Sipping a freshly poured glass of Chivas Regal Scottish Whiskey, I tried to relax in the comfort of my computer room. Whiskey was proving to be just as numbing as the Rum had been before I’d run out of the damned stuff -- simply shifting poisons from one style to that of an older, more premium blended variety.

That hadn’t been all that had changed.

Abby now had complete access to the entire complex, given that her efforts and assistance had deserved some kind of reward. Within the security systems she would now be known as “GothicFang”.

It had become clear that she needed unrestricted access to properly care for Mids.

Besides, I needed to start trusting someone to help me figure out what the hell was going on. Abby seemed to enjoy her new codename, proving once again that you should never underestimate Vampires or their sense of humor.

Unfortunately, when the morgue had been considered and implemented, an infirmary had not; so we ended up securing Mids in her own quarters. We didn’t know what surprises she’d built into her panic room and didn’t want to set off any traps that she may have left for intruders.

Amazingly, Abby had even been able to procure medical equipment to help stabilize Mids physical condition and begin her recovery from whatever state she’d worked herself into. We finally settled on cuffs over shackles for the time being, along with safety belts to keep her in place. They were more for her safety than ours. I was becoming worried about her state of mind when she eventually woke up.

Something bad had caused her to go postal on the Master of Toronto. As a mortal, that had just not been anywhere near in her best interest. It was tantamount to suicide. Fortunately Grace had not taken offence. Quite to the contrary, she seemed to have believed she deserved it. I’ll never claim to completely understand women. They just seem to get even more complicated when they’re Vampiric in nature.

I sipped my drink and looked at the notes from yet another complicated Vampire style woman. Parquette had been fastidious in keeping track of things she’d been doing scheme-wise.

After Abby asked me to leave her alone with Mids so that she could do some sort of “female-type stuff” examinations, I remembered the folder Parquette had been reading just prior to her unplanned exit. It was high time I found out what it was she’d learned. Making notes as I read, I attempted to follow the trail she’d been blazing.

Parquette had learned of the Mids situation, perhaps through the Council or some other informant. From there she’d then identified at least two other members of the group besides myself and had followed up on them. To what means, remained a mystery.

She’d been able to follow links between myself, Mids, Nixon and Zebella.

The intriguing part of the mystery was that she only had four of the eight that’d been involved. That indicated the source had not been Mids herself, but someone outside of our group. She’d found someone that only knew about half of us and not the others.

That fact alone would narrow down the field of suspects to follow up on later.

Next I started with the four she’d actually had been able to discover. Mids and I had apparently been on opposite ends of her list. She was first, and I’d been last. That left two in the middle.

Hayden Millhouse Fox had been known as Nixon since he was a kid; his resulting codename fitting somewhat more appropriately than one might have expected. It’d been such a running joke that he had even begun doing impressions of the late President.

Zebella’s real name was Tracy Venetia Braham; but we called her Zebs. She’d proven to be an interesting mix of Mexican and Italian heritage. Short, tantalizingly exotic and sharp as a whip. She’d been enjoying married life and had a daughter the last time I’d seen her. She and Big Al, her husband, had made quite a business of raising horses and dogs out in the deserts of Arizona.

Something worried me about Nixon’s name on Parquette’s list. It’d been crossed out and dated about eleven months earlier. There were few photos and even less information about his current whereabouts. I noted the date next to his name in my notes and pondered its meaning as I examined what Parquette had found out about Zebella.

Apparently since I had last checked, Zebs and Big Al had moved from Arizona to Idaho and added another daughter to their family. From the pictures in the folder they appeared to be the All American Family. Until you realized the photos were of the surveillance variety and they were being targeted for something that might not be entirely pleasant.

I smiled, realizing Zebs had not been joking; Al really was big. It was funny how big men often fell for short women. Zebs barely broke five foot one, while Big Al appeared to be around six foot four and built like long haul trucker. There were a lot of notes about their family and the property they lived on. Contact names were listed in the notes with several crossed out and notated in some sort of code. The notations included dates that I could follow up on when I talked to Zebs to see what had happened on those particular dates.

Reaching the end of Parquette’s notes I found an odd reference to steel rats that was not linked to anyone on the list. Parquette never appeared to make idle notes, but then again who knew what went on her psychotic mind?

