Page 8 of Sundowners
When she was finished, Rey spoke to Megan while I looked around the area. I’d learned what to look for in a crowd after a crime had been committed, that perpetrators often hung around to see their handiwork. There weren’t many folks around at this point.
Rey joined me a few minutes later.
“Megan’s already interviewed two of them who said the same thing the victim did,” he said. “So weird.”
“What did they say?”
“Guy over there said it was like something out of a movie. They pushed her back and forth between them and crowded her against the wall, just laughing. And staring. Until one of them bit her on the neck where it met her shoulder.”
“Like some sort of fucking vampire?”
“Guess so. Damn. I’ve seen a lot of weird shit as a police officer. Disturbing shit. Disgusting shit. Hilarious shit. It’s the weird shit I can’t stand.”
“You mean because weird shit has no rhyme or reason?”
“It’s harder to solve. Someone attacks a person they love out of anger? Simple. A person robs a bank? Cut and dry. Two persons fight and one is killed? Sad but predictable. But four grown men, well-dressed, who corner a woman against a building and taunt her like high school bullies? Who could even make up this shit?”
“The group I was researching in Bilbao had a whole mythology around blood. It was intense. And there are definitely blood drinkers out there who do it because they think it has medicinal benefits, and they have rituals around the ingestion of another person’s blood, but this situation doesn’t seem like your average vampirism.”
“Yeah?Average vampirism, huh? Well, once you’ve caught your breath, you can tell me all about it. This ain’t the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen, but it’s pretty fucking weird, and this isn’t the first incident.”
“No? Now I’m intrigued.”
I’d returned to UC Santa Cruz to complete my dissertation and doctorate degree on modern cult behavior and crime. It seemed oddly coincidental that the moment I returned home; my two worlds intersected.
Rey got me home after midnight and thankfully I was too tired to do anything more than strip, shower, and crash. There would be plenty of time to mourn in the morning.
3
CHAPTER THREE
Creed
“Help me, Rhonda!”
Normally I loved singing along with the Beach Boys, but today I growled my favorite lyrics to my beloved dog.
“Where the hell are they?”
I came to Santa Cruz after getting a tip that my enemies were here and then…nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. Until a strange news article caught my attention.
A woman was bitten on the neck on a busy street. In front of witnesses. Strange…and possibly not related to the people I was looking for, but something I needed to keep an eye on. It could have been kids being dumb. Or it could be the break I needed.
I spent all of my time off from the nursing home scouring the internet and the local library files for something…anything. I’d been away for so long, I had no idea how to find who I was looking for anymore. I searched for certain words or phrases that the group I studied with— my cohort—used, or names, but then they could have easily changed them in the last fifty years. I needed to find the people responsible for the destruction of my way of life and the death of my mentor.
How that would happen, well…perhaps it would be some strange news story that was the key, so I continued to look.
I finished my afternoon smoothie while looking through some of the financial magazines I’d picked up at The Bookshop and was doing some more research on local spiritual groups. I’d come here after hearing about some folks who were living together and practicing the healing arts, and I thought maybe I’d found them. Instead, they’d turned out to be a Wiccan coven. There were more, I was sure, but they weren’t out in the open, these groups.
It wasn’t like the group I was looking for would be posting on the internet and inviting folks. No, they’d gone underground fifty years ago and it was highly unlikely that they were practicing out in the open. If they were still practicing at all. They could have ditched The Way after the mutiny; I had no way of knowing.
I was about to toss all of the papers out the window when Rhonda gave a deep woof.
My beloved dog waited by the door, her floppy ears perked with interest and her expression scolding me for letting my frustration get to me. She’d been my companion so long, she knew just what I needed.
“You’re right. I could use some fresh air.”
She turned her gaze toward her leash on the table and sighed heavily as though she were put out by my slow response time.
