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[against_peace][/against_peace]

The man handed the vampire a neatly folded, thick square of lined paper. The vampire slipped it into his jacket. “I have it on good sources that there’s a second man, somewhere in River Rock, who’s also paying top dollar for evidence of zombie kills,” the dark haired man spoke in a hushed tone, his almond eyes automatically scanning the darkness to ensure that they were truly alone before he continued. They were, of course. The vampire had found a nice little corner of an abandoned sewer tunnel to tuck away their rendezvous. Though the lingering stench of fetid waste still seemed to cling to the long, lost city sewer line, arranging meeting points such as this one had become a necessity. Harper Rock seemed to be growing more and more barren with each passing day. Barren of your average folk, at any rate. Military men and soldiers of fortune had become the norm, taking up where your hard working, John Q citizen had once spent his evenings. It made the bars unsafe for the exchange of information, when said information was often concerning the happenings of the occupying forces. Besides, there were worse spots to spend a humid summer evening.

So they stood face to face, in the shadows of the quiet tunnel, a vampire who’d rolled into a nightmare scenario of tyranny, creeping in the guise of security, and the man he’d placed into the militia, as his eyes and ears, his living tool, shrouded for the moment from the world outside. Though both men were relatively tall, the skeletal vampire seemed to tower over his human accomplice, almost as of the emotional denomination he exerted over the man had become personified. And what a thing it was! To be able to influence the feelings of another in such a way as to bend them to your own course of action, to the whims of your will. It was both a monumental accomplishment and a terrible task. The end result was a mind without a delivered drive and, more importantly, the realization of one’s own emotional make up. Those particularities that could be coaxed and manipulated, for without a doubt, he wasn’t the only vampire to have discovered such a gift. A gift that could very well be used against him in the future, either directly or indirectly. A gift he suspected was in play as part of the current situation, excluding present company.

A smoky haze of menthol swirled around them as the vampire exhaled a cool, tobacco breeze into the stale air of the tunnel. The fear of the supernatural that his thrall had once felt had been replaced by a desire to advance the immortal cause, driven by the promise of everlasting life. It was apparent in the man’s dark eyes currently, but he played his part well. Just another self-interested soldier of fortune, dawning dark fatigues more than jeans and slinging a rifle rather than sitting behind a desk. It was a stark contrast to the vampire’s own appearance. Along with the myriad of different tattoos that adorned his neck, back, arms, and hands, the black, worn leather jacket and dark denim he sported gave him the overall appearance of a small time, brawler at worst or rebellious, punk at best. It was the look of the a man who baked his bread on the streets and when he had still been a man, the vampire had called the road his home. Unlike his thrall the vampire would never have been able to blend in, despite the rabble that sought out bounties (at times, himself among them, a buck is a buck and monster hunting is honest work). He needed someone who could work his way into the upper echelon of the power structure, someone who could be seen in the daylight. His man was the perfect spy, the best kind of inside player, the vampire had seen to that. And they had a lot to show for it, troop movements, raid plans, coding, just to name a few. Still the deeper secrets evaded them, at least for the time being.

“And before you suggest it, it can’t be Dratch…” the man continued pulling out his smartphone. They’d talked plenty about the infamous figurehead of the militia. The vampire watched, curiously, as his thrall fiddled with the gadget, before moving to the vampire’s side to demonstrate. They were looking at a map of Harper Rock. “This here,” the man pointed to a red pushpin icon in the map, “that’s Dratch’s homebase. It’s in the QZ, some Gambondale, but even if they were mistaken about the locale, he’s closer to Wickbridge than anything else, which means,”the vampire cut him off, “Which means we have another trail of cash to follow.” His man nodded in agreement.

It was, ironically, the fifty million dollar question. Where was the money coming from? It began with Gerard Dratch bringing in his zombie hunting forces, the North American Deamination Unit. It wasn’t just that they were that city’s current occupying force, a force that brought along an increase in crime and destruction, but rather it was the outrageous bounties that Dratch offered for zombie ears. It was reminiscent of early American colonial authorities offering payment for the scalps of Natives. And now, just as then, there was mad dash to cash in on the parts of anything undead, vampires included. But was it really Dratch that was ponying up the cash? Even if he was individually wealthy his funds would have had to run dry by now. Not like they were even able to find that out. The man was like a ghost, he just appeared out of the blue one day. Every lead on some background led to a dead end. It evidenced that something much larger than a tinpot military despot was funneling cash into this operation. Dratch was merely the puppet of some cabal that lurked in the shadows. At least, that was the vampire’s hunch and he was determined to rout them out. He was unsure of their true motivation, but watching events unfold around him, the vampire knew it was certainly unsavory.

