Psalm of Vampires: Chapter 25
Longtooth’s Lair
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We arrived in the middle of a busy thoroughfare along the Bay. Horns blared at us as we stood in the middle of traffic on one side of a wide median divided by streetcar tracks. A few pedestrians milled about the median, but hundreds more hustled or loped or jogged along on a wide sidewalk rimming the bay side of the boulevard. This was the only part of San Francisco Moreland and I had both been to that we could think of.
We had visited San Francisco together the previous century when a local vampire house was on the verge of being discovered during the Second World War. The House of Agru had perched themselves along the waterfront in a building on Pier 5. During the war, the U.S. Maritime Service Enrolling Office came calling to gain the space for itself, forcing the Agru to scramble out of the area. Moreland, Charly, and I arrived to help the Agru with their move by keeping several federal officers and personnel distracted. To distract them, we sometimes fed on them, which affected their short-term memory, but other times we challenged their notions of reality, which surely led to a few ghost stories at local watering holes shared by confused personnel.
We weren’t the only ones helping the Agru. The Longtooth clan assisted in less civilized ways, resulting in more than ghost stories. The U.S. Master-at-Arms rating, which was a naval military police force, was forced to investigate several disappearances in the area when the Longtooth clan began to feast on the influx of naval personnel in the area. The Longtooth were not feeders who cared much about the impact of a long feed. For them, a protracted slow death during a feed might be cause for celebration. This kept the naval police busy.
It wasn’t a coincidence, then, that Philip identified the location of Longtooth in the same building at Pier 5 that once housed the Agru. Moreland and I couldn’t flash there, however, because Moreland said she had never been in the building or its former space. She had haunted the periphery and local construction sites that the U.S. Navy had established to gear up for war. So we settled on the area where an old freight line had once run along the shoreline.
When Moreland and I last alighted in San Francisco, The Embarcadero, the boulevard where we now found ourselves, wasn’t a palm-lined tourist magnet, but instead a set of unused freight tracks on space that now serviced a streetcar line. The autos whizzing by were unforgiving as we stood in the middle of the northbound lanes.
Moreland and I were fast enough to dash to the median, but we weren’t keen on the idea of carrying Owens and Garrison as we did so, and neither were they. Owens finally took matters into his own hands by displaying his badge and gun. The traffic halted as the first cars to see him slammed their brakes and nearly created a massive fender-bender. It must have looked strange for drivers to see a guy with a police badge waving a semiautomatic DSA SA58 Tactical Pistol at them, but they weren’t in much of a position to question Owens’ authority.
We crossed the street to the median and looked at our phones. Pier 5 was nearby. We walked along the median to the next intersection, which we crossed to get to the waterfront. Moreland and I had longer, faster strides than Owens and Garrison, especially Garrison, and when we reached the stucco building on Pier 5, the two were lagging far behind.
“You two would lose a foot race to a barstool,” I said when they caught up. Garrison was huffing and puffing.
According to Philip’s software, Longtooth was still there. Philip texted me using the Telegram channel we all shared, saying, “Maybe I’m doing something wrong, but if the GPS is working right, he hasn’t moved from this location in two days. I don’t mean from the building. I mean from the same location within the building.”
That was strange. I shared my information with the others. “Do we just barge in?” asked Garrison.
“I think so,” I said. “Guns drawn.” I looked at Moreland. “Sword brandished.” Moreland was wearing her warrior outfit, but it was covered with a long trench coat. It was an odd combination, but San Francisco, despite a concerted gentrification effort to wipe them out, still had enough oddball citizens that nobody would have thought much of it.
My semi-automatic was secured in a shoulder holster, the same kind Owens and Garrison wore. I reached for it as we approached the building, which was close enough to the wide sidewalk full of pedestrians that we needed to be careful about causing a big scene. I didn’t check with Philip to see if the software for the nanobots was “armed,” for lack of a better word. I trusted him on this. The plan was to use the nanobots to disarm any Wurdulacs that were in the building, then take Longtooth out with our sidearms.
