Jason stopped midsentence as two soldiers appeared from the road and moved towards them.
“Step forward,” one of them instructed. “Arms to your sides.”
Nadine immediately complied.
Jason rested his cane on the front of the car.
“What’s this?” one of the soldiers asked, taking hold of it.
“I have a limp,” Jason said. “I was shot.”
“Oh.” A pause. “Arms out.”
They were patted down.
Once satisfied the soldiers then marched them properly out of the area and down the road towards one of the buildings.
A plaque out the front read: Centre of Paranormal Affairs.
They passed through some metal detectors and entered the building.
They were then instructed to sit in the foyer.
“Ms. Evans has been notified of your arrival,” the soldier said. “She’ll come get you when she’s ready.”
“Thank you,” Jason said. He looked over at Nadine after the soldiers had left. “I wonder if she’s been expecting us too.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Nadine said.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Luna had not been expecting them. Snapshots of the car had been taken via surveillance and she’d put the plates forward just to make sure there was no mistaking. These were two of her old workers from Cresh’s division, one of whom was supposed to be in prison. As video feed of them sitting in the foyer stood frozen on the screen beside her, Luna made calls to everyone she could think of who might provide her with some kind of forthright explanation for how Nadine had gotten out and what the fuck they were doing here. Eventually, she could stand it no longer. She picked up the phone and had them sent up to her office.
She was on her feet when they entered. In the previous minute she’d swallowed the remainder of an energy drink and downed a handful of sweets, before spraying her mouth a few times with a freshener. There were two chairs standing side by side against the side wall where she motioned for them to sit, her eyes rigidly watching their every movement. The receptionist mouthed asking whether she should close the door, to which Luna nodded.
And then it was closed.
“I’m most surprised to see the two of you,” Luna began. “How long has it been exactly? Four – five years?”
“Almost,” Jason answered.
“How hard did you have to work at tracking me down?”
They looked at each other.
“We’ll get to that,” Nadine said. “It’s sort of a long story.”
“I see.” Luna paused. “Where shall we start then?”
“You’re still working with Paranormal Police?” Jason asked. “Is this the new headquarters or something?”
“Not exactly,” Luna replied. “The police were disbanded as a result of our misfortunes. You should be aware of that. What this is, is something else entirely. We don’t exactly so much as investigate paranormal situations, as we do neutralize them.”
“And what’s your role here?”
Luna shrugged. “I’m just a supervisor,” she said sitting down. “I don’t have much authority. I have a caseload just like everyone else.”
“Sounds like hard work,” Nadine said.
Luna drew her gaze to focus. “Why are you out? Your sentence was fifteen years.”
“Yeah,” Nadine smiled. “Thanks a lot for that.”
“Let’s not turn this into another argument,” Jason said quickly. “Just stick to the facts everyone. Save the sarcasm for –”
“Shut up, Jason,” Nadine said. “You didn’t have to do the time. I need answers.”
“For what?” Luna challenged.
“I was not the traitor,” Nadine declared. “I was innocent.”
“Yet the court found otherwise.”
“They were just looking for a scapegoat. Someone to pin the failures of the department on. They didn’t want to deal with the real situation. They didn’t want to find the real killer.”
“What planet are you living on?” Luna scoffed. “They did everything they could.”
“Bullshit.”
Luna turned to Jason. “Seriously, I don’t know what she’s doing here, or what line of crap she’s sold you, but I hope you’re not taking it in. This woman betrayed us. We had tonnes of evidence to support it, not just my own, truthful, testimony. She’s the reason people are dead.”
A vicious growl exhaled from Nadine’s lungs.
She pounced from her chair and landed on top of Luna, swinging at her.
“No!” Jason cried, standing up. “Please don’t!”
He jumped on Nadine and tackled her to the floor.
Luna shifted away from them and put her fingers to a button underneath her desk.
“Don’t push it!” Jason shouted. “We can resolve this!”
Luna hesitated.
Nadine shrugged Jason off her.
She got her knees and crawled across to where Luna was. She took her hand into her own.
“I was innocent,” Nadine said, tears streaming down her cheeks. “You were wrong.”
“But it wasn’t me,” Luna said. “It was Cresh. He said it was you who betrayed us. It was the last thing he ever said…”
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Luna wasn’t lying. She was in court the day Nadine was convicted. They had emails from her computer to the VDA advising them where to meet for an exchange of information. They had surveillance footage of Nadine at her computer when the emails were sent. If it wasn’t enough, Luna could travel back into her own mind to where she found Cresh in his destroyed office, underneath the rubble…
“I know, I know who betrayed us,” he wheezed.
His hand was on her cheek. His blood was there too.
“Don’t talk,” Luna said. “You’re hurting yourself. I’m going to call for help.”
