Episode 3 - "Oath of Office"

     President-elect Regina Moore looked in the mirror for perhaps the hundredth time that morning, even though not a seam on her peach-colored suit was so much as a millimeter out of place and not a single short black hair escaped the matching hat on her head. She was ready for the swearing-in, at least outwardly. Emotionally, she wasn’t so certain.

     Regina turned from the dresser and sat on her bed. There were many factors in support of her taking the presidency, all of which she had used in making her decision. First and foremost was the mandate of the office, which was to promote the nation of Transylvania and to speak for its citizens both at home and abroad. Many countries at best distrusted vampires and at worst wanted to see them wiped from the face of the Earth, and that did not sit well with her, so the need was there.

     Further, she had been elected by an overwhelming margin by what few vampires had so far chosen to relocate to Romania, the country chosen to be sold to their species, and the Prime Minister had thrown the full weight of the government behind her. Of course, there had been no other contenders for President, a fact she could interpret as a positive or a negative, but she chose the former.

     No, what bothered Regina was whether or not she could make a difference. She had been conscientious as a human being, not a bleeding heart but still giving to the needy and recycling to save the planet, yet when the first wave of vampires began to appear she had feared them as much as the next person did. She hated nobody, yet she’d found herself wanting the menace to be stopped. If someone like her felt that way, she figured that most of humanity could never find it inside themselves to tolerate vampires. An interspecies peace was nearly impossible; neither Atlas nor Hercules would have envied whoever assumed the office she would have in just a few minutes.

     There was a knock at the door.

     “Who is it?”

     “Etienne,” came the muffled voice.

     “Come in.” Regina stood and faced the door. In came Etienne Moreau, her hand-picked Chief of Staff, who at thirty-one was exactly half her age. He had been an attaché to the French embassy in Italy, before that a lieutenant-colonel with the Gendarmerie, and he spoke seven languages. No one else sent for her consideration had come anywhere close to those qualifications.

     “Good morning, Etienne,” Regina said.

     “Madame President-elect,” Moreau said with a mock-frown, “I woke you at just after six.”

     “You’re right. My apologies.”

     “Think nothing of it, Madame. It is perhaps the biggest day of your life, so you can be forgiven for the minor lapse.”

     “Always the most tactful person in the room,” Regina said with a smile. “So, is it time yet to go to the ceremony?”

     “In a moment. First I want to make certain you’re good to go. Actually, first I need to ask if you received the bouquet Prime Minister Calidori sent. He was adamant that I get back to him.”

     “Yes, I got it.” Regina waved a hand to the flowers sent by the Prime Minister. To say they were a bouquet was to call the Grand Canyon a pothole. There were dozens of long-stemmed roses in more colors than most people knew existed, and the pot they came in had been accompanied by its own stand. As an Italian, Calidori sure knew his way around grand gestures, though whether this was out of genuine well-wishing or to soften her up for their upcoming policy debates was anyone’s guess.

     “Excellent,” Moreau said. “Now, how ready are you?”

     “More than I’ll ever be,” Regina answered. It was a vague reply, she knew, but going into all her fears wouldn’t make any positive difference. On the other hand, doing so could bring Moreau to doubt her ability, though he’d never say it, and that could lead to a morale problem among her staffers at precisely the time she needed those around her strong. She fed off them, but they fed off her first.

     “Good,” Moreau said. He simultaneously knocked on the door and pulled out his cell phone. He held up a finger to the black-suited agent who entered the room, then spoke into the phone. From his end of the conversation, Regina gathered he was informing the Prime Minister’s staff about the status of the flower delivery. He hung up seconds later.

     “Madame President-elect, this is agent Jeremy Dawson. He’s heading up your security detail.”

     “Welcome to the team, agent Dawson,” Regina said warmly.

     “It’s my pleasure, Ma’am. You’ll be safe under my watch.”

     Regina took note of the security man’s voice. “Are you from North Carolina, Agent Dawson?”

     “Yes, Ma’am.”

     “And where did you go to college?”

     “Chapel Hill.”

     “I’m a Blue Devil, agent. Is that going to be a problem?”

