Joan and Kallen go wide-eyed, staring past me.
Though their expressions say it, I’m pretty sure Freddy Krueger isn’t sneaking up on me. I turn, surprised to see Mr. Corley approaching us again.
“Your sister is welcome to remain here while you attend to your task.”
I glance at the woman who seemed most interested in making a snack of her. Yeah, umm… not sure about her staying here.
“Miss Wright…” Corley rests a hand on my shoulder. “Because you are so new among our kind and also not used to our customs, I shall not be angry with you for the implication your sister would be at risk after I’ve extended an offer of protection. She will be safe here. You have my word.”
Aww, crap. I upset him. Despite his calm expression, I can’t help but feel scared like nine-year-old me gave my third-grade teacher the finger in the middle of class. No way in hell would I have ever done such a thing, for fear of being looked at the way he’s looking at me now. And the detention part. And the call to the parents. Slow down, Sarah. Just because this guy could order my destruction if he felt like it is no reason to be terrified. He seems like a reasonable guy. Friendly even.
“Oh. I, umm. Sorry. I didn’t understand you meant it as an official offer of protection. I’m not used to speaking with… heads of state?”
He chuckles at the floor, then looks at me. “I find such a comparison more preferable to being thought of as a Mafia boss.”
Oops.
Mr. Corley nods politely at my sister. “Sophia will be perfectly safe here until you return.”
She stares up at me with a heartbreakingly pleading expression.
I hug her. “You’ll be safe here.”
“I’m not worrying about me. I don’t want you to get eaten by a werewolf.”
Kallen pats me on the back. “I reckon’ she’ll be fine, luv.”
“Where is this guy, anyway? I don’t know my way around here.”
“Aye. We got it sorted. Meredith and I will be goin’ wif yas.” Kallen grins.
I don’t want to let go of Sophia, but the sooner I do, the sooner we get to go home. Reluctantly, I stand and follow the two local vamps to the door. Sophia remains still, staring at me the whole time until I’m out the door. Leaving her here rubs me entirely the wrong way, but what choice do I have? It’s possible Corley meant to hold onto her as a bit of silent encouragement to keep me on task, like the way the Mafia says ‘nice house, shame if something happened to it.’ I suppose it’s also possible Corley is exactly as he seems on the surface and genuinely intending to keep her safe. Making serious decisions when knowing so little about everyone involved is nerve-wracking.
Once outside, we take flight. As casual as anything, Meredith starts up a conversation about Innocent vampires, wondering if my bloodline is responsible for my ‘relatively slow’ flight speed. To me, being able to clock 140 without a vehicle is pretty damn impressive. These two aren’t too much faster than me. She never thought to use her phone and a GPS app to determine her actual speed. The temptation is too much for her to resist, and she ends up zipping around in a series of random aerial sprints before rejoining us.
“175!” She cheers.
Great. Get down with your bad self.
Okay, I’m in a mood. Understandable considering Sophia’s situation. I’m sure all the vampires in there are deathly afraid of going against Mr. Corley, but all it would take is one idiot. Even if whatever vampire who hurt her died viciously for it, nothing would bring her back.
Worry bumps me up to maybe 160.
At least, it feels like it.
Kallen and Meredith lead me to a residential area close to the outskirts of the city in the north. We glide in to land on a quiet street lined with oldish looking lamps, dense trees, and quaint English homes.
“Wow,” I mutter. “Which house are we picking the baby-who-lived up from?”
Meredith and Kallen chuckle.
He points at one, three down from the little courtyard we landed in. “There.”
My stomach does a backflip so hard my voice trembles. “So, umm, how bad are weres? I’ve never seen one before.”
“Hard ta say.” Kallen puts an arm around my shoulders. “Wee ones aren’t too bad. They kin range from irritating little blighters to ones what could tear Mr. Corley in half.”
Gulp. “Is he like the biggest badass in London?”
“Inside the city, aye.” Meredith nods. “Rumor ’as it there’s a few real old blokes livin’ way out in the boondocks.”
“Be straight with me… did Corley send me here to get killed?”
