Underground Vampire (5 page)

 Trudging in the night
drizzle, Ortega thought a great way to celebrate the first day of his brand new
demotion would be to drink.  Transferred from robbery/homicide to nowhere,
he was alone in the rain walking a beat.  They hadn’t put it like that
when they ordered him in and gave him his new assignment, avoiding a union beef
he figured, but he was walking down the street, at night, in the rain,
alone. 

 Drinking on duty was frowned
upon, but hell’s bells, thought Ortega, first day or actually first night of
his transfer deserved memories and no one offered to buy so he might as well
buck up and get used to the situation.  Walking from Pioneer Square,
putting the revitalized City behind him, into the bums and bars part of town to
“get a taste of the neighborhood,” as the Lieutenant suggested when he pushed
him out the door.  Judging by the smell wafting out of the alleys, there
were only a couple of words to accurately describe the taste.  Now, he was
using his talents to sniff out, that’s what the Lieutenant actually said, sniff
out any Asian involvement in organized criminal activity occurring at the
street level.  They hadn’t put him back in a uniform, but had made sure he
understood that he wasn’t undercover and wasn’t really functioning as a
detective, since they weren’t assigning him a case.

 He was just there to see what
he could see about the lay of the land. Very important and necessary and
something headquarters had been meaning to get to when they found the right
person, which coincidentally they just discovered to be Detective Jesus Ortega,
Jesse to his friends.  Friends seemed to be in short supply at the
station. 

 All he had to do was keep
clean and do his time.

 Ortega scrunched his
shoulders up into his raincoat to keep the drizzle from the back of his neck.
Tall and dark with thick black hair combed back on each side of his face he had
the best of his Mexican father and black Irish mother.  Trudging down the
sidewalk he thought that if it had been the other way around he’d have an Irish
name and none of this would have happened.  If his name was O’Rourke or
any other mick name instead of Ortega, the Seattle Police Department officers
would have accepted him; even if he looked like a wetback taco beaner, it would
have been alright if he had the right name.

A product of Southside Catholic,
the oldest all-boy high school in Seattle, he’d grown up white.  He’d
never really felt different until he’d joined SPD, where the old line culture
judged on race.  No matter what he said or did, he was a Mexican to the
Department, helping them meet quotas a poster boy for integration.  
In the station he was spic, wetback or beaner, depending on the
situation.  He’d given up trying to explain as the old timers would never
change and the young guys easily adopted casual racism to justify cowboy
justice required for acceptance. 

It had all worked out until he had
broken Keenan’s nose with a hard right hand over a remark about his sister, which
led to the hearing where he’d said yes sir, there are some racist elements in
the station, which led to an internal investigation where he had eaten his
words on the advice of a soon to retire sergeant who told him,  “If you
want to make a career at SPD, you tell them you misspoke and that you’ve never
been mistreated at SPD, which is a goddamn lie and we know it’s a goddamn lie
and they know it’s a goddamn lie, and then they will punish you, not for lying,
but for making the department look bad. They’ll assign you to some crap dead
end job, which you will happily do for as long as it takes, maybe years, to
prove they can trust you to keep your mouth shut; then they’ll move you
back.   Or, you quit now, right now, today, and find a job somewhere
else, some other state, there’s a whole bunch of them out there, they’re all
over the place.  That’s the SPD way.” 

Which was why Jesse Ortega was
walking down skid row at night in the rain looking for indicia of suspicious
Asian drug gang activity, whatever the hell that was, but at least he was still
a detective.  The real pisser in all this was he didn’t even have a
sister; he’d just had enough.  The only bright spot was that it was worth
it to spread Keenan’s alcoholic Irish nose across his pasty white face. He
could tell the brass admired the damage when the bastard got up to testify at
the hearing. That’s one thing you could count on with SPD, if you’re gonna get
physical, do it for real.

The neon sign outside Blue Anchor
Bar and Grill blinked blue and red in the grimy drizzle promising a drink and,
hopefully, suspicious Asians.  A mainstay of the downtown drinking
landscape, it had been rebuilt after the Great Seattle Fire, serving men come
to rebuild the city, dreamers and schemers going to Alaska, longshoremen and
stevedores and, today, a mixed bag of hard and serious drinkers.  It was a
boilermaker place where a workingman could get an honest ounce of whiskey with
a beer for a decent price. They didn’t serve mixed drinks.  Any woman
ducking in alone was presumed to be working, which was alright so long as she
ordered something from the bar, even if it was coffee. 

