by Terry Spear
Once the man had bitten into Crichton’s arm, he said, “Now you will do as I say. Go to one of the bedrooms on the right and lie down for now. I’ll call you when I need you.”
He needed to do this in an organized way, or he could lose control of those he hadn’t turned already. He sure didn’t need anyone running to the police, warning them a rogue was turning people into vampires in the city.
So far, they hadn’t had to deal with the police concerning the rogue vampires eliminating the hunters. He suspected they were afraid to get involved, though calling on other hunters to take out the vampire threat could become a reality if they discovered he was turning humans. But he didn’t have the luxury to leave and find a new bunch of humans to turn in another city or state even, that would help to eliminate their concern. Rutherford, as much as Crichton despised the self-righteous aristocrat, at least had done that right, taking humans from different locations, regions, and bringing them here already turned. But the problem was they weren't friends and often that could cause more trouble than not. Bickering and rival newly turned vampires could be a pain.
He started on the next human until he'd gotten through all the ones he'd brought to the condo. He had a slight buzz from the guys who had been drinking beers, but not enough to incapacitate him.
The newly turned vampires could fight in a few hours, less time, if necessary, like if they suddenly had a hunter threat. He wanted to hold off showing anyone his cards until he had at least another ten turned. He thought fifteen to twenty was a good number to begin with to help him eliminate the hunter threat and even take out some of Rutherford's vampires. After all, if Rutherford hadn't died and he finally was healed up enough to take Crichton to task, he could easily give his vampires the order to terminate him. Hell, once Crichton had enough of his own vampires, they could take out them, and the hunters.
Crichton was beginning to think there had to be a lot more than one hunter.
Once all his blood bonds were sleeping, he went out again. He saw a couple of Rutherford's vampires milling around on the sidewalk near his complex and that gave him pause. What were they doing here? He'd been careful not to be seen, not to allow anyone to know exactly where he was staying. He could have just vanished and reappeared where he wanted to be if he was going somewhere far away, but he couldn't do that if he was stalking humans to turn into his minions, and like a pied piper, taking them to his condo to change them. He didn’t want to get caught doing that on the street.
He was about to vanish when one of the vampires turned and saw him. Too late now, but at least they didn't see him leave the building. "Have you seen Whitefoot or any of the other ancients?" he asked, as if he cared. All he cared about was Rutherford's whereabouts.
"No. We've been watching for any sign of the hunter who's killing vampires though," the one man said.
"Do you know of any of the vampires who have gone missing for sure?" Crichton asked. It felt like a black void out there where it seemed the vampires were but hidden from his sight.
"Alex. He said he was going to check the Camerons’ house and he never came back, and I can't get hold of him. I didn't know him from before, but we just hit it off. He reminded me of a friend back home, funny, serious, just fun. He said you sent him to Camerons’ house looking for Dennison. But no one's seen Dennison either. Sorry, I know we're just supposed to be looking for hunters, but it just seems there's more than one out there."
The other man nodded. "I was with him when Alex said he was going to check out the house. We wanted to go with him, but he said it was his job and there shouldn't be any trouble."
"Hell, we need to check out the houses where the vampires were supposed to be staying to monitor the hunters’ homes from across the street," Crichton said.
"Rutherford said we were supposed to get out on the street and look for hunters."
Crichton's jaw dropped and then he quickly recovered. Maybe Rutherford had been so badly injured that he thought only the hunter had targeted and nearly killed him and maybe another had tried also. Maybe he didn't realize Crichton was the one who had nearly killed him. "So he sent you a message...a new order recently?"
"No, it's the same one as before."
"Okay, look," Crichton said, glad that Rutherford still wasn't communicating with his blood bonds, yet still not sure what to think, and annoyed that Rutherford’s vampires wouldn't do what Crichton told them to without hesitation. He'd rather send them into danger, if the houses were now overrun with hunters, though he couldn't imagine such a thing, than send his newly turned vampires out to do the task and get them killed. Then he’d have to start all over again. "Rutherford gave you the standing order to kill hunters. If there are any hunters at the houses across the street from the hunters' homes, kill them. Then you're still fulfilling Rutherford's orders and taking care of the threat. If you can get hold of some of the others he turned, go in a group, the bigger the better." He wasn't going to waste his breath on trying to convince anyone else to go with them. He was certain they'd do a better job at it than him.
“Well?” Crichton didn’t like it that he couldn’t just order them to get it done. Alex, for whatever reason, went ahead and did it, but these vampires seemed to have more of a mind of their own.
“Did you want to come with us?” the one vampire asked.
Like he was their buddy or something like that? “No, I’ve got to find Whitefoot. But if you can get some other ancients to go with you, the more the better.” If some of them went with the newly turned vampires, maybe they could get rid of some hunters. Or alternately, the hunters could get rid of them and he’d have fewer vampires to deal with. He couldn’t believe it had come to this where he was more concerned about eliminating the vampire threat—to him.
“Okay, we’ll find some more of the others and check it out.”
“Let me know if you find anything.”
“Then you’ll join us?” one of the men asked, his brow raised. He was being impertinent Crichton thought and he didn’t like it one bit.
