It was mid-afternoon when Nadja answered Cassidy's phone call to Cristiãn's cellphone. After Cassidy disconnected, Nadja jumped into action.
“Cassidy is danger,” Nadja yelled after running into Cristiãn's bedroom. “She found Jerry and she's on her way to the location where she thinks McGuire is hiding. I’m sending the address to your cellphone. I'm taking the car and I'm going there now.”
Cristiãn neither awakened nor reacted to Nadja's words, but that is what she expected. Nadja knew that Cristiãn was more than a dozen minutes away from returning to consciousness. She expected his subconscious mind to slowly assimilate her words into perceptible information. Once that happened, she expected a gradual acceleration of his heartbeat until enough blood flowed into his brain to bring him back to consciousness.
After speaking her message to Cristiãn, Nadja hurried into the bedroom she shared with Petru and repeated the message to her sleeping mate. Then she went to the refrigerator in the kitchen and grabbed a water bottle full of blood. She went to the living room and grabbed a wide-brim hat, sunglasses and the key that she left there from her earlier meeting with Cassidy. Then she raced out of the apartment. A call to Stefan on her way down to the garage was the first link in a communication relay to all the other Dacia Vampires in New York.
“Where’s Petru and Cristian?” Stefan anxiously queried.
“They’re coming behind,” Nadja returned.
“Good, I’ll send Radu and Flavia to you,” Stefan delegated in an authoritative tone. “Sorin and Adrianna will go to the other address with me and Helga.”
By the time she was turning David’s car out onto the street, all the Dacia Vampires in New York were either preparing to leave or rousing from their sleep. Nadja believed it imperative that she go to Cassidy’s aid because she was the first in motion, and it was her understanding that Stefan, Helga, Sorin and Adrianna had to hurry to the other address to dispose of Jeremiah’s remains before anyone else could find it.
Nadja was racing through the streets of New York on a direct course for the construction site address that Cassidy sent her. As she drove, Nadja made multiple attempts to call Cassidy. Each call out to Cassidy’s cellphone went to voicemail. After three attempts, she abandoned the effort and focused all her attention to driving as fast as she could without drawing attention to herself. It was almost ten minutes later when Nadja got her first text from Cassidy.
Cassidy: I’m here.
Nadja quickly picked up her cellphone when she heard the alert. It took her a couple of seconds to read the message, and then she began responding to it by tapping a text into her cellphone with the thumb of one hand while driving with the other hand.
Nadja: Do not go inside.
Nadja put her cellphone down on the passenger seat and went back to driving with two hands. A little more than a minute passed when another text came in. Nadja picked up her cellphone to read it.
Cassidy: Seeing no activity. Going to the back.
Once again, Nadja began tapping a reply text into cellphone after reading Cassidy’s message.
Nadja: Stay out.
After sending her text, Nadja set the cellphone down and went back to driving with both hands and all her attention. Several minutes later another text came in, and Nadja snatched up her cellphone to read it.
Cassidy: I’m inside.
Nadja’s alarm was noticeable in her expression. She quickly started typing in her reply and her driving suffered a little from the distraction. Nadja managed to make a quick correction for the sloppiness in her driving and continued to negotiate her way through traffic while sending out her text.
Nadja: Get out, now.
Nadja held her cellphone in her hand for three minutes while she waited for a reply, and then she set it down and put all her concentration back into her driving. She had been driving for nearly five minutes when her cellphone began ringing. Nadja picked it up and saw that it was Cassidy calling in.
“He’s here,” Cassidy whispered through Nadja’s speakerphone app, “McGuire, Charlie Panko, Ben Dalby and another guy I’ve never seen before. They’re asleep, I think.”
“Cassidy, you need to get out of there,” Nadja instructed in a commanding tone.
“They look dead,” Cassidy reported with indifference to Nadja’s warning.
“They’re not dead,” Nadja roared toward her cellphone. “They can hear everything you say. They’re brains are working in slow motion. You need to get out of there.”
“How slow?” Cassidy sharply questioned. “How much time do I have?”
