It’s a good thing he’s stopped there because moments later I felt a shift in the air and then a woman was standing in front of us. She was tiny, barely five-foot, if that, and looked scarcely out of her teens, with long, black hair streaked with purple and lavender. In spite of her size and apparent youth, she radiated power, so I had no doubt who she was. I surprised myself by bowing to her, and saw Axel do the same. ::Did she compel us?:: I asked him.
“Of course not,” the woman replied before Axel could. “If I have to do that to get the respect I’m worthy of…Well then, I wouldn’t be worthy of it, would I?” Her tone was haughty, but there was a glint of amusement in her eyes.
“It’s an honor to meet you…” Axel hesitated because we didn’t know her name.
“Edina Sarisbury, but you may call me Dina. It’s less old fashioned. Which one of you is Lucas?”
I pointed to myself before introducing Axel.
“You’re…” She looked at Axel, “A Young Adult. I’d say one hundred and seventy-four years of age?”
“Seventy-five.”
“I stand corrected. On the other hand, Lucas, including all his years on earth, is a whole twenty-six and a few months, and yet you’re lovers. Rather committed ones if I’m reading things correctly. Interesting.”
“How so?” I asked her, surprised she had figured that out so quickly. “We don’t look our real ages. Okay, I do, but Axel would…does pass for twenty-five.”
“True, but he has nearly two centuries of life experiences that you don’t, Lucas. Don’t you find that disconcerting?”
“More helpful than anything else,” I replied. “If he hadn’t been with me when we ran into those rogues, they might have decided to eliminate me before I told anyone about them. Not that I know anyone, but they wouldn’t be aware of that.”
“How old were they?” Dina asked Axel.
“Best guess, Adolescents, which means they’ve been around for at least fifty years.” He smiled briefly. “Which you know of course, although Lucas might not.” I did know, but I didn’t argue. Now was not the time. “They looked in their late teens to early twenties.”
She frowned, saying sharply, “Describe them. No, better yet, picture them.”
I brought up their images and I was certain Axel was doing the same.
“I should have known,” she said with obvious disgust. “One of them, Tony, the taller one, is Gebhard’s get. The fool always lets his Children loose when he tires of them, without taking the time to be certain they understand and accept the rules of their new lives. He also severs his ties with them so he can’t help us locate where Tony and his companion have gone to ground.”
“Why would he do that?” Axel asked.
Dina’s smile was sour as she replied, “Geb…he hates when I call him that. Anyway, he’s an Old vampire, although not nearly as old as I am. When vampires make it to one thousand or more several things can happen. Some become reclusive as they believe they’ve seen and done all there is to do. A few, like Geb, think it’s great fun to create more of us. It gives them a hobby, as an old friend of mine put it.”
“Some hobby,” I muttered. I thought of Justin. “Or because they want a companion, as short termed as it may be.”
“Like your Sire?” When I nodded, she patted my arm. “That happens, unfortunately. Still, it’s better than what Geb does.”
“What about you?” Axel asked.
She grinned. “For a long while, several hundred years in fact, I retreated into my solitude, dismayed with what the world had to offer. Then, the sixties arrived. The nineteen-sixties. I awoke one evening, turned on the television, and saw Woodstock happening in all its glory and madness. It was like a whole new world opened up to me. I decided to live my life to its fullest. After all—” she swept her hand down her body, “—I can pass for barely out of my teens, why not enjoy it. So here I am, a very wise older woman with the heart and emotions of a young girl.”
Given her hair, and the fact she was dressed like a girl hanging out at a mall with her friends, I’d say she undoubtedly succeeded very well.
“Enough of me,” she said, sobering. “We need to find Tony and his friend before they harm that girl.”
“How the hell do we do that?” I asked.
“We start by going back to where you saw them. I should be able to track the woman from there because she’s a human.”
“Even if they flew away with her?”
