Page 29 of Nocturne

28

CALLAHAN

I drift back to consciousness slowly, moving through layers of darkness like swimming up from the bottom of a deep lake. With each passing moment, sensation returns—first the dull throb of pain at the base of my skull, then the cold bite of metal against my wrists and ankles, then the flickering orange glow against my closed eyelids.

My head pounds with a ferocious intensity that makes coherent thought difficult. Fragments of memory come in disjointed flashes—the Crimson Clover, vampires feeding on drugged humans, Valtu tearing out Tatiana’s heart, the chaos of battle, Lena’s voice calling my name.

A blue glowing blade.

Then nothing.

I force my eyes open, blinking against the stabbing pain that accompanies the effort. The room swims into focus gradually—stone walls, high ceiling, no windows. Candles burn in wrought iron holders spaced around the perimeter, casting long shadows that seem to writhe with a life of their own.

I’m secured to what appears to be a medical gurney, thick metal restraints binding my wrists and ankles. The bonds are heavier than standard hospital equipment—designed, I suspect, to hold someone with vampire strength.

“Welcome back to the land of the living,” a voice says from somewhere beyond my limited field of vision. “And to think some call us the undead.”

The speaker steps into view, and recognition slams into me. The man from the morgue—the one I’d seen briefly standing in the corner when I was staring at Elizabeth Short’s mutilated body. Tall, distinguished bearing, with black hair and silver at his temples that only enhances the aristocratic planes of his face. He can’t be older than me and yet he has the air of someone who has been around a very long time. I hadn’t seen him clearly then, had thought him just another official.

Now I know better.

“Dmitri Ivanov,” I say, my voice a dry rasp.

He inclines his head slightly, acknowledging the identification. “And you are Victor Callahan. Private investigator. Former boxer. Former soldier.” His mouth curves in what might be a smile on a human face, but on his, it’s merely a predatory baring of teeth. “Former human.”

I test the restraints subtly, assessing their strength without betraying my intent. They don’t budge.

“Don’t bother,” Dmitri says, watching my efforts with mild amusement. “Those shackles are designed to hold creatures far older and stronger than you.” He moves to stand at the foot of the gurney, studying me with unsettling intensity. “Though I must say, your strength has developed impressively for one so newly transitioned.”

“What do you want from me?” I demand, forcing authority into my voice despite my vulnerable position.

“What do I want?” Dmitri echoes, seeming genuinely puzzled by the question. “I want what any father wants. To know his son.”

The words hang in the air between us, absurd and impossible. I stare at him, waiting for the punchline, but his expression remains earnest.

“I’m not your son,” I say flatly.

“I beg to differ.” He steps closer, his movements fluid and precise. “Your transition at thirty-five. Your extraordinary strength for a newborn vampire. You’re the product of an ancient, powerful bloodline.” He reaches out, his fingers hovering just above my face though not touching it. “And of course, there are the physical similarities. Your mother’s coloring, perhaps, but my features. My jawline. My eyes….my hunger.”

I turn my face away from his hand. “My parents were Michael and Eleanor Callahan,” I say through gritted teeth. “Decent, loving people who raised me to be nothing like you.”

“Ah, yes. Them Callahans.” Dmitri circles the gurney slowly, each step measured. “Childless. Desperate. So grateful when the adoption agency offered them a healthy three-year-old boy, no questions asked. They never knew what you really were, of course. That was the point of the experiment.”

“Experiment?” I repeat, dread coiling in my stomach.

Dmitri stops at the head of the gurney, looking down at me with something like pride. “Nature versus nurture. Would vampire nature assert itself even without knowledge or preparation? Would blood truly tell, even when raised by humans in complete ignorance of your heritage?” His smile widens. “And the answer, it seems, is yes. Blood always tells in the end.”

No. I can’t be related to this man, can’t be this monster’s son.

“You’re lying,” I say, but the conviction has drained from my voice.

“Am I?” Dmitri produces a small silver case from his jacket pocket. From it, he withdraws a yellowed photograph which he holds before my eyes. A woman holding an infant, her face young and beautiful despite the exhaustion evident in her eyes. “Your mother,” he says softly. “Natasha. She died shortly after this was taken. Childbirth can be difficult for our kind. Mentally. She couldn’t hack it; she hacked away at herself.”

I stare at the photograph, searching for any resemblance to the face I see in my mirror each morning. The shape of the eyes, perhaps. The line of the nose. But nothing conclusive, nothing that proves this isn’t an elaborate deception.

“Why?” I manage to ask. “Why give me up? Why monitor me from afar if I was your son?”

“Science,” Dmitri replies simply. “Knowledge. Our kind has existed for eons, but there is still so much we don’t understand about our own nature. Your life has been one long case study in the immutability of blood.” He returns the photograph to its case. “And I must say, the results have been fascinating.”