Inside, an old Jew worked the bar
wearing a tweedy looking suit with a paisley necktie knotted in a clumsy double
Windsor at his stringy neck.  A white apron optimistically protected the
suit with long ties wrapped around his skinny waist and looped in the front
into a tidy little bow rather like the cravat on a traveling preacher
man.  The apron fell almost to the cuffs of his trousers above the serviceable
brown wingtip shoes, practical support for long shifts.  He was wiry thin
and probably went a hundred thirty-five with the suit, the tie and the
wingtips, one twenty-five in his boxers.  Thinning, wavy grey hair sat on
a well domed head, and wire spectacles filled the space between his straight
nose, hard grey eyes and hairy eyebrows.

“Gimme a draft,” said Ortega,
walking past the gleaming Rock-Ola shuffleboard table stretching down the left
wall of the bar. 

Two guys were standing at the far
end of the table.  The big Indian-looking guy wearing blue jeans and a
real nice Pendleton over a black t-shirt casually started a blue weight on the
right side of the table with his thumb on top of the weight and his fingers
gliding on the edge. The weight didn’t look like it had enough to make it to
the foul line, let alone twenty-two feet, but it kept creeping down the
polished maple till it kissed the red disc sitting at the deuce off the board,
caroming gently into the deep right corner, a gorgeous three.  His
opponent, a white guy with cheap tattoos under a tatty Sonics sweatshirt said,
“Crap, not again, you are so lucky,” and waved to the bar pointing at the
Indian. 

Ortega reckoned that was one Indian
who rarely paid for beer.

As he walked by, the Indian said,
“Table’s open, care for a game?”

“No thanks,” said Ortega, “You’re
too lucky for me.”

“I’ve still got the table,” whined
the white guy, slapping dollar bills onto the table, “These say your luck just
run out.”

“Well let’s just find out, shall
we,” said the big Indian.

Ortega moved on down, pacing
himself in the mirrored back bar on the right, passing black and white
photographs hanging on the wall to his left.  Stopping, he turned and
looked at the images.  They were in plain, black, dollar store frames, the
glass fronts stained brown from years of cigarette smoke tinting the pasty
faces yellow. The first was a picture of a hockey team called the
Metropolitans, the next were two cops buttoned up in old style patrolman
blues.  Neither was smiling; they stared straight into the lens as if the
unknown photographer was stealing their souls.  But for the old style
clothes, they could be images of cops sitting in the station today, mused
Ortega, turning as the barkeep clattered a drink onto the bar. 

Stepping up to the clean polished
bar, he pulled cash from his front pocket and straddled the bar stool, “What
were the Metropolitans?”

“Your money’s no good
here.”  

 Didn’t order that,” said
Ortega, pointing at the shot sitting on the bar next to the schooner.

“Forty years I been tending bar,
and finally you come in and tell me how to do my job,” stated the Jew without
sarcasm, “what took you so long?” 

Ortega said nothing, picked up the
shot glass, sniffing at the contents.

“Whiskey,” said Ortega, giving him
cop eye, which produced no reaction.

“Rye,” agreed the barkeep, matching
his emotion.

Ortega put the whiskey down in one
swallow, set the shot glass on the bar, picked up the beer and extinguished the
fire in his belly. He carefully placed the schooner into the exact center of
the coaster. 

“Done that before,” observed the
Jew, “haven’t you?”

“Celebration,” replied Ortega.

“You’re not Irish, not even white,”
opined the bartender, inspecting him like he was a bug pinned to a board, “but you’re
a cop so it must be you.”

“What are you talking about, old
man?”

“Turn around, you see those
men?  They came the last time; now you walk through the door, you must be
the one.”

“Trust me, I’m not anybody. 
Just putting in my time till I can get my job back.”

“No going back after what’s going
to happen.”

Turning around, he leaned his back
against the bar, “what about them, who are they?” nodding his head at the two
cops.

“Brothers; they walked the beat
down here their whole career,” the Jew pointing with a liver spotted finger,
“refused promotion outta here.”

“Yeah, why’d they do that?”

“Liked it down here; they ran the
neighborhood, did alright for themselves, kept the peace.”

“Those days are over, this is the
modern SPD.”

“Sure,” said the old Jew, “whatever
you say.”

“What happened to them?”

“They stood up, that’s what
happened.”

Jesse contemplated the photos and
went back to his drink, unsure what it meant but whatever it was about, it
wasn’t about Asian gang activity.

“Now you come walking in, you even
drink the way they did.” 

“I didn’t order this; you gave it
to me, remember?” objected Ortega trying to make sense out of the old man’s
rambling.

“Doesn’t make any difference. 
You drank it, didn’t you?  He’s back, you’re here, that means you are the one,”
he reasoned, you are the one chosen.”