Philip had learned that the building had been cleared out during the most recent pandemic. It had previously been occupied by architectural and advertising firms during better years. A law firm was still listed at the building, but when Philip tried to contact it, the phone number was disconnected. So, as far as we knew, Longtooth and whoever was with him were the building’s only occupants. I envisioned him on a throne surrounded by a vampire harem.
The rectangular building was fronted by a large archway with two brown metal-framed glass doors that led to a hallway flanked by offices on each side. San Francisco is known for its micro-climates. It might be foggy in one part of the city, and sunny in other parts at the same moment. That’s not quantum mechanics. It’s just San Francisco. It was sunny along the Embarcadero, so the long wooden pier along Pier 7 on the other side of the building leading to San Francisco Bay was brimming with pedestrians. Seagulls squawked as we approached the big glass doors of the archway.
The doors were locked, so I broke the glass with my fist and reached around to turn the lock from inside. “Ouch,” I said as my knuckles reacted to the broken glass. I pulled a piece out of the back of my hand, which healed instantly thanks to my recent feeding. I tossed the shard aside as we walked in.
“Might have been easier to bust through the garage,” said Owens, referring to a large garage door on the south end of the long building.
The building seemed too quiet. The hallway was empty other than a water rat scurrying across the floor on the far end of the hall. Both sides of the hallway showed darkened offices that I remembered as large bulkhead rooms. We didn’t see any security cameras, outside or inside, or domed brown plastic that would have hidden one. That didn’t mean there weren’t any.
Philip’s location software told us that Longtooth was in one of the offices on the south side of the building, so we turned right to the first one we saw. I called Philip. “First one,” he said into my earbuds. “I’ll keep the video call alive,” he added, “But let’s talk by text unless it’s an emergency. It’s quieter.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged with a mocking whisper.
The office door was gone, replaced by boards and metal struts, which Moreland and I broke apart, causing the sound of falling metal and wood to echo through the hallway.
“Such stealth,” said Owens sarcastically.
“Shish,” I said.
Beyond the now broken door area was black air filled with the smell of old furniture and mildew. Moreland and I could see our surroundings, but Owens and Garrison would have been unable to. A drip echoed repetitively somewhere beyond our field of vision. Large crates filled the room. No sign of life at all. We pushed aside crates and pallets full of smaller crates and boxes. The room got dustier and older smelling the further we made our way through. I put a hand up to command everyone to stop moving.
I wanted to listen for signs of life. If this was a trap, it was a good one. I couldn’t hear a thing except for another animal scooting across the floor. I texted Philip. “We don’t see anything here. It’s empty.”
Philip took a moment to respond. “Maybe the transponder isn’t a person, or Longtooth, but a thing.” If that meant we’d have to dig through all these crates, I was going back to Singapore.
“I’m bouncing the signal off your phone,” Philip texted. “I can give you precise directions that way.”
“Okay,” I replied by text. After a tense few moments of silence, I whispered into the phone, “Today you’re doing this? Or tomorrow?”
Philip responded with a crap emoji. Then a middle finger emoji. A minute later, he sent another text. The room was so eerily quiet that it seemed impossible for something bad not to happen. “About twenty feet straight ahead, then to your right,” he texted.
One of the detectives behind us ran into something that made a loud noise as it toppled over. A crate on top of a crate on top of a crate, I guessed. “Shit,” Garrison said weakly.
“Now,” said Philip through the text app, “About ten feet to your right.” To our right was a huge crate made of wood and metal. The metal looked thick, but it was hard to tell. Vampire night vision is better than human, but everything looks red and dark, so it’s hard to see details well. When we reached the crate, Philip texted, “That should be it.”
Moreland knocked on the metal. It wasn’t as thick as it appeared. We broke apart the wood that framed the crate. The metal was sealed with hundreds of machine screws. “Fuck this,” Moreland said. She unsheathed her sword and hacked away at the metal, which eventually gave way. Either she was even stronger than I thought, or that sword was made from magical properties. “This crate is just thick aluminum,” she said as if in reaction to my thoughts.
When we peeled open the aluminum at a tear created by Moreland’s sword, we saw a figure sitting on a stool with its hands possibly tied behind its back. Owens flashed the light from his phone at the seated figure. It was Longtooth. He was just sitting there with a dumb look on his face: Expressionless, as far as I could tell through the camouflage of oversized round darkened glasses rimmed with jewels. His mouth was hung open, his body still. Owens unholstered his assault pistol and pointed it at the silent Longtooth.