“You’ve been watching me my whole life,” I say, the realization washing over me in a wave of violated privacy. “Following me. Monitoring me.”

“Of course. Every milestone, every achievement, every failure. Your boxing career. Your marriage. Your military service. All of it collected and analyzed.” Dmitri’s expression softens slightly. “I’m proud of you, Victor. Despite your human upbringing, you’ve shown the strength and resilience of your true bloodline.”

A horrible thought occurs to me. “Catherine,” I say, her name barely audible. “You were monitoring our marriage? You didn’t?—?”

“An unfortunate necessity,” Dmitri interrupts. “You needed to be free of attachments, needed to be in Los Angeles for the next phase, to come home to us. Your wife’s death accomplished both.”

For a moment, the world goes white with rage. I strain against the restraints with every ounce of strength I possess, metal creaking under the pressure. “You murdered her,” I snarl, my voice unrecognizable even to myself. “You murdered my wife.”

“She was human ,” Dmitri says dismissively. “She would have died eventually. We merely accelerated the inevitable. These are tough lessons all vampires have to learn.”

“She was everything to me!”

“And yet here you are,” he observes, “already forming an attachment to another. To Lena Reid. Life continues, even for those like us who exist outside of it.”

At Lena’s name, a different kind of fear cuts through my rage. “Where is she? What have you done with her?”

“Nothing, yet.” Dmitri resumes his circling of the gurney. “She escaped our grasp during the unfortunate altercation at the Crimson Clover. Fled with Van Helsing and his little band of dissenters.” His mouth twists in distaste. “You were the consolation prize. Even though you yourself can’t open the gateway.”

“The gateway to where?” I ask tiredly.

“To our king. To the Red Realm.” Dmitri’s eyes take on a distant, almost dreamy quality. “The true homeland of our kind. A place where we need not hide what we are, need not restrain our true natures to accommodate human weakness. Where we don’t have to sit idly by and watch humanity bring out the worst in each other, watch this planet crash and burn.”

The madness in his voice is evident now, a zealot’s fervor. I think of the ritualized murders, all part of some deranged scheme to open a portal to another world.

“You’re insane,” I say quietly. “You murder, torture innocent people just so you can leave this world.”

Dmitri’s expression hardens. “I am a visionary. The humans’ time on this planet grows short. They poison the air, the water, the soil. They slaughter each other by the millions in their endless wars. The next century will see them destroy themselves completely. There is no turning back for them, they’ve dug their own graves and history will continue to repeat itself because no one ever learns. They are simply too dumb.” He leans closer. “We can survive them, Victor. We can return to our realm, rebuild our civilization there. But only if the gateway is opened. That’s the only way we can go in.”

“And for that, you need Lena,” I say, understanding dawning. “Because of her blood type. She’s AB negative, isn’t she?”

He grins, straightening up. “The rarest of the rare. And rarer still in a vampire. She would be the perfect final sacrifice. Perhaps even the key to opening the gateway permanently, so that we can come and go as we please.”

“I won’t help you find her,” I say, certainty hardening my voice. “I don’t give a fuck what you do to me.”

Dmitri sighs, as if disappointed by my predictable response. “You misunderstand, Victor. I don’t need your conscious cooperation. I only need to determine what triggers your transformation.”

Fear coils in my stomach—not for myself, but for what I might become, what I might do if the other side of me takes control. “What are you talking about?”

“Your vampire self,” Dmitri explains, as if to a child. “The part of you that emerges during your blackouts. It’s quite fascinating—when your vampire nature takes over, it’s as if you become a different person entirely. One who recognizes me as father. One who obeys me without question.”

A cold weight settles in my chest. “You’re lying.”

“Am I?” Dmitri gestures to a cloth-covered table I hadn’t noticed before, positioned against the far wall. “Perhaps a demonstration will be more convincing.”

He crosses to the table and removes the cloth, revealing an array of items laid out with surgical precision. He selects one—a woman’s scarf, emerald-green silk—and returns to the gurney.

“Do you recognize this?” he asks, dangling the scarf before my eyes.

I do. It’s Lena’s, the one she wore the morning we had coffee at Musso & Frank. The sight of it sends a jolt of panic through me. “Where did you get that?”

“From her apartment, of course. Along with a few other personal items.” Dmitri’s smile is coldly clinical. “I’m testing a theory. You see, I think when vampires first transform, it’s not just the birthday that causes it, but there’s a specific trigger that brings forth their true nature. For some, it’s pain."

He produces a blue dagger from his sleeve, letting it catch the candlelight. “For others, it’s blood.” The dagger disappears back into his sleeve. “But I suspect, in your case, it might be more…emotional. And if it’s emotional, well, perhaps we can manipulate it.”

