Inheritance Pilot Episode

It’s a cold and rainy night as I turn right onto Rosedale Drive, heading downhill both literally and metaphorically.  The rain makes me prematurely tired, just when I need to be at the top of my mental game. Not that there are many other types of night in Ash Falls in September. Blame it on El Nino, the monsoon, global warming,  – and just ignore the meteorologists, because the facts are plain – in September, it rains.

The call came in to bring my sorry ass down to the dock district for a meeting with the town’s heaviest hitters. It would undoubtedly be in some poorly lit warehouse, with me standing like a supplicant in the Star Chamber below the bethroned players who wanted to see me. They were admittedly not good friends to have, but they made even worse enemies. In this town, the authorities and the criminal element are all drinking from a common pool, and the good guys are always playing from behind, working from within a weak and shrinking framework of straight cops, righteous judges and attorneys that stay bought once paid for. The bad guys don’t need the law, and can be a little more direct-to-consumer.

I take another left off the rail yards running parallel to the docks. The scattered streetlights are glowing with muted intensity through the surrounding mist – too thick to be rain, too thin to be fog. I pull my Ford Taurus in behind a gleaming black Hummer parked on the street in front of an otherwise unremarkable warehouse. Two guys are standing guard at the front door brandishing tactical assault weapons –  MP5s, ignoring and being ignored by a marked police unit not 50 yards away. Ash Falls. The Wild West meets Nosferatu. I silde out of the car and cross the street to the warehouse, nodding to one of the gunmen as I enter.

Once inside, I shake myself like a wet dog, then walk further into the open building. Sure enough, 5 chairs up on a platform, klieg lights behind the seats looking down on a center area obviously designed for a witness or supplicant. Do these guys all watch the same movies, or what?

It takes me a moment to notice that the center seat, usually reserved for the mover and shaker in this town is empty. The absence of our city’s most powerful millionaire casts a different kind of  shadow over the meeting.

“Good evening, Brian. I hope our call did not inconvenience you”. This from the smallest and least threatening of the platform figures. Dreyfus, his name is, a Professor of Anthropology or Archeology or Underwater Basket Weaving or something at our local U. Why he runs with this crowd, more to the point why they let him run with them, has always been a question to me. One I have never bothered to ask, of course. The fewer questions I ask, the faster I can leave..

“Hiya, Professor. No, nothing that couldn’t be interrupted. Are we waiting for Annis to arrive?” I ask, nodding toward the central chair.

A muffled snort from the right side of the platform, then a throat being cleared. A big body, leans forward – Rowan Bale, a local dockworker union boss and around-the-bend tree hugger besides. “He won’t be joining us, Mr. Drake. He is…indisposed.” This delivered from beneath black bushy eyebrows, lips framed by a thick black mustache and Van Dyke beard.

“Ha. Indisposed. Just plain disposed is more like it.” This, with a trace of a Colombian accent,  from a slight, lanky bronze-skinned man of indeterminate age. “El Rey” he is called on the street, and his is the empire that provides us with the majority of our drugs, guns and prostitutes here in the City Wet. The guards with the submachine guns outside would be his bodyguards. I raise my eyebrows in surprise at the information being conveyed.

“Are you gentlemen trying to tell me that Annis is no longer with us?” I would have thought it impossible to achieve his demise without a team of Navy SEALs backed up by a flight of archangels.

El Rey nods. “He is gone, and so are eight of his bodyguards. Whoever managed it brought some serious hardware, man.” Nods and affirmative mumbles come from all but one of my four “employers”.

The final member of the group breaks his arrogant silence.“If we could dispense with these trivialities, and commence our business?”. This delivered with an arched gaze framed by professionally manicured eyebrows, touched up at great expense, everyday – no doubt. They couldn’t ever grow that way normally. In fact, they can’t grow at all. Leandro de Castillas, you see, is dead.

Well, undead, anyway. He claims some thousand-year-long heritage from France or Spain or something – a real classic Old World Vampire. Something about him has always struck me as a little off. Probably the fact that he looks at me as a serf or a peasant or worse. What the hell he is doing here, helping “manage” a city with less than a half a million people is beyond me. Surely he has a dark and brooding castle in the Alps or the Pyrenees.

Bale clears his throat. “Yes, well, in truth Annis is no longer among us. We do not understand the circumstances behind his departure. His power was great – his resources beyond imagining. How one of us managed to perform this -”

“One of you?” I ask, incredulous.