That was as far as she’d apparently gotten trying to figure out the who’s who in our group. I sat back and looked at my notes. Zip, zero and nada. I was glad to see they’d not found Kit, Ace, or the others; it would give me a chance to find and warn them.

However, the steel rat reference worried me.

I had a feeling Parquette had not given up on her quest. Once she got her fangs into something she didn’t like to let go, and that thought brought me back to what or who had been her source of information. If it wasn’t too late, we might be able to protect that source or even use it to steer her in another direction.

I made a note to follow up on possible suspects.

We’d really have to figure that mystery out. Both for the sake of her source and to put a stop to the flow of information Parquette had been enjoying. It was almost a given that she would use any information about us to her advantage.

I must have zoned out and was startled back to reality when Abby climbed up and sat on the back of my chair. Vampires had that strange ability to climb anything like cats or spiders could. She began to rub my shoulders as she studied my notes. “Mids is on a diet of rest, relaxation and IV medication until sometime tomorrow. Her system was completely out of whack,” she reported as her fingers working magic on my shoulder muscles. “When was the last time you slept?”

I had to think about that for a minute. “I want to look up current information on our group; then I’ll sleep.” The last day and a half had seemed almost like a week.

“Okay, show me how to do it and you sleep while I snoop.” I realized at that point she was right. Vampires as a group typically don’t need a lot of sleep.

The flavor of Vampire they were would depend upon their so called heritage.

Some slept from when the sun came up until it went down; others could go for a long time without resting. Required feeding was the common denominator when they were awake and crossed all lines of heritage -- no matter who’d sired them. There were other things that differed between the flavors and it dawned on me that I hadn’t thought to ask Abby about her particulars. We might have to go out in the daylight soon which could prove to be a bad idea for her.

Sunlight can make many Vampires go poof while others just smolder and burn; much like spontaneous human combustion. There are only two ways to know, by asking or taking them out for a walk in the sunlight.

More often than not, the Council had used the later as a form of execution. I didn’t want to accidentally do that, especially not to Abby; Parquette perhaps, but definitely not Abby.

“Abby, how does sunlight affect you?” I asked as her fingers released knots that had formed and festered.

“It doesn’t really. Even without clothing. Holy water and religious items don’t usually affect me either. It’s kind of nice in a way.” I stiffened as I realized what she’d implied about what we all considered a given about Vampires. “Phantom, what’s the matter? Did I say something that bothered you?”

She had, but I didn’t exactly know how to ask my next question, so I asked it the only way I could. “How many Vampires are not affected by Holy water or religious items?”

She laughed as she began to rework my stiffened muscles. I relaxed again because, well, she’s good at being a masseuse; and her soothing voice only added to the affect. “There are only a small fraction of us that can survive both. There are a lot of day walkers but very few who can hold crosses and bathe in holy water.”

Okay. This was interesting news. I’d known about the variances in Vampire tolerances to sunlight, but hadn’t quite realized in the same thought that they would not be affected by holy water. “I have to ask a dumb question, how is that possible? I mean I thought holy water and religious things were a given. No offense.”

“Phantom, Phantom, Phantom. You meant a given when used as a weapon. No, it has to do more with your Sire and their heritage than belief. Grace was a high Priest and very, very religious when she was mortal. It’s probably due to that more-so than anything else. Holy Water differs from regular water only in the level of magic it contains. Belief is strange that way.”

Suddenly it made sense that she was relaxed around Grace. I thought she was just another worker bee of sorts for the Council. I simply had to ask the next question. “Are there any enforcers that are immune to that?”

Looking at the monitor I could see her reflection behind me as she smiled and shook her head. Reflections are more of a Hollywood thing than reality. I hadn’t met a Vampire yet that could not see their reflection in a mirror. However there were amateurs who still hunted Vampires by carrying hand mirrors like they would metal detectors; go figure.

“No silly, enforcers are enforcers simply because they’re naturals for that type of work. If you’re worried about Parquette, don’t be. She reacts to holy water and religious items like most of my … kind. But she can walk in the daylight somewhat like I can -- I’ve seen her do it. But unlike me, she has to keep most of her skin covered -- and no we can’t tan.” That was good news. I mean about Parquette, not the tan lines thing.

