Charlaine Harris - An Apple for the Creature

“We tested the contents of these coffins,” DeWitt said through his transmitter. “Bodies are fully human, and appear to be seventeenth- and eighteenth-century. The sarcophagus you’re examining, Agent Anderson, was the one concealing this trapdoor.”

She followed his pointing finger, spotting the trapdoor in question. It was open, and on the exposed underside of the access hatch, a cross had been inlaid with iron, now very rusty. The cross would have been flush with the ceiling of whatever lay beneath it.

DeWitt climbed through the hatch and clanged down a contemporary set of portable metal stairs. Claire and Jackson followed after, Claire in her skirt and heels, and then the two guys from Maine. The walls of the tiny chamber were pitted and limey. More super-bright lights illuminated a wormy, weather-beaten wooden coffin perched on top of a stainless steel sheet, on top of another sarcophagus. Its lid sat across the tiny room on several pieces of what appeared to be linen, on a metal cart.

“We’re unclear about pathogens, so make sure your masks are secure,” DeWitt said through his mic.

“Before securing the masks of any children traveling with you,” Jackson murmured, as he, Claire, and the Mainers walked to the side of the coffin and peered inside.

A man who appeared to be about forty years old lay as if sleeping. His cheeks were ruddy and his face was full. He was covered up to his neck in the same linen as the coffin lid rested on, but something protruding from his chest tented the fabric. DeWitt lifted the linen, and Claire saw old-timey clothes in tatters and a wooden stake plunged through the chest, exactly where the heart should be.

“Vic number four?” said the taller of the Maine agents.

DeWitt shook his head. He reached into his pocket and pulled on blue latex gloves. Then he approached the body and gently pulled back the left side of the upper lip. The canine was long, and very sharp, as if it had been filed.

“We believe that this is a vampire,” he said.

For a few seconds, Claire’s mind went blank, as if it simply couldn’t process what he had just said. Then errant thoughts filtered in about naked Ms. Hannover and her pointy teeth. Leaping over a balcony railing, flashing—literally—down the street.

“I smell money,” Jackson said. “Fifty bucks.”

“How did you find him?” Claire asked, ignoring Jackson.

“It was an accident. A lucky one,” DeWitt said. “About five years ago, there was an incident in the graveyard—kidnapping across state lines, murder—so we had jurisdiction. We were collecting evidence. In addition to the blood of the human kidnapping vic, we got a faint purple glow in the cemetery dirt. We didn’t know what it was, and we sprayed the cemetery down. The glow was strongest on the ground around the sarcophagus on top of the trapdoor. We kept following the trail. And habeas corpus.”

“Damn,” Jackson said.

“We took fingerprints, too,” DeWitt said. “There were two distinct sets on the trapdoor, and on this coffin, with the purple glow. We’ve documented them with long-exposure photographs, same as the punctures.”

“So these were the prints you were talking about in class?” Claire asked.

“Yes,” DeWitt said.

“But there were no fingerprints at the crime scenes,” Jackson said.

“Yes. Our serial killer vampire is very careful. He cleans up after himself. Except he doesn’t know about the Luminol.”

Claire stared down at the vampire. “So back to this body. You conjecture that Vampire One came down here with Vampire Two and, what, staked him?”

“I thought when you staked vampires they turned into dust,” said the shorter agent from Maine.

“There’s no evidence to support that,” DeWitt said with a straight face. “We’ve drawn some blood and taken tissue samples. We don’t have the proper language to describe the results. You’ll be going over those samples tomorrow.”

“Is he alive?” Claire asked, grimacing down at the vampire. The tent of linen was neither rising nor falling, so it didn’t appear that he was breathing.

“Again, that’s open to interpretation,” DeWitt said.

“What happens if you remove the stake?” Jackson asked.

“We don’t know. We haven’t done it. We debated for a long time about if we should remove the body from the crypt. We ultimately decided against it.” He stared down at the vampire with a little smile on his face and shook his head as if to say, You rascal . “We don’t know why he’s here.”

“Why are we here?” Claire asked. “Why were we selected for this case?”

“’Cause FBI fugitive task forces are a dying breed,” Jackson said. Which was true. Marshals had the corner on the fugitive biz these days.

“KSAs. Knowledge, skills, abilities. Each of you has been selected to be here because of your stellar performance records,” DeWitt said. “We’re hoping that once we show you everything we’ve learned so far, you’ll come up with some theories about the perp. The vampire at large,” he elaborated. “We’re wondering if our perp is the same vampire who accompanied our friend here. Maybe he staked this vampire to put him in some kind of stasis. To immobilize him. Maybe this is a vampiric coma, or imprisonment. We conjecture that the stake acts as a kind of restraint.”

“So maybe this vamp is a vic,” Jackson said.

DeWitt cracked a small smile. “That’s a theory. There’s so much to learn, wouldn’t you agree? Two weeks isn’t nearly enough time.”

Claire and Jackson went back up tombside and talked to the Maine agents while the other two groups took their turns discovering that the Truth wasn’t out there; it was about ten feet below. By then it was nearly midnight, and they were dismissed and sent off to their quarters. Jackson asked to come to Claire’s room after they both got settled in to talk for a while, and she figured they weren’t in high school and they did have a lot to talk about, so she said yes.

“Damn,” he said, as he shut the door. Her room had a bed, a small dresser, a desk and a chair, and an overstuffed chair. He sat on the desk chair and she took the more comfortable one. “Vampires.”

They shared a look. And Clare got nervous, because not only was she really glad he’d asked to come in, but she’d been hoping that he would.

“Vampires,” she concluded. “Can you believe it?”

“Just watch. We’re going to end up as a task force,” he said. “We twelve. We’re going to have T-shirts that say VSI. They’re going to transfer us to the basement of the J. Edgar Hoover Building in D.C. like those guys in The X-Files . People will laugh at us.”

“That should pose no problem for you. You’re already big on laughter,” she pointed out.

“She had a baster ,” Jackson said.

“I might have shot her.”

He nodded. “I’m sorry, Claire. It’s been a weird time in my life.”

Her ears pricked up at that and felt an unsettling little blip in her chest. “Girlfriend?”

Steadily gazing at her, he replied, “You know I don’t have a girlfriend.”

It was stupid to be relieved. Stupid, and wrong.

“Is your grandma sick?” she probed, trying to get him to share.

“It’s just family stuff,” he said. “My sisters and I inherited a house in California from our aunt and we’re trying to decide what to do about it.”

He’s thinking about moving, she translated. She hadn’t known about all these feelings for him—okay, she’d known she had feelings, just not that they ran this deep.

“Hey, so how’d you meet Peter?” he asked, naming the elephant in the living room, and she blessed him for it.