Raising an eyebrow in question, she asked, “Nicola didn’t talk you into taking pity on me then?” The woman moved closer to him and shook her head, “I can smell her on you. I thought she had more of you on her than normal. Well, at least you two can do that now.”
The last was said revealing a bit of her frustration at the situation.
“Have you seen Logan or Kate since yesterday afternoon?” questioned the man slightly shifting the subject, though the pertinence of their solution had some bearing.
“The love birds were definitely trying to solve her problem when Nicola and I first returned home. By the time I needed to go to sleep, they had settled down as well.”
Picking up a cereal box from the counter, the girl started to fan herself.
The cereal inside shifted inside making rattling noises that he tried to ignore as Nick added, “If it works for Kate the way Eric said, maybe he’s right about the timing of the full moon also. It’s less than a week away to at least see if your cycle will end with the first moon.”
Nodding at him, Charlotte agreed saying, “If it doesn’t get any worse than this, or much worse anyway; then waiting for the full moon shouldn’t be too much of a problem. Are you considering what you will do if I do become sick from not following biology?”
“There must be something natural that will end it without finding a mate. I mean there have been enough werewolves as far as I can tell that they can’t be so susceptible to their hormones. Nature must have an answer built into your bodies.
“Dying without a mate or becoming violently ill would hardly help your race to create new werewolves or whatever the plan is behind it. If finding a mate is all that drives your bodies, and it can be disrupted so easily, you would think that there must be some form of reset.”
Charlotte took his hand with her free one and placed it against her forehead. Warm and clammy, for a normal human he would think them sick and try to lower their temperature with aspirin or ice. For the werewolf, the initial touch seemed to react with their skin. Though Nick couldn’t feel her illness, he could feel her warmth and the slight change from his contact.
With a sigh, Charlotte closed her eyes telling him that his touch was working. His other hand he placed in the center of her chest with his fingers touching the base of her neck. This time she shivered slightly and he was certain that he felt her skin adjust with the contact.
Realizing that what she wore wasn’t enough to combat the symptoms, Charlotte unbuttoned the shirt pulling it off and turning her back to him. “It looks like the shirt wasn’t enough. Can you rub my back please?”
At least the woman had worn his shorts as well; he thought and began rubbing her back and arms slowly.
“So why are you all dressed up?” she asked casually as if she wasn’t nearly completely naked in his kitchen.
“I am meeting up with one of my police contacts to canvas a few buildings for their camera records. The feline hunters walked past several cameras, though until I look I won’t know if they crossed the path of one with a good view. I am hoping to discover what they look like in human form and animal as well as their vehicle. Maybe a license will give me an address to find them and discover why they are here.”
“The great detective back to work, is this how you found Lena and us?”
He was about to respond when the girl turned to face him and he pulled his hands back while lifting his eyes to her face. Charlotte placed the shirt on the counter before taking his hands and placing them over her breasts. “Just finish my torso, doctor, and hopefully I won’t need you while you’re out doing your detective work.”
Sighing, Nick had to admit that it would have been an enjoyable task, if his loyalty to Nicola didn’t scream at him to stop; but the vampiress had practically thrown him to the werewolf before changing her mind and taking him for her own last night. Trying not to think about it, he answered her question as his hands slid to her sides as she raised her arms, “Ray and the other two brought me faster than I might have been able to otherwise, but they were just one of the leads I was following. In this case, I have the cameras to start with to find these hunters.”
Footsteps preceded Logan’s crying out, “Whoa!” as he accidentally walked in on the two of them. Kate was right behind him wearing one of her mate’s shirts, though less from the need than Charlotte apparently. The smaller woman swam in the shirt making it look more like a dress on her.
“Have we walked in on something I really don’t want to see?” the werewolf asked averting his eyes, though Kate looked on a moment longer with an amused smile.
Groaning in annoyance, Charlotte complained, “Give me a break, Logan, I woke up with a fever and was overheating. Nick’s rubbing me down to make it go away. He’s not sleeping with me like you two are.”
With her skin feeling much cooler to his touch, Nick pulled away despite her eyes looking like she wanted him to continue longer. Pulling the shirt back on, the girl covered herself without buttoning it as if she were making sure that he didn’t need to rub her down further.
Her brother returned his gaze making sure that it was safe to look as he replied, “I thought maybe you had convinced him from the sounds we heard last night.”
Kate nodded slipping her hand into his looking very content and happy with her situation. Logan glanced to her and smiled, while Charlotte breathed out angrily and replied, “Nicola and Nick finalized their relationship for a couple hours while I tried to sleep. I am simply his patient needing his touch when his clothes aren’t enough like this morning.”
“You finally did it with Nicola? I thought Charlotte had a better chance of getting you to give in than that poor girl. I thought you two were afraid to get together for some reason,” Logan replied bluntly.
“I was afraid of hurting her, since I am a voran and my body could kill a vampire. She was tired of waiting and risked it anyway,” the man revealed more than he thought he ever would, but when the werewolves in the house had all heard them enough to comment it was too late for discretion.