“No,” he growled, not letting her leave. “You need to listen to me. I’m trying to tell you…”
Their eyes locked together.
“It’s Nadine,” he said clearly.
“Nadine?” Luna said with some belief. “What did she do?”
“She’s the one. The one who –”
His sentence was never finished. He stared at her for some time until she knew it was just his lifeless eyes she was looking at. It didn’t matter anyway. She could finish the sentence for him.
Nadine had betrayed them.
Nadine had attacked him.
Nadine was behind everything.
Looking at Nadine now, with those tears in her eyes, expressing the horror of the injustice dealt against her, Luna could almost be fooled into believing it. That’s how good she was. That’s how cunning. Nadine’s guilt was never in question. The only play was that Luna didn’t know how she’d gotten out, and what she was doing here for all places. Surely her affiliation with the vampires, could not have withstood all these years.
“You believe me?” Nadine pleaded. “You believe me, don’t you?”
“Alright,” Luna lied. “I’ll believe you. For now.”
They both got to their feet.
Jason stood up also. “If we could have a civil discussion now, that would be great.”
“No problem,” Nadine said sitting back down. “She believes me.”
“And you believe me too, don’t you?” Luna questioned. “You believe me that Cresh did finger you as the traitor before he died?”
“I guess,” Nadine shrugged. “But if it happened, then he was wrong.”
“We think Kendra was the traitor,” Jason explained. “Nadine says she saw her alive and working with the Count when she last visited the house.”
“I know,” Luna said. “It was part of her defense.”
“They never did find Kendra, did they?” Nadine asked.
Luna shook her head. “Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here now? What the hell you want from me? Or are you just here to accuse me of setting you up?”
“It’s not like
that,” Jason said.
They were both seated now.
Luna shifted back into her own chair.
“We’re trying to find out what really happened that night. With Haley. The killer. And who actually betrayed us.”
“Someone wanted me out of prison,” Nadine said. “I have no idea who it was, but they left a message for me with everyone’s address on it. We’ve just been to see both Dino and Riley looking for help. Our last stop is you.”
“They’re both out of the game, aren’t they?” Luna replied. “I mean Dino still works security but it’s not in an official capacity –”
“Obviously we’re conducting our own investigation,” Nadine stated. “We don’t have weapons. We don’t have resources. We want to track down the Count and go undercover into the VDA again. Wherever it might be. But … we were also hoping maybe someone would shine a better light on what we’re looking for. Make sense of what happened…”
“There is no VDA,” Luna said. “It’s been taken over. It’s done.”
“No, that’s not true,” Nadine said shaking her head. “I’ve seen there’s still a website. You can still sign up –”
“I’m sure there’s lots of those things now,” Luna interrupted. “They might be tied with real vampires, but they have nothing to do with the Count. And certainly nothing to do with any active serial killings.”
“So you’re saying they stopped?” Jason asked. “Can you confirm that?”
“As far as I know,” Luna shrugged. “But people disappear all the time. Maybe he’s just being more careful now.”
“Look, let me just ask you,” Jason continued, “does any of this sit right with you? That we never figured out the full story. That Haley vanished into thin air.”
“Guys,” Luna murmured. “What do you want? It’s not hard to figure out. Nadine herself was the last one to see Haley alive. Surrounded by a horde of vampires, didn’t you say?”
“Something like that.”
“So they probably killed her that night, or at the very least kept her as some kind of slave. We never found the Count so she could still be with him. But there’s no reason to believe the Count is still in the country with the manhunt focused on him. If he were truly innocent, shouldn’t he have remained where he was, and welcomed the police presence? No. Instead he ran away because he was guilty for those murders. And someone else was obviously helping him. Whether you want to believe that was Kendra risen from the dead, or our friend here – there’s no mystery left to solve. With a thousand and one agents looking for him for the past five years and coming up short, I highly doubt whatever scheme the two of you come up with is going to deliver the goods.”
Nadine stood up. “That’s all we’ve been hearing. That it’s impossible. That we can’t do it. Well, fuck off. We’re not asking for your pessimism. We’re asking you for help. Don’t you want to find out what happened? Not some made up story you tell yourself, but what’s real. Don’t you want that bastard behind bars?”
Luna sighed. “I can’t do it.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re not being honest with me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t want the truth. All you want is chaos.”
Nadine went to lunge at her but Jason reached out and held her back.
“No more fighting,” he said. “If she doesn’t want to help us, then we can’t force her.”
“You bitch,” Nadine said and spat in Luna’s face.
Luna wiped the saliva away with disgust. “Get the fuck out of here before I call security.”
Nadine stormed out of the room while Jason made his way out slower, taking hold of his cane.
At the door he paused, and turned back to face her.
“When it turns out we were right, I hope you have the decency to apologize,” he said.
“To who?” Luna fired back. “To that crazy person who just attacked me?”
