“Yes, you would think I would have learned just from you, wouldn’t you?” he teased her back.
“So it sounds like your apartment is getting pretty crowded.”
“You have no idea, though Logan and Kate are out supposedly looking into getting jobs, which might at least get them out of the apartment. If they don’t leave soon, I may have to move,” he chuckled.
“Moving around is nothing new to us, Nicholas,” the woman countered.
“True again, it’s a shame that the humans can’t know of us and the others. There would be scientists cutting us open to find the secret of our longevity and armies trying to kill the rest,” he finished with a sigh.
“Humans might come to a point where they could learn to live with the others, but I fear our fate should we go into the open as well,” Vivian agreed. “Movies, television and books might open peoples’ minds to a point, but in the end humans don’t deal well with not being at the top of the food chain. It is still best to do what we can to hide vampires and werewolves from them.”
Nick nodded and shortly after, the man ended the call with his former mentor before returning to the duties of the day.
Chapter 24- A Short Walk From Campus
When the city suddenly became relatively quiet as the patrols only came across a few rogue vampires, Nick realized how cynical he had become. Instead of enjoying the lull in strange incidents around the city, the voran kept asking himself whether it was simply the quiet before the storm.
The reapers had seemed to disappear, though they might simply be working farther to the north or moved outside of the city. Whether they had come to whittle away at the vampire population after figuring out that there had been activity on a large scale thanks to Cyrus, or if they had been simply moving through as some of the more nomadic vampires might do to avoid wearing out their welcome; he just didn’t have enough information to know.
With the destruction of the large nest, disappearances had gone down keeping such news from the media, though the internet and news stations still commented on the dozens from the past few months. The fire that had killed dozens, according to the news led by police with misinformation, seemed to be forgotten by the media, though the families affected would certainly remember and be curious how their loved ones had come to be there in the first place. Those lost with Sami were also slowly revealed.
Nick had worked with a small group he knew. The detectives and FBI agents he knew had profiled the victims. Grouping those who might be likely to be in the clubs, those were pulled back into the store and with a little bit of music equipment to sacrifice, the building was set on fire. It was contained to the first two floors leaving almost a dozen victims purportedly killed in an illegal rave. The rest had been set adrift in the sewers with the hopes that eventually they would be found to eventually give their loved ones the peace of knowing they had died, though not how.
It had been a morbid duty and the voran had enlisted Marek’s help to retrieve the bodies. The abilities of the voran and vampires were necessary short of bringing in others with special gear that might be noticed sooner.
One of the worries of working the site was that they might be discovered by the reapers if they were still watching the nest for potential strays returning home. They never appeared anymore than any other strays. The team retrieved the bodies, set the evidence and set fire to the building in the middle of the night.
Fire trucks were called preventing any other buildings from being involved; but not before the ‘rave room’ was sufficiently beyond redemption. Even for forensics, it would be difficult to pick out the truth of the situation.
In contrast to the city’s night life, Nick’s home had become quite chaotic, though it was just from adjusting to so many people in one little area. Luckily, the werewolves tended to be awake by day and able to go about their lives, including having Logan and Kate get the jobs they had hoped to get.
There was a clinic in need of doctors and though he had left early before his years of practice in a hospital were complete, they were desperate enough to take him in based on what he had accomplished up to that point. He would be a probationary doctor in a way, but it was a paying position. While his salary wasn’t as large as a doctor in a large hospital, it was a way back into the field he still loved. It was also enough to afford an apartment for he and Kate.
With little money and coming from being basically homeless, Logan retrieved his bed from the second werewolf house. Eric had given permission to do so though technically it was pack property even if Logan had been using it for years. Nick supposed that it was just another attempt of the pack leader to instill goodwill between them, and after his return to tend their wounds after the last full moon he owed the doctor.
The only problem for Nick was that with Logan gone, it was just him and the women in his life. With the room emptied of the werewolves, Nicola decided to move her wardrobe and other acquired personal items to his apartment. She didn’t usurp the whole closet, but as Sami wound up with her own room, the girl was still sharing her closet with Nicola. The two vampires didn’t seem to care and, in fact, the younger girl was often seen wearing something that she had looted from the closet. Nicola never became mad and appeared to enjoy having Sami around like a little sister. Her own blood siblings had passed away, she was fairly certain, since the vampire had tried to communicate by letter for years never telling them of her turning.
As everything seemed to settle down after the moves, Nick thought maybe his fears were unfounded.
“I don’t know, Geni, shouldn’t we stay in tonight and study a bit for the exams?” Lena asked as the blond haired girl, dressed to party, pulled her from the suite of dorm rooms.
“Gah, if I don’t take a break from studying for one night, my brain is going to explode; and if you don’t come with me, they’ll explode all over you!” the blonde aimed her head towards her friend miming her brains exploding with her hands and a weak sound effect.
Lena had to laugh and understood the feeling. Only with the help of her friends had the girl finally caught up on the homework she had been behind on thanks to her time with the werewolves in February. Charlotte had been a big help, even if it had been a few years since she had been to college. Surprisingly, Sami was the biggest help on accounting homework as the younger girl simply read the book quickly catching onto the various concepts faster than either of the older girls.
