Wolves and Men

Kenneth grabbed the girl by the chin. She accepted his grip without pain. She might make an interesting slave. He looked deeply into her brown eyes. She wasn’t owned by another vampire. The thought was tempting, she was a little bit older than he preferred for his students. He stopped himself. She was already a loyal servant to someone. If he took her then it might raise suspicions and questions that he wasn’t ready to answer. He let her go.

“So, is what the investigator told me true? Was this fire started from the inside?” He wanted confirmation, not that the male officer would have lied to him, his control over him was light and impermanent, but even then, no human could lie to him while under his sway.

“Yes, we believe it was,” Diaz replied. “The boiler exploded and the fire there jumped onto the gas lines and the whole place went up like a match stick.”

“A match stick?” Kenneth wheeled on Diaz and grabbed her throat. He shoved her up against the van wall. She tried to pry his hands loose. Kenneth squeezed; it took a moment but her legs stopped flailing. “Do you have any idea how long it took to get this site producing at capacity?” Diaz shook her head violently. “Do you have any idea how much money it took to build this place to what it was?” Diaz’s eyes started to roll back into her skull from lack of oxygen. He dropped her to the floor.

She crumpled into a heap and coughed violently. She stayed on the ground rubbing at her neck and trying to take long slow breaths.

Kenneth turned back toward the small table in the lights. “I want whoever did this Diaz! I don’t care what you do or how you do it, just get it done.” He didn’t look back at her as he exited the van and strode away back to his car.

Michael opened the door and he slid onto the back seat. It was later than he realized, almost two o’clock in the morning already. He needed to see the club though he was pretty sure he would find the same thing.

They arrived at the club a little while later and the place had about the same amount of fire damage as the Farm. The place was charred, but it didn’t seem that the fire had scorched the outside as badly as at the Farm. He strode through the police tape and found the guy in charge.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Don’t know, Sir.” The detective promptly answered. At least somebody had the sense to know who he was on sight and not provoke him. “Seems that faulty wiring started the fire. It’s likely the fire started in a corner of the club, and grew out from there, luckily no one was hurt.”

Kenneth glanced around the inside of the still dripping wet interior. “You mean everyone made it out, ok? That was very lucky,” he said dryly.

“I know, right? The few witnesses we talked to said that they were dancing, or drinking or whatever, then some guy screams, ‘FIRE’ and everybody just bolts for the door. I’m amazed nobody got trampled to death.”

Kenneth asked, “Did anyone get a description of this guy that called out the warning?”

The Detective shook his head. “No. That would have been a break, but with the darkness in here and with all the black lights it would have been impossible to get a reliable description. Even if someone came forward, I would be hesitant to accept their description of what the guy really looked like.”

Kenneth nodded his head. “I see.” He looked up toward the upper floor and the office that was housed there. “What about the upper floor, was anything found there?”

The Detective nodded. “Yeah, some of my guys went up there earlier.” He bowed his head and shook his head. “The place was a blood bath, Sir. The people up there were slaughtered. There was six total, Sir. We have a girl who had an arm that was ripped off. A few men with their faces bashed in, some broken bones, all dead. Whoever did that was either the strongest men in the world or just a couple of junkies high as kites on PCP, would be my guess.” He looked up toward the office and the blackened walls. “The place itself wasn’t damaged that bad by the fire itself. There were some scorched walls, some of the papers upstairs were torched, the desk was half burned, some of the filing cabinets were a little melted and some damage to the underside of the floor, but other than that the place was in good shape. Oh, that and it had been ransacked.”

“What do you mean ransacked?”

“I mean, Sir that the place had just about every file cabinet open, every desk drawer was open, and every piece of paper in the place had been rifled through. There were stacks of paper all over the place. Payment vouchers, order sheets, time cards, everything was thrown all over the place.”

Kenneth nodded. “Was there anything missing?”

“Well Sir, I wish I could tell you that, really. Between the fire, all the damage, and the amount of paperwork up there, it’d be impossible to tell if anything was taken, but somebody was definitely looking for something.”

“Is it possible that whoever started this fire had also tossed the office?” he asked coldly.

“I’d say that’s the assumption we’re going off of right now. Especially with all the dead bodies up there, I’d say that was a certainty. So, whoever started the fire, used it as a distraction and made their way up to the office, killed those people up there and made off with whatever it was they were looking for before the fire trucks arrived.” He shook his head again. “I don’t even want to know how fast they must have moved through that place. Those people up there probably didn’t even see it coming.”

Kenneth looked up toward the office. Was this the wolves’ true target or was the Farm what they wanted? Or did they want both? How many had there been? His thoughts were promptly interrupted.

“Uh, Sir did you want to see if you could identify the bodies. I’ve got them down at the morgue if you wanted to take a trip down to the precinct.”