The rain smashed down on the roof with big fat drops. It was the perfect weather for sleeping and thats exactly what Davis was doing, his feet up on his desk, his head back at the correct angle for bad neck pain later and his mouth wide open, emitting a noise almost reminiscent of bees buzzing.
It was a little after 2pm and, for once, he was genuinely caught up on all his work. No one had called him for the last few hours, and there was no one out in the field that he had to wrangle. For all he knew, everyone had died since it started raining, but none of it was his concern. He could finally rest.
“You shouldnt leave your throat exposed like that,” a voice said.
In the dream Davis was having, his usual, where hes James Bond laying on the beach, he was up to the part where the lead actress emerged from the surf in a bikini that was almost too small for her and he was about to make a snide quip about it, which would lead to the inevitable hotel room scene. Instead, as he watched the water, Hitch emerged, fully dressed in what looked to be a Victorian-era gown. Her hair was done up in a tight bun at the back and her skin, white as paper, was bone dry. She licked her dull blue lips as she looked over Davis, laying there, and said something he could not quite hear. He picked himself up and leaned on his elbows, the dream version of him not yet registering what was happening.
“That is not quite beach appropriate, what you have on, young lady,” he said, all the while some part of him that was awake, yelled at the back of his head that the rest of him had better catch up or thered be hell to pay.
“I said,” the dream version of Hitch said, suddenly on top of him, pinning him to the sand, leaning down, those long, sharp fangs mere millimetres from his neck. “You shouldnt leave your throat exposed like that.”
As the final words escaped her mouth, and the tips of her fangs brushed over his skin, he awoke, jerking forward in his chair, gasping hard. On the other side of the desk, in a typical office skirt, shirt and jacket, Hitch stood. Her hair was done up in a tight bun, her skin was bone dry and paper white and her fangs were long and sharp, but otherwise, the dream version of her was totally different.
“You never know when someone might come and interrupt your nap,” she said. It wasnt her voice. Not really. It was the voice of the elder vampire, still locked away somewhere in the building. Field agents moved her every other day in an attempt to keep Hitch from finding her. Each night the almost-but-not-quite fully turned Hitch would search the building, looking for the creature that had bit her, hoping to free her. Then the two of them could find somewhere abandoned in the city, and start their new harem.
“Fucking hell, you know how to ruin a good dream,” he said.
“Im sure Viola would love to hear all about it,” Hitch said, licking her lips. Her tongue was the only part of her that still retained some colour and Davis could not help himself but stare.
“What do you want?” Davis asked, pulling his attention back to her eyes; coal black and all seeing.
“An interesting case,” she said. Her voice was back to being hers. Whenever work stuff was the topic, the elder vampire let her go. “A church downtown was vandalised, but their CCTV shows nothing.”
“Lets see it,” Davis said, wheeling his feet off the desk and planting himself in the proper posture for work.
“You know I cant come closer,” she said, pointing to the circle that ran around his desk and chair. It was some combination of runes that one or another of Viola’s contacts had come up with to prevent Hitch from getting within arms reach. Every desk except hers had one. It was like a threshold, a doorway. She had to be invited to cross it and everyone on staff had been trained not to offer it to her. So she stood with the very tips of her toes, in her pointed heels, on the line, looking hungrily across at Davis. “The details are in the folder,” she said, indicating the manila folder with a dozen or so pages in it she had thrown on the table. “Also, the digital stuff is in the usual place.”
Davis nodded and took the folder, skimming the cover page, which is what Hitch had already told him, and then started reading the more detailed report on the next page.
He got to the end, flicked the page over to find nothing written on the other side, pushed the folder to the side and searched through the networked storage to Hitch’s directory where he called up the CCTV footage she mentioned.
“There was a thunderstorm last night,” she said by way of explanation. As you can see, at the edge of the roof, the church has several statues.”
“Yes yes, I read the thing,” he said dismissively.
“At one minute and 13 seconds, the power to the CCTV is cut.”
He scrolled through the video until just before the time she mentioned and started playing it again. At the time she said, the feed turns to static for a moment and then comes back up. Very clearly, despite the weather, all of the statues are gone, only broken concrete where they had stood lent any evidence to their previous position. Soon after, the video cuts out entirely and stops.
“How long was the feed cut for?” Davis asked.
“Four minutes and sixteen seconds,” she replied.