The vampire took another drag of his cigarette, letting the smoke and silence linger as he closed his eyes, just trying to thing for a moment or two. There was the distinct sound of dripping water in the near distance and the rush of draining water in the far depths of the cave. The contrasting sounds were rather peaceful, helped the thoughts flow through his head. His man broke that silence after a few minutes, “So, my brother, should I poke around River Rock and find this guy? He might be the key, or at least the map to the key…” the vampire opened his eyes slowly and began to study his man as he exhaled more menthol smoke. The eagerness in his carmel features was certainly apparent, perhaps too eager. The vampire wondered for a moment if he hadn’t broken his friend completely. Pushing that thought aside for the moment, “No, you’re needed in the QZ where your stationed. We’ve got months of solid work in there, no need to raise any suspicions now. It could set us back, my man. I’ll head to River Rock, see what I can dig up,” it was true, they’d come too far now. Blowing up his man’s spot was too big a risk. There might have been soldiers a foot, but it wasn’t the heart of the occupation and being that the vampire had the peculiar trait of being able to pass for a human, the risk would be minimal. He flicked away his cigarette butt, the cherry popped and flickered out in the darkness. It was their queue to depart.

As his man turned to leave, the long, black, silky hair cascading down his stocky shoulders, the vampire again wondered if he had gone too far in the manipulation of his emotions. His man seemed so changed now, characteristics that had made him, him, turned in the opposite direction. Some nights it was like conversing with a different person altogether. The vampire looked down at his hands, his mantra,’Stay Free’ was etched across them like a taunt. Did the ends really justify the means? ‘Yes, my love, they most certainly do,’ the voice of his phantom paramore slipped into the soft mass of his mind like a hot knife through butter. When his man was out of sight, she appeared behind him, arms he couldn’t feel criss-crossed over his shoulders, a touch he couldn’t know dancing over his heart. “Do you think there’s anything to it?” the vampire asked her, as he watched her spectral fingers drifting over his chest, swearing he could feel the breath from her lips tickling his ear. A ghostly giggle escaped her lips, ‘there’s something to everything.’ Then she was gone again. The vampire was left alone in the shadows of the tunnel, with only the distance flow of the city’s discharge to keep him company.

After a few more minutes of solitude, the vampire too began to make his way out of the tunnel and up towards the city’s surface. River Rock it was then. Liberty was too big a prize to gamble away. He had first hand knowledge of that fact. Perhaps he could track down this man and maybe sniff out a path to the true force that threatened the very existence of vampire kind. Dark days weren’t coming, they were already upon them. They could only grow more dismal, until each immortal found his or herself locked away in the prison of the abyss once more.

River Rock wasn’t one of his usual haunts, but as the illusionist slipped through the darkness of the sparsely populated streets he found himself a bit charmed by this part of town. A familiar tune slipped gently and melodiously from his lips,

“And early on they saw the warning signs and symptoms all day long...We sit and dream of better days...”

it was coaxed on by May’s sweet little humming of course. It tickled his brain cells, alive, not only in his memory banks, but also in his auditory centers, whatever that meant. When the illusionist’s melody met the ears of those few folks that happened to pass by, they couldn’t help but take a moment from the hustle and bustle of their evening to pause, overcome with a brief bliss, forgetting their troubles, if only for a little while. That was his goal, after all, to make them forget. Forget about the darkness that enveloped them, forget about how death walked ever so closely to their heels.

Jack appeared as he did most nights. His black, worn leather jacket hanging open over a plain white tee, which itself hung loosely over his tall, skeletal frame. The short wavy brown hair under his blue and gray patchwork ivy cap was tousled in no particular way while a perpetual five o’clock shadow graced his rugged features. With his tattooed hands firmly tucked away in his dark denim jeans, his equally dark blue eyes scanned the nighttime gloom for the sign of a certain pub. In the meantime he continued to sing, that gruff, melodious voice of his riding on the cool summer breeze into any ear that happened to be around to catch it.

The pub was a rather popular hole in the wall, place called ‘Marley’s.’ Marley was dead, a great story once began. The story of this pub was no different as Marley had indeed passed quite some time ago, before Jack had come to Harper Rock, before zombie infested streets, before vampires were anything but the subject of fiction writers and hollywood moguls. It was the cancer that took him and took him young, at the ripe age of twenty-eight. The bar was named for the man rather than by the man, by the young wife he’d left behind. That was two decades ago, at least, but she kept the place running. A great monument to the man she loved. His ashes sat in an urn, high on the mantle of the giant, stone fireplace that was centerpiece of the establishment. Marley’s Maggie kept their dream alive and she was just another resilient dame who wouldn’t be driven from Harper Rock by some ghouls and goblins. Secretly though she hoped that Marley would come walking through the large, oak, double doors of the place one night, alive again in some supernatural sense. An impossibility, as he was a pile of ashes in a vase, but the hope of a miracle made her no less the vampire sympathizer. A friend of a friend passed Jack her name and her story, along with the assurance that if there was a happening in River Rock, Maggie would be in the know.

