One of Them (Vigil #2) Read online

  Also by Arvin Loudermilk

  IN A FLASH

  A NEW WORLD

  THE BLOOD DETAIL

  For more information visit

  www.arvinloudermilk.com

  ONE OF THEM

  ©2013 Arvin Loudermilk. All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be reproduced or used in any form,

  or by any means, without prior written permission of the publisher.

  First published October 2013

  Based on the Vigil comic book series by

  Arvin Loudermilk & Mike Iverson

  Vigil and its characters are copyrights of The Concentrium.

  Phoenix, Arizona USA

  www.theconcentrium.com

  ISBN: 978-0-9898586-0-1

  Cover by Mike Iverson

  Contents

  Also Available

  More Info

  Copyright

  Intro

  Wakey-Wakey

  From Above

  Where It Hurts

  Creature Comforts

  Heartbreaker

  Settling In

  Way Down

  Two + One

  Safe and Sound

  No Time

  A Helluva Leap

  Coda

  Continued

  About the Author

  I was betrayed. Once I accepted that fact, what to do about it became simpler and simpler. The truth was, the fault was mine. It did not come easily for me, but I trusted these people, for reasons I still don’t fully understand. I’d like to say I’ll never rely on anyone again, but I can’t. There’s no way I can do what I need to do all on my own.

  Wakey-Wakey

  Initially, I felt no different at all. I was in a strange place, yet I did not feel changed in any way. I was tired and confused, but shouldn’t that be expected? As I sucked in the first breath of my new life, all I really wanted to know was where I was.

  Best as I could tell on that front, I was inside of a fifteen foot by fifteen foot box. The walls surrounding me were metallic, as was the ceiling. The surfaces themselves were not reflective, not exactly, but they were shiny enough to make you think that they could be. I saw no doors, no windows, no way out.

  I stretched my legs out, lying flat on my back on some kind of medical bed in the center of the space. There were no sheets or blankets beneath me, only a plain mattress and a stitched in pillow for my head. All I had covering my body was a puce-colored gown made of this obnoxiously crinkling tissue paper. The garment was scant at best, and it left my legs and arms exposed, though I felt neither hot nor cold. The temperature inside the box was decent, this despite the fact that I had no idea how air was even circulating—the walls were really that blank and featureless.

  I sat up, and at the same moment, realized that I could sit up. Last I remembered my spine had been broken in two places, both up high and down low. For a moment there, I did not know if my brain was fucking with me or not—did the attack in the townhouse complex even happen? It didn’t take long and the memory of the pain came flooding back in full force. Feelings that intense would probably never go away, not for as long as I lived. And I was living. I had died, and then I was alive. It was loony, but also indisputably real. I hated to think about what that meant.

  The task force I’d been working with had been on the trail of a man they claimed had vampire-like characteristics—enhanced strength, aversion to light, bloodlust, and so forth. I didn’t buy it for a second, but there was something unusual about this Jessup guy, and he needed to be apprehended before anybody else was killed. I was only involved because Jessup had taken a liking to me after I’d been called to the scene of his latest kill. After that encounter, he began to stalk me. The task force itself was primarily a specialty detail within the LAPD, where I served as a patrolwoman. The higher-ups commandeered me during my suspension and put me to work as bait. This sad tale ended with my spine being broken by Jessup, right before he choked me to death with a mouthful of his blood. As I was lying there dying in the grass, no one who I thought was going to protect me did so. I’d been abandoned, left as a hearty meal for the piece of shit who had killed me.

  My thought process wound back to the whole ‘aversion to light’ thing. It was then that I realized the room I was in had no light sources to speak of, yet I could see perfectly, as if my eyes themselves were creating the illumination all on their own. The more I strained to look, the more it became obvious the space in front of me was neither light nor dark; it was just visible.