Bale nods, unperturbed. “Yes, it had to have been one of the four of us. Certain safeguards were bypassed that only one of the four of us would have been privy to. And this is where you come in, Drake. We need you to determine which of us is at fault here.”

I blink, and take a deep breath. “Jesus Christ.” I mutter. “Colonel Mustard in the Library with the Ball-Peen Hammer.” I hear Dreyfus snicker, but the other 3 remain resolute. Maybe they never played games as kids. Maybe they never were kids. I shake my head as if trying to drive away an insect, trying to re-center myself.

“So, you want me to investigate until I figure out which of you did this, then report back…here?” I can immediately see some logistical problems with this approach.

Dreyfus leans forward. “Precisely. Upon delivery of your report, we will determine how to best…proceed.”

“And you want me to deliver this report back to you all here?”

Apparently misunderstanding my concern, Rey breaks in. “Anything you need for this, you’ve got it. You want guns, guards, cops, whatever – just tell us and we’ll make sure it is yours. Corregir rapidamente, entiendes?” Oh, yeah – I understand, alright.

With a dramatic sigh, Leandro chimes in.“We have also agreed to double your already considerable daily fee.” You would think someone a few centuries old would have learned a little patience by now. “I am personally of the belief that this effort is valueless, but I am apparently alone in that assumption.”

I put my hands up to stop the verbal flow, though the idea of two grand a day is not at all unpleasant. But I still have a couple questions of my own. “Do I get access to your crime scene?” I ask.

Rowan grimaces. “There is not precisely a crime scene, as the police are not precisely involved. A body is required for a homicide investigation. But you certainly may have access to Annis’ former domicile.”

I take a deep breath, then plunge in. “So, I understand the gig, ok?” I stated. “But what I don’t get is what happens when I find your theoretical killer or killers.”

“That would be our problem, yes?” Dreyfus again. What was up with the other 3 letting him jump in like this?

“Yeah, I understand, but let me lay it out for you. I find the smoking gun, turn in your villain. Those of you that are righteous on this lay it down on him, presumably. But what is to prevent his organization from taking it out on me after this report is delivered?”

Dreyfus made another economical gesture, somewhere between a sigh and a shrug. “You already enjoy certain…protections, do you not?” I shrug, not really willing to test that boundary in this company. “But, if it should come down to that, you’ve got the resources of the other three of us to protect you, you see? But if you choose not to undertake the investigation, then you have all of us lined up against you while we look for another investigator. Is that clear enough?”

I nod, caught somewhere between fear and disgust. Nothing like employee incentives.

Far overhead, the full moon shines down on the clouds covering Ash Falls. Its glowing face is reflected back by the lake above the city, while tiny moon-images are refracted back from the river that runs 50 miles to join the Pacific. The night embraces a quarter of a million souls along both banks of the river, a population that locks their doors, bars their windows, but, curiously, never seem to muster the desire to leave. Ships arrive from the ocean, trains haul shipping containers away North, East, and South, tractor-trailers come and go freely along the Interstate. But something – whether a malaise, an illness, or a spiritual anchor, keeps the residents calm, silent and malleable – unwilling to be displaced from their homes in the name of safety or freedom.

They are nothing more than sheep, waiting patiently in their pen – seemingly unaware that, in the absence of shepherds, their flock is instead being watched over by the wolves.

 

Two

My mind is still spinning when I pull back into the parking lot in front of the repurposed warehouse/condos on 33rd. I am so distracted that I don’t even notice the figure huddled in the rain sitting on my doorstep until I almost step on her. She turns to look up at me and I start back – momentarily glad that she must think it was an unexpected presence that surprised me, and not the sheer fact that it is her, arriving here and now. The perfect ending to a perfect day.

We look calmly at one another for a moment, neither moving to kiss, embrace, or otherwise greet one another – all those things that lovers would normally do after a long absence from each other. I finally clear my throat, staring into the intense green eyes rimmed by running mascara that makes her look as if she’s been crying. Maybe the rain. Maybe not.

“How did you find me?” is all I manage for the opening salvo after a 4 year silence.

“I don’t know, maybe I asked around?” she asks coyly. “Or maybe I gave Steve a call to find out?” This sends a shiver down my spine, and I take a step backward, deliberately unclenching my fist.

“No, I don’t think that is it, Jess.”

She somehow misses my reaction to this, and continues trying to banter. “Why not? You think Steve wouldn’t take my call?”

