Chapter 5
"The Investigation"

John looked at the fat, grotesque body realizing it probably hadn't always looked like that. It had been soaking in the river for a couple days at least. A few fish and turtles had decided to take a bite or two, and the insects had found a new home. The skin was pale, whiter than John had seen before, almost as if it were an albino. The flesh was bloated having been soaking in water and lying in direct sunlight. It didn't smell very good either.

It wasn't a pleasant sight, but John had the feeling that before this young woman had taken her ill advised swim, she had been quiet lovely. The idea that the corset that now strangled her midsection had once fit seemed laughable, but also suggested that she had possessed a very attractive figure at one time. Now it looked like the straps on the back were kneading dough.

John had seen enough. "Cut her clothes off and cover her body with a sheet," he said. As his men did as they were told, he stepped away from the scene, wondering for the hundredth time why he did this job.

A man had come to the guardhouse shortly after dawn saying that he and his son had gone south on the river to fish and had found a body. John had come down with them and examined the scene. He didn't get many drownings, and when he did, the body was rarely found. This one seemed to have avoided the swift current in the middle of the river and had stayed close to shore, finally getting caught up among the reeds.

He already had a guess as to who this young woman was. Gregory Traft had come to him yesterday afternoon saying that his daughter Betty was missing. She had not returned from the Toole party two nights ago now. John had obviously been at that party, but he did not recognize this girl. That wasn't surprising with as much as her body had changed in the river and with the fact that John had spent most of that night looking at food and not women. But this was most likely her.

Betty had probably left the party having had too much to drink, went swimming, and drowned. It wasn't common, but it happened. John did not like bringing young girls back to their fathers wrapped in a sheet.

"Sir, there is something else over here you need to see."

John followed one of his men up river a ways to another clearing. There, hanging on a tree was a dress, and on the grass next to the river was a pair of shoes. "Why would she get undressed here?" John's man asked.

"Good question," John replied. There was a small inlet here, where the water was relatively calm. It was actually a very safe place to go swimming, as long as you didn't go too far out into the middle of the river. But the water could have only been four feet deep here. You'd have to be pretty drunk to drown in four feet of water.

The more likely way to drown would be to have ventured too far out and get caught in the current, but if that were the case, then there was almost no way that the body would have washed back to shore only a few hundred feet down river. Now if she had managed to drown in this shallow section, then her body would have slowly moved down river, bouncing off the shore until it became tangled in the reeds.

But this still didn't make sense, because there was a much better swimming hole right on the edge of town that lots of people used. The only reason to come this far south would be for privacy. John knew that there had been a lot of available men at the party. That meant she had probably not come here alone. So either there was another body to be found, or the captain had a potential murder on his hands.

John heard the horse coming a few seconds before one of his men spoke up. "Sir, someone is coming."

The road was a good 100 feet away from the river, so someone had left it and was coming to them. John felt suddenly protective of the scene, realizing that it was a little more complicated than a simple drowning. With that added complication, he wasn't surprised to see who came walking through the trees to meet him.

"Artemis, what brings you this far south so early in the morning?"

"You found a body?" Entreri asked, not bothering with a greeting.

Most would be upset with the intrusion, but Entreri obviously had an agenda here, and since John had no leads, he didn't hide anything. "Yes I did. She is down this way."

Before following the captain, Entreri scanned this clearing, seeing the dress, shoes, and inlet. John figured that the assassin had probably reasoned everything that he had and in just a few quick glances.

"Why the interest in this body?" John asked. "And how did you know it was here?"

"I didn't," Entreri replied, following John through the brush along the shore of the river to the body down stream. "I went to the guard house looking for you. They said you were down here because someone found a body in the river."

"And why were you looking for me?"

"You have another killer loose in the city," Entreri said plainly.

Great, John thought, more fun. "Worse than Drizzit, or whatever his name was?"

Entreri hadn't thought of it like that yet. "Depends," he responded, not sure he knew the answer to the question.

John waited for an explanation, but didn't get one. "So why the concern over this new killer? I thought you didn't care about what happens in this city."

"I don't," Entreri replied humorlessly, "but he killed two of my men two nights ago, and he attacked again last night."

"Well, I don't think this is your man." They walked out of the trees into the second clearing. The men had finished cutting off her clothes and had put a sheet over her. One of them had left to go get a wagon to carry her back to town.

"She was killed two nights ago as well," John continued. "In fact, she was at our party. So if your killer was up by your place, I don't know why he would come back down here to kill her. Besides, it looks like she just drowned."

Entreri didn't reply verbally to that comment, but threw the captain a sarcastic look. John was right; Entreri had gathered all the evidence from the other clearing. Instead of talking, Entreri walked up to the body, squatted next to it, and peeled back the sheet a little bit. The bite mark stood out clearly on the bloated skin.

John watched him, and could now see he was deep in thought. "What is it?" John asked as he walked up beside him.

"You are half right," Entreri started, wondering how much to tell the captain. If he told John everything, then he would have city guards at every street corner. While it might be good for the safety of the city, the vampires wouldn't come out and play, and Entreri would never find them. They would very slowly build their army and not come out until they felt strong enough to overcome anything.