“What about Bishop and Truman?” I asked reluctantly.

Abby moved her head down and kissed my neck. “They are Grace’s as well. Next time you threaten Truman, think grenades or rocket launchers, not shotguns silly.”

No wonder that bugger hadn’t appeared as afraid as he should have been. He was immune to holy water and probably knew I hadn’t known that. Crap.

“Now, shall we start looking for your friends so you can get some sleep?” She was right, we needed to get moving.

“How is your Klingon?” I finally asked, opening up some new applications on the computer.

“Klingon? You can’t seriously mean that Star Trek stuff…” As she watched the monitor, she smiled. I was enjoying the mirror effect monitors had of things behind me. “Oh, I see that you were serious. Way cool!” I admit I enjoyed myself as I walked her through yet another tool I’d developed, but had not shared with a whole lot people.

I introduced her to my pride and joy, NightStalker.

Across the world, and particularly North America, there are millions of computers that sit in homes connected to the internet. Most are unprotected and used by hackers to initiate attacks on targets such as Google, CNN or other popular web sites. Hackers control these computers in any number of ways. They can plant spy-ware by sniffing out the computer on the network, or send a virus to users via their email. Most back door programs set themselves up to wait for commands that will tell them what to do when, and whom to do it against.

NightStalker was something I‘d thought up, more as a way to use those unprotected computers for the good rather than the bad and to help protect those who would not protect themselves. Trust me; if NightStalker had found your computer, you had one of the best firewall protection schemes around. You just didn’t know it. The rules for NightStalker were really simple when they protected a computer. Shoot first and don’t ask any questions. Dispose of the attacker and then clean up any evidence that it had done so.

Once it found a computer, I’d designed it to worm its way into the operating systems in such a way that it could hide from virus scanners and firewalls that might be added later. It was almost undetectable and only really expunged by doing a full system rebuild when you were safely protected by a router that was itself protected and I had friends who’d built one for the Apples that were touted to be hack proof. Even Apples had worms nowadays.

One of the key elements of spreading NightStalker was the fact that most peripherals devices had memory for buffering data. Take your printer for instance, or your digital camera. Any device that was either discoverable or used to send or receive data was examined by the drivers of NightStalker. If something new came along, information about it was sent to the servers, processed, analyzed, updated, and sent back.

If you’re familiar with Star Trek, think of the characters they called the Borg.

NightStalker was much like they were portrayed to be. Artificially intelligent engineering that could fix itself as necessary. Move a printer or camera from computer to computer, behind firewalls that normally could not be breached and voila.

One way I found useful in protecting the interface from easy exploitation was to design it using an entirely made up language from the Star Trek series, which had been invented by Marc Okrand. He’d even designed written and published several Klingon dictionaries. In some cases I managed to use Romulan and Vulcan dialects, but I wasn’t as good at those as I’d been at learning Klingon. I can’t really speak it fluently, but I’m fairly good at reading it.

To date, NightStalker was slowly nearing the million computer mark. As it was benign enough in nature and had never attacked anyone, the various anti-virus programs were blissfully unaware that it was even there. Having purchased each and every one of them and tried out their beta versions, I made sure that it would remain that way until it would need to be otherwise.

NightStalker was not designed to attack so much as it was designed to snoop. Using the remote systems, it could check various databases and not leave a trail to follow if it had been detected doing so. Authorities would follow the trail to the system and not find any useful information to lead to the servers. That was accomplished by having some of the remote systems themselves act as servers instead of snoopers. The links between them were purposely spread far and wide geographically to specifically cause jurisdictional issues. The programs could also tell if there were attempts made to detect them and remove themselves accordingly.

Another thing that NightStalker had been designed to do was specifically target those annoying companies that called asking if you wanted new aluminum siding or better windows installed. The companies that were targeted in particular were the ones that used computers to give the operators both their targets and the questions to ask. The resulting answers were then captured and sent back to the servers. That way we could have someone call and ask questions that were not tied to our searching directly. I dubbed them my human hamsters. No offense intended really, to the hamster crowd anyway.

Finally, NightStalker was smart enough to look for traps and triggers. If it happened to discover some before they discovered it, it would report them for later analysis and not go any further than required.

