by R. E. Carr
“Actually, we don’t,” Kyle blurted out. All eyes turned to him. “The procedure didn’t work.”
“But . . . Morgan . . . the eyes . . . the voice,” Paige stammered.
“Bam-Yin and Dr. Pang loaded Morgan up with their blood. That’s why they were so weak in the fight. Morgan was a distraction. Turns out he’s a pretty good actor - and a better shapeshifter than we ever gave him credit for—”
“But if that was not Lorcan—?” the Jaeger started to ask. His face fell. “Then we are lost.”
“…Not exactly,” Kyle said. He pointed to his rucksack. “Um, Lorcan . . . is in there.”
“Excuse me?” was all Paige could reply.
“I see,” the Jaeger replied. “Then let us hope that our outside allies can find a way to help you.”
Paige raised a brow and asked, “What outside allies?”
16
“You know, I could get used to this town,” Gail purred, licking her lips. A waitress slumped against the vampire’s shoulder, her bleached-blonde curls tickling Gail’s chest. Javier looked up from the busboy’s wrist and gave his bride a wink. Gail dove back in for seconds.
“Make sure you don’t take too much from . . .” Javier said, leaning over to check the name badge, “. . . Sheila. After all, we don’t want to have a repeat of the hot chicken incident, no?”
“How was I supposed to resist someone who tasted so good?” Gail protested as she pulled away. “I never knew that hot sauce and pickles could actually combine with hemoglobin to make such sweet magic!”
“See, this is why Nashville is such a tourist destination,” Javier purred. “The Foodies all swear by it. Though I would personally argue that Mexicans still taste better, mi amor.”
Gail slid around the booth and let poor Sheila flop onto some pleather. Gail curled into Javier’s lap and kissed him roughly, biting down to get a taste of his lip. “Mmm, I agree,” she cooed in his ear. “Now, that we’ve had a snack, how about a little more fun?”
“Well, I did want to test out your strength just a little bit more, mi amor, and I do have some work tonight,” Javier said. He toyed with Gail’s bottom lip as she gave him a tremendous pout. She responded by sliding back to her own seat and dragging out her laptop.
“Work, work, work,” she sighed. She quickly checked the waitress for a pulse. Once satisfied that she wouldn’t be hiding a body later, Gail dove into her own research.
Javier watched her, a smile on his face. He took a moment to ease the busboy into a nearby chair and slipped the pointedly oblivious bartender another hundred. As he shuffled back to their booth in the corner he rubbed his chin.
“Gafas!” He said excitedly. When Gail gave him a blank stare he clarified with, “Gafas . . . . Glasses. We should get you some.”
“But I don’t need glasses,” Gail said, now eyeing him suspiciously.
“Yes, you do,” he protested. “They would be super cute on you. When you stare at the screen and you stick out your tongue just a wee bit when you concentrate, it is adorable. The only thing you need to perfect your sexy bibliotecaria look . . . is a pair of glasses. I can just imagine it now.”
“That busboy was high, wasn’t he?” Gail muttered. Still, she did smile, as Javier gave her his best puppy gaze out from under his mop of dark hair. She finally sighed, “You are lucky that you are adorkable, Señor Azarola.”
Gail turned back to her laptop, a rather snazzy lightweight model covered with stickers from some video game. She distracted herself for a few minutes puttering around the internet on the restaurant’s Wi-Fi, and made a point not to give Javier any attention. She noticed him shuffling a bit to and fro, but quickly became lost in a story about a rash of disappearances just off the strip in downtown Nashville.
“That’s odd,” she muttered, copying the address over to her growing spreadsheet of unsolved mysteries in the Nashville metropolitan area. By the time she looked up again, Sheila had been moved as well, and the busboy was already back to mopping tables as if nothing had happened.
“Hmm? Javier asked.
“Just a sudden spike in murders and missing persons around here,” Gail muttered.
“Not including the ones we contributed to?” Javier asked innocently.