He was the first on Crichton’s list to go. The vampires vanished and Crichton continued his prowl to search for more potential vampire converts.
He was about to go into a restaurant when he saw Whitefoot headed his way. “I owe you an apology,” Whitefoot said, surprising the hell out of Crichton.
“Two of Rutherford’s vampires told me that you tried to save him from a second hunter’s sword. If you hadn’t, he wouldn’t have lived.”
Now that was a shock! “Where is he? Why not thank me himself?”
Whitefoot shrugged. “Only the vampires he’s turned are allowed to see him, I suspect. I haven’t met any that have actually gone to meet up with him.”
“I just spoke with some. They haven’t heard from him,” Crichton said.
“I’m sure, in his weakened condition, he’s only speaking to a couple of them.”
“I had the notion that a hunter or two might have taken over the homes across the street from the hunters’ homes,” Crichton said, hoping to convince Whitefoot he should go take care of it.
“You should check that out. I’ll see you later.” Whitefoot vanished before Crichton could respond.
Crichton didn’t believe Whitefoot. Or didn’t believe that Rutherford, if he really told Whitefoot that, thought two hunters were trying to kill him at once and Crichton had intervened to save his ass.
As unsettled as Crichton was over Whitefoot’s comments, he continued on with his mission, even more determined to create his own army of vampires to take down Rutherford and his own vampires. Of course Whitefoot would have to be a casualty too.
Crichton hadn’t exactly formulated the plan to get rid of Rutherford during a battle with the hunters until he had gotten fed up with Rutherford’s highhandedness about being royalty and Crichton being nobody before the Black Death changed them forever. To Crichton, it had evened out the playing field. But the vampire aristocrats didn’t feel that way. Once an aristocrat-born, always an aristo
crat.
Once Crichton had established his own vampire clan way back then, he’d been used to being in charge and liked to keep it that way. The others had been turned at the same time as he had, so they weren’t his converts, but they’d listened to him just the same. Until all the backbiting had begun and he hadn’t been able to control any of it.
He’d never turned anyone actually, only hatching the idea after Rutherford seemed so successful at it. Crichton really hadn’t had any use for the newly turned vampires and didn’t respect them either. They didn’t have the same world view of the ones changed so long ago. He thought of them as more like hipster vampires and they believed they knew everything when they didn’t know a tenth of what he knew because of living for so many centuries.
He walked inside the steak restaurant and saw too many couples. Then he saw a group of men dressed in suits. He thought they might be somebody important and too easily missed. Not that the other men might not be either. But he couldn’t afford to turn someone who was too influential in town. He left the restaurant and returned to the pub. Two police officers were talking to a waiter. That gave him real pause.
“Okay, so you say three men went with this guy, and then he stopped at another table and the four men there went with him?” the officer asked.
The waiter ran his hands through his hair and nodded. “Yes, sir. He…I think he was a vampire.”
Another waiter joined him and agreed with him. “I took the orders for the three men and then when I brought the meals to their tables, they were gone. They didn’t pay or anything.” He sounded highly annoyed.
“The other four had their meals and drinks and ate only a small amount and then they left without paying. They didn’t finish their beers and these guys have been in here before and they’ve had two or three beers apiece,” the other guy said. “And they’re big tippers. They wouldn’t have just left like that.”
Hell, Crichton really hadn’t planned to get the police involved. He vanished and returned to his condo and paced across his living room.
Then he got a telepathic message from Whitefoot. “What are you doing? Creating an army of your own? Why do you think Rutherford made a real effort to take people from all over? One pub? Seven missing men? Really? Two of Rutherford’s vamps were inside eating when the police arrived and warned me about it.”
They warned Whitefoot and not Crichton? That irritated Crichton all the more.
“They’re circulating photos of you all over already. You were caught on video, Crichton! If you don’t believe me, just watch TV. And if they realize you’re truly a vampire, the police will hire hunter assassins who go after specific rogues. The police were leaving us alone because we weren’t bothering with the local citizens. Don’t you get it? If I were you, I would leave the area, for your own sake. Hell, you’re a dead man if the hunters come in droves to terminate you.”
No way was Crichton leaving. He had come here to do a job and his job had changed a little bit, but he wasn’t going to be chased off now. “We needed more vampires. Our own are vanishing. I need some control over the situation.”
“This is the way you take control of the situation?” Whitefoot ended the conversation.
Okay, so Crichton had to admit, to himself only, that things hadn’t actually gone according to plan. He now believed all the vampires would be watching him and some of them might try to take him down. More of a reason to have his own vampires watching his back. Then he had a thought. He could release his newly turned vampires and let them return home, or to the restaurant, pay their bills, and then do whatever, and he’d call them when he needed them. Then the whole issue would be mute. The men weren’t harmed, and they finished their meals or whatever.
He called out to the vampires in his condo, “You will return to the pub, order meals, and pay your bills, then go about your business until I call on you.”
