Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

Chapter 4

Chapter 4The office lights at Cross LedgerAccounting were on but the lobby lights were off, making it look likethe offices were closed but a handful of people were putting in someovertime.

I walked through to the office Sonyaused after the sun had set. Sonya was a vampire. With her mouse-brownhair and dull yellow eyes, her pale skin made her look even morewashed out. She was impossibly thin and tall, with long fingers.Ruben employed her because it meant he could take vampire businesstoo, if it came down to that. Money was the driving force behind hischoices. Vampires often had a lot more money because they stuckaround long enough to make fortunes. Immortality was a blessing, atleast in that way.

I put my helmet on Sonya’s desk. Sheglanced up at me, irritated. Her lips lifted in a snarl thatthreatened to roll back over her long fangs, but she controlledherself. She knew well enough what I could do.

“Ruben wants to see you before youhead out,” she said, handing me a stack of papers.

We were careful not to touch each otherduring the exchange. Her skin on mine felt like it would burn me. Iwas sure she felt the same about me.

The papers had photos of driver’slicenses or black and white scans pulled off servers somewhere.“Who’s this one?” I asked. There was no photo, only a socialsecurity number.

“That’s the one Ruben wants to seeyou about,” Sonya said, not looking up at me. “He’s in hisoffice.”

Where else would he be?

I took the stack of papers and walkedinto Ruben’s office. He was scribbling something down on a piece ofpaper.

“Since when do you send clients to myapartment?” I asked. I didn’t sit down, and in my leathers andlace-ups, I was intimidating. Ruben knew I carried firepower, and Ididn’t know if he was sure I wouldn’t use it.

“Look, she wouldn’t leave me alone.She kept going on about needing to find some vampire, and you’rethe best person for that kind of thing. Besides, she was going to paybig bucks. I wasn’t going to pass her up.”

“No, you were going to pass her on.She wants a rescue mission. I don’t do charity cases.”

Ruben looked up at me. “She saidshe’d pay,” he repeated.

“I didn’t mean money. I meantletting people live. It’s not my department.”

Ruben chuckled and dropped his pen.“Look, you do what you want with that case, but make it look likeyou did what you could so I can get some money out of this. I don’thire you for my health.”

I grunted and sat down on a chairopposite him. “What about this other one? Sonya was cheerful aboutit.”

Sonya was never cheerful aboutanything. I supposed working for people who slayed her kind afterhours was tough for her to handle. And Ruben paid her next tonothing. On the other hand, maybe she had a reason to hate vampiresas much as I did.

“Someone from the Hills wants thisone taken out. Another big contract – he’s a big shot around townwho did something to piss off the wrong people. I want you all out onthis one. It’s a kill, so it’s right up your alley.”

“What am I supposed to do with this?”I lifted up the paper with the details. “You didn’t give me muchto work with. I don’t even have a name or an address.”

Ruben shrugged. “That’s what theygave me. They’re not too keen on any of this information gettingout, so they’re trying to limit the amount of information thatchanges hands around here. I get the feeling they’re after him forsomething bigger than the usual I-hate-vampires stuff. You’ve donethis before. Don’t tell me you’re getting picky. Picky is aboveyour pay grade.”

I rolled my eyes and got up. I wasitching to get my hands on a vampire or two. I was in a terriblemood, and the only way to fix that was to take out a menace.

“Don’t cut it so close. I want toleave the office earlier tonight.”

“If I believed you had what it takesto set foot out in the dark, I’d believe you,” I called over myshoulder.

Ruben could suck it. I did what Iwanted. He wasn’t going to fire me. Carl was a joke; without me,Ruben would lose all his money. There weren’t a lot of people outthere jumping to take my place.

Sonya shook her head when I walked out.I took my helmet off her desk and stepped out into the night.

The air was crisp with the first hintsof autumn. There were no clouds, and the sky was filled withpinpricks of light. I opened the throttle on my bike and drove to thefirst address on the list. A driver’s license was a big help – Ifound a lot of houses that way – but the vampires were rarely home.

I stopped in front of a red brick housewith a well-maintained lawn. The night smelled like jasmine as Iwalked up to the front door. Vampires liked to choose night-scentedflowers, not because they liked them, but because every animal knowsthe importance of scents and covering them up.

