Vampires weren't something I believed in. I had seen a troll and many strange and weird creatures, but I never thought vampires were real. It is part of their magic, beware.

"I will cure your nightmares; I'll tell you something so frightening you'll never sleep again." Cory, my crow stated what he wanted written on his tombstone and specified that he would talk from beyond the grave as some kind of forensic wizard ghost crow. I told him thank you for giving me something new to believe to be impossible. It was, after all, impossible that vampires could exist. I asked Cory why he never told us there were vampires and he said it was "Because you never asked."

"The file." Special Agent Caprice offered a file to Agent Saint. The rest of the FBI were gone.

"You were transferred here? To this team, as a replacement?" Agent Saint asked him.

"I was." Special Agent Caprice nodded and lit a cigarette out of his sleeve, the match between his finger lit it and he took a long drag and then just held it, letting the fag hang from his lips, stuck to them dryly. He grinned with crazed eyes and his arm in the sling twitched. His gun arm.

"You are injured." Agent Saint pointed out.

"I am still effective." Special Agent Caprice claimed. "I have learned to shoot left handed already."

"Bullets rarely do any good." Agent Saint replied.

"I see some weird stuff in these surveillance photos." Special Agent Caprice. "That's my specialty."

"This man is lying." Cory told me in Corvin.

"I think you are right." I told Cory. "Let's see who he really is, when he has what he wants here."

"What did Cory say?" Detective Winters asked. "Who is he? Is that what he said?"

"My crow said who he is, actually." I revealed to my friend.

"The crow talks? Who are these guys?" Special Agent Caprice asked.

"Case consultants. We are tracking the activity of one of the Triad Killers right now." Agent Saint told him.

"We should report back to headquarters and have all of this properly analyzed." Special Agent Caprice looked around at all of the case photos and notes on the Triad Killers and also my notes from working on our grimoire.

"There really isn't time for that. There is one component missing from the Majara that the cats built and if they don't get it then the world will be destroyed by the remaining Triad Killer." I told the new agent. He nodded and decided:

"That's all?" Special Agent Caprice wondered appreciatively.

"No, you might come with us. You seem more sane than we do. We have to meet with the local sheriff this morning. Evidently the U.S. Marshals are chasing two escapees that are actually dangerous cultists that were last seen in the ghost town near La Cucharacha. We have to go there and find out what they were doing at the place you two found." Agent Saint briefed Special Agent Caprice, and everyone and then pointed at me and Cory.

"Sounds good." Special Agent Caprice decided.

"What about the vampires and the story I was to tell about them?" Cory asked.

"Did that bird just speak English?" Special Agent Caprice was amazed.

"He does that sometimes. Meet Cory, the spekaing corw." Detective Winters grinned.

"My crow has spoken to vampires already. He had to learn Desmodean to do it, the language of the vampire bats." I told Special Agent Caprice.

"This file is on the Jonah Lito case." Agent Saint read some of the file she was handed. "And vampires."

"Haven't read it." Special Agent Caprice smiled.

"It is from QUIETUS, the part about vampires. An official photo copy. This is classified material." Agent Saint read more of it.

"What is QUIETUS?" I asked.

"Quantifies Unsolved Investigation Evidence That's Understood Supernaturally." Agent Saint said. I processed that for a moment and asked:

"You knew that off the top of your head?"

"Yes." Agent Saint admitted.

"So you know about QUIETUS, no, this is that. You made it. It's your classification." I figured.

"Guilty as charged." Agent Saint confessed sarcastically.

"That means you also knew there are vampires!' I realized.

"It is what QUIETUS exists in the first place for. We have thousands of cases with blood draining methods that went unsolved until I got assigned them. I solved all of the current ones and the FBI found out that vampires were real, at least as far as science is concerned. We had a mountain of forensic evidence and we could arrest their familiars and charge them with the murders because they buried or disposed of the dead for the vampires sometimes. We never caught any vampires though, they are too elusive." Agent Saint explained.

"The Triad Killers was your big case? They aren't vampires." Detective Winters pointed out.

"We don't call them vampires. They are just active case numbers for unsolved murders. I use my powers to locate the gravediggers and link them to the crime. But the amount of funding and protection that the actual creatures have is similar to the big three. They were just the easiest to track." Agent Saint admitted to hunting witches.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"So you hunted witches and left the vampires alone because they were the biggest fish? The ones who preyed on the vampires? The Lilim?" Cory surmised with sarcastic questions.

"Yep." Agent Saint nodded.

"Let's go check this ranch out. Shall we?" Special Agent Caprice asked.

The rest of the FBI started making preparations to drive out there. It was a ghost train, leaving a vehicle behind. We went with Agent Saint and sat in the back. Detective Winters rode shotgun.

The last stop for gas loomed ahead and everyone stopped to rally up before going into the ranch. "There's no road. We go up from here, along the highway, on foot." Special Agent Caprice told everyone. I sent Cory to find the best path and then when he returned I showed everyone where to go. Along the hot desert highway we went and reached the ranch long before sundown. There was a night landscape in the shadow of the mountains while the sky was blue. The Jonah Lito Ranch had old iron gates on stone pillars and a pagoda temple in the middle of a Zen garden. Stone Lanterns stood as the four elements of magic in four corners of the ranch on pillars. I noticed that all of them were activated.

"Welcome to the ranch." Jonah Lito came out and greeted us. He looked like a vampire-jesus. I wondered:

"Is he a vampire?" I asked Cory.

"I don't think so; I am not sure." Cory cawed.

"What did he say?" Detective Winters asked me.

"Probably not a vampire." I said.

"You are with the FBI and you are looking for vampires?" Jonah Lito asked, laughing. "I am just an actor. I am not a vampire."