Ortega drank the last of his beer
and said, “Why don’t you give me another while we talk; say, you know anything
about Asian gangs around here?” 

Muttering, “Asian gangs” under his
breath, the bartender walked down the bar to the pulls to refill the
schooner.  Ortega spun the stool to get a better look at the long gone
cops and noticed something written in pencil at the bottom of each photo. 
Getting up, he bent to squint at the faded printing and finally jotted each
name and rank down in his notebook before returning to his stool. 

“When did all this happen?” he
asked, eyes on the second rye in the barkeep’s hand. 

“My great grandfather was still
running the bar and my grandfather was just helping out, so it was over a
hundred years ago,” the barkeep said, setting drink on the coaster.

Ortega sipped the rest of the rye,
happy that he wasn’t drinking on duty now that he was actually gathering
information.  Pleased at the way his first night on the new
assignment was starting, he picked up the second beer. “What happened to
them?” 

“Don’t talk about it out loud;
words are powerful; numbers have meanings, some benign, others neutral, and
many dangerous; you must be careful, it’s not something to say out loud. 
Look it up; you’re a detective, the records are somewhere; you go look it up
but don’t read it out loud, you understand?  Don’t say the words, just
read to yourself.  It’s too dangerous. Then come back here and we will
talk.”

“I can read without moving my lips,”
said Ortega, “so I should be safe.”

“Good, you do that,” said the Jew,
oblivious to his sarcasm, “you do that.” 

Ortega finished his beer and sat at
the counter.  “What about the Asians?  They ever come in here?” 

“What are you waiting for?  Go
and read the files,” said the Jew, shooing Ortega down the bar to the
exit.  “You have work to do; remember, keep it to yourself.”

“I’m going, I’m going.”

“Stanley Cup Champions,” yelled the
barkeep.

“What?” said Ortega, confused.

“1917, slaughtered the Montreal
Canadiens,” said the Indian, fervent as only a diehard fan can be.  “Three
games to one, outscored ’em 19 – 3; first American team to take the
cup.”   The Indian smiled and tipped the schooner in his hand, the
skinny white guy just muttered.

Walking out the door, Ortega
wondered what time warp he’d fallen into.

Arabella started the morning in
Pioneer Square at the Totem Pole and began circling the neighborhood block by
block.  She’d gone with a short heel cowboy boot with silver toe tips,
snug boot cut jeans, a fitted black t and an A2 from Eastman.  Her 1911
fit comfortably in the right hand pocket, neither bulging nor sagging.  A
Terry Tussey Junior built on a Caspian frame, it was concealable and light with
full ACP stopping power. 

The wooden stake went into the
inside pocket she’d added to the jacket for just this purpose.  She would
never alter her original, and had purchased the repro to modify.  Her
original jacket was a gift from a WWII pilot reserved for special
occasions.  She carried her gun whenever she might need to defend herself
or discourage hostiles without going all vamp on them.  And if she did go
Vamp, the police rarely looked farther than the big hole the fat slug left in
the unfortunate’s face when assessing the cause of death.

 Unlike most of her kind, she
functioned in daylight so long as it wasn’t direct bright sun.  As a
permanent lifestyle, Los Angeles was out except for the occasional short
shopping excursion but Seattle, with one hundred fifty eight days of
precipitation was perfect.  The best part was there were only thirty-eight
inches of rain annually so it really wasn’t an umbrella town like London or New
York.   Except for August when, inexplicably, the sky was clear and
the sun was bright, it was the perfect Vampire city.  When it wasn’t
foggy, misty, drizzling, raining, sleeting, hailing or snowing it was generally
overcast with blue grey sludge filtering the sun, allowing her to comfortably
move about, unlike the Eastern European and Russian Vampyra who were restricted
to the dark.  Besides, all in all she preferred the materials and design
of fall winter rather than spring summer.

She was quite good at taking care
of herself and had since she’d been made on a French battlefield in 1784. 
A peasant girl, her village had been captured by a German force and, when the
French counterattacked, she was separated from her family in the chaos. 

Europe had been the perfect habitat
for the Vampyra for hundreds of years, incessant warfare and a lack of
communication allowed Night Hunters to travel from one conflict to the next
unimpeded and anonymous.  A Vampire needed to feed but once a month and
could go much longer without power diminishing, so it was relatively easy to
follow an army and find a target of opportunity. 

Such had been Arabella.  Alone
and frightened and lost in the chaos, a man had appeared from the battle smoke
and offered to help her find her family.  Under the pretext of avoiding
the pillaging soldiers, he had led her into the woods where he had thrown her
to the ground and, at penetration, had bitten her and taken her to darkness but
not death. As he buckled his pants he said, ”You are so lovely, I gifted you
with life; good luck,” and turned, abandoning her.  Fifteen years old and
delirious with the changes to her body, she determined to stay alive. 