“No, he wouldn’t. Steve is dead, Jess.”

She looks as surprised as I have ever seen her, and then looks down for a moment. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.” Whether for my loss or for the lie, she doesn’t clarify.

We wait for an awkward moment more, then I finally give up and break the silence. “What do you want, Jess?” It sounds more like a whine than a stern rebuke, but I gave up on presenting myself the way I want to be around Jess a long time ago.

 “To get out of the rain would be nice” she retorts. Always a wise-ass.  As I look her over more closely, I notice that her collarbones are seriously protruding inside the neck of her ratty t-shirt. Apparently she isn’t eating, along with whatever else she is doing. With that, my defenses collapse. I was always a sucker for starving strays.

“Fine.” is the best I can manage without starting an hour long rant on everything that is wrong with her, with me, with us. I turn and unlock the door, then gesture her inside as if it was a Park Avenue apartment, rather that the old warehouse repurchased into a condo that it actually is. She walks in and I follow her, careful to maintain some distance between us. I hang my coat on the rack by the door, not caring about it dripping on the floor right now.

When I turn to face her, she is already deeper into my home, looking at the “ego wall”, mainly pictures of my brother Steve and I in better days. She is in more than a few of them, frequently standing between the two of us and smiling. She always did love being the center of attention.

She turns to face me, one eyebrow raised quizzically. “No new photos here, Brian? Haven’t you done anything worth talking about in the past few years?”

“Nothing I would want photographed, no.” With that, I carefully step around her to the other side of my tiny dining room table, getting a solid object between the two of us. I am not usually susceptible to feminine wiles, but she has always been my kryptonite in that regard. In ragged and dirty clothes, with running makeup and looking like she hasn’t eaten in a week, I can still feel her pulling me towards her center of gravity. She has that strength – I have that weakness.

“So, Jessie, you are out of the rain – what do you want?”

She stops looking at the photos, then smiles wearily when she notices that I am across the table from her. “Maybe I just wanted to see you.”

I shake my head. “No, you didn’t. After 4 years of nothing? Nah – you want something.”

Her smile turns down a little at the edges, and hard lines emerge from her face that weren’t there the last time I saw her. “Fine. I need some help with something. I just need – “

I put a hand up to stop her. “No, Jess. Whatever it is, no. There is nothing left of “us” for you to trade on. You made your choice when you decided to bail out after you and Steve – “

And that is as far as my grand soliloquy gets me. Just as I am preparing to let her have it for the last decade of torment, the door opens – and two men walk through the front door that I have neglected to lock behind us.

I take a step backwards, momentarily taken aback, and I sense, rather than see, Jessie scurrying behind me as I take a look at my latest unwanted visitors. One is big, tattooed, and muscular, maybe borrowed from central casting for the latest show involving motorcycle gangs. He stands behind a darker skinned and better-dressed counterpart. Your typical street duo – muscle and shooter. I make a note of distinguishing features and tattoos, so I can complain to El Rey, if I should ever get a chance.

I ease back towards the table as I gesture at the dripping coat on the rack. “Wallet is in the inside pocket. Take what you want and leave. If you feel like being nice you could drop the driver’s license on your way out. I hate standing in line at the DMV.”

The shooter smiles, displaying a truly hideous grin with fake diamonds inset into his front 4 teeth. “Nah, man, you don’t have to wait in line. We ain’t here for your money. We here for the girl.”

Amateurs, these two. They should’ve never given me a chance to get this close to the table with my hands out of their line of sight. I slide my Glock 27 out of the holster attached to the underside of the table, and have it pointed between the shooter’s eyes before he can blink. It is a small gun, and I always feel a little self-conscious while I hold it, with my pinky waving around in the breeze as if I was holding a teacup. I try to suppress the feeling and pay attention to the business at hand.

“Not sure what you clowns were thinking, but it is time for you to go. Next time, check in with your boss, and have him check in with Rey before you walk through my door again. Freelancing is bad for your health.”

The shooter snorts, clearly not impressed by the gun or the mention of El Rey. “Rey? Please.” He spits on my floor for emphasis. “He ain’t nothing in this town any more. What are you going to do with that little toy gun, anyway?”

“What am I going to do? I am going to put two quarter-sized holes in your head and still have 4 rounds left over for your mouth-breathing friend. The real question is, what are you going to do? Are you leaving, or is this about to get ugly?”