I pushed Owens’ gun hand down. “Not yet,” I said. Owens gave me a dirty look but didn’t resist as his arm fell to his side while he held onto his gun.
“We found him,” I said into the phone to Philip. “He looks comatose. Not moving at all.” Owens kicked Longtooth’s right calf like he was trying to separate it from its knee. Nothing happened. Longtooth’s long-tailed black suit coat, which looked like something a grand pianist would have worn to his last concert, barely moved after Owens struck. Thick gold chains that covered a black silk shirt under the slightly opened suitcoat also had no reaction.
“Tell him to wake up,” said Philip.
“What do you mean, tell him to wake up?” I asked.
“Don’t you even,” said Owens.
“And then bring him to me,” Philip added. I would have liked it if he answered my first question.
“Just so you know,” I added, noticing that Owen’s head was about to explode, “you’re on speaker.” I had ditched the earbuds because they were interfering with my ability to hear what was happening in the room.
“Okay,” said Philip, not understanding why that might matter. “Just get him back here. I think I know what might be happening.”
“Sorry, Owens,” I said. Then I announced, “Wake up, Longtooth.” I was surprised Owens didn’t mow me down with his DSA. I was pretty sure he wanted to. But it didn’t matter because nothing happened. Longtooth continued to sit, perfectly straight, I should add, with no reaction. “Nothing’s happening, Philip.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said. I guess the software wasn’t “armed” after all, because he then quickly said, “Try again.”
Before I could, though, loud shrieks burst out of the bulkhead above, splitting it apart into a thousand pieces of wood and mortar as two Wurdulacs barreled toward us.
They both took aim at Garrison, maybe because he was straggling from the rest of us a bit. He fired his DSA at one of them, which went down, but the other covered Garrison with its wingspan. I couldn’t see what was happening to Garrison. I did what I did when I faced Longtooth earlier by flashing to the top of the Wurdulac’s shoulders. The Wurdulac tried to take off in flight inside the building. Apparently, their sense of physics isn’t great, because there was no way it could fly with me on its shoulders.
We crashed into a pallet stacked with boxes. I held its neck like I was holding onto a light pole in a hurricane, then slashed at it with my karambit. I could hear Philip mumbling something as I saw Moreland approach with her sword. She nearly took me out with it as she plunged it into the Wurdulac’s neck. I jumped off, fell to the ground, rolled a bit, then stood up as Moreland took another hack at the neck and rolled its head down a tiny alley between two rows of nearby pallets like she was bowling for a strike.
More screeching, this time from the doorway we had entered earlier. The high-pitched sound was nearly splitting my eardrums apart. Again, Philip was mumbling something through the phone, but it was incoherent. Then the screeching stopped. “They’re asleep,” he said to me.
With the Wurdulacs now disposed of, Philip repeated his earlier instruction to wake up Longtooth, adding, “But say his name like you did the first time so you don’t wake the others up. I’ve put any other Wurdulac that might be there asleep.”
I was curious: “Why can’t you do that?” I asked. I wondered because, after all, he was able to put the Wurdulacs in the room asleep.
“You need to say his name. I’m not sure how to do that programmatically. I don’t want to wake the others up,” Philip answered. “If he had been awake, my command would have put him back to sleep. I can’t single any of them out for instructions.”
“Oh,” I replied.
When I did as Philip instructed, Longtooth’s eyes opened wide. “Atticus! What a pleasant surprise,” he said in his English accent. It was the more aristocratic version this time, not his Cockney accent. “Oh, I see you brought your little friend. Oh my, and another little friend. And Moreland. Well, this is an interesting development. I would ask how you found me, but I do believe I already know.”
He jumped off his seat, triggering a reaction from Owens. Aiming his DSA at Longtooth, Owens looked at me. I shook my head.
“Oh, stop, you silly little man,” said Longtooth. “I have no intention of hurting you. Quick question, Atticus, and then you’ll be on your way, I presume. You have not encountered a couple of Battue whilst galivanting through these fine halls, have you?”
