by Parker Blue
Conversation was sparse since we couldn’t talk about our job in public and we didn’t have much else to say to each other. By the time we finished eating, the sun was down.
It was never really dark in this area of the River Walk, though, not with the twinkling fairy lights in the trees and the busy restaurants and hotels along the river. Two groups of partiers floated by on red dinner barges, barely passing each other on the narrow river and adding a brief burst of laughter and gaiety to the evening.
It reminded me that this was what we were trying to preserve—the right for people to live their lives and enjoy themselves without worrying about the dark things that lurked in hiding. It wasn’t all about combating the lust inside me or killing vamps. I needed to remember that.
Dan flipped through the notes he’d taken in the lieutenant’s office. “It looks like most of the sightings have been downstream. Start there?”
I nodded. That’s where I’d killed the vampire the night I’d found Fang.
After we paid and left, we headed past the touristy area, down to the darker side of the River Walk, strolling the flagstone path like any other normal couple. That was, any other normal couple who kept two feet of distance and a small hellhound between them.
I hated the fact that it was necessary, but knew it was the wise thing to do. So far, my anger at Dan had kept Lola at bay, but I couldn’t count on it to continue. A little vampire action tonight would help take care of her.
As if my wish had made it so, Fang suddenly paused and sniffed the air. With that telltale purple eye flash, he growled and sprang into action, jerking the leash out of my hand and bolting toward the embankment.
VAMPIRE! he told me, unnecessarily.
Dan ran after him with me close behind, my demon blood sizzling with the anticipation of action. Dan leapt over something, but I didn’t notice in time and tripped. As I went sprawling, I had one moment to feel grateful that the large soft thing had kept me from scraping my hands or face on the ground, then realized the thing I’d landed on was a body. A warm, unmoving one.
In horror, I scrambled off it. No, not it. Her. I’d seen plenty of dead vamps in my short life, but humans . . . that was something else entirely. I froze for a moment. This wasn’t something I’d had to deal with before.
Dan and Fang rushed on ahead, and I chastised myself. You’re a professional, a slayer. You know what to do.
Yes—I had to see if the woman was still alive. I knelt down to feel the pulse at the side of her neck. Unfortunately, there was no pulse, only a pair of neat punctures, oozing sticky wet blood. Poor woman.
Dan and Fang came back, a little slower than they’d left. Lose the scent? I asked Fang, wiping the blood off on my jeans.
YEAH. HE MUST HAVE TAKEN TO THE TREES OR ROOFTOPS, ’CAUSE THERE WAS NOTHING LEFT ON THE GROUND.
“Lost him,” Dan said. He glanced down at the woman I’d tripped over then at me. “Don’t you know better than to contaminate a crime scene?”
“Very funny,” I snapped. “I’m sure the dead woman appreciates your humor.” And dead very recently, too, if the warmth of her body was any indication.
Fang thoroughly sniffed the body. He’d know that vampire’s scent again if he encountered it.
Dan removed the dead woman’s wallet from her purse then called Ramirez on his cell, advising him to get a team down there ASAP, before any tourists took a stroll this way. “The victim is a Caucasian female, name Lorena Kott, with a Louisiana driver’s license,” he told Ramirez. “She’s probably a tourist.” He pulled out one of her business cards. “Says she’s a molecular virologist.”
I gazed down at her with regret. It wasn’t often I actually saw the victims. “She looks like a nice woman. I wonder what she was doing on this part of the River Walk by herself ?”
“Oh my God, Lorena,” a woman exclaimed from the sidewalk behind us. She stared at the body in horror and hurried over.
Dan and I spent the next twenty minutes trying to calm the hysterical woman, and I was grateful when the team arrived and took over. This had to stop. I never wanted to have to do this for some poor person’s loved ones ever again. What if it had been Jen? The thought made my blood run cold, making me even more determined to learn as much as I could.
After the team took over, Dan and I were free to do some more hunting. Unfortunately, with all the sirens and flashing lights, I figured any vamp would be long gone by now.