“They’re relatively young,” she replied. “They can’t fly far before they have to land, especially while carrying her. I presume one of you has a car.”
“I do,” Axel said. “It’s in the garage.”
When we got out there, she looked at it and then my bike. “If it was only you and me, Lucas, I’d suggest the bike. I love riding them. The car…” She wrinkled her nose, but didn’t hesitate when I opened the passenger door so she could get in.
Ten minutes later we had parked in the lot Axel always used and were walking down the alley. We didn’t have to point out where the attack had happened. Dina homed in on it immediately. The scent of blood, I suspected. After a moment, she nodded then pointed to the roof. ::Up there?::
I wasn’t at all surprised that she used mind-speak, although I wondered why as I replied, ::Yes,:: at the same time that Axel did.
::I don’t sense any of our kind around,:: she said to my unspoken question. ::However, it’s best to be cautious until we have more information. Wait here.::
She went invisible and flew up, at which point I said to Axel, ::Why does she need us here?::
He shrugged. ::Safety in numbers? A distraction once she discovers where they went?::
::Cannon fodder, at least in my case,:: I replied dryly.
::Not at all,:: Dina said. ::If you’ll join me, please.::
Taking her invisibility as our cue, Axel and I did the same before flying up. We couldn’t see her, of course, but her pull was strong so we knew where she was standing.
::They went that-a-way,:: she said, snickering. I thought she was taking all this a bit too lightly considering we wanted to find the girl before they killed her.
::Lucas…:: I could envision her shaking her head. ::In time you’ll learn that a small amount of levity will help ease your tension. Yes, finding her and stopping them is important, but if you’re wound tight as a drum you’re likely to blow it.::
::No smartass comments from you, Axel,:: I muttered.
::Me? Never.:: He chortled.
Dina became visible, assuring us it was safe. “There’s no one close we need to worry about.” She was sitting on the parapet at the back of the roof. We joined her, visible now as well. “As I said earlier, we’ll do this in hops and jumps. They put the girl down on the roof of that building.” She pointed to one two blocks east of us. “Shall we?”
Because it was dark, almost three A.M. we remained visible as we followed her—and then kept going, flying from building to building once she’d located traces of the girl. We were halfway across the city, on the roof of an old apartment building, when she said, “They’re in there,” pointing to a derelict house next door. “You’re to do exactly as I tell you. Understood?”
Axel and I nodded.
“We’ll go down to the parking lot. Yes, we can fly, there’s no one about at this hour except a couple of homeless men sleeping in the doorway of the building across the alley. From there, we’ll go to the back door of the house and mist inside.”
“How can we?” Axel asked. “We need an invitation.”
“Look at the sign by the door,” she replied, knowing that with our enhanced sight we would be able to read it.
I did. It said, ‘No trespassing by order of the City and County of Denver.’ “So it’s public property?”
“Yes, meaning going in will be no problem. As soon as we’re inside, re-form and I’ll shield our presence. From there, we’ll locate where they are and the two of you will burst in like the heroes in a bad action flick.”
Axel rolled his eyes. “You’re taking this ‘I’m really a teenage at heart’ thing to the extreme.”
“Sue me.” She grinned. “It’s fun, sometimes, and as I told Lucas, a little levity helps you relax.”
“I’m relaxed, already. Let’s do this,” he retorted.
I wasn’t, but then I’m so new at this vampire thing, relatively speaking, I wasn’t certain how I could be anything other than a hindrance.
Axel apparently understood what I was feeling because he said, ::Think of it as more of what…Never mind. Damn it, Dina, quit eavesdropping.::
She merely lifted an eyebrow and took off with us right behind her. When we landed, we misted to enter the house and re-formed. We were in a kitchen with empty spaces where the stove and refrigerator had stood what I guessed had been several years ago from the amount of dust and debris I saw.
“They’re above us,” she said. As she was hiding our presence from the rogues I knew they wouldn’t have heard her.
