I want to see this for myself.
Jamie leapt down from the vehicle and streaked through the trees toward the house. The noise rose as he ran across the wide lawn in front of the building, and then he was through the front door, directly disobeying the only order Frankenstein had given him. The noise was coming from behind a huge carved wooden door at the rear of the lobby, and he hauled it open, his heart pounding, his mind racing with what he was going to say to his mother when he was reunited with her.
It was a large dining hall, set for a dinner that was never going to be served. A huge open fire roared in a fireplace at the back of the room, sending orange light reflecting off an ornate chandelier that hung above the long table. Standing in front of the fire were maybe twenty men and women in tuxedos and cocktail dresses. The Blacklight strike team surrounded them, their T-Bones set against their shoulders and pointing at the protesting crowd.
Jamie’s heart sank.
His mother wasn’t there.
Neither was Alexandru.
As he stared into the room, Frankenstein pulled the beam gun from his belt and raked purple UV light across the group. Several of the women shrieked, and most of the men bellowed angrily, but there were no screams of pain, and no smoke rose from the exposed skin. Frankenstein turned away from them, his face as dark as thunder, and Jamie saw him speak into his radio.
“I demand to know the meaning of this outrage!” shouted one of the men by the fire, a large, portly man in a tuxedo that was straining at the seams. His round face was bright red with indignation, a glistening black mustache quivering on his upper lip. “This is private property! I demand an explanation, this instant!”
A Blacklight operator stepped forward and jabbed the tip of his T-Bone into the man’s chest, hard. Several of the women cried out; the man backed away in a hurry, shouting as he did so, until a striking woman in a figure-hugging black dress placed a hand on his shoulder, and he was quiet.
Frankenstein strode back through the operators and addressed the small crowd.
“Where is Alexandru Rusmanov?” he growled.
“Never heard of him,” snapped a woman at the front of the group.
Frankenstein strode to a table set against one off the long walls of the hall. On it were glasses, plates, and a silver tray containing glass vials of a dark red powder. He picked one of the vials up and held it out toward the woman.
“I suppose you don’t know what this is either?” he snarled. “Or do you always keep a supply of Bliss on hand for whenever you throw a party?”
“I’ve never seen that before in my life,” the woman replied, a maddening smile on her face. “I don’t know what it is, or why it’s here, and I challenge you to prove otherwise. Now, why don’t you get the hell out of my house?”
Frankenstein threw the vial to the floor. It smashed, and Bliss flew into the air in a small red cloud. He saw a number of the guests eye the spilled powder with naked desire and felt himself teeter on the edge of control of his temper. He took a half step toward her, but the woman didn’t back down an inch. She stared up at the monster, her eyes narrow, her face calm. She was standing steadily, her hands on her narrow hips, wearing a dark red cocktail dress and a white shawl around her shoulders.
“Tell me where Alexandru is, and we’ll go,” replied Frankenstein, his voice low and dangerous.
They faced each other for a long moment, until a voice called from the back of the group. “You’ll never find him, you filthy monster!”
The crowd parted, revealing the woman who had quieted the blustering man. She was incredibly beautiful, her limbs long and slender, her narrow face framed by jet-black hair that fell across her shoulders. She smiled at Frankenstein as he walked slowly toward her.
He leaned in until his enormous face was only inches from hers. “What did you say?” he asked. His voice sounded like tectonic plates shifting.
“I said you’ll never find him, you filthy monster,” she replied, calmly. “He floats above the earth like a god, while you crawl on your stomach like a beetle. You could never hope to understand him, or find him, or stop him.”
A smile broke slowly across Frankenstein’s face, and hers faltered in response. “When I pierce Alexandru’s heart, and his warm blood sprays across my face,” he said, softly, “I will think of you.” He stood up, abruptly, and the woman recoiled, as if anticipating a blow. Instead the monster turned his back on her and strode across the dining hall to the door where Jamie was standing. “Everybody moving,” he bellowed. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
“Who are they?” whispered Jamie as the monster passed him.
“Vampire lovers,” spit Frankenstein. “Acolytes. They follow vampires around like doting children, give them money, places to stay, hoping to be turned. They’re the worst kind of scum.”
The Blacklight team returned to the helicopters as silently as they had advanced. Admiral Seward had called the four officers into his vehicle, his voice tight and strained, as though he was almost too angry to speak. Jamie was riding in the third of the four armored cars, sandwiched on a bench between two operators he didn’t know. As they crawled along the country road toward the drop point, the inquest began.
“Just bloody groupies. Someone tipped Alexandru off,” said the operator to Jamie’s right.
“You think so?” said another. “What was your first clue? When he wasn’t there?”
“Go to hell,” said the first operator.
They rode in silence for several minutes, until the same man spoke again.
“The director didn’t look happy,” he said.
“That,” said the operator opposite Jamie, “is the understatement of the year.”
They arrived back at the Loop at midnight.
The exhausted men were dismissed and fled for the elevators, while Jamie, Frankenstein, and Morris waited in the Ops Room for Admiral Seward to finish his phone call to the chief of the general staff.
When the director appeared ten minutes later, he was white with anger, the veins standing out on his neck and the backs of his hands like ropes. He walked slowly to the front of the room and took a deep breath, as if to steady himself.
“I’m sure I don’t need to tell you,” he said, his voice that of a man trying his hardest to keep his temper, “that tonight was nothing less than a catastrophic embarrassment for this Department. Do I need to tell you that?”
“No sir,” they said.
“Good. That’s good. The only silver lining is that the men and women we apprehended were clearly already aware of our existence, so the PR damage is minimal. The damage to your careers, on the other hand, and to mine, is likely to be significantly more severe.” He clenched and unclenched his fists, several times. “I’m going to leave it to you to ascertain exactly how this disaster was perpetrated, although I’m sure we all know the answer. I want a full report on how this came to happen on my desk in the morning, or I will have your resignations. Is that clear?”
They told him it was, and he nodded, stiffly.
“I suggest you start your investigation in the cellblock. Beyond that, I have nothing to say to any of you. Good night, gentlemen.”
Seward walked slowly across the room, opened the door, and left without looking back. Jamie, Frankenstein and Morris waited until they were certain he was gone, and then began to talk.
“How did this happen?” asked Morris.
Frankenstein grunted. “As if we all don’t know,” he said, looking steadily at Jamie.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the teenager.
“It means your girlfriend tipped off Alexandru,” Frankenstein replied, his voice maddeningly calm. “It means she went to him when she escaped, then told him to wait two hours after she left so she could come back here and save the day. It means she played you-again.”
“You’re wrong,” said Jamie, and the venom in his own voice shocked even him.
“It makes sense, Jamie,” said Morris. “Who else could have done it?”
“I don’t know,” replied Jamie, fighting hard to control his temper. “But it wasn’t her. That I do know.”