The tension in the room escalates for a moment, but just as I am thinking about exhaling and pulling the trigger, something changes. The shooter nods, then they start backing out the door carefully, keeping me in sight,  not looking at all like a couple of dope fiends who have just had their lives threatened. “You say so, man. We’ll be watching. No way to protect your chica forever.”

With that, they are gone. I walk to the side of the steel security door and kick it closed, not wanting to silhoutte myself in the doorway. I then double lock it and turn to pull my cell phone out of my jacket, cursing myself for being so distracted that I didn’t secure the damn door  in the first place.

I gesture Jess towards a chair, her eyes never leaving  the pistol still in my hand. I take a brief look through the window at the street outside, parting the shades with my pistol. Nothing. With my other hand I dial a number. 3 rings before anyone answers – must be a busy night.

“Yeah?” Boredom drips from his voice, through the phone and runs down my arm. That or rainwater from my jacket.

“Clarence? Drake. Two street boys just walked into the loft and tried to boost a lady friend of mine.”

“Oh, yeah?” He now sounds interested. “You and the lady ok?”

“Yeah, I persuaded ‘em to make better life choices”

He chuckles. “And now you need some clean-up?”

“No, they walked out.”

A snort, whether amusement or disgust I can’t tell. “I keep telling you, you too soft, Drake. No one gets up in my crib and threatens me and my woman, then gets to walk out.”

“I was busy. I don’t multitask well. Besides, that’s what I have you guys for, right?”

“Yeah, I feel you.” He pauses for a moment, and I can hear the vague thump of subwoofers and crowd noise in the background. “So, you need some boys, or you want a squad?”

“Send a squad – I can give ‘em a pretty accurate description. They weren’t anyone I’ve seen around before.”

“Alright, a boy in blue be there in 10 or so. Lock up and stay strapped till they get there. Try not to create any more problems in the meantime”

“Already on it, Clarence. Tell the boss I said hi.”

“Right. Like he wants to hear from you.” And with that, the call is disconnected.

I turn back toward the table, walking under the watchful eyes of my brother’s police academy graduation photo. He was the one that taught me to never be more than 3 steps from a gun, anywhere in my house. Just like in most things, he was right.

I put my pistol down on the table, grab a chair and spin it around to face Jess, and then straddle it, resting my arms along the top of the chair’s back. The last thing I want right now is arms full of weeping ex-wife.

“Ok, Jess – you now have my full attention. What the hell do those guys want?”

 

The downtown bars are full tonight, the dream of chemical amnesia or intimately shared fear being pursued by those who can afford it. In the darker corners of the city, more dangerous forms of forgetfulness are being sold on street corners, to be taken away into cars and alleys then injected, smoked, or swallowed until peace is achieved. But respite is only so long, leaving in its place a desire for more: a new partner, another drink, a different drug. Escape is never purchased, only rented. As long as life exists, the fear will return. Here, even those who seek a permanent solution through ending their own lives might find that, within a day or two, their torment is renewed – only now with a vicious and thirsty edge. 

 

Three

She takes a deep breath as if to steady herself, then looks at the pistol resting near my hand.

“Put that thing away. You know I hate them.”

I shake my head. “It is staying in reach until I think we are safe. My house, my rules. Now, stop preaching, and start talking.”

She looks down at the table, then over my shoulder, refusing to look me in the eyes. If she was a normal person, I would say she was feeling guilty. Since she is Jess, I know she is playing for the cameras, trying to hit me for dramatic effect. Any second now, she is going to…

Right on cue, she shoots to her feet, the chair squeaking across the hardwood floor. “I need to leave. It was a mistake to come here.” She makes no move towards the door, though – watching for my reaction instead.

I shrug. “If you really want to walk out into the waiting arms of those thugs, suit yourself, Jess.” That gets her to look me in the eyes. I went off-script and didn’t beg her to stay.

After a moment of indecision, she sits back down, pulling the chair back up to the table. “I didn’t really mean to put you in danger, Brian. I thought, if I came here…” Her voice trails off, then she gives me a crooked smile. “I don’t know what I thought. I thought you would fix it. Make it better.”

I nod. “Sure you did. I have a reputation for ‘fixing it’. Why don’t you tell me what it is I am fixing this time?”

Another deep breath, and then her shoulders slump. She looks back down at the table, but at least she starts talking.

“You know what I am now, right?” This barely mumbled.

“A junkie. A police informant. A hooker. Which of your jobs are you referring to?”