Over the days and weeks and months
that followed she survived as a camp follower, a prostitute, while her mind and
body underwent the transition.  She disgusted herself sneaking out at
night to roam the battlefields where she sucked blood from the freshly
dead.  Each morning, sickened by the memories of the night, she swore to
never do it again but her body required the energy of fresh blood to fuel the
change and, without her maker to guide her, she followed her body’s insatiable
desires and survived.   Succumbing to the blood lust that infected
her and her growing sexual appetites she reveled in war torn Europe, travelling
from battlefield to battlefield satisfying her blood hunger with the injured
and dying and her lusts with dashing young cavalry officers.  As the
Continental wars drew to a close and her needs finally satiated she turned her
attentions to her situation and determined to carve out a niche in life.

Reinventing herself as a member of
the newly emerging bourgeoisie, she moved to Paris utilizing her accomplished
charms to become the mistress of a minor nobleman in service to the French
Court.  With conversational knowledge of German, English and Russian acquired
from those countries’ Officer Corps, she was able to converse freely and became
a constant companion at the balls and functions that swirled around
pre-revolution Paris. 

When the revolution came she
forcibly spirited her lover to Marseille and put him on a boat bound for
London.  He had been good to her and she owed him a debt for introducing
her to another way of life.  Their time together had been good; he had
introduced her not only to his social circle but also to the intellectuals swirling
about the capitol, so that her excellent mind had been influenced by some of
the best thinkers of the time.  If he wondered about her occasional night
long absences, he was sophisticated enough to tell her he was concerned only
about her welfare and secure enough to believe her when she whispered she would
always take care to be safe and would always be home before the sun came up.

The revolution and turmoil that
ripped through France provided her the cover to continue her education. Finally
comfortable with the cycle of demand and satiation that was her lot, she
learned to moderate her beast although when it raged she fed easily in the
chaos of the streets.  Bonaparte’s ascension and the continent wide
warfare that followed provided her the cover to grow and to complete her
education.  A series of powerful lovers in government and the military
showered her with presents and indulged her with connections and tutors until
she was one of the most knowledgeable people of the time.

One evening she went out to a fashionable
party and on her way home vanished from the streets of Paris and indeed from
Europe.  Taking passage to Buenos Aires under an alias, she knocked at the
door of a splendid villa located in the fashionable hillside district, a place
that she had spent the past years searching out.  Using her European
connections to identify the owner and confirm his history, she satisfied
herself that he was her maker. 

At the door she claimed to be
related to an acquaintance from France and only wished to pass on a letter. 
The manservant admitted her and showed her to a waiting room furnished in dark
Teutonic furniture carved with scenes of mounted huntsman pinning pigs to the
ground with lances.  When the master appeared he broke into a broad smile,
as she was beautiful and dressed in the latest Parisian style. 

He advanced towards her, saying he
did not recognize the name but wished to correct this oversight; he was suave
and used to impressing young women with his Old World charm and
sophistication.  As he reached out to take her hand, she grabbed his wrist
and plunged the stake she’d spent the tedious sea voyage carving into his
chest, puncturing his heart saying, “I never thanked you for your gift,” and
watched as he shrank and began turning to dust.   As the spark dimmed
in his eyes, he asked, “Who are you,” and finally, “why,” but she did not
answer.  He could not see the dirty little peasant girl in the beautiful
woman who had just ended his life.

He had accumulated vast properties,
which she appropriated and liquidated allowing her the financial freedom to
live her life as she chose.  She roamed the world stateless, without
allegiance to any nation or Clan.  As word spread among the People of the
Night, she was asked to intervene in delicate matters or to lend assistance
with a dispute.  Since her maker was dead and she had never joined a Clan,
she was truly independent and could sell her services to the highest or lowest
bidder, as she determined. Over time she achieved a reputation as a formidable
and relentless opponent, and her powers grew to equal those of all but the
oldest and strongest Vampires.

Tiring of the peripatetic
lifestyle, she sought a place where she could live in semi-retirement, avoiding
conflict and accepting commissions at her discretion.  The Pacific
Northwest was an attractive possibility; the geography lent it a certain
isolation, which served to shield her from some of the more unsavory People of
the Night who roamed the East Coast.  She hadn’t hunted in the Northwest,
so there were no unpleasant surprises lurking about seeking retribution, and it
had a nice parochial outlook with a small power structure that would be easy to
monitor. 

