- 25 -
"Well, look who decided to join us," Max said, sitting on the edge of my bed.
"Where am I?" I covered my eyes to protect them from the bright light in the room.
"Nebraska Methodist Hospital in Omaha," he said. "They rushed you here the moment they pulled into the station."
"Guess that means they got the train running again."
He nodded, "no thanks to your EMP." He walked over to turn off the TV before returning to his spot at the foot of my bed. "How did you pull that one off? You could barely create a spark before I left."
I placed my hand on the guardrail to my right, using it to pull myself up. "Apparently you don't need to create the spark. Only push it out."
"Good job, kid. You may surpass me yet."
"Doubt it," I said with a smile.
"You had me worried sick!" Stacy said as she walked into the room with three large cups of coffee. "I tried calling you for two days straight."
"Kid fried his phone," Max said, laughing.
"Add that to the list of things I need to replace." I tried to sit up on the edge of the bed, but I decide against it after feeling a sharp pain in the back of my head. "Why are you here anyways, Max? I thought this was your week to work for the council."
"It is," he said, sipping his coffee, undoubtedly black. The way he always drank it. "They gave me an easy job this time around."
"Never happens to me," I snorted. "What'd you do?"
"Still doing it."
"Watching me sleep?"
Max laughed. "Heavens no, boy. They wanted me to make sure you got to your appointment."
I sighed. "They can't let a man rot in a coma, can they?"
"They can. I let them know you found yourself in another one."
"So I got out of it?" I asked, smile forming on the corner of my lips.
"Not this time," he said. "They want you to report the moment you are well. I get to stay here and babysit until you are ready."
"So," I said. "When do we leave?"
Max got up and walked across the room, finally sitting on a faded red recliner in the corner of the room. "Not until the doctors release you."
I sighed. After being awake a few minutes, I was ready to get out of this piece of junk bed and into my own. The thought of the stalker nurses in the Boulder hospital didn't help things. I laid back on the bed and closed my eyes. If they weren't going to let me know, I was going to get some sleep.
Real sleep this time.
"Not so quick, champ. You have a visitor coming soon."
"Who would want to see me?" I asked, perplexed.
"I took the liberty of hiring a councilor for your defense. He is going to be stuck to you like stink on crap until he knows everything that happened to you in Boulder."
"Just tell him to turn on Fox," I said, yawning. "They surely have the Cliff's Notes version running on repeat by now."
"About that," Stacy said. "I called your friend Sam too. Managed to get him to erase all mention of you being in Colorado for the last few weeks. As far as anyone knows, you never left the office."
"What about now?"
"Fell at the zoo," Max laughed, showing me a Photoshopped picture of me lying on the ground next to the tiger pen. I assumed the true picture was taken here in Omaha, but I could've been wrong.
Even with the commotion, I closed my eyes only to have my relaxation interrupted by a knock at the door.
"Is he awake?" a voice said through the cracked door.
"Come in Eli. Take a seat."
"Eli?" I said. "As in the Eli in charge of the vampire clans in Wisconsin?"
"The very," Eli said, bowing. I looked to the window, noticing it was dark out. I didn't have a chance to look for a clock, but I guessed it was somewhere around ten at night. He was wearing a sharp red buttoned up silk shirt over a pair of black dress pants held up by a black leather belt. He had a phone near his left pocket, clipped onto his belt for easy access. Unlike most vampires I've seen, his face is almost normal looking, but I knew the reason when he took Max's seat on the edge of the bed as I could smell the makeup from over here. He had a hooked nose, dark black hair and a set of hazel eyes. Unless you knew better, you wouldn't know he was a vampire. "If you don't mind, I'll be asking the questions from here."
"Do I have another choice?"
Eli looked up grinning wide enough to show off his perfectly whitened teeth. "You do."
Read the next book in the series - Vampire for Hire
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Vampire for Hire Chapter Sampler
- 1 -
Never before had I been so close to a vampire. After this is over, I vowed to never get so close again. Max meant the best, sending me to Milwaukee to recover from the incident on the train. The council was upset with me over my actions in Boulder, but they promised to give me as much time as I needed to make a full recovery. Of course, that just meant it would hurt that much more if they did a mind wipe, but it was a small price to pay to get prepared.