There was no neon sign marking the pub’s location, nor was there any flashy decor to designate it’s spot. Rather it was a classy structure, blended nicely into the cityscape. Though however inconspicuous it may have appeared, the sounds that came from within were unmistakable. Even a block down the street, Jack was able to sense a swarm of bodies making merry. And when he pushed open the doors and entered the cool bar, he was surrounded by the largest host of folks he’d encountered in one spot since Saint Patrick’s Day. It was rather hard to believe, but seeing it, the illusionist knew that he was in the right place. He need only find Maggie now and strike up a conversation so how. She wasn’t hard to locate. Towering above the multitude, she sccuried to and from the bar, pouring and passing drinks to various servers.

It was her voice that truly made her stand out, to tower over the crowd. Maggie, in appearance, was a rather stout, short woman. Like Jack, however, she had a voice that couldn’t help but carry ear to ear. It had a singsong quality to it filled with jovial merriment. Her flushed red cheeks were filled with laughter as much as they were covered in freckles. Like her servers she wore a modest blouse and skirt that left just enough to the imagination. Her dark red hair was wrapped up in a bun, but fly aways seemed to escape from from every angle as she spun around the room distributing beer and cheer to her patrons. The illusionist was sure to catch her eye from across the dimly lit, but tightly packed bar. In fact, Jack ensured that his dark blue eyes locked directly onto Maggie’s soft brown ones. The gaiety seemed to slip from her features and she turned, heading to the rear of the bar. Jack followed, swimming through the sea of talking heads and drunken spread.

Maggie sat at a table in the farthest corner of the bar, far to the left of the large hearth that stood as a sentinel among the merriment. The illusionist sat down across from her. With his most charming smile and with his eyes locked firmly into hers, he began, “Evenin’, Ma’am.” Maggie stopped him, however, with only a simple sentence. Though her voice was now devoid of all gaiety, of all emotion really, what she said was something so cliche, that he should have expected her to say it, “I know why you’re here…”

The meeting with Maggie had left a bad taste in his mouth. As the tall, skeletal vampire strolled under the hazy glow of the midnight moon he couldn’t pull the words from his mind, ‘he always knows, that one. Call him the Shadowman they do.’Of course, despite her explanation, Jack felt as though he’d been had. By who though, he wondered. It couldn’t have been Tito who betrayed him, yet his man was the only one who knew of whom he was searching. It truly just could have been a hunch on the part of Maggie, with a flair of dramatics thrown in for good measure. Still the look of awe and fear in her eyes had told Jack differently, 'if you have what he needs, he’ll rise from the gloom to find you.’ A chilling thought that some months ago he would have dismissed, now though, anything seemed possible.

Still, the vampire was quite certain it would be a man that he’d encounter. No doubt someone with their own tight network of agents, seeking out those who were seeking him. Maggie might just have been one of them. So with three zombie ears tucked away in his pocket, bait for the Shadowman, he wandered through the shadowed streets of River Rock. Jack let his eyes wander towards the narrow mouths of the alleyways as well as the darkness drifting over the door frames of the buildings he passed, hoping to catch a glimpse of eyes following him. The streets seem to grow more empty with each passing moment, however, with less and less bodies making their way on past. The dull roar of automobiles slowly fading to the scream of summertime crickets.

As he turned the corner, a boy brushed past him, almost running right into the vampire’s leg. The boy couldn’t have been more than ten years old, small and thin as he was, with a head full of messy black hair. The strangest thing about the boy was that Jack didn’t hear his approach from behind. It was only after he darted by him and disappeared into the gloom of a nearby alleyway, that the vampire had been aware of his presence. Jack, keeping his senses finely tuned in search of his prey, found this to be extremely odd. Much odder in fact than a young boy out on the streets, during times like these, without the accompaniment of an adult guardian. It was a sure sign to follow the youngster.

“Mind yourself, love, the air is thick with darkness…” May’s singsong voice reverberated through his brain, ringing it like a bell. It was a thing that he still couldn’t find himself getting used to and it sent him reeling for a moment or two amidst the choking gloom. His ghostly girl was certainly right, the darkness seemed all encompassing here, despite the light of the moon. Jack could still hear the boy’s footsteps scurrying ahead down the zagging alley. It was like wandering through a pitch black maze. Corridors seemed to align with and intercept the towering structures hanging above him. With every turn, they seemed to grow more and more narrow. The smell of damp humidity and the lingering reek of old trash assaulted his senses, still Jack kept a steady pace with the boy. That is until the boy’s footsteps seemed to vanish into the void.