Ramirez was right—the vamps were getting bolder, getting closer to crowded areas, which was so unlike them. “Let’s go somewhere else,” I suggested.
Dan agreed and we headed out toward the seedy west side of town where there had been increased vampiric activity, me on my motorcycle with Dan following in the truck. But as we passed HemisFair Park with its distinctive Tower of the Americas silhouette, Fang suddenly nudged me with his nose, hard. I glanced back and saw he was snarling, his fur hackled.
I SMELL VAMP. TAKE A RIGHT.
I did as he asked and thrust an arm in that direction to let Dan know where I was going.
The hellhound directed me through the park, finally saying, STOP HERE.
I had barely come to a skidding halt when Fang leapt off the motorcycle and took off for the trees, still wearing his goggles. Taking a moment to shove down the kickstand, I ran after him, figuring Dan was close behind.
As the demon leapt joyfully into play, I ran as silently as I could so as not to alert the vamp. No, make that vamps, plural, I realized as I suddenly came upon two of them in a clearing.
A boy about Jen’s age lay on the ground, and two male vamps tugged a girl between them like a wishbone they were about to pull apart. The girl was making helpless whimpering noises as the boys, who didn’t appear to look any older than their victims, fought over her.
“Stop,” I yelled. You, too, Fang. We need info.
Fang halted, and the vamps turned toward us. They howled with laughter, then the redheaded one on the right said, “What? Or your ferocious four-eyed dog will attack us? Ooooh, I’m so scared.”
The other snarled, trying to look bad-ass and failing as he said in a dramatic voice, “You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”
Fang snorted. ARE WE IN THE MIDDLE OF A BAD B MOVIE, OR WHAT? WHAT ARE THEY, TWELVE?
Luckily for me, the redhead made the mistake of trying to control my mind. He must have been very newly made, because as soon as he connected I was able to learn exactly what kind of person I was dealing with. “Oh, really?” I whipped two stakes out of my back holster and spun them like an old-time gunslinger, letting them come to rest with the sharp ends pointed toward their hearts. “Care to bet on that, Billy? Or you, James?”
I grinned—I’d been practicing that move for awhile and had finally gotten the hang of it.
They cast uncertain looks at me, obviously wondering how I knew their names. “Who are you?” Billy, the skinny redhead, asked.
“Ever heard of the Slayer?” I might as well get some use out of the stupid nickname.
“Ye-es,” James, the more solidly built blond, admitted.
“Then you know what I do to creatures like you who hurt people. Let go of the girl.” I took a menacing step forward, wondering where the heck Dan was.
The vamps snarled, still not understanding the danger, still thinking they were immortal. “Make me,” Billy said mockingly.
I heard a twang and a swish, and Billy was suddenly pinned to a tree by a quivering quarrel bolt. As the vamp screamed, I glanced aside to see Dan just stepping out of the shadows, reloading his crossbow.
Fang woofed. GOOD SHOT.
“Nice toy,” I said admiringly. So that’s what had delayed him.
“Nicer than you think,” he said, aiming at James. “The bolts are coated in silver.”
No wonder Billy was still screaming . . . and unable to pull himself loose.
“Let go of the girl,” Dan called to James. “Or the next one goes in your throat.”
James didn’t even
try to resist and was too dumb to think of using the girl as a shield. He dropped her, and she crawled toward the boy on the ground, sobbing.
James backed away, his hands up as Fang advanced with a menacing growl.
LET ME TAKE JUST ONE LITTLE BITE, PLEASE.
Not yet. Let’s see what else we can find out, first.
“Don’t shoot,” James begged. “We weren’t going to hurt her—we were just gonna have a taste.”
Billy stopped screaming long enough to gasp out his agreement.
“Like you did to that boy on the ground?” Dan asked, his voice hard.
“He’s not dead—just fainted,” James said. “Ask her.”
The girl, who had been frantically pawing at the boy, finally spoke. “He’s alive, but no thanks to them.” If her eyes had been weapons, James and Billy would have been slain on the spot.