“He didn’t kill me. In fact, we had a lot of fun. Sorry, if we woke you all. We were trying to be quiet,” Nicola’s voice came from behind Kate and Logan without anyone noticing her walking the hall. She was dressed in her red lingerie despite her shower, though Nicola hadn’t worn them for long after all.
Seeing the blonde vampire rubbing her eyes in her lingerie made the two wolves’ eyes widen and Logan commented, “If that was what she was wearing to seduce you, then I can see why it worked.”
Kate elbowed him with a frown, but Nicola merely smiled feeling no shame or embarrassment in what she wore. Like the werewolves, who soon overcame their shyness with the full moon, the vampiress was comfortable in her body and what she wore covered as well as a swimsuit after all.
Her eyes looked tired and Nick could tell that she was fighting the grogginess the sun brought for her kind. The light was on the entry wall opposite the vampire so her skin wouldn’t burn, but it was day time and her kind couldn’t usually hold out for long against the need for sleep.
In spite of her drowsiness, Nicola perked up a little bit and smiled as she replied, “Even this wouldn’t have caused him to take me and make an honest woman out of me. I finally just showed him my breasts and threw myself at him.”
“Lucky you,” Charlotte said trying to have a sense of humor about the other woman getting to have her way. “Even making him touch my breasts and rubbing myself against him hasn’t worn him down for me.”
Sliding past the couple and Nick, the blonde noticed the still unbuttoned shirt sliding her hand under the cloth to touch the other woman brazenly. The vampire’s touch sent a chill into the werewolf cooling her further as Nicola joked, “You let him touch these and he didn’t crack? I am surprised. If he doesn’t give in by the full moon and your condition continues, I would try it again. As pretty as you are, since he is just a man, eventually you will wear him down.”
Charlotte asked in confusion, “You
want him to be with me?”
“I was thinking about that. There times even in the Bible that two women shared a man. Didn’t Abraham bed his servant because his wife wanted him to have a child?”
Nick snorted and stated, “And Ishmael and Isaac hated each other so much that their descendants tried to kill each other regularly. Until this day, Israel and the Arabs are still fighting.”
Giving him a frown, Nicola tried again, “I know there were others even so. What I’m saying is that with regular humans it can happen so, even though it isn’t my preference, it can be done. Besides I doubt that I will have to worry about any descendants, being a vampire.” The last was said with a bit of regret and the teasing and joking were gone. She felt Charlotte’s forehead noting a slight fever remaining, but it had lessened enough with both of their touches that it didn’t seem dangerous.
“Well, the sun is up and this little burst of energy is starting to leave me,” the vampire stated covering mouth as she yawned. She turned to kiss Nick on the mouth before retreating to his shared bedroom.
While the other four took the time to eat breakfast, Nick called one of his contacts on the force. By the time he was finished, the meeting at the first building was set. Unless someone had something to hide, there was no need for warrants or other paperwork. They only needed a short window of outside video at a typically unimportant time of night. Most companies should have no trouble with helping the police with an investigation. The cover story would be an investigation of video looking for thieves from a local breaking and entering. Since most companies preferred such criminals as far from them as possible, there should be little to no problem.
He was soon out the door and using his black Escape to drive to meet with the detective. When it was a matter of business, even the vampire kind; he found the SUV to be a good vehicle for blending into the background.
Finding a parking spot was more difficult by day, but he found one and walked to the first building with his notebook and pen in hand.
“So we’re investigating break ins now?” a man’s voice asked from the doorway of the intended start.
Nick smiled at the man. In his forties and wearing a suit and coat that wasn’t flashy as much as businesslike for this work, the detective was a graying black man. They had first met over a decade earlier. Detective Fred Tucker was a confidante and one of a few that understood the truth that much of the darker deeds of the night were enacted by creatures no longer human.
“Well, that is the best cover story I could think of,” the voran greeted and shook his hand. It had been awhile since he had seen the detective, though he tried to keep in touch with those he trusted with the secret. “I thought telling everyone that we had unknown vampire slayers running around might be a little less believable.”
The brown skinned man rubbed his close trimmed head finding a bald spot beginning to widen with a bit of disappointment. He nodded his head in agreement as he replied, “Talking of vampires rarely gets you in the door and is likely to get you thrown in a psychiatric wing, but you have unknown vampire slayers? What does that mean?”
“As stated, we have approximately three who can take out a vampire. They work as a team and have something to do with felines. I think they can transform to use cat like powers.”
Eyes wrinkling in confusion, the detective shook his head. “Some form of were-cat now?”
“That’s why we’re here. They had a bit of a run in with my friends. These are trained hunters using specialized smoke grenades that had silver laced in the mixture. It wasn’t enough to kill, but it stung and had to be designed with vampires in mind.”
“I thought silver bullets were for werewolves,” Fred admitted freely knowing the truth was often different from mythology and tweaking by the media.