He drapes the scarf across my face, the silk cool against my skin. Lena’s scent fills my nostrils—heady night jasmine. I close my eyes, struggling to maintain control as memories flood my mind—Lena singing at The Emerald Room, Lena’s lips against mine, Lena’s blood on my tongue. My cock throbs in response.

“Interesting reaction,” Dmitri observes dryly, watching me closely. “But not quite what I’m looking for. The last thing we need right now is bloodlust.”

He removes the scarf, returning it to the table. “Perhaps we need a stronger stimulus. A different emotion. Or perhaps it’s simply a matter of time. That’s always how it happened before.” He checks his watch. “I’m prepared to keep you here as long as necessary, Victor. Days. Weeks. However long it takes for your true nature to fully emerge.

“Or,” he adds casually, “you could simply tell me where Lena is, and I’d be willing to release you now. A gesture of good faith, father to son.”

“Go to hell,” I spit.

Dmitri sighs. “So American in your expressions. So…human.” He turns back to the table, selecting another item—a small glass vial filled with dark-red liquid. “But you’re not human, Victor. You never were. And the sooner you accept that truth, the easier this will be for both of us.”

He uncorks the vial, and the scent of blood fills the room—rich, intoxicating, with an unfamiliar metallic undertone that makes my fangs ache in my gums. “Do you know what this is?” he asks.

I remain silent, fighting the hunger that rises unbidden.

“This is Lena’s blood,” Dmitri says softly. “Taken when you were both brought over to the pool party. Poor girl probably never noticed. There was so much going on, wasn’t there?”

The mention of the pool party brings back the memories of the girls. Katya and Tatiana.

My sisters.

I nearly vomit at the realization.

Dmitri grins, seeming to delight in my reaction, then holds the vial near my face, not quite touching it to my lips but close enough that the scent overwhelms my senses. I turn my head away, straining against the restraints.

“Fascinating,” Dmitri murmurs. “Such control for one so young. Perhaps a different approach is needed. A different emotion needs to be stoked.”

He returns the vial to the table and comes to stand at the head of the gurney once more, looking down at me with an almost paternal expression that turns my stomach.

“Let me tell you a story, Victor. About Elizabeth Short. The Black Dahlia, as the papers so colorfully named her.”

My body goes rigid at the mention of her name.

“She was special, you know. Not just because of her blood type, though that was certainly a factor. There was something…pure about her aura. Not pure in the evangelical sense, no she was quite the tawdry whore. But in spirit. A quality we look for in our subjects.” Dmitri begins pacing slowly around the gurney again. “We’d been watching her for months. Using Cohen’s organization to bring her into our orbit. Having her make deliveries, carry messages.”

“You manipulated her,” I say, thinking of the entries in Elizabeth’s diary that Lena had described. The Europeans. The warehouse. The strange symbols.

The promised dreams, dangled like a carrot.

“We cultivated her,” Dmitri corrects. “Prepared her. And when the time was right, we brought her to the fold.” He pauses, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Or rather, you did.”

The words hit me like a slap across the face.

“What?”

“January 9th. The Biltmore Hotel. Elizabeth was waiting in the lobby for her contact—a man who would introduce her to people who would change her life.” Dmitri watches my face carefully. “You approached her, Victor. In your vampire state, under my control. You brought her to us. You.”

“No,” I whisper, but even as I deny it, images flash through my mind—fragments of memory I can’t place, can’t contextualize. Watching a woman in black sitting alone in an opulent lobby, waiting anxiously. The resigned look on her face when she stepped out the main doors and saw me. The smell of her fear as she realized something was wrong.

“For three days, we prepared her for the ritual. The carved symbols, the careful positioning—everything must be precise for the gateway to open.” Dmitri’s voice takes on a lecturer’s cadence, dispassionate and clinical. “And when the time came for the final act, you were there again. To complete the cycle. To drain her of the last of her blood.”

“Stop,” I plead, but he continues relentlessly.

“You drank deeply that night, Victor. Your first true feeding. The beginning of your awakening.”

The taste of copper fills my mouth as the memory crashes through the walls I’ve built around it—Elizabeth Short’s lifeless body, her slashed mouth, the slices and burns across her skin, the hot rush of blood. And me, drinking until full, my humanity receding with each swallow.

“No,” I say again, but the denial is hollow. I know it’s true. Can feel the truth of it resonating in my bones, in my blood.

I killed Elizabeth Short.

I drained her blood and consumed it. I am the monster I’ve been hunting all along.

“Of course, we didn’t know Virginia West would hire you to track the killer. I have to say it added a whole new element to our experiment. You were looking for him without even an inkling that you were looking for yourself. But then you started to pull the wrong threads, got mixed up with Cohen and his boys and his boys’ woman. What a tangled web you weaved for yourself, Victor.”

Tears burn at the corners of my eyes—tears of rage, of grief, of self-loathing. “Why are you telling me this?” I demand, voice breaking.

