Elliott Kay - Natural Consequences

“They all vanished last month. We haven’t picked up a trace of them since.”

Amber blinked. Hauser shifted to the next slide, which showed multiple views of what must have been a large house-perhaps a mansion, judging by its footprint-that had burned down to the foundation. She had to wonder how long it had been burning before the firefighters in the pictures arrived. Even much of the grass had burned within an acre of the house, maybe more.

“We know that in mid-September, Kanatova held some sort of major party at this house in one of Seattle’s northern suburbs. We don’t know what the hell happened at that party. The fire burned so hot we can’t really piece together any physical evidence. Property records are suspiciously sketchy. We’ve matched several abandoned vehicles nearby to known vampires in the Seattle metro area. We’re sure at least some of the vampires survived, but they’ve gone to ground.

“Local authorities found one still-unidentified woman in the tree line with her head twisted almost in a full turn, and ashes from two vampires, along with their dresses,” Hauser said, clicking the slideshow along, “but that’s pretty much it. No human remains. No shell casings. Nothing.

“We’ve got wire-taps on vampires from here to New York and Miami, and everything indicates they haven’t a clue what happened, but they’re extremely concerned. They suspect it was a hit by another supernatural faction, but hits this size don’t happen.

“About a week before this incident, a similar fire destroyed a cemetery chapel in Seattle,” Hauser continued, shifting to a new spread of pictures. “Again, cause undetermined. Someone inside called 911, but left the phone off the hook without giving any info. No human remains were found. Nothing but ash.”

Hauser leaned forward on the table. His voice held steady, but his frustration couldn’t be missed. “Years of investigations. Thousands of hours of surveillance. Research. Solid cases, just waiting for a safe moment to nab the suspects. All gone up in smoke, without an explanation. And now we have vampires all across the country and probably beyond on a hair-trigger to retaliate.”

Amber glanced around the table. The expressions worn by her fellow agents confirmed that they all knew the whole story already. This briefing was specifically for her. “So we don’t have any leads at all?”

“One,” Hauser grunted. He clicked to the next picture.

She saw a typical cell phone self-portrait: bathroom mirror, sink in the foreground, towels on a rack on the wall behind the subject. The guy in the picture might barely be old enough to drink. He was skinny, with short, wet brown hair, a pale, mostly hairless chest and a towel wrapped around his waist. His thug-life posture looked so comical that he couldn’t possibly have taken himself seriously. In one hand, he held his cell phone. In the other, he held what appeared to be a wooden stake and a necklace of fangs.

An inset photo beside the youth’s face provided a blow-up of the fangs, with markings to denote their likely legitimacy.

“His name is Jason Cohen.”

“This picture’s all over the place,” Alex teased. He held his phone in one hand, both his elbows on the restaurant table. “I mean, you’ve got fangs in your hand, posing like you’re about to bust out some terrible nerdcore rap, but all this lens flare makes it look like you’ve just joined Starfleet… I don’t know if I’m supposed to think you got these fangs from vampire Klingons or vampire Tupac, y’know?”

“Oh, like you’re the guy to critique anyone’s photography,” retorted Jason. Baskets of half-finished gyros and Greek fries sat between the pair. “Didn’t you burn down a church the last time you busted out your camera?”

Alex cringed. “I’ve taken pictures since then,” he said, his voice dropping. He wore a blue dress shirt and black slacks, having come over for lunch from work. “And it was just a funeral chapel. Anyway, you know we didn’t take out all the bad guys that night. Why would you want to ask for more trouble?”

“Dude, nobody’s listening to us. It ain’t like any of ‘em are gonna eavesdrop on us at this hour,” Jason said, jerking his thumb toward the window. Though Seattle’s skies were as overcast and its streets as wet as any other October, it wasn’t exactly dark. “Lorelei said those guys are like supernatural bottom feeders, right? So what’s the big deal?”

“They aren’t a big deal to her or to Rachel,” Alex corrected, “or to Molly and Onyx. But I-“

“Yeah, have you called them lately?” interrupted Jason.

Alex winced. “No.”

“Why not? They seem awesome.”

“They are, I’m just… can we stay on topic? Look, there are more of those guys out there. They knew my name and how to find me, so they must know how to use computers. I deleted all my social media shit, but we both know all that stuff stays out there anyway. How hard do you think it’d be for them to figure out who my friends are?”

Jason gave a bit of a scowl. “You’re that freaked out about it?”

“ We are, yeah,” Alex nodded. “Jason, I’d be dead right now if it wasn’t for you. Twice, at least. And I don’t want to think about what would’ve happened to Lorelei. She almost pulled out of her thing with the conservatory board today to come talk to you about this. I don’t think you know how much you mean to her, man.”

Sighing, Jason pulled out his phone. His fingers tapped through his password and called up the web page out of muscle memory. Jason barely had to look. “I was just fucking around anyway,” he muttered. “Not like I thought anyone other than you two and the guys would get what’s in that picture.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured at first. Lorelei convinced me otherwise. She’s dealt with these assholes before. She says they’re hard-core about their secrecy stuff and so it stands to reason that they pay people to cruise the Internet and check for anything that might be about them. Even dorky bathroom cell phone pics.”

Jason rolled his eyes. “It’s gone, okay? Already off my profile pic. I’m deleting it from my pictures, see?” He tilted his phone to show the webpage. “Wasn’t even up all that long.”

“Thank you,” Alex said. “Although that brings up the other question-where in the hell did you get those, anyway? Those were real fangs?”

“Yeah, they’re real,” Jason said. “I picked ‘em up just after the fight. They were just sitting there in the piles of ashes. I guess not all of them crumble up all the way. We wanted to pick up all the incriminating evidence, right?”

“So you could post it on your profile page?” asked Alex.

“Hey, it’s gone, alright? It’s gone.”

“Thank you,” Alex sighed. “And you won’t show those to anyone, right?”

Jason sighed back, more dramatically than before. “No,” he grumbled. “Nobody’d know what they really were, anyway.”

“Hopefully.”

“Unless Lorelei knows any demon girls who are single,” he added. “If that sort of stuff impresses them.”

“I kinda doubt it. What about Britney and Brittany? How’s that going?”

“Uh. Well, that wasn’t ever gonna work out anyway,” Jason said, scratching the back of his neck. “I mean, I don’t think I’m ready to settle down yet, y’know?”

“Fucked it up?” Alex asked.

“You might be right about me blabbing too much online,” Jason confessed. “Less said about all that, the better. Anyway, I’m back on the market.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just give it some time. You’ll find someone new, or she’ll find you.”

“Easy for you to say. You’ve had women hanging all over you ever since all the crazy started.”