  I twisted my legs off the elevated bed and dangled my feet over the floor. The surface beneath me was like the surface above. The drop to the metallic flooring was shallow, relatively speaking, about eighteen to twenty inches at most. I took my time before I attempted to climb down. I wasn’t sure how strong I was going to be after my injuries. Somehow, some way, I’d been repaired, but that did not mean I was healthy enough to be walking around on two feet.

  Erring on the side of caution, I brought my foot down softly. The coolness of the floor was a shock. Everything else in the room had been so blah. Encouraged by the lack of any shooting pain, I set my other foot flat and shifted all of my weight onto my ankles and stood up in one continuous motion. There was no hint of discomfort, so I started to twisting my hips from side to side and stretching out my stiffened arms. A couple of steps forward would cinch it—so I tried my luck, trudging ahead and puttering around the bed once, then twice. The relief I felt was monumental.

  But euphoria tends to ebb, and those ridiculously blank walls continued to make no sense whatsoever. I crossed away from the bed and pressed my palm against the patch of wall that was closest to me. I didn’t find it to be as cold as the floor, but it was not exactly hot either. Just more blah. The metal had some grain to it, however, which I never would’ve been able to notice through the calloused soles of my feet.

  I turned back around and got a better look at the bed I’d woken up on. The wide, circular base supporting it was embedded into the floor, plain and extremely low tech. I proceeded to walk every square inch of the room and confirmed that my eyeball search was correct—there was no way in or out.

  I was fucked. Whatever this place was, and whoever built it, the answers to both of those excellent questions would only reveal themselves in ways I could not control or hasten. I needed to remain patient, because patience was the only play I had left.

  I placed my back against the wall and slid all the way down to the floor. My ass ended up being as cold as my feet were, but there was no way I was getting on that bed again. That was what someone obviously wanted, and I was never giving anyone what they wanted ever again. I folded my legs into the lotus position and tried my hand at the breathing exercises I’d routinely mocked with every sensei who had ever attempted to instruct me. In, then out.

  Possibilities rattled around in my head. Issue numero uno was my sudden comprehension that all of this had to have been a part of a group effort. The stainless steel prison I was in could not have been managed or maintained by a single person, so an organization of some significance would need to be involved. When Jessup went to town on me, I was supposedly being protected by the Detail—by Mac, Racine, Castellano, and the hundred or so other officers who were scattered in and around the complex. That was the plan at least. But were they ever even there? Nobody answered the door when Beth and I knocked, that was part of the plan, too. Had something happened beforehand which caused the team to hold back? Not likely. If something had occurred, Beth and I would have been warned off. The focus of everything we had been over the previous week centered on keepi
ng the two of us safe—and that was the one thing that did not happen. Beth was killed and Jessup did his number on me. This would not have gone down if the Detail had wanted to stop it; the firepower they had was overwhelming. I didn’t like it, but the only conclusion I could come to was the bitter truth that someone had wanted the attack to happen, or maybe more to the point, didn’t mind that it happened. Were Beth and I sacrificial goats? Or had whatever restored me also restored Beth? I didn’t know. I couldn’t know.

  But knowing or not knowing was irrelevant. The Detail was all that I could think about. They were the only ones who knew what I had been up to and where I was going to be at the precise moment I was attacked. I suppose the LAPD proper could have been called out and found me inadvertently, but then I would have been taken to a hospital or a morgue, not to some undisclosed location.

  No. The cell I had been tossed into had all the makings of something covert and quiet. Only a federal organization could pull something like that off. And if the Detail were what they said they were, a joint LAPD-FBI field team, they would have unlimited resources. But that was the problem. I had no way of knowing if the Detail was telling the truth, about anything. Were they truly keeping the city safe from a bunch of unheard, unseen bloodsuckers? As far as I knew, the bloodsuckers were invisible, literally so. The only one I had ever seen with my own two eyes was Jessup. I read about a couple of others in reports provided by the Detail, but maybe I was too quick to believe the crap I was being sold. I badly wanted to do something of importance, and capturing Jessup would’ve allowed me to make a mark in the department. I just went along with their bullshit and never questioned a thing when they horned their way into my life and put me into danger, even going as far as trying lull me into a fake relationship with a handsome cop who all of a sudden was madly in love with me. I mean they used every distraction technique in the book. I was a sucker, a fool. A gullible fucking fool. The Detail had to be the ones behind this. I was sure of it. There was no one else it could be.

