~~~
An hour and a half later, they lowered down into the parking lot of a Home Depot. Starr was amazed to see that things were just as bad, there, as they were in the city. Every window of the shopping strip had been broken into, and their displays emptied and destroyed.
“What are we doing here?” asked Starr. “Why not just start at Lucenzo’s house and track her from there.”
“We want to stop at the post office. That way I can confirm, for sure, that the virus was sent from here,” said Alin.
He started walking north. Starr and the others followed.
She caught up to him and asked, “How do you know it didn’t come from the other side of the Atlantic?”
“It’s just a hunch. We don’t have great leads, and since Credenza went missing here, it just makes sense to check it out.”
“Do you have any idea of how old, or how many vampires, we could be up against?”
“No, so we have to be careful. There are several old families here, and they like to be left to their own devices. They only reveal themselves to those they have real connections with or have need of. More importantly, their hearts have hardened over the centuries. Since they come from a time where nearly everyone was barbaric, and they’ve had their humanity scrubbed at by vampirism, then you can imagine some clans are extremely savage. Now if any one of these families should have something to do with these outbreaks, then we could be looking at one hell of a fight.”
They walked a few blocks, on which there was not a single sign of another human being.
“Stop, I hear something,” Alin suddenly said.
In the emptied jewelry store to their right, a man screamed out. Starr looked in remotely and saw that a woman ripped into his gut. The woman pulled back her clamped on jaw, and his flesh burst in half. Behind the man was an open wall safe. He must have come to get something, and was ambushed.
Starr made to go over and help, but Alin grabbed her and said, “Stop. He’ll die, no matter what. We need to keep going.”
They crossed the following intersection and were horrified to see six vampires tearing into another freshly turned vampire who wailed and growled. One vampire took his arm; the other ripped out his leg and chomped down.
A few of them turned and ran at them.
Starr was about to pull out her machetes, but the man, who called himself James, quickly shot them in the head. They dropped to ground. He continued to shoot the other four, and the one they were eating, in their heads, too.
“That way,” Saul said and pointed to a building on the corner.
They followed him inside the Boston Postal branch. Inside, Starr’s stomach contracted, tightly, for that same cinnamon-like smell enriched the air.
Chanler’s girlfriend, Michelle, picked up a blank envelope that was lying on the floor. She pulled a blank piece of paper out of it.
“Ugh,” she said and gagged. “Why is it so nasty?”
“Let me see,”Alin said. “There’s a familiar scent on it. Sari, take a whiff.”
He tossed the paper to him.
“It’s latex glove. Whoever planted this knew that scent would throw us off his or her track.”
“So, what do you think?” asked James.
“I’m really not sure,” Alin answered.
“There’s nothing we can do,” said Emil in a light Swiss accent. “There aren’t any real leads.”
“That’s not true. We’re going to visit the Scamalls,” said Chanler. “A friend told me they know something.”
“Who are they?” asked Starr.
“A tribe of Irish vampires; very old, very proud and very vicious,” he replied with a serious face.
“They’ll kill us on the spot,” Michelle shouted.
“Will you calm down?” asked Chanler.
“I will not calm down!”
“Please, shut up, Michelle. You’ve been screaming nonstop for days and it’s driving me crazy,” Emil said, shaking his fist at her.
Chanler put his arm around her waist, pulled her into him and whispered in her ear.
At the sight, a burning sensation spread along the scalp line of Starr’s forehead.
“Why would they kill us?”
“We had a falling out during the Celtic revival period, last century. Let’s just say that while others were bringing back art, they were bringing blood baths and human sacrifices. We tried to ignore it, but when they started stockpiling whole families in underground homes, we went to war with them,” said Sari.
“You think Madam Balaji was bad? Well, the Scamalls’ Bealtaine feasts would make them look like the USDA at a livestock plant: humane,” added Alin.
“It was one of the worst wars we ever had with a tribe,” said Saul. “We lost twenty of our men. Before then, we’d never lost a single person, ever.”
“Well, at this point, we don’t have a choice,” said Emil. “We need help; we can’t do this with just us. Now, surely, with their Irish pride, they wouldn’t like to be at the mercy of these nasty creatures, what could easily outnumber them.”
“I’m agreed,” said James. “Let’s go.”
He walked out and the others followed.
Clouds