She winces at my summary, but carries on. “I was referring to my habit. You keep your ears open, right?” I nod, unwilling to say anything that might interrupt her. “Well, then,  you know there is some new product on the street, right?”

In fact, I do know. Info has been making the rounds on both sides of the fence, since no one seems to know what the source of this new product is. “Are you talking about Red Smoke?” I ask. She exhales deeply, apparently relieved that she doesn’t have to explain further. “Yeah, I have heard of it. Is that what you are using these days?”

She actually smiles, looking animated for the first time since she arrived. “It is incredible, Brian. It is smoother than silk. Makes you feel good, you know, not weak.” I do the best I can to control my face, but it is hard, listening to her talk about crack like a connoisseur. “You don’t even have to shoot it, you can just smoke the stuff. Makes you feel like you you can do anything – I even forget to eat when I am high. Best thing is, it lasts for days – you aren’t hitting every few hours.”

My scepticism kicks in finally. “And it only costs as much as 5 or 6 days worth of crack, right?”

She shakes her head. “That’s the thing, Brian – it is cheaper than normal product. I don’t understand it either.”

My patience is starting to wear a little thin. It’s been a long day. “So, again – what do you need from me? And why the heck are street rats chasing you into my condo? Do you owe somebody money?”

She shakes her head. “No, I don’t owe anyone anything, exactly. I just had a bad time recently, and I think I might have…seen something.”

I wait out the dramatic pause, and she eventually continues. “I think I might know where this new stuff is coming from, Brian. Like, where it is being made”

I know enough about the police department in Ash Falls that I don’t bother to ask why she did not take this info to the cops she occasionally reports to. “And what am I supposed to do with that information, exactly?”

“I dunno…it’s just…creepy.”

I sigh again. “So, what’s the big secret, Jess?”

Just as the rotating red and blue lights pull up outside, she takes a deep breath, and takes the plunge.

“Brian – do you believe in vampires?”

I am thunderstruck for a moment, and it is all I can do to not look over her shoulder at Steve’s photo on the wall. Apparently she never found out, just like the rest of the ignorant fools in this God-forsaken town. I take a deep breath, then stand at the sound of a nightstick being banged into my security door.

“Vampires? No, Jess, I don’t. Guess you’ll have to try that line on somebody else.” With that, I turn my back and move to open the door before this cop leaves a permanent mark on it



Something exists here, in the long miles between Portland and Sacramento. A black hole of sorts, it draws to itself all that is evil, all that is empty, all that mankind has reviled and hidden from since the light of consciousness revealed itself to humankind. It calls out to broken dreams, forgotten idols, and the avatars of man’s darkest desires, saying: “Here, you can find what you are looking for. Here, you will be protected and nourished, here your strength may grow again to what it once was during the days of mankind’s darkest imaginings.” For here, in Ash Falls, the worship of fear has taken hold once again, defeating the promise of science and reason, and replacing hope with the huddling of bodies pressed together in the dark, each praying only that another will be taken.

Four

The morning sun rising over the dam is burning a hole straight through my sunglasses and into the center of my hangover. The convenience store coffee is almost as bitter as my mood as I stand around in the parking lot of the windowless block of concrete that used to be the home of Annis Black. Hurry up and wait, just like always.

It was close to 1 AM before the interview with the cop wound up, and I finally got him out of my hair. He got about as complete a physical description of a pair of suspects as he has ever received, and I got plenty of assurances about how crime enforcement was being stepped up in our neighborhood. The fact that I had to call in a favor from a drug lord’s consigliere to get a unit to show up in less than an hour was never mentioned.

I also convinced him to take Jess into “protective custody” overnight, hoping she might get a meal and some medical care out of it. She did not go quietly or happily, but she finally went. After they left, I relocked the door, pulled out a cleaning kit, and serviced the guns I have lying around the house while drinking Jameson. Somewhere around 4 the alcohol finally overcame the fear, and I passed out for a few hours of troubled sleep.

And now, here I am, paying for my sins. I have taken a pretty good look around the half-acre parking lot, and have spotted some shell casings, quite a few bullet-shaped gouges, and what looks to be around half a dozen blood stains around the area. However this went down, Annis and his crew did not go out quietly.

A black Chrysler 300 pulls up at 9:40, only an hour and 10 minutes late, and I step out of the Taurus, the comforting weight of The Judge on my hip. The same idiot city council that will not allow licensed concealed carry in this town are perfectly happy to let me wear this monster “openly” in any place that isn’t a school or a church. I’ve had more than a few comments about what I am compensating for by wearing this thing, but I ignore them. Let the haters start working with my clientele list – then we can make comparisons.

