While the rest of the outreach members were assigned to populated and well-lit areas of the Quarter and Garden District, hunters and a handful of highly skilled vampires were assigned to the rougher areas. As a testament to how shorthanded we were on that end, I was assigned to the team working St. Louis Cemetery Number Two. Evan had a longstanding rule of not assigning women, no matter how tough or bulletproof they were, to this area, hence my added armor.
Personally, I wasn’t thrilled with the assignment. The last, and only, time I visited the cemetery, I had my neck torn to shreds by a vampire after foolishly ignoring my friends’ warning not to wander into unfamiliar territory with a guy I had just met. Just standing outside the crumbling wall in the dark gave me chills. I took small comfort in the fact that Andre was with me and that Lance and Edgar were somewhere in the nearby neighborhood. What I didn’t like was the fact that I was the only member of our team with no familiarity of the layout. Though the cemetery itself was not large, the broken and bumpy walkways, tall crypts, and narrow passages meant there were a lot of places I could end up being trapped by someone, vamp or otherwise, who knew the place better.
If it wasn’t for night vision lenses and GPS enabled density scanners, I wouldn’t have been confident enough to take the assignment. But I had to admit, for all the dangers the cemetery posed, it was the one place no one would have thought to look for me.
“I don’t like this,” Andre whispered as we both glanced at our hemographs. The cemetery was already alive with activity. Faint signals meant dead bodies and from the fading yellow dots on our screens, there were already at least five dead in addition to three live vamps inside. Even worse, the ant-like line of strong green signals coming over the back wall likely meant that a group of weirdo kids were trying to sneak into the cemetery, either as a prank or to perform some ‘satanic’ ritual. Luckily, Edgar was close to the back wall and sent a message that he had it covered. The last thing we needed was a group of teenagers stumbling across vampire corpses.
“Punk ass drunken college boys looking for a souvenir skull for their frat house,” he called back a few minutes later, adding with a chuckle, “I think a few of ‘em are gonna need new shorts after dealing with Count Thugula.”
I stifled a chuckle of my own. Both Edgar and Lance, along with a couple of other hunters, were disguised as vampires. It was both a brilliant and dangerous move. Like Miles being disguised as me, the vampire disguises were meant to bait whoever was targeting the mods into action. I only prayed that it didn’t draw unnecessary attention to our team.
“I don’t think we should split up,” Andre said as we tried to determine who to go after first.
“We don’t have to, look,” I said and pointed to the screen. “They’re all leaving. Lance, can you get a look at this crew going over the side wall?”
“Three lovely ladies headed downtown,” Lance reported back. “What do you want to bet all of your corpses are male?”
“Keep an eye on them until they reach the next sector,” Andre said and turned to me. “We might as well start piling the bodies. Mike’s called for a retrieval crew, but there are already a bunch of requests stacking up in the usual places around Bourbon.”
“Of course there are,” I said grimly. “I have a bad feeling no one is even trying to talk to vamps tonight.”
“It’s Halloween,” he reminded me. “You know the rules are different.” He may have been right, but I still didn’t like it. Because of the increase in activity, hunters were seeking out and killing any vampire who appeared to be putting a human life in danger, just as they used to before we expanded the outreach. It was still early, yet I had heard at least a dozen calls for retrievals.
All total, Andre and I piled up seven bodies, all vampires and all brutally murdered, by the main gate. I kept myself from having a physical reaction by concentrating on using our search to familiarize myself with the layout. It seemed too quiet. Around midnight we had a spike in the number of kids trying to sneak in, but there were no more vampires. From the stories I had heard about this place, the quiet night was less likely a reprieve and most definitely a bad sign.
"Is this normal?" I asked over the network.
"Not at all," Andre's reply buzzed in my ear. "You guys keeping the vamps at bay out there?"
"Not I," Lance replied. "The only fangs I've seen tonight have been my own. You think this is a trap?"
"Perhaps whoever is killing them made a dent in the population," Edgar quipped.