“Because you need to understand what you are.” Dmitri places his hand on my shoulder, the gesture almost comforting despite the horror of his words. “Your vampire self knows. Accepts. Embraces its true nature. It’s only your human consciousness that resists, that clings to outdated morality and weakness.”

He leans closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Your vampire self knows me as father. Takes comfort in that knowledge. Obeys without question or hesitation. Not like Marco.”

Marco? I think. He can’t mean Marco Russo. I know he’s dead. I’d almost be happy if he wasn’t.

“Doesn’t it feel good to have a father?” he adds.

The restraints suddenly feel too tight, the room too small. I struggle to breathe as the full weight of Dmitri’s revelations crashes down on me. I am Dmitri’s son. I helped murder Elizabeth Short.

I’m the monster in this story, not its hero.

And Lena…sweet god, Lena. How could she ever look at me again if she knew the truth? How could she ever touch me, trust me, love me after what I’ve done?

What I am.

“She’ll never forgive me,” I whisper, not realizing I've spoken aloud until Dmitri responds.

“The Reid woman?” He waves a dismissive hand. “She doesn’t need to. Soon she’ll be the final sacrifice, the key that opens the gateway to Skarde. Her forgiveness or lack thereof will be irrelevant.”

Something shifts inside me at his casual dismissal of Lena’s life. A rage different from what I’ve felt before—not the mindless fury of my vampire side emerging, but something colder, more focused.

A clarity born of absolute certainty.

I may be Dmitri’s son by blood, but I am not him. I am not defined by my heritage, by the monster lurking in my veins. I am defined by my choices, and I choose to protect Lena. To stop the Ivanovs. To be worthy of the trust she’s placed in me, even if she never knows the full truth of what I’ve done.

But to do that, I need to escape. And to escape, I need to convince Dmitri that he’s won. That my vampire side has taken control.

I close my eyes, focusing on the rage simmering beneath my skin. I think of Elizabeth Short, of what I did to her under Dmitri’s control. Of Catherine, murdered to further his plans. Of Lena, marked for death to satisfy his mad ambition.

The change comes more easily than ever before—not a violent seizure of control, but a gradual integration. I can feel my fangs extending, my senses sharpening, power flooding through my limbs. But this time, I remain aware. In control. The line between my human consciousness and vampire nature blurring until they are no longer separate entities but aspects of a single, unified self.

When I open my eyes, I know they’ve changed—pupils expanded, irises glowing with unnatural red light. I let a growl build in my throat, let my lips pull back to reveal extended fangs.

Dmitri steps closer, triumph evident in his expression. “There you are,” he says softly. “My son. My true son.”

I snarl in response, straining against the restraints with renewed vigor. The metal creaks but doesn’t give.

“Easy now,” Dmitri soothes, reaching for the straps that bind my wrists. “I’ll release you, but first you must promise to obey. To be the son I know you can be.”

I force myself to nod, to appear compliant while keeping the rage burning just beneath the surface. Somehow I’m able to thread both parts of me and remain in control. Dmitri unfastens the restraint on my right wrist, then my left, then moves to the ankle straps.

As the final restraint falls away, I remain motionless on the gurney, watching Dmitri through narrowed eyes. Waiting for the moment to strike.

But Dmitri is cautious, stepping back as soon as I’m free. “Stand,” he commands.

I obey, rising from the gurney with fluid grace that belies the tension coiled within me. My muscles ache to attack, to tear him apart for what he’s done, but I hold back. Not yet. Not until I’m sure I can overpower him.

Dmitri observes me carefully, searching for any sign of deception. Finding none, he smiles coldly.

“Good,” he says. “Now, I have a task for you. A simple one, to prove your loyalty.”

I remain silent.

“Bring me Lena Reid,” he says, his voice taking on a hypnotic cadence. “Find her. Capture her. Bring her to me unharmed…or at least alive. Unharmed is probably asking for too much.” He steps closer, placing his hands on my shoulders. “Be a good son and bring me Lena Reid.”

Something shifts in my consciousness at his words, a compulsion that wasn’t there before. A pull toward obedience that threatens to override my own will. I fight against it, struggling to maintain control as darkness clouds the edges of my vision.

Be a good son and bring me Lena Reid.

The phrase bounces in my head, wearing down my resolve, and the patient look in his eyes tells me there’s no escape. That he knew I was faking it.

No , I think desperately. I won’t betray her. I won’t be your weapon.

I will stay in control, I will keep up the facade.

But the darkness is winning, consuming my thoughts, reshaping them into something alien.

Something monstrous.

Bring me Lena Reid.

The command echoes in my mind, drowning out my own voice, my own will.

Be a good son.

The last thing I see before surrendering to the darkness is Dmitri’s triumphant smile, certain and cruel.

Be a good son.

Bring me Lena Reid.

And may God forgive me for what I’m about to do.