“Maybe we should call Nicola and Charlotte. We could take Sami off their hands for some fun, if nothing else.”
Shaking her head vehemently, the blonde replied, “Oh no, not tonight, we can’t take a fifteen year old to the club I was planning on going to.”
“We aren’t twenty-one for a few more months either, Geni. Where can we go that she can’t?”
Holding up a pair of I.D. the girl said, “We can go anywhere we want, Margaret Brumowitz.” She had read the name off the one with Lena’s picture on it. “I think you look more like a Maggie though.”
“Oh, yes, because a bouncer will think I am a... twenty-eight year old, Jewish woman, Geni,” she said pausing to read the birthday on the I.D. as she complained to her friend. “And who are you supposed to be?”
“Amber Davis, a twenty six year old from Evanston,” Geni stated. “You mustn’t corrupt innocent little me, you old lady.”
The blonde giggled as she dropped her fake I.D. into her clutch before passing Lena hers.
“If we get busted, I will never hear the end of this from my parents,” the dark haired girl sighed as she tucked it into the front pocket of her tight, blue jeans. With high heeled boots and a black blouse, Lena gave in to the other girl’s pressure. She wanted to have some fun as well before spending a weekend studying for the first of her exams.
The bar Geni wanted to go to wasn’t far and as they walked, Lena felt a little worried. While the strange disappearances had seemed to end all at once, perhaps from the nest being destroyed where Nick found Sami; there were still threats out there.
Her voran radar could sense the unusual though, so she figured that she could keep them away from supernatural danger at the very least.
Once inside the bar, the two girls found a few dozen of their college friends partying to forget that they only had two and half days until exam time. Even though she knew that she shouldn’t drink, Lena found a beer in her hand. There had been those summer functions where she had snuck beer before, but her parents had always cut her off after a few sips. With no parents and Geni joining her, Lena soon found a few empty bottles on the bar beside her.
The music was rocking and the two girls danced, whether with each other or with one of the brave boys watching the college girls. Lena kept a watchful eye over Geni. Girl friends needed to protect each other, especially if they were getting drunk.
Someone introduced shots on a tray. They were small and tasted of peppermint. Since they didn’t seem that strong, Lena found that she had three glasses all tipped over soon enough. Her head was getting woozy, however, and the girl knew that she had had enough. She was probably already drunk, but the girl still had enough of a mind left to avoid getting wasted.
Seeing Geni’s collection of glasses, and the blonde being a little smaller than her; Lena leaned over and said, “Maybe we’d better head back. If we get too drunk, we’ll never be able to study for our final exams.”
“Maggie, you are such a killjoy, but I think you are right!” Geni declared with a raised finger and hand, as she began to sway and not with the music.
The two girls took a few minutes and drank a glass of coke while eating some of the pretzels on the bar hoping to absorb some of the alcohol so that they could make the trip back to the dorms. Lena felt like she had just missed becoming too drunk to walk and still had to assist Geni out the door.
Despite only a few blocks to walk, Lena’s stomach was starting to turn. “Oh, man, I don’t feel too good,” the brunette stated and quickly used a tie from wrist to pull her hair into a tail. “Hang on, Geni, I need to throw up.”
Turning into a gap between the buildings that was less an alley than a separation of stone structures, Lena threw up seeing the remains of the pretzels that had failed in their mission of settling her stomach and absorbing the alcohol. As she turned to look down the sidewalk, the path Geni had wobbled along to avoid seeing Lena’s being sick for fear that she would join her; the brunette noticed a man appearing to kiss her friend’s neck.
Through the bleariness of alcohol, Lena cried out in fear as her radar told her this wasn’t a normal man, but a vampire. “Hey, get away from her, you jerk!” she cried out sounding slurred to her ears.
The man had dark hair, was very thin and his skin was so pale that in the moonlight he appeared to glow white. His eyes turning away from the weakened blonde haired girl terrified Lena. They were black as night and not the vaguely gray sky over Chicago, but true darkness. No light reflected from those eyes. No white appeared at the edges. They were a darkness that tried to drain her will and called her to give in to the animal coming for her blood.
He was on her in a blink before Geni could even sag to the ground unconscious. Lena watched as her friend’s blood stained her dress from neck to breast and the stain continued to grow. His teeth were in the voran’s neck in turn stunning her for a moment.
Pulling back from the girl in shock, the creature tore her skin rather than withdrawing smoothly as a normal vampire would have. “What are you, pretty pretty?” he asked with an accent that the stunned girl would have problems guessing even sober.
The creature didn’t wait for an answer as he greedily returned to the torn flesh of her neck. Her vision blurring in pain, Lena brought her hands up between them in self defense. They were pinned between the two when she desperately released the light of her aura blades with every ounce of her being.
With rasping breath, the reaper tried to pull away. Lena couldn’t believe he was alive let alone trying to pull away. Giving a cry of effort, the voran threw her hands wide making her aura blades cut from the center of the vampire’s chest outward slicing through flesh and bone like a pair of fiery swords.