"That may not be a joke," I said as my eyes fell on the pile of bodies. Lance had been right. All of the victims were male. “We’ve found a lot of dead vamps out here recently. Could be that the locals aren’t as keen to hang out here anymore. Maybe they know something we don’t.”
“That’s not a bad theory,” Lance said. “I’m sending a message out asking the outreach folks to find out if there have been any rumors about this place.”
I was about to respond to Lance when Miles suddenly jumped on our line. “Hey Lucy, I just wanted to give you a heads up. Someone is definitely after you, but we haven’t gotten a lock on them. We’re still trying to piece it together.”
“What happened?”
“A couple of minutes ago, this person dressed like a ninja just kind of landed in front of me, like they jumped off the roof of a building or something. Anyway, I get ready to attack and they stopped, kinda looked at me for a moment, then whispered something that I think was ‘clever,’ and then literally disappeared. I swear if Layla hadn’t seen the exact same thing I did, I’d doubt my own sanity.”
“Weird,” I said, feeling a slight chill. “Were you able to see where they went?”
“That’s the thing,” he said. “I wasn’t kidding when I said they just disappeared. One minute they were there, the next, gone. And I didn’t see a face either because they were dressed head to toe in black. I’ve seen a lot of crazy shit in my life, but this kind of takes it.”
“Yeah, that is creepy,” I said. “But thanks for letting me know.”
Miles jumped off our line and I saw that he sent a message out telling everyone to look for a strange vampire dressed in black. I tried to focus on the fact that there was a potential lead and not the fact that I was being stalked by a mysterious figure with apparent super powers. Of course, that did nothing to keep me from freaking out.
“We’ve got a visitor,” Andre said. I looked at the hemograph and saw that he was referring to a vampire who managed to sneak past us, heading for the center of the cemetery. When they stopped, we waited a moment to see what their next move would be, but there wasn’t one.
“What the hell just happened?” I asked as I watched the yellow signature on my screen flicker and begin to fade.
“Come on,” he said and pulled me along the path until we found the vamp.
“Oh my god!” I turned my head away from the gruesome site before me. The body leaned against the side of a tomb. His arms and legs were bound and he had been gutted. “How is this possible?” I asked, slightly hysterical. “We saw him walk in here.”
“We saw someone walk in here,” he said quietly. “Maybe they dumped him and we didn’t notice.” He went back through the hemograph log and I did the same. Neither one of us showed anyone leaving the cemetery. When we switched back, however, there was another fading signal.
“I don’t like this,” I said.
“Nor do I,” Andre muttered with a curse as another vamp made their way through the cemetery gate. “Let’s go,” he said, indicating that we should go after the live vampire before checking out the dead one, and took off, sprinting toward the signal.
“We’re heading in,” I heard Edgar say over the headset as I stumbled to catch up to Andre.
Luckily, I caught myself before falling, but when I looked back, I saw that what I had tripped over was the leg of yet another dead vampire. I realized with a sickening sense of dread that the body definitely hadn’t been there a minute before. I was about to show Andre, b
ut he was already gone. He must not have noticed that I was no longer behind him. Realizing that I was now alone, in what basically amounted to a deadly and unfamiliar labyrinth, spooked me enough to run the remaining distance to the gates, keeping an eye out for dead vampires.
Of course, fear does terrible things to my sense of direction, so I ended up at the back wall instead of the front. Okay, keep it together, I told myself as the familiar and cold sensation of anxiety crept over me. My heart was already hammering in my chest. After taking a moment to clear my head, I reminded myself that dead vampires posed no threat to my safety, but panicking in a moment like this was deadly. With shaking hands, I checked my GPS and began walking back to the front. Suddenly, I heard low voices whispering nearby and I froze.
“Andre, there are people here,” I whispered into my headset. “I can hear them.”
“I only see one,” Andre whispered back.
“That’s odd,” I muttered and checked my hemograph. There was only one signal.
