A PALE HORSE

Everyone gathered around her gasped. Momma Rose, seemingly over the shock grabbed her sister in a warm hug. “I don’t know how you made it back to me, but praise the Master that you are here.” They hugged for a long time until Peter cleared his throat and said,

“Maybe we should go inside. It has been a long trip, and I’m sure that you guys have a lot to catch up on. Also, there has been a new development that we need your help with.”

Momma Rose let go of Margueritte and said in a no-nonsense voice, “Yes, you need to update me on a lot of things, young man, but first, breakfast. Questions will keep their own company until such time as we ask .” She wiped nervous hands on her apron and took hold of Margueritte’s arm, pushing Max aside in the process. Maggie stifled a giggle at Max’s wounded expression. She took pity on him and took his arm. He looked down at her and smiled. Together they walked behind the others to the little café. Peter took Tammy upstairs to his apartment to make her comfortable. He told her to put her things in the guest room and he would send someone upstairs with food for her, then he would return later to check on her. She looked relieved to be somewhere she knew, that was familiar. She had stayed at Peter’s numerous times after movie marathons or late night RPG sessions, and considered it her home away from home. Peter left her sitting on the bed in the guest room and went back down to the café. He found the group sitting around the kitchen. Momma Rose had supplied a plate full of beignets and some fresh fruit. The others had already helped themselves to the food and were at present eating happily. Momma Rose had just finished putting fresh coffee on the table and enough mugs for all. Peter noticed that the only one not eating in the room was Sam. He stood looking out the window wearing a vacant look. As much as Peter wished for a beignet at the moment, he knew that his friend needed him. He walked over to Sam and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “It’ll be fine. We will get her back.”

Sam looked down at Peter and in a soft voice said, “The thing is, Peter, I can’t remember something. It’s important, and everytime I looked at that little girl, she nudged that memory a little. She was spunky and unafraid and reminded me so much of someone. Someone important to me…” he trailed off a bit before continuing. “Someone that I can’t remember.” He growled in frustration. “As much as I want to save that little girl because it’s the right thing to do, I want just as much to see if I can remember that someone I have forgotten. Does that make sense?” he looked at Peter with a pleading expression. Peter felt that Sam had been resigned to not knowing what happened in his past for so long, that the first stirring of a memory sparked a hope in him that had been threatened by whoever had taken that spark away.

“Other than Momma Rose, I don’t think I’ve known a more selfless person, Sam. I really think you should go see Dr. Jo. Do you still have the card I gave you?” Peter asked, “She did wonders for me, I think she could help you, too.” Sam smacked his hand to his forehead.

“I almost forgot!” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed the number that was stored in his phone. Peter was confused for a moment before he heard Sam say, “Hey, doc. Yeah, we landed about an hour and a half ago. Currently we are having breakfast and we are going to discuss some things but I can be there in a couple of hours, is that possible?” Sam listened for a moment before saying, “Thanks for squeezing me in! I’ll see you soon.” He hung up and looked at Peter with a wry smile. “Does that answer your question?”

Peter smiled and said, “I guess there is only one thing to do at the moment, then.” Sam looked at him in question, “Eat!” Peter said with emphasis. Sam laughed and walked over to the table with Peter. The others looked to be about finished partaking, and Peter sat down, reached across the table for a plate, and started to help himself. “Whath diid I misth?’ he said around a mouthful of beignet. He closed his eyes, savoring the flavor as he waited for their response. When he opened his eyes he found that everyone was watching him and Momma Rose was smiling at him.” “What?”

“Man, I have never seen anyone demolish anything like that!” Abe said with a chuckle.

Peter looked embarrassed, but Momma Rose came around and kissed the top of Peter’s head, “Leave him be, Abraham… he is my biggest fan!” Sam had poured himself a cup of coffee and was watching the group with amusement. He gulped the last bit down as the door of the café chimed.

Time to get down to business, he thought. “Alright, we need to decide what to do about Sarah.” It was like someone flipped a switch, hushing the good-natured conversation immediately. “Ideas? Anyone?” Sam said, scanning the faces at the table.

“I can tell you who I think has her,” came a new voice. They all turned to the doorway to see Joshua standing there with a pensive look on his face. “I scanned a fingerprint that I found on a piece of the broken window, and sent it to my people. They put it through AFIS and the hit came back almost immediately. It belongs to a local goon by the name of Jean Scarasse. Ring any bells?” he asked as he scanned the faces at the table. After a collective no, he continued, “He’s usually a solo small-timer, but in recent years has been working down on the docks at a warehouse belonging to a local merchant named Narcisse Olivier.” At the mention of the name, Peter saw Max sit up and lean forward. “I have had dealings with him before. He works with my father.” Max said, then surprisingly turned to spit, disgusted at the mere mention of the vile man being known as his father. “My apologies. That was crass,” Max said, turning back to the group and looking queasy. “I cannot call him that any longer, and I will not.” Margueritte looked at her son with a mixture of pride and pity, and reached out to take his hand in hers. Joshua came to the table and sat at the last seat available. He pulled out a little notebook from his pocket and looked at Max.