We went into the living room and saw a flight of stairs in the front entryway. They were missing a couple of steps and I worried about them creaking, so I levitated an inch or so above them and started up.
“Smart,” Axel whispered, following my lead.
I wasn’t at all surprised to find Dina had beaten us to the second floor. She was standing in front of one of the bedroom doors. With a nod, she indicated it was time for us to do our thing. So we did.
Axel kicked in the door—not a problem given his strength and the door’s age—and slid in and to the right exactly like a cop in a gangster movie. I took the left side of the doorway, surveying the scene in front of us with what was very righteous anger, considering.
The two rogues had spun around from the bed where the girl lay, naked and restrained. I could see bite marks on her neck and torso and knew they’d been draining her blood, whether to feed or to turn her I had no idea. Either way, it infuriated me.
“What the hell?” the taller one, Tony, Dina had called him, cried out in fear. As Dina was shielding us, I knew he couldn’t see us—only the broken door.
Then, she dropped the shield, ordering me to free their victim.
“No fucking way,” the shorter rogue said, a knife appearing in his hand.
“Bad move,” I heard Dina mutter as she used what I knew had to be telekinesis to rip it from his hand and send it spinning to me.
I caught it at the same instant that Axel bowled into him, sending him flying. I slashed the ropes holding the girl and set the knife down before gently picking her up. She began to scream, so I enthralled her, telling her she was having a bad dream.
“Take her out of here,” Dina ordered.
I hesitated, not wanting to miss the fun, and then realized it was all over but the shouting, to be clichéd. Dina had taken control of the rogues. They stood in front of her, heads bowed in submission. Axel handed her the knife, undoubtedly at her mental command. As I reached the doorway I stopped to look back. She had grabbed the hair of the shorter rogue and as I watched she slashed through his neck, almost decapitating him. Instantly his body turned to dust.
That did it for me. I knew Tony was next and didn’t want to watch, even though I wished I was the one who would end his life, permanently. Visions of my being restrained while Justin turned me flooded my mind when I looked at the girl, so I beat it down to the ground floor. I laid her carefully on the dilapidated sofa in the living room and then set to work healing the bites inflicted by the bastards. I’d barely begun when Dina and Axel joined me.
“Let me,” she said, so I moved away. She completed the job quickly before asking Axel for his shirt. When he handed it to her, she put it on the girl and then picked her up, cradling her in her arms. “I’ll see you at your house,” she said to us. With that, she vanished.
“We’d better move it. It’s not long until the sun comes up,” he said.
As soon as we were outside, he gripped my hand and we flew, with several stops to give me time to replenish my energy, to his car. A few minutes later he had pulled it into the garage. We made it inside and upstairs with moments to spare, not even having time to undress before collapsing on the bed as sleep overtook us.
* * * *
We awoke Wednesday evening to the sight of Dina sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed. She held two bags of blood which she handed to us.
“Not your normal fare, but necessary at the moment,” she told us. It wasn’t, but we dealt with it. After all, it was blood, if not as fresh as we liked. We gave her the empty bags, at which point she said, “Clean up and come downstairs. We need to talk,” and left the room.
“Now what?” Axel asked with a worried frown as he quickly undressed.
I stripped as well, very tempted to take advantage of our being naked for some tension release. I probably would have if Dina hadn’t been waiting for us. Instead, we showered together platonically, getting rid of the dust and grime from the house where we’d found the rogues. After drying off, we dressed in jeans and T-shirts, tossed the dirty clothes in the laundry hamper, and went down to find out what Dina had in store for us.
She was seated in the armchair across from the sofa. With a gesture, she indicated that we should sit, so we did.
“If I had an ounce of common sense,” she said, “I’d destroy the two of you the way I did those rogues.”
I opened my mouth to ask why, or at least deny we needed to be—and snapped it shut again when she glared at me.