“Nope, not including those,” Gail sighed. She pulled up a map. “I don’t know why I started this little investigation . . . maybe because one of the people missing is employed by a corporation near and dear to our lifeless hearts?”
“A Biogenesys employee?” Javier asked.
“One found dead, another just reported missing. It’s also out in the papers. I would have thought if there was a little something weird going on, that they would do a better job covering it up. Am I being paranoid?” Gail asked.
Javier shook his head. “I’ll check with a few people,” he said softly. “There is something strange going on, that’s for certain, mi amor.”
“I’m not going to find more videos of myself, am I?” Gail asked. “At least if I do, I hope I’m a little less vague. What was the point of being the lynchpin in some vampire resistance, if I can’t even remember it?”
“That I cannot tell you,” Javier said as he took a seat next to her again. “But, you must admit that it would be muy awkward if you wanted to be the lynchpin of some vampire resistance now, no?”
She smiled just enough to show her fangs. “Sí,” she replied, giving him a little wink. “Still, we are sort of sneaking around some other vampire’s stuff and causing a little mayhem, right? Isn’t that a sort of vampire resistance?”
“Sí,” Javier said with a raised brow. He didn’t get to continue his thought, as his phone buzzed on the table. He picked it up with a deep sigh. The sigh turned to a look of concern as he recognized the number. Gail frowned as Javier slipped away once more.
Even though he had walked to a darkened corner of the dive – ironically to the skeleton of the long-extinct pay phone - Gail could just hear the faintest traces of him saying, “Tonight? I can, but—”
Gail closed her eyes and focused solely on her hearing. A crackly, older voice just echoed in Javier’s speaker.
“There has been an escalation of timeline, Fox,” the voice said. “And my lures have apparently been too subtle to get any of the relevant parties interested.”
“The deaths are being noticed, dama alguacil,” Javier replied.
“I need that idiot Kevin to take notice, Fox!”
“Sí. I will redouble my efforts.”
“Do not forget, Fox, if you fail me again, there will be repercussions far greater than last time. Am I clear?”
“Sí, we will make some noise, and promise that all the interested parties will come.”
“Good, and put that child bride of yours to work. You might be an imbecile, but she is not.”
Gail tried her best not to snicker at that last comment. Instead she switched focus to the Project Zero notes she was tasked with deciphering. While she couldn’t read any Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, she was starting to make sense of the numbers and chemical formulae scratched into notes. She gave Javier a little smile as he returned to the booth.
“So, some little old lady phones and calls you an imbecile?” Gail asked sweetly. “Also, what am I supposed to get to work on other than this?”
“Your hearing has already gotten better?” Javier asked. “You know, if you were truly cagey, you should have concealed that from me, mi amor.”
“And start off our eternity together by lying and hiding things? That would be cruel, don’t you think?”
Javier’s smile tightened just a bit. “Point taken,” he sighed.
“So, Kevin?” Gail growled. “You want to lure that monster, Kevin, here? Was that actually the sheriff on the phone? Have you been working with her this whole time?”
Javier hemmed and hawed for a moment. Gail returned to her screen. He listened to the furious tapping of her fingers until he finally just sighed and nodded. He furrowed his brows and leaned over so sh
e could actually see him nod again. She rolled her eyes.
“Listen, mi amor, there is so much to tell you, but there will be a time and place. After all, we now have so much time.”
Gail glowered. “Time? I hear over and over again from you how we have time, and I . . . I have to be patient,” she snapped. “I get it. I’m not asking for your five hundred years of history in a day.”
Javier did a little thumbs-up motion. Gail offered, “Six hundred?”
He did the motion again.
“Thousand?” she sighed. He gave her his best apologetic smile. Still, she remained positively pissed. “I don’t care if you spewed your bullshit to Julius Caesar, I can deal with that in time, but for now, for right now, can you stop hiding everything from me? You might be ancient, but I’m not, and I don’t have this magical perspective. Also, did it ever occur to you that I might be a little bit upset that you are dealing with the vampire who tortured me, erased my memories, and then tortured me again?”
