interesting point.”

“Well it isn’t mine,” Zia spoke quickly, as if to divert the blame, “my friend Iscah told me about it.  She’s always like that, wanting everyone to win,
y’know?” 

He chuckled.  “Yes, I know the type.  Is she Ventori as well?”

“Oh, heck no,” Zia laughed, sad and thoughtful.  “She’s human.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Father Killian set a hand over Zia’s, comforting but also pitying.  She knew why the Father would apologize for Iscah being human; it meant Zia would have to watch her die.  Clan members lived almost twice as long as humans, sometimes even into three centuries.  But she wasn’t sure if she would, since her mother was a human.  Not only that, her mother was a human with the sickness, and Zia carried the strain in her blood.  Sure, it couldn’t be transferred, and as far as anyone knew it didn’t affect clan members; but it could evolve again, mutate.  It was already on its third evolution after all.

“Anyway,” Zia pulled away from Father Killian as she crossed her arms, “um…how exactly did you come by this case?”

“I volunteer here from time to time,” he returned his hands to his own lap, “when I heard of the unusual deaths I couldn’t ignore them.”