Maybe they aren’t so stupid after all. The vampire grimaced and plucked a mouse from the window sill. As it dangled in front of him, its little legs wriggled in the air. Unable to escape, the small creature squeaked wildly. Sturtagaard threw it out the window.
The thousand-year-old demon paced. Even with a drinking establishment at the end of the block, this location offered him nothing; the vampire was hungry and desperately needed blood. Gazing out the open window, Sturtagaard glared at the bar, which currently had no patrons, and he waited for his next meal.
Feeding under duress felt crude; Sturtagaard preferred to take his time—take pleasure in seducing and playing with his quarry—before draining victims of blood. But he could no longer afford to be choosy. His hands shook from lack of blood. It was time to settle for someone off the street—someone like… her.
Like a gift, the girl appeared. Young and possibly beautiful if not for the layers of makeup caked across her face. A fake leather skirt emanated a smell of sweat and plastic as it hung from her thin frame. Plastic heels clicked against the crumbling sidewalk until her ankle twisted in the high shoes. A grin crept across Sturtagaard’s thin lips.
On their own, his fangs extended and his mouth watered, prompting him to step a long, lean leg out of the second-story window, gracefully landing beside her.
“Where’d you come from, honey?” When she smiled nervously, the lines aged her once-pretty face, but Sturtagaard didn’t care. He was distracted by the rich, sweet smell of iron pulsing through her veins, making his head spin and his eyes glaze in pleasure. And when a bony hand reached for his thick ebony hair, a longing moan escaped his lips; his jaw clenched shut to hide the fangs.
The vampire moved closer to the girl, who visibly shuddered at the chill of his body against hers. Sturtagaard sensed unwillingness and firmly grasped a thin wrist. The hunger grew and gnawed at him.
“There’s nothing to fear from me,” he cooed. The stench of cheap cigarettes and whiskey assaulted his nose.
“You’re so cold,” she squealed, trying to warm his trembling hands with her own.
“I need you to warm me.” His perceived weakness quelled her trepidation momentarily as the demon directed her inside his lair.
“I’m all yours, honey. I’ll even throw in a second go at it for free,” the girl offered and snapped her lips in his ear.
“You may wish otherwise.” Yanking on her hair, exposing her long, creamy neck, the vampire opened his mouth, revealing his fangs.
If the coldness of his skin didn’t alert her of the danger, his teeth did. The girl’s eyes widened in fear. Her thin, wiry arms pushed him away, but the vampire grasped her tighter and pressed her neck to his mouth.
“No. P-please, let me go.”
Tears rolled down her cheeks as his fangs punctured her skin like biting a crisp apple. Arms flailed about as the girl helplessly tried to repel the monster. Gasping with the last of life, her body trembled under him. Sturtagaard grew more eager, like a drug addict who couldn’t get enough, and shuddered with spasms of delight as the last of her blood passed his lips. Dragging his tongue over the remaining blood droplets, the vampire licked her clean.
Not wanting to leave her easily found, Sturtagaard dragged the limp body across the dusty floor and threw her into a hidden closet. Shoving the body between bags and boxes, he let go so her head slumped sideways through an old toilet seat.
Creatures scurried through the walls and the old warehouse creaked and groaned. Someone crept along the lower level, an unwelcome intruder in his hideout. To escape, the vampire glanced out the window at the alley in search of humans, or worse, the Wizard Guard.
Though Sturtagaard no longer felt hot or cold, he pulled his coat lapel up to his neck covering his long ebony locks and jumped from the window to slink off into the dark corners of the city.
*
Annie stayed with the VAU as they cleaned up the morgue, mostly watching because anything more rendered her in the way. They removed all traces of her vampire fight, replaced the bodies with new ones that were glamoured to hide their identities, and zipped them inside their bags. By six in the morning, Annie headed home to crawl into bed.
