Uncle Mike turned the steering wheel to the right, moving the car from a highway to a dirt road. In a few minutes, a building looking like a huge storehouse appeared from behind the trees. The image of Jack's house, a gloomy concrete building just like this one, came into my mind right away. “Must be every vampire’s fate to hang out in such places,” I thought.
We stopped in front of a ‘Guard dogs on duty’ sign. Uncle pressed the button on the remote control, and the gates opened slowly. Two dogs came running around the corner in an instant. They were of the same coat, black with red spots, but one of them seemed to be the other's version on steroids. Having recognized the vehicle, the dogs slowed down, but followed us up to the garage to the left of the main building.
We got out of the car. The dogs came up to me, close enough to rush at me and sink their teeth into my throat at the first opportunity. Mike went around the SUV, stood next to me and looked at the dogs. 'Sitz!' he said sharply. The dogs sat instantly. Uncle pointed at me and added, 'Freund'. The dog that was considerably bigger rushed toward me. For a fraction of a second, I experienced the primal animal fear probably similar to the horror a gazelle feels when a lion attacks it out of the tall grass. But there was nothing to be afraid of – the dog began licking my hands and rubbing its head against me. The second dog got closer to me too but did it in a kind of measured and nonchalant way.
“What was that?” I asked.
“Just a bit of German. It's convenient to have guard dogs that don't speak English, you know. What I said was 'Sit' and 'Friend'. I'll teach you how to handle them later and you'll become their 'Wirt', which means 'Master'. For now, I'd like you to meet them – the big one's Hector, and the name of this aristocratic Doberman is Polkan.”
I scratched Hector behind his ear, to which he responded by squeaking happily, and patted Polkan gently on the head.
“Polkan? Why such a strange name?”
“It's Russian, I'll tell you later where it comes from.”
We walked up to the main entrance. Uncle took a long metal key out of his pocket, put it into a keyhole and turned it several times. There was a digital panel above the lock. Then he entered a twenty-character code.
“Two locks?” I asked.
“Yep. Increased security. Burglars are rarely good with digital technology, and no hacker for sure can pick a lock. Plus we have a special super-tight mechanism, so an ordinary human simply won't have the strength to turn the key.”
Uncle opened the door and let me come in first. There were two long corridors behind the door – one leading straight and another to the left. Mike gestured for me to go ahead. Down the corridor, I found another door. Behind it was a spacious room divided into two areas. Near the entrance, there was some kind of a command center: a computer table with seven monitors on it, a couple of large displays on the walls, apparently used for demonstrating some important plans for world domination, a large oval table and a dozen chairs around it.
The main space was located in a kind of depression, with a short three-step staircase connecting it to the command center. It was surprisingly cozy. The floor was covered with colorful rugs, a long bar stand cut the room roughly in half, and there was a dark red corner sofa with a TV behind it.
At the table with the monitors sat a woman with a voluminous hairdo. Hermione from the first Harry Potter movie had pretty much the same hairstyle. Only the hair of this woman was dyed lurid color. She was tapping her fingers on the keyboard enthusiastically and scarily quickly and seemed not to have noticed our appearance. Mike approached her, reached for the back of her chair and turned it around to face me.
The owner of the world’s brightest hair turned out to be an Asian woman about twenty-six-twenty-seven with a round and very nice face and three rings in her lower lip. She was dressed in a black tank top with a low cut, and on her chest, there was a tattoo of a sugar skull in Mexican style colored as brightly as her hair.
“Please meet Lee – our search specialist. Lee, this is my niece Sam.”
“‘I!”
She said exactly ‘i’. Not ‘hi’, not ‘hey’, just ‘i’. She must have been saving letters.
“Hi. What are you searching for?” I asked her.
“Vampires. Daytime and nighttime ones, their victims, potential vampires and their potential victims.”
“Why search for the nighttime vampires?”
Lee was about to answer my question but my uncle interrupted her, “I’ll tell you this later. Let's move on. You need to meet the others.”
He took me by the shoulders and lugged me off downstairs. As we walked past the sofas I spotted a man lying on one of them. If I had to describe him in one word, I would say ‘shifty’. He was about the same age as my uncle, pale, with dark hair, slicked back and coated with a thick layer of gel. He was nervously waggling a toothpick between his lips. All in all, he came across as a very jumpy type.
“Oh, hi, Stoker. Why lying around?” asked Mike.
Instead of answering the man rolled his eyes expressing displeasure.
“Sammy, this is Stoker – our breaking and entering expert. Stoker, this is my niece Sam.”
“Hey.” Stoker extended his hand for a handshake which turned out to be slack but at the same time clingy as if his hand were sticking to mine. Perhaps with the same motion pickpockets take out their victim’s wallets so that they don’t notice anything.
“Hi,” I turned my head and looked at my uncle questioningly. “Why do you need a breaking and entering specialist? Do you rob people as well?”
“I’ll tell you about it later, too.”
