Good Things: An Urban Fantasy Anthology

by Mia Darien

  She glanced at Rehobeth again, then whispered to Andreus, “You look like him.”

  Rehobeth’s smile turned into a grin, and Andreus had to admit that there was a strong resemblance between them. The resemblance extended to the same kind of energy or life force he had always sensed within himself. Rehobeth’s wings were no longer visible, but Andreus recognized him as kindred, and immediately trusted him. Considering that he had never trusted anyone besides Helen and now Jaci, that was saying a great deal.

  “Now that I’ve located you, we can discuss that later. For now, we’d better get you two some place safe. Those things I just killed are called minions, and not the funny cartoon kind. They were sent to kill both of you, and I’m sure there will be more of them soon. I have a truck just down the road.”

  Andreus turned to Jaci and she swallowed, her nails digging into his side as she clutched him. Her free hand shook as she brushed it across her forehead.

  “Can you walk that far, or do you need me to carry you?”

  Jaci nodded, her movements jerky. “I-I can walk, I think. Yeah. I need to walk.”

  Rehobeth led them to his truck and Andreus helped Jaci onto the seat. Her wound had healed as if it had never happened, but he felt her body still trembling. He admired her calm resolve. She seemed to be handling things well, despite everything she had been through.

  Bracing himself, he felt the painful retraction of his wings as they receded into his back, no longer needed. They folded and joined with the muscles and nerve endings along his spine. When the pain finally subsided, he was able to breathe again.

  Rehobeth waited patiently behind the steering wheel, a satisfied gleam in his eyes. “It only hurts like that the first time. Eventually it will be like lifting your arms and putting them down.”

  Andreus climbed in beside Jaci, watching her carefully as she slid as close to him as possible. The poor woman had to be in shock. Despite remaining questions, the feeling of shock was oddly absent for him. Instead, he acknowledged a sense of coming home, and anticipated finally learning more about who and what he really was, whatever the answers turned out to be. One thing had already been made clear to him: his instinctive need to protect Jaci from whatever dangers she was about to face.

  One step at a time, Andreus thought. One mystery at a time.

  To Be Continued

  After three attempts at writing different urban fantasies with complete endings, the main characters in “Outreach” insisted on being a part of this urban fantasy anthology. I hope you’ve enjoyed their story so far.

  For your FREE copy of Part Two, send an e-mail to: darielsdreamkeeper(at)gmail(dot)com. Please include “Good Things Anthology: Outreach” in the subject line.

  I sat in the chair on the other side of my boss’s desk, watching her read over the report I had just placed in front of her. Crossing my legs, I leaned back in my seat and crossed my arms over my chest to keep from chewing my already-devastated fingernails. I could see her eyebrows keep lifting like she wanted to look at me but was stopping herself, and my foot started swinging in the air entirely of its own accord.

  “Torres,” she finally said, closing the folder and setting it just to her left. She said my name but then nothing else, just took a deep breath and rested her elbows on the desk. She folded her hands, leaning her chin against them. I was just about to tell her that she had in fact gotten my name right, anything to prompt her, when she continued. “I can’t do anything.”

  “Oh, come on,” I all but whined. Uncrossing my legs, I planted my feet on the FBI regulation carpet and leaned towards her. “Nobody died.” It seemed I put more weight on the zero-count death tally than anyone else.

  “You discharged your preternatural abilities on a suspect,” she stated, sounding exasperated.

  I held up my hands with a shrug. “I didn’t shoot anyone!”

  She didn’t look impressed. “Frankly, it would have been less paperwork for me if you had. Do you know the current agency regulations and filing for a DPA?”

  DPA equaled Discharge of Preternatural Abilities. It was a brave (insane) new world.

  My name is Serafina Torres, and I’m an agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigations, stationed in the preternatural satellite office in Boston, Massachusetts. In the years since Cameron’s Law, making all preternatural beings legal citizens of the United States, the country had changed—had to change—a great deal. Now there were things like the preternatural satellite office of the FBI. As an electrokinetic—which meant I could create and/or control electrical currents—I was assigned there.