     Dawson smiled. “No, Ma’am. Basketball isn’t my sport.”

     Regina nodded and turned to Moreau. “Shall we?”

     “By all means,” the Chief of Staff answered. He gestured to Dawson, who opened the door, checked around in the hallway, and indicated through a wrist microphone that the President-elect was on her way. He led them into the basement garage, where a motorcade of six vehicles awaited. The three of them entered the third car from the front, and the convoy pulled up a ramp and into the street beyond.

     As the garage door shut behind them, the car turned right, reached the end of the block, and proceeded southeast toward downtown Bucharest. Prior to the 1989 ouster of Nicolae Ceausescu, leaders of Romania resided in the Royal Palace in Revolution Square, a lot closer to the capital city’s center than the small office building that Regina had requested be converted into her new home and seat of power.

     They made their way across the Dambovita River, then down the Soseaua Kiseleff to the Arcul de Triumf – Arch of Triumph – that rivaled the one in Paris. Moreau, who had been carefully briefing the President-elect on ceremony procedures, stopped and stared at the reminder of his homeland.

     “When was the last time you were home, Etienne?” she asked with quiet respect.

     “In 2004,” he replied. “And who knows when I’ll be there again.” Regina could tell by his expression that his when was more of an if.

     “You know, as head of state I have the power to assign ambassadors. France is a major nation, so I imagine they’ll be one of the first places we’ll set up an embassy.”

     Moreau looked at her on the verge of tears. Ever conscious of his image, though, he choked them back. “If you’re so anxious to be rid of me, Madame President-elect, please let me know how I’ve failed you.” Regina laughed and let the Frenchman have his pride.

     It wasn’t long before they were nearing the Parliament Palace, home of the government and site of the presidential swearing-in ceremony. Regina thought back to all of the similar rituals she’d watched on television. It filled her with a sense of place and history, but then it also brought her to despair. In each ceremony she’d ever witnessed, the new official had had family present, a spouse and at least one child. Regina had a family back in North Carolina, but they were still human and still residents of the United States. For many reasons, they had decided to not be a part of her new life, and after three years it still stung more deeply than had the bite.

     Outside the front of the palace, the motorcade threaded through hundreds of the vampire hopeful, most of whom found more solace and friendship in their new peers than they had among their old ones. Some were new to the culture of fear and loathing that had always been aimed at minorities, while others had long ago developed thick shells but on some levels still felt the pain. These were people Regina knew her office was being set up to help, and that purpose brought her from her despair.

     The cars stopped near where a dais had been set up. Dawson exited the front passenger seat and walked around to her side. After his agents were in place, he opened the door and let her and Moreau out. He then escorted them up the front steps and into the building, all the while scanning for possible threats even as his ground agents and rooftop snipers did the same.

     Inside the main lobby, which had been cordoned off for the event, Prime Minister Enrico Calidori greeted her with arms wide open. He was a burly man with a fair amount of hair on his face and in other places, so the embrace he took her in was not the most comfortable, but she endured it with dignity. Practice made perfect, after all. Senators then greeted her, as did some other officials of whose names and titles she wasn’t completely certain.

     “It is nearly time,” the P.M. said after checking his watch. “Are you ready?”

     “Very much so,” Regina answered. A circumspect answer would not work as well with Calidori as it had with Moreau. The Prime Minister took her arm and the pair proceeded outside and back down to the dais. He stood in front of a lectern that faced perpendicular to the growing crowd, and she stood behind it. He asked her to raise her right hand and place her left on the symbol of a vampire’s cross etched into the lectern. She did so, and repeated the words of the oath segment by segment as he uttered them.

     When the ceremony was over, the citizenry went wild with cheers. Then they went silent as Regina swiveled the lectern on its base so she could speak to them. The hugeness moment suddenly overtook her and her mind went blank. She mentally fumbled around for something to say, but words failed her. Then she focused on a sign so large it took eleven vampires to hold it up. “Deliver us from hatred,” was all it said, but it was enough to give her a place to start.

