“We have to check it out.”
THE BROKEN RADIO
WAS PLAYING SUICIDE
Billy DeFeo & Mia Gillespie
When he pulled into the garage he saw her sitting outside the building, waiting, and when he got up to the lobby via the elevator that led up from the underground parking level he punched the button to let her in through the front door. She had her bike with her, and she wheeled it along at her side, jogging a little to catch up with him. His legs were longer and his stride was greater; he was in a rush, barely listening as she told him she’d been waiting for more than an hour.
“Where have you been? You said you’d be here at nine.”
It was gone ten? Billy hadn’t realised. The non-committal sound he made in the back of his throat didn’t help Mia’s mood in the slightest, he sensed, and he knew she scowling at him; he could feel her eyes boring holes into his back as they went up the stairs. He took the steps two or three at a time, and she carried her bike with more ease than a woman who looked as young and lacking in physical strength as she did to casual observers. When they reached his floor he didn’t stop, just kept going, his black bag slung over his back and one shoulder, the weight supported easily.
“Jesus, Billy, slow down.”
He didn’t, just kept going, shoving his key into his lock with hands that were, he realised, beginning to shake. When the door was open he pushed through and left it open for Mia to follow. Her bike ended up leant against the wall in the entrance hall and she followed him, asking, “What the hell’s going on?”
“Come here.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Just come look.” Billy pulled his bag from over his head, realising as he did so that he had all but snapped the words at Mia, who now stood in the middle of the living room looking baffled and taken aback. Pausing for only a moment, Billy shook his head, a wordless apology, and then jerked it towards the spare bedroom. Come on, the motion said, and without another word he was pushing through that door as well. When he had moved in it had been a second bedroom but it had quickly and easily been converted to a studio of sorts, a place for him to work from home without having to rent space in some big building where others might look over his shoulder or snoop through his stuff. He heard Mia follow him into the room scattered with moviemaking paraphernalia and equipment and without explanation he set the bag he’d been carrying down on the table in the middle of the room, unzipping it briskly and pulling out the camera he had been using less than an hour ago. He carried it to a desk at the side of the room, brought the computer out of standby, and sat down, already working on connecting the camera.
“Billy, would you just tell me-”
“Wait,” he told her. Billy didn’t know how to explain it, how exactly to tell her what he wanted to show her- no, needed to show her. The computer had already recognised the device connected and he got to work on opening up the raw files. His free hand was close to his mouth, the tip of his thumb between his teeth as he shook his head, still trying to process what he had seen for himself. “Okay, hang on,” he mumbled, skipping through one of the video files; the footage he had recorded played at double the normal speed as he searched for the right moment, the city in the background of the shots darkening visibly. “Okay,” he said again, taking a breath and leaning back. “Here.”
He realised then he hadn’t turned on any lights in his apartment as he’d come in. Mia hadn’t switched them on either. He sat in the dark with the she-wolf standing, confused, at his side. “Just watch,” he told her, pointing at the screen before playing the video at regular speed. “In the background, behind these guys here.” He pointed again just in case she didn’t realise where he meant, and then fell quiet.
The sound was muffled, a pair of headphones still connected to the speaker port from the night before, but it didn’t matter. Mia didn’t need to hear anything. She just needed to see. The scene was unremarkable in and of itself, something Billy had already been considering cutting out of the piece completely, unnecessary filler really, but without meaning to he had caught something unexpected in the background while he’d been recording.
“There,” he said. “Did you see it?”
“What?”
Billy cut off the frustrated sigh before it could really take form and skipped the video back. “Here, to the right of these guys. Back by this wall, in this pocket of shadow.”
The video played again.
Mia made a small sound, a mixture of confusion and suspicion. “What is that?” She leaned closer, one hand on the back of his chair with the other on the edge of the desk. “Can you magnify this or what? It’s too small.”
Billy did as she asked. The quality wasn’t nearly as good, but it wasn’t clarity they were looking for. He enlarged the area he had told her to look at, and played it again. The men in the foreground of the shot were just blurs now, unfocused movement to one side of the screen, leaving the majority of the computer display to be taken up by the shadowed wall. Several seconds in, out of nowhere, came a flash of red. A blur of movement entirely different from that of the magnified movement of the men Billy had actually been recording.