“The thought did cross my mind,” Javier confessed.
“And yet you did it anyway,” Gail sighed. “What, were you hoping that I wouldn’t find out and this would just blow over?”
“That thought did also cross my mind.”
Gail closed her laptop, and quietly put it in her Hello Kitty bag. Javier watched, sheepishly, as she straightened her dress, grabbed her satchel, and wiped her mouth one more time just to be sure there weren’t any rogue Sheila bits still hanging about. Gail made it all the way out of the bar and nearly to the car when something flickered out of the corner of her eye. She blinked and Javier was leaning against the driver’s side door.
“Damn, you are fast for a one-legged man,” Gail said sullenly.
“You will catch up . . . in time,” he said, trying a bit of smolder with his smile.
“You really don’t get it, do you, Javier?” Gail asked. “When I close my eyes every morning, I still have nightmares. I have nightmares about him, and every night the nightmares get just a tiny bit clearer. Jesus Christ! No person should ever have PTSD over a guy named Kevin.”
Javier grew pensive and rubbed his chin. Gail made a move for the door, but he slid over to block her way.
“One can be ancient and still be a fool, mi amor,” Javier whispered in her ear. “However, whether you like it or not, I must deal with the sheriff, for both our sakes.”
“And are you going to even tell me what that means?” Gail sighed. “Or just gloss it over and tell me we have time?”
“I . . . deserved that,” he acquiesced. “Come on, let’s walk, and talk for a while. I’ll tell you why I must deal with the sheriff, all the reasons, I promise.”
“Fine,” Gail said. She did take a moment to toss her bag in the trunk. She raised a brow as she saw a bunch of baseball bats tucked next to Javier’s guitar. “Do I want to know?”
“I told you, I want to test your strength,” Javier said. “Now come on, let’s take a walk.”
They began to promenade out onto a particularly seedy section of Dickerson Lane. As they passed the dive bar front, Javier made a point to show Gail the little sticker on the door. At first glance, it was just a torch and three letter Bs. “See that little red dot below the middle B?” he asked. “That changes it from the Better Business Bureau to the Better Bondsman Bureau. If you see that sign, you know you’re among friends, mi amor.”
“Huh,” Gail said, peering closely at the tiny lettering beneath the expected words. She then muttered, “It’s like the arrow in the FedEx logo after all.”
“Just like your hearing is getting better, your smell will get better too. You’ll be able to sniff out bondsmen soon enough. If you can’t quite pin them down, just say you’re a fan of Camelot. They will either think you love musicals, or they will get your drift.”
“You learn something new every night,” Gail sighed. “And you are digressing, Javier.”
“It’s what I do,” he said with a wink. He took her arm, and waved to the masses of seedy and drunken characters wandering about. “What a lovely night.”
Gail gave a few nervous glances to a group making deals at the corner. She picked up her pace slightly.
“You’re a ferocious predator of the night, a killer—”
“For food,” she interjected.
“Of course,” he said gently. “But you still carry the baggage of being just a little human girl. Your thinking is still changing, and there is much you don’t yet understand.”
“Condescension will get you nowhere, loverboy,” Gail growled in his ear.
“I need to teach you our ways,” he sighed. “You need to understand more of what you can and cannot do. These thugs on the street, no matter how frightening they seem now, are just comida – comida that can be manipulated and controlled. Comprende?”
“Comprende,” she replied in an exaggerated version of his accent. “Let me guess, I don’t have to be scared of these people, but I need to learn to be scared of the sheriff and her goons?”
“See, you do catch on quick,” he said with glee. “Now, I told you that we have different classes among our kind, but I never really explained it all the way, no?”
“No.”
“Well you have the Cesare off in Europe – the old, oh so old vampiros. They are like the, um, House of Lords in Britain. They think they have the most power, but they are mostly rich and irrelevant. The modern families . . . they make up something like the House of Commons, and have the bulk of the power in the world. They also have been known to band together from time to time and name a vampire king. It’s mostly for show, but can be quite influential in the right hands. Arthur Pendragon was the last and . . . probably . . . current king. It’s like your president, no?”
