Authors: Jean Lorrah
“Not that I'm aware of. Why?"
“How long have you had it?"
“Since yesterday. I saw the word ‘vampire’ in it, skimmed it as I made the printouts, and deleted it. It was only in the system a couple of hours, so if the Numen didn't see it then, maybe he won't find out."
“I'm pretty sure he doesn't know,” said Brandy.
“What makes you say that?” he asked with eager hope.
“He hasn't made a move against you, although you've had the information almost two days."
Brandy felt most of Dan's tension drain away. “You're right. He'd have made an attempt to get it away from me."
“Dan,” Brandy said, “if that document is true, he would have made you destroy it and forget you ever saw it."
He was silent for a moment. Then, “That's what I find hardest to believe. I have no gaps in my memory. If I wasn't born a vampire, when could this have happened to me?"
“The document says you make up the memories to fill in the gaps. Dan...” Did she dare? They needed every ounce of truth and trust between them now. “I've seen you do it."
“What?” He stared at her in shock.
“Usually when I ask about your life before we met, you have a ready answer. But sometimes I ask questions no one else has. I've seen you pause—I thought you were searching for the right words, but what if you were creating a memory that would fit your life history?"
He put a hand to his head. “No,” he protested softly. “Sometimes I have to think to remember, just as you do."
She looked into his eyes. “Dan, the first time it really bothered me was when I asked you about Megan."
“I thought you had accepted that I was married before."
“Not that. When I assumed that you—fed from her."
“I did,” he said positively. “It was wonderful, but not as wonderful as what you and I have."
“I don't think it ever happened,” said Brandy.
“Brandy, the records will be on file—"
“I don't mean your marriage. I just don't think you were a vampire then. How old were you when Megan died?"
“Thirty-two."
“And that's how old you've stayed. Maybe your grief at her death made you vulnerable to the Numen. Intelligent people are not easy to control. In medieval times they were probably drawn in by the chance to learn alchemy, but modern scholars require different lures. You were grieving after Megan died. I remember how distracted I was when Dad died—even though I genuinely liked school, my grades dropped and my free throws went to hell. I couldn't center, couldn't find the zone. For it to be a wife, not a parent, and a cruel, slow disease instead of a sudden shock—it was far worse for you."
“I remember blowing up on the job,” said Dan. “My boss suggested I get out of the east coast pressure cooker. He helped me find a new job as an engineer on a federal highway project, Interstate 24.” He paled. “Oh my God. I was here. Only for a week or so, but I had completely forgotten it! We stayed in Paducah and drove all over this area to study putting a four-lane highway through this terrain!"
“It's all right,” Brandy said gently, disturbed by the terror emanating from this normally fearless man.
“It's not all right,” he insisted. “Years later, in a new identity, I came to interview at JPSU with no recollection that I had ever been in West Kentucky before."
“But you remember it now."
“Yes,” he said in puzzled tones. “Did I just make up that memory? Or is it real, but I had suppressed it?"
“We'll track Eduardo Tomas Donatelli's employment records,” Brandy told him. “I suspect it's true."
“If it is,” he said, “you realize there's not just a Numen in Callahan County. The Numen who made me a vampire is here."
“I had already assumed that,” said Brandy, “and I have a hunch who it is. I'll research police records and the newspaper morgue. I don't want to be put on insanity leave, if I accuse the wrong person."
Their rapport as strong as ever, Dan did not ask her the identity of her suspect. Instead, he said, “I'll check the news stories, and make copies of anything significant."
“Do you know what to look for?"
“Local officials involved in the I-24 project. It has to be someone I met."
“Murphy's paper is small. Scan all the headlines in issues around the time you visited,” suggested Brandy. “I'll check murder and accident victims, get the autopsy reports and see how many times onset of rigor mortis is suspiciously absent."
“How far back do you plan to go?"
“It depends on what I find."
Brandy found four cases in the past two years in which people died by means that would kill a vampire, all petty criminals with drug connections. There were other cases in which the heart or the brain was destroyed, but in two the remains were skeletal and in the others rigor set in as expected.