Landing in a clump of trees at the end of her block, she strolled down the quiet street as if returning from the train station, attempting to blend into her quaint neighborhood. Her neighbors had known her most of her life, and yet none of them knew Annie’s secret.
Sometimes it proved difficult to protect her neighbors from wayward spells, magical creatures, and, on occasion, a demon or vampire, but it seemed worth the effort. Her elderly next-door neighbor, Mrs. Welter, was already awake and fetching the morning paper the paperboy threw into the enormous bush on the side of her front porch.
“Hello, Annie,” the elderly woman said with a smile before turning back to her search.
“Here, Mrs. Welter.” Annie knelt beside the prickly bush, shoving her hand inside. She couldn’t quite feel the bundle, which was apparently also out of her reach, so Annie summoned the paper, wrapped her fingers around it, and pulled it out.
“You’re such a good girl—and after working all night. It’s been many weeks now, hasn’t it?” Mrs. Welter asked.
“Three weeks of all-nighters. I’m done this week.” Annie handed her the paper.
“Why, thank you, dear. Take care.” Mrs. Welter said, shuffling back into her house.
For seventeen years, they had lived side by side. Annie wondered what Mrs. Welter would think if she found out she had been living next to a witch all those years. What would any of them think?
Trudging up the stairs, more tired than hungry, Annie flopped down on the fluffy white covers of her bed. When her head touched the pillow, there were no thoughts of vampires or what the FBI was doing at that moment. Instead, the soft rhythmic ticking of the clock beside her bed lulled her to sleep as the sun rose in the sky.
*
“So what’s he like?” Cham stood over Annie’s shoulder as she scried for the vampire, but the demon again remained elusive.
“I don’t know. Nice, I guess.” Annie tried another section of the city, but the vampire appeared to have disappeared.
“I should’ve gone with you.” Cham sat beside her at her kitchen table. “Can I look at your neck?”
“I’m fine,” she protested, yet her throat still rasped raw, making it hard to speak or eat.
“Let me see.” Gently turning her chin towards him, she acquiesced and tilted her head. Dark purple bruises covered both sides of her neck.
“I should have gone.”
“It’s done. Leave my neck alone.”
His obvious concern caused Annie a great deal of guilt.
I shouldn’t go out alone like that again. Absently she reached for her neck, still unable to admit her thought even to Cham. “I didn’t want to freak out the FBI guy. I won’t go out without backup again. I promise.”
His hand lingered for a moment before dropping to his lap.
“So no Sturtagaard yet?”
“You made me stop.”
Cham rolled his eyes and picked up her scrying crystal. While his solid pink quartz crystal fit in the palm of his hand, hers—both smaller in size and weight—hung from a silver chain. He wrapped it around his finger. It twirled in circles across the map, not finding their quarry.
“Actually, I thought maybe he bought magical protection from the black market,” Annie suggested.
Cham shrugged. “I can see him buying something. Though it doesn’t offer great protection and won’t last long. I say we go as soon as it’s light tomorrow. No more tracking. We need to find him and that army.”
“Do you really think he’s clever enough for that?” She picked up the crystal and ran it across the map. The crystal dropped on its own volition, shining brightly against the location. “You mean like this?” Annie asked as the magic finally found their vampire.
*
Cham held Annie while teleporting them behind a large wareho
use on a deserted street. Annie peered around the corner, judging their exposure risk. “We’re about two buildings away,” she noted.
More than half of the buildings along this roadway were empty; some were missing pieces of their facades, others had broken or boarded-up windows, eerily creepy in the dark. The rest kept security lights on to protect their contents, though the dirty, yellow lights offered little to no security or safety.
Cham glanced around the wall. “No one’s here. You ready?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
To avoid being seen, they hugged the building closely and remained in the shadows as best they could. In an alley between the two buildings, they stopped and listened for movement. The clanking of garbage cans echoed toward them.
“Vampires don’t eat from the trash,” Annie whispered. Nodding, Cham looked into the dark alley and saw the shining eyes of what was probably a fat rat. It scurried off.
