Out of the Silence
Part 2

See Part 1 for notes and disclaimers and author's ramblings.
If you don't receive a part, the parts can be found at:
http://www.loftworks.com/wftk/fiction.html

        Vampires.  Blood-sucking creatures of the night.  They existed.  
He hadn't believed it at first.  Not really.  And yet, he had.  And 
time had proven it out.  He believed.  He knew.  In fact, one night, 
about four years ago, he'd actually had a sighting of the demon kind.  
It had been a freak accident, and T.C. counted himself lucky that the 
vampire had no idea he was observed.  If he had been, T.C. was sure 
he'd be dead.  Dead, dead, dead.  The weird thing about it was that he 
hadn't been thinking about Knight, or vampires or anything remotely 
related to the case when it had happened. 
        It had been a surveillance operation.  Detectives from his 
precinct had been tracking a drug operation, one so highly delicate 
that they moved their surveillance equipment every day, and it had been 
paying off.  They'd identified twelve major players already.  That 
particular night, they had been running the surveillance from a corner 
room in a three-story warehouse.   They had been watching with interest 
the  comings and going at the dilapidated building across the street.  
It appeared to be the headquarters for distribution to street vendors--
they had struck paydirt.
  
                                 *****

        T.C. dropped by to check on the surveillance and determine what 
other support they might need.  Roberts handed him some night-vision 
goggles with a grin.  "Hi, Cap," he said.   "Take a look through those.  
You can see *everything*!"
        T.C. raised an eyebrow as he took the NVG's.  "You are lucky 
SOB's, you know.  We never had anything like this for surveillance.  No 
money, no support..."
        "Yeah, and you had to walk there through a meter of snow, too, 
right?" Roberts interjected with a laugh.
        "Yeah," T.C. said, cocking his head at Roberts, "and don't you 
forget it, or you'll be doing surveillance with tin cans and string."
        "Right, boss," Roberts said with just the right amount of sass 
and humility in his voice.
        T.C. shook his head and slipped into the dark booth set up 
around the window.  Roberts' partner Kyle Miller was already there 
watching the output from a video camera.  T.C. exchanged nods with 
Miller and looked out into the dark night through the goggles.  It 
always amazed him that nothing remained hidden by night's darkness with 
NVG's.  Nothing.  He watched in silence for a few moments and was 
rewarded when a man exited the building and slouched to a car.  Moments 
later, the car took off and excelerated rapidly down the street.
        T.C. looked at Kyle, "We could have got him for speeding."
        Kyle grinned.  "Yeah, but we have greater things in store."
        "Who was that?"
        "Dave Clegg.  They call him 'the Bowler'."
        "Do I want to know why?" T.C. asked dryly.
        "Dirt on the street says its because he's a fanatic bowler, but 
also because he has a great score on keeping his dealers in line.  They 
screw up, they...disappear."
        "We haven't nailed him for that?"
        "Not yet," Kyle said.  "But I think we will this time."
        T.C. nodded in satisfaction and left the booth.  He wandered 
over to the booth by the west windows and ducked in out of curiosity.  
A camera was taping street activity, but since this side was a dead 
end, there wasn't much of interest.  But T.C. just wanted a few more 
minutes to play with the goggles.  He looked at the warehouse through 
them.  NVG's fascinated him.  He had an urge to take them apart to see 
what made them work.  Why was everything green through the goggles?  
T.C. shrugged mentally.  He supposed someone could tell him, but in the 
meantime it gave new meaning to turning green.  
        Roberts ducked in to check the tape.  "There's a homeless guy 
living over by that dumpster at the warehouse."
        "Been watching him, huh?"
        "Now and then.  Like you say, Cap, the goggles are great."  He 
ducked out again and T.C. started looking for the homeless guy.  He 
found him in what ought to have been a dark recessed corner near the 
dumpster--unless you were using NVG's, that is.  The homeless guy 
looked like he was settled down for the night with a bottle to keep him 
company.  T.C. sighed.  There was no easy or simple solution to 
vagrancy and homelessness.  There were as many reasons as there were 
homeless people.  What, he wondered, was this guy's story.  Abuse?  
Addiction?  Delayed Stress Syndrome?  Mental Illness?  Job loss?  Who 
knew....
        T.C.'s thoughts stopped as the homeless guy sat up.  The look 
of fear was clear on his face.  He searched back and forth through the 
darkness, and T.C. began looking, too.  What had scared this guy?  What 
was he hearing?
        T.C. watched the guy's head slew around to the left, towards 
the dumpster.  But even as T.C. started to focus on the dumpster, a 
dark blur streaked across his field of view.  It seemed to sparkle 
with...well, he didn't know what, but the blur was suddenly a man.  And 
he had the homeless guy held in a tight grip against his body.  
        He was dark, with hair caught back in a pony tail.  Well 
dressed.  Eastern European.  All those thoughts crossed T.C.'s mind in 
a single instance as the man ripped the homeless guy's shirt and coat 
away.  He threw his head back in a movement that was primal, sensual, 
and visceral at the same time.   His jaws opened and that was when T.C. 
saw them.
        Fangs.
        In the instant it registered, the vampire struck, burying his 
fangs in the homeless guy's jugular.  A rictus of pain crossed the 
homeless guy's face.  Pain, surprise, disbelief.  T.C. was sure it was 
mirrored on his face.  
        The embrace was a grotesque mimicry of an intimate moment that 
T.C. watched without breathing, without moving, as his hands tightened 
on the goggles and sweat broke out on his brow.  How long it lasted, he 
didn't know.  Perhaps a minute, perhaps less.  It seemed timeless.  The 
homeless guy's eyes slid shut as blood loss overwhelmed him.  Then the 
vampire dropped him, callously, to the ground.  
        There was a look of primal lust on his handsome face.  His eyes 
sparkled with sheer joy under heavy lids.  And T.C. could see it all as 
if he was only two meters away rather than a hundred.
        The vampire cocked his head, listening, and swept the area with 
a look that missed nothing--or almost nothing.  T.C. involuntarily 
gulped, but didn't move.  Movement just might draw attention to him.
        But the vampire did not see him, did not look at the dark 
windows of the empty building.  He picked up the body and vanished in a 
blur.
        And that was how T.C. witnessed a murder...and didn't raise a 
finger, or say a word to stop it...