But four cases were significant, as with Rett Land and the Andersons they made seven instances in two years of unexplained absence of rigor, the only sign Brandy knew of that the corpses had been those of vampires.
Then, on a hunch, she searched the musty archives for the autopsy report on Cynthia Louise Sanford Callahan. It was brief, attesting that she died of a gunshot wound to the head. No mention was made of the onset of rigor—but no note, either, on anything unusual about the corpse.
Still, Brandy wondered: why would a woman take a man's way out? Did her husband pull the trigger? Or had he or someone else turned her into a vampire because, like her brother, she was immune to influence? Had she chosen one of the very few ways a vampire could commit suicide?
Brandy told Dan that evening. He had found something equally interesting, a news article from 1898: SCHOOL TEACHER MISSING. MYSTERIOUS BODY FOUND. There were no photos, but the story indicated that the corpse of a woman apparently in her nineties was found when the principal's assistant went looking for Miss Abigail Santee, who had failed to appear to teach her class. Miss Santee was nowhere to be found, but the aged dead woman lay peacefully on the couch in her parlor. The follow-up story the next week (for the local paper was a weekly at that time) indicated that Miss Santee was still missing, the dead woman not identified. The members of a local church provided her with a Christian burial.
“What else did you find?” asked Brandy.
“Similar cases in 1924, 1947, and 1962."
“I'll see if coroner's reports still exist on any of these,” said Brandy. “It looks as if Murphy, Kentucky is where old vampires come to die."
“No,” said Dan. “It's where they are enticed to be killed. To be—harvested."
Chapter Fifteen—Invitation
Brandy now had evidence that a Numen—a creator and exploiter of vampires—was operating in Callahan County—and had been for over a century. Although she had no direct proof, her suspicions fell on the most powerful man in the county: Judge Lee Joseph Callahan.
However, his birth records were on file in the county records. They might have been faked, as a Numen obviously had hypnotic influence, but the Callahan family had moved to Western Kentucky right after the Civil War; the whole community knew their history.
Dan was the only person Brandy could talk with about the Numen, and talk was all they seemed to do. “Maybe the Numen is just associated with the Callahans,” Dan suggested. “Judge Callahan could be a vampire under his direction."
“I don't think so,” said Brandy. “He's a good ol’ boy, not the scholarly type. He's a politician, Dan."
“If I were a Numen,” said Dan, “I'd follow Machiavelli's advice to change with the times. It would be convenient to control a powerful politician."
“I suppose you're right,” Brandy conceded. “I've wondered if that perfect tan is makeup. But he never wears sunglasses, even in the summer."
“I've considered getting contact lenses,” said Dan, “but I don't need any correction."
“If Callahan is a vampire,” said Brandy, “I wonder how the Numen feels about his plans to run for governor."
“I assume the Numen would be the power behind the throne,” Dan suggested.
Brandy shook her head. “We don't know enough. The library will have books on county history."
They found three such books, one from the early 1950's, one put together in the late 1970's, and the most recent from just last year. Spreading them on the coffee table, Brandy began looking for references to the Callahans.
There was a photograph of Joseph Lee Callahan, with the reproduction of an oil painting of his father, Lee Joseph, grandfather of the present-day judge. The man in the painting sported mutton chop whiskers, a mustache, and center-parted hair, but there was no denying his resemblance to his son. And Joseph Lee, except for his dark hair, was the spitting image of the judge on the bench today.
The thought, “spitting image,” triggered something Doc Sanford had said. “Joey Lee,” everyone had called the man in the photograph—the man Sanford said killed his sister.
Brandy studied the three versions of the Callahan story. The earliest book had a photo of the Callahan family in the 1950's: Joey Lee, Cindy Lou, and a skinny, solemn boy identified as Lee Joseph.
“Oh, God,” whispered Brandy. “That boy never grew up into the man we know today."
“How can you be sure?” asked Dan.
“Look at this family history. In every generation there is one son, and the father never lives to see him completely grown. See here? Joey Lee's father was killed in World War I, when Joey Lee was fifteen."
“So?"