The vampire knew he wasn’t alone in the alleyway though. He spun around to find himself face to face with a man cloaked in the darkness that surrounded them. Quite literally, the vampire and the fade stood only inches apart from each other. Later on, it would cause Jack to question the true extent of his heightened awareness, but in this moment he was sure this was the gentleman he was seeking. The cloaked figure took a step closer, causing Jack to take a step backward. There was something not quite right about the guy. The stench of decay seemed to cling to him like a parasite. Jack could make out the whites of his eyes and the shimmer of his pearly whites as they twisted into a devilish smile, but the rest of his features were clouded by the fade. The man took another step forward, causing the vampire to take one more step backward. A hand was outstretched just as Jack’s melodious voice penetrated the gloom, “They say a man ‘round here will buy evidence of zombie kills. You that man?” With a hand still outstretched the cloaked fellow merely tipped his head as if he were admitting to that identity. Jack reached into his pocket to pull out the zombie ear, but as he did so, he failed to realize, until it was too late that the man’s hands were upon his chest. They gave him a mighty shrug that sent him stumbling backward through the darkness and with a sharp gasp, downward, falling into the depths of the abyss. A shrill cackling sound was all that he could hear as the wind rushed around him.

Hard stone met his back and his back sounded off with a sharp crack. Pain shot through his body almost instantly. The vampire let out a low groan and cursed, rather loudly. There was nothing around him but black, though he could make out the opening from whence he fell. He estimated it at about 15 feet above him. He laid there in the pitch black, the damp and fetid odors of the city’s underground hung heavy around him. He kept his eyes on the opening, half expecting the man who had pushed him to follow him down into the depths of Harper Rock. For a long time there was nothing, no indication of any movement above or any down below with him, minus the shrieking of rats somewhere in the distance.

As he moved to get up, Jack cracked his spine, popping something back into place. The pain was as intense and as instant as it had been when he hit the stone, but it passed almost as quickly as it had come. A drink would be mighty nice right now, but there would be time for that later. Now, there was a mystery to be solved. As he slowly stood, still looking up into the void, Jack began to wonder if the man he had encountered had been a man at all. There should have been no living mortal that could have pushed him with the simple ease that the peculiar fellow had. And the way the shadows seemed to cling to him, it wasn’t something that seemed typical, to say the least. He turned his head toward the right, the tunnels ahead were darker than death, but upon turning his head to the left, the vampire was able to make out the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. It was quite a ways off from where he was, but he had a hunch that if anything was down here, it’d be down that way.

The city sewer system was a massive maze of tunnels. Some were large enough to walk upright through, while others one could barely squeeze by in on his belly. Some were carved of old stone, while others had a more modern, concrete look to them. Grime and the creatures that wallowed in it seemed to stick to the floors and walls, as rivers of waste carried the filth of Harper Rock out of people’s minds. The tunnels led everywhere and nowhere, providing a quick means of escape or a surprise entry, depending on the circumstances. Vampire hunters lurked in their depths, however, setting traps and looking for prey. Daring vampires hunted the hunters, turning the tables whenever they could. Jack tried to keep himself out of such affairs, live and let live. And besides, the hunters weren’t patrolling the streets like jackboot oppossors, not yet anyway.

At first he had been alone with his footsteps, the rush of the sewer system, and the scurrying of critters. Soon, however, he could hear voices in the distance, the dim light growing closer and closer. The voices seemed to be singing, no, perhaps it was more of a chant. Jack stepped up his pace a bit, but let his footsteps fall more lightly. Caution was the best avenue when dealing with the unknown and up ahead could be anything. A dim glow poured out into the tunnel he was in as he hooked a right. The vampire could clearly make out a chamber near the end of the corridor. It was most definitely a chanting, there was no doubt about it now. The language was foreign to him, but was quite guttural. He moved as silently as he could, hoping any noises he made were masked by the sounds of the sewers. Jack peaked around the corner and into the chamber, his hands holding the slimy stone walls for support.

It was a strange, yet rather beautiful sight. The chamber itself had been carved from old stone, yet the walls appeared to be coated in pink quartz. Almost as if a massive crystal had been here and the chamber had been carved directly from it. Jack didn’t think such a thing possible, but it was only a few months ago that he couldn’t believe the tales of vampires and zombies either. The glow from within the chamber came from hundreds of white candles that had been placed on the stones that jutted from the walls. They seemed to line up in a perfect triangle on both sides, arranged going upward from the opening of the chamber and downward towards the back of it. A stone altar stood near the very back of the place, though it looked as though it might be of onyx or coal, not quartz. The whole room seemed to shimmer in the glow of the candle light as wax melted down over the shiny stone. Within stood about fifteen to twenty cloaked individuals. They were darker than the night and seemed to hum in a hive like unison, never missing a beat. At the head of the altar stood a figure with the hood of his cloak down. It was hard to determine whether it was man or vampire, with skin that was sickly pale, or maybe fine porcelain, but Jack could see his heart beating, could hear the thumping of it as he sang in foreign tongue. Around his neck was a chain crafted from zombie ears.

When their eyes met the chanting halted. Jack felt as if he were being drawn into his dark, black eyes. He lifted his arms into the air and yelled a series of phrases, those gathered before him responded in unison. Then he motioned to Jack, "Come, young vampire, we’ve been expecting you.” Jack couldn’t help but feel compelled to walk into the chamber and down the aisle towards the altar.

