Chapter 10

When Tom exited the apartment building, he was immediately blinded by the flash of more than a dozen cameras. Blinking away the spots of light that continued to swim in his vision, he resolutely waded through the reporters that were closing in on him like a pack of wolves. He winced as they bombarded him with questions concerning the debacle of the previous night. At least, he thought, it seemed from the content of the questions that the cover story was holding up. With a grimace, Tom wondered how long that would last.

When he finally reached the relative safety of his car door, he fixed a polite and blatantly fake smile on his face, "Those are matters involving ongoing police investigations. You know that I can't comment."

Tom laboriously climbed into the vehicle, fearing for a moment that some of the reporters were actually going to try to get in with him. Fortunately, he was spared that indignity. Once safe behind the thin sheets of rusted out metal, he started the vehicle and gunned the engine, leaving the reporters deafened by several loud backfires and coughing in a cloud of black smoke.

Tom decided to hit the library first. On his way there, he entertained a fantasy in which he sustained Mia on a diet of nothing but sensationalist journalists. The journey ended all too soon.

Tom had been at the Carnegie library for close to two hours, perusing both the stacks and the net, when his cell phone rang. Caller id informed him that it was Mark.

"How's it going, Lazarus? Please tell me that you're having better luck than I am," Tom said as he answered.

Mark's loud and boisterous voice burst from Tom's earpiece, "Actually, boss, things are going pretty damn well. I thought that I would have a hell of a time convincing anyone that we had a vampire loose in the city. I was wrong. We've all been joking about vampires ever since the first drained body showed up and, even though we all laughed, apparently the jokes left nagging doubts in some people. When I gave my official report on last night's raid in the briefing room, there was no one laughing at all. A few people looked at me like maybe blood loss had damaged my ol' noggin, but quite a few came up to me afterwards to quietly ask what I thought we could do to put an end to this. A lot of them had helped to clean up the mess last night and they want payback. I took down the names of those who are willing to help us out and I'll text those over to you in a bit. We have nineteen so far."

Mark paused for a moment and then continued in a far quieter tone, "Tom, just so you know, in my official report and in my little talks afterwards, I told everyone that it was our male perp that did all that killing and that the female perp actually saved me. I suppose the latter is true enough; maybe even twice over. I thought that maybe this would help pave the way for when we introduce Mia to the team. Before you say thanks, I want you to know that I did it because it seems pretty damn obvious that we're going to need Mia to see this thing through, and that'll be tough enough without having to deal with resentment and distrust in the ranks. Don't get me wrong, Mia seems like a nice enough girl and all, once you get by the whole fangs and feeding on human blood things anyway, and I see the way you look at her, but if we didn't have the big baddy still running around loose ... Well, I would do my job."

With a sigh, Tom responded, "Yeah. This isn't exactly the easiest situation, is it? Whatever your reasons, though, I do appreciate it. Thanks."

"No problem, boss. Another thing that you really need to know is that one of our believers is the Chief. He pulled me aside and asked me if I had any idea of how to resolve our situation. I told him that we were working on it, showed him my list of names and told him that you were going to be procuring some weapons that we had reason to believe would be effective. He authorized me to pull our little team whenever we needed and told me that overtime wouldn't be an issue. He also told me to tell you to use the department's card when you go shopping. He said that he can hide anything up to ten grand in the 'miscellaneous' portion of the budget. Obviously, he wants to keep any word of vampires from the press, so the quicker we get this done, the happier he'll be."

Mark paused for thought for a moment, "I think that's about all I have to report. So, I'm guessing that things aren't going well at the library? You do know that proper library usage requires that you know how to read, right?"

"Funny. But, yeah, I'm striking out here. I guess that I had thought that I could waltz right in and there would be something like a big yellow 'Vampires for Dummies' book waiting for me. The truth is downright depressing. Most of the stuff in the stacks on vampires is in the fiction section, Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and the like. Not exactly a great source of factual information. The stuff in the non-fiction section is all about narcissistic kids who pretend to be vampires. Also useless to us. And, finally, all the stuff on the web seems to be unlikely fap stories written by third rate writers. I had been hoping to get a head start before Mia wakes up, but I'm about to give up."

"Ok, boss. Unless you need me for something else, I was going to head home for a while. Seems that I, uh, sorta forgot to tell Jenny when I was discharged from the hospital. She arrived for visiting hours and found an empty bed in a cleaned out room. Lets just say it freaked her out a little. I need to go smooth things over, prove I'm not dead, that kinda thing. Of course, I think I'll let her believe that my recovery was the result of some divine miracle rather than telling her that it was because a lovely young woman licked me all over. Anyway, I'll see you around dusk."