I walk over to shake the hand of Detective Larry Barela – a halfway decent cop in a barrell full of rotten apples. Once upon a time he and my brother shared a squad car, before Steve got promoted to Lieutenant, then promoted further on to glory. Barela is in his own ride, not a city unit, so I am guessing he is on his own time here.

“What’s the word, Larry?” I ask as I shake his hand.

“Not a lot, Brian.” He nods his head toward my revolver. “You see a rabid chipmunk that scared you or something?”

See what I mean?

“So, what’ve we got here?” I ask, to deflect further sarcasm about my sidearm of choice, as well as in hopes of getting out of this hideous sunlight.

He grows serious. “Quite a fireworks show, actually. Looks like 2 groups of pretty well-armed folks had a go of it two nights ago.”

“So, why nothing in the papers?”

He grimaces. “Because there was nothing to report. Plenty of gunshots, some evidence of major trauma – but not a single body or witness. Inside of the church is pretty tore up, but again – nothing inside but some screwed up furnishings and ashes.”

“Church?” I ask. We are in the middle of the only real high-rent district in Ash Falls, surrounded by large landscaped lots surrounding million-dollar homes. An odd place for a house of worship, especially since I was given to understand that this was Aniss Black’s home.

“Oh, yeah, you’ve gotta see this. Dude must’ve been running some whacked-out cult of darkness or something.” He turns, and I follow him to the entrance. He pulls open the metal fire door, and gestures me inside.

Once my eyes adjust, I see exactly what he was talking about. The inside of the building is one large room, shaped like an elongated cross. The layout is completely familiar to anyone who spent some time in a Catholic Church, like I did growing up. From the outside the place is a featureless concrete box, implying the corners must be filled with something…

But there, the resemblance ends. There are some very expensive-looking pieces of artwork on the walls, and small “sitting areas” comprised of couches and stuffed chairs scattered throughout the building. No pews. Here and there on the floor I notice small piles of ash, some still intact, some scattered and stepped in. I do not bother to tell the Detective that the bodies he didn’t see are still here in the building.

I turn to face him, and notice him carefully not looking at the piles on the floor. When I clear my throat he turns to face me.

“So, who caught the case?”

He laughs, bitterly. “What case, Drake? I’ve got a dozen unsolved homicides with corpses and witnesses and physical evidence waiting to be worked on back on my desk. Who the hell is going to take the time to look into an empty cult building with a few bullet holes, considering we’ve got no complaintants and no witnesses? Dude that owns this place spends the majority of his time out of the country – we are having a hell of a time tracking him down.”

I nod, understanding. Business as usual at AFPD. “Gotcha. Well, thanks for letting me in. I will lock up on the way out.”

He hesitates at the door – wanting to ask me who I am working for here. Discretion grabs him by the scruff of the neck, and he merely nods. “Yeah. See ya around, Drake.” With that, the door closes behind him.

I am slightly surprised he had no questions or comments about my home invasion last night. He must be on his way in, heading for his desk at the precinct now, not having caught up on the overnights yet. At least I was saved the ribbing over that Charlie-Foxtrot.

Finally unsupervised, I am able to get a sense of the building that I thought was once was the domicile of our richest and most reclusive citizen. There are no interior walls, no bathrooms, no kitchens. While I do not exactly feel as though I am in a church or cult headquarters, I certainly do not feel as though I am in a home either. If Annis lived here, they way he and his staff lived is nothing like what I would consider “life”.

I turn to take a closer look at the closest pile of ashes. The fragments are tiny, granular, almost looking like black sand. I nod. Once upon a time, these were Annis’ guards and servants. “The MIB” is how the rest of the members of the circle referred to the ten of them. All with pale, cadaverous skin, they wore black suits with mirrored sunglasses, were constantly armed to the teeth, and each was able to lift the back end of a Mercedes. I had previously speculated that they were some species of vampire, and now I was looking at proof in piles on the floor.

Looking around the room, I only find seven more piles. This means that 2 guards and Annis himself are still unaccounted for. My employers seemed pretty rock-solid on Annis being deceased, but I would feel a whole lot better if I found some proof of that myself.

