“Let’s get the show on the road then,” Oliver said instead and watched as everybody filed into the room and took their seats.

“Sunrise is in two minutes. The charges were set earlier in the night, and we made sure that the security cameras in the area were obstructed at the time. Nobody will assume foul play. They’ll blame it on PG&E as usual,” Thomas summarized as he typed something on the keyboard he was sitting at.

“All our staff have cleared out of the area?” Samson asked.

“Everybody’s far enough away.”

Samson added, “Any innocent bystanders?”

Thomas shook his head. “We made sure nobody is in the vicinity. We received the “all clear” a few minutes ago.”

Ursula’s eyes were glued to the monitor, when the live feed went black. “What’s happening?”

The monitor flickered, then a video feed from a different angle showed up on the screen. “We’ve switched from the camera at the gas station across the warehouse to our own camera which we’ve installed on a telephone pole. It has its own power source. All power on this block will go out once we give the go-ahead. That way we can assure that there will be no footage on the security cameras.”

They had thought of everything. Nothing would be traced back to them or expose any vampires to humans. Their secret would be safe.

“I think Ursula should give the command,” Oliver suggested. He looked at his colleagues, and one-by-one they all nodded.

Thomas waved Ursula to change seats with him. “Take the mouse and point it to this icon here.”

Oliver watched as the first rays of the sun started illuminating the street in front of the building. More seconds passed. “Sunrise,” he announced.

Ursula glanced back at him, then all that could be heard in the room was the click of the mouse.

“The electricity to the block is being shut off now,” Thomas explained, and simultaneously all streetlamps and other building lights around the warehouse went out.

Oliver watched the screen, when suddenly an explosion rocked the warehouse. Even though he’d been expecting it, it still jolted him.

The fire spread, engulfing the building quickly and fully as expected: according to the blueprints, the building wasn’t equipped with sprinklers.

The few vampires who tried to escape by braving daylight didn’t get far. To assure none escaped, human sharpshooters, trusted Scanguards employees, had been positioned at strategic points, their weapons loaded with silver bullets. But no shots were fired in the end. Instead, the sun took care of the escaping vampires, adding their ashes to the dirt on the pavement.

The blood brothel and its jailors were finally history.

The police would investigate, no doubt, as would other government agencies, but Scanguards had enough connections who would make sure that nothing would come of these investigations.

“Now our real work starts,” Samson said, his voice serious. Everybody nodded.

When Ursula gave Oliver a questioning look, he explained, “We found Corbin’s client list. Each and every one of those clients is a potential risk to the human population of San Francisco. We’ll have to monitor them and lock those up who are most at risk until they’ve gone through all stages of withdrawal.”

It would be an enormous task, but the mayor had offered Scanguards all resources at his disposal. Within a few weeks, the situation would stabilize, and San Francisco would be as safe as before.

39

Two weeks later

Oliver carried the two suitcases into the house and dropped them in the foyer. Behind him, Ursula set a small bag onto the floor. After almost two weeks in Washington DC, visiting Ursula’s parents, he was ready for some major relaxation. He’d never been so tense in his entire life.

While Ursula had stayed with her parents, Oliver had resided in the house of a vampire Gabriel knew and only joined them in the evenings. After discussing it at length, Ursula had agreed to his suggestion to wipe her parents’ memories of the past three years and plant new ones in their minds. All their pain would be forgotten as if it had never happened. They now believed that Ursula had transferred to UC Berkeley to study for her master’s degree, and that she visited her parents at least twice a year. In addition, Oliver made sure that he was part of their new memories too, so that they would easily accept him as their daughter’s boyfriend. Mind control had become easier for him after he’d used it to make Ursula feel his bite. Almost as if he’d simply needed the right motivation for it.

But simply wiping her parents’ memories had not been enough: Oliver had had to enlist the help of Scanguards staff in Washington and New York to do the same with friends and family of Ursula’s parents, staff at the embassy where her father worked, as well as the police detectives and reporters involved in the case. Thomas had hacked into the police computers and deleted all files of Ursula’s disappearance and also erased the records at the newspapers who ran the story. It was a colossal task, but one that was necessary so Ursula could be with him. Had Oliver and his colleagues not erased every memory of her disappearance, her parents would have never let her leave again.