Hitting the pause button after skipping it back to the exact moment when the red flashed in the background, Billy sat back in his seat. He felt Mia’s hand but she didn’t move her fingers and he didn’t sit forward again. His dark eyes focused on the computer screen, he said, “What do you see?”
“Red,” Mia said, shaking her head, before leaning in and getting a closer look. “It’s hard to tell, but it looks like two points. Here,” she pointed, “and here.” Moving her finger, she pointed again.
Billy nodded. “That’s what I thought.” It had been hard to tell playing it back on the camera, but he’d suspected the same thing.
Mia turned her face down and back towards his. “Eyes?” She sounded sceptical. When Billy shrugged, she did the same. “I mean, it’s not that strange.” She straightened and turned enough to prop herself against the edge of the desk so that she was facing him. The room was lit only by the computer screen and the faint glow of the streetlamps outside. “There are vampires in LA. They’re always skulking around, wherever you go.”
Billy conceded that with a nod, but he leaned forward to say, “That’s what I thought, but they usually stick close to the centre of the city, I thought.” Billy had been on the outskirts, filming away from the big buildings and the hustle and bustle of busy city life. “If vampires hung around out there on a regular basis, don’t you think we’d have heard about that?” From Skid or any of his gang. Isabel would have told them about it, surely, or at the very least eliminated the threat herself.
Mia was chewing the inside of her bottom lip, her eyes cast off to one side, deep in thought. Scrunching her face up a little, she shook her head, trying to make sense of it. Billy knew he had a point, and the she-wolf perched against his desk had to know it too. “Okay,” she said at last, “so what do we do about it?” Her gaze was back on Billy now. “One vampire isn’t anything to get all fired up about.”
“One vampire, no,” Billy admitted, and then he was reaching out for the computer’s mouse again, pressing play. Almost a full minute passed after the initial flash of red, and then he lifted his finger to the screen just as another set of twin flashes appeared. And another. “What about three?”
Mia’s voice was a low murmur of disbelief as she twisted around against the desk to get a closer look; “Jesus.” She turned her eyes on Billy. “Three?”
“Three.” Billy hadn’t wanted to believe it at first but he had played it back several times before letting himself react. The first thing he had felt was uncertainty. That had quickly been followed by a deeply-rooted sense of discomfort, and then concern. Underneath all of that was the first thread of fear, which was already beginning to grow even as he sat in the safety of his own apartment with the one person he trusted more than anyone else in the world. The one person he could trust to watch this footage and see the same thing he saw.
“We have to check it out.”
“Or tell someone.”
Mia tilted her head first one way and then the other. “But what if it turns out to be nothing?” she asked. “You really want to call in the cavalry for a false alarm?” Her brows lifted a little. “We should take a look around, see if we can’t find something concrete.”
Something concrete. Billy looked back at the screen and drew in a deep breath, thinking about what he had seen, what he had caught on film. Three twin flashes of red, what looked suspiciously like eyes. Vampire eyes. Something concrete, Mia had said. As Billy stared at the screen he found himself admitting that the evidence he had recorded was shaky at best. She was right. It couldn’t hurt to be sure. So he nodded his head, saying as he did so, “All right.” One more glance at the screen sealed his conviction and he sat up straighter. “All right. Let’s go check it out.”
The traffic had lightened up and it hadn’t taken them long to drive back to the location Billy had been using to film the majority of his new project for the past week. The outskirts of a city like Los Angeles were fascinating if you knew what to look for; the lighting and the composition were naturally perfect so much of the time that Billy rarely needed to play around with shots after the fact. It wasn’t that he was lazy about the process after the initial filming was done, but he had never much cared for films that had been tweaked and manipulated too much in post-production, and nobody liked a hypocrite.
