by Nazri Noor
The cold air ripped at my lungs as I ran. I finally gave myself a second to glance over my shoulder, and my heart puttered when I saw that the two men were within leaping distance, the hypothetical vampire just paces ahead of the guy who looked like he could break me in half over his knee. Now or never. I picked my entry point – just under a nearby tree – and fixed on an exit, right by a dead lamppost, some twenty feet away. I stepped.
The chill of the night went chillier, and the cries of surprise from my pursuers went muted just as soon as I entered the shadows. Everything was muffled, as it always was, and chaotic, with the swirls of blackness enveloping, clouding my vision.
But what stood out to me was how much harder it was to breathe, a combination, I guessed, of how I’d been running and was naturally out of breath, and the fact that I was making a much longer step for the first time. I fought the doubt taking over me, any thought that I would fail to make the leap, because what use was successfully evading my pursuers if it meant I’d done so by shunting myself deep into a brick wall?
Moments later I emerged from the Dark Room. I could breathe again. The men’s voices came from much further away. Good. I’d put some distance between us. I felt light-headed, disoriented, but at least I was safe, and – I patted at my limbs, at my face, just to be sure – probably in one piece. I gave myself a scant few seconds to catch my breath, then turned again to check on my stalkers, and yes, maybe I briefly considered taking just enough time to give them the finger.
The bigger man, Gil, was some fifteen feet away, where he should have been, but the other one was streaking towards me, his body a blur, a horrific silver arrow shooting unerringly in my direction, legs pumping, and one hand outstretched. When he was only a few feet away, I heard him snarl.
“No,” I muttered. “No no no,” a string of murmured panic as I turned around and ran into the nearest shadow I could find. How had he caught up to me so quickly? I heard him shout in frustration as I blinked out of view again, and this time I didn’t even know where I was headed, only that it had to be away from him, away from them.
I stumbled through the Dark Room, through the shuddering mists, the shadows closing in on me, becoming heavier and heavier. And when I could no longer breathe, when the chill had sucked the air and the warmth from me, skin and bone, I tripped and fell headlong into the light.
Regaining my bearings, I looked around. I was still in the park, this time shifted several dozen feet away from the last point. Gil was hurtling towards me, the change in direction taking some wind out of his velocity, but his partner was nowhere in sight. I clenched my fists, testing my limits, but no go. I knew I couldn’t shadowstep anymore. I was out of steam.
Crap. I summoned what strength I had left – zero sleep, a full stomach, and more numerous, much larger steps than I’d ever taken – and put one foot in front of the other. It was a spirited attempt to break into a full run, I thought, until the canopy of trees above my head started rustling.
Something pale sprang out of the darkness and crushed me, knocking the wind out of my lungs and sending me sprawling across the cement. I had scuffed up my knees, that was for sure, and there was a sharp pain in my elbow, but I knew that wouldn’t matter much compared to what these lunatics had in store for me.
One of the man’s knees dug into my breastbone.
“Can’t. Breathe.”
“Hmm?” the man said, feigning disinterest. “Sorry, I couldn’t hear you over the sound of my balls breaking.” He tugged at his hair, picking a leaf out of it, grimacing. “That was very sneaky of you.”
“Not sorry,” I sputtered out.
“Real cute.” The man placed a hand, fingers splayed, across my chest. He was light, the weight of him barely noticeable as he straddled my body. Still, something in how he incapacitated me as easily as he would pin a child to the ground suggested that fighting my way out would end very, very painfully.
Heavy footsteps told me that Gil had finally caught up to us. He panted, wiping at his beard with the back of his hand, brows knitted in anger.
“He wants him alive,” Gil said.
He? Who was he? Who wanted me alive?
“I know that,” the man on top of me snapped. “Just – let me have this one. A tiny little snack.” His lips parted, and this time I saw his canines descending, two inhumanly sharp fangs protruding from his top row of perfect teeth.
“So you – you really are a vampire,” I stammered. He could probably feel my heart pounding under his hand.
The man rolled his eyes. “Brilliant deduction. You made me work up a sweat, little Hound. Got me all thirsty. I just want to take a quick sip. Haven’t had me some magical blood in a minute.”
“We don’t have time for this,” Gil hissed, looking around like he was worried someone might see.
“Shush, Gil. Just a little bite.” He smiled at me. “You don’t mind, do you?” The man parted his lips, his teeth silver in the moonlight, and he bent down. His breath smelled like lilacs.
“Die in a fire,” I grunted.
I struggled and bucked, and on reflex, my hand went to my throat, as if that could have been enough to protect me. But my fingers brushed against the leather thong of my necklace, and then against the opal dangling from it. I didn’t even have time to think of anything to say, but the connection must have held up, because the transmission of thought and emotion was instantaneous, immediate.
“Fuck,” I thought, in a flash of wild panic.
Thea’s reply came lightning fast: “You dumb idiot.”
Now, here was the thing about the Lorica’s higher-ups, the executives, the Scions, call them what you like. They didn’t like us grunts knowing exactly they could do in the arcane department. Knowledge is power, as the saying goes, and the smartest way to counter someone magically was to grasp what they were capable of, the way a less than scrupulous coach might go and record an opposing team’s game or routine.