  Basically, I’m a human taser.

  In the case before us, that was all I did. I used my abilities to stop a suspect who was running. He didn’t die, although he did end up in the hospital for a few days. Just like when any force is exercised on a suspect, you file a report. I was sitting in front of my boss, hoping that there wouldn’t be too much trouble rolling down the mountain about it. I didn’t feel like riding a desk.

  I didn’t reply to her question, because I didn’t think anything that would come out of my mouth would actually help. She sighed, either frustrated with me or relieved that I didn’t speak.

  “You’re not going to be shelved,” she assured me and I blew out a breath. “However, you’re not going to like what you’ll do instead.”

  “I hate it when you do that.” I narrowed my eyes at her, and waited.

  “Protective detail.”

  “Babysitting?!” I sounded like a teenager asked to babysit their toddler sibling, but I didn’t bother trying to correct myself. I’d been working under this woman for long enough that she knew me for who I was.

  She looked thoroughly unimpressed with my annoyance. That was how it usually was, so I wasn’t bothered. I knew that nothing I said could change her mind.

  Dropping my head, I sighed.

  “Who?” I asked, defeated.

  I saw the edge of a file folder enter my vision. Without looking at her, I took it and opened it. Inside, there was a picture clipped to the top left. The name was Ben Collins, and from a quick look at the image, I would guess he had some Pacific Islands in there. Maybe he was from Hawaii. Although why anyone would leave islands like that to come to chilly New England, I couldn’t guess. Reviewing the stats, I saw that he was a vampire, but a young one. It had only been a few years since he Turned.

  “He’s a witness for the murder trial of Cameron St John,” my boss said before I got to that part. That automatically made my eyes widen as I looked up.

  It was widespread knowledge by now that a top level member of LOHAV—the League of Humans Against Vampires—had been arrested for the murder of Cameron St John, the werewolf who introduced the Preternatural Rights Act in the first place, back in 2010. He and his girlfriend Sadie Stanton had been attacked. Cameron was killed, and Sadie nearly.

  But it had been years, and there had never been enough information to make an arrest. I now knew what had changed, but they’d been keeping word of a witness pretty tightly locked.

  “As you can imagine,” she continued, “we are highly concerned for his safety. Members of the LOHAV organization have been known to attack and kill preternatural citizens on the street for less reason than being a star witness for the prosecution of one of their elite.”

  Suddenly, this job looked much bigger.

  “So far, we have no reason to believe that his identity has been leaked; we don’t even think his existence has been leaked, but we’re taking no chances. He’s a vampire and completely vulnerable in daylight, so a guard during those hours is going to be the most important. I plan to have an agent on him at all times. We have to swap out the daytime agent, and you’ll be taking his place. Only one more week until he testifies.”

  “So you’re not really punishing me for the DPA?” I asked with a small half-smile.

  “Not really,” she agreed with a mirror expression. “Still, this will get you out of everyone’s line of sight for a while.”

&n
bsp; I nodded. “When do I start?”

  It took a whopping two whole days before my “quiet” daylight assignment went from standard to ‘shit got real.’

  Contrary to popular belief, vampires don’t sleep in coffins in mansions better suited to Miss Havishim. Ben Collins lived in a modest first floor apparent, with one bedroom that was sealed off with heavy, oversized blackout curtains. As a young vamp, he was going down halfway through dawn and not waking until full dark. The night agent showed up before that happened and I arrived after dawn, so I never even spoke to him. He kept to his dark room in that coma vamps go to during daylight hours. I played on my laptop, caught up on paperwork, and started reading a new book.

  This all changed on my third day.