“What else happened in that general area that night?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did the lightning make contact with anything? Ground strikes, things like that?”
“I dont know,” she said after a moment.
“Check.”
“Now?” she sounded like she was going to start whining.
“Yes now,” he said. “Meet me upstairs when you find it.”
“Find what?”
“Whatever else it was that happened last night. Itll stand out, you wont miss it.”
“Ugh,” she said and turned to leave. “Im not going in her office,” she said back over her shoulder.
Davis waited until he knew she was in an elevator car and then left his office and called for another. She was definitely going down, which was good. He stepped in his car and pushed the button for a floor several above his own. It wasnt the top of the building, but it was close.
It was Violas floor – the whole lot, just hers. One big office.
As the car stopped and the doors opened, he stepped out and was immediately presented with long wooden poles, sharpened to points. Along the ground, more complex runes than the ones at his desk were not just written on the floor, but carved or etched into it. The stink of garlic wafted through the air.
“So thats why she doesnt want to come up here,” he muttered. “Guys, its me,” he said to the guards who held the poles to his throat. He pulled down the collar of his shirt and let them see there were no puncture marks.
“Let him through,” a familiar voice purred. “I can tell he has not been violated.”
The poles were removed and he took a deliberate step over the runes. “See?” he said. “No flames, no pile of ash. Not a vamp.”
“Mmm, my dear Davis, I have invited you in, so your logic is not sound, but as I said, I can tell you are not one of theirs. We are all safe from you in here,” Viola let out a choked laugh and held out her arm, inviting him to join her at her desk. “But such invitations do not last for long if you have come here for no reason, yes?”
“Hit-” he started to say, before seeing the look on his bosses face. “She,” he corrected himself, “brought an interesting case to my attention. The statues atop a church in town.”
“What of them?” Viola said, her voice was tight with impatience and the stack of paperwork on her desk gave every indication as to why.
Davis took a deep breath and spoke rapidly, knowing she would keep up with him. “Oldest church in town, rebuilt from an earlier church which was torn down brick by brick and carried here, by hand, in order to break a curse. The curse itself was lost to time, but the effects of the curse were flying creatures snatching children and defiling crops.”
“I know this church, yes,” Viola said.
“During last nights storm, the statues disappeared. I have,” he almost said her name again. “I have her combing through whatever other information she can find about last night. Something, somewhere in the city has reawakened the curse and if she can find out where it happened, which wont be hard, we can find out who did it.”
“Did what?” Viola asked.
“Reawakened the gargoyles,” Davis said.
“Take me through this curse again?” Hitch said. She was laying on the sofa in Davis’ office, idly playing with the hem of her skirt. He could tell the elder vampire was telling her what to say, even though this was a work conversation. “How did it work?”
“We dont know,” Davis said. “I read about it in school, you probably did too, before,” he waved his hand at her, “all this.”
“Pretend I didnt,” she sneered and her eyes flashed with something else.
“Some hundred and sixty something miles away,” Davis said, “there used to be a small town, a town of the faithful. They existed around the church that had been built there on a site thats purpose has also been lost to time. Over the years, this town flourished, until some mage or wizard or cultist or whoever laid a curse on the town. Common theory is, although this isnt confirmed, that the person who laid the curse was upset at the town being built on that particular site. Anyway, we dont know what the curse was specifically, but children were snatched, taken, killed, whatever and any crops that fed the town turned to rot.”
“What does this have to do with us?” she said.
“Getting there, hold on. So the people of this town realised it was because of the church, or maybe the curse said it was. Again, we dont know, and they demolished the church brick by brick and carted it all here. They rebuilt the church where it stands now and life moved on. Children werent snatched, food remained edible. The curse was broken. I, and others, had a theory though that the curse could be reawakened somehow. That the curse wasnt truly broken. Its possible that during the storm last night, someone nearby found the right combination of factors and reawakened the curse. The curse being fucking gargoyles, some of the meanest and hardest to kill things ever to exist.”
“And those statues?”
“During the day, the gargoyles are statues, stone. Easy to use a hammer on. At night they come to life and terrorise whoever they want.”
“And whoever woke them?” the elder vampire said via Hitch.
“Has no good reason to,” he replied.
“Then you should probably see this,” she said, throwing over a page of data. “Says the only thing of note that happened last night happened in the upper levels of this very building.”