Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

by Vivienne Neas

  I stopped in front of a red brick house with a well maintained lawn. The night smelled like Jasmine when I walked across to the front door. Vampires liked to choose night scented flowers, not because they liked them but because any animal knew the importance of scents and covering them up. The porch light was on but everything else was off, and emptiness hung in the air.

  I walked around the back of the house. I kept my eyes open for trouble, but my nose worked overtime. There was no vampire on the premises. The smell of cheap cologne hung in the air near the bedroom window, telling me the vampire had been here earlier and tried to douse his scent with a different smell. They tended to do that. Vampires could smell each other out, and cologne helped. But it wasn’t enough.

  It was never enough.

  I worked my blade under one of the windows at the back and slid it up. It was a good neighborhood and the windows weren’t sticky like some of the ones I worked with. It also helped that there were no burglar bars. Those could really make breaking-and-entering a bitch.

  Inside the house I walked around. The furniture was cheap but nice, and organized like the person liked being here. I guessed that this had been the house it had stayed in before it’d turned. Vampires often chose a new place because they cut ties with their old life, and often the interiors changed. They were asleep when they were home in daytime, and at night they wanted to get out. The night air made vampire skins itch if they were cooped up for too long.

  Houses became a safe shelter from the sun for sleep. Furniture and décor didn’t matter.

  The en-suite bathroom was the room with the fragrance hanging thick in the air. It tickled my nose and I crinkled it, trying to breathe around the smell. In the bedroom I found what I was looking for. A scent that wasn’t altered. The bed was full of it. The myth that vampires slept in coffins was absolutely ridiculous. Vampires liked comfort as much as the next person. The curtains in front of the window were thick and black, with roll-up blinds. I looked carefully at the walls around the window.

  Shutters had been installed that came down in daytime to keep out the light, but it was well done. Classy.

  “Well, let’s see if we can find you,” I said and took a deep breath, filling my nose with the scent. It smelled like earth and mulch, and something that reminded me of baby-powder even though I couldn’t compare the smells. I didn’t know what did it. Maybe the powdery quality of something that could live longer than your average eighty years.

  The house had little else to offer. There were no photos or personal mementos that I could see. This vampire had fallen into the habit of distancing itself from life a little after all.

  Finding the vampire after I left the house was easy. It was a matter of tracking. The scent was easy to pick up. The vampire had left over the back wall and not through the front yard. Clever.

  I found its scent on the other side of the wall and followed it through two neighboring gardens. I stuck to the shadows and kept my ears open, but I wouldn’t be seen. Unless there were dogs it was easy to hide myself.

  Animals were a whole different ball game. Some animals loved vampires. They were drawn to the lack of human presence in the vampires’ nature. Other animals hated them. With me it could swing both ways. Animals hated or loved me depending on how much of me showed to them, and which side they preferred. I hated that it was a gamble and I could never be sure, but I had enough going for me that I couldn’t complain about a few setbacks. After all, everyone had flaws.

  The vampire was a young one. It didn’t cover itself up the way it should have, and I found it two blocks away. It was hunched in a corner, eyes half-closed with the satiated high of the feed. If you’ve ever seen a snake with an animal half-down its throat you’d get the idea. There was a moment for every predator where it was helpless. For a vampire it was the moment just after a feed, when the energy levels hadn’t kicked up just yet, and the vampire was lulled into a passive state for a just a few counts.

  It was my luck that I’d caught it at the perfect moment. I waited until it snapped back to reality so that it would have a fighting chance, but even then the vampire wasn’t as quick as it should have been. It was clumsy and helpless and it didn’t take long before the job was done. I didn’t even get my leathers dirty.

  I walked away, unsatisfied and more frustrated than when I’d started.

  I had a handful of vampires still to find for the night, but I needed a challenge. If it wasn’t a good fight, if I didn’t have to fight for my life, it wasn’t worth it. There was nothing that made me feel as alive as being so close to death I could smell the rot on its breath.