“Nah.” Kallen shakes his head. “He’s not a roundabout sorta bloke. If he wanted ya ta die, he’d ’ave been up front wi’ it.”
“Really? Who would go somewhere knowing they’d die?” I blink.
Kallen’s permanent smile flattens. “Picture it as a, go ’ere and get kilt, or die right ’ere, after we kill the wee one in front of ya, and hunt down everyone ya know.”
“Oh.” I gulp again. Wow, I want to go home so bad. This place is crazy. “Yeah, I can see why someone would do it then. I’m not going to start some kinda war if I kill this guy, right?”
“Well, maybe still,” says Kallen. “See, we got a thousand-year-old armistice with the furry bastards. Basically, they stay outta the city, we stay outta the countryside. This were, the Haddon bloke, ’e’s fairly new. Just like ya are.”
“Oh. Okay. So Mr. Corley’s sent a baby to get rid of an annoying baby.”
Meredith laughs. “Something like that.”
“Aye, but this baby’s got teeth. See, the fing about weres is”—Kallen makes a pouncing gesture—“if ya get ’em when they look normal, they go down pretty easy like. Even a new one can be a right ballache if ya catch ’em full cheesed off.”
“So, make it quick,” I say.
“Aye.” He swats me on the back again. “And painless.”
“Make sure to rip the heart out.” Meredith pokes me in the chest. “If ya don’t, he’ll get back up.”
“Do I need silver?”
“Nah. Folklore nonsense.” Kallen waves dismissively. “Claws or fangs work perfectly fine if you get the heart.”
“Oh, wait. The girl’s an Innocent. Ye ’ave claws, dear?” asks Meredith.
“Yeah. It’s weird to say this, but I’m better using a sword.”
“Odd for an American.” Kallen grins.
“Kinda odd for anyone these days.” Meredith stuffs her hands in her back pockets.
I smile at her. “I have an interesting sire. Hey, can I ask you a weird question?”
“Go for it, hon.”
“You’re an Old Guard, right?”
“Aye.”
“Isn’t that anarchy shirt a bit strange then? Like you guys are all about tradition.”
“It’s called irony, luv.” She winks.
“Oh, right. Don’t mind me. I’m stalling.” I swallow. “This guy eats kids. I can do this. Hey, how is it a werewolf is running around eating children and it’s not all over the news like a serial killer story?”
Kallen’s lip twitches. “’E ’eads into Whitechapel, nibbles on the poor ones no one’ll miss.”
I narrow my eyes. This is starting to sound a bit strange.
“You guys gonna help or just watch to make sure I do it?”
“Can’t get involved,” says Meredith. “Treaty and all. But… we’ll swoop in and grab ya if ya start losin’.”
Small favors. “Right. Here I go.”
Fists clenched, I approach the home of one Ronald Haddon, werewolf.
Well, this is new. First time in London. First time kicking in a door to do an assassination. Dalton said ‘spend enough time in London and you’ll want to kill someone.’
I figured he meant a little more than two days.
14
A Hairy Technicality
I’m so not the kick down doors type.
Kallen said werewolves are easy prey when in human form
, so going all Sarah Smash is a bad idea. I can’t believe my brain is plotting the most effective way to ambush-kill a person, but my odds of getting out of here alive go up quite a bit if I can stay sneaky. Seriously though, if this guy does eat street kids, he doesn’t count as a person.
I leap the small fence around the property, sneak around to the back, and glide up to a second story window. The house isn’t big, maybe half the size of mine. This area has a lot of houses, all pretty much the same design in slightly varying sizes. Serious Monopoly house vibe going on. The third window I check is open a little. Enough for me to get my fingers under it and lift, then glide in horizontally to the messiest bedroom in the world.
A strong human scent saturates the air.
Seriously, the scale of the mess makes me think a fourteen-year-old boy lives here alone. The bed smells like it hasn’t had its linens changed in months. Plastic bottles, empty chip bags, and clothes litter the floor. Band posters and topless women adorn the walls. Okay this isn’t a kid’s room. Or the parents are super permissive. Mom and Dad would drop dead on the spot if teenage Sam ever tried to put bare boobs up on his walls. Funny, Mom never complained about my shirtless Hugh Jackman Wolverine poster.