"Let's try this again," Eli said, adjusting the blue and gray diagonally striped tie he made me buy a week ago. It was meant to match the blue-gray suit Stacy shipped once she was back at the office though it didn't seem to work. "Why were you in Boulder?"
"I was called in by my good friend, Detective Trevor Fields to investigate a rash of accidents in a short span."
Eli sighed, the frustration showing on his pale face. "I know that's the truth, but you couldn't come up with something better?"
"Like going there to commit terrorism?" I turned to the mirror and adjusted the tie to my liking. It was too late to embellish a story, not that I wanted to. If the truth wasn't good enough for a stuffy group of wizards, then it was time to cut my ties to them.
"You couldn't tell them you were there to take down Bradley from the beginning?"
I shook my head. "They wouldn't have sanctioned me to do that. I'm not exactly on their good side." They only called upon their most trusted people to take down the worst of us. When he wasn't doing anything better, Max was usually their go-to guy. In my case they sent Cedric Rogers, a wizard well known for his ability with fire magic. He usually played second fiddle to Max though it never seemed to bother him the way I thought it would. That's probably why he volunteered to hunt me down, just to have something to throw in Max's face.
"For someone who could be facing death, you seem to not care about your own welfare. I'll never know what Max sees in you."
"Probably my willingness to stand up for what I believe in," I said, taking a seat on the plush sofa in the conference room. "Or my brash stupidity."
Eli covered his mouth, failing to hold in a laugh. "Perhaps it's your honesty."
I let a smile creep from the corner of my mouth. "Where is Max anyway?"
"The council decided it was best if he wasn't part of the proceedings. They wanted to make sure the only outbursts they faced came from you."
I slammed my fist on the coffee table which sent my coffee cup tumbling to the floor, its contents rapidly staining the wolf pelt rug in the middle of the room. "That's a bunch of crap. There's one guy in the whole world who's always been in my corner, and they are going to make him sit this one out?"
Eli strolled across the room and took a seat on the couch. "That's why Max sent me here. I may believe you are foolish for wanting to flaunt the truth, but I'm here to make sure they don't cross the line."
"What are you going to do if they do? Bite them all?"
He laughed before pulling out a small switch in his pocket. "Max is close enough to be at the meeting in a matter of minutes. He isn't going to let them take you without a
fight, but I doubt it comes down to that."
I shrugged my shoulders and plopped back on the couch. "I wish I had your confidence. Cedric wanted me wiped the moment he met me."
"Which is why Max gave his statement to the high council before leaving the building. He wanted to make sure they knew you had someone up high in your corner." He pulled some paperwork out of his briefcase and sat it on my lap. "He also wanted me to let them know how you are helping the community at large."
"Cedric will prove otherwise." Lord knows I gave him plenty of evidence to the contrary while I was in Boulder.
"That's why we arranged to have some character witnesses present."
I looked over at him, surprised. "Why didn't you tell me?" Part of me was worried. While I go out of my way to help my clients, I tend to be brash to those who aren't my ideal clients. Even to the point of walking away from a case if it proves unworthy. That doesn't count the ones I do help and how most of them don't approve of my methods though they are all happy with the results. I've never been one to take a case I can't handle.
"We didn't want you to get too confident," he said, looking me over. "But it seems the news had the opposite reaction."
"I would've talked you out of it." Call it a hunch, but I have a habit of rubbing people the wrong way. It's not that I go out of my way to tick people off, but I can't honestly say I'm willing to go the extra mile to help on my own either. Now once I get invested, it's another story as I proved in Boulder. Too bad it took Trevor's death for that to happen.
"Surely there is a handful of people in the world you haven't angered over the years."
I nodded. "Too bad they outnumber the other side at least six to one."
Eli laughed and strolled across the room before taking a seat on the plush recliner in the corner. He pulled his briefcase up to his lap and opened it up before pulling a folder out. "As of now, it's Cedric's word against yours. There is plenty of precedent showing it takes a lot more than that to turn a vote."