  I was going to find the faceless vampire that Ruben wanted me to hunt down. That would be a challenge, and I had all night to do it.

  When I got to my bike my phone rang.

  “Are you knee-deep in blood yet, or can you come in?” It was Joel. “Your ammunition arrived and I have another gun here that’s looking for an owner that will actually fire it.”

  “It’s a slow night. I’ve got time. I need you for a couple of things, anyway. I’ll be there in ten.”

  I pulled my helmet on my head and turned the throttle, spraying gravel like waves on both sides until I was on the street. I got to Joel in less than ten minutes. When I pulled into the drive the garage door was already open for me. I rolled my bike inside and the automatic doors slowly rolled shut.

  “You’re going to get caught if you draw attention to yourself like that,” Joel said.

  “What, and you don’t think I can talk my way out of it?” I pouted and made my eyes big. He laughed and hugged me. His dark brown hair was long and curled where it brushed his shoulders and jawline. He wore glasses with a black frame that made his eyes stand out, and he always had a three-day stubble. Today he wore sweatpants and a matching jacket with holes cut in the sleeves for his thumbs, but I’d seen him in a variety of outfits ranging from hobo to classy. Joel was weird, but there were no questions about who he was, and his loyalty was complete. He would never rat me out.

  “Come on through,” he said. We walked through a narrow door at the back of the garage. It led into a small room with a narrow strip of small windows against the ceiling. Servants’ quarters once upon a time. A dark opening took up most of the floor space with a concrete staircase leading down into the earth. The trap door leaned up against the wall. There were houses in Westham that still had war bunkers and the like. Joel had been lucky enough to snatch one of the last ones on the market.

  Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling every couple of feet, throwing circles of light on several work benches. The low hum of the lights filled the air and classical music streamed from a radio somewhere.

  He opened a safe, and stacked boxes of ammo onto the table in front of me. The boxes all had polystyrene packaging in them with rows of bullets. Five by ten. Joel packed them out according to their labels.

  “Smith and Wesson 500s, Gen4 Glock 23, 9mm Beretta, SIG Sauer P226.”

  I nodded as he named them. He knew what I carried. Joel Garber was the only person in the county that could organize silver bullets. If you asked me every police officer needed to carry at least one cartridge of silver, not only the vampire-prison guards, but vampires hadn’t made that kind of name for themselves yet.

  “You’re a star,” I said, taking out cartridges I had on me and filling them. The rest I would put in the storage compartment on my bike. I always felt better when I had a fresh set of ammo.

  “Should last you a while,” Joel said.

  “I hope so.”

  Joel walked to the narrow locker in the corner and opened it. He took out a gun and walked back to me.

  I whistled, taking it from him. It was a Carbine AR-15. The black metal was cold under my fingers.

  “This one’s semi-automatic. Air-cooled. Light enough for you to throw around when you need to.” He produced a scope. “And it has extras.”

  I smiled, looking the gun over, holding it up against my shoulder to try it on for
size. It was light, Joel was right.

  “Not your usual inconspicuous deal, but I thought you could appreciate it.”

  “This is why I love coming to you,” I said, grinning. Joel pushed a box of ammo across the table toward me. “And you got me silver for it,” I exclaimed. Joel grinned.

  “What else do you need done?” He leaned back against the desk and folded his arms.

  “I need you to check out a social security number for me. It’s all I have to go by.”

  Joel shook his head but he walked to his computer and sat down. It was always on. He ran a hell of a system. I didn’t know much about these things but Joel was a real techy. Sometimes I wondered what he did in a hole in Westham, helping a fly-by-night vampire hunter like me.

  “Don’t you have better things to do with your time?” I asked. He held out his hand and I gave him the paper with the details on it. He kept his eyes on the screen while his fingers flew over the keyboard in a blur.

  “Then who are you going to run to for this information? There are some ugly characters in town.”