“No,” Jason said, his eyes on the floor. “To Haley.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
It was ten to seven. Night had begun to settle in. Jason and Nadine were able to leave the barracks without incident and were soon on the road again. Where to exactly … it hadn’t been determined.
There was silence between them. Jason knew Nadine was upset things hadn’t gone according to plan. Since leaving prison he sensed she’d been swept up in a whirlwind of adrenalin and determination. But as the sun set and the sky darkened, the thoughts in her mind hadn’t been realized into anything of actual substance. They were aimless, ignorant, without cause or direction.
The turning of the world, was not on their side.
And already he could feel it coming back to him. The shackles of responsibility. The truth of the world he had made for himself. He thought about going home again and closing the front door, the TV on and everyone talking. Noise and demeanor. How wonderfully it could erase.
“Maybe we didn’t think this through,” Jason said finally.
“Of course we haven’t,” Nadine replied. “That’s the next step for us.”
“I mean, whether we should embark on this thing at all.”
Nadine turned slightly. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying … Luna made some points. Dino made some too. Hell, even fucking Riley made a case against it.”
“So what? You’re out? It’s just me. All by myself?”
“I didn’t say that,” Jason said. He then reconsidered. “Well, maybe that is what I’m saying.”
“No,” Nadine whispered. “No, no, no…”
“Why is it so important to you? I mean. For real. Which part of this is driving you? Is it … Haley … or…”
“You saw what happened back at the barracks, right?”
“Which … what –”
“Luna. She still thinks I’m guilty.”
“Oh. Well, yeah.”
“This is how smart this guy is. This is how far he’s thought ahead. Choosing to frame me. Doctoring evidence. Even … somehow manipulating Cresh before he died. It’s … it’s so clear to me. I can feel the fucker grinning at me. He’s just … there. Doing me over. It’s breaking me. Breaking me to bits. I need to know. I need to know who he is…”
“But…” Jason trailed off.
“What?”
“What if it’s all in your head? What if you’re just a victim of circumstance?”
“Are you kidding me?” Nadine ground her teeth together. “Circumstance didn’t get me out of prison. Circumstance didn’t make Haley disappear for five years. This isn’t fucking circumstance. This is … a monster…”
Jason was confused.
He only half believed the words.
Seeing the truth on one side of the mirror.
And a whole world of something else on the other.
“What is it going to take, Jason?” Nadine demanded. “To get you on my side?”
“Them,” Jason blurted out. “Dino. Riley. Luna. We needed them. Maybe not all of them, but at least … at least somebody else…”
Nadine pounded her fist into the dashboard. “I’m begging you. Please. Please don’t abandon me. Please tell me I can count on you tonight.”
Jason took a deep breath.
Poor Nadine. She’d been through hell. And she meant every word of what she said.
He felt horrible. He didn’t want to say no to her.
But the faces kept coming back to him.
Dino.
Riley.
Luna.
All three, were perfectly sane and rational.
All three, connected with reality.
Could he really let go of his own reality – his own responsibilities – his own love – To dive into this dark dream with Nadine?
Could he do it?
“Please,” Nadine said again.
Jason’s mind collapsed.
He suddenly realized the window was open beside him, and the cold atmosphere was rushing into his skin at a hundred miles
per hour.
He reached out and took Nadine’s hand.
“Alright,” he heard himself say.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Noise. Smiles. Conversation.
The Traitor stood in amongst it all, acting perfectly normal. Of course, the others would ask – Who were they? What did they want?
The lies would roll right off the tongue.
And the Traitor was good at it. They were an intelligent, manipulating force to be reckoned with. Their greatest gift was persuasion, and there was almost no one they could not deceive.
Once enough time had passed and the opportunity for privacy was granted, the Traitor seized the moment and took out their phone to dial a particular number.
The call was answered after a couple of rings, but the Traitor could not hear its recipient.
Except perhaps, for some heavy breathing.
“Hello?” the Traitor murmured. “Is that you?”
“What do you want?” the Count rasped.
“There’s something you should know,” the Traitor said, pacing. “Nadine Blue is out of prison. I just had her and Jason Freelaw turn up where I am, which was troubling to say the least.”
“Do they know it was you?” the Count asked.
“What do you mean?”
Silence.
“Hello…?” The Traitor gripped the phone anxiously.
“Has your cover been compromised?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then you should deal with this. Shouldn’t you?”
“How … How exactly do you want me to do that?”
Silence.
“You don’t mean – ?”
“Tonight is a very special occasion for myself, and my kind. I don’t want any kind of interference. Do you understand?”
“Yes. I’ll – I’ll keep an eye on them. Make sure they never find you.”
“And if they do?”
The Traitor hesitated. “Then I’ll kill them.”
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Vampire Dating Agency III Page 9