        "...and I didn't do a damn thing to stop it.  I didn't say a 
word.  I didn't tell Rogers or Miller anything.  I just handed back 
those goggles and walked out of there," T.C. said, his face hidden in 
his hands, several hours later sitting in Joe Reese's study spilling it 
out to Joe and Scott. 
        "Don't beat yourself up over this, son," Joe said softly in the 
darkened room.  "You couldn't have stopped it.  How far away did you 
say he was?  A hundred meters?  By the time you could have yelled for 
help, or gone there, it would still have been over.  And nobody else 
would have seen a thing."  
        T.C. just shook his head.  "Yeah, but I should have 
done...something.  Anything!  I don't know.  I was so caught up in 
it...I just didn't think."  He ran his hands through his hair.  
"Couldn't think, is more like it.  It was so...hell, I don't know.  No.  
I felt like I was a voyeur watching sex.  It was primitive and 
unbelievable.  Hell, now I know they're the top of the food chain.  He 
was pure predator.  Like nothing I could have imagined.  No movie 
special effect can even come close to it.  It was minimal effort with 
maximum outcome."
        "Calm down, T.C., you sound like you're high..."
        "High?  Hell, I haven't come down that far!"  T.C. said in a 
burst and he stood and began pacing the room.  He stopped and looked 
over his shoulder at Joe.  "You can't imagine what it was like."  He 
started pacing agitatedly again.  
        "And how the hell did he just vanish like that?  Just a 
glittery blur and he was gone..."  T.C. gasped and stopped.  "Ohmi... 
the trajectory... it was upwards."  He stared at Reese as it hit him.  
"They can fly."
        "Now, don't go jumping to conclusions there," Joe cautioned.
        "Jumping.  Oh, no.  No no no no no!  I'm not jumping, I'm past 
that, all the way to absolutely certain," T.C. said as he ran his hands 
through his already rumpled, wildly curling hair.  "He went up.  And he 
had to be incredibly strong."
        "T.C.," Scott said finally, interrupting.  "If he can fly, and 
if he was that strong, do you think you could have done anything to 
stop him if you'd been closer?"
        T.C. stared at him, stopped dead in his tracks.
        "In fact, you'd be dead if you had tried.   At least now we've 
got more information, we know more than we knew yesterday about how 
they operate, how they attack and kill.  We know how swift and deadly 
they are.  Before we could only speculate, now we have facts.  It could 
save our lives someday, you know."
        Joe sighed.  "When you talk about them like that, I just can't 
imagine Nick ever doing anything like that."
        "And yet," Scott mused, "he had to be capable of it.  If he was 
one of them, he would have been as much a predator as the one you saw 
tonight."
        "I don't think I like Nick Knight very much right now," T.C. 
muttered.  "I'm still shaking."
        "Nick," Reese reminded him, "wasn't like that."
        "At least," T.C. added, "not in your sight."
        "Not when I knew him.  If he'd been like that, he wouldn't have 
been a cop!"  Reese said heatedly.
        "Okay, quit it, both of you!" Scott said sharply.  "We knew he 
was a vampire.  We knew it was dangerous.  Now we know more than we 
could have imagined, and how quickly they can strike, and its twisting 
the old knife in the guts.  It doesn't change anything.  It's just a 
little more..."
        "...visceral,"  T.C. finished.  "I need a drink."

                                 *****        

        "I could really use a drink," T.C. murmured as he stared out 
the window at the heavy snow falling.  It was hard to imagine Joe laid 
up in a hospital.  A heart attack.  He was indestructible.  He was the 
force behind everything--Joe and his unshakeable belief that Nick 
Knight deserved to be found.  T.C. shook his head at that.  He had such 
ambivalent feelings about it since the night he'd seen and truly 
understood what a vampire was.  
        What had Knight been?  It all depended on how T.C. felt at a 
given moment.  Vampire and predator.  Hero cop.  Natalie's friend and 
confidant.  Perhaps her lover.  Perhaps her killer.  Enigma.  That was 
what Knight was.  He didn't fit the mold--or the myths.  At least, he 
hoped he didn't.  
        Was Knight like that graceful and elegant killer that had moved 
more like a primal animal than a man--T.C. hoped not.  But he suspected 
that he must have been.  All the information about Knight indicated he 
had incredible charisma and charm, not too mention grace and elegance.  
Maybe that was part of it.  Perhaps a vampire had a sexual charisma 
that sucked in the victim before he even realized what had hit him.  
The one he'd seen kill had exuded something sensual--and he'd felt that 
from a hundred meters away.  Imagine what it could be like at a meter.  
Maybe Natalie had never had a chance...then again, maybe it had been 
her choice.  It all depended on how you looked at it.
        T.C. sighed and turned from the window.  This was something he 
didn't have time to dwell on.  He'd go see Joe after he finished his 
shift. Hopefully this insane storm would wear itself out by then.  His 
phone range.
        "Davis" T.C. said into the receiver.  He closed his eyes and 
shook his head as he was informed of an eight car pile up on Yonge 
Street two blocks away from the previous pile up, and a major power 
outage that had hit part of his area. It just never ended.  He should 
have stayed a Detective...

End Part 2
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