Blueblood 4: Dracula - 20. Aggresive Measures

Sorin looked puzzled. “I said something wrong?”

I grinned at Sorin. “Not at all!” I smiled slapping him lightly on the back. “We, the very few…appreciate good cinema and a good story.” I frowned at Gabriella and my mother. “Sometimes it’s not appreciated by some…less enlightened individuals.”

Stan came in the room but was carrying a tablet he studied as he walked, but had a near blank stare as he was looking at what he was reading.

“Earth to Stan,” Mark said lightly to his partner but looked at Stan’s face. “Is there a problem, Stan?”

Stan looked up as he read. “Huh?” Then he seemed to come around more and aware we were there. “Oh, yes…” he said looking at all of us. “Now, we have another problem.”

“Another problem?” Colin asked. “What new problem is it now?”

“Well, it’s not really a new problem, but a complication.” Stan looked at his tablet. “Buddy and I planted…well…it’s sort of a piggyback program like malware or one of those programs to just ride a message and see what keys you hit and tell it’s source.” He said. “Even though we can’t find where this Vampire Death Squad originates. The messages are flying all around on the World Wide Web.”

“Who’s Buddy?” Sorin asked as he looked up having looked the plastic gun as he marveled at what it was supposed to do. “Vampire Death Squad?”

I patted Sorin. “I’ll explain in a minute.” I said. “What have you found out, Stan?”

Stan was nodding as he read. “The program Buddy and I created attached itself to the last message sent…that broadcast the Vampire Death Squad sent and rode it all over the world. When it arrived at different locations, it left a piece of itself so I could read other messages that are received and sent.” He waved the tablet. “They are referring to ground zero.” He said looking at all of us. “They’re coming here! They think this is ground zero!”

I shook my head. “But this isn’t ground zero,” I said simply. “Vampires originated in the Middle East.”

Stan nodded. “They don’t know that.”

Colin frowned. “If they aren’t already here.” He said softly.

“Who are these people?” Sorin practically bellowed. “Who is coming or already here?”

I gave a quick nod and realized he couldn’t know. “Buddy is our computer. Our brain. He’s not here, but the mainframe back in Manhattan ties in with all our computers, devices, translators…Stan is our…well…he is all things computer. He’s a genius. We broadcast a web broadcast showing Dragon's conversion from vampire back to something more human to ease the other vampires into trusting us. We thought. This group…this Death Squad has four kills under their belts, warning us…through another broadcast that they would kill us!”

“But you’re on the same side!” Sorin then asked simply. “They don’t see you as good guys?”

I shook my head. “They couldn’t know that.”

“Vampire Death Squad?” Sorin said again. “They sound like they could be teenagers…at best…in college.”

Stan nodded appreciatively. “He’s right.” He smiled at Sorin.

“How do you know?” Mom asked Stan.

Stan turned the tablet to my mother. “The language used.” He said simply. “Many are from the United States, but…everyone is using this shorthand now, but almost all of these messages have it.”

“Buddy translates languages,” Shelly said. “Could it just be the translation program shorting it?”

“No. This generation has grown up on LOL and TMI and all that. Abbreviations in language when texting. Even messages of love and hate are abbreviated like 143 means I love you and 182 means I hate you. They don’t have time to write things out. These messages are full of them and some that are just theirs!” Stan explained. “Buddy doesn’t translate those.” He pulled up a message and read it out loud. “TOA 2 GZ 1029 DCWL.”

Sorin looked confused. “What? That’s just numbers and letters.”

Stan pointed at Sorin. “Exactly.” He grinned. “That means time of arrival to ground zero October 29^th, Dracula’s Castle, Wallachia.” He sighed. “I had to work that one out, but almost everyone these days has their emails sent to their phones now. They can receive and respond by phone, but this generation thinks that’s too much typing and don’t even think about punctuation. They created and use these shortcuts.” He shook his tablet. “I think these are what these are.”

Sorin smiled as he got it. “This is like that movie…” he started, “the one with those two boys named Corey something in it…” But his tone was telling me the gravity of this situation was hitting home now as he lowered the serum gun.

“The Lost Boys?” I supplied.

Sorin nodded. “Yes! Lost Boys! This group could be made up of people like in that movie, where they grew up, went to college and now fight vampires on semester breaks!?”

“The really bad part is…these guys are well supplied financially and are using sophisticated hardware.” Stan said. “If anything, I think they’re using college access to computers to do some of these things,” Stan said. “Using Daddy’s money to hunt these vampires and using the computer lab.”

Mark threw his hands up. “So, we have some Poindexters in a computer lab killing vampires while studying Calculus!?”

“Poindexters?” Sorin asked having no clue what Mark meant. “What is that?”