“Silver is a metal of purity that can harm or even kill vampires and werewolves both. It attacks the curse or something to that extent. Whether it affects other strange hybrids, I don’t know. I’ve only run into the two types,” Nick confided realizing that for all he knew there could be dozens of hidden races around the world.
The detective shook his head and gestured towards the door. “You are in luck though. There have been a couple break ins nearby, so I can justify it to the department without raising suspicion.
“You have a specific window of time for these three, I presume.”
Nodding, Nick replied, “Between eleven and one, Marek wasn’t positive on the time, but they had to pass through here around that time.”
Opening the door of the first building, the two men found a manager’s office. It took little to get the older man to let them into their security room holding the footage. With such a small window of camera footage, the manager didn’t even seem to bat an eye at their need.
“We hold forty-eight hours at a time on the hard drive,” he explained as they sat down in front of a panel of screens. Hallways and the front door view were either showing or easily flipped to with his controls. “Since we just downloaded the drive yesterday, we’re right in the middle of another run. You just need the front door camera?”
“Yes, just that one covering 11 PM to 1 AM,” Nick assured him. After watching the manager quickly jump through time with his controller like watching someone playing with a DVR, Fred asked the man to step outside to assure that they could scan the footage privately.
Acquiescing with barely a raised eyebrow, Nick began to run the footage. It was as boring as expected, but knowing the window of time, at least their search was limited. There was little activity after eleven o’clock and even slightly sped up, Nick’s eyes caught the single movement for the first hour.
“There,” he said stopping the digital playback. He backed it up a step revealing three light shadows crossing the camera’s view line. It was pointed mostly at the doors, since securing a sidewalk mattered less than the glass paned doors and windows of the front lobby.
Still, Nick could make out the shapes of the ones he believed were the hunters. “Three, like we’re looking for.”
Fred peered closer at the monitor and asked, “What are those lines coming off of their backs? Is it from lighting?”
Shaking his head, the voran replied, “Tails. Apparently in full transformation, they have tails.” He noted the time in his notebook, 11:14 PM. They now had the starting timetable for the rest of the cameras along the way. Nothing would precede that time and each successive camera would eliminate what they needed to look at as well.
They parted from the room after exiting from the section of video moving to the next building on his list.
“You know the final building where the car was will be your best bet to track them down,” Fred declared as they walked looking at ten more sites before they would be likely to see the car the trio had used.
“That gives me the destination. I am trying to find out what we’re facing here. Also I am worried what might be recorded from one of these cameras.”
Fred shook his head and retorted less worried than the voran, “No one watches those videos unless there’s a break in, Nick. We’ll be the only ones to watch these ever.”
“If you can actually guarantee that, so we won’t see them plastered all over television by some bored security guard looking for a pay day; then I’ll relax,” Nick replied looking at the cameras he could see as they walked making sure that he hadn’t missed one.
Five videos later, Nick found the most accurate footage they had seen. Just the glimpses of shadows from the first five cameras, led to a camera mounted across the street. The woman in charge of the building was an older woman with an eastern European accent, most likely Polish based on the heavy population in the area. She was also the least cooperative making Fred take out his badge and dialing the precinct to check the validity. Once satisfied that he was a police officer, she grilled Nick, the civilian expert and assistant as they tried to explain the voran’s part in the search.
It was worth the effort as they discovered a camera that was targeted at
the street. With an angle that covered to the far side and the sidewalk there, Nick could see the three figures in their ninja garb. They either wore the most realistic masks he had ever seen or they had heads of felines. One appeared like a black panther while the second big one looked more like a tiger. Another had grey stripes like a leopard cat from Asia or perhaps a striped house cat. It was hard to tell in the paused video, but the striped one might be a female, he thought.
Using a thumb drive, Nick downloaded the important part of the video before thanking the woman and moving onward down the street.
“So now we have cat people roaming the streets as if the werewolves and vampires weren’t enough,” the detective complained with a sigh. “My world was a lot less complicated before I met you, Steel,” he said using the voran’s last name, not his original, but the current one.
“It would have been a lot shorter if I had let that vampire kill you too,” replied the voran with a bit of smile. Most of his police contacts were people like Fred who quite literally owed him their lives. When weapons fired in panic failed to kill the already dead vampires, most police would be dead. It was only his interference and that of Marek’s coven that prevented those deaths. Few humans would get lucky and kill a vampire. The predators were too fast and strong while being nearly invincible to projectiles like those used in a policeman’s revolver or pistol depending on the time period. When an officer knew of the creatures of the night, few could afford to find and create silver bullets like in the movies.
Rubbing his neck self consciously, the dark skinned detective had to nod. “I wish I could warn the other police, but you’ve been pretty strict on that.”
“Not every officer can stop from spreading the news and leaking it out to the world. Let the rumors spread and there will be those who refuse to acknowledge it, then there are the others who suddenly see every neighbor they dislike as a vampire. Look at the ancient witch hunts. Once the news gets out, killing won’t just be from vampires.”
Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) Page 12