“A Battue?”
“Indeed. Or two. They rarely travel alone, after all. In pairs, most frequently.”
“No, no Battue.”
Longtooth sniffed the air. “No, they appear to have dashed off somewhere. I suspect, though, that they may be lurking somewhere. Perhaps the bulkhead of this very building.”
“You can smell a Battue?” I asked. I had never been able to detect the scent of a vampire.
“I can smell the difference between a room with a hundred flies, and one with ninety-nine,” he answered proudly.
“Why would the Battue be here?” I asked.
“Oh, you really are quite removed from the facts on the ground, aren’t you, Atticus? I’m afraid you don’t have your uncle’s military mind. Well then. You must be informed, so I shall try to keep this brief. The Battue, to keep things simple, have developed a form of mind control through the genetic code. It’s all quite unsavory, even for my tastes.”
“We thought that was you,” I said.
“Well, in a sense, it was. They do use me as a conduit. A hub, as it were. But they control me, as well. Hmm. Well, slight correction. They did until your arrival.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Owens.
Longtooth raised one eyebrow. “As much as it delighted me to see my fork thrust into the back of your hand, I’m afraid I cannot claim credit for such a divine inspiration.”
“Go on,” I said, waiting for more.
“There’s nothing more to say. Other than you best leave while you can. Before the switch turns back on, as it were,” said Longtooth.
“We’ve got the damn switch,” I said. “If you’re not part of this, why are you being so damn coy?”
“Ah,” said Longtooth. “Perhaps I cannot know whose side you are on? Did you not just now release me from my curse? With your newly found switch? It is no longer Longtooth in a box, now, is it? That changed with your arrival.”
I showed him my phone. “I have a guy,” I said. Longtooth said nothing. Just looked at me. “He reverse-engineered it.”
“How quaint,” said Longtooth. “A human?”
“Yes, what difference does that make?” I asked.
“Oh, I suppose not much. Not now. And you claim that this human is, what, precisely? Capable of controlling me?”
“Yeah, ‘fraid so,” I said.
“That’s an amusing story,” he said. “What I cannot determine is why you’d team up with this,” he looked at Owens, “whatever he is, and the Battue. To what end?”
“We’re not teaming up with the Battue,” I said. I tapped the phone to resume my voice chat with Philip. “Philip, can you hear us?” I tapped the speaker button.
“I can hear you,” said Philip’s voice.
“That’s our guy,” I said to Longtooth, pointing to my phone. “Now, Longtooth, please sing America the Beautiful.”
Longtooth began:
“O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties…”
“Stop,” I said. “Let’s leave it at the vampire mountain part.” I looked at Owens. “I bet you never knew that song was written by a vampire, did you, champ?”
I had missed Owens’ eyerolls because it had been a while. I got one.
Longtooth looked chagrined for the first time in, well, ever. “Proves nothing. Accentuates my concerns, in fact,” he said.
“What about the rest of your clan?” I asked Longtooth. “Are they under control, too?”
“Well, I imagine you know the answer to that, but yes, to humor you, I’ll confirm.”
“Philip, is your trick only good for Longtooth here? Or for all of them?” I asked.
Philip answered, “If they were asleep or something, they would have woken up when you sent your command. They have also all sung the first three lines of God Bless America somewhere. Wherever they are. Would love to have seen that. There must not be any Longtooth there. Only those Wurdulac things.” I guessed again that Wurdulac didn’t sing.
“Wait, Philip,” I said. “I hate to interrupt our proceedings, but this is important. How the hell do you know about the song America the Beautiful?”
“My great-grandfather,” he said, “Used to play the song on an old LP player,” said Philip. “My grandfather told me about it. Before Singapore became a rich country, he said. His dad, he wanted to emigrate to America for the longest time. Then my dad got a version sung by Ray Charles.”
“Hmm,” said Longtooth. “Perhaps your story is plausible. The Battue did cage me rather hurriedly. They commanded me to remain perfectly still. This includes everything. No blinking of eyes, or any other movement at all. This, I am somewhat embarrassed to admit, became a common occurrence whenever a task they commanded was complete. Sometimes, their instructions were quite complex and involved, such as when they commanded me to put a tracker on your tiny girlfriend in that dreadful mountain town and to train substantial flocks of Wurdulac through the same method as I was being manipulated. It’s all rather ghastly, don’t you think?”