Moving to the far end of the room, I can’t help but notice that the floor here has buckled upwards, as if something exploded beneath it. I look around, and, sure enough, an unobtrusive door in the nearest corner opens to a stairway heading down into darkness. I draw my pistol, grab a flashlight off its holster on my belt and head into the depths below.



Something stirs in the spiritual world around the city. An implosion of sorts, it leaves behind nothing where once a center of power stood. Immediately, alliances begin to be made, plans for conquest decided upon, troops marshalled from far and wide. Across the globe, powerful and eldritch creatures feel the opportunity to feed freely if they can rush to fill the void left behind by the departure of a central power. Around the city, dark forces hold themselves in readiness – unwilling to act unwarily, but willing to pounce on any weakness they might perceive when the struggle for power should commence.

 

Nature abhors a vacuum.



Five

Whatever I was expecting to see when I entered the room below the nave, this was not it.

A black stone, previously about 10 feet long and 6 feet wide, is now sitting in two pieces on the floor here, having slid off of whatever used to be holding it up at about waist height. It has been cracked entirely in half, with the middle of the stone split down the center as if hit with a giant’s axe. Whatever force destroyed the stone somehow erupted upward, leaving a blackened hole filled with twisted beams and tiles directly above where it once sat.

I look around with the flashlight a bit and finally locate a light switch. Naturally, flipping the switch does not a damn thing, probably due to the trashed conduit and wiring in the gap in the ceiling. I turn back around into the room, and notice something I had missed when I walked in from the stairwell.

Along the floor are thin trails of rust-red, leading back into the darkness deeper beneath the building. I kneel down, and take a closer look, already knowing what I will find.

Blood trails. Dozens of them, all leading from a point further into the darkness, all terminating at the fractured stone. A closer look at the stone reveals the surface of the stone also smeared and discolored as if gallons of the stuff had been spilled over it. Playing my light along the half that has fallen on this side of the room, I can detect the remains of what must’ve been grooves carved into its surface, forming channels that led…to the foot of the stone?

Moving where the bottom of the stone would have rested, I confirm what I suspected – 3 holes have been bored into the floor, all inside a shallow bowl-like area about 2 feet wide. The receptacle is completely discolored. Who knows how many gallons of blood have passed through this niche in the rock, probably over a period of many years, if not decades.

Standing, I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, swallowing hard. Caked-on evidence of hundreds of blood sacrifices does not mix well with gas station coffee and the remains of last night’s Irish Whiskey. I move deeper into the room, following the trail of blood along the near interior wall, using my flashlight to confirm that there is a matching group of blood trails on the far side of the room.

As I get closer to the far side of the room, I can see what I have been half expecting, and half hoping not too see – 5 prison cells, all side by side against the far wall. The cell bars throw shadows against the cinderblock wall behind them, but as I get closer I notice that all 5 cell doors are open, the cells empty. Each holds a cot with a blanket, and a bucket in the corner. Each and every cell has blood trails leading out of it, evidence that prisoners were dragged, bleeding, from the cells towards the cracked stone that I now realize is an altar. This was no colony of vampires – they would never have wasted this much blood. What the hell was being done here?

Inside the cells, I notice something else. Scratched into the concrete floor is a collection of prisoner graffiti. Names, phone numbers, pleas for help, final requests. All scratched in shallow white, these dying wishes would not even have been visible to the writers down here in the dark. In the cell closest to the wall I walked down, I find a short nail, tip gleaming with use. It must’ve been passed from cage to cage by desperate people hoping to leave some sign of themselves behind. I wonder how many of AFPD’s missing persons cases would get turned into potential homicides by taking a look at the floor here.

That thought brings me up short. How did the department not find this? No doors were locked, I didn’t do anything special to get down here. The buckled floor upstairs would point out to the most inexperienced investigator that something was down here. Did nobody bother to take a look at all?

As some natural scepticism of our local constabulary’s dedication to duty comes and rests upon my shoulders, something catches my eye on the floor of one of the cells – my name, scratched in white on concrete. I bend over to take a closer look, and immediately wish that I had listened a little closer to Jess last night.

“JESSICA DRAKE DIED HERE. TELL BRIAN DRAKE.” Well, obviously something happened before she died, but after she had enough time in this cage to scratch this out. What the hell was she doing, locked up in a cage down here? When? For how long? And most importantly, why?

As I try to make sense of it, I also notice something my subconscious has been trying to inform me of for a few seconds now. Noises are emanating from behind the door across the room from me, which I assume leads to another stairwell. Someone is coming down the stairs.