“What can you tell me about him?” Max looked a little uncomfortable at all the attention and Maggie placed her small hand on his arm. He covered her hand with his and took a deep breath.

“He is in procurement and distribution. He looks harmless until you cross him, then… it is accurate to say that he has a veritable army at his disposal.” Max told them. “It is one of the reasons that Lev uses him so often. The deals he has with him are usually for children.” Max had turned to stone once again and Maggie could tell that he was wrestling with his inner demons. “I tried to have as little contact with him as possible, but I can tell you that with only a call, Lev could have him unleash trouble upon anyone, anywhere. He is a very well-connected man. Lev has had him work not only in the United States, but in the U.K., Lebanon, Thailand, China, Iraq, Africa… you get the picture.” Max told Joshua.

“I don’t know much about Olivier, but I will tell you that after our run in with him in the bayou, I had my organization pull the schematics for his warehouse and I had a pilot buddy of mine fly over and get some thermal scans of the area.” Joshua told them. “The thing is, there are people that go in and out of that warehouse at all times of the night, but we have not been able to detect anyone, nor have we observed anyone, go in or out during the day.” Joshua raised his eyebrows and scanned his audience, letting them know that we he was about to say was important, or at least he thought it was. “Here’s where it gets sort of Fright Night; when we ran night scans using a drone, there were only minimal heat signatures. Most of them can be attributed to small rodents and the occasional cat. No humans.”

“What are you saying, Joshua?” asked Maggie, trying to piece it together. As the others were trying to puzzle out this new riddle, an idea popped into Peter’s head.

“Whoa! What if they are like the grunch?”

Joshua turned to Peter, grinning, “I think you are onto what we thought…”

“What are you two saying… English, please?” Maggie was getting frustrated and tired.

“Okay, follow me for a moment. This will sound far-fetched but over the last month I have seen things that make this a definite possibility.”

“Go on…” Joshua said with a hurry up motion of his hand.

“Well, what if they are vampires?” Peter said in a rush. “I mean, this would make much more sense if you think about the lore of the vampire. They don’t come out in the daytime. They have no heat signature and a supply of fresh blood in the form of children would be a must.” Peter told them then sat back and waited for the jokes to fly. He was surprised when none of that happened though.

Joshua instead looked at Momma Rose, “Rose, you know our position on this. What do you think?” Momma Rose looked over at Margueritte, paused only a moment before saying,

“Oui. There is a brood that lives here,” she affirmed. “Has for years. They pick off revelers that pass through our streets every night. Most do not even know they have been victimized. There is the occasional murder, and those who make that mistake answer to the Quorom. It is rare.” Rose supplied.

Margueritte looked at her sister with new eyes, “You are saying that vampires are real?” she asked in a small voice. She had unconsciously raised her hand to cover her bare throat, pulling the shawl she wore a bit tighter to her bosom. A shiver passed over her body and Max put a comforting arm around her shoulders.

“Oui, they are very real and, in this city, very active.” Momma Rose gripped her sister’s hand and looked her in the eye when she said, “But you do not have to worry about them. This place is protected from them at all times.” Peter shivered a little at the thought of vampires in his city.

“What do you mean ‘protected’?” Peter asked her. Rose smiled lovingly at Peter and stood, motioning the group to get up and follow her. She walked to the far side of the bistro, past the shelves of old dishes and bottles, past a row of pretty geraniums, to a side door. Holding it open, she spoke to Maggie, the first one through.

“Maggie, walk to where I am pointing, cher,“ Rose said, pointing to the back corner of the brick building. She waited for them all to gather at the place indicated, and she joined them, shushing them as the chatter had become significant. “Joshua, can you hand me your key, please?” Joshua reached into his pocket and produced a small apparatus about the size of a nail, but rounded and smooth. It shone as if made of a very bright metal, like platinum. He held it up for the group to see the details. It was flat on one end, with what appeared to be a semicircle with a chevron and some dots. He tossed the key up from his palm, caught it, displaying its heft, and handed it to Rose. “Thank you.”, she said, bending low and motioning the group to look at where she was indicating. About a foot or so from the lowest brick on the corner, she took the key and slid it along the bottom edge of the brick there, and the group let out a collective gasp of surprise when, about halfway across it clicked and stopped. Rose turned to them, smiling, and proceeded to move the key straight up from its current position, until, again the key clicked and stopped. Rose pulled the key away from the brick, and as she did, a glowing symbol appeared. There were exclamations of surprise from everyone except Joshua, who just stood watching, and Sam, who seemed mesmerized and confused in equal measure, staring at the glow. The symbol that appeared shone in a sort of alien white light, and it appeared to mirror the key that Joshua had produced only moments before: a semicircle bowed up like a rainbow over what appeared to be stars, with a chevron directly below it. The glowing symbol pulsed slowly seven times and then faded from view, with no evidence that it had ever been there at all.