All I really knew of Thea was that she had perfected numerous spells, had a collection of enchanted baubles, and mainly specialized in an ability to magically manipulate light. Funny, that, how the two of us ended up working together, one walking in darkness, the other, a master of illumination.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been entirely surprised, then, when a segment of the darkness above me brightened. A light, somewhere in the clouds. I gawped, almost forgetting that I was squirming under the hands of an undead thing that wanted me for a midnight snack. The shaft of light in the night sky grew brighter – yellower than the stars, and more luminescent, somehow – until I saw it for what it was. A pillar of brilliance, piercing the veil of dark, rocketing towards the earth from out of the atmosphere.
I wasn’t sure how Thea did it, or how she knew my exact position, but the light must have reflected in my eyes because the vampire tilted his head curiously at my expression. Then he turned his face. The beam of light seemed almost solid against the velvet dark of midnight, and as it struck home it shone brightly against my skin, a puddle of warmth, familiar and comforting. I recognized it for what it was – sunlight. But the vampire was in the way –
And how he screamed.
I had never heard a man howl quite as hideously as the vampire did that night, and I don’t ever want to hear anything like it again. The sunbeam was nothing more than a ray of warmth as it graced the earth, but against the vampire’s face it might as well have been a flamethrower. I could smell his flesh as it sizzled and cooked under the light’s touch, his cheek charred to cinders, his hair incinerating wherever the pillar made contact.
He shrieked in pain, the bone showing through what flesh had been flayed from his skull, and the screaming didn’t stop when he covered his face with his hands. Within seconds the flesh had been burned from them, too, leaving ragged hanks of torn skin and skeletal fingers. I gagged, choking on the smell of cooked undead flesh, of burned hair. He rolled off me, crawling for shade and shelter, but the pillar of sun followed him like a searchlight. Thea wasn’t fuc
king around.
The vampire rolled on the ground, shielding his face with the sleeve of his leather jacket – finally, some reprieve. I was starting to feel bad for him, almost, this thing that was so intent on taking my blood. Gil looked at me menacingly, then warily up at the pillar of light, then at his comrade lolling about on the ground. He shook his head and cursed under his breath, his decision made, and he enveloped the vampire with his body, guarding him from the sunbeam.
“I told you,” he said, scolding the vampire, “but did you listen? Do you ever listen?”
“Fuck off,” the vampire cried, half-whimpering, half-screaming. His voice was different now, issuing from his blistered mouth.
I took my chance to run. Gil was the slower of the two, and whatever he was, he didn’t have the insane acrobatics that the vampire could resort to, so I went on foot as far as I dared, hitting the edge of Heinsite Park before, for good measure, stepping into the shadows and shunting my way across the street. When I was far enough that I couldn’t hear the vampire wailing, far enough that I knew it was safe to sit and breathe, I took some time under the shadows of an office building.
It was a little trick I picked up some time back: by standing perfectly still in the darkness, I could sometimes almost pass myself off as invisible, as if a portion of me receded into the Dark Room. That wouldn’t have helped against the vampire, of course, since I was sure he could have still smelled me or sensed my body heat.
After catching my breath, I turned my attention to a new, unpleasant task: reporting in to Thea. I bit my lip as I raised two fingers to my necklace. Even before making contact I already knew she was going to be unhappy. Kind of an understatement.
“Fine mess you got yourself into,” Thea said. “A damn, fine mess.”
I hugged my knees. “Sorry. And thanks for saving me. And sorry again.”
“You’re lucky everything came flooding in when you called. A vampire. A vampire, Dustin!”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
I didn’t think to, or maybe there was that certain fear of being yelled at by an authority figure, which, in retrospect, would still have been leagues better than being kidnapped by Sir Pervert von Vampire and his hairy companion.
“I don’t know,” was all I said.
“I told you about going around alone at night, didn’t I?”
I sighed. Thea clearly wasn’t going to let up on this one. “I was starving. I just went for a burger. That’s all.”
She scoffed. “We can’t have you roaming on your own from now on. I’m not taking any more risks with you.”
“Wait, what?” Dread crept up my spine, or maybe it was the coldness of the brick against my back, but I knew that whatever was coming next wasn’t going to make me happy. “What do you mean?”
“It isn’t safe for you to stay alone in your apartment anymore. I need you to pack your things.”
“Wait.” I blinked. “Am I moving in with you?”
Telepathically, Thea guffawed. “Try again.”
I felt like someone had dumped a bucket of ice water all over me. “You’re not asking me to move into HQ, are you?” The line was silent. “Hello? Thea?”
She didn’t answer. I couldn’t tell you how I knew, but I swear I felt her smiling.
Chapter 9
“You’re kidding,” Romira said, eyes wide as saucers. “You have to live here, right in HQ?”
I nodded, then shrugged. I was as much at a loss for words as anyone. When I made it back to my apartment that night, I got another transmission from Thea. She had settled down by then, telling me that I could spend one last night at the apartment, but that I was to report promptly to the office the following morning, and to take my valuables with me.