The porch light was on, but everythingelse was off.

I walked around to the back of thehouse. I kept my eyes open for trouble, and my nose was workingovertime. There was no vampire on the premises at the moment. Thesmell of cheap cologne was hanging in the air near the bedroomwindow, telling me the vampire had been here earlier and had tried tocover his scent with a different smell. They tended to do that.Vampires could sniff each other out, and cologne helped. But itwasn’t enough.

It was never enough.

I worked my blade under one of thewindows and slid it up. It was a good neighborhood, and the windowsweren’t sticky like some of the ones I worked with. It also helpedthat there were no burglar bars. Those could really make breaking andentering a b***h.

Inside the house, I walked around. Thefurniture was cheap but nice, and was organized like whoever livedhere enjoyed being here. I guessed that this had been the house thevamp had lived in before he’d turned. Vampires often chose a newplace to live in after they’d turned, because they had cut tieswith their old life – or they changed the interior of theirexisting homes. They slept during the day, and at night they wantedto get out. The night air made vampire skins itch if they were coopedup for too long.

Houses became nothing more than a safehaven for sleep. Furniture and décor didn’t matter.

The en-suite bathroom was the roomwhere the fragrance hung thickest in the air. It tickled my nose andI crinkled it, trying to breathe around the smell.

In the bedroom I found what I waslooking for: a scent that wasn’t altered. The bed was full of it.The myth that vampires slept in coffins was absolutely ridiculous;vampires liked comfort as much as the next person.

The curtains in this room were thickand black, with roll-up blinds behind them. When I looked carefullyat the walls around the window, I saw that shutters had beeninstalled that came down in the daytime to keep out the light. Thatseemed a little like overkill, but whatever. Better safe than sorry.

“Well, let’s see if we can findyou,” I said, and took a deep breath, filling my nose with thescent. It smelled like earth and mulch, and something that remindedme of baby powder.

The house had little else to offer.There were no photos or personal mementos that I could see. Thisvampire had fallen into the habit of distancing itself from life alittle, after all.

Finding the vampire after I left thehouse was easy. Now that I had the scent, it was just a matter oftracking it. The vampire had left over the back wall, not through thefront yard. Clever.

I found the scent on the other side ofthe wall and followed it through two neighboring gardens. I stuck tothe shadows so I wouldn’t be seen. Unless there were dogs around,it was easy to hide myself.

Some animals loved vampires; theyseemed to be drawn to the lack of humanity in the vampires’ nature.Other animals hated them. With me, it could swing either way. Animalshated or loved me, depending on how much of myself I showed to them,and which side they preferred. I hated that it was a gamble and Icould never be sure, but I had enough going for me that I couldn’tcomplain about a few setbacks. After all, everyone had flaws.

The vampire was a young one. It didn’tcover itself up the way it should have, and I found it two blocksaway. It was hunched in a corner, eyes half-closed with the satiatedhigh of the feed. If you’ve ever seen a snake with an animalhalfway down its throat, you’ll get the idea. There’s a momentfor every predator where it’s helpless. For a vampire, it was themoment just after a feed, when its energy levels hadn’t kicked upjust yet, and it was lulled into a passive state for a few minutes.

I’d caught it at the perfect moment.I waited until it had snapped back to reality so that it would have afighting chance, but even then the vampire wasn’t as quick as itshould have been. It was clumsy and helpless, and it didn’t takelong before the job was done. I didn’t even get my leathers dirty.

I walked away, unsatisfied and morefrustrated than when I’d started.

I had a handful of vampires still tofind before I could call it a night, but I needed a challenge. If itwasn’t a good fight, if I didn’t have to fight for my life, itwasn’t worth the trouble. Nothing made me feel as alive as being soclose to death I could smell the rot on its breath.

I was going to find the facelessvampire that Ruben wanted me to hunt down. That would be a challenge,and I had all night to do it.

When I got to my bike, my phone rang.

“Are you knee-deep in blood yet, orcan you come in?” It was Joel. “Your ammunition arrived, and Ihave another gun here that’s looking for an owner who will actuallyfire it.”

“It’s a slow night. I’ve gottime. I need you for a couple of things, anyway. I’ll be there inten.”