It was like walking through a dream. The cloaked figures on the aisle to either side of him seemed to fade and flicker with the candle light around them, as if they were slipping into and out of existence. Jack wondered if they were there at all, if he were here at all. One thing that seemed to stay constant were those black eyes hanging over the stone altar. As Jack passed, the cloaked figures stepped out into the aisle behind him, creating a procession of sorts. It wasn’t something he could have noticed, even if all of senses had been finely tuned. It wasn’t just that their footfalls were silent and not a rustle was made from behind their garb, but rather that all of Jack’s focus was on the man beckoning him from ahead. It was the whirling pits of darkness that graced his face, drawing the vampire in like a moth to a flame.

“Welcome, we knew you’d come and now you are here. Glorious is the day!,” the man’s voice had a brittleness to it, but it was domineering nonetheless, like the voice of a parishioner ever ready to extort monetary tribute from his flock. Jack had stopped about three to four feet in front of him, the cloaked figures all lined up behind him. He moved his lips to speak, but found that an unusual dryness had taken hold of his throat, but he managed to choke out his words, “How’d ya’ know I’d be comin’ when I didn’t even know it myself.” A sad yet devious smile cut across the man’s pale features, teeth glistened in the candlelight. Teeth, which seemed to switch from a mouthful of straight pearly whites to two full rows of sharp fangs between the shadows. “Ah, your curiosity, of course, we could feel it pumping through the world above.” With every world this guy sounded more and more like a charlatan, but Jack was transfixed on the utter strangeness of the way he was able to present himself.

“You vampires, you fail to grasp the sheer raw power of death!” The strange man exclaimed, his voice seemed to pierce right through Jack’s skull, "Well today shall be the day you learn it my, young friend. Rejoice and be glad! For you shall herald in a new day! Rejoice, for we are the Shadow Man, and we welcome you to our body.” The exposition probably would have infuriated Jack, if his head hadn’t felt so heavy, so hazy. The Shadow Man, or perhaps they were all the shadow men, or collectively one unit? It mattered not, he spoke again, "Are you ready to bring about the new dawn, Jack? See what we have only done with a few pieces of decay,” he stepped forward from the altar, and stood painfully close to the vampire, really less than half an arm’s length away. The scent of decay Mr. Shadow Man spoke of hung heavy around him now. It was as if the room had become flooded with mounds of corrupted flesh and rivers of dead blood.

Jack didn’t respond with words. There wasn’t a part of this that he wanted. The overwhelming desire to strike down this strange fellow had overcome him though. In one swift and lucid motion, Jack drew the blade he kept tucked into his jacket and jammed it into the chest of the cloaked figure. What followed was a haunting laughter that seemed to dig into the very depths of his soul. The knife had phased right through the man, as if he weren’t there at all. Before Jack could react he felt a cold steel slip into his left shoulder blade followed immediately by a separate dagger digging into his lower back. He fell to his knees then, the clatter of his own blade echoing off of the chamber walls. The procession continued forward however, each stabbing him as if he were a Roman Caesar, before falling to the back of the line again. Just as the final dagger was forced into the side of his neck, the Shadow Man grabbed him by the chin, those black eyes seeming to draw out his very soul, “Yes, you’ll make a fine martyr for the cause.” The world around Jack became the darkness of those man’s strange eyes.

When he awoke, it wasn’t to the reek of decay, but rather to the hearty scents of hops and the sweet smell of blood. Also to a very sharp pain in his neck. His eyes opened slowly, yet almost right away he knew something was off. Or rather something was on, on him! It was a heavy, dead weight and when his eyes adjusted to the light of the room, that was just what it was, or rather who it was, dead. Maggie Marley lay lifeless across his lap, two neat puncture wounds gracing her fleshy neck. It was then that he realized he was hunched up in the corner of a very quiet Marley’s, next to the large hearth. A feeling of slick, yet sticky wetness chilled his normally icy hands. With a head that felt as though it were full of lead he glanced down seeing that he was covered in red goo, his own red goo, his dead blood. It was then that he reached up to his neck, the only point of pain, other than his head, and tugged the foreign object out. A new wave of blood gushed downward, but slowed as the healing process took effect.

He let Maggie Marley in peace on his lap as he examined the dagger. In was a gnarled thing, ancient looking, with the brightest blade Jack had ever seen. He thought it could be made of platinum, but that didn’t seem likely. There were symbols carved into the hilt, but just as he was examining them, he heard the loud whirl of sirens on the approach. Shoving the blade inside of his jacket and shoving the bar keep out of his lap, Jack moved to stand. The world seemed to spin around him as he did so. It was when he finally balanced himself that he understood why Marley’s was so quiet, as Maggie wasn’t the only corpse to be found. Scattered about the floors and, in some cases, even still seated at bar stools and tables had to be about twenty to thirty motionless, breathless bodies. Some with small pools of blood around their heads and others drained so completely that no blood spilled from the bites in their necks. Jack cursed quite loudly.