  I snorted. “I think I count as one of them,” I said. He grinned.

  “You’re not so bad. I’ve seen worse. You don’t see the kinds of guys that walk through my door.”

  “If they don’t have fangs they’re not really on my radar,” I agreed. Joel and I were tight and we’d come a long way.

  “Here we are,” Joel said and the computer beeped. I walked around the desk and bent down. My face hovered over Joel’s shoulder. He smelled musky, like he’d sprayed on deodorant, but not recently.

  “There’s no name,” I said. It was only an address. 442 Caldwell Street. It was definitely in Westham Hills.

  “I know. His details are blocked with all sorts of firewalls and security systems. This was all I could get.”

  “I thought you were good at this,” I teased.

  He turned and looked at me. His face was open and his eyes serious. He was offended.

  “I can do it, but it’s going to take me a while. You don’t look like you want to wait a day or two.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll figure it out.”

  Joel nodded and got up. “Look, I’ll keep running it for you and let you know if I find anything else. Until then you’re going to have to use address only. It’s more than you started off with, though.”

  I climbed the stairs back up to the garage, carrying my load. Joel followed. I packed my ammunition into the compartment under the seat, and swung my leg over. The Carbine was on my back with a strap. There was nowhere else I could put it with the compartment full, but maybe I could get the chance to use it tonight. I was about to pull my helmet onto my head when Joel put his hand on my arm.

  “Be careful out there,” he said.

  “I have at least two hundred shots on me and a helluva gun. Don’t worry about it.”

  “People don’t usually have that kind of protection unless it’s serious. He doesn’t want to be found, and you’re going to push his buttons by doing the exact opposite. Don’t get dead.”

  “I won’t,” I said, smiling at Joel. I wasn’t going to tell him that if that happened, I didn’t know if I’d be too upset about it. They couldn’t turn me with my already-vampire mix of blood. The only way for me to go was out for good. Sometimes I wondered if it would really be a bad thing. Still, his concern was endearing. I pulled my helmet onto my head and waited for the garage door to roll up. I pulled into the night, my bike the only sound for miles around.

  I opened throttle and raced down the street. I followed the main road until I had to take a left that eventually wound up the hill. It became darker, the halos around the lights drowned in the canopy of leaves that stretched over the road and around the lights. My bike’s headlight cut a shaft of light into the inky black, and the darkness folded closed behind me again like a curtain.

  I found Caldwell Street easily. It was close to the top of the hill. The road was framed by high walls with electric fencing on top and cast iron gates with intricate curls to keep everyone out that didn’t belong. Through the gates I spied mansions, lit up by green garden lighting and chandelier porch lights, making the rest of Westham look like someone’s leftovers.

  Number 442 had a mustard-colored nine foot wall all around it, and it was topped off with electric fencing. The gate was big and black, mostly solid so I couldn’t see much through it save for the kind of paving on the other side. The spikes on top were a warning. With all my skills and breaking-and-entering expertise I wasn’t sure how I was going to get into this one. I sat back on the seat of my motorbike in the dark shadows of a huge poplar tree, and listened.

  The whole neighborhood was alive, I could feel people everywhere. They felt like warm puffs of air that clouded around your face in winter. Smells travelled to me on the wind, sweet and spicy, a mix of people and the lifeblood pumping through their veins. There was no way I was going to find a trace of this vampire by sitting in the road. Either I had to make another plan, or I had to wait a day or two for Joel to get back to me.

  I hated waiting. I had a furnace raging inside of me that only managed to settle after a kill. I couldn't get the burning heat under my skin to stop without it.

  I leaned forward and I was about to turn the key to kick the engine into life when a dark shadow blurred in the corner of my eye. I was too late, the sight reaching my brain too slowly. Something hard knocked me on the right of my jaw and I crashed to the ground next to my bike. White spots danced in front of my eyes and for a moment I couldn't figure out which way was up. The world spun around me and I was nauseous, like I was going to heave out my stomach.