“I don’t know,” Nadja answered with a mix of anger and confusion in her voice, “ten minutes, twenty, more—less. It all depends.”
Nadja’s answer reflected her ignorance of the state that McGuire, Ben and Charlie were in at that moment. She knew that their minds and bodies could have started the process of awakening five minutes ago.
“I can’t let them wake up,” Cassidy declared after a moment of silence. “What can I do?” She nearly pleaded through the phone connection.
“What’s wrong with you?” Nadja shouted toward her cellphone with an intonation of astonishment. “You—are—in—danger!”
“My city is in danger,” Cassidy immediately rifled back through the cellphone. “And I’m the only person here. You need to tell me what to do.”
“Cassidy,” Nadja yelled at her cellphone. “If they wake up, they will kill you. They’ve heard you by now. You’ve got to get out of there.”
“That’s all the more reason why I have to do something now,” Cassidy argued through the phone. “I can’t let them get away. There’s got to be something I can do.”
Nadja could hear that Cassidy was determined to act against Tony McGuire and the two other vampires with him. She concluded that helping Cassidy to quickly do what she was determined to do was the only way to help her stay alive.
“If you impale something into their hearts, it will stop them from sending blood to their brains,” Nadja advised reluctantly. “They won’t be able to wake up,”
For a few minutes, Nadja listened to the sounds of Cassidy moving about and breathing heavily. On several occasions Nadja urged her to hurry.
“You’re running out of time,” Nadja finally yelled into her cellphone.
“I found a nail gun,” Cassidy responded directly back. “Will that do?”
“I don’t know,” Nadja wondered aloud. “I suppose it will work if the nails are long enough and they actually go into the heart, but you should use more than one for each of them.”
“How many?” Cassidy asked.
“I don’t know,” Nadja quickly returned. “Four—five, just make sure they go deep into their chests.”
After hearing Nadja’s instruction, Cassidy said nothing for several seconds. Only the sound of her moving and breathing could be heard over the cellphone connection.
“How do I know that they’re really vampires?” Cassidy’s words suddenly came through the cellphone.
“Are you kidding me?” Nadja screamed at her cellphone. “If they’re not vampires then they would have awakened by now.”
“They could be drugged,” Cassidy countered through the cellphone in a hushed voice. “I mean if they’re not vampires this will kill them.”
Nadja was infuriated by Cassidy’s hesitation. In her mind this situation was exactly why Cassidy should have left it to them. She knew that she would be able to smell the difference between human and vampire.
“Get out of there!” Nadja roared at her cellphone.
“Tell me something,” Cassidy demand back.
Nadja was confounded by the request. She knew that breaking the skin, the usual test that the vampire hunters employed, would not work while a vampire was asleep. Their ability to rapidly heal would be moving just as slowly as their brains were. After a moment of thought an idea came to her.
“Check for a pulse,” Nadja said in a rush. “If you don’t get a pulse, they’re either vampires or they’re already dead.”
Once again, Cassidy gave no response for several seconds.
“Okay,” Cassidy spoke at the end of a pause. “No heart beat.”
Before Nadja could say anything in response, she heard a rapid succession of five muffled thumps.
“I think it worked,” Cassidy exclaimed through the cellphone. “Hold on.”
Several seconds later another succession of six muffled rapid thumps could be heard.
“Two down,” Cassidy spoke to Nadja through the cellphone connection.
Once again, a few seconds passed and then another rapid succession of muffled thumps could be heard through Nadja’s cellphone speaker.
“That’s three,” Cassidy reported. “One more to go.”
Several seconds of silence followed behind Cassidy’s last remark. Nadja listened to the sound of her movement and her breathing, and then she heard Cassidy scream. A couple of seconds later the line disconnected.
~~~~~Line Break~~~~~
It was late in the afternoon when Cassidy arrived outside of the commercial building that Jeremiah was renovating. She looked the building over as she drove by in her car, and then she turned the corner at the end of the block and parked. The building was a short walk from the intersection, and she quickly crossed the distance. Cassidy began texting Nadja’s cellphone the instant she got out of the car. At first, she paid no attention to Nadja’s return text. Cassidy’s texts were sent as reports on what she was doing and where she was. She ignored Nadja’s repeated calls that she stay away from Tony McGuire.