I exit the cell and quickly place my back against the door closest to me, across the room from the approaching steps. I aim The Judge at the door, resting my gun hand over the top of my opposite wrist, pointing my flashlight to illuminate the door frame. Whoever this is, I will not be dealing with them in the dark. I guess I have about fifty feet between the opposite door and I, when the sounds stop, and the door swings open.

I was expecting a whoever, and what steps through the door is a whatever. It is hunched over on all fours, rear legs and lizard-like forelimbs ending in hands all touching the floor. Short, furred wings are folded against the back. Worst of all is the head – looking like someone has surgically attached a green and purple squid to this bat-like body. I know from experience that demons tend to inhabit the forms imagined for them by worshipers, and briefly wonder what crazed group of worshippers came up with this as a design worthy of veneration.

A voice suddenly rattles in my head. “I come for the stone. Are you the guardian?”

If there is one thing that can make a hangover worse, it is telepathy.

I shake my head, and speak as clearly as I can through my clenched jaw and sudden nausea. “I am not guarding anything. I do not wish to contest with you. I will depart.” The formality of the words sounds strange to me, but if there is one thing spirits do not respond well to, it is sarcasm.

The glowing red eyes over the twitching tentacles narrow for a moment, and the body tenses. “If you are not a guardian, I may dispose of you. My master would have this place for his own.” With that, the creature unfurls its wings and leaps across the room at me.

The thunderous noise of five PDX .410 shotgun shells being fired in a couple of seconds is bad under normal conditions. In an enclosed space, suffering from a hangover and adrenaline shock, it feels as though someone has split my head open while driving spikes into my ears.  I almost hope that I missed, so this creature can tear my head off and end my self-induced torment.

Like all my hopes, this one is not to be. Halfway across the room, the thing has collapsed, smoke still rising from two holes in its head and three more from underneath its body, where the rounds entered but were not able to exit. The eyes flicker, the tentacles twitch, and there is a sound like a hundred toilets being flushed at once as the body collapses into itself, leaving behind a smoking morass of black, tar-like goo.

The smell is astonishing, and I retreat back to the other end of the room to get as far away from it as I can. As I understand it, destroying a creature like this only wrecks the physical form that was created whenever it was called from the Other Side. When the spirit is released, the physical form immediately decomposes, leaving behind the detritus of centuries-old flesh to decompose all at once. Most are at least that old, as there are too few primitive cultures left creating these things to worship any more.

Contending with them is dangerous business, usually best left to other supernatural creatures. Religious relics will sometimes drive them off, but not reliably. They avoid fire if at all possible. But silver seems to be the only thing that consistently destroys them, like many other “creatures of the night”,  and no one I have met in the last few years can tell me why.

My monthly ammo bill is sky high since the economic collapse forced everyone back into investing in precious metals.

My ears are still ringing as I back into the stairwell I came down originally and stop to reload, then climb back up to the main floor. No other refugees from the world of H.P. Lovecraft seem to be waiting for me, so I head back outside as I pull out my cell phone and re-holster my pistol. This assignment has just taken one hell of a left turn, and I want some back-up before I go much further here.

The phone only rings twice this time, as I step out, squinting against the sunlight, into the parking lot. Clarence’s voice is an aural picture of exasperation.

“Now what, Drake?”

“Clean-up, Clarence – Aisle 5.”

“Where?” He is all business now.

“Annis’ place.”

“OK, hold tight. Have someone there in half an hour. Don’t let anyone else in.” A click, and he is gone.

With that, I dial central booking, hoping that Jess is still in a cell sleeping it off. I need some answers, and apparently she had them all along.



The warfare has started, as foot soldiers begin to engage one another. Strengths are noted, weaknesses are plotted against. Across the city, the human sheep can feel the conflict around them, but do their best to ignore what remains out of their sight, outside of their limited knowledge. They are, at once, both the victims and the prizes here – power over this city grants  nearly a quarter of a million souls to prey upon, a quarter of a million hearts filled with blood, a quarter of a million minds that can be driven to the worship of fear of the unknown.

 

As the evening storm clouds roll in, a fog-like blanket of apathy and terror arrives with it. Here there will be no war for liberation, no voices leading refugees to a promised land. All that will be here is a struggle to decide what powers will survive to prey upon those dwelling in the city alongside the river.

 

The powers may come and go, but the battlefield of Ash Falls remains, forever unchanged.