When he’d gotten close to the place, an old park that hadn’t been used for more than twenty years, most of its equipment rusted and broken now, he had switched off the bus’ headlights. He’d parked far enough away that even supernaturals would have strained to hear the engine, even that of an old VW, and if they had heard it, there were enough people who randomly came out here to smoke or drink or do anything and everything in between that they shouldn’t think anything of it.
Mia took the lead as soon as they were out of the bus and the doors had been locked. Billy followed without a word of complaint, keeping his eyes open and his other senses on the alert as they moved. Their footfalls were quiet and neither of them spoke as they moved along. Billy assumed Mia was following his scent trail from earlier in the evening to find the location, and when they reached the scene she stopped in the exact spot he had been stood for the majority of the filming itself. Billy almost smiled at that, catching himself at the last moment when he cast his gaze over to the point where the flashes had been caught by the camera. Soundlessly, he lifted a hand and pointed, but Mia had already found the spot for herself, and after a glance back over her shoulder at him, she set off. Again, he followed her.
As they approached the wall they slowed their pace, relying on scent more than anything else to tell them what they had already suspected. Even for those wolves lucky enough to have had little contact with vampires, the smell was unmistakable, cloying and heavy with the undercurrent of death. Billy almost grimaced. For a moment he thought he saw Mia’s eyes flash, but the moment passed so quickly that he couldn’t be sure. It was dark here so close to the wall, the shadows pressed in on all sides, and Billy’s discomfort escalated. The closer they had gotten to the location, the worse it had become, and now that they were here he was starting to second-guess their choice to come all the way out here to investigate.
Instead of talking and drawing unwanted attention their way, he touched his hand lightly to Mia’s arm. She turned her head to look back at him, met his gaze and held it, not saying a word and not moving a muscle. They were doing this, she was saying without even needing to open her mouth, there was no turning back now.
Billy looked into her eyes and rediscovered his own conviction. Mia wanted to see this through, and he should do the same. This was his discovery after all, and just because he didn’t go chasing trouble around the city that didn’t mean he was a coward. Taking a quiet deep breath, he nodded his head. Okay, he told her soundlessly. They would keep going.
Mia found a scent trail and followed it, keeping her footfalls light and quiet, one hand occasionally reaching out to brush against the wall as if for reassurance, and Billy glanced frequently back over his shoulder to check they were alone. Occasionally he glanced up, to where the wall reached its peak somewhere high over their heads, keeping himself always aware of Mia’s position. The scent of vampires -- the stench of them, really -- grew stronger as they pressed on, further and further into the darkness, until finally Mia drew to a stop long enough to feel out a handle against the wall. A door.
She glanced up at him, met his eyes long enough to gauge his reluctance, or lack thereof, and then made to open the door. Billy reached out and stopped her at the last moment, pointing further along the wall and up over their heads. Mia followed his hand, and he saw her smile in the darkness. A window. Approvingly, she looked back at him.
Boosting Mia up was unnecessary, she was a wolf and therefore capable of feats of great agility all by herself, but it made Billy feel better to be useful. Once she was up and inside the window, which opened outward at an angle, she reached down and returned the favour, pulling him upwards after he jumped up and caught her downward stretched hand. Thankfully, the frame of the window barely rattled as they worked their way inside the building. Maybe it had been a factory once upon a time, perhaps an office building, it was almost impossible to tell now, all the furniture broken apart or taken away, the surfaces all covered in thick dust that smothered old scents like a heavy blanket.
Billy made sure the window didn’t close all the way, using an old piece of wood -- the remains of a desk or a chair, perhaps, from the building’s heyday -- to wedge it open enough that there was no sound. Only when he was certain it wouldn’t fall did he join Mia in the middle of the room. Once again, effortlessly and as if this had all been thoroughly planned out in advance, they communicated without words and with very little in the way of body language. Mia took the lead once more, this time because of her shorter stature; Billy could see what was happening ahead of her, giving them a higher chance of spotting danger before it could get too close, and the she-wolf was lighter and quicker as a general rule.