Cassidy’s reason for pushing forward to find Tony McGuire was because of her fear of what would happen if the world found out that vampires did exist. She knew that the Dacia Vampires were ill equipped to do the footwork that needed to be done at this time of day, and she needed Tony McGuire off the streets as soon as possible. It was the killing of the prostitute that made his death an imperative for her. The woman’s murder weighed heavy on Cassidy’s mind. The thought of people being killed by vampires while she was keeping their existence a secret from the world was quickly growing into a persistent pang in her conscience. Cassidy rationalized that even the Dacia Vampires were better insulated against culpability than she. For them, the secret of their existence was survival, but for her, it was a choice. To Cassidy, the responsibility for stopping Tony McGuire and ending the threat from him and any vampire offspring he may have had grown to be more hers than anyone else’s.
The first thing that Cassidy noticed about the building was the chain and padlock secured through the nine-inch pull handles on the double doors to the entrance and that the large front windows and frames were note in place. The openings for the windows and frames were boarded over from the inside. She thought of trying Jeremiah’s keys on the lock but immediately reconsidered. She worried that the front doors would be an obvious entry point, so she turned her attention to the parking lot side of the building. As Cassidy started down along the side of the building, she sent another text report to Nadja. Near the back end of the building, Cassidy passed a single loading dock with its roll-down garage door shut. Next to the dock was a regular walk-in metal door. Cassidy stopped just outside that door, listened for nearly a minute and when she heard nothing from the other side, she tried the doorknob and discovered it locked.
Cassidy was convinced, to a large extent, that there was no one moving about on the other side of the metal door and that it was safe for her to enter. After listening at the door, she pulled Jeremiah’s keys out of her jacket pocket and started trying them on the top deadbolt lock one at a time. The first four keys failed to go into the lock’s keyhole, but the fifth slipped in without any resistance. When Cassidy turned the key, the deadbolt slid back. She then directed her efforts to the keyhole in the doorknob: the eighth key she tried slipped right in. After Cassidy unlocked both locks, she slowly swung the door open while taking her gun from its holster. She entered the building when the opening was just wide enough for her to step through.
After entering the building, Cassidy closed the door behind her and stood silent. Despite the darkness inside the room, she recognized that she was in a storage area. Sunlight emanating through a small rectangular window high up on the wall provided just enough illumination for her to see the building materials and equipment stored there. She also noticed a table setup with bottles of alcohol, sodas and plastic cups. While she listened for sounds within the building, Cassidy pulled out her cellphone and sent another text to Nadja. When she finished sending her text, she started moving deeper into the building with her gun at the ready.
Moving slowly and quietly, Cassidy went through the doorway that led to the main room. Like the storage area, light was diffused from a pair of rectangular windows high on the wall, partially illuminating the room. The large windows at the front were boarded over. Newly installed drywall was everywhere; some walls were painted. The room was a work in progress. Cassidy gave little notice to the condition of the room. What caught her attention was the absence of anyone inside the room. After a brief examination of the large empty space, she turned her attention toward the stairs and the mezzanine level over the storage room.
With careful steps, Cassidy ascended the stairs to the mezzanine level as quietly as she could. When she reached the top of the stairs, she paused to listen for sound from the two rooms that opened out onto the balcony of the mezzanine. There were no doors in place for the rooms and there were large square cutouts in the wall for windows and frames for each room. After listening a few seconds and hearing nothing, Cassidy moved quietly along the balcony until she came to the first doorway. When she looked around the corner, she saw an empty room that had recently been painted. After a moment of looking inside the room, she softly moved on to the next doorway, peeked inside room and caught her breath.
The sight of four men lying still on cots surprised Cassidy even though she was looking for something exactly like that. She hesitated to go in for fear that her movement inside the room might wake them. She quickly rationalized that they must be vampires and were not going to suddenly awaken because of a sound she made in the moment. She also concluded that time was not on her side, and then turned around the corner and went into the room.