Sniff.
Yeah, definitely a man. Though, some of the guys I went to school with had some ripe days. I didn’t have super keen senses then either. Suppose a teen boy could smell like a man if he had some hygiene laziness. Regardless of who is responsible for the disaster in this room, no one is here.
I slip out into the hallway and encounter a complication: multiple scents. It’s difficult for me to say for sure, but at a guess, there are at least four different people living here. Damn. I broke the first rule of Assassin Club. No, not talking about it. I went into a target’s residence without knowing anything about him other than his name. No idea what he looks like, who else might be here, and so on.
Hi. I’m Sarah, and I’m new at being a contract killer.
Grr. How did I go from the nice, normal kid no one at school really noticed to a creature of the night ready to kill a total stranger at the command of a vampire king? Yanno, if I’m really lying on the floor at Bethany Cooke’s house after someone spiked my drink with LSD, haven’t tried to dump Scott yet, and this entire vampire thing has been an acid dream… I’m seriously going to wound someone.
Sigh.
Nah. Bizarre drug-induced hallucinatory dreams never last this long. And other than the paranormal stuff, far too much normal has happened during the past six months for it to be a funky trip.
I freeze still and listen.
Faint conversation comes from down the hallway, multiple people and too quiet to be real. Gotta be someone watching television with headphones. To my left, tiny creaks and clicks sound exactly like Sophia punishing a PlayStation controller. Someone’s playing a video game, also likely using headphones. I can hear the buttons, as well as the warbles of a stomach working on junk food. No other sounds of life exist in the house.
So there are two people in the place, not counting me. Since I don’t have a clue what Ron Haddon looks like, I’m going to need to rely on my vampiric powers. One of two situations will occur. If I can read a werewolf’s mind, I’ll be able to figure out his name. If I bump into someone in the house whose mind is shielded, good bet he’s the werewolf.
But dammit. It’s going to take more than ‘good bet’ for me to kill a guy.
Might as well check the upstairs bedroom first.
I sneak up to the last door on the right. The scent of blood is obvious at the end of the hall. I crouch and sniff at the bottom of the door. Yep. It’s coming from this room. But… it doesn’t smell right. Stale. Weak, or something.
Maybe he eats sick kids. Even worse.
It takes me a few seconds forcing myself to think about innocent street kids being hunted by a furry monster to work up the nerve to grab the doorknob.
“’Mon in, luv,” says a man.
Crap. How the heck? Whatever.
I open the door.
The bedroom is much neater than the first one, but still messy. A cheap particleboard computer desk stands against the wall to my right, the man seated at it looking up at me from his chair. He’s shirtless, reasonably buff, wearing blue running shorts with little white stripes down the sides. Cute, but a bit old for me, mid-twenties. Short brown hair, thick eyebrows… he totally looks like how I’d imagine half the football players from my old school would turn out five or six years after graduation.
Also, the instant I make eye contact, it’s obvious he’s something more than human. He’s not a vampire, but still radiates a strong supernatural presence. The hairs on the back of my neck would probably be standing up if he had any amount of hostility in his demeanor.
“Didn’t mean to make so much noise.”
“You looking for Troy?”
“No, Ron.”
He tilts his head, confused. “Those bastards. Ya look a bit young ta be doin’ that sorta thing.”
I frown. “I’m not a hooker sent by your buddies.”
“Not where I was going. Different bastards.” He smiles. “Question is, did they send you here to kill me or to get rid of you?”
“Oh. Been wondering the same thing myself.” I bite my lip. “Guess I’m not as quiet as I think.”
“You didn’t make too much noise. Smelled a girl outside.”
I blush. Okay, so I’ve gone a day or two in the same clothes without showering. Still doesn’t make it nice to hear. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I smelled a girl out in the hall.” He shrugs. “Guys smell different from girls. I’m not tryin’ to say you stink.”
I glance around the walls, plain. He didn’t take any time to decorate. “Good grief. Vampire vs. werewolf. Talk about overdone.”