In this moment there was only one thing the Jack was unequivocally certain of and that was that he hadn’t killed these people. Even despite the dizziness dancing in his skull his reasoning was based on two key facts. The first being that if he had drained these folks there would be at least ten ravenous, fledgling vamps stalking around the bar. With a kiss like Jack’s, even the smallest nibble could turn a human. And the second reason, well the only blood the vampire could taste at the moment was his own. Upon waking he could feel the rancid trail it left down his throat, thanks to the lovely stab wound throbbing at his neck. This forced more than one gag from him, a reflex that Jack hadn’t experienced since his days as a human. The vampire knew, however, that both defenses wouldn’t hold up in the court of public opinion and the way things were these days he’d never see a real courtroom, he’d be lynched on sight.

The sirens wailed right outside the door now and more could be heard swooping in from the distance. His eyes fell to the door which he expected to fly open under a small battalion of city police and soldiers. As fortune would have it though, the large doors had been locked from the inside. He could hear a heavy banging against it, followed by a shouted order to unbar the door. Through the haziness of his thoughts Jack couldn’t understand why such a thing had been done, but then it clicked. Of course it had to be locked, the scene had to appear as if there were only one culprit and what a better way to establish culpability than to have a door locked from within. The spinning feeling in Jack’s mind was beginning to wear off now and he had to think quickly. If the Shadow Man or whomever had done this had closed off the main entrance that had to have meant there was another way out of here. Just as the thought crossed his mind, he discovered where that alternative exit was.

The vampire heard a loud cracking sound from the room behind the bar, a door smacking against the wall. He’d assumed it was a storeroom when he’d first seen it, but now he knew that there must have also been an exit to the outside. Jack was out of time, the heavy boots of soldiers marched into the building. Even if he hadn’t been weakened, there was no way that the young vampire could fight off a whole battalion. Jack was left with only one option, he fell, limp, to the ground.

Laying amongst the corpses on the dusty pub floor with eyes closed, Jack was unable to see how many entered, but he could hear their heavy footfalls, as well as deep voiced curses and even some horrified gasps. Remaining completely still, that was the key to getting out of this. The vampire had to become a corpse. He was already partially there anyway, he just had to refrain from showing any signs of animation, any signs of his supernatural life. Covered in blood like he was, with a gash still unhealed in his neck, he banked on the authorities, the first responders, to count him among the victims. There was no need for him to breathe and his skin was always icy cold. It needed to be enough. He could feel bodies stepping over him and he heard the front door open. More footsteps filed in.

“Was a massacre, damn fangers!” Barked out a voice with a bit of a rough euro accent to him, "Sergeant!” He yelled, perhaps a bit too loudly, “Get your people in here! We need to get this mess cleaned up pronto!” Another voice could be heard yelling back, this one with the more familiar accent of the region and certainly not as rugged, “the paramedics are just pulling in now and the coroner is on the way.” The loud gentleman scoffed, “Ain’t no time for the coroner! These folks are dead, my people need to get them bagged and burned.” The response for the sergeant was clearly one of frustration, “That’s not protocol, Captain, these people have families that we need to answer to!” There was a brief pause in the conversation, the room seemed to grow a bit quieter making it appear more drawn out than it probably was. Jack could hear footsteps just passing his head, he didn’t move a muscle. “Sergeant, this city of yours is still filled with families,” the captain’s voice, now coming from right above his resting place, had taken on a calmer, yet somehow more deeming tone, “if we let your paramedics and coroner bumbled around in the name of protocol, we’ll be *** deep in walkers, here in this lovely little borough. How many more lives are you willing to sacrifice tonight?” The sergeant didn’t respond to the captain, verbally anyway. “Get these folks shot so we can identify them later, make sure you get close ups of their faces, Christ, get a move on,” it was an order to the men moving around the bar, their footsteps picked up. Jack heard the captain mumble afterwards, “Bloody, ******* protocol, losing their ******* city and it's all about protocol,” then the captain barked another order, “hurry up and get those pictures taken, boys, they be rising in no time!” then Jack felt himself being pushed over onto his back with a strong boot under his stomach. The vampire hoped his body wouldn’t betray him in these moments, he remained as limp and lifeless as a soup noodle.

“What do you think happened to this guy, Cap?” A new voice from directly above asked, “Looks like the poor **** was trying to fight back. Get his picture than get him out in the truck.” The captain walked away barking orders as he went. Jack could hear the click a the camera now, sensing a flash beneath his eyelids. Then he heard the rustle of flimsy plastic on the approach. Two sets of hands slid under his arms and around his ankles as he was hoisted into the air, before being placed back down. The sounds of a zipper and the stifling chemical smell of plastic added to the putrid blood bile that hung in his throat, overwhelming his senses.