  It started with the smell of something burning. Instinct made me jump up and rush to the oven in his small, stuffed-in-a-corner kitchen. I happen to hold the world record for burned cookies and muffins, so the smell of burning anything made me jump and think I’d done it again. It took until I had a grip on the oven door’s handle before I remembered that I wasn’t cooking anything.

  That’s when the smoke detectors went off.

  My human brain just shrieked: fire, panic! My FBI brain told me that someone had found out about our witness and where he lived. They were going to burn him alive while he was temporarily dead to the world. It might not have been the case, but I suspected. Whatever the source of the fire, however, one thing was before me: I had to get Collins out.

  During daylight hours, vampires are asleep. It’s a coma-like state that no amount of effort can wake them from. Only the sun can do that, and only by setting. Otherwise, the sun isn’t exactly healthy for them. A little can burn, a lot can destroy.

  It didn’t pass my notice that this could be a ploy to get Collins out of the building; him like a dead man, and me compromised by dealing with his body. I checked the door and found the hall clear and traces of fire licking the end of it through the open door of another apartment. I rushed back in and called for back up and emergency services as I ran to the bedroom. The space was so short that I had only just gotten a person on the line as I opened the door.

  I was explaining the situation very hurriedly as I looked into the pitch black room. Even though I couldn’t afford the time, I was momentarily disoriented. In the age of electronics, and my chronic curtain shortfall, I had never seen a truly dark room. Only the light from the open door I stood in fell on anything, but it was enough to guide me to his body.

  I almost tried to wake him, just out of habit, but caught myself. I finished with the phone and stuffed it into my pocket as I hurried to the side he laid on.

  By quick estimation, I guessed Collins was 5’9” or thereabouts and happily not a big man. However, I’m only 5’5” and unlike shifters in human form, human psychics don’t have super strength. At least I kept up with my physical fitness as a fed. I knelt down and pulled his dead weight to the edge of the bed and over my shoulders in a sort of firemen’s carry. Grunting with the effort, I stood and staggered awkwardly out of the room. Both the smell of smoke and the smoke itself was getting stronger.

  Not bothering to hide my noises of exertion, I made my way across the small apartment and to the door. I fumbled to get it open, finding the handle was already growing hot. I knew that was a bad sign. Entering the hallway, panicked people ran past me to get to the door. I followed a half-clad man down the smoky passage and to the exit.

  Sunlight poured through the door as a stark reminder of the guy on my back and what his species was. I held him with one arm as I struggled to pull my gun, just in case this was a trap.

  As I emerged, I didn’t see any obvious threats. The overhang above the door kept the sun off us for the moment, but I could feel the heat behind me. Sirens were in the distance, but I had the bigger issue of the vampire now. He grew heavier by the moment and I needed to put him somewhere.

  I looked up and down the street and my eyes fell on my car. I was parked at the curb not very far away.

  Unfortunately, I had to holster my gun to get my keys. I staggered along the sidewalk and was more aware of the sun than I had ever been in my life. All I needed was to get my thumb on my key fob. I unlocked the doors twice, locked them, and set off the alarm as I jammed blindly at buttons before finally popping the trunk. I thought I heard sizzling behind me, but couldn’t be sure if I was imagining it as I threw him—not very gently, really—into my trunk. I slammed the door, cutting off all light and providing some safety as I turned back to the building.

  Above all the noise, I heard someone calling for help. With my eyes already on the building, I saw someone carrying a child out. I guessed the little one couldn’t be more than two and the woman was wailing. “My father is still in there! He can’t walk very well and I couldn’t get them both!” She sobbed around the words.

  Again, my brain wondered if this was a trap...but could I live with myself if it wasn’t?

  “What apartment?” I demanded of her.

  She had that panicked deer look for a moment, like she couldn’t get past the screaming of her child and the smell of the smoke to comprehend my words. I shook her and asked again before she stammered the number.

  Still on the first floor.

  I ran into the building.

  The smoke was clogging the hall now and the heat hurt like hell. I crouched low and covered my mouth with my sleeve as I hurried forward, looking at door numbers.