I pulled my helmet on and goosed thethrottle, spraying gravel like waves on both sides of the bike untilI was on the street. I got to Joel in less than ten minutes. When Ipulled into the drive, the garage door was already open for me. Irolled my bike inside, and the automatic doors slowly rolled shut.

“You’re going to get caught if youkeep drawing attention to yourself like that,” Joel said.

“What, you don’t think I can talkmy way out of it?” I pouted and made my eyes big, and he laughedand hugged me.

His dark brown hair was long and curledwhere it brushed his shoulders and jawline. He wore glasses withblack frames that made his eyes stand out, and he always had athree-day stubble. Tonight he was wearing sweatpants and a matchingjacket with holes cut in the sleeves for his thumbs, but I’d seenhim in a variety of outfits ranging from hobo to classy. Joel wasweird, but there was no question about who he was, and his loyaltywas complete. He would never rat me out.

“Come on through,” he said.

We walked through a narrow door at theback of the garage. It led into a small room with a narrow strip ofsmall windows near the ceiling. Servants’ quarters, once upon atime. A dark opening took up most of the floor space: a concretestaircase leading down into the earth. The trap door that normallycovered it was leaning up against the wall. There were houses inWestham that still had war bunkers and the like. Joel had been luckyenough to snatch one of the last ones on the market.

Fluorescent lights hung from theceiling every couple of feet, throwing circles of light on severalworkbenches. The low hum of the lights filled the air, and classicalmusic was streaming from a radio somewhere.

He opened a safe and stacked boxes ofammo on the table in front of me. The boxes all had polystyrenepackaging in them, holding rows of bullets. Five by ten. Joel packedthem out according to their labels.

“Smith and Wesson 500s, Gen4 Glock23, 9mm Beretta, SIG Sauer P226.”

I nodded as he named them. He knew whatI carried.

Joel Garber was the only person in thecounty who could organize silver bullets. The way I saw it, everypolice officer needed to carry at least one silver cartridge, notjust the vampire-prison guards, but vampires hadn’t made that kindof name for themselves yet.

“You’re a star,” I said as Istarted taking out the cartridges I had on me so I could fill them.The rest I would put in the storage compartment on my bike. I alwaysfelt better when I had a fresh set of ammo.

“Should last you a while,” Joelsaid.

“I hope so.”

Joel walked to a narrow locker in thecorner and opened it. He took out a gun and walked back to me.

I whistled, as I took it from him. Itwas an AR-15 carbine. The black metal was cold under my fingers.

“This one’s semi-automatic.Air-cooled. Light enough for you to throw around when you need to.”He produced a scope. “And it has extras.”

I smiled, looking the gun over, holdingit up against my shoulder to try it on for size. Joel was right: itwas light.

“Not your usual inconspicuous deal,but I thought you could appreciate it.”

“This is why I love coming to you,”I said, grinning as Joel pushed a box of ammo across the table towardme. “And you got me silver for it,” I exclaimed.

Joel grinned. “What else do you needdone?” He leaned back against the desk and folded his arms.

“I need you to check out a socialsecurity number for me. It’s all I have to go by.”

Joel shook his head, but he walked tohis computer and sat down.

It was always on. He ran a hell of asystem. I didn’t know much about those things, but Joel was a realtechie. Sometimes I wondered what he was doing in a hole in Westham,helping a fly-by-night vampire hunter like me.

“Don’t you have better things to dowith your time?” I asked.

He held out his hand, and I gave himthe paper with the details on it. He kept his eyes on the screenwhile his fingers flew over the keyboard in a blur.

“Then who are you going to run to forthis kind of information? There are some ugly characters in town.”

I snorted. “I think I count as one ofthem,” I said.

“You’re not so bad,” he said witha shrug. “I’ve seen worse. You don’t see the kinds of guys whowalk through my door.”

“If they don’t have fangs, they’renot really on my radar,” I agreed.

“Here we are,” Joel said, and thecomputer beeped.

I walked around the desk and bent down.My face hovered over Joel’s shoulder. He smelled musky, like he’dsprayed on deodorant, but not recently.

“There’s no name,” I said. It wasonly an address. 442 Caldwell Street. It was definitely in WesthamHills.