"Be honest with me," I said, trying to hide my nervous twitch. "What do you think about me?"
He sat there for a second before giving his answer. "I can't give you a resounding yes, but I see enough good in you to put me at ease."
I snorted knowing the first week he was with me I tried my hardest to run him off. Part of it was my stubbornness showing its ugly head, but that wasn't the whole story. Even through all the things Max has told me about Eli and his clan, I found it hard to let myself get close. I know I'm a youngster when it comes to the affairs of the supernatural, but I've never felt comfortable around vampires, werewolves, or any of the other creatures that go bump in the night. Throughout history there are plenty of examples of how the other species have used, and often abused, humanity to fulfill their needs and desires. While the whole food chain issue is part of the problem, things are more deeply seated than that.
"What would it take for you to change your mind?" I asked, truly concerned.
"I'd have to think on it," he said, digging back into his briefcase. "But the fact that you asked means a lot in my book."
I tried to smile, but there wasn't one to be had. Without knowing what other's perceive as my flaws, it would be difficult to win a personality contest like the one I knew I was facing. Eli and Max may have my best intentions in mind, but I knew neither of them had been on the bad side of the council. Eli especially.
Max was older than me, so there was a chance he had a rebellious streak when he was younger, but his current role isn't one that they hand out lightly. If I had to guess, they only give those jobs to people they trust. People who like to play by the rules.
Sure, Max didn't have a problem bending the rules, he just does it in a way that doesn't get him caught. If I got out of this in one piece I was going to have to ask him how he did it all these years though I suspected I already knew the truth. Without cameras around to watch his every move, he had a lot more flexibility in what he did. As long as he didn't do anything to get the attention of the local news, which was slow to respond on the best of days, he was fine. Today, everybody is a potential newscaster, carrying phones in their pocket that were better than the best cameras around when Max was young, and it was only going to get worse the longer things went on.
I was about to ask him another question, but our attention went to the door when we hear a knock. It opened a few moments later. A younger man with short black hair and a well trimmed beard poked his head in the room. He couldn't be a day over twenty if I was being generous. His outfit was a white suit jacket over a white buttoned-up shirt with a matching white tie. He didn't come in any further, but I knew he would be wearing a pair of white dress pants as well. This was the color of the servants of the council. Everyone who joins wears the colors at some point or another, usually for the first few months after you join. "The council is ready to see you, Mr. Gilmore." He didn't wait for our reaction before leaving, the door shutting softly behind him.
"You ready for this?" Eli asked, grabbing his briefcase off the counter.
I nodded. "Ready as I'll ever be."
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Other Books in the Nephalem Files Universe
Sparked
Vampire for Hire
Dead of Night
Thank you again for reading my book. I spent countless hours writing and editing my book to make it the best I could. I then sent the book to an editor in order to catch the things that I may have missed.
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AUTHOR'S NOTE
I can remember the first fantasy book I read as a kid. It was Dragons of Autumn Twilight and the rest of the Dragonlance Chronicles. Raistlin, Tas, Tanis, and the rest of the cast had me putting my name on the list to borrow the book at least once a year at my school library. From the first read I fell in love.
From there my love of fantasy turned into a love of gaming. Dungeons and Dragons, Rift, and Shadowrun firmly had my attention throughout my teenage years. There was hardly a week... a day when my friends and I didn't sit down to play something. Even when we weren't playing, we had a blast just creating characters or talking about the settings.
Eventually, I taught myself how to be a dungeon master of the games. This allowed me to come up with scenarios and stories for my friends to play through. I didn't need any preparation beforehand, everything I needed came from my head.
I don't play the games like I used to, but I'm a much more avid reader than I've ever been. I'm thankful for my Kindle Unlimited subscription that allows me to keep something on the fly, even when things have been tight. Some of my favorite authors are Brandon Sanderson, George R.R. Martin, the late Robert Jordan amongst others.
Sparked: The Nephalem Files (Book 1) Page 15