  1D. I hurried in and through the haze, I could see an elderly man with an obviously stiff leg trying to walk with his hands on the walls. I ducked under one of his arms. “Come on, sir,” I said. “I’m a cop.”

  “Did Lisa get out?” He coughed before he finished the question.

  “Yes,” I replied, walking forward as quickly as the scenario would allow. “She and the kid are outside.”

  “Thank God.” He sounded like he was crying, and I couldn’t help feeling choked up. It was just the smoke, of course.

  It was sensory overload and deprivation at once. I can’t really recount how I made it out, but we did. Falling to the cement, I kind of dropped the guy but hey, we were out of the burning building. I hacked up a lung, but managed to look up and see that my car was still there and with no signs of an open trunk.

  If this had been a trick, it was the most detailed and yet least successful.

  Leaving the woman, Lisa, to her father and child, I pushed myself weakly to my feet and hurried to my car. I opened the trunk long enough to assure myself that the origami vampire was still there. He was, so I slammed the top shut and then sagged back to just breathe. My eyes stung, so I didn’t bother looking at the source of the sirens drawing nearer.

  A pair of agents came to take Collins—and my car with him—away to another, safer location. Meanwhile, I was down the street, sitting on the back of an open ambulance being offered oxygen that I swatted away, though I accepted the blanket because by now—with the adrenaline waning and fire further away—I was beginning to feel the late winter chill, even if it was abnormally warm for late February. I watched my boss walk up.

  “Are you okay, Torres?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and eyeing me up and down like she could see the state of my lungs with just her eyes.

  “Yes, sir,” I replied simply. “Have they put the fire out?”

  She nodded. “For the most part.” Pausing, she glanced back at the building beyond the line of fire trucks. “They can’t get in to investigate yet, but I’ll bet anything that it was arson.”

  I sighed, and resisted the urge to cough. “I would agree.”

  Her x-ray eyes returned to me. “Go home and get some rest,” she said, turning and starting to walk away. She paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Good work, Torres.”

  “All I have to do to get a compliment is nearly burn to death,” I said to myself and started chuckling, which made me start coughing, and the medic gave me the oxygen mask again.

  My “go home and rest” only last
ed a few hours.

  I got a call, which told me to wait for a car. The car came and took me to some nondescript building that I could barely make out in the dark. The agent who drove me, who I didn’t know very well and didn’t bother to try and fix that, walked me up to the door.

  At the door, after some hoodoo I wasn’t witness to, it opened to reveal my boss. She led me inside while the other agent left.

  “He’s asked to see you personally,” she told me by way of greeting. And there was only one “he” this could be, given the day and the setting.

  Ben Collins looked almost exactly like his picture. With a human, that would of course be expected. Vampires, however, don’t change physically. I knew the image in his file had been after he was Turned, so seeing that he had a scar at his hairline—pronounced with a small stripe of missing hair going back a couple of inches—was a surprise.

  He stood up from the couch as I walked in, smiling as he held his hand out. I took it and shook.

  “I am told that I have you to thank for the continuation of my un-life,” he said with humor. “I never imagined I’d be so grateful for the trunk of a car.”

  His humor surprised me, and I laughed. “Yes, well. We work with what we have. I’m just glad it worked.”

  Collins inclined his head to me. “As am I, I assure you.”

  “Mr. Collins has asked that you be shifted to head up his protective detail from now on,” my boss said. “That would put you on the night shift, starting tonight.”

  “If you’re up to it, of course,” he interjected. “I know that you took in some of that smoke.”

  Even if I hadn’t been up to it, I never would have told them that. First off, because I didn’t like admitting any kind of weakness in front of anyone. Secondly, this was a boon to my career, leading a detail and at the request of a star witness. I wasn’t stupid enough to turn that down. I nodded instead. “I’m fine,” I assured them.

  “Good.” My boss patted me on the shoulder, and then left.