“I know. His details are blocked withall sorts of firewalls and security systems. This was all I couldget.”

“I thought you were good at this,”I teased.

He turned and looked at me. His facewas open and his eyes were serious. He was offended. “I can do it,but it’s going to take me a while. You don’t look like you wantto wait a day or two.”

I shook my head. “I’ll figure itout.”

Joel nodded and got up. “Look, I’llkeep running it for you and let you know if I find anything else.Until then, you’re going to have to use address only. It’s morethan you started off with, though.”

I climbed the stairs back up to thegarage, carrying my load, with Joel a couple of steps behind me. Ipacked my ammunition into the compartment under the seat of my bikeand swung my leg over. The carbine was on my back with a strap. Therewas nowhere else I could put it with the compartment full, but maybeI’d get the chance to use it tonight.

I was about to pull on my helmet whenJoel put his hand on my arm.

“Be careful out there,” he said.

“I have at least two hundred shots onme, and a helluva gun. Don’t worry about it.”

“People don’t usually have thatkind of protection unless it’s serious. He doesn’t want to befound, and you’re going to push his buttons by doing the exactopposite. Don’t get dead.”

“I won’t,” I said, smiling atJoel.

I wasn’t going to tell him that ifthat happened, I didn’t know that I’d be too upset about it. Theycouldn’t turn me, with my already-vampire mix of blood. The onlyway for me to go was out for good, and sometimes I wondered if thatwould really be a bad thing. Still, his concern was endearing.

I pulled my helmet on and waited forthe garage door to roll up. Then I pulled out into the night, my bikethe only sound for miles around.

I opened the throttle and raced downthe street. I followed the main road until I had to take a left thateventually wound up the hill. It became darker, the halos around thelights drowned by the canopy of leaves that stretched over the roadand around the lights. My bike’s headlight cut a shaft of lightinto the inky black, and the darkness folded closed behind me againlike a curtain.

I found Caldwell Street easily. It wasclose to the top of the hill. The road was framed by high walls withelectric fencing on top and cast iron gates with intricate curls tokeep everyone out that didn’t belong. Through the gates I spiedmansions, lit up by green garden lighting and chandelier porchlights, making the rest of Westham look like someone’s leftovers.

Number 442 had a mustard-colorednine-foot wall all around it, topped off with electric fencing. Thegate was big and black, mostly solid, so I couldn’t see muchthrough it save for the paving on the other side. The spikes on topwere a warning.

Despite all my skills and mybreaking-and-entering expertise, I wasn’t sure how I was going toget into this one. I sat back on my bike in the dark shadows of ahuge poplar tree, and listened.

The whole neighborhood was alive. Icould feel people everywhere. They felt like the warm puffs of airthat cloud around your face in winter. Smells traveled to me on thewind, sweet and spicy, a mix of people and the lifeblood pumpingthrough their veins.

There was no way I was going to find atrace of this vampire by sitting out on the road. Either I had tocome up with another plan, or I had to wait a day or two for Joel toget back to me.

I hated waiting. I had a furnace raginginside of me that only managed to settle after a kill.

I leaned forward, about to turn the keyto kick the engine back into life, when a dark shadow blurred in thecorner of my eye. I reacted too late; the sight reached my brain tooslowly. Something hard cracked against the right side of my jaw, andI crashed to the ground next to my bike.

White spots danced in front of my eyes,and for a moment I couldn’t figure out which way was up. The worldspun around me and my stomach flipped, ready to heave.

I had to be fight-ready – I was surethere would be a follow-up – but with my head spinning, I wasn’tworth much. I reached for the carbine on my back and pointed itdeftly in front of me as I pushed myself up. Joel would be happy tohear it had been fired on its first night on the job.

I heard a snicker to my left, and Iswung the gun in that direction, but I couldn’t see anything.

My mind recovered, and I was up on myfeet with a swift jump. The air smelled stale, laced with a floweryscent I couldn’t place – it tried to be natural, but it wasn’t.I pulled the trigger, and the first bullets left the barrel with awhoosh and a clap, but whatever was out there had moved. I could feela shift in the atmosphere. If it was faster than my bullets, I was introuble. If I was too concussed to shoot straight, I was in troubletoo, but I could forgive myself for that.

