In the Land of the House of Night

The following is considered high value, classified information, only for the eyes Director Margaret Santo of the FBI.
This is a formal report from Agent Daniel Walker. Agent Walker has been working undercover for the past four years as part of Operation Godfather, an infiltration of certain criminal groups with ties stretching from the United States to areas around the world, with central power structures located around the Mediterranean Coast, particularly in Italy and Tunisia. His identity is of the utmost secrecy because of the immense risk to his life and the lives of his family members. As such, in all standard discourse, including internal communications, he is to be referred to as Agent A.
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In all my years of service with the police force and with the FBI, I have never been forced to discuss something as strange or as mind boggling as the power structure I recently observed in Italy. In May 2005, I came here because of fears that there might be a threat to national security associated with two crime families in New York City which had connections to a larger criminal society in Naples, and I am reporting now, in November 2009, that not only were those fears based on undeniable truth, they were drastically understated.
When I arrived, I was set up with a job in a restaurant in Naples where high-ranking members of the largest crime family in the area, the Alvonzi clan, were known to eat frequently. Through some of the waiters who were apparently associated with the crime family, I made it known to them that I was looking for more 'gainful' employment. I did not think much of it at the time, but the waiters were not very willing to speak on my behalf.
At the time, I suspected that they were just suspicious of outsiders, but now I realize that they were probably more afraid of their own employers than of me. If I were discovered to be someone wishing to do the family harm, the blame would eventually come to them, and they would be punished greatly.
My first meeting with one of the Alvonzis was at that restaurant, on a reserved second floor balcony and dining area which offered some privacy. The man who spoke with me was actually a low ranking 'foot soldier', but I didn't know that at the time. He carried an air of confidence, and seemed to have quite a bit of power. Among the people in town, he probably did. A connection with the Alvonzis, I found out, was a badge of strength and invincibility.
He spoke with me and offered to contact me within the week if I got a job from the Alvonzis. If not, he said, I would never hear from him again, and further attempts to contact the family were 'strongly discouraged'.
I received a call on my Blackberry three days later, and was invited to have dinner with a local Alvonzi captain, a genetic member of the family who lived in the hills just outside of Naples. I was to be picked up at the restaurant, blindfolded, and driven there in such a way that I couldn't retrace my steps. Despite being scared by the possibility that I could be executed, I accepted the offer, and met with some of the captain's men at the restaurant. They put me in the back of a Cadillac Escalade after a frisk search for weapons, and drove me on a winding course through the city, then through the countryside, until finally we reached our destination.
The Alvonzi captain lived in a fairly modest villa, surrounded by acres of vineyards and what looked like a winery. I was driven up to the front door, where the man stepped out to meet me. He greeted me with a mask of hospitality and a cold embrace, then brought me inside of his home to talk business.
Inside, the first thing that struck me was the coldness of the place. It was late evening, and he had the air conditioner running. The captain, whose name was Carlito, talked to me about his personal life for a while (making up most of the stories off the top of his head), then asked me about my self. It was a sort of interview. I told him that I was from Palermo, Sicily, had grown up as the oldest son of a single mother, and had learned to fend for myself. I subtly hinted that I had killed two men who had tried to steal from my mother during my childhood, something that I thought he would receive well. He appeared to, and we talked for a while longer before he asked me if I could use some money. I said yes.
My work for Carlito Alvonzi started with some pretty basic jobs. I drove him around to meetings with other Alvonzi family members in Naples and the surrounding countryside, and once took him to my 'home town' of Palermo to meet with members of another major clan, the Gillespies. It was during that meeting that I began to understand the power structure of the Alvonzi's world.
The Gillespies were the most powerful in Italy, and, therefore, in the world. I didn't ask questions, but I got some answers, anyway. They had a leader whom everyone called 'The Matron' and looked up to with respect. I did not see her during my visit, because she was far above the meeting that Carlito was attending, but I heard a good deal about her. Everyone who I met spoke constantly about her children, asking how they were doing, and whether they had 'progressed'. I didn't understand then, but someone later told me that, to 'progress', the child had to become a murderer. After that, they were given a share of the family fortune.
When we got back to Naples after that meeting, I started climbing up a bit through the rankings of the Alvonzi foot soldiers. Carlito began to talk to me, not as a friend, but as a worthy subservient. He asked me to drive him to meet with some of the Family leaders at a private party hosted in the Alvonzi Patron's villa, and I secretly jumped at the opportunity, while keeping my cool on the outside.
On this trip, we took Carlito's private vehicle, an Ashton Martin. Carlito rode in the back, and two armed men were with us. During the entire trip, Carlito talked about how much he loved driving on his own through the countryside, but how he felt that he would be looked down on if he did not know how to properly 'use men'. The man sitting beside of me looked visibly nervous, and was sweating despite the fact that it was night when we left Naples, and the air conditioner was on at its highest setting.
Carlito met with the Patron in a palatial mansion, twenty seven miles outside of Naples in a secluded grove. The parking lot outside looked like a showroom for some of the most expensive cars I had ever seen. There were some that I had to search for on the internet to identify properly, because they were so rare and so expensive that they were the toys of billionaires. Next to some of them, a Cadillac would look like a Yugo. The most impressive, painted silver and gold and probably costing five times as much as my house, had two tall, powerful looking men guarding it. Their eyes followed my every step until I walked into the villa.