The seven men filed out of the bedrooms, nodded a greeting to him, and left the condo. He thought of vanishing and reappearing next to the pub, but he was afraid he’d be seen, though he was dying to know how it turned out. He considered reappearing at the building across the street, a drugstore, and he could watch from the shadows, but he wanted to be inside the pub to hear what was being said. Too bad he couldn’t reappear in the pub and make himself invisible while he listened and watched what was going on. But vampires couldn’t do that feat.
Chapter 18
Adonis was driving the SUV back to the houses they were staying at when Pasha thought they were being followed. "Does it seem like that SUV behind us has been following us since the last street we turned onto?"
Adonis had been careful to make several side-street trips, avoiding going back in a straight line to the first of the houses the hunters had taken over, just in case anyone had the notion they were hunters and wanted to see where they were staying.
That could prove disastrous if the vampires planned retaliation once the hunters split up and went on their way to the other homes. The other places where Carissa had told them vampires were staying turned out to be a bust. They figured once the vampires were killed there, the others wouldn’t return there.
"I've been watching the vehicle. We're going to take several more detours to lose them."
"If they're vampires, won't they assume we're going to our homes?" Pasha asked. They could just arrive there ahead of them and lie in wait.
"The hunters there are keeping an eye out on things. If they see any activity, they'll alert us. If the vampires appear inside the homes we're hunkered down in, they'll inform us there's a fight going on. So we should be covered either way," Adonis said.
Still, things could go wrong. She continued to watch the black vehicle behind them and so did the other hunters.
"They're turning down another street," Michael said.
"Yeah, I see it. I'll follow them then, if I can catch up to them." Adonis went down the next street and turned back one, everyone watching for signs of the vehicle. No one saw any sign of it.
She hoped they weren't going to have any trouble tonight, but if they could finish this off and none of their people were killed or hurt, she was ready for it.
Zachary was on his phone, calling up the various hunter groups to make sure everyone was fine. When he was done, he said, "No one's having any trouble. Laura and Jeremy killed another vampire when they saw the lights turn on in their home, but otherwise, it's been quiet. Even though we all can see in the dark, the vampires still like turning on lights."
"Good thing for us when we're watching for them." Pasha was glad everything was quiet still. But nighttime was when the vampires got active, so she figured they'd soon be having some sightings.
"Hey"—Zachary was still looking at his phone—"apparently one of the vampires is turning people."
"Crichton did it, I bet," Pasha said. "Now we're in for more trouble."
"The police are talking about it, saying they're going to hire vampire assassins to clean up the city," Zachary said.
"Now they say so." Pasha was irritated with them for not doing so when the hunters had fallen in the area.
"Yeah. Now that their people are being targeted, they have to do something," Adonis said.
"As long as hunters show up who aren’t trouble for us," Pasha said.
"You mean Gregory and his friends?" Adonis asked.
"Yeah, now that he's banished from Dallas, he'll have to find work elsewhere."
"If he was in this area, he would already be killing vampires and the police department would have hired him," Adonis said.
"I agree," Danai said from the very back seat where she was sitting with Michael. "The police would have told us if they had hired hunters for the job so we could coordinate with them or stay out of their way. They'll want the money for the job and no interference from us."
"If they hire someone, it will most likely be for just Crichton." Pasha looked at her own phone and saw Crichton's image. "He looks like any middle-aged man on the street. Nothing remar
kable about him except for the major cleft in his chin and the slight balding on his forehead."
"He doesn't look like he could have masterminded this whole thing." Danai brought up an image to look at too.
"He didn't. Rutherford did. And Crichton has made a real muddle of it for the vampires, and potentially us, if hunters come to take him out and we have the same notion," Pasha said.
"Well, they can have him." Danai snorted. "Any hunter can, just so he's eliminated and doesn't go anywhere else to pull the same thing."
"I agree," Michael said. "He needs to be eliminated. Even the vampires might take him down now after what he's pulled."
"Ohmigod, reporters are reporting live at the scene of the pub where the seven men disappeared. They've just returned to order meals and pay their bills at the pub and the press and police are all over them. The reporters are trying to get interviews from the men and...one just bared his fangs at the reporter, who immediately retreated."
"Sounds to me like Crichton turned them." Adonis pulled into the driveway of the house where Zachary and Pasha were staying.
"Yeah, and they're so newly turned, they haven't learned to control their fangs," Zachary said.
"Let's go watch some television," Adonis said, and they all piled out of the SUV and headed into the house.
Boniface and Victor greeted them.
"We've got the news on," Victor said, “if that's why you all are coming inside."
"Yeah, that's exactly why. If we have any hired hunters coming into the area, all of us need to know about it. I'm calling the police chief about it now." Adonis got on his phone while everyone else gathered around the living room to watch the TV.
"There you have it," one of the reporters said to the viewers. "One of our own people, baring vampire fangs at us. Once the rogue vampires begin turning us, where will it stop?"
One of the police officers was on his radio and despite all the talking, the hunters' hearing was so good, they could filter out conversations. "Yes, sir. At least one of them is a vampire. What do you want us to do? They can just vanish in a blink of an eye. Okay, we’re not to arrest them. Yes, sir. I'll ask them nicely." He ended the call and said, "Could I have you go with us to tell us what happened to you? We don't need for all of this to be on the news. You’re not under arrest or anything."