“You’re not nearly what I thoughtyou’d be.” A silky voice traveled to me on the breeze. Itsurrounded me and caressed my skin. A woman’s voice. An icy fingertraced a shiver down my spine.

She stepped into a pool of moonlightthat broke through the leaves. She was dressed in tight black clothes– it looked like I wasn’t the only one who had dressed to suitthe night – and she had white hair that was pulled back tightlyagainst her head. She kept her head dipped so her face was maskedwith shadows. Where her eyes should have been, there were only poolsof black.

“Who are you?” I asked. I didn’tusually ask my opponents that, but then again, they’d never beenthe ones to hunt me.

“Your worst nightmare,” she said.The cliché was lost in the venom in her voice.

We circled each other in a crouchedstance, both ready to attack. I still had the gun pointed in herdirection. One pull of the trigger and she would have a hole in herchest, whether she was human or not. I had my mind back in the game,so she wouldn’t be able to outrun the bullets again.

But I was intrigued by this woman, whomanaged to seem like a copy of me, and the exact opposite, all atonce.

“What do you want?” I asked. Themillion-dollar question.

“How long did you think you could getaway with it? How long did you think it was going to take for peopleto find out what you really are?”

The blood drained from my face and Isuddenly felt cold, despite my leather jacket. I’d hoped the answerto that question would be “never”. There was a reason I worked inthe dead hours of the night.

I opened my mouth to ask a question,but she launched herself at me. She took me by surprise again. Twicein one night – I was getting sloppy. In the process, she knocked mygun out of my hand, and it clattered into the darkness beyond myreach. There was no time for me to reach for another gun. She was ontop of me, and she didn’t fight like a girl.

It got dirty fast, and I silentlythanked Sensei for training me the way he had. Her fists were likejackhammers, with a strength that equaled my own. I wondered if shewas human, or some other sort of creature – a half-breed like me,or maybe something else that was mythical. Vampires were the onlycreatures acknowledged by the government, but there were others, too.

We rolled around in the dirt. She gotmore hits in than I did, and besides it hurting, it made me angry.

I reached down and pulled my silverknife from its thigh sheath. I lunged at her, but she was faster thanI’d thought and I only nicked her skin. Still, she let out apiercing scream and let me go, scrambling away.

“b***h,” she hissed. “You’dbetter watch your back. This isn’t over.”

She melted into the shadows, andseconds later she was gone.

If she’d reacted to the silver thatbadly, she was definitely not human. Or a half-breed vampire.

I groaned and lay back on the ground.My face throbbed and ached. I touched my nose carefully, and myfingers came away with blood on them, black in the moonlight.

I managed to get myself back intodowntown Westham, where the streetlights were welcome and the roadswere familiar. I knew nothing could get to me there.

“What the hell happened to you?”Ruben asked when I walked into the office. He checked his watch.“You’re early.”

“I think I’m gonna call it anight,” I said as I dropped the ID of the one vampire I’d gottenon his desk.

Ruben raised his eyebrows.

“Before you say it,” I said when Isaw a complaint forming on his tongue. “If you want to send me outthere to do your dirty work, you’d better believe I’m going totake some time off to recover. Every other job has sick leave.”

“And other jobs pay taxes,” hesaid.

“I’m going home. I’ll call you,”I told him, then I walked out.

Sonya didn’t say anything. She juststared. I bet she was damn happy about her safe little desk job.

I made my way home more slowly thanusual. I didn’t want to run into a pole because my coordination wasoff. I was dizzy and nauseated, and the movement around me made itworse. I was sure I had a concussion. I considered myself lucky Ididn’t have a broken nose. Small blessings.

Somehow, I made it home and into theshower. The water stung on my face. I had a split lip, and I wouldhave a black eye and a swollen jaw for a day or two. Thank goodnessfor supernatural healing abilities.

When I looked in the mirror, mycolorful face complimented the scar down my neck for a change, and itblended rather than standing out. I shook my head at myself, thenstopped. My brain felt like it was loose in my head.

I had the presence of mind to check myGlock before I put my head on the pillow. Then I let myself sink intoa deep slumber.