  Patience, patience.

  The Detail and its machinations were not even my most pressing concern. I was. How did I not die after such unspeakable trauma? I felt like I was going crazy. The hows and whys were just sitting there in front of me waiting to be acknowledged. Two plus two equals four, and the facts were the facts. Jessup had been so specific with me. With Beth and his first victim he’d behaved like a rampaging monster, chewing one up and bleeding the other out in a matter of seconds. With me, the things he did came off as ceremonial, like his actions were precious and important—maybe even sacred. Had he turned me? Had he made me like him? I had ingested his blood, a whole lot of it. And then, suddenly, for no logical reason, I was able to see in the dark—and I’d survived crippling injuries, yet I felt fine. Hell, I felt energized. I felt like kicking in those goddamned blank walls. I felt like kicking someone’s ass.

  In my mind, I’m about the furthest thing from an irrational person. I did not normally think such insane thoughts. I was taught to look at evidence rationally, and then analyze it. It was a practice my father had drilled into me from an early age. I was a born pragmatist, just like he was. So whenever my mind started to go astray, I considered what Daddy’s reaction would have been, and then co-opted his cold-bloodedness as best as I could. And it didn’t take a genius to figure out what his response would have been to all of this shit. He’d have told me to distance myself. What one personally thought had zero relevance. What one could prove did. I may not have had complete control, but my captors most definitely wanted something from me, otherwise I wouldn’t have been among the living. That gave me an edge from which I could apply pressure. And applying pressure was something I was pretty damn good at—and I would not stop doing it until I knew. I had to know what the fuck I’d become.

  I collapsed forward, balling up and attempting to think of anything else. But it was hopeless at that point. The word had set root. An utterance so ridiculous I had trouble saying it out loud.

  Vampire. Vampire. Vampire.

  From Above

  The second time I awoke, it was to the smell of decay.

  My stomach was grumbling as my eyes scanned desperately for the odor’s source. But sprawled out on the floor the way I was, I had no real angle on the room. I jerked up into a crouch and began to crawl around the floor on my hands and knees. In the midst of a rather furious turn around the bed, I skidded to a halt. In front of me was a white container, a plain old plastic bucket. I stared down at the liquid redness inside, breathing in the aroma, pungent and dank. The smell was overwhelming.

  I dipped my finger in, gathered up a thickened dollop on the tip and raised it toward my mouth, drawing it inward and licking it clean. The blood wriggled its way down my throat, warm and tasteless, and ultimately unsatisfying. I wanted more of it, a whole lot more. I used my cupped hand to scoop out an even larger helping. As I gulped it down, the leavings dripped everywhere—on my thighs, my chest, and all over my face. But it still was not enough. I wanted the damn stuff to taste like something. I wanted more. Three additional handfuls went inside of me before the urge to consume slowly started to subside.

  I sat there, feeling sickened by the stickiness in my mouth. I kicked the bucket away. I was what I thought I was. Why else would I consume blood like that without even thinking? For what other reason would someone leave blood out for me like that if I did not need it? I was in a fog, unable to maintain control. And that was the scariest part of it to me, the lack of restraint. I’ve never been someone who indulges in impulses, any kind of impulses. But I dove into that blood because something inside of me wanted it, or needed it, and I had no say in the matter. I desired the stuff, so I drank the stuff.