They were telling the truth. “They’re newly undead,” I told Dan, holding one hand in staking position as I approached James.
The vamp stared at me from fear-filled eyes, his mouth wide with shock as he backed as far as he could. When his back came up against a tree and he could go no farther, Fang growled.
WHAT A WIMP. A DISGRACE TO VAMPIRES EVERYWHERE.
I stifled a smile. Fang had his fierce gaze on James’s crotch, like a child eyeing a Christmas package he couldn’t wait to unwrap. “Good boy,” I said. “If he moves, eat the dangly bits first.”
James visibly gulped and lowered his hands to shield his bits, which had probably shriveled by now. “How . . . how do you know when we were made?”
“I know because I’m the Slayer,” I said and gave him a cold smile. “Go ahead, try to control my mind.”
The idiot did, and at the first probe of his mind, he opened up a connection between us that I now owned—I could read his every thought. “Ask your questions,” I told Dan.
“When were you turned?” he asked.
“Last . . . last week,” James said.
“Who turned you?”
“I-I don’t know. It was one of those initiation things. Everyone was masked.”
Dan shook his head like he didn’t believe it, but I said, “He’s telling the truth. So far.” But this was the first I’d heard of someone being turned by a group.
“Who do you work for?” Dan persisted.
“No-no one,” James gasped out.
“Then why are you working together?” Dan demanded. “Most vamps work alone.”
“We’re best friends, we always do everything together.” James glanced tearfully at his friend who was still pinned to the tree. “Why did you do that to him?”
Fang took a step closer as Dan menaced James with the crossbow. “You should be more worried about what we’re going to do to you if you don’t answer my questions.”
The vamp didn’t seem able to decide which threat was more dangerous—Fang or Dan. “What? Ask me anything, just let him go.”
For the next twenty minutes, Dan grilled James. We learned that he and his friend had contacted the vamps themselves, thinking that becoming undead would solve all their problems. But James didn’t know who had “initiated” them, didn’t know anything about the three who had attacked us, and didn’t have a clue who was behind the sudden rash of new vampires springing up around San Antonio. The only order their initiators had given them was to avoid the New Blood Movement and the blood banks at all costs.
“He’s telling the truth,” I confirmed
“How many people have you killed?” Dan asked, his voice hard.
“None, I swear it,” James said as his friend sobbed out a denial. “We’d never do that—we only take a little. But we have to have blood somehow or we’ll die.”
Dan glanced at me. I said, “James is being a good little vampire and telling the truth.” I backed off a little when I realized that. These idiots had gotten in way over their heads. But it wasn’t like they could suddenly change their minds and decide they didn’t want to be undead after all.
“Are you going to let us live?” James asked, hope dawning on his face.
“Why should we?” Dan asked harshly.
I moved closer to Dan, and said softly, “They haven’t killed anyone. Maybe we should let them go.”
Dan scowled. “But they have terrorized people. And we don’t have holding cells for vamps.”
“Yes, but we can’t just kill them.” Not when they were helpless. When he continued to frown, I added softly, “They remind me of Jen. It’s the kind of stupid mistake she’d make . . . that she might still make. Remember what Alejandro said—not all vamps are evil. They become more of what they were when they were alive.” After touching the minds of these fledgling vamps, I believed that. “Maybe you can scare them into staying on the straight and narrow.”
Dan relaxed a little. “Okay, you have a point.”
I relaxed muscles I hadn’t realized I’d tightened and Fang sighed mentally. WELL, SHOOT. I WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO THOSE DANGLY BITS.
Dan glanced at the terrified baby vamps and raised his voice. “You’re lucky. My partner is feeling charitable today and wants to let you live.”
“We won’t do it again, I swear,” Billy said.
“Will you join the New Blood Movement?” Dan asked. “Take blood only from those willing to give it?”
I listened carefully to James’s mind to see what that meant to him. All I got was fear.
“But they told us to stay away from the blood banks,” James protested.
“Or what?” I asked.
“Huh?”
“What did your sires say would happen if you went there?”