Cassidy went up to the cot closes to the door, pulled out her cellphone, activated the flashlight app and examined the face of the first man. At a glance, she was not familiar with him, but after a close examination, she recognized him as either Tony McGuire or possibly his son. In appearance, he looked to be thirty to forty years younger than Tony McGuire’s true age. After giving the first man a quick examination, Cassidy took his picture and then did abbreviated exams of the next two men down. She quickly identified both as Charlie Panko and Ben Dalby. She remembered them from the time that Razvan and Dumitra had her kidnapped and brought to them. She had since examined mugshots from their past. They both looked decidedly younger, but they still looked like themselves. Cassidy took their pictures in turn, then went to the fourth at the end cot and farthest from the door. She examined that man but had no recollection of having ever seen him before, which caused her to give extra time to his examination. When she was done looking him over, she took his picture. Then she took a pair of ear buds for her cellphone out of her blazer pocket, put them in her ears and dialed Nadja.
“He’s here,” Cassidy whispered quickly into the ear bud mic the instant Nadja answered her call, “McGuire, Charlie Panko, Ben Dalby and another guy I’ve never seen before. They’re asleep, I think.”
Cassidy moved to the room’s entrance as she spoke to give distance between her and the sleeping men. She was doubtful that the distance made any difference other than being a comfort to her.
“Cassidy, you need to get out of there,” Nadja instructed through the cellphone connection.
“They look dead,” Cassidy reported as she looked the four men over from a distance.
“They’re not dead,” Nadja bellowed through the cellphone. “They can hear everything you say. They’re brains are working in slow motion. You need to get out of there.”
“How slow?” Cassidy quickly asked. “How much time do I have?”
“I don’t know,” Nadja returned confused, “ten minutes, twenty, more—less. It all depends.”
Cassidy paused to look at the four men. Nadja’s report worried her, but it also added importance to the moment. She did not want to miss this opportunity.
“I can’t let them wake up,” Cassidy declared after her moment of silence. “What can I do?” She nearly pleaded through the phone.
“What’s wrong with you?” Nadja blasted through the cellphone. “You—are—in—danger!”
“My city is in danger,” Cassidy growled into her cellphone in a hushed tone of voice. “And I’m the only person here. You need to tell me what to do.”
“Cassidy,” Nadja yelled. “If they wake up, they will kill you,” she emphasized with vehemence. “They’ve heard you by now. You’ve got to get out of there,” she finished in a near pleading tone.
“That’s all the more reason why I have to do something now,” Cassidy argued back. “I can’t let them get away. There’s got to be something I can do.”
Cassidy waited impatiently across a prolonged pause. She worried that Nadja was not going to advise her, and she feared that she might disconnect the call with disgust.
“If you impale something into their hearts, it will stop the blood from flowing to their brains,” Nadja advised after several seconds of silence. “They won’t be able to wake up.”
Cassidy’s mind instantly went to the building materials and equipment she saw in the main room and storage area downstairs. After a moment of thought, she raced down to the main room and started looking for anything that could be used as a stake. She examined a couple of sticks with tapered ends, but both appeared to be too dull for the task that she needed them to do. In less than a minute of searching, Cassidy raced off to the storage room and scoured the area. Her attention quickly focused on a large metal job site storage chest. The container looked large enough for two people to scrunch together inside with the lid closed. Cassidy hurried over to it only to discover a large, heavy padlock securing it. She quickly retrieved Jeremiah’s keys from her pocket and tried them on the lock. To her surprise, the fourth key slid in, and with a twist, the lock opened. She quickly opened the storage chest and illuminated the interior with her cellphone light. Her eyes roamed over a couple of screwdrivers and putty knives, but she quickly homed in on a battery powered nail gun.