Jack wasn’t sure how long it had taken them or how far he had been carried, but his body bag had been tossed into the back of what he now assumed was a pickup truck. Other heavy bags broke his fall, but others were piled on top of him, one slamming right into his skull. He had cursed inside the bag upon impact, but immediately bit his tongue. Not that the sound was much of anything anyway, his vocal cords hadn’t fully recovered from the knifing he’d received. He hadn’t been home free then, even now he still wasn’t. Despite the plastic bags piled up on him, he could still hear the rush of the humid summertime air around him, could feel a bit of its damp coolness as it entered the zipper he had been working to drag down from inside the nylon tomb. His success had been slight, for after what seemed like hours of struggle (really only about five minutes), he only had managed to open the zipper about an inch. The space wasn’t enough to even slip a finger through. He’d lost is blade in the sewers and he was in dire need of it right now. It was then that he remembered the dagger!

The plastic sliced open with a distinct tearing sound as the truck rolled down the street. Jack didn’t jump up through the bagged corpses and tumble out onto the road, however. The vampire knew he had to play it safe, stay smart, well smart enough to get himself out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. He stayed low, swimming through the bags, until he managed a bit of a peep hole to see out into the road behind him. The truck it seemed as one of the municipal dumping types, the kind that normally salted your road in the winter or carried away fallen branches after a heavy storm. Jack could also see that it was being tailed by a green and black jeep, with very large tires, making it roll pretty high off the street. It was just as he had assumed, the truck with the potential zombies was in middle vehicle of an armed convoy.

The truck slowed and halted, it must have been a traffic light. He peered out into the jeep. Two soldiers sat in the front seats, but they were paying very little mind to the truck ahead of them, or to each other, or to anything really. It looked like they were texting! The vampire’s jaw nearly dropped. Saved by smartphones and good fortune, what a life! Jack quickly pushed himself out from beneath the bagged bodies and jumped down out of the truck just as the light was about to change. He only had mere seconds really, which meant that he would have to make another quick drop to the ground. The jeep was motionless for a few moments more before it realized it’s truck was vanishing on ahead of it. It rolled right over Jack’s body, enormous tires just short of turning his head into a pancake.

The convoy thundered down the otherwise empty road leaving all the bloody mess that Jack was deposited on the street like common roadkill. The vampire stood up, taking care as he did so, as if he were a hunted animal with a possible pursuer lurking behind any shadow. The dagger was still clutched in his left fist, he’d forgotten that he had been holding it. He was alone though and he shoved the ancient looking weapon back inside of his bloody jacket. He could see the trucks in the far distance now, entering the QZ. They’d made it out of River Rock with Jack and now he stood in the darkness about halfway between the two points. He knew he had to get out of sight. If anyone happened upon him like this, well questions would be hard to face when he didn’t yet have the answers. That and he had to get back down into the sewers, perhaps there was a clue to be had in that chamber. Though as he made his way towards an alleyway, back towards River Rock, Jack was beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together, fearing that finding an entrance back into the underground would do him no good.

The media dubbed it ‘Marley's Massacre’ while the culprit at large became the ‘River Rock Ripper,’ depending on who you read or listened to. Eyewitness accounts drew a picture of the suspected vampire that lay somewhere between the horror of Nosferatu and the seduction of Lestat de Lioncourt. No one had really seen much, but there were always a few who liked to jump in front of a TV camera or get a dose social media dopamine. Speaking of which, various internet personalities were already calling the event, ‘the first battle in the upcoming war,’ or ‘a strike at the heart of wholesome humanity,’ apparently drinking at a bar around 1AM had become wholesome. If the shoe fits. Others, though, still preached peace and temperance. Then there were those who took issue with martial law like tactics of police and military officials in response to the incident, Jack’s favorite group. The debate continued albeit with a slew of new apologists for ‘Humans First.’

It had been two days since Jack had woken up in a bar full of drained, human corpses. The mark of vampire victims had lain on each and every chilling neck before they were burned away, turned to ash so that they may never rise again. What would have normally been covered up by the local officials and the rabid military that held them in power, had been exposed by a rogue media outlet, tipped, anonymously, to be in the right place at the right time. If left no doubt in many minds, including Jack’s, that it had in fact been the murderer himself who had alerted the media and the subsequently the authorities. If the mysterious figure’s plan had gone off without a hitch, Jack would have been pegged the vampire terrorist, the new boogeyman haunting the headlines.

He sat in a quiet cafe in Swansdale, his man was directly across from him, dressed to the nines in militia garb and drinking from a rather small espresso cup. Darkness had just recently fallen over the city and Jack watched from the windows as folks seemed to be in more of a rush than usual. Perhaps it was just his imagination. They met in public tonight because they weren’t exchanging the normal clandestine, inside knowledge of the militia, but rather, just having a friendly conversation about recent events. That and Jack was just about done with the sewers. The vampire had spent the last two days scouring the endless tunnels in vain. It had been an effort in futility, but one that left much time for reflection.