“Sires? You mean our fathers?”
I rolled my eyes. These clueless guys knew absolutely nothing about the culture they’d joined. “Your sire is the vampire who turned you. What did yours say would happen if you went to the New Blood Movement?”
James seemed genuinely puzzled. “Nothing—they just said not to go there.”
Dan looked incredulous. “They made you, said don’t go to the blood banks, then let you trot off without guidance or supervision?”
“Yeah, I guess.” James glanced back and forth between Dan and me as if wondering what it signified.
“Doesn’t that seem strange to you?” Dan asked.
“Uh . . . yes?” He said it as if asking Dan if he were giving the right answer.
I sighed. “Trust me, it’s odd. I doubt they are tracking you or even have a clue what you’re doing.”
“Right,” Dan grated. “But I can guarantee you one thing. If we ever hear either one of you have attacked another person again, we will personally hunt you down, stake you on a sheet of silver, and feed you to the sun. Have you got that clear?”
“Yes, sir!” James snapped as smartly as any military recruit. Billy nodded.
“Good—use the blood banks. That’s what they’re for.”
Dan removed the bolt from Billy’s shoulder. The vamps sped off into the darkness, terrified out of their minds. Good. Maybe this incident had knocked some sense into their heads.
THEY MUST BE GETTING DESPERATE FOR SOMEONE TO TURN, Fang said, his tongue lolling out as he looked very pleased with himself.
As well he should. Thanks for sniffing those two out for us.
MY PLEASURE. WHEN I SMELLED THE HUMANS, TOO, I KNEW SOMEONE HAD TO BE IN TROUBLE.
Oh, yeah, the humans. I glanced around, but the two victims had vanished, apparently having made good their escape while their attackers were distracted.
“So, lust demons are lie detectors, too?” Dan asked as he carefully disarmed the crossbow.
I shrugged and answered him warily. “Not really. But if they try to control my mind, I can read theirs. That’s what gives me an edge in a fight. And those two were so new, they couldn’t hide anything.”
“Nice ability. Any reason why you didn’t tell me earlier?” He sounded a little miffed.
“Because then I would have had to reveal my true nature . . . and look ho
w well that turned out.”
“Anything else I should know about you?”
“Let’s see,” I said mockingly. “Lust, reading minds, inhuman speed, super hearing, fast healing . . . nope, that about covers it.”
“Good.”
“So glad you’re satisfied. Now, let’s talk about what we learned.”
“Like what?” Dan asked. “Did you get more out of that than I did?”
“I shared everything I learned.”
“Then all we know is that some mysterious vampires sired them and told them not to go near Alejandro’s organization.”
“Yeah. Kind of makes it look like he’s in the clear. On this anyway.”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Dan said. “Kind of sounds like classic game theory—the quickest way to get humans on board with blood banks is to show them the alternative. People will be lining up to give blood in a nice civilized fashion once this gets out. He’s probably getting desperate, too, since the news isn’t picking this up.”
“Or maybe someone else is trying to make him look guilty because they know that’s what people would think.”
“I doubt it.”
“That remains to be seen.”
Dan looked exasperated, but I could tell he wasn’t entirely convinced by his own arguments. “Let’s do it then. Let’s find out.”
“All right.” Next stop—Alejandro’s blood bank. And he’d better have some damned good answers.
I glared, exasperated, at the perky Brittany. “Yes, I understand Alejandro isn’t here, but can you tell us where he is?” This was the third blood bank we’d visited, with no luck.
“No, I’m sorry, I don’t know,” Brittany said, apparently determined to be cheerful despite my annoyance.
“What about one of his assistants? Like Lily or Austin?” What were the names of the other two? Oh, yeah. “Or Rosa, Luis.”
“They’re not here, either.”
“Look,” Dan said. “You know we were here before and met with Alejandro and the others. Can you get a message to him, letting him know we’d like to talk to him?”
A frown marred her pretty face. “I-I can’t. I don’t know how to get in touch with him. It’s a secret.”
Dan and I exchanged glances. A secret? “Why?”