“After high school, the male heir goes off to college—spending several years away from Murphy. When he returns, he's all grown up and the spitting image of his father!"
“Brandy, are you suggesting that—?"
“The real son disappears. The presumed-dead father returns sans aging makeup and takes his place."
“You think all these Lee Josephs and Joseph Lees are the same man—a man capable of murdering his own children?"
“Are they his own?” asked Brandy. “It's not in these sanctified histories, but Judge Callahan's father married Doc Sanford's sister. She had an affair. Joey Lee shot the man, but Cindy Lou gave birth to a son."
Dan flipped to the reproduction of a news story in one of the later volumes: STATE SENATOR CALLAHAN KILLED IN MINING ACCIDENT. “The bodies were never recovered."
“And just how did Joseph Lee's father die?” Brandy wondered. It was in the 1950's volume: in World War I France, Callahan and several other soldiers took shelter in a deserted farmhouse. The building was hit by mortar fire. That Lee Joseph Callahan received a posthumous medal for dragging one of his buddies out of the burning building. He died trying to save the rest.
At least the surviving soldier remembered it that way.
But how hard would it have been for the “hero” to exchange dog tags with a man whose body was about to be reduced to ashes?
“Look!” said Dan, searching the volume from the 1970's. TRAGIC SAGA OF CALLAHAN FAMILY read the headline. Joey Lee Callahan had had an older sister, it seemed. Not ten days after he returned from law school, she drowned.
There was only one survivor of each generation of Callahans, Callahan wives died young, often tragically, and since the family set down roots in West Kentucky every Callahan boy had lost his father while he was still in his teens. The article concluded with the death of the current judge's wife, in childbirth. The infant also died.
“So,” said Brandy, “the trick didn't work this time."
“How are you reading this?” Dan asked.
“Numen or vampire,” said Brandy, “Lee Joseph Callahan has found a unique way of coping with his long life. Instead of moving and changing identities, each generation he fakes his death and returns as his own son!"
“What happens to his real sons?” asked Dan.
“We don't know that he ever had any,” Brandy replied. “If the boy the current judge replaced was the son of that Darwinist college professor, I doubt Callahan would feel any compunction about killing him."
“Or turning him into a vampire,” suggested Dan.
“Possibly. In the war he could wait for an opportunity to fake his death. But he had to arrange that mine collapse—which killed two other state legislators and nine miners! Who knows how many other people he's killed?"
Dan sat very still, one hand on the open book. Very quietly, he asked, “What if we're right?"
“We are right. We have to do something about it."
“Brandy, a man with the history we're theorizing won't hesitate to kill us."
“I know,” she replied. “First we have to find out if Callahan is vampire or Numen."
“How do we do that? You can't arrest him."
“If Church is right that Callahan is connected with the drug trade, we might get a warrant to search his house."
“For the Numen manuscript?"
“If he hasn't destroyed it.” Brandy closed the book and sat back on the couch.
“I'm so sorry I got you into this,” said Dan
“What do you mean?"
“A little knowledge is dangerous. Even worse is false knowledge. I don't know how much of my own memory is true. Now I don't even know—"
When he broke off, Brandy encouraged, “Know what?"
“I don't know if I can give you children, Brandy. When Megan and I were trying to have a baby I was tested. I was fertile then—but now I know—or think I know—that I wasn't yet a vampire."
“So?"
“Callahan appears to have no children of his own."
“We don't know about the earlier marriages, or the baby that died with his last wife. There were no rumors concerning her—and believe me, in this town there would have been at the slightest suspicion of adultery!"
“If she knew about it,” said Dan. “A Numen's power of influence must be far greater than a vampire's. What if he hypnotized his wife and a man of his choice into having an affair just long enough for her to become pregnant?"
“That's sick,” said Brandy.
“Sicker than killing his own sons?"
“We don't know that's true, either,” she said. “Our problem is to investigate Judge Callahan without his knowing that we've guessed what he is. I can pick up the—. Oh, my God,” she said, her skin tingling in sick realization.
“What?” Dan asked.
“He pulled the same trick on me that he did on his wives!"