Entreri didn't want to wait that long. He knew there were at least two vampires. If he waited till there were 20, he would never get his weapons back. He needed to flush them out now, and he needed to do it without the "help" of the city guard.

"I am half right?" John prompted, for Entreri had lapsed into several moments of silence.

"This wasn't my killer, at least not directly." Entreri just decided to come out with it. He stood and spoke so that only John could hear. "You have vampires in your city."

"Come again?"

Entreri pointed at the neck of the body. "A vampire did that."

"How do you know it wasn't insects?"

Entreri pulled the sheet further, exposing more of the naked body. "What is wrong with this body?"

John could think of lots of things, but kept his mouth shut.

"When a body gets bloated like this, aren't the veins usually visible through the skin?"

John nodded slowly. That was why the body looked so white. The veins weren't there.

"It's not that the veins aren't there," Entreri continued, practically reading the captain's mind, "but there is no blood in them. A vampire sucks all the blood and life from its victims. Insects don't do that."

"So a vampire is a creature that sucks blood."

"Yes. They appear human. They only come out at night. And they can multiply. When they feed on someone they can leave them for dead, or turn them into a vampire. Once turned, they are more demon than human. They care nothing of their former life and live only to kill and obey the one who turned them. They have supernatural strength and speed and are impervious to normal weapons."

"These things are walking my streets?" John was obviously not happy.

Entreri tried to calm him. "Right now there are two, the one who attacked me, who I believe is the leader, and the one who killed this girl. He was at the party. I know what he looks like."

Entreri could see the wheels turning in John's head as to how he was going to fix this problem and hunt down these creatures. "You have to let me handle this," Entreri said.

"Like hell I do," he replied.

He was about to turn to his men, but Entreri grabbed his arm. "Listen to me!" he said in a harsh whisper. "If your men go up against vampires they will die. Remember what happened with Drizzt?"

"I remember what happened, you sat on your ass and he killed half a dozen of my men."

"Yes, well, I am not sitting on my ass now, and a lot more than half a dozen of your men will die. Look, if you come out in force, the vampires will retreat and stay hidden."

"Good, then they won't be killing anyone."

Entreri shook his head. "Yes they will, only they will be much more careful about it and we won't catch them. They will wait until they have an army and then they will attack.

"Look, right now they are not killing in bunches. They are laying low. I'm guessing they are only feeding in the north. We were supposed to think this girl drowned. And outside of you and me, who else would have seen through this rouse?"

John conceded that point. "But they are still killing, and northerners are people just like anyone else. I don't value life like you do."

"If you do what you want, it will be as if you don't value life at all! Look, you have to trust me on this. I know everything about vampires; you know nothing. You have to let me handle this."

"Why should I trust you? Every time I have come to you asking for help, you have refused. Why are you suddenly so charitable now?"

Entreri took a deep breath. "In the past you have asked me to join in a fight that wasn't mine. You wanted me to risk my life for the sake of your city. I don't have a badge on my lapel. I don't work for the city. I'm not asking you to help me build ships, so why should I help you with your job. This is different. This vampire has already attacked me. By business has been hurt. It will continue to suffer as long as the vampires feed. I will handle this."

John paused in thought, thinking there was more to this than Entreri was letting on. He also wondered if what Entreri said was right. Maybe the assassin was the best way to solve this. He wasn't finished yet. "Remember what happened with the goblins? You walked into that mountain range with an army and you were slaughtered. Then you and I walked in alone, and we killed everything. The solution to everything is not force. I will handle this."

John slowly nodded. "You do realize that if the mayor finds out about this, I will lose my job. And if anything else happens, if any more of my townspeople are killed, I will respond. Finish this quickly."

Entreri nodded, accepting the arrangement. John looked down at Betty. "As far as anyone else is concerned, this girl drowned."

"Thank you," Entreri said.

"Is there anything I can do?" John asked.

Entreri nodded. "You can give me a lead."

"What?" John almost laughed. "I thought you were the one who knew everything about vampires."

"True, but you are the one with your finger on the pulse of the city. Has anything happened in the past week that has seemed odd? Was there anything that when you heard the report you thought to yourself, 'They had to have gotten that wrong?' Think. There had to be something."

John remembered Craig's story quite well. "Yes, there is something."

John had told the two diggers to take a break for a while so that he and Entreri could have the tunnel to themselves. On the way back to the city, John had told Entreri Craig's story about how a creature and risen from a coffin and bitten Fredrick. Entreri got a brief description from what John could remember of what Fredrick was supposed to look like (he had never met him) and Entreri satisfied his curiosity that it was the same person that was trying to seduce Christine. He tried to get John to remember him from the party, but the captain honestly didn't remember.

The two men walked down the torch lit tunnel with John pointing out any items of interest, such as where the cave in had been, how they had never found the missing wheelbarrows and pick axes, and how there was no trace of any coffin or blood or anything.

Entreri nodded as he heard the facts, looking everything over for himself. He paused halfway into the tunnel looking at the wall. "There is a hole here," he said. He turned and looked to see a matching hole on the opposite wall just beneath the torch. In fact there were holes under each torch proceeding down the tunnel. Each hole was a little lower than the one before.