“A vampire? You’ve lost me brother, what about the heartbeat and the breathing? Hell, he even called himself a man didn’t he? Didn’t you even say he was something somewhere in between, something more supernatural?” Jack smiled in response to his man’s questions, the heat of an undrunk coffee mug warmed his hands as the rich black aroma wafted through his nostrils. Yes, this was much better than meeting in a sewer. “Ain’t nothing more supernatural than our people, brother,” and by ‘our’ Jack meant vampirekind in general, “It might be easier to understand if I show you,” the vampire’s melodious voice had taken on a bit more of a gruffer tone than normal, turns out vocal chords took a bit of time to heal. He placed his coffee cup on the table and considered his man in silence for a few moments, before his hand shot out like a viper and plucked the man’s right eye from his socket. His thrall let out the beginnings of a startled yell as blood and blindness consumed his right side, Jack holding the eyeball in front of him, but just as soon as it started it was over. The thrall was able to see perfectly again, there was no blood as the eye had never been torn from its socket. What Jack held in his hand and now spun on the table was a quarter. A few heads had turned in their direction, but seeing that nothing was truly the matter they returned to their lattes. He leaned in towards his man, who was just now letting his hand drop from his eye. “See my man, nothing more than a trick of the mind.”

And it had been a grand illusion at that. The likes of which Jack had never experienced before. He’d had a hunch that what he had experienced under the city had been something purposefully contrived, it seemed to outlandish, like something pulled from a horror novel. Sure there had been moments where the vampire considered the very real possibility that the city had birthed something new, something much darker than it had ever yet spewed. But as he wandered the the tunnels of the sewers, backtracking and retracing, the massive chamber of quartz was nowhere to be found. Even the tunnels that had had to have led to it seemed altered. It was an impossibility, but still Jack had been on the fence. What sealed it for him was River Rock, the maze of an alleyway that he had followed the boy through, the labyrinth which ended in his falling into the darkness of the underground, was also inconspicuously missing, as if it had never existed at all.

Then there were his wounds, well one wound really, the one in his neck. At least twenty five blades had been jammed into his back, yet he hadn’t a single gash for any of them. True, they’d of healed by this point, but even that night, upon waking up in Marley’s, the only blood that gushed from his body, was from his throat. It could only mean that the procession of stabbings had all been in his mind, a mental attack projected as reality. It certainly explained the way that his head felt during the entire ordeal and the way his preternatural senses had seemed to be in the fritz. The only thing that he couldn’t be sure of was of whom that he had encountered who had been real and who had just been part of the show. Among the all strangeness that vampire controlling the illusion had to be. Jack thought he might have been the boy who led him into the alleyway. It would have accounted for how he seemed to detect no footsteps behind him on the child’s approach. Even now though, he couldn’t be sure that it even had been a child. Perhaps just a diminutive vampire with immense abilities. He’d ruled out the man at the onyx altar who had spoken to him. No doubt the words themselves belonged to the culprit, but the mirage was too obvious and hadn’t his own blade slipped right through the cloaked orator, as if he were made of the shadows himself?

“So this tale you’ve weaved for me tonight, my brother, it was all an elaborate trick? Could a vampire create such a dream world?,” there was concern in his thrall’s eyes as he spoke in a low voice. Jack eased his fears a bit by tweaking his man’s emotions ever so slightly, calming him from the what the implications of such a revelation meant. His man may have had a penchant for superstition, but they were certainly concerns that Jack also shared. The vampire nodded slightly, “One with a good deal of age behind him. I imagine that, like me, he’s an illusionist, only one much more finely skilled at his craft, the kind of skill that comes with experience.” Jack snatched up the still spinning quarter right before it dropped to flat on the table and tossed it inside his front pocket, “we’ve been made, my man. Someone out there knows about our little operation and they just tried to get rid of me.” Were Jack’s words paranoia or was it, as he so strongly felt, the truth behind the matter.

“The Shadow Man of River Rock then, the man paying out for zombie kills, was that him?” Jack had been pondering that very question, he sat silently for a few moments, looking down into the blackness of his coffee, just collecting his thoughts, “Perhaps, I couldn’t say for sure. I do believe that if that vampire was not himself the gentleman paying big coin for zombie parts, that he is either using a thrall for that purpose or working with a shadowy organization.” “To what end?” That was the fifty million dollar question. What was the true goal here? To spark a war between humans and vampires. It seemed to cliche to be true. Jack suspected a deeper motive, though pinpointing what that was remained lost on him, “I wish I knew, my man, but what I do know is this...There’s a powerful vampire out there, with all the skills of manipulation at his fingertips, who is at the center of this military occupation and governmental power grab. Someone stoking the flames of resentment between the species. Someone feeding on the chaos that results.” Jack leaned back in his seat and looked out the window past where his man sat. “What’s next then?,” his thrall asked also leaning back in his own chair. “We do what we always do, until we get to where we need to be,” the vampire responded with a mischievous grin.