“I understand why you’re doing it. Believe me, I do. I felt the same way when I was your age. But—” She paused, looking at me and then Axel. “We are not gods. We don’t have the right to choose who lives and who dies.”
“They deserved it,” I protested. “Well, most of them.”
“If they knew about us, they’d think the same,” she replied. “There would be no vampires because they, humans, would destroy us, or force us into hiding, which in my opinion would be equally as bad if not worse.”
“The humans we went after were bastards,” Axel spat out. “They didn’t care about anyone but themselves and how to live off the backs of others.”
“I agree,” Dina said. “It still doesn’t make what you and Lucas are doing right. There are other ways you can deal with them. Ways to make them pay for what they’re doing.”
“Turn them over to the cops?” I snorted derisively. “I doubt the police give a shit that they are forcing their employees to work in dangerous situations, or paying them so little they need three jobs just to put a roof over their heads and food on the table.”
She cocked her head. “I take it you pity at least those humans.”
“I…suppose,” I replied, and it hit me that I did. Me, who had hated all humans with a passion.
“You don’t, you know,” she said softly. “Yes, I pried. It’s what I do when necessary. You work with humans. I get that it’s out of necessity, but still, do you hate them?”
I looked at Axel and we both shook our heads.
“I’m not too fond of some of them,” he said. “The ones who drink too much and use that as an excuse to abuse their wives or girlfriends; or to start a fight because they don’t agree with what someone said to them.”
“I feel the same way,” I said. “Most of them, though…” I shrugged. “I guess they’re not too bad…for humans.”
She chuckled. “Damned with faint praise.”
“So, what would you have us do?” Axel asked.
“Figure out how to take them down so that they, and people who admire them, realize what they’ve been doing is wrong. Especially when it comes to the ones who think they’re entitled to step on the peasants on their way to acquiring massive wealth. The criminals, like the dealers Lucas killed? Set them up and bring them down. That should be easy enough.”
“In other words, channel our hatred,” I said softly.
“Precisely.” She leaned over to pat my knee. “I know you can do it. Hell, I might even be willing to help.”<
br />
Axel looked at her in shock. “Are you serious?”
“It’s not like I’ve got much else to keep me entertained when I’m not going after rogues or chastising their Sires for not teaching them correctly.” She shot me a look. “Speaking of which, I should probably have a word or three with Justin.”
“Uh-uh,” I said, waving my hands in front of me. “He’s not to blame. Not at all. He knew how I felt and did everything he could to dissuade me from acting on my feelings short of compelling me not to.”
“You knew!” Axel burst out. “Even before you came here last night you knew what we were doing. Why didn’t you take us out?”
“To dinner and a show?” she asked, laughing. Then she sobered. “If you want the truth, I admired the plan you two came up with. It worked without endangering us…vampires. You on the other hand,” she looked at me, shaking her head. “I began keeping an eye on you when I found out you were killing drug dealers as a way to channel your anger. You were clever about it, so I didn’t do anything to stop you. My major problem came with how you handled the man who owned this house. He didn’t need to die, Lucas. You could have let him believe everything was on the up-and-up.”
“Until he realized there was no money in his bank account from the sale,” I replied.
She shook her head. “You could have enthralled him. Made him believe it was there and he spent it on…hell, who knows. A donation to his favorite charity? It’s too late now, of course and it nearly cost you your life. You’re lucky I had bigger problems to handle at the time. I put you on the back burner since you were clever enough in how you dealt with his body, and that of poor young man you…umm…” She glanced at Axel.
“I know about him,” Axel said. “I’m not dense, Dina. I hardly expected Lucas to be a virgin when we met.”
Her laughter pealed through the room. “I would hope not,” she said. Leaning back, she tapped her fingers together as she gazed at us. “I like you guys. That said, if you ever, ever, kill another human except in self-defense I will terminate your existence with extreme prejudice. Understand?”
“Yes, ma’am,” we replied in unison.
I Hunt by Night Page 9