I grinned did a quick search. “Tocilar.” I offered.

Sorin’s eyes now understood. “Oh.” But I saw his face begin to lose more of that happy discovery look.

Colin leaned toward me and looked puzzled. “What’s tocilar?”

“Geek,” I said.

“Oh,” Colin said.

Sorin suddenly thrusting his arms out. “Stop!! Everyone just stop!” He was gathering himself and thinking. “I lost myself a little with all this.” He said handing what looked like a Supersoaker to Mark. “I got caught up in this…fever about vampires, but…I am an enforcer of the law here.” Sorin said a little testily. “This whole…night has been…” he swirled his finger again around his head. “It’s been crazy. I woke up one morning not even a few weeks ago…where I was handed this case and thought…no, I knew you were hiding something. There was an explanation. Rich men from the West are wandering around in the woods that early? A doctor in the group…with an unknown drug. I knew there was more than what I was told. I knew it! I’m thinking about drugs or something I can deal with. A simple crime!” He turned to Colin. “I find out there are vampires! Real vampires and I’ve seen them!” He shook his head. “My mind is still telling me it is a trick, but I can’t figure out how or why.” He looked at the others in the room. “You are almost all vampires here.” He shook his head. “I saw those two…what you call Old Ones and I still have trouble with accepting it, but they were right there! I saw them! There are real vampires and they’ve been here for centuries! Longer in some cases.” He waved at Amasis. “I knew you were hiding what you were doing here, but I never once considered this.” He was starting to get loud. “Well, now, I’m back! I’m the police! This has been amazing, but now there’s another group coming in to kill you!?”

“Wrong, Inspector,” I said. “This group is coming to kill all vampires. Me, Colin, Iilya, Lucian, Gaius…Dragon..!”

Sorin was struggling again as he sat down suddenly. “I have always been this…show me evidence person.” He explained. “I’ve seen people do some horrible things to others and themselves.” He looked at Colin. “You suffered like Dragon did tonight almost every night?”

Colin nodded. “Once the levels were…”

Sorin nodded quickly. “I know…it was shorter, but you did it willingly every night!”

“To try to get rid of this? I’d do it again.” Colin nodded. “George will succeed in finding how to get us free from this venom. I know he will.”

Sorin nodded. “What I’m saying, I was always the Investigator. Show me the evidence. Follow the rules…” he looked up at me, “what your TV shows say by the book sort of investigator.” He threw his hands up. “But there are no laws about how to deal with vampires! Now, I find out there are vampires here to help other vampires out, another group of vampires that want to be Dracula-type of vampire or one in those fiction stories…and now this group of kids that want all vampires to simply die.” He shook his head. “What rule do I follow? I can deputize all of you, but there will be thousands of people here that night! How do I protect them?”

Alex smiled sadly. “You can’t.”

Sorin put his head in his hands as he tried to come up with a solution. “People are going to die?”

“Definitely.” I nodded. “We’re going to try to minimize as many as we can, but there will be deaths.”

“A long time ago, some greedy men decided they knew what was best for us and to hell with the other people and wanted to control the world,” Colin said calmly. “They…over hundreds of years created the creatures like Iustina and Repetate. The Old Ones were sent out in the world to destroy. Now, we’re trying to clean up the mess. I know about five of these things. There was one in England that bit Wayne. He saw another there. Gizmo was the one that Devon met in Germany that was killed. Their numbers have been reduced, but the effects are still ongoing.”

“They’re breaking the law!” Sorin asked. “The laws of nature! Why are they still alive?”

“Because we need to understand them and find out about how to counteract their venom,” I said. “It would be easier to just destroy them, but I think Dragon did a good job keeping them contained as he has. They’re no threat now.”

“As long as they’re in custody,” Sorin said. “But they could get out.”

“We’re trying to deal with a problem, not get rid of it,” Wayne said.

“What can we do?” Sorin asked all of us. “We could broadcast, as you said you did with Dragon, telling people not to come.”

“And not be able to tell them why?” Colin asked.

“We come up with something…we could say there was a terrorist threat.” Sorin offered.

“Which you’ll have to show evidence like you said,” I said. “What threat? By whom? How’d you find out?”

Colin stood next to me. “Why did they choose you to solve what happened to us?” Colin asked Sorin.

Sorin smiled. “Because I have a 94 percent resolution rate. Conviction.” He said trying not to sound too proud. “I get the answer to problems. Drugs, prostitution or murder…I get whoever is responsible. I close cases.”

“That’s great!” I said grinning. “You’re good at what you do.” I walked over to him. “Look, Sorin…this is going to be very bad. That...you have to face.”

Colin came up behind me. “We’re doing everything in our power to make…lessen the losses.”