Lena watched the reaper stagger back with both arms dangling from thin pieces of flesh. Chest bared to reveal a beating black heart as black blood sprayed from the wound, she could still see the monster’s body holding onto life even as it tried to repair the damage she had caused. Plunging her hands with the light of two blades into its heart, the girl pierced the beating pump and watched as it turned to ash like silver burning a normal vampire.
Staggering back a few steps, the creature burst into a ball of flame turning to dust during the explosion before the air began to blow it away.
Not even bothering to dodge the remnants of dust, Lena stumbled to Geni. The voran’s left hand held her wound shut as best she could a moment before taking some of the blood getting through her fingers with the right. Making sure the drops entered Geni’s mouth as Nick had told her to do for vampire bite victims; she wiped the wound on her neck quickly before pulling her phone from her pocket.
Her vision blurring, Lena pressed her bloody thumb to the screen to speed dial Nick.
“Hello?” Nick answered surprised to hear from Lena at this time of night.
“Help, Nick. Geni and I were attacked by a reaper. We’re both hurt.”
“Are you bleeding?”
“He tore my neck. There’s a lot of blood, but I gave Geni some of mine and wiped the wound while trying to keep from bleeding out. I’m going to pass out, Nick,” the girl said trying to fight the shadows beginning to darken her vision.
“Tell me where.”
She could tell that he was already running from the moment she had said that the girls had been attacked. As best she could tell him, Lena described their walk from Halsted and the name of the bar. She didn’t hear him respond as the girl toppled over next to her friend.
Voices could be heard in the darkness. She felt her body move and more voices. Someone called her name, but Lena couldn’t say anything back she was so tired.
Time passed in the shadows, but Lena’s mind was still. There was no white light, just the darkness.
Voices were talking and a slit of light slipped through the lids of her eyes. Blinking as she tried to open her eyes, Lena asked through a dry throat, “Where am I?”
The first face she spied was Logan. The werewolf had blood on his hands, but a smile on his face as he greeted, “Welcome back, Lena. Don’t try to move just yet or you’ll pull out the IV.”
Her eyes flicked from a wall and cabinets just inches above her head and then back towards Logan noticing Nick sitting in a chair. His eyes looked up at her looking tired. “Are we good, Logan? I don’t think I can do much more right now.”
A red tube flowed from her wrist to her mentor, or more accurately from him to her.
“What’s going on?” she asked as Sami suddenly moved close with a bottle of water and a straw.
“Drink up,” the girl said with a smile even as her eyes tried to hide her worry and unease.
The water was like heaven to her parched mouth and once inside her seemed to flow in a cooling stream to her stomach. Logan warned them to slow down and go easy, but Lena’s worry as she recalled what happened overrode her own needs. “Where’s Geni?”
Sami pointed towards her feet, but in reality she meant a table ten feet away. “She’s on the table, but Logan said she’ll be fine.”
The werewolf doctor loomed into view pinching off the tubes of flowing blood. He nodded in agreement with the young vampire, “You saved her with your efforts, Lena. She lost some blood, but she’ll be alright. You were our greater concern, since the reaper tore your neck. Nick said that you vorans heal almost as well as a vampire. Pushing the flap of skin against your neck started the healing almost instantly, but you still lost a lot of blood so we had Nick give you a small amount of his to help with the healing process.”
“Small amount? I give less to the vampires in a month, even with Sami’s extra need
s this month.”
Nick stood but looked wobbly. He was pale and sat back down. Nicola swooped in with juice and a plate of food.
With the tubes removed, Logan said it was safe to move, but to be careful. Lena managed to sit up on the counter in a kitchen that she didn’t recognize.
“Where are we anyway? Whose house is this?”
Logan pointed to his chest and answered, “It’s our apartment. Kate and I just moved in a few days ago and barely have any furniture. I guess it’s a good thing we picked up the dining table even without any chairs or Geni would be on the floor.
“Nick called me when he found out where you were, since I was using his Escape and live closer than the Lair.”
Nick spoke up between bites of his sandwich, “We were visiting the club when you called. Marek and the others came with to look for anymore signs of reapers, but all we found was the one you managed to kill.”
Lena half smiled as she informed her mentor, “I was able to pull up two aura blades when I needed them.”
He smiled back looking just as tired as she felt. With his blood to help save her life, Lena knew that she owed her life to Nick and Logan. “What was it like?”
His question was somewhat vague, but the girl guessed what he meant, “He was thin, with dark hair and black eyes instead of the white when a vampire loses it to their hunger. He moved so fast that I couldn’t even react.
“Geni and I went to the bar and probably drank too much.”
“Especially since you are under age,” Nick nodded being less judgmental than stating the fact.
“Only for a couple more months,” she replied, but went on ignoring the issue. “My sixth sense didn’t pick him up until I saw him biting Geni and it was too late. If I hadn’t gotten sick in the alley, maybe I could have done better and kept her from being bitten.”
“Or you might have been attacked first and both of you could be dead instead. Don’t worry over what might have been as long as you survived. Now go on and tell us what happened after you saw him attack Geni,” the man said in a soothing voice.
Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) Page 33