They crossed the alley to the front door of the building. A heavy chain and padlock, which must have once locked the doors, lay on the ground in pieces.
Annie picked up the halves of the lock the intruder must have sawed off to gain entry. Waving her crystal across the chain and lock, she determined that magic hadn’t been tried at all.
The vampire’s been here.
Cham carefully pushed open the door; it dragged and squeaked across the cement floor.
“Well, so much for stealth,” Cham said as they entered the warehouse.
“So why are we whispering then?” Her flashlight lit the warehouse. The room was filled with stacked boxes, creating a mountain of discarded items that blocked passage to the back. Old machine parts and unsold products lay strewn over boxes or on work benches and scattered across the floor. The owners had left in a hurry, leaving behind a minefield of junk and scrap. Annie opened one of the boxes and checked inside. More raw parts.
“What did this place make?” Annie asked.
“Uh, I have no idea.” Cham shone his light toward the back. “This place is massive. What is that in the back?”
Climbing over the pile, Annie stepped on the boxes and pulled herself up. As she reached near the summit of the pile, her foot fell through a weak box. Balancing herself with magic, she sat on top of the boxes and glanced around for any sign of life or death.
“Well?”
“It’s a vampire nest,” she advised before climbing down the other side. Nomadic creatures, vampires seldom stayed in one location permanently. It made it too easy for the Wizard Guard to find them. Vampire nests were hiding places, used by vampires as a place to hide before moving on. This appeared to be one of those nests.
“What’s that smell?” Cham sniffed the air.
It was a musty smell mixed with a twinge of iron. Annie followed her nose over to the countertop of a makeshift kitchen along the back wall. Stored on the top of the cracked Formica surface between plates caked with food, old clothing, and shoes, was a portable stove with a dented pot sitting on top of red hot coils.
Oh, ugh…
Burnt blood stuck to the pot in a thick brown coating. Nauseated, Annie slammed the button off and backed away.
The rest of the space contained a kitchen table covered with papers, discarded mail, more clothing, and more old food. She only counted three chairs. A small refrigerator hummed in the corner. Cham opened the door but slammed it shut immediately.
“It’s gross… just gross.”
“It’s more than a vampire’s nest,” Annie guessed, moving over to a small sitting area that contained three mismatched chairs in varying degrees of the color of dirt.
“Well, food is human—a vampire wouldn’t require that. Maybe it’s used by the homeless,” Cham offered.
“But the blood…” Annie’s nose crinkled at the lingering smell.
“Okay, maybe it’s Grand Central for the downtrodden and also for vampires.”
“You’re flipping hilarious.”
They turned to their right and crept up stairs leading to a loft. The stairs, made of dry planks held up with rails, looked barely able to support the weight of a toddler, let along two grown adults. The railing shook at Annie’s touch.
But what’s waiting for me up there if I teleport?
“I’ll go first,” Cham offered. Annie waved him away; his weight might crush the unstable structure.
“I got this.” Annie climbed the precarious steps, getting closer and closer to what could, for all she knew, be a trap in the loft. The entire structure shook under the weight of each step. When she finally reached the top, she jumped to more solid footing and looked around. The room was empty, devoid of boxes, parts, people, or vampires. It offered nothing useful for them in their search for the vampire— he appeared long gone.
“It’s empty.” Cham teleported after her, and they both summoned crystals to search for magic. Neither detected anything. Annie headed toward the open window and peered outside.
“It’s a bit high, but Sturtagaard could probably jump down.” This alley was dark, smelled like urine and was filled with garbage cans, piles of boxes, and, in her thin sliver of light, a rat scurrying across broken glass.
“Tracking him won’t be the answer, I’m afraid,” she said.
“We’ll get him. It’s late; we need to leave.”
For the time being, they put the vampire out of their minds.