“We don’t have any guidelines.” Mom said. “We’ll help in any way, however we can.”

“The danger will not be us,” Willie said. “Iilya, Lucian and their followers will be…”

“And this Vampire Death Squad.” I nodded. “We won’t have guns to use on people. The sun gun and serum pellets are our weapons, but we’ll be out there.”

“What are your plans for those two…” he pointed with his thumb over his shoulder. “…Iustina and Repetate?”

Colin nodded. “Well, George wants to take them to Manhattan. He has a lab there that will work better…he says.”

“How are you going to do that?” Sorin asked. “They can’t be out the daytime.”

Colin nodded. “They will be in what the first vampires we’ve transported in, but they will be from the farthest away. We have containers they can travel in that will shield them from sunlight.”

“We’ll move them at night to the container and then put the container on a plane,” I explained.

“This is going to be a busy night coming up,” Willie warned Sorin.

Colin smiled at Sorin. “We’ll be out there with you.” He assured.

Sorin was not in charge of the protection that was needed in Transylvania that night, but he was part of the task force to help with it.

He met with us almost every day.

Dragon was going through the serum and Sorin got to see him and even shared the first morning Dragon had to see the sunrise. Burke got him familiar with the serum guns and sun guns. Now Colin and I were bringing Sorin over to speak with George.

George and Laurel were working almost night and day with the venom and Nicolae’s unusual blood properties.

Laurel was looking at the computer screen…no more did you have to look down on a sample under a microscope…the monitor screen showed the cells that were in Nicolae’s blood large and in color! She nodded. “I see…it is like convergence to the two. The antivenin and antibody…” She looked at George’s notes. “This is…what batch?” She asked. “You added venom directly from Iustina and Repetate…and they’re living.”

George nodded. “And I harvest the ones that survive to further the process. They are getting stronger.”

I cleared my throat making them both turn around. “Sorry to interrupt, but…have you had a chance to…whatever…tweak the detectors?”

George nodded. “Of course!” He went to a counter near where they were working and picked up one he had worked on. “John was helping with this…we can’t seem to…” he shook his head, “…you can’t just point at someone and know if they’re a vampire or not.” He explained as he turned it on. He looked up. “Dimitry.” He called to a man walking by. He was still a vampire. “Dimitry is going to have the serum tomorrow night, but for now…” he pointed the detector at Dimitry and the red light blinked and a little alert sounded from the detector. “At best, it’s a proximity alert, meaning there is a vampire near you.”

“But there will be a crowd that night,” Sorin said.

“Our senses are tuned to pick up vampires,” George explained. “We use smell; the subtle biochemical changes that occur in the body that can be read. The problem is…if they are upwind or downwind, you may or may not get much warning.”

I nodded. “But, you’ll get a warning.”

“It’s best if one of us is with you at all times,” George said cautiously. He smiled at Sorin. “This will give you some warning.”

Sorin shrugged and smiled at me. “It’s better than nothing.” He looked at me. “How are we doing this? Do I deputize you all?”

“You could Shelly, Chuck, and Mark, but I think it will be best if Devon, our mother and the others just fan out in the crowd,” Colin said. “More noses and senses out among the people.”

Sorin nodded and still looked a little worried.

Colin put his hand on Sorin’s shoulder. “What’s going to happen is going to happen. We’ll just do what we can to prevent it from being so much worse. You’re not alone in this.”

Sorin nodded. “It will be bad.” He sighed.

“It will.” I agreed.

“And my people will help as well.” Dragon said happily as he walked in the room. Only he didn’t have on that dark leather now. His hair had been cut, his eyes had moisture and we were wearing a leather jacket over a turtle neck sweater and a nice pair of pants! He was a very nice looking man.

“Who are you?” I grinned as Dragon came over to us. “You look familiar.”

Dragon chuckled. “That’s a joke.” He literally bounced. “I look like a man of the twenty-first century now?” He asked holding his jacket open so we could see what he had on.

Colin nodded. “Very much so.” He looked behind Dragon. “Wasn’t Gaius with you?”

Dragon nodded. “He’s spending a lot of time with his son and daughter-in-law, catching up on missed time with them.”

“We should probably get Nicolae out of the country before this…thing,” Colin suggested to us. “If they realize he’s a key…”

George nodded. “I agree. If we lose him…”

“They don’t have any idea what we’re doing, do they?” I asked Colin and George.

“No, but we don’t want to risk losing him the night of this Transylvania Halloween thing,” George said.

“Okay, they leave within the week,” Colin said simply.

“What about Iustina and Repetate?” I asked. “Shouldn’t they go, too?”