"The torches had been hung too low," John replied. "I had the men take them out and put them back in at the proper height."

"Why had they been hung to low?" Entreri said, looking closely at each one and measuring the rate of decent of each successive hole.

John paused, realizing that his initial assessment of the situation might have been wrong. "At the time I saw them, I thought it was fatigue. I mean Craig had just told me an unbelievable story, so I figured the men had been half asleep to dream up that kind of tale."

Entreri crouched down, almost putting his cheek on the dirt as he looked down the tunnel and then back up it. He got up quickly. "The torches weren't hung low. Someone raised the floor."

"What? Why?"

Entreri turned to the captain. "You said that the coffin had fallen from the ceiling. That would have left a large rectangular hole in the top of the tunnel. It is quite impossible to lift dirt back to that hole to fill it in, so they instead removed dirt from the ceiling to level it out. The coffin was probably two and a half feet tall, so they removed that from the ceiling gradually tapering it back to normal. The result was that they added that dirt to the floor. The ceiling went up and the floor went up, but the torches never moved.

John nodded, understanding the reasoning clearly. He crouched down too and could just make out the slight slope in the floor. They walked to the last hole in the wall and looked up. "This is where the coffin fell. They reshaped the tunnel to match this height, and since then your men have been digging ahead at this level."

John shook his head, feeling stupid. Entreri decided to throw in an editorial. "You thought Craig was lying, or at least got the story wrong. So you looked for evidence to support your theory. Times are changing. The next time someone comes to you saying they've seen a monster. Believe them."

John nodded, accepting the criticism, knowing that Entreri was right. "Okay, but where is the coffin now? It looks like our vampires sealed themselves inside, but when we dug through the cave in, this is what we found."

"Give me your sword," Entreri said, as he walked back up the tunnel.

John unsheathed it slowly. "Where's yours?" he asked, noticing for the first time that Entreri wasn't wearing a weapon. It wasn't odd for the assassin to walk around town unarmed, but since they were hunting vampires, John would have guessed he would bring along some weapons.

Entreri took the two-handed sword without answering the captain's question. After they had walked back to about where the torches had been moved, Entreri thrust the sword into the dirt wall. The blade went in a foot and a half and stopped. He turned around and thrust into the opposite wall with the same result.

"What are you doing?" John asked. "I mean besides dulling my blade."

"Trying to find out where they hid," he replied.

Entreri kept up the routine, moving up the wall slowly. Finally he found what he was looking for. He thrust forward and lost his balance as the blade sunk into the wall to its hilt. John understood immediately. He whistled up the tunnel and the two workers came running down. John took one of the pickaxes and went to work. Within a minute he had the fake wall down, revealing a dark tunnel beyond.

John looked at Entreri. "Do we go in?"

Entreri nodded. He handed the captain back his sword and traded it for the pickaxe. He then reached for a torch with the other hand and cautiously led the captain down the tunnel. If Alec were here now, he would probably be sleeping. It was daytime, so if this was where they lived, they should both be here. In these tight quarters, Entreri felt he had the advantage. Fredrick would not be a problem, and Alec would be too cautious to engage Entreri when he held a torch.

No one was home. The tunnel led to a small cave. Inside were the two pickaxes and wheelbarrows. There was a large rectangular indentation in the floor where the coffin had been, but other than the tools, the room was empty. Entreri swore. "I guess they found a new home."

There were two tunnels leading out of the room. Down one they could hear water trickling and could tell it led to the sewer. The other one offered no clues. Entreri held the torch high as they made their way down the second passageway. It ended 30 feet later with stone protruding into the tunnel.

"It looks like the foundation of a house," John said. He reached up to the stone tiles and found one of them was loose. "Which house is this? They could get in whenever they wanted?"

"If I had to guess," Entreri replied. "I'd say this is the Toole home. Fredrick has a thing for the daughter."

"What do you mean by that?" John asked, not liking the way it sounded.

"Vampires are known to hunt their prey. They pick out someone, usually someone who has scorned them in their previous life, and they stalk them. They draw it out as long as possible, torturing the poor soul until they finally end it."

"We need to warn Thurston and his daughter about this."

Entreri figured that would be his response. He shook his head. "No, they can't know. We will collapse these tunnels and take the digging equipment back. If you start alerting people to the vampires, everyone will know, and I won't be able to find them. I will protect Thurston's daughter."

"How?" John asked.

Entreri didn't answer right away. Right now Christine Toole was his only link to the vampires. From the sewers, they could get anywhere in the city. They had found a new home and were beginning to build an army, no doubt. Entreri was running out of time. He needed a plan. He needed more information. He needed a lot of things.

"I need some weapons," Entreri told John.

Despite the situation, John managed a smirk. Entreri had fought with this head vampire and had lost his weapons. While much of this man was a mystery, his pride was obvious. He now had even more confidence that Entreri would finish this thing quickly. "I think we have a few extra a the guardhouse."

Entreri nodded and followed John back out of the tunnel and to the guardhouse, a look of determination on his face. It was late morning. He had the rest of the day to put together his plan. He needed to act tonight.