“You’re giving me the vampire version of Schoolhouse Rock. So the sheriff is part of the judicial branch or the police force?” Gail asked.
“Both actually. The sheriff of each domain has great power. If you are nobility you get some leeway, Cesare, a little bit more, but for the common vampire, the sheriff of a land is all but a god. We might only have four laws, but they are always watching for any infraction, and if you break those laws, you are at the sheriff’s mercy. Actually, if you aren’t old and powerful enough, you are at their mercy for even the tiniest insult. Comprende?”
“So, the rich and powerful get passes, and the regular folks are screwed? Why did I hope that being a vampire would be any different than being plain old Gail?”
“That’s the thing, you have a little bit of a pass, mi amor. You are not Gail Filipovic anymore. You are Gail of House Harker, ward of Dama Harker herself. I, on the other hand, may be a true Azarola, but the name is only used to mock me. I am only allowed to travel in the circles that I do by the grace of the sheriff – especially now that my old friend is disgraced and missing to boot. If she gets mad enough, I might as well leave the country.”
“So basically, you are her bitch?”
“Oh, sí,” he replied. “I stole her precious test subject, and for all she knows, I turned you myself out of spite, and then covered it up by sweet talking Dama Harker. However, I am also no friend of King Arthur and his traitorous father.”
He punctuated his statement by spitting on the sidewalk. Gail squeezed his arm.
“I am not a test subject anymore,” Gail grumbled. “And I don’t belong to anyone. Comprende?”
He squeezed her arm in return. “Perhaps you belong with someone, no? Is that allowed?”
Gail rolled her eyes, but still leaned against him as they continued to stroll. A few of the locals eyed her prim floral number with surprise. One guy dared to ask, “How much?” as she passed.
She stopped and blew him a kiss. “You can’t afford it, baby,” she said sweetly. She then whispered to Javier, “Can I eat him?”
Javier sniffed the air. He shook his head subtly. He then flashed his fangs to the big guy, who went scurrying back to his pack of fellow thugs.
“He’s a scout for another hunter,
mi amor,” Javier explained. “It’s like I thought, they are getting bold.”
Gail raised a brow. “There are other vampires here?” she hissed.
“Commoners galore,” Javier muttered. He nodded toward a pair of bright eyes in the shadows. “They aren’t used to seeing creatures like us. They think you have to be all, how you say, showy to be one of los vampiros.”
Gail took stock of a big guy with slicked back hair and a dark suit. He all but oozed nouveau riche smarm as he smoked skinny cigars under a street lamp. He caught her gaze and flashed a surprisingly tiny pair of fangs.
“They are . . . so unimpressive,” she muttered as they kept walking. Javier smiled proudly.
“Well, you are spoiled by mine,” he said with a wink.
“Wait, are these vampires responsible for the murders, the disappearances?” Gail asked, suddenly alarmed.
“Now you are being racist, mi amor. The first thing the sheriff and the nobles assume is that the commoners are causing all the trouble.”
“Oh,” Gail said, suddenly shamed. Javier winked again.
“Of course, it’s usually their fault. That’s why they don’t move up in the ranks,” he said. He groaned as Gail jabbed him in the ribs. “You have your mother’s delicate touch already, mi amor.”
“Is there a point, Javier?” she asked.
“Always. Keep watching.”
A few blocks later she saw a similar gentleman with the same flashy suit and eurotrash look. Next to him stood two goons who also flashed remarkably insignificant canines. Less than a block later and the scent of blood wafted on the evening breeze.
“How many of the reported disappearances were from around here?” Javier asked.
“Only a few,” Gail murmured. “Not enough to be statistically aberrant, I mean.”
“Exactamente,” Javier said. “It’s tourists and suburbanites, no? What does that tell you?”
“I have no idea, other than we are probably in the wrong place looking for the real trouble,” Gail offered. Javier swooped in and kissed her.