Colin nodded and brought me aside. “I was thinking…” he looked at me, knowing I wouldn’t like what he was going to say. “You need to go with them.”

“What!?” I practically bellowed. “Leave you here!? I’m not leaving you!”

Colin nodded and tried to calm me down. “I know you don’t want to, but think a minute.” He said. “They are dangerous creatures. Not to us, because we are vampires. Manhattan would be an open feeding ground for them if they got loose!”

“They won’t get loose.”

“There could be accidents and…it could happen and who is the one person they trust right now? You!” Colin said again simply. “If they got loose the only one they would come to is you.”

I waved at George. “They trust him! They let him take their venom!”

Colin nodded again. “With you there. Face it, Devon, you are the only one that can keep them calm and trying to escape!”

“Colin! I am not leaving you here!” I said now worried about the fact he would be separated from me if I went. “No,” I said shaking my head. “This might become deadly, even for us! I won’t be able to think or do anything if I don’t know you’re safe.”

“Iilya and Lucian know about these Old Ones,” Colin said. “They might come after them to make them…more the vampire.”

“How can I do that, Colin?” I asked him. “I care about them, but I love you! I love you! I can’t leave my husband to deal with this alone.”

“I know, but they’ve never flown before.” Colin went on. “Hell, they’ve probably never seen an airplane. They’ll be scared, but they will be vulnerable if they stay.”

“Fine.” I looked at George. “Is the container ready? Is it here?”

George nodded. “It’s here.”

“We load them up,” I said to Colin. “We get Nicolae, his wife and children on that plane…put Iustina and Repetate in the container and we fly directly to Manhattan, I get them secured and we fly right back! But you come with me! I’m not taking chances with losing you.”

Colin nodded. “Okay, but we can’t leave them alone.” Colin objected.

“That’s Iustina and Repetate…Colin, they’ve lived for decades in that cell. They’ve lived how many thousands of years?” I shook my head. “We put them in one of those rooms where we put Brett,” I said. “The one they can’t get out of…” I patted his chest. “I don’t know if they understand me, but I’ll tell them what will happen and whoever’s watching them to keep the Bugs Bunny, Tom and Jerry coming and keep them supplied with blood. They should be fine.” I waved toward George. “He’ll be there and they know him. They’ll make it a few days to do this and get back.”

We’d been so busy these few days, most of the time we collapsed in bed and just went to sleep. Pitiful. I saw his eyes soften and he smiled. “I will confess something to you.” He waved at Sorin. “I was jealous of Sorin for a while.”

I asked surprised. “Why?”

Colin shrugged. “He was…so much more than I…he knew movies as you do and he’s a handsome guy you seemed to like...”

I know my eyes widened. I didn’t need to see them. “And you think I would be tempted…Colin!”

Colin smiled again. “I didn’t say that, but you have a way with people and they just love you. How could he not love you?” He shook his head. “But not the way I love you. Now, I know you love me and this just proves it more.” He kissed me gently and pulled me into an embrace. “We’ll have to hurry.”

“I love you, Colin.” I grinned. “Besides, I’m not his type.”

Colin’s eye grew. “And how do you know that?”

“He told me!”

“How did that subject come up?” Colin demanded.

“I’ll tell you all of it.” I grinned and looked at his slightly peeved face. “You’re kind of sexy when you’re jealous.” I pulled him to me kissing him. “I took vows to you. Don’t worry about things that won’t happen. I love only you.” I said swatting him lightly, making him flinch but knew I’d never hurt him.

He grinned pressing his forehead against mine. “I know.”

We came back at Sorin was arguing with Dragon.

“…but it’s been centuries since you fought any conflict! Things changed over these centuries.” Sorin said. “You are who I think you are, we don’t want to kill anyone.”

“I proved I would do anything to keep the people safe!” Dragon argued. “Something is threatening them again. My men are from several wars over the centuries.” Dragon said heatedly. “Dimitri is the last three of my people to go on the serum. They are vampires. They will be able to sense these other vampires. Don’t tell me you can’t use their help, Sorin.”

“That would put more vampires on the serum out there.” I pointed out to Sorin.

He looked up like he was seeking heavenly assistance and then looked back at Dragon. “Fine. But your people answer to me! Got it?”

Colin chuckled. “Okay, say good-bye to Iustina and Repetate. They leave tonight.” He looked at Dragon. “Can you tell Gaius we’re moving his son and family tonight?”

Dragon nodded with a smile. “I can! I’ll go to his house! In the daytime and tell him!” He said almost excited about the fact he could now.

“Sorin, it takes a few days to get them there and settled, we’ll be back before this Halloween thing. I promise. We’ll coordinate what we need to do when we get back.”

Sorin nodded. “I hope so.”