“Be careful,” Andre warned. “I’m heading back to you.”
I crept quietly up the main walk, pressing as close to the crumbling crypts as I could to stay out of the faint moonlight. When I got within a few feet of the signal, I stopped and glanced at the hemograph again. There was still only one signal, but I could hear two distinct voices and one was clearly terrified. Either I was dealing with a vampire with major split personality issues or there was something wrong with the hemograph. I had a bad feeling neither answer was correct.
I crept toward the voices, keeping an eye on where the others were, just in case I needed backup. I peeked carefully around the corner and spotted the vampire, tied to a rusted iron gate surrounding a family plot. At first, I thought he truly was alone, but following his terrified gaze, I saw a figure perched on the top of another monument. Male or female, I couldn't tell because they were dressed from head to toe in a matte black suit that was so effective, even with perfect night vision, I nearly missed them.
“Andre, it’s him, the ninja vamp!” I whispered, realizing this was the person Miles had encountered earlier in the night. Still, they didn’t appear on the hemograph, which was baffling. Unless their outfit was lined with lead, something was incredibly wrong.
“W-why?” the vampire kept asking. “I didn’t do anything. He approached me! I didn’t say anything. I didn’t…”
“You allowed yourself to be seen.” The voice was female, but sounded positively ancient, almost like the voice of an old hag in a children’s fairy tale. “You know the rules.” With cat-like grace that in no way matched her voice, the woman leapt from the monument and pulled out a dagger that she aimed at the vampire.
“Stop!” I stepped out of the shadows, unsheathing two of my own weapons and holding them in an attack position. The dagger paused, inches from the vampire’s neck, as the woman turned to me. The featureless black mask made this a lot creepier than I expected. “Who are you?” I asked.
“Lucy, what are you doing?” I heard Andre say in my ear.
A low, cackling laugh came from behind the mask. “I don’t appreciate interruptions, poppet.” Before I could take another step, she ran the dagger across the vampire’s neck, severing his head completely in one motion. She took a step forward, reaching toward me. I raised my CPA and lunged to attack, but stumbled when my weapon failed to land on its intended target. I looked around blindly for a moment until I heard her cackling laugh above me. The vampire was back on top of the monument. The fact that I hadn’t even seen her move was both puzzling and terrifying.
“Your name is not on my blade tonight, little girl, but fear not, we will meet again. Perhaps sooner than you think.” With another leap she was gone, like a magician disappearing into a puff of smoke.
“Anyone see where she went?” I jumped as Lance’s voice broke the silence.
“There’s nowhere she could have gone,” Edgar replied. I looked up to see him standing on the wall a few feet from me. “She’s got to be hiding around here somewhere.”
Andre appeared around the corner. “Are you okay?”
“A little spooked, but I’m not hurt. Did you see where she went?”
“No, but I heard everything. We need to get out of here.”
“Isaac’s on his way with a van,” Lance said, jogging up to us. “We’ll grab the remaining bodies and clean this up.” He looked at the beheaded corpse with grim disgust. “Get Lucy back to headquarters. We’ll meet you there in a few.”
For once, I didn’t argue.
Chapter 9
There were still a few hours of darkness left by the time Andre and I got back to headquarters, but other than the usual bump in the number of vampires trolling for victims on Halloween, none of the other teams reported anything out of the ordinary. Aside from Miles, no one else had encountered the strange ninja vampire either. Andre went immediately to his office to run some simulations and determine if it wasn’t just a glitch in the way the hemograph read a previously unseen anomaly. After they dropped the bodies off with the lab, Lance and Edgar came up to compare notes on what we had seen.
According to Edgar, who had been standing on the wall, after she threatened me, she leapt to the next monument and disappeared completely. Even more troubling was the fact that from where he was standing, Lance could not see her at all unless she was moving. Everyone’s description of the encounter matched with what Miles had recounted earlier.
“You know, this kind of reminds me of those ES freaks,” Edgar said thoughtfully. “Maybe she skinned one and made a suit out of them.”