     “You want me to deliver you from hatred,” the new president told her constituents. “Hatred comes from fear, and fear comes from ignorance. Ignorance, as you may or may not know, is not the same as stupidity, and that distinction is one that will carry us. We must look at those who hate vampires merely as those who don’t know us, and we must hold that they are intelligent enough to understand that we mean them no harm. We were all once as they are, and but for the grace of Fate they can be us. If we stress these similarities even as our differences are apparent, we can bridge the gulf and bring our peoples closer together.”

     She paused, and they cheered. She basked in the common goal even as she knew the sharply uphill battle they all faced.

Episode 2 - "The Unit, Part I"

     Jennifer Ashe unbuckled her seatbelt the second the light turned off, grabbed her mission folder, and deplaned ahead of everyone else. That wasn’t particularly difficult, seeing how the division director had booked her a front-row seat in first class. She had served under Domingo Henry twice before, both times as now in the FBI, so he knew she did her best work when surrounded by creature comforts. Since the private jet that had been requisitioned for VCU wasn’t ready yet, the first-class seat was his way of keeping her happy.

     Ashe exited the gate and made her way to baggage claim. She normally flew United Airlines, but that would have put her arrival in Terminal 7, which was on the other side of the airport from where the murders had been committed. Taking Continental had put her that much closer to the crime scene.

     She got to the carousel and waited for the baggage to arrive. It soon did, and she grabbed her overnight bag. After checking that her sidearm and ammunition were still there, she headed for the exit. That took her past another carousel, and she absently glanced over to see what other people had brought to the Big Apple. Aside from regular luggage, there were several duffel bags in military camouflage, a set of golf clubs, a steamer chest, and a baby stroller. What caught her eye most of all, though, was the black tech box with stickers from all over the world; she smiled as she saw a few that had been added since she’d last seen it.

     Knowing there would be other gear to weigh down its owner, Ashe reached over with her free hand and picked up the box.

     “Please put that down,” came a familiar, slightly nasal voice behind her. “It’s government-issue.”

     “I know,” Ashe said, “I issued it.”

     She turned around and gazed at special agent Marco Polo, whose bright blue eyes and buzz-cut blond hair belied the intensity of his personality.

     “Jennifer,” Marco said with a wide smile before remembering their once-again working relationship. “I mean Top. We’re working together again.”

     Ashe resisted reminding him that she had requested him for the new unit. Marco plucked another tech box from the conveyor and placed it on a nearby cart.

     “You are not wheeling that dorky thing to my crime scene,” Ashe told him.

     “Yeah,” said Marco’s ex-wife, Natalie, who came up next to him. “Besides, airport security will never let it past the curb.”

     “Same flight, huh? You two back together?” Ashe asked.

     “Please,” Natalie said. “He was visiting the kids when we got the call.” She was the opposite of her ex, shoulder-length black hair and brown eyes with a laid-back chill, though she always did her job with perfection.

     They grabbed the rest of the gear and headed for the exit. They crossed a busy road and headed for the parking garage. An NYPD officer stopped them.

     “Do you have a car inside?” He jerked a thumb behind him.

     “Nope,” Ashe answered. She pulled out her newly issued ID and showed it to the cop.

     “VCU? What are you, an extra on Law and Order?”

     “That’s SVU,” Ashe pointed out. “We’re the Vampire Crimes Unit.”

     “Oh, then you can go in. Are they with you?” asked the cop. Ashe took her agents’ IDs from her pocket, show them to the officer – who just had to comment on Marco’s name before clearing them – and passed them out.

     “Jeez,” Natalie said with a roll of her eyes, “you had to use the photo from Quantico? I was just about to sneeze when they took it.”

     They entered the garage and quickly located the scene. Marco cracked open his boxes as Natalie started casing the bodies, which had been ordered to be left as-is until they got there. Ashe identified the cop in charge and went over.