There it is again! Sam thought. Clawing at me, trying to make me remember… I know I’ve seen it before, but somewhere else. Where!?? It was driving him crazy. Momma Rose’s voice snapped him back.

“There is a sigil on this place that marks it. This place is set apart and the sigil offers the protection of ARC,” Momma Rose told them as they all re-entered the café, now brightly lit with morning. Peter saw Maggie and Max share a smile and then turn back to Momma Rose. It was Maggie that spoke this time, after they had all resumed their seats.

“I have run across this name before. Who are they?”

Momma Rose looked over at her curiously and asked, “Where did you see this information? It could help, more than you know, to know how you came across it.” Momma Rose’s tone had grown serious. Peter knew it; he had heard it on only a few occasions. Never directed at himself and it always left him hoping it never would be.

Maggie cleared her throat and looked at Max who nodded, then said, “When we rescued your sister, I liberated some files from Lev’s underground lab. The naga we ran into took the files from me before we escaped, but not before I had a chance to rip out a few of the pages. The acronym ARC was written on one of the pages.” Maggie hesitated to hand over the notes that she had only just started to really look into.

“These notes- what were they about?” Momma Rose asked her. Maggie wasn’t certain how much she wanted to disclose, and she was conflicted. The journalist in her did not want to opt for full disclosure, but she liked Rose and she trusted the situation she found herself in.

“They were referring to a subject that was tested and found to be one hundred percent human. It said that the subject was perfect for egg harvesting and that the subject would never know, never be let go, and they had to make sure that ARC never found out,” Maggie said. She heard Margueritte gasp and saw Rose stiffen.

“That was me, wasn’t it?” Margueritte asked, “Answer me, Maggie! It was me… I was the subject?” Maggie could hear the hurt and the anger in her voice.

“Yes, I am sorry, Margueritte. That was from the first day, the day you disappeared. I’m sorry I was not able to get the other sheets from your file, but I did manage to get ten pages before I had to catch up with Max in the cave.” Joshua was more than a little lost.

“What the hell are naga? What are you guys talking about?”

“Naga are ancient monsters. Snake people. Now be quiet, Joshua, I’m working!” Momma Rose admonished him. The rebuke caused him to roll his eyes, throw his hands up, and slump down in his seat like a petulant school boy. Momma Rose turned back to Maggie, “Maggie, can you tell me anything else about what they were doing in that lab?”

“There were cells with iron doors and chains,” Maggie shivered as she remembered them. “Tons of files. I went over to the filing cabinet and found that the files were all labeled with the names of, what I thought at the time, were fictional monsters. Vampire, Werewolf… a bunch of others, and the last one was Human. I thought it strange that all the other listings had multiple files but the human listing only had one file. Margueritte’s.” Maggie told them. “When I skimmed through the files, I saw that they were extracting DNA from each of the creatures and, if it wasn’t exactly what they wanted, they would terminate the creature.” Peter thought that Maggie had gained an inordinate amount of information under extreme stress. He could tell that there was more to this woman than she let on. Momma Rose must have thought so as well.

“What made you think to get so much information in such a stressful situation?” Momma Rose asked.

Uh oh! Peter thought. Momma Rose is giving her the look. It was a look that Peter knew well from his childhood. It was a look that said “I know there is something that you are not telling me and I will be extremely irritated if you don’t fess up.”

“Yes, about that-” Maggie started but Max spoke up on her behalf, “Maggie is an investigative journalist. I asked her to look into Lev and she has been working with me to bring him down.” Maggie relaxed a little and smiled in thanks at Max.

“Well I’m not sure mixing yourself up in Lev Avatov’s dealings was a smart idea, but we will welcome any help you can give us regarding Sarah’s disappearance.”

“Who exactly is we?” Maggie asked mimicking Momma Rose’s previous look. Peter marveled at how much alike the two women were. Momma Rose paused and cocked her head as if listening to something for a moment.

“We are ARC,” Momma Rose responded as if it was the most logical conclusion ever.