  I pushed myself up on my hands and knees. I had to be fight-ready - I was sure there would be a follow-up - but with my head spinning I wasn't worth much. With my one had I reached for the Carbine on my back and pointed it deftly in front of me while I pushed myself up. Joel would be happy to hear it was fired first night on the job.

  I heard a snicker to my left, and I swung the gun in that direction, but I couldn't see anything.

  My mind recovered and I was up on my feet with a swift jump. The air smelled stale, laced with a flowery scent I couldn't place - it tried to be natural, but it wasn't. I pulled the trigger and the first bullets left the barrel with a whoosh and a clap, but whatever was out there moved. I could feel it in the atmosphere, a shift. If this person was faster than my bullets I was in trouble. If I was too concussed to shoot straight, I was in trouble too, but I could forgive myself for that.

  "You're not nearly what I thought you'd be," a silky voice traveled to me on the breeze. It surrounded me and caressed my skin, a whisper that physically touched me. A woman's voice. An icy finger traced a shiver down my spine.

  She stepped into a pool of moonlight that broke through the leaves. She was dressed in tight black clothes - it looked like I wasn't the only one that dressed to suit the night - and she had white hair that was pulled back tightly against her head. She kept her head dipped so her face was masked with shadows. Where her eyes should have been there were only pools of black.

  "Who are you?" I asked. I didn't usually ask my opponents that, but then again, they'd never been the ones to hunt me.

  "Your worst nightmare," she said, and the cliché was lost in the venom in her voice.

  We circled each other in a crouched stance, both ready to attack. I still had the gun pointed in her direction. One pull of the trigger and she would have a hole in her chest, human or not. I had my mind back in the game so she wouldn’t be able to outrun them again. But I was intrigued by this woman, this person who managed to seem like a copy of me, and the exact opposite, all at once.

  "What do you want?" I asked. The million dollar question.

  "How long did you think you could get away with it? How long did you think it was going to take for people to find out what you really are?"

  Blood drained from my face and I suddenly felt cold, despite my leather jacket. I'd hoped the answer to those would be 'n
ever'. There was a reason I worked in the dead hours of the night.

  I opened my mouth to ask a question but she launched at me. She took me by surprise again. Twice in one night - I was getting sloppy. In the process she knocked my gun out of my hand and it clattered into the darkness beyond my reach. There was no time for me to reach for another gun. She was on top of me, and she didn't fight like a girl.

  I silently thanked Sensei for training me the way he did. It got dirty fast. Her fists were like jackhammers, with a strength that equaled my own. I wondered if she was human, or some other sort of creature. A half-breed like me, or maybe something else that was mythical. Vampires might have been the only creatures acknowledged by the government, but there were others, too. They just kept it very quiet because it was still a myth everywhere.

  We rolled around in the dirt. She got more hits in than I did, and besides it hurting, it made me angry. I never even got beaten up by man. How was a girl beating me?

  I was on the floor, and she was taking out whatever she had against me on my face. I saw stars. I reached down and pulled out my knife from the thigh sheath. I lunged at her but she was faster than I thought and I only nicked her skin. Still, she let out a piercing scream and let me go, scrambling away.

  "Bitch," she said to me in what sounded a lot like a hiss. "You better watch your back, this isn't over." She melted into the shadows, and two seconds later she was gone. Silver had saved me many times before, and if she’d reacted to it that badly, she was definitely not human. Or a half-bred vampire. I was fine with silver.

  I groaned and laid back on the tarmac. My face throbbed and ached. I touched my nose carefully and my fingers came away with blood, black in the moonlight.

  I rolled over and pushed myself up, every muscle screaming in protest. I managed to get myself back into Westham downtown where the streetlights were welcome and the roads were familiar. I knew nothing could get to me out here.

  "What the hell happened to you?" Ruben asked when I walked into the office. He checked his watch. "You're early."