     “Special agent Jennifer Ashe, VCU,” she said, extending her hand.
     “Detective Sam Alston, NYPD,” he said in return, taking the hand. “For the record, I don’t agree this is a Federal case.”
     “Is that because the perpetrator is likely local or because fellow LEOs were killed?”
     “A little of both,” Alston admitted. Then, with a mild dig, he added, “I hear you guys are new.”
     “The unit is new. This is our first case, actually, but we’ve each got at least ten years with the bureau. I have seventeen.”
     The detective held up his hands. “My apologies for impugning you’re professionalism, special agent.”
     “That’s all right,” Ashe said. “I would have done the same, and with a lot less restraint. So, three vics?”
     He led her to the bodies. “National Guardsmen, one shredded by a vampire, the other two shot repeatedly with the first man’s rifle.”

     “Any suspects?”

     “Not yet,” Alston said. “We have agents reviewing video feed.”

     “I’d like that streamed to my man,” Ashe told him. She pointed to Marco. Alston nodded and gestured for a cop to take care of it.

     “Witnesses?” Ashe asked.

     “Hard to say,” the detective answered. “The gate is automated, the Guardsmen’s rifles have been fitted with silencers to avoid scaring the public, and no one has come forward.”

     “Vampires are still a largely unknown quantity at this point,” Ashe said. “There could be several people who saw what happened but fear reprisal if their names are leaked.”

     “That’s what I figured,” Alston said. “What I’d like to know is why the perpetrator ate one but shot the other two. Was he no longer hungry?”

     “That’s possible,” Natalie said, “but look at the positions of the bodies. Torres and Jones, the two he shot, are in the middle of the aisle, but Carson is lying between cars. He could have felt cornered.”

     “They would have flanked him,” Ashe said. She saw and pointed to scuff marks on a portion of the aisle floor between Torres and Jones. “Carson came on him first, and the vamp jumped him. That brought the other two, and the vamp pulled Carson between the cars for defense.”

     “Shell casings and bullet holes indicate Jones and Torres shot at the perp, but they wouldn’t have jeopardized their partner by initiating the exchange,” Alston said.

     “No,” Natalie said, “And the vamp wouldn’t have had the time to eat Carson and then dodge the bullets. The vamp definitely feasted first. Then he was shot at, he got a gun and returned fire, and then took off.”

     “It’s hard to tell if he’s naturally vampire-vicious or it was a situational thing and his human half regained control. Your bolo should warn about a possible lethal threat.”

     “It needs a physical description first,” Alston pointed out.

     “Marco,” Ashe called out, knowing the answer that was coming.

     “Polo,” he shot back. Ashe found it comforting. She and Alston walked over to where Marco had his satellite laptop on the hood of a Maserati Quattroporte; the computer was more souped-up than the car.

     “Get the video feed yet?”

     “Yes, Top,” Marco answered. He paused and minimized a window with a camera view inside the terminal and brought up one looking outside. “Torres alerted her partners to something strange, and here they’re seen heading for the parking garage. There are several people in front of them, and I’m running facial recognition to identify them, but the quarry might already have gone inside the parking structure.”

     “What about inside the terminal?” Ashe asked.

     “I’m looking at that now,” Marco replied. He pulled up the first window and restarted the stream.

     Ashe turned to Alston. “I need to know every car and person who entered and left this garage from two hours before the approximate time of death until the bodies were discovered.”

     “Anything to help you catch this man,” the detective said.

     “Animal,” said a six-foot-three, broad-shouldered man who came up just then.

     “Pardon me?” Alston asked him.

     “You said ‘man,’” the hulking mass said. “No man did what I just saw back there.”

     “And you are?” Ashe asked the newcomer.

     “I’m special agent Kurt Reed.” He flashed a VCU ID. “And if you’re Jennifer Ashe, I’m your new partner.”

     Ashe bristled. She hadn’t had a partner in almost a decade, and she wasn’t about to do so again now.

Episode 1 - "Ignition"

     Sharif Covington pulled into the parking garage across from Terminal 2 in JFK International Airport as he had every Monday but two for the past eleven years. One of those missed Mondays had been due to the passing of his mother in 2002. The other had come shortly after the death of his previous life only a year and a half ago. His mother probably would have said he was being melodramatic, that he should just accept his new reality and overcome whatever adversity accompanied it, but her only son being bitten by a vampire might have been too much for her to handle with typical stoicism.

