22

I left Castle Bran and the Gibson-Case Center, surprised to see that, like Brandon had said, it was morning when I stepped out of the artificial world and into the real one. I took the sample of Patient Zero, grabbed the subway, and headed back down to the Village with the morning rush-hour crowd, for once embracing the crush of humanity and not vampires around me as everyone packed like sardines into the car. It beat being crowded by the undead, especially if they had gone feral.

Once I hit the Lovecraft Café, I made my way back through the movie theater, into the offices, and all the way to my desk, figuring out how to best present this fresh sample to Allorah without giving much of anything away. I sat down at the partners desk for a moment, turning how I would handle it over and over in my head until I felt my nerves begin to give. The desire to be invisible washed over me, if only to keep from lying to my superiors.

With a quick look around, I grabbed my satchel, got up, and headed off to find Allorah’s office. It took me several minutes to locate, as it was nowhere near and nothing like the space the Inspectre used. Allorah’s office was like a giant studio apartment with different sections of the space delegated to several functions. Lab equipment, much of it similar to the vampire’s spread of it, filled a long low table along the back left-hand corner, while the far end of the room seemed to be allocated to books and research. There had to be a method to the mad organization of it all, but at the moment Allorah was tearing about the space, working on several things all at once. She was in black army fatigue pants and a white tank top that showcased the muscled contours of her dark skin. Enchancellor Daniels was surprisingly buff.

When she saw me, she paused and looked over. Her eyes were a little sunken in. Allorah looked exhausted. “Hello, Simon,” she said. “You might want to try picking up your phone once in a while.”

“Sorry,” I said. “The reception wasn’t very good where I was in town. Got a sec?”

“Not really,” she said. Allorah stopped and looked over at me, running her eyes down to my lower half. “What are you? A thirty-two waist, thirty-four inseam?”

“Thirty-four, thirty-four,” I corrected. “Why? Are the Enchancellors going to have us wear uniforms now?”

Allorah smiled, but shook her head. “Not a chance,” she said, “but I am requisitioning you a special pair of pants. They’re covered in a Kevlar blend and soaked for over two weeks in a solution of minced garlic.”

“Just what I always wanted,” I said. “Thanks.”

“They might not smell nice, but when you’re knee deep in the undead, you’ll thank me.”

Allorah continued dashing around her office, gathering bits of equipment that were either silver, pointy, or garlicy… sometimes all three. The woman needed to slow down. “Putting those on rush order, are you?” I asked.

“I will,” she said, “but right now I’m seeing if I have anything you might fit into.”

“I doubt that,” I said.

The female Enchancellor kept at her search.

I walked over to her, grabbing her wrist to stop her. “Listen, Allorah, calm down. Why are you in such a rush?”

She stopped and looked at me like I had slapped her. “Why the hell aren’t you? Didn’t you hear?”

I shook my head. “Hear what?”

Allorah sighed, then leaned back against one of the lab tables behind her. “Calls have been coming in to Dave Davidson down at the Mayor’s Office of Plausible Deniability all last night and early this morning before sunrise. There’s more than one of those creatures that attacked you and they keep popping up, centralized in Midtown. We need to get geared up and get out there.”

Shit. I hoped that Brandon and his people would make good on their word to wrangle the escapees, but they certainly weren’t running around in the light of day to find them. Allorah was pumped up by the news coming in, somewhere between bloodthirsty and excited, running to and fro. It was a scary combo and I needed her to be reasonable if I was going to try to pass my sample off to the more scientific-minded part of her.

“Hold on,” I said. “Let’s talk about this for a second.”

“We don’t have a second,” she said. “You think the other Enchancellors are moving on this yet? Not a chance. It’s up to us.”

“Maybe we should let cooler heads prevail while we gather more intel,” I said. “It’s daylight, after all.”

Allorah wasn’t having it. She grabbed my arm and dragged me to the far end of her office where piles of folders and papers were spread out across a massive wooden desk. She was going a mile a minute now.

“Ever vigilant are the eyes of justice,” she said and started sorting through several folders.

“Then why is she always blindfolded in statues?” I asked.

Allorah gave me a look that could kill. “Shush. You’re friends with Godfrey down in the Gauntlet, yes?”

I nodded.

“I asked for his assistance in helping me research a few things,” she said. “I was impressed to hear that you had already taken the initiative concerning vampires with him.”

I tensed. I hadn’t really meant for that bit to become public knowledge, but I hadn’t sworn Godfrey to secrecy on it, now, had I?

“He has several archival projects allocated for development down there. One of them has to do with implementing a cross-reference system of all matters vampiric in the computers.”

“Allorah,” I said, but she didn’t hear me. I grabbed her by both of her arms and spun her toward me. I wasn’t sure what the policy was on manhandling an Enchancellor, but I needed her to pay attention. “Allorah. Look, that’s great, but I need you to do me a favor.”

Something in my desperate look must have gotten to her. Her eyes sharpened, a little calm coming to her face. “Okay,” she said in earnest. “Shoot.”

I reached into the satchel and pulled out the sample Brandon’s people had given me. “Listen, I forgot I had this sample I took when I got attacked.”

Allorah looked a little pissed. “Didn’t I tell you that you were supposed to turn in all the evidence when I asked you for your ruined clothes from the attack?”

“I know, I know,” I said, taking her dressing-down. “I forgot. You know I’m swamped with casework… but I need you to analyze this.”

Allorah was already shaking her head. “I’ve already swabbed all your clothes and analyzed what I got off of them,” she said.

“But this,” I said. “This is special.”

“Why?” Allorah said, skepticism creeping into her voice.

It was now or never. I had to sell it. “When that creature had me trapped on the floor, crushed under it… this came out of a gland on the side of its throat. I think it might be some kind of venom, you know, like a poison sac.” I was bluffing. I had no idea if the damned creature even had a gland or sac like that, but I was also hoping Allorah had no idea either.

She took the vial from me and examined it, enraptured, twisting it around as she held it up to the light. She brushed past me and walked back over toward the laboratory end of the room. She set the vial in a rack of others next to a microscope. Already she was pulling on gloves, prepping a slide, and readying an eyedropper to take a sample.

“Your level of focus borders on really creepy when it comes to vampires,” I said. I slowly crossed the room as she pressed the specimen between two plates of glass and slid them under the microscope.

“What else do I have?” she said, her voice sounding distant as she concentrated, but there was a much darker and more bitter undertone to her words than I was used to seeing on her.

I put one of my hands on her shoulder. “What happened to you?” I asked, not really expecting an answer given how focused she was on the slide.

Allorah pulled back from the microscope, scooped her hair out of the way, and lifted the silver necklace she always wore from around her neck. On the end of it was palm-sized circle of polished silver filled with etched concentric circles. She held it out to me. I opened my hand and let the whole necklace run down into it.