Chapter 4
“So. What are you two doing to find the vampire?” Cranky as usual, Milo stared across his desk at Annie and Cham. Annie tapped her fingers against the armrest of the chair while Cham un-crossed and re-crossed his legs. Both would have preferred to be anywhere other than Milo’s disorganized mess of a cubicle. Cham fidgeted again, bumping against a stack of newspapers. The sphinx on the cover of The American Sphinx, the Wizard Guard’s daily newspaper, winked at him.
“We’re thinking of heading to the Snake Head Letters. Put pressure on Mortimer,” Cham volunteered. Archibald Mortimer, owner of the wizard shop, sold items of questionable heritage and always knew the who and the what of the magical community.
“No. Don’t drag him into this mess,” Milo said definitively.
“We can’t stake out the warehouse. Sturtagaard will smell us out,” Annie said.
The two friends stared back at their boss, matching his gaze. Milo shifted in his seat.
“So what do you suggest, Milo? We’ve been tracking him for weeks,” Cham said.
“I put you on this because the two of you, you’re smart. Figure it out.” Clearly frustrated, Milo picked up a folder on his desk and began to read; their presence was no longer required.
“How about we take a trip to the Black Market? Listen for any talk of an army and see if he bought a potion?” Annie said. What could go wrong with this?
“Yes, or you could determine how the army will be animated and figure out who’s preparing to animate it,” Milo responded from behind the file.
“But there are several ways to animate something dead, Milo. It can take months to track down all of the equipment and supplies that go into it. I’m sure someone in the market, maybe Mortimer, knows something,” Cham said.
“Just do it,” Milo said curtly. He grabbed a second file. “You can go.”
They returned to Annie’s cubicle, grateful for its organization and quiet. Annie plopped in one chair; Cham joined her in the second.
“He’s acting weird.”
“When isn’t he?” Cham pulled out his notebook.
“Sturtagaard’s protection is good enough to evade us. I say we start with the Black Market and see what we see. I’ll give him this: it’s an ambitious project. The vampire never puts himself out there quite like this.”
“Sturtagaard’s not one to go back and brag about his accomplishments, either. Maybe he said something when he bought the protection potion,” Cham ventured.
Annie reclined, putting her feet up on her desk. Her scuffed boots dropped bits of dirt on her top. I wonder if I need a new pair of shoes. I probably look
like a slob. Embarrassed, Annie dropped her legs from the table. “Okay. How about this,” she suggested. “We find out where he purchased the protection potion, buy it, and scry for that.”
“Can we trace a protection potion?”
“Why not? It’ll be a specific combination of ingredients. I think we should be able to.”
“Maybe. We still have the problem of that damn sense of smell,” Cham reminded her.
Annie leaned back against her chair and stared at the ceiling. The large water mark above her desk had grown over the last few weeks with all the recent rain. I really need to get maintenance in here. “We make our own protection spell.” Annie smiled.
“Stealthy. I like it.”
*
The Black Market, a nefarious, open-air bazaar, well protected by magic and hidden on a separate plane of existence, could be accessed through portals scattered throughout the world. Four of them happened to be hidden in the middle of Busse Woods outside of Chicago. The safe teleportation spot was behind several large evergreens with dense branches, which kept them well hidden as they landed in the very public forest preserve.
Brushing through a small opening in the branches, Annie gazed out at the open field and spied the entrance to the market. Both the portal and the open field were deserted.
“Are we safe on that side?” Cham asked, eyeing a less used portal.
“Yeah. And you?”
“No one’s out. Must all still be at work.”
They slipped from behind the trees and walked through the clearing. The portal was protected by a thick growth of needle weed, a thick thorny vine that burned and itched the skin if touched. Annie turned sideways to avoid the tangled mess of vines as she shuffled her way to the entrance.
A decrease in temperature surrounded each portal in an attempt to keep nonmagicals from getting to close to the magic. Annie stood beside the hazy air pocket, trying not to let it suffocate her.
Wizard Hall Chronicles Box Set Page 4