Ron chuckles. “You’re kinda young. Do we really have to do this? My roommates will be pissed if we get blood everywhere.”
“Already is blood everywhere. I can smell it. Why kids?”
“Sometimes I grab one when I can’t find a sheep or pig, but kids don’t have much meat. Need a handful. Too much work.”
“I mean children, not baby goats.”
Ron starts to chuckle, but stops and stares at me a moment. “Wait, you’re serious?”
Time to cheat. Or at least try. Attempting to read his thoughts takes effort, like I’m pushing my head into dense gelatin. Sights, memories, and emotions appear as indistinct flickers. Glimpses behind a pane of smudged glass or sounds from far off in a tunnel. Emotion is much easier to pick up, and he’s horrified.
“They told me you ate poor street kids in Whitechapel.”
Ron shakes his head. “Lass, I think you’ve been punked.”
“So you don’t kill children?”
“No way… at least, not intentionally.”
Huh? “Not intentionally? How does one accidentally eat children?”
“My condition causes blackouts sometimes. I lose time.”
“Full moon?”
“Nah. Thought the same at first, too. Moon’s got an effect on me, but the blackouts aren’t from it. If I go too long without having raw meat, the monster takes over. Ever since I figured out how it works, haven’t had a blackout. Keep ta sheep an’ goats mostly. One a week’s enough. The blood you’re smelling in here must be on me shoes, or the laundry in the bag there—but it’s sheep’s blood.”
“You eat an entire sheep or goat at once?”
“Aye.”
“How…”
He leans back, lacing his fingers behind his head, grinning. “Just talented I reckon.”
“Right…” I sigh.
Ron lowers his arms, smile fading. “Look, luv. I didn’t ask for this condition. Been a bit of a shock ta the system, yanno? How’s a bloke supposed to deal with finding out he’s a werewolf, then learnin’ all the other shite what’s supposed to be all mythical’s all real, too?”
“I know what you mean. Same thing happened to me.�
��
“For real?”
“Yeah.”
“Figured all you lot hung out at goth clubs pretending to be vampires until you found real ones and begged ’em to do it to ya.”
“Hah.” I laugh. “Yeah, maybe some do.”
“Try most. Your lot’s in it for the power and immortality. We’re all a bunch of unlucky bastards. Attacked, left for dead, but not finished off. Wake up back in one piece, then the craziness starts.”
I step into the room, relaxing a bit. Ron seems to sense me lowering my guard and does the same. “Funny you should say that. I woke up in a morgue cooler with no idea what happened to me. Didn’t have even the slightest clue vampires existed even though I’d become one.”
“Wow. Some random bastard do it to ya for kicks? How’d ya not see it coming?”
“My ex-boyfriend stabbed me to death when I tried to break up with him. The guy who turned me was there by chance, saw it happen, tried to save me.”
“Oh, aye. Rough time, lass. Fer me, I’s goin’ in for the early shift at Tesco. Big hairy bastard came outta nowhere. Not a bloody clue what he wanted. Grabbed me in his jaws and tossed me aside. Could’a been get outta my way or I figure he’s runnin’ around tryin’ ta make more weres ta piss off the vamps. Like gettin’ hit by a truck I didn’t see coming.”
“Sorry.” I look around again at the room. Makes sense now why he didn’t bother decorating. He’s not expecting to be here long. “Guess it’s hard for you to have roommates without them noticing something’s strange after a while?”
“Aye.”
“Okay, so you don’t eat children.”
He shakes his head.
“Why would the vampires want you destroyed?”
“Feck if I know. Probably your gang initiation. Kinda how the bangers in the East End have’ta kill someone ta get into the gang proper like.” Ron snaps his fingers. “Oh, an’ the bastard what bit me killed one of them. Could be a revenge bit, but you should know, killing me won’t make him lose a moment of sleep.”
I pace. “I don’t want to kill you… but I can’t just leave. They have my little sister.”
“If you ain’t got no real loyalty to them, I kin help ya get her back.”
Vampire Innocent (Book 9): An Introduction To Paranormal Diplomacy Page 13