30 Days of Night: Light of Day (21 page)

“I guess so.”

“I’m telling you. Done is done.”

Marina and her team landed in Little Rock, where the local cops showed them what they had on the broad-daylight vampire incident. Some citizens had captured bits and pieces of it on mobile phone cameras, and of course when the police arrived their cameras captured
the end of it. They had managed to convince the press to call it a case of a drug-maddened murderer, without releasing the more inexplicable elements of it.

When she saw the footage, though, both from the police and the confiscated phones, she knew that the initial reports had been correct. The guy had been a vampire, no doubt about it, and he had been out in daylight without experiencing the traditional spontaneous combustion.

She was sitting in the police captain’s office. He had all the furniture in the room shoved up against the walls, as if he needed the space in the middle clear as a dance floor. He was sitting at his desk, while Marina had a stiff-backed chair next to it instead of facing it. Tony O. leaned against the wall in a vacant spot, as silent and blank as an empty file cabinet. The others waited in a sitting area in front.

The police captain wore an old-fashioned aftershave that reminded Marina of her maternal grandfather, who had worked for most of his life in a Georgia train station. The captain was a lean, sad-faced man with thick gray hair and slumping shoulders. Every time she looked at him she expected him to burst out in tears. Then again, considering what he’d had to witness, he might have been entitled to.

“You’ve got to bury this footage,” she said. “Bury it deep.”

“So you do think it’s really a—”

“I couldn’t say.”

“I read the news, of course. Like everyone else. The controversy—”

“Look,” Marina said. “Vampires aren’t real. You saw what you saw, but there’s a perfectly legitimate explanation for it. You saw the guy’s tox screen, right?” RedBlooded’s “community relations” people had made sure it showed ridiculous amounts of drugs in the man’s system.

“Yes. But I saw the house, too. That poor woman …”

“I know. People can be sickos, no doubt about it. Especially hard-core drug users.” Marina shook her head sadly, a sorrow not entirely faked. Marina had seen that too—the woman whose house had been used as a base, and whose stolen credit card had triggered the search that had revealed Larry Greenbarger as the thief.

Greenbarger had been inside the house. He had some connection, then, with the bloodsucker who had run amuck in the street.

What that connection was, she couldn’t be sure. The house didn’t look like it had been occupied by a whole den. Maybe the two of them had just met somehow and stuck together. That is, until one of them had figured out that he could go out in the sun.

That explanation would have been more convincing if Marina didn’t know that Larry had been an Operation Red-Blooded scientist, a researcher whose field of study was vampire physiology.

Evolution could, she supposed, account for the unknown bloodsucker’s newfound talent. But she didn’t
believe that for a minute. No, Larry Greenbarger had definitely been turned, and he was up to something.

Whatever it was, Marina was determined to stop him. She had never liked the guy anyway, and the whole being undead thing just aggravated the hell out of her.

“R
OCCO, BABY
,” S
HILOH SAID
.

Rocco glanced over and saw her sitting cross-legged on the floor with a laptop braced on her thighs. “Yeah?”

“Look at this here.”

Rocco eased down off a display case and went to her side. “What?”

“This website posting.”

He suppressed a sigh. Shiloh loved hanging out in vampire chat rooms, and he had drummed into her over and over, like she was some fourth-grader, how important it was not to give away any information that the authorities could use to find them. He believed she was being careful, but so far she had never reported learning anything useful, just a lot of stupid arguments, flame wars, and soap opera–worthy nonsense that he couldn’t imagine helped anyone.

“What?” he asked again. Love was a human emotion, not something to which he was susceptible, but he couldn’t deny a certain fondness toward Shiloh. She could get away with just about anything around him, and he always forgave her.

“Just look.”

He read the text above her finger. “Do you yearn to walk in the Light of Day? To feel the sun without peril? It can happen. I can help you come out of the night.”

“What about it?” he asked.

“Don’t you think it’s, I don’t know, interesting?”

“I think it’s bogus.”

“Why, babe?”

“It’s a crock. We can’t go out in the sun. It’s someone trying to get us to fry ourselves.”

