At around 4:30 AM, a light on Alex the night guard’s panel went red, drawing his attention. An elevator door alarm on the twelfth floor corridor had been triggered. He leaned forward, reaching towards the 2-way but instead picked up his cell phone sitting just beside it. He flipped it open and pressed a series of numbers.
As the call rang through, a haze seemed to be filling the camera view right in front of the elevator door but nothing else could be seen. The call picked up and he spoke, “It’s Sidewinder. Yeah, we got that alarm, just like you said. No fire alarm, just the elevator door. What would you like me to do, sir?”
“Nothing. Reset the alarm. If anything else happens, in the hall, of course proceed with protocol. But anything in the room, leave it. We’ll take it from here.”
Alex paused. They’d had to do a bit of jerry rigging to move guests from that particular wing, stating that there was a maintenance request and upgrading them to better rooms with restaurant comps. Cindy, one of the front managers, hadn’t wanted to do it but the footage of her getting horizontal with the new chef on top of a conference table after hours convinced her otherwise.
“Sidewinder, do you read? Leave the situation alone.”
“Yeah, ok.”
“Follow protocol on all other matters, except the room and guest in question.”
“Yeah, yeah, ok. I’ll monitor and will call if anything more happens.”
On the other side of the phone, just across the street, tucked into the shadows at the base of the construction site for the new condo complex, a short, nondescript man in a green fatigue jacket with German eagle crest on the sleeve lowered a pair of binoculars with a hint of a smile.
“That won’t be necessary, Sidewinder. We’ve just pressed Play. Ritterreiter out.”
The man known as Ritterreiter hung up his cell, lowering his binoculars and tucking them into his coat and pulling out a flashlight. Turning it on, he picked up crowbar that was leaning against the finished foundation wall and made his way away around the side of the structure. The first several floors of the structure had been completed, even to the point of having the beginnings of a wine bar almost ready for retail.
The top ten floors above were a different story, an organized mess of steel beams, rebar, plywood platforms, and concrete mixers wrapped in a bow of orange plastic safety fencing. A yellow industrial crane towered over it all, American flag flying proudly over the months of work yet to complete the new condo/retail space.
Out of the old was arising the new. Wide vistas of flat concrete space were being replaced by towers of glass and steel. The Bellevue skyline had been and would be permanently home to a nest of cranes as the city refactored itself from sleepy downtown host for local computer entrepreneurs to entertainment mecca for the jetsetter trophy families of the rich and digitally minded.
Ritterreiter came around the corner to a parking lot with a lone truck and checked the sky. The black sky of the Pacific Northwest sky was feeling its first twinges of dawn. Night was ending and monsters were in play. As he lowered his gaze, two hooded figures came out a side door of the construction site, dragging a jackhammer.
The two figures loaded the jackhammer into the back of the truck and threw him a wave. He smiled, taking his cell phone back out.
“My finger is on the button.” He dialed and put the phone to his ear.
Vampirony 