Mike grabbed me again and dragged me further. At the end of the room, there were more doors. My guide opened the rightmost one. Behind it there was a laboratory: test tubes, round flasks, connected to the glass conduit, several microscopes and a whole lot of other unknown devices were arranged on the tables and shelves. A man stood at the far wall of the room with his back to us. Judging by his silver hair and the fact that vampires age very slowly, he must have been the whole two hundred years old. Uncle Mike leaned over to my ear and whispered, “This is Fleming – our scientific genius. It was he who created Bloodberry and a bunch of other useful things. Under no circumstances distract him from his work. Altogether this old man is the kindest soul, but if you disturb him at the wrong time, he will fly off the handle. Once he even hung one on Stoker.”
At the last words, Uncle uttered a muffled chuckle. He closed the door to the lab and turned me to the left. The neighboring door opened in front of us, and out of it, bending down so as not to hit his head against the doorframe, appeared a creature of incredible size – something about seven foot three.
He was not just very tall but also very massive. His broad shoulders hardly squeezed through the doorway. On seeing him I almost gave a whistle.
“Oh, Mike. Hello, my friend!” thundered the giant.
His voice would perfectly fit some ogre. Contrary to such a formidable appearance the giant gave us a rather friendly smile and shook my uncle’s hand.
“And who’s this little one with you?” he asked.
“Please meet my niece Sam. Sam, this is my friend and the ‘muscles’ of our organization – Lumberjack,” Mike introduced us to each other.
The owner of a very suitable nickname extended his hand for a handshake. While shaking it I felt like my palm literally disappeared inside his huge paw.
“Nice to meet you Sam, I’ve heard a lot about you!”
“Thanks, you too.”
He was shaking my hand so friendly, but so hard that I started worrying about the well-being of my elbow joints.
“Do you happen to know if Rettle is at his place?” Mike asked the big guy.
“Sitting in his basement as usual.”
“Well, then we go and say hi.”
We started walking toward the opposite wall which had a doorway in it and a staircase going down to the basement.
“Who’s Rettle?” I asked.
“Oh, Rettle is a legend! He’s the very same martial arts master I told you about. Rettle is our everything. He has been teaching martial arts and weapons handling to all members of the Order for over fifty years. Besides, he makes weapons and ammunition by himself and designs all sorts of cool fighting and protective gizmos. Overall, he is a first-class guy. You’ll like him!”
We went downstairs and stopped at the massive iron door resembling the one that is usually installed in bank vaults.
“It’s just that he has some quirks, so don’t be surprised. And even don’t try to ask him questions about his personal life. He won’t answer them anyway,” Uncle added.
He pressed the handle and the door opened. At that moment a powerful sound wave almost swept me off my feet. Super loud music was roaring inside. I looked through the door. There was a spacious room with a lot of identical square columns. It was dark inside. Or, rather – totally dark, terribly bright, totally dark, blindingly bright again. The strobe lights were doing their work. Dubstep, strobe lights – I was about to think that some vampire rave party was going on there, but there was no one inside. Struggling with epileptic lights I strained my eyes and saw something now utterly odd. A man hung on the massive chains in the middle of the room under the ceiling.
Not in the sense that he was suspended from the ceiling like a prisoner, no, he was actually hanging there by himself, holding on to the chains with his hands. Besides, he was upside down, with his arms spread wide, so his body resembled the reversed letter “T”. I saw something like that on TV when I watched the latest Olympic games – it was the men's gymnastics, exercise on the rings. I took a closer look. The man was hanging with his back to us, and what I mistook for his clothes at first turned out to be a drawing. His entire back was covered in one huge tattoo. In such lighting, I couldn’t make out particular details but I got the general picture. It was definitely a multi-colored Japanese yakuza-style tattoo, something with dragons or maybe a tiger.
Mike closed the door.
“Those are some of the quirks I was talking about.”
“What is he doing there?”
“It’s his way of meditation. You know how ordinary people sit in lotus position, in peace and silence, relax and dip into nirvana. So Rettle does everything visa versa. He strains all his muscles, turns on the music to the maximum, plus strobe lights to make it totally insane. He says his thoughts prevent him from absolute relaxation, but if his body and sense organs are strained to the limit it clears his brain from all unnecessary reflections. That's Rettle for you - such an interesting character!”
“Is he Japanese?”
“Noticed his tattoos?”
I nodded.
“In fact he’s Russian. Polkan is his dog, that’s why it has such a strange Russian name.”
“Where did he get his tattoos then?”
“Oh, that’s a good question, my friend. But as I already told you, Rettle doesn’t expatiate upon private matters. I’ve been working with him for the most part of my life. In all this time, the info I gathered on him wouldn't be enough to fill a page. But I know for sure that he lived in Japan once.”
We started going upstairs.
“And what a strange name ‘Rettle’. Is it also Russian? I thought they are all named Ivans there or what’s Putin’s name?”
“No, it’s not Russian. In fact, Rettle is the word ‘ratel’, pronounced incorrectly by someone long ago. And ratel, in turn, is a name of an animal also known as a honey badger.”
“What does this animal have to do with it?”
“The thing is that our Rettle is the spitting image of a ratel. He is small, insanely courageous and incredibly cool. Besides, he also has long and sharp ‘claws’, but you’ll find out about it later.”
“Sounds like too much to find out about later. Who else am I going to meet?”
“That's all for now.”
“Are there only five of you here?”
“There are seven of us, but Geek and Bessie aren’t here yet. Don’t worry, you’ll meet them tonight. They are coming over for dinner. We have dinner together every night at 8.”
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