When Petru appeared at her home in
Philadelphia with a letter from the Queen of the Northwest Clan proposing a
contract for hire, she traveled to Seattle and accepted the commission. 
While discussing the Queen’s problem, a common enough matter involving a
Clanless Vampire looking to set up shop in Portland, she was able to secure
permission to establish a permanent residence in Seattle.  The Queen got a
private enforcer outside the Clan structure and she had the protection of the
Clan around her.

The Queen had taken her time
considering Arabella’s request.  Allowing the preeminent Vampire assassin
of the past century to move in as a permanent guest stimulated her neurotic
fear, but the chance to make a personal ally out of this dangerous weapon
outweighed her paranoia, and she ultimately agreed.  Arabella’s ability to
persuade the Portland problem to leave without a messy scene impressed the
Queen greatly, as she valued discretion. The only condition she imposed was
that Arabella not ply her trade in Northwest Clan territory without the
personal authorization of the Queen, a condition she was happy to accept, as
she had long sought a place where she had no enemies and where no Vampires
resided with old connections to someone she had eliminated. 

Of course, the Queen had added at
the last when the negotiations had been concluded and things were all friendly and
neighborly that she could perhaps use some assistance from time to time if
Arabella wasn’t otherwise occupied, small services, barely a trifle, something
that would take little of her time and would undoubtedly be most helpful. 

The trifling little problem
annoying the Queen turned out to be Oliver’s Insurrection.  Summoned to a
midnight meeting at the mansion, she found herself hunting Oliver and the
followers he’d recruited throughout the City and finally following him into a
devastated section of the Seattle Underground, as reconstruction of the burnt
City went on around and above them.  Petru accompanied her, whether to
assist her or to spy on her Arabella was never sure, as they rampaged through
the rebellious Clan members who’d thrown in with Oliver. 

Capturing his confederates when
they could, killing them when they had no choice, they’d finally cornered him
Underground where, with Petru’s help, she captured and subdued Oliver.  As
they prepared to stake his heart, cut off his head and burn the body, the Queen
intervened and spared Oliver’s life. Petru and she had forced Oliver into the
concrete burial vault, bound it round with iron bands and hauled it to the
waterfront where a well-paid charter with the Puget Sound Tug Boat Company
waited. The tug steamed up Puget Sound into the Strait of Juan de Fuca, where
they told the Captain to stop then winched the vault up off the deck and pushed
it from the stern.  After marking the position of the moon and stars into
her memory, they returned successful but troubled that a dangerous enemy was
left alive, albeit at the bottom of the sea.

 It had never occurred to
Arabella that the Queen retained any Human emotions, but it seemed her leniency
was the result of a passion not entirely grown cold.  Oliver was, after
all, of her blood and resided with her as her personal Human, bound to her by
the blood providing her with nourishment and perhaps even satisfying her
lingering sexual appetites before she made him.  Once made, he was quickly
promoted through the Clan until his ambition made him try for her chair.  

Now, either he had somehow returned
or another had designs on power.  Either way, the Queen wanted them found
and delivered to her, and if she wanted to stay alive and living in Seattle,
she needed to find and stop whatever was going on.

Stepping out of her building on
Second Avenue, she crossed Yesler at the crosswalk, turned right, then a left
on Occidental and into Pioneer Square.  Since the area had upgraded from
brothels and opium dens to art galleries and tourist museums she had lost her
taste for the area, although she particularly liked the Totem Pole the City had
purchased from the Tlingit to replace the one they’d stolen and been forced to
return to its rightful owners. 

As usual, people were clustered
about the base of the 60-foot Totem craning their necks to see the top. 
She stood off admiring the raven guarding First Avenue when a woman wearing a
pilled orange sweater and blue stretch pants sausaging her significant behind,
with a watch cap pulled over her head like a navy blue condom covering a red
fire hydrant handed her a camera and told her to take her family’s picture and
be sure to get the Totem Pole in the shot.  Complying, she maneuvered the
herd so that the hook nosed figure on the Totem appeared poised to gouge out
the tops of their heads and snapped away. 

Returning the camera, she realized
where she needed to go to find the Ratman.   Continuing through the
Square, she turned left on Jackson and walked towards the International
District, one of the downtown areas clinging to the old ways.  At an
intersection she watched as the WALK/DON’T WALK crazily flashed, the people
beside her stepped off the curb then back confused by the erratic
behavior.  Watching she realized there was a pattern although what it
meant was beyond her. Her cell phone buzzed and answering the phone a machine
voice said, “Morse Code.” 

“I don’t remember the code, if I
ever actually knew it,” she said. 

 After a moment the voice said
“Would you like to learn?”