It was at that party that I learned the truth about the Alvonzis, which I hesitate to relay here out of fear that I won't be believed. You see, I had been approaching the Alvonzis as though they were some sort of typical criminal organization, like the Mafia. The FBI had that attitude, too. What I realized, though, was that they were something else entirely.
Going into the party, I saw the Alvonzis walking around nude and fully 'displayed', as they call it. At first, my mind refused to accept what I was seeing. Then, I wanted to run.
They were like goblins, pale white, nearly translucent, and extremely tall. Their faces were extended into lizard-like snouts, and their nails were extended into powerful claws. Their eight foot tall bodies were lean and powerfully muscled, and their hair stretched down to their wastes. On seeing me and the other humans walking in with Carlito, they all glared at us. There were other humans at the party, but I still couldn't help feeling like we were about to be slaughtered like dogs. We probably would have been, had Carlito not smiled, thrown off his clothing, and undergone the most horrifying transformation I've ever seen. His body stretched as cartilage extended and pulled flesh taught. The pigment in his tanned, olive complexion was stretched so thin that he became ghost white, just like all of the others.
When he opened his mouth, he spoke in Latin. I didn't understand a word of it, and I was too scared to try to interpret when he finally switched back to Italian. I spent the remainder of the party too scared to even feel rational terror, and much too frightened to actually pick out the leader of the Alonzis or any of the other Families in the crowd of terrifying figures. Somehow, I managed to drive Carlito back to his villa before being driven back to the apartment where I lived in Naples.
The human who drove me there talked a bit about the Alvonzis, and about what I saw. It turns out that they are what are called the Noctros, the Knights of Night. There are seven major Noctros families in Italy, with the Alvonzis and Sorlozos being the most powerful beneath the Gillespies. The major Noctros families had their hands in everything that could make them money. They had large investments in the stock market, in the Swiss banking system, in oil companies and drug runners, and in pretty much every terrorist or militant group on Earth. The control over terrorists and militants served three purposes; first, they could be a source of income from looted territory, second, they were guaranteed not to attack the Noctros, and third, they gave the Noctros a good deal of control over world politics.
The man didn't know much about where the Noctros came from originally, except that most of their human employees had a belief from somewhere that they originally came to the Mediterranean from North Africa, and arrived there from space at some point in the very distant past.
Power in Noctros society came from two sources. One was age, and the Noctros could become quite old. The head of the Alvonzi clan was said to be older than the historical record; dating back to 4700 B.C. The second source of power in Noctros society was being a female willing and able to have children, because of rampant infertility among the species. There were only a handful of Noctros born every hundred years, and so the Matron of the Gillespie family had cemented her claim to power by becoming a mother of three.
The man also talked about the vehicles when I mentioned them. Apparently, the Noctros loved living on the luxuries of human society, and they loved none of those better than vehicles. Cars were a particular status symbol among the Noctros, and were not even necessarily tied to money. Many Noctros were rich, but if they bought certain types of cars which were above them, they could be punished just like a soldier who put on the uniform of a general. The lowest rankings of the Noctros drove Cadillacs, the low ranking generals and captains drove Ashton Martins and similar sports cars. Cheaper Ferraris and Lamborghinis were reserved for higher ranking generals, and the heads of some lower Noctros families and highest ranking generals of the most powerful drove rare and expensive sports cars. The heads of the Alvonzi and Sorlozos drove Reventons, and the Matron of the Gillespie clan drove a Bugatti Veyron, the car that I had seen at the party.
Turns out, if I had taken a step in its direction, they would have ripped me to pieces, alive and screaming.
When I got back to my apartment, I seriously considered stepping out of the mission, but I decided, possibly against my better judgment, that I would see Operation Godfather through to the end.
I learned a bit more about Noctros society. About their feeding habits, about their religious practices (many belonged to a strange religious sect which I can't even begin to explain with the limited knowledge gained from my observations), even about their sexual lives and their exploitation of human men and women. I could fill a biology text book with the information that I learned about them, but that isn't what I'm trying to do here.
I just want you to consider one important bit of information. The Noctros do not like heat. It weakens them. Fire is the only way to kill them. In fact, if they are dishonored, they consider burning themselves alive to be the only way to reclaim that honor. I learned this from a human gunman who worked for the Noctros and had seen one of them do this. He said that they would lie quietly on a couch while they had gasoline poured over their bodies, and then would try to remain silent as they slowly cooked in the flames. If they screamed, then they were dishonored, and destined to burn for eternity.
Obviously, they won't be quite so complacent if a person tries to take them down, but it may be the only way to stop one. I'm terrified by the idea of outright war with them, and I hope that you have the wisdom not to try to deal with the Noctros families in America. I hate to recommend that you do nothing about a criminal threat in America, but this may be a threat we can't deal with.
When we look back at our past, we see stories of vampires, of ghosts, of goblins which all share the same features everywhere on the planet. I think that we, as a species, know that we should fear the Noctros.
I'm going to be back in America in three weeks, and I'm going to be able to put all of this behind me. I hope that my wife and kids will still be waiting for me. I don't want anything to do with this in the future, and I'm sorry, but this is also my resignation letter from service for the FBI.
Category:Beings
Category:Diary/Journal
Category:Reality