“But what if it’s not?” She gazed at him with puppy dog eyes, like she could will him into believing just because she did.

“If it’s not, if it’s for real, then …” Rocco paused to give himself a few seconds to think it over. “Then it changes everything.”

“You really think so?”

“Absolutely. Without the sun holding us back, we win. The end. We’re stronger than the meat, smarter, faster. Without the sun keeping us at bay, then human dominion is at an end.”

“That’s kinda what I was thinking. Pretty sweet, huh?”

“
If
it’s real, Shiloh.”

“I think it is.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Just a feeling. Intuition, whatever. But I believe it.”

Rocco folded his arms and leaned back against the wall. Other members of the den were watching them now. Probably waiting to see what he would say. He
was the undisputed leader, and they all looked to him for guidance on issues large and small, even the new members they had taken on: Chip, Ciara, Kenton, Nightmare, and Angel and Dragon Lady, who was physically stuck at twelve years old, but had been for most of the century. This was probably one of those small issues, but if it was real—and he could barely wrap his mind around that possibility—if it
was,
then it wasn’t even large, it was huge. As big as they came.

And yet, why would someone post that just for a goof? It wasn’t like he or she was asking vampires to hold their hands to the computer screen to be blessed, and then run outside.

“Write back,” he said after a while. “See what it’s all about.”

“Seriously?”

“Sure, why not. If it’s some sort of scam, we’ll know when we get an answer. If it’s for real … then like I said, it changes the whole game.”

Shiloh graced him with her happiest smile, showing plenty of bloodstained teeth.

A reply came within the hour. Shiloh squealed, waking Rocco, who had drifted off with his head against her hip. “What is it?”

“It’s from Light of Day,” she said.

“Who?”

“That’s what he calls himself. Or his email address, whatever. Light of Day.”

Rocco realized what she meant. “Oh, okay. What’s it say?”

“He says he’s meeting a den in Chicago in a couple of days. It’s kind of a test, he says, and he’s willing to meet with more while he’s there.”

Rocco knew a den in Chicago, one that had been formed by a onetime friend called Lucky Strike. As far as he knew, it was the only active den in that city, or at least the biggest, with seventeen members, last he’d heard.

But those in Chicago were on the opposite side of the philosophical divide. They believed vampires were best off staying in the shadows, remaining feared creatures of legend, rather than declaring all-out war against humanity. Maybe they would see the value of what seemed to be on offer, but Rocco didn’t think so. Coming into the light was the antithesis of what they wanted—the ability to do so would naturally lead to the desire. That would blow the mythological quality they were after.

“I don’t know who he’s talking about,” Rocco said. “But get back to him and see if you can find out when and where they’re meeting. Tell him we’d love to be test subjects, too, only we’re going to have to leave tonight to get there in time.”

“I’ll let him know, Rocco.”

“Good.” He figured Shiloh would get the information he wanted—he knew from experience that it could be hard to resist a full-on Shiloh charm offensive. He
very much wanted to learn what this Light of Day business was all about. If it was real, he wanted to be in on the ground floor. When the ultimate war with the humans finally began, the struggle for
nosferatu
supremacy would be right on its heels, and something like this could provide an important edge.

And he
really
wanted to know who this Chicago den was.

L
ARRY
G
REENBARGER’S TRAIL LED
to Kansas City, east to St. Louis, and then northward, through Springfield and Bloomington. He had eluded everyone for longer than expected, but once they knew his pattern he was as easy to track as if he had been tagging his name on walls with pink Day-Glo spray paint. He took a victim, fed, stole whatever cash he could get. Sometimes he spent a day in that victim’s home, other times he used the cash or a stolen credit card to pay for motel rooms and gas. By following the credit cards taken from drained victims, Marina and her team stayed just a step behind him.

A glance at the map showed a possible destination of Chicago. A phone call from Zachary Kleefeld confirmed it.