The room opened out onto a kind of walkway, and it was at this early stage in their investigation that they hesitated, both coming to a silent stop at the same moment, gazing out into the pool of darkness beyond a sheer drop into god only knew what kind of space below. If there were vampires here, they might be just beneath that walkway, right under their feet. Just because they hadn’t heard any kind of movement yet, that didn’t mean they were in the clear, and they had to be careful.
They glanced at one another again. To press on or go back. Billy suspected Mia, in that moment, was as torn as he was. There was no telling what might happen. Even if there were only three vampires here, neither of them was particularly old, or especially skilled in combat. Wolves didn’t need training in order to fight to survive, that was true, it was instinctual and came as naturally to their kind as breathing in a life or death situation, but when it came to actual finesse and proficiency? Billy knew he didn’t have what it took to overpower a vampire if they were trained and of any kind of considerable age and experience. He had always suspected that Mia had had more training than him, but she wasn’t a fighter, not like some of the wolves they knew who could hold their own against multiple creatures like the ones they might face here tonight.
If they were cornered? Billy wasn’t confident they could come out on top.
But they had come this far, and now that they were inside and through that first door, the stench was almost unbearable. It was so thick, it all but turned his stomach, almost triggering a built in flight reflex that he found himself really working to overcome. One glance at Mia told him she was feeling it as well. She looked tightly wound, like a spring coiled and ready to release at any moment, barely even seeming to breathe for the tension that had flooded her frame. Billy’s muscles were already aching, he felt so anxious.
And then, as one, they were moving onward instead of turning back. It was a bad idea, a terrible one really, every fibre of Billy’s being was practically screaming at him to turn, go back, get out before it was too late, but something else, something he couldn’t even begin to label or put his finger on, let alone understand, told him to keep going. See this through to the end.
There was a gangway leading over the centre of the room. A factory, it had to be, or at least it had been once upon a time, and Billy could almost imagine the sounds it had once made, the voices of the workers drifting back and forth and the machinery churning and grinding. What had been manufactured here? Why had it closed down? When?
Something moved behind him. Billy turned to look and saw the red points in the darkness. His hand touched Mia’s back as his breath caught in his throat, and immediately she was moving, her hair whipping around her face and neck as she sprang into action. Billy was hot on her heels as she started to dash across the gangway, intending to get ahead of the creature that had silently crept up behind them and come so close to attacking. It had almost been close enough to reach out and touch him. The thought chased a shudder up the length of Billy’s spine.
They had barely made it halfway across the grated metal bridge before something swung over the railing and into their path. Mia slammed on the brakes and Billy pulled to a stumbling stop behind her, eyes widening before he turned to look behind them. The first vampire was still there. His breathing had quickened, his heart following right along as it began to hammer inside his chest. “Mia.” He didn’t know what else to say, and even then his voice only came out as a sharp whisper.
“I know.”
There was one unaccounted for.
Lights came blazing to life at the corners of the room, so suddenly and without warning that Billy had to close his eyes and turn his head to keep from being dazed by the glare.
Mia cursed. Her voice was a harsh, tight whisper, the curse vulgar and strangled. Billy opened his eyes and immediately saw why, the bottom of his stomach dropping out at the same instant his knees weakened enough to make him grip the railing at his side. His jaw dropped and his lungs stalled in his chest.
Beneath their feet were vampires, dozens of them, the floor all but littered with their tense, unmoving frames, every pair of eyes turned up towards the two wolves boxed in on the gangway. One of them growled, a single snarl that rippled outward from the source and soon built to a swelling cacophony that filled Billy’s entire being with icy dread.
A coven. It was a coven.
Mia’s fingers brushed over his on the railing and he remembered how to breathe. They were out of options, as poor as their chances were. They would have to try and fight their way out. The packs had to know, they had to be warned, even if it was the last thing they did. They had come here to find out what was going on, and now that they knew it was down to them to spread the word.
It was Mia who moved first, lashing out at the vampire in front of her with a kick that doubled them over and sent them sprawling backwards. In the same instant, Billy threw caution to the wind and turned to throw a punch into the face of the creature at his back.
The snarls built to a deafening roar, and all hell broke loose.