Cassidy pocketed the keys, and her cellphone before giving the nail gun a brief hands on examination. She found the on switch and activated it, taking note of the light when she switched it on. She then pressed the nail gun against the drywall behind the chest and squeezed the trigger. A nail immediately blasted out of the gun and all the way into the drywall. Cassidy instantly raced off with the nail gun. She hurried back up the stairs to the mezzanine level and into the room with the four men on cots, just as she had left them. She paused to consider what she was about to do. Her mind went to the one man in the room that she had never seen before. She wondered who he was and what he was. As she stood there thinking, she heard Nadja’s voice reverberating from the cellphone in her blazer pocket.
“You’re running out of time.”
“I found a nail gun,” Cassidy whispered at her ear bud mic. “Will that do?”
“I don’t know,” Nadja replied indecisively. “I suppose it will work if the nails are long enough and they actually go into the heart, but you should use more than one for each of them.”
“How many?” Cassidy questioned as she moved toward the cot furthest from the door.
“I don’t know,” Nadja answered with a who knows intonation. “Four—five, just make sure they go deep into their chests.”
Even as Nadja was speaking, Cassidy was moving alongside the cot of the man that she did not recognize. His identity was bothering her. She knew that impaling a nail in a vampire was not enough to kill him or her. Nadja had just told her that much. What Cassidy did know on her own was that a nail through the heart of a human would likely kill him or her, and that was an error she did not want to make. Her plan was to incapacitate the vampires until the Dacia Vampires could collect and dispose of them as needed. The one thing she did not want to do was kill a human.
“How do I know that they’re really vampires?” Cassidy whispered into her ear bud mic.
“Are you kidding me?” Cassidy heard Nadja screaming back in her ears. “If they’re not vampires then they would have awakened by now.”
“They could be drugged,” Cassidy challenged in a hushed tone of voice. “I mean if they’re not vampires this will kill them.”
Cassidy continued to look down at the man below her as she waited for Nadja’s response.
“Get out of there!” Nadja instructed after a pause.
“Tell me something,” Cassidy quickly countered with anger.
Once again, Cassidy waited for a reply that was slow in coming.
“Check for a pulse,” Nadja instructed. “If you don’t get a pulse, they’re either vampires or they’re already dead.”
Cassidy reached down and checked for a pulse in the carotid artery of the man she did not know. This was nothing new for her. Checking people for a pulse was part of her police officer training. She held two of her fingers against his neck and applied a slight amount of pressure. After several seconds of nothing, Cassidy pulled her hand away. She felt no pulse and the man did not awaken.
“Okay,” Cassidy reported with a hint of relief and as she readied the nail against the stranger’s chest. “No heart beat.”
A second later, Cassidy rifled five nails into the stranger’s left chest. She was relieved by the absence of any response from him, and she let out a sigh of relief.
“I think it worked,” Cassidy softly exclaimed. “Hold on,” she continued while hurrying about to the next cot.
Cassidy quickly thumped six nails into the left chest of Ben Dalby.
“Two down,” Cassidy announced as she hurried around to the third cot.
Without the slightest hesitation, Cassidy thumped seven nails into the left chest of Charlie Panko, and just as before there was no reaction.
“That’s three,” Cassidy declared while hurrying around to Tony McGuire’s cot. “One more to go.”
Cassidy had just reached the head of the cot when Tony McGuire’s eyes suddenly opened. The sight of Tony’s eyes staring up at the ceiling shocked her into a dead stop. For an instant, she did not know what to do, but she lunged at Tony with the nail gun anyway. Just as she was about to ram the nail gun against Tony’s chest, he reached up with his left hand and grabbed Cassidy’s right wrist, swiftly steering the nail gun away while simultaneously reaching up with his right hand and grabbing her by the throat. Her yell for help was stopped by the powerful grip that suddenly choked off her voice. Tony sat up while maintaining his grip on Cassidy. He swung his feet to the floor and stood up while lifting Cassidy off the floor by her neck. As she struggled to breathe, Tony examined her with an amused expression.
“Detective Cassidy Tremaine, we meet again,” Tony greeted with a smile of satisfaction.