I was beginning to believe him. But I had never much trusted Longtooth in the best of times. It was more difficult now than ever. I told him what was happening in Singapore. I then showed him some videos on my phone while giving him a brief synopsis of the attack by the Goa vampires.
“Oh my, girls really do just want to have fun,” he said with amusement. “Well. I guess the secret is out again, isn’t it, Atticus?”
“The secret?” asked Garrison, his first words in a while.
“Yes,” said Longtooth, “the existence of vampires has been securely tucked away into mythology and fiction until now, but we were quite the known entity for hundreds of years. Thousands, in fact.”
Garrison looked at Owens, who nodded affirmatively.
“And now, alas, here we are again. Your little companion’s grandfather was a highly accomplished persecutor of my kind, even when it was all supposed to be a myth,” Longtooth hissed. The fact that Longtooth knew this probably meant that the fork in the back of the hand was destiny, whether Longtooth had been under mind control or not.
“Not all vampires get hunted,” said Owens, looking at me. “And it wasn’t just my grandfather.” He slapped the DSA with one hand.
“Well, you do understand,” said Longtooth to me, ignoring Owens, “That the Mouras Encantadas maintained substantial breeding grounds for a very long time. Those breeding grounds, where they maintained entire villages of humans for feeding purposes, were disbanded for fear of discovery. Perhaps they are lashing out.”
“I am pretty sure you don’t believe that,” I countered.
Longtooth shrugged. “Perhaps not. You say that this began after your friend, who has so lovingly been turned by Moreland here, screwed up and created a bad batch of genes?”
“He didn’t screw up!” Philip’s muffled voice said from my phone’s speaker.
“My young friend,” said Longtooth. “Have you considered sending a command to the Mouras Encantadas to simply halt their activities?”
“Oh, shit,” I said.
“This gene,” said Longtooth, “triggers a set of routines to develop within the body at the atomic level. It is quite a sophisticated scientific achievement, if you don’t mind me saying so. The simple act of one Mouras Encantadas biting another passes the gene along, but it also triggers the growth of the nanobot, which is quite biological in nature.”
“Philip?” I said.
“He’s somewhat correct,” said Philip. “It’s microcircuitry at the molecular level. It’s why I can’t fully understand it.”
“Further,” Longtooth said, pointing one long finger up, “the nanobots are pre-programmed as soon as they are, shall we say, born. The command sequences are built in. However, without an initial command, well, I presume you did not issue one when you manipulated the Mouras Encantadas genes. This resulted in mayhem. An unpredictable mayhem, but mayhem it was. All you need to do is tell them to stop feeding, and they shall. You may wish to add, ‘stop killing,’ as well, unless you enjoy watching them partake in the sport as much as I do.” He smiled savagely at Owens when he said that. Overall, though, I thought they were getting along much better.
“Philip? I said again.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m on it,” he replied. “Inputting the commands on the laptop now. I’m going to send them home, too, unless you’re still crushing on one of them,” he said. His humor was returning. This was a good thing.
“The results should be instantaneous,” said Longtooth. “Check your phones. Your grotesque internet should soon be filled with its usual trash, along with reports of silenced Mouras Encantadas.”
“Well, I’ll be a son of a fucking bitch,” said Owens, looking at his phone. He later explained that he had queued up a live feed from the Singapore Police Force before we arrived in San Francisco. “The cam feed has resumed on the SPF Facebook page,” he said. “They blacked it out ‘til now. Check it out.” He shoved his phone’s screen near my face.
The feed showed police shooting at fleeing Mouras Encantadas. Even through the phone’s tiny speakers, I could hear the echoing songs of fear that the Mouras Encantadas were leaving in their wake. The hunters immediately became the hunted. And they couldn’t fight back because Philip told them not to.
The Facebook feed displayed a new headline from the SPF: “Victory against the alien attack shall soon be ours.”
“Aliens,” I said. “Huh.”
“Works for me,” said Owens. “For now.”
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