"Needle marks? From what?"
"The blood removal."
"Uh … there weren't any."
"What? Then how was the blood removed?"
Jake swallowed, leaning closer to her. "Sammi, the Crimson King is a vampire."
Sammi Glass laughed. And not just an ordinary laugh. One that came deep from her toes, rumbling upward and parting her throat with wanton robustness. "Really, Jake. You must give Anne Rice a rest."
"I'm not joking, Samantha!" Jacob Whiting hissed, showing an emotional side that Sammi had never seen. "Surely you've heard of the legend. The Crimson King's been around long before I got here and he'll be here long after we've left."
"Jake," Sammi leaned back into her chair, sipping her latte. "Vampires are creatures of fantasy. They don't really exist."
The man she'd known as Jacob Whiting changed into a serious professional before her very eyes. "Come with me."
"I can't. I have a lot of research to do … "
"It can wait. Come with me."
Barely assenting, a scant thirty-two minutes later, Sammi found herself at the morgue, greeting Roland Thaw, the assistant Medical Examiner and following Jake and him into the antiseptic bowels of the county's Coronor's Office and Examination Center.
"So, Jake, what can I do for you?"
"I brought Sammi to see the ‘special' patients." Roland's dark eyes narrowed in disbelief. "And to see the newest victim."
Roland's eyes flicked to her, then back to Jake. "Are you sure you want to do this?"
Jake nodded. "It's going to be her gig. She ought to know the truth."
"Jake, none of us know the truth."
"True, Rollie, but she needs to know what we mere mortals know."
Roland shrugged and gave her a weak smile. "All right, missy. Welcome to our personal Twilight Zone, 2004."
Sammi tried her best to smile but found it hard to ignore the stiff hackles that had arisen on the back of her neck. "Lead on, MacDuff."
Roland led them into a small supply room and Sammi and Jake were both fitted with smocks, pants, booties and headwear. Jake put his on without comment while Sammi chuckled during her fitting. When they were suited, they entered the elevator, watching as Roland extracted his magnetic card key, slipped it into the provided slot and pressed the Lower Level 5 button. The wide steel box thrummed as it slid down the suspended cables, then the door opened onto the mostly dimly-lit floor.
"Need an electrician?"
Roland laughed. "No. We just don't use it as much so we keep the electricity expenditure down here to a minimum. Everything still works, however. We just don't use the switches unless it's necessary." He paused, glancing to Jake but holding Sammi's attention. "We also don't use regular lighting here. That's the reason that there are no windows on this level, other than the fact that it's a lower level."
Sammi thought that this was strange and looked to Jake, who seemed to completely ignore her. "Why the special lighting?"
"You'll see." Roland turned his back on the twosome, used his card key to enter a set of polished stainless steel doors and secured them once Sammi and Jake had passed through. Once inside, Sammi and Jake stood in the center of the square room, waiting patiently as Roland opened a steel locker and adorned himself in the same clothing as they had. The only thing he added was a light blue face mask, tossing one to each of them and gesturing for them to put them on before stepping in front of the black-lighted silver door. "Ready for the freak show, kiddies?"
Jake nodded, then turned to Sammi. "What you see in here is classified as confidential. You cannot tell a soul, not one person, ever in your lifetime what you've seen in here, nor can you detail your viewing in words or pictures. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes." For the first time, Sammi felt scared. She'd never heard that tone in Jake's voice and she hoped that she would never hear it again. "I won't tell anyone."
"Okay. Let's go."
Roland placed his hand onto a biometric plate and patiently waited for the machine to do its duty: reading his fingerprints, comparing them to those on file and searching for his security clearance level. The light under the plate burned blue, signifying that Roland had high clearance and it went dark as the inch-wide steel door slid aside and the three humans slowly entered.
"Welcome to our Area 51." Roland muttered, handing two pairs of talc-lined gloves to them while pulling a pair on himself. Four doors opened off of the open area, all closed and locked with the same biometric plates as the one outside. Roland activated the first one, waited for the door to move aside and stepped into the chilled, purple lighted space. A coffin, square and unremarkable, sat in the center and Roland lifted the lid, holding a handheld black light aloft over the contents. "This is Stefan."
Stefan was nothing but a few bones and a handful of tattered cloth. He had been found in the same alleyway, about a mile up and he had been gutted. His heart had been missing and his poor state of upkeep had been blamed on the detectives. No one had known about the Crimson King back then. Another smaller coffin held bones from eight previous murders, all with the same modus operandi. All had now been linked to the Crimson King.
The second door held five coffins, all containing mummified contents, as did the third door. Each consecutive coffin held human contents that were more complete than the one before, yet each was still missing an item.
Finally, the fourth door. Roland used his card and took a gun out of the glass-and-wood box, a special gun that was equipped with silver bullets. "Stand behind me and if I say, run, do so."
Sammi heard the words but was unable to quell the amusement that bubbled in her throat. This was all so ridiculous. Black-lighted bones and well-kempt bones did not a vampire make, if a vampire could be made. "Ooo, I'm so afraid."
"You will be."
The door slid closed behind them and the interior light bathed them in violet rays as they slowly moved forward. A jail cell loomed ahead, the dingy steel bars dully glinting in the light. They crossed a dark column of tile, moved into another circle of light and stopped in front of the cell doors.
"Wake up, Domenico." At first, no sound answered Roland's call, then there was the sound of newspapers being rubbed together and a deep groan. "Come on, Domenico. I know you weren't sleeping."
The slithering sound grew louder and the accompanying groan played a gruesome counterpoint, driving the mirth from Sammi's body and instead, instilling a deep seated feeling of dread. Bitter bile burned the base of her throat and her hackles raised again, almost painfully.
"No." Thorne's disembodied moan matched her own and she recoiled from the unseen, held stationery by Jake's strong arm. The tendrils of the light caught the approaching man, playing on the hills and valleys of his ruined features. He shuffled over to the door, reluctantly moving into the light, even though he knew that it would not harm him and cast his eyes toward the group.
"Sammi, this is Domenico Roballo."
The scream caught in her throat as she viewed the man. His skin was a nauseous shade of gray where it laid against bone and black where it slipped into shadow. His nose was gone, the cartilage long eaten away and his teeth were bared in an eternal snarl, his lips shriveled into useless borders. It was his eyes that caught her attention. The eyeballs rotated in their sockets, dry as corn husks, the pupils mercilessly trained on her.
Deteriorated lips curled around rotting teeth as long-dead Domenico Roballo did his best to smile. "Pleased to meet you."
Sammi fainted dead away.