“Yeah, but at least they show up on the hemograph. Maybe the material just has similar properties,” I said with a shudder. I seriously did not want to think about the fact that Edgar’s suggestion was not out of the realm of possibility. “Did anyone follow those three that were leaving when we showed up?” I asked, almost forgetting about them entirely. “If they were Daughters, and I bet they were, they might know something.”
“Last I saw of them they were headed toward Dennis and Michelle, who had a lock on them,” Lance said. “I haven’t checked back,” he added sending a message to the team. After a minute, he read the reply and cursed.
“Bad news?” I asked.
“Michelle tried to talk to them but they kept walking, pretending they didn’t hear her. Then they crossed paths with Saba and Penny. Needless to say, they aren’t available for questioning any longer.”
“Dammit,” I hissed. I didn’t care if there were different rules for Halloween. Saba knew we wanted those particular vampires alive.
“They were probably drugged anyway,” Edgar rationalized. Just because he was probably right didn’t make me any less pissed off.
As they were leaving, my father came up from the lab, looking troubled. He told Lance and Edgar to go on without him and that he would catch up soon.
“Dad? What’s wrong?” I asked after the other two had left.
“I knew the last victim,” he said quietly. “I had spoken to him not more than an hour before he was killed.”
I was a little confused by his apparent worry. Not all of the mods that we talked to ended up joining the outreach and a lot of them ended up dead, but I’d never seen my father get this upset over losing one before.
“Mamma was right,” he said with a sigh. “Something is definitely up.”
“Wait, you mean you actually knew him?” I asked, suddenly understanding why he was so upset. “Was he one of the vamps Ida told me about that used to hang around back behind Gilly’s?”
“Yeah,” he said with a tired nod. “His name was Josh. I hadn’t seen him in almost thirty years, but I remembered him. He wasn’t quite right though. I could tell while I was talking to him that something was off.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I’m not sure, exactly. He was acting nervous, but that was nothing new. That group was always a little shifty, but they were harmless, for the most part. Never did want to accept help from any
one and this time was no exception, but he still seemed different. Now that I think about it, he might have been drugged. Dammit!” He slammed his fist down on the table. “How could I have missed what should have been obvious?”
“You couldn’t have known,” I said quietly. “It’s not your fault he’s dead.”
He looked at me with an expression full of guilt and regret. “I should have known something was wrong. I should have paid attention to where he went after he walked away.”
“I don’t think that would have mattered. That… whatever she was… she must have seen you talking to him,” I said. “He was saying that he didn’t tell you anything.”
“No, he didn’t say much of anything at all,” he said with a sigh. “If I see another one, I’m not giving them a chance to run. They weren’t bad kids, Lucy. They were just lost and too damned proud to take the help mamma was offering.” I knew exactly what he was going through. It was the same heartbreak that I felt every time a vamp I tried to save ended up dead.
“Dad,” I said softly. “You can’t save everyone. You told me that once. It applies to you as well.”
“I know, but tell that to my conscience,” he said with a mirthless laugh. “I’m sorry, baby doll. I didn’t mean to bring you down with me.”
“Don’t be,” I said and gave him a hug. “We care too much. It may be our biggest weakness, but it’s also our biggest strength.”
“You’re starting to sound like mamma,” he said with a soft chuckle. “I need to get back out there. You gonna be okay?”
“Yeah,” I said and put on a smile for his benefit. “Just be careful, dad.”
Not long after that, Evan checked in, saying that Lance had briefed him on everything that had happened in the cemetery. Andre and I were given strict orders to stay off the streets until we left for Paris. Despite the nagging feeling of being completely useless, I was actually grateful for the break. In the week since we were forced to move back into headquarters, I hadn’t had a moment of peace, which was taking a toll on my health. I wasn’t getting sick as often, but the headaches were frequent and occasionally debilitating. The near constant thud in my head seemed to intensify around large crowds and hiding out in my room wasn’t always an option.
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 71