Cassidy could not respond to Tony; she was too busy trying to breathe. Motivated by her need to get free of Tony’s grip, she braced her right foot against Tony’s left thigh and quickly wrenched her right wrist free from his left hand. As she freed her wrist, she immediately thrust the nail gun against his left eye and fired. Tony screamed in anguish, twisting his head to the right and knocking the nail gun out of Cassidy’s right hand with his left. Still gripping her by the throat, furious and in pain, Tony fumed at Cassidy through his right eye while blood streamed from his left. He quickly noticed Cassidy reach for her holstered handgun. He reached down with his free left hand and ripped her gun from her right hand and tossed it out the opening in the wall for the window. The gun sailed over the balcony and fell to the floor of the main room below. After tossing the gun, Tony finally released his grip on Cassidy’s throat by tossing her over the cot and onto the floor.
Cassidy was dazed by her fall to the floor. By the time her wits had returned to her, Tony was standing in front of her and a half dozen feet back. Cassidy watched as he pulled the nail out from his left eye socket, and she noted the anguish he endured as he did it. She wanted to get up and run past him, but Tony was directly between her and the doorway. She suspected that standing up would motivate Tony to react defensively, and she was doubtful that an attempt to run past him would be successful. An alternative to trying to fight her way past Tony popped into her mind, and she surreptitiously reached into her jacket pocket as she waited for Tony to make the first move. As she waited, she watched Tony’s left eye gradually repair itself.
“Aren’t I magnificent?” Tony growled with satisfaction.
Tony’s left eye was fully reformed, and he was visibly pleased by its return.
“I see you got your wish,” Cassidy scoffed. “You’re a vampire.”
“Strength. Immortality,” Tony gloated with his arms spread wide. “I’m what everyone like you are going to wish they could be.”
“Soon, you’re going to be dead,” Cassidy disputed as she maneuvered herself into a crouch. “By this time tomorrow every law enforcement agency in the country is going to be looking for you. You won’t be able to show your face in public.”
Tony chuckled in response to Cassidy’s threat.
“I’m going to own the cops,” Tony declared with an excess of confidence. “But you’re not going to be one of them,” he continued while stepping forward with his hands out toward Cassidy.
The moment Tony moved in for the kill, Cassidy used her thumb to flip off the cap to a small container in her hand, and before Tony could grab her, she tossed the powdery contents into his face. Tony instantly began to gag from the smell of the mustard seed powder. His eyes began to burn, forcing him to close them. He stumbled backward coughing and wheezing and waving his hands, trying to disburse the caustic powder from his face. Cassidy took advantage of the opportunity she created and raced past Tony and out the doorway. She ran down the stairs in a desperate effort to recover her gun. As she searched for her handgun, Tony leaped over the mezzanine balcony to the ground floor. Cassidy’s path to the backdoor that she came through was now blocked by a mostly blind and wheezing Tony.
“Where do you think you’re going, bitch,” Tony growled ferociously.
It was clear to Cassidy that he did not know exactly where she was in the darkened room and with his eyes still burning from the mustard seed powder. She stood still out of fear that he would hear her and began using small movements of her head to look for her gun in the dimly lit room. A few seconds into her search, Tony's vision began to improve. Cassidy knew that time was not on her side, and she began moving toward the front of the building and the padlocked doors.
“There you are,” Tony spoke with a sinister glee.
Tony turned his gaze directly at Cassidy as he spoke. He started moving toward the shadowy blur in his vision.
“It’s not going to be that easy this time, Detective,” Tony hissed.
As Tony moved toward Cassidy, she moved toward the front doors. After a few steps, Cassidy turned and began pushing against the doors and the padlocked chain that was holding them shut. When the door refused to open, Cassidy turned her attention to the boarded window to the right of the door. Tony was now just a few steps away from her. Just as Cassidy turned to grapple with the boarding that was nailed over the window openings, the front doors of the building were ripped open by a third party. The sudden flood of light onto Tony’s face seared into his already damaged eyes. The best that he could see was a dark fuzzy silhouette in front of a blazing glow of white light.
ns216.73.216.33da2
and then Add to home screen.