They were in a van with Jimbo at the wheel, having just left a scene near Decatur. Marina rode in back, between Tony O. and Kat. The landscape was flat, with trees cutting the sunlight into jagged slices that flashed across the windshield. Quarters were cramped, especially with all the gear they carried, but she wanted to be on the ground and ready for action. The
air conditioner blew hard but couldn’t erase the male sweat and testosterone as thick as smoke inside the vehicle. The group was smaller than it had been before the massacre at Nags Head, but no less determined.

Marina was more resolute than ever. She had put Barry Wolnitz in danger and had lost him. Then she’d made bad decisions about how to handle the North Carolina situation, and had lost two more of her own. From now on she would carry the memories of all those lost with her, and every vampire she met would have to answer for them.

“Fuckin’ bankers, man,” Monte was saying. “Oughta cut us loose from chasin’ bloodsuckers for a couple days, let us go to town upside some bankers’ heads for the shit they pulled. Only difference is the bankers and shit are suckin’ everybody’s blood at once, not just one at a time.”

“I’d do that job for free,” Tony O. said. “Marina, you think we could get unpaid leave for that?”

“Hard to say. Maybe. I don’t think anybody much loves those guys right now.”

“Shit, one of their annual bonuses would set me up for life,” Monte went on. “Taxpayers have to pay those motherfuckers that kind of bonus, they could just pay me one and I wouldn’t trouble ’em no more.”

“The taxpayers are paying you, Monte,” Kat said. “Anyway, you’re just pissed because it turns out bankers and stockbrokers are better thieves than you ever were.”

Everybody laughed at that. The financial sector had come under a lot of verbal fire from Marina’s team lately. Considering their own greatest contribution to society came in the form of pulling triggers and kicking in doors, Marina didn’t think they had a lot of room to complain, notwithstanding the fact that she was just as angry at the ones who had thrown a giant boulder through the economy’s fragile plate glass walls as they were.

She was about to say something to that effect when her phone rang. She looked at it and saw Kleefeld’s name on the screen. “Shut up, everyone,” she said. Then she flipped it open. “What’s up, Zach?”

“We’ve been intercepting some interesting email traffic lately,” he said.

“What have you heard?”

“I think our boy Greenbarger has something going on.”

“Seems that way from here. Do you have anything specific?”

“He’s been posting ads online offering vampires the ability to go out in the sunlight.”

“Like that one in Little Rock?”

“Exactly.”

“He getting any takers?”

The van made a tight corner and Marina slid over so her thighs brushed against Kat’s. She gave the other woman a smile, then scooted away.

“Yes. He’s got a meet set for tomorrow night in Chicago.”

“I figured that’s where he was headed. Who’s he meeting?”

“Looks like some bloodsuckers near the area, and then another set coming in from New York.”

“Sounds big.”

“It could be.”

“Is there any progress on figuring out what was done to the one from Little Rock?”

“They’re still studying him,” Zachary said. “But given the fact that we’ve placed Greenbarger at the scene, I think it’s safe to say that he was involved. Maybe that one was a test subject, someone he found in person instead of online.”

“Makes sense. Do you have a location yet for the Chicago meet?”

“Not yet, but we will soon.”

“We’re not too far away, so we can definitely be on the scene.”

“I’m counting on it, Marina.”

After she ended the call, she briefed the others in the van about what Zachary had told her. “So head for Chicago, Jimbo,” she said. “That’s where Larry’s going, or maybe he’s already there.”

“Chicago it is, boss.”

“There’s a good steakhouse there,” Monte said.

“You like your meat bloody?” Jimbo asked.

“I don’t like it attached to a man,” Monte said.

“Maybe you just haven’t tried the right cut.”

The others laughed, and Monte turned red around
the neck and ears. Talk turned to what they would do once they found Greenbarger and the other vampires. Bullshitting about physical violence against whitecollar finance types was over for the moment, and Marina was glad. She didn’t like bankers any more than the others did, but she wanted her people to focus on the undead. Personally, she wanted to focus on the business at hand—Larry’s actions felt like a betrayal, and one she wanted to avenge. For all the unexpected qualms of conscience she’d been having lately, one thing hadn’t changed—bloodsuckers and those who supported them had to die, and she felt fine about that end of it.