“And several changes of clothes,” she said. “Enough to last you an indefinite period.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that exactly, which was why I was standing in the kitchenette with a duffle bag full of clothes and toiletries. Truthfully I didn’t own very much. Having to start my life over showed me that humans actually didn’t need a whole lot to survive. All I really had were T-shirts, jeans, socks, some underwear, a couple of jackets, and a few pairs of sneakers.
Everything I needed was in that bag. Well, save my consoles, television, and desktop computer, but Thea said that she had some people working on moving those over as well. I was a hundred percent sure this special treatment was going to make me extra popular at work.
“I’m surprised she even let me stay another night, if I’m honest,” I told Romira. She scratched the side of her nose at that, turning away. I tilted my head. “What?”
“Well,” she started. “Did she mention that you were going to be safe?”
“She did.” In fact, Thea said that she was going to have a couple of Hounds keep watch over me for the night. I didn’t notice anyone around my apartment at all, but that was why they were so good at their jobs. I did pick up smatterings of conversation in the morning, though, as well as someone resentfully muttering “golden boy” in my general direction. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t make out the source of the voice. Some Hounds were just that sneaky.
I told Romira as much. “She said she’d have some people keep watch over me.”
She cleared her throat. “She wasn’t any more specific than that?” I wasn’t sure if it was just the light in the break room, but it sort of looked like she was reddening.
Then it dawned on me. “Wait. She asked you to watch me, too?”
Romira smiled wolfishly. I felt my ears burning. What was I doing the night before? Did Thea regularly have me monitored? As if to allay my doubts, Romira put her hand on mine.
“No, I didn’t watch you shower. And no, this isn’t a habit. She was worried about you, so she called me and asked me to keep watch. It’s never very specific when I see things anyway. I just have this general idea of where you are, and whether or not you’re safe, same as how I found your body – I mean, when I found you in the morgue. I don’t actually see you physically, just your energy signature.” She trailed her eyes up and down my body, a smile lingering on her lips. “Which is a shame.”
My ears were on fire. “You stop that,” I said, chuckling, embarrassed, but okay, maybe flattered by the attention. “But thanks for watching over me.”
Romira held my gaze a little too long for comfort. “My pleasure,” she said, her words thick with exaggerated huskiness. I forced myself to laugh, my voice tinged with nervousness. She shoved a cup of coffee in my hands – she was so good at playing this game that I hadn’t even noticed she was fixing me one – and started shooing me out of the kitchenette. “You come back and visit when you’re all settled. And show me this room of yours when you’re ready. Now I’m all curious about what the HQ dorms look like.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I said, winking.
Romira tossed her hair and winked back. I knew it was a harmless gesture on her part, but it still had my stomach puddling on the floor.
As if I even knew where my room was located. Who knew they even had residential suites in the Lorica? The place was full of surprises. But I hadn’t made it six feet out of the kitchenette when I bumped into Thea herself. I held onto my coffee like it was a cup full of hot lava, carefully eyeing the perennial whiteness of her pantsuit, aware that I was already on her bad side.
But if Thea was annoyed with me, it didn’t show, or she was making a fine effort of concealing it. “Graves,” she said, nodding in greeting, the way she always did in the morning. “Good to see you in one piece. Have you set up in your new quarters yet?”
“Not just,” I said, shaking my head. “I’m not even sure where to look.”
Thea cocked her head. “Walk with me. I’m pretty sure they emailed me the location earlier.”
I followed her in silence, duffle bag in hand, feeling for all the world like a kid on the verge of receiving his punishment. Was this really all so ne
cessary? I’d survived the night, after all. Couldn’t they just, I don’t know, put me under surveillance?
But then the thought of the Lorica expending extra Hounds and Eyes made that idea more and more ridiculous the closer we got to Thea’s office. Any solid basis I might have had for making a compelling argument against moving into HQ started to crumble.
Thea swung her office door open with one hand and went straight to her computer – stark white and pristine, just like the rest of her office. She jiggled her mouse, tapped at her keyboard, then nodded.
“There it is. Far end of the east wing, room 17B.”
My confusion must have shown, because I mostly just stood there and blinked. “Huh. Didn’t even know there was a 17B.” I scratched the back of my neck. “Come to think of it, I didn’t know the Lorica made room for people to even live here in the first place.”
Thea shrugged. “The Lorica – and by that I mean the building itself – makes allowances for whatever we need. Sometimes people need extra protection, or we need to put them under surveillance. Somehow the Lorica makes room for that.”
I wondered if I was being brought in merely for protection, or for surveillance as well. I decided it was best not to ask. But that didn’t mean that the stupid side of me was done talking or thinking. Without considering it, I blurted out my earlier thoughts.
“But is this even necessary? I mean, those guys were scared off. I’m pretty sure they’re not coming back for me, not that they even know where to look.”
The atmosphere in her office seemed to shiver, like the serenity of it had been interrupted. Remember when I said that the offices were reflections of their occupants’ inner selves? I didn’t realize I was so very correct. Thea’s office darkened, just slightly so, enough to match the disapproving look on her face, and the sunlight streaming in through the windows felt that much harsher.