I walked Abby through the main menus, explaining what each option did and gave a quick lesson in Klingon. She was a quick learner and didn’t ask many questions as we went. I accessed our old membership records, built a search key database which would give the snoopers enough data to start looking for their targets. When I finally got up to go to the other room, she was taking an online course in Klingon. Somehow I knew she’d become fluent faster than I had.

* * *

When I woke up, I had that moment of disorientation before realizing where I was. I also realized Abby was sleeping behind me with her arm draped over me. Yes we had our clothing on and no, nothing apparently other than sleeping had taken place.

I’m ashamed to say I did check my neck before I realized what I was doing. Shame on me. I carefully extricated myself and checked on the progress of NightStalker.

“QaQ po” Abby said as she settled in to the chair next to me. Vampires apparently are lighter sleepers than I’d thought; and they really were fast learners. It was indeed a good morning.

“HIja oH oH“, I replied in acknowledgment. Ok, so I do speak a little Klingon, I’m just not as fluent as I suspected Abby now was.

NightStalker had been successful in some cases and had found stone walls in a couple of others. It was still waiting for results on some of the remaining members. Two in particular had been Nixon and Ace. I knew now what the date Parquette had written meant. Nixon had been doing relief work in South America when he’d apparently run afoul of the local militias and their war lords. He’d been kidnapped along with several other aid workers and hadn’t been seen or heard from since. Given the amount of time that had passed since his abduction it did not bode well for his survival.

Ace, on the other hand had apparently joined the Marines and been PDQed which roughly translates to passing through Pendleton, Dill and Quantico during her training. I’d heard that term from friends of mine who had spent time in all those places.

She’d started in Camp Pendleton then moved on for further training at Fort Dill and had then become a training officer at Quantico. Shortly after nine-eleven had happened, she’d disappeared from military records all together. At least the ones the not so general public had access to.

NightStalker had detected traps and not gone any further than it had needed to. In order to get any more information on her whereabouts, I’d have to resort to the type of searching that is done only once. They have a lot of traps set up to catch hackers in certain government computers. But if you’re fast and good, you can stay just ahead of the responses that would be triggered and still manage to get some information for your efforts. You just burned a lot of good bridges in doing that kind of searching. I’d wait on doing that until I had no other choice.

The strikingly odd thing about Ace that differentiated her from the rest of our group was that she was the only one of us that had not gone on our infamous trip. Apparently during the process of the selection for who would be and would not be going, she’d been the odd person out that’d been left behind. I wondered if Parquette was aware of this bit of information, or better yet, would it help me figure out her source.

While we waited for the program to complete, Abby went to check on Mids and found her still sedated and sleeping. She returned with a soda for me as we analyzed what we knew. “Parquette doesn’t have access to these tools, so how’d she know about four of your group if Mids didn’t tell her?” she asked, looking over my notes.

“That is the fifty dollar question,” I replied pondering options I’d have used in her place.

Then Abby asked the one question I should have. “If I were to come here and not know anything at all about your group, who would people send me to when I asked about them?”

There was only one person who’d have known only the four members of our group in question and probably not the rest. I groaned as I realized that I’d actually been responsible for him having that particular bit of information. It wasn’t really his fault he’d been responsible for the information getting to Parquette. Neither of us had realized the importance of the information he would eventually have given her. It’d been at a party I’d attended with Mids, Nixon and Zebella at that first Convention. We’d just formed the group and shared the news with my old friend.

“You figured out who it is, didn’t you,” Abby said, apparently reading my reaction for what it was. “Yes, I think I have; and we need to warn him in case Parquette comes back looking. He only knows so much about our group. Once she finds he’s no longer useful, she may dispose of him.”

“And who is this person?” she asked. I sighed as I realized we needed to figure out a way to protect him without exactly being entirely truthful.

“I think its time we checked in on a local solicitor. He’s an old friend who knew the four of us back when we originally formed the group.” I hoped this would not be yet another dead end. I really hoped he’d pick up the phone when I called. Parquette was known to dislike leaving loose ends around.

I reached for the phone and began to dial, unconsciously crossing my fingers. If he answered we may just have found some bait for Parquette.

* * *