     Sharif parked, grabbed his briefcase, and got out. As he turned to lock the vehicle, the sight of it sent him into yet another emotional tailspin. Could he have gotten something other than a four-door in drab gray? They’d had plenty of others on the used lot: different colors, coupes, even ones with sunroofs. Geez, he hadn’t even had the guts to get a new car, though he made more than enough in sales commissions to easily pay for one without financing. Shying away from going after what he wanted was a hallmark of his life, pathetically even now.

     He wrenched himself away from the car and plodded toward the terminal. He was such a failure as a man that it carried over to his new existence. Sure, plenty of bitten refused to kill a human, and as such Sharif considered himself morally solid. Full conversion didn’t require biting a human, though, only a living being, yet Sharif still couldn’t do it. The thought of putting into his mouth any being that wasn’t cooked, or in the case of sushi at least dead, made him gag. He’d never have the courage, thus he’d always be as anemic as he was since he’d been bitten, but then physical passivity was much like emotional passivity, and he was long used to that.

     Sharif crossed the main road at the intersection and entered the terminal. He made his way to the automated kiosk and began to retrieve his ticket. He had just printed it when a scream from the check-in lines caught his attention.

     “Sir, can we please look inside your mouth?” a security guard just past the metal detectors said to the man at the front of the line.

     “You want to see my mouth? Fine,” said the man, who promptly bared three-inch fangs and hissed liked a snake just as two more guards arrived. The woman behind him on line screamed in the voice Sharif had heard. Two NYPD officers and three National Guardsmen arrived seconds later.

     “Sir, let’s end this safely,” said one of the cops, his hand on his holstered weapon as his partner backed him up from the side. The Guard ushered people away to a safe distance, not that they needed to; there had been enough dangerous incidents with vampires to convert the “wow” factor into a general public fear.

     “Safety at the expense of liberty,” the vampire said. “When will it end?”

     “That’s not my call,” the officer said. “I just enforce the laws.”

     “Show me a law that calls for probing orifices.”

     “I can show you one for mandatory identification of your kind.”

     “And what is my kind?” the vampire asked with only partial sarcasm; the rest of his tone was genuine frustration and sorrow. “Math professor? Hospital volunteer? Husband and father?”

     “Look,” said the cop, “we live in a new world. First terrorists, now vampires.”

     “The two are not synonymous,” the vampire said. He rolled up a sleeve and held out his arm.

     “Not here,” the cop said.

     “Thank you,” the vampire replied. He collected his belongings and followed the cops away.

     “Never thought I’d see it again,” said someone at the kiosk to Sharif’s left. It was an old man.

     “See what?” Sharif asked.

     “This,” the old man answered. He rolled up his own sleeve to reveal a seven-digit tattoo. He was a Holocaust survivor. “They hunted us, too, made us register before they killed us. And don’t think that’s not what the government has in store for them. Forget all the talk about a sovereign vampire nation and dual citizenship. Nobody wants them around.”

     “But they’re human beings,” Sharif said with horror.

     “So were we,” the old man said before leaving.

     “Hey, are you finished?” came a voice from behind Sharif. He touched “no receipt” on the screen and walked away from the kiosk. Unlike normal, though, he found himself heading back toward the exit instead of to check-in.

     Sharif stopped walking and considered his situation. If he went ahead on the business trip, he’d be identified as a vampire, something he had so far purposely avoided. Being black, he’d experienced the prejudice the old man had hinted at, though clearly not to the same degree; as a vampire, the hatred would only grow. Sharif just wanted to be left alone to earn his keep and dream his dreams.

     He looked back at the metal detectors with regret, knowing he’d have to change jobs to one that did not require registered travel. He locked eyes with one of the Guardsmen, who’d remained as a calming presence. Something about him must not have sat right with her, for she tugged at a colleague’s arm and pointed over at Sharif. Sharif instinctively headed for the exit again, and before he fully turned forward he saw all three Guardsmen follow him.