  Shockingly, after everything I’d slurped down, I was still hungry. And not for blood—but for real food. My bladder was full as well. I had to go, but there was nowhere to go. I kept nudging the bucket farther and farther away from me. If I stayed too close to it, I just knew I would need to suck down more.

  In the midst of my struggle, out of nowhere, the walls began to shine, looking as if they were heating up internally. Where I couldn’t before, I could now see my reflection in the structure, and it was not a pretty sight. My blonde hair was mangled, a mess of knots and blood. I couldn’t tell if I had messed myself up while I was eating, or if no one had cleaned me up after the attack. Either way, I looked like a horror show.

  I scooted closer to the glowing wall to study myself in detail. I checked my teeth first. Of all the things, those would be an indisputable sign I had been turned. But to my instant relief, my mouth was unchanged. My incisors were a normal length and everything else was where it was before—even the fillings in my back molars were intact. There were traces of blood glazed across the enamel, but after all the slurping I’d done, I knew where that had come from.

  “Do you like what you see?”

  I turned, thinking there was someone behind me. But there wasn’t. I was still alone. All of a sudden, the walls glowed much, much brighter. My eyes did not appreciate the intensity.

  “What the fuck is going on?” I said, blinking like a crazy person.

  “Language, language.” The voice, wherever it was coming from, was being electronically altered. I couldn’t tell if the person speaking was male or female.

  “If you don’t like my language,” I said, standing upright and balling up my fists in a weak-ass attempt to be threatening. “Come on in here and do something about it.”

  “Oh, no. You are being kept in there for a reason. A reason I bet you have already surmised.”

  “I haven’t surmised shit, because I don’t know shit.”

  “You knew to drink that blood we left out for you.”

  I didn’t respond. And it wasn’t just because I was embarrassed by the fact that I’d guzzled the stuff down. Intransigence was vital here. I could not engage on any issues my jailers wanted to discuss. The situation had to work
in my favor and my favor alone. They would tell me what I wanted to know, and I would tell them nothing. A mind war was in the offing, and I’d win that just as easily as I would a fistfight.

  I held the silence a long time. It was the voice who broke first.

  “There’s no reason to feel shame about drinking it. You are what you are now.”

  When presented, I took the opening. “And what exactly am I?”

  “Don’t you know? You were aware of what Danny Ray Jessup is.”

  Is not was. So Jessup remained in the picture.

  “I only know what I have been told,” I said in an attempt to play dumb. “People told me stuff about Jessup. No one’s told me anything about me.”

  “Well, you could be informed about a great many things. But first, you need to tell me what you experienced when you ingested that blood. How did your body respond? Is your stomach sore? Did you feel any discomfort whatsoever?”

  I was talking to a scientist or a doctor of some kind, the questions made that clear. Someone like that would be far easier to manipulate than a hardcore interrogator. On that front, I’d lucked out big time.

  I kept nudging. “Since I don’t know what I am, how am I supposed to articulate to you what my experience was?”

  “Like I said when we first started speaking, I think you do know what you are. If you need me to say it for you, I don’t mind doing it.” The voice paused. “Is that what you’d like from me?”

  “I guess so.” I walked over to the bed and propped my arms on the mattress, to make sure I had steadied myself for whatever it was I was about to be told.

  “Alrighty then,” the voice said. “You have died and been restored to life, your nervous system reanimated. Although I do not approve of such terminology, in the common tongue, you are now a vampire. You require blood to live and you will not do well in direct sunlight. Your aging process has been slowed to the point of imperceptibility, and you are now strong—very strong. It’s that last bit which frightens me the most. I’m aware of what you were before—violent. And I know what you are now—super-human and violent. That’s a volatile mix. And I, for one, do not want to test how angry you actually are. I suspect you are absolutely livid and are only toying with me, feigning this pleasantness. I hope I am wrong about that, because I mean you no harm—but that doesn’t mean I do not understand that you might want to murder me or anyone else with impunity. Terrible things have happened to you, and someone must shoulder the blame.”