"Vampires are here. Two escaped blood drinking cultists, among you." Special Agent Caprice specified.

"They have sanctuary here. This is my property." Jonah Lito said.

"They are here, then?" Special Agent Caprice asked. He got no answer.

Agent Saint decided it was time to leave and so we had an appointment. Just then they showed up. Two US Marshals with a dog and also the Sheriff and his deputy and their dog. They had caught up to us on horseback.

"They have confessed to having the fugitives in this place." Special Agent Caprice walked over to them and said, with his arm in a sling.

"That's right. You can come in, if you like." Jonah Lito laughed evilly and retreated into the pagoda of the ranch, rather quickly.

"What just happened?" Detective Winters got his gun out.

"We're going in." The Sheriff said. I hadn't caught their name.

The Deputy and Marshals went in on foot. "Careful, they bite!" Special Agent Caprice called after them.

"Must go now." Cory told me. I noticed that Agent Saint was already heading towards the path back to the highway, through the desert. I followed. Cory called out "Must go now!" towards Detective Winters, he went into the pagoda, ready to use his automatic shotgun on any vampires in the place.

There was gunfire in the pagoda and soon a swarm of frightened cultists in their tunics came running out screaming in terror. They had seen the vampires. I worried at their panic and I sped up our pace to try to stay ahead of them on the path through the desert, retreating from the gun battle.

Detective Winters caught up to us and said, with his eyes wide with terror and his breath a mist that made my right hand ache. "It was a bloodbath in there. Everyone is dead in there."

"So they are vampires?" Cory asked, amused sounding.

"I don't know, they were like vampires, I guess, all monstrous and very hard to kill. There were a lot of them too." Detective Winters told us. He was bleeding.

"You're hurt." Agent Saint pointed out to Detective Winters.

"I'm fine, just a few bullets grazed me. I won't die, though I might pass out a bit." Detective Winters assured us with shocked calmness.

"You should go get the car and we can wait here with Detective Winters." I told Agent Saint.

"That' our plan." Agent Saint agreed and took off along the highway, back to the gas station for her car. I listened as rattlesnakes and coyotes sniffed our trail of blood. The sun began to set.

I heard the high pitched squeal of the bats. Cory said:

"It is very convenient that I know Desmodean." Cory laughed. "Those bats are saying that they will digest your blood and mine and to use images of your family in your mind. They are guessing I understand them and they have stopped talking. It is said that the bats can also use telepathy, and that they do not lie to other bats, only to other species, with their telepathy." Cory reported.

"Interesting." I interrupted Cory.

"You're seen!" Cory told the bats, imitating Desmodean to the best he could.

"Land!" The bats said in Desmodean. Cory told me they were saying they were landing. They always had their wings spread, seeming to use it to sense and control thoughts of their prey, somehow. Their huge eyes looked blind, but they were not. The bats could see a variety of colors in the dark. Mostly to find and eat large mammals.

The bats landed near us and I did see images of my family in peril in my mind. I knew it to be the trickery of the bats and I still had to resist it. When I had overcome their illusions, the bats outright attacked us. They flew away when Agent Saint brandished her weapon and swung at them. Also they flew away when Detective Winters used his sidearm to shoot at them clumsily in the dark. Cory squawked an alarm at me as they came at me from behind, it was enough to save my life a couple times. I thanked my crow.

"What were those?" Detective Winters looked terrified. He dropped his sidearm and stood weaponless. He felt helpless.

"Vampire Bats, my Lord calls them. They are very old and never came out like this before, avoiding Man until now. The Dusk." Cory explained.

"They were here for the ranch?" Detective Winters asked.

"The other way around." Agent Saint pointed out.

"The Vampire Bats will return, and in greater numbers." I predicted. I remembered them from the encounter Cory and I had with vampires before. It was almost exactly the same, except Agent Saint hadn't survived in my recollection. I stood at the entrance to the gas station while Detective Winters waved goodbye.

Cory and I waited while the gas was filling and then shut off the pumps and climbed in.

"Why am I not surprised the gas was siphoned off by someone? These deserts are death." Agent Saint sorta complained. We left for the nearest hospital, after giving Detective Winters first aid, putting some bandages on him and making him comfortable in the back of the tiny car. Cory rode on his hip and kept him calm with soothing crow words.

I thanked Cory when we arrived at the hospital. He got emergency surgery and we were wheeling him out the next day when the television in the lobby of the waiting room caught everyone alertly and people started crying and praying loudly. I watched the news and caught it; that three nuclear bombs had gone off on the border and countries around the world were threatening nuclear war.

We drove back to La Cucharacha and found the remnants of the FBI gathered there. Special Agent Caprice said: "I thought you said you needed someone sane, for the job?"

"That is funny!" Cory cawed. "You had a very bad idea. Nobody should have gone to that place."

"The crow is always right." Detective Winters agreed.

"Not always." I disagreed.

"Death always happens." Cory said in English.

"Hey he talked finally!" Detective Winters pointed out.

"Those vampires won't be finished." Agent Meroë spoke up from his solitary brooding. "And when they are at the door, won't let them in."

"Now who is talking?" Cory pointed out.

"No. I saw something when I killed Araek. I saw that anything I face, will die." Agent Meroë told everyone. "As in, as an adversary. When the vampires come, I will be ready."

"You've gone crazy." The wounded Detective Winters in his sutures and bandages and convenience chair told him.

"I've never known Jerod Meroë to be crazy." Agent Saint said. "And I don't think he is. Just let him face the vampires."

"Thank you." Agent Meroë got the hunting bow he wanted to use, ready for use.

"QUIETUS sure is quiet." Cory whispered to me.

At that, I laughed.