     He exited the terminal and walked the fastest he felt he could go without drawing even more attention to himself. He was soon back in the parking garage, and as he turned into his car’s aisle he looked toward the terminal. One of the Guardsmen flanked to his left, one to the right, and the one who’d spotted him came straight in.

     Sharif ducked between two cars, his heart pumping like crazy. He hugged the ground and scanned between tires for signs of the Guards. He saw a pair of black boots slowly go step over step as the one who had flanked to his right methodically searched for his prey.

     Prey? Was that how Sharif saw the world now? If so, it was because he was the hunted, as the old man had said. But unlike Jews, vampires were stalked because they had killed first. Humans were out to kill his kind because they feared for their own lives.

     As well they should, Sharif suddenly decided. He’d avoided conflict for thirty-six years, knowing he’d fail under the pressure. He’d been wrong. Dead wrong.

     The scrape of a boot brought his head around to the other side. The left-flanker was two aisles over and moving up the aisle in his direction. Another ten cars and he’d see Sharif, except Sharif would show himself before then.

     Covington rose to a crouch and walked with a hunch to the aisle between him and the left-flanker. Not that he was afraid, as a blood-rush peeled away decades of trepidation like layers of an onion, but he’d heard tales of special anti-vampire weapons. They might be myths, and such weapons if they did exist would more likely be given to cops than Guardsmen, but Sharif wasn’t taking any chances.

     The aisle was clear, so Sharif hunch-walked to the next one and crouched even lower. The Guard was about six cars down the aisle now and getting closer. Sharif waited until he was two cars away and, when the man’s head was turned to scan between cars across the aisle, Sharif hurled his briefcase. It landed with a thud between two cars, and the Guardsman turned toward the noise. With the man’s back turned, Sharif pounced.

     With superhuman ability, Sharif went higher and farther than he had ever thought possible. He landed on the Guard’s back, knocking him to the ground and sending his rifle skittering across the pavement. The man screamed, and Sharif heard boots come their way from two different directions. He dragged the Guard to his feet, stood behind him, and held fangs at his neck.

     The other two Guardsmen thrust into the aisle, one in front of Sharif and one behind him. Sharif quickly turned to the side and backed between cars for protection, taking the first Guard with him.

     “Let him go,” said the female Guard who had first seen him. The tag on her uniform read Torres, and her voice had a slight Spanish accent.

     “Not gonna happen,” Sharif said through his fangs. He could have a career as a ventriloquist.

     “Brother, you won’t get hurt,” said the other Guard. His name was Jones and he was black just like Sharif.

     “I’m not your brother,” Sharif spat, pissed at the presumption and getting vampire spit on the first Guard’s neck. He wondered if it were poisonous.

     “No offense,” Torres said. “Just let our man go.”

     Oh, Sharif would let him go, but not without inflicting a measure of justice. Sharif bit the Guardsman on the neck but hesitated at going completely in. Should he go for the kill or merely for conversion? Conversion would spare his life, but what kind of life would it be? Had Sharif the right to force it, as the previous vampire – Mario, he remembered – done to him? Plus, leaving him alive meant he could kill Sharif in revenge.

     In the end it came down to neither fairness nor ethics but to hunger and thirst. Sharif bit down on the carotid artery, drinking heavily of the man’s blood. When he’d had his fill, he ripped off huge chunks of flesh and swallowed them without chewing. Completely sated, he let the dead man fall and turned to his partners. The Guards came in with rifles blazing. A bullet nicked Sharif’s left elbow as he leaped over and between cars to gain a better position.

     Sharif came to a crouching stop and saw the abandoned rifle nearby. He dove for it, brought it to bear on his attackers, and emptied the full clip into both of them. Torres and Jones fell with no hope of survival. Sharif went over and took their ammo belts; he had no need for their guns, but their bullets might come in handy, for Sharif had decided to run. There was no way he could go back to his normal life, not with the law enforcement that would surely identify him and not with the beast that had been unleashed inside him.

     Sharif found his car, hid the gun and ammo under his suit jacket on the floor behind the driver’s seat, and started the car. He forced himself to drive calmly out of the garage even as he knew speed had never been so important.