“These are low level, Adele. I told you, you need to prioritize that last one I gave you. I’ve got clients on my case about it.”
I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and looked out the window. The sky was changing, the darkness incomplete now with the warning of dawn.
“I’m still tracking him. I haven’t found a solid lead.” I didn’t want him to know I’d failed with Connor. I didn’t want him to know that I saw Connor as a he and not an it even though he was a vampire. I didn’t want Ruben to know that I referred to him as Connor.
“You’re getting sloppy, Adele. You’re usually on top of them in one night.”
“You just gave me a social security number. What do you expect from me?”
He looked at me and I looked right back, locking us in a stare-down. In Ruben’s world it was a warning. Human’s did it to emphasize their point, their resolve. They did it to win an argument.
In my world it was a fight for dominance. If one predator locked eyes with another it was a challenge. And Ruben sure as shit didn’t want to challenge me. I had a lot more on him, speed and strength and two guns and a knife. He was going to end up very far second.
Ruben broke the stare and looked down at the ID cards again. He didn’t realize he’d just lost the fight. I was the Alpha between me and him, no matter who paid who at the end of the month.
“Just make sure you get this over and done with,” he said, not looking at me. “Talk to your friends, call your contacts. I know you run to a techy when you need something. Now would be a good time to do that.”
The way he said it got my back up. I didn’t run to anyone.
“I said I would get it done,” I said, and my voice was hard and cold as ice. Ruben glanced up at me. I didn’t know what my face showed, but he nodded.
“You better,” he said but his voice was empty of the warning his words were suggesting.
I drove home and put away my guns, stripping out of my leather and getting into the shower. I scrubbed my skin until it was raw. The thing about blood was that once it was dried it was damn hard to get off. I didn’t want to arrive at my training with blood on my hands. Much less at Aspen’s.
By the time I was ready to leave again it was already heading on towards eight o’clock. I picked up my phone and dialed her number, but only got through to voicemail.
“I’ve got training until ten today, I’ll stop by afterward. Keep something warm for me, Sensei is going to make sure I’m starving.”
I hopped on my bike and drove into town. It was faster than any public transport system was going to get me to the Academy.
I met with Sensei an hour earlier to make up for missing my session yesterday. We started with a warm-up and then some sparring. Everything went well until he knocked me in the head. If I was fine nothing would have happened, I would have recovered and went after him for it. But my head hurt more than I’d expected it would, and I sprawled on the floor. I held my hand up for him to just to wait a second. I didn’t have to say anything, he put two and two together.
“Either you’re running with the wrong crowd, or my teaching isn’t working. What happened?”
“I stepped into the wrong territory, is all,” I answered. Sensei looked at me until I squirmed under his stare.
“Really, it was nothing. You should see the other guy.” I chuckled half-heartedly. Of course it hadn’t been another guy. It had been a woman. And I hadn’t made a mark on her save for the burn I was sure she carried on her leg now after I’d cut her with my silver blade. But I wasn’t going to admit any of that to Sensei. Besides, he didn’t know about all the other injuries.
“I’m starting to think I should be worried about you on more than just a self-defense and fighting-technique level,” he said, starting with the stretching routine I mirrored for warm-up.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “I can handle myself.”
“Doesn’t sound like it,” he said. I steeled myself against the insult. I would show him in our sparring and hand-to-hand just now. I could still put him on his back and make him hurt. I ignored that it was because he was only a human, and my enemies almost never were.
At the back of my mind I wondered if I would be able to find a vampire that would train me in supernatural fighting skills. It might have come in handier than what I was doing now. That of course meant that I would have to know a vampire without killing it. And that wasn’t something I liked to do. Not because I killed every vampire I knew, but because I only spoke to them when I was about to kill them. It was a strange, backward cycle.
And in the middle of it all, holding everything together like a stake in the middle, was Connor. The one vampire I hadn’t managed to kill. The one vampire I didn’t even really hate, if I had to admit it. I shook my head. I wasn’t going to admit it, just yet. There was still time. Hatred was better when it was left simmering for a while.
“You’re not doing this for fun, are you?” Sensei asked me when I all but crawled to my bag and fished out my water bottle. I’d taken it all out on him, and he looked like he’d just had a warm-up. Maybe he had energy left because he wasn’t beating himself up on top of everything.
“I don’t—“
“You know, your stories are getting old,” he said and walked over to the chair next to my bag, sitting down. “All I’m seeing is you getting hurt, and then coming down here to take whatever you’re mad about out on me. I don’t mind being a punching bag, that’s my job. But just hitting everything and everyone you see isn’t going to fix whatever’s bothering you.”
“It’s worked for me so far,” I lied. The truth was it wasn’t working at all. But what else could I do? Forgiveness wasn’t an option, and it sounded ridiculous to scale down to a nine-to-five desk job now.
I threw my things in my bag without ceremony. When I wanted to stand up Sensei put his hand on my shoulder. The warmth of his touch made my want to lean into it and to cringe away all at the same time. Instead I just froze. My muscles were tense. I could take him again if I had to.
I shook my head to get the thoughts out. This wasn’t an attack. Not everything was.
“I don’t know what you’re doing. But you’ve been coming here for long enough with the same routine… all I’m saying is that not everyone is an enemy. There are the few in your life who are willing to be your friends.”
He stood up and walked away from me without a care in a world, like he always did. I resented that. He could walk away and take on his next student without the darkness trying to catch up with him, and I walked out of the door into the past.
I reached Aspen’s house half an hour after my training session. Every muscle in my body felt numb and complained when I slid off my bike. Zelda opened the front door when she heard my bike’s engine.
“Adele,” she exclaimed, looking at the motorcycle over my shoulder when I walked toward the front porch. “You don’t usually come here on that.”
“I had a change in routine today. I left her a voicemail,” I answered. When I was on the steps, Zelda shook her head.
“Aspen’s gone out.”
I froze in my tracks, one leg still hovering in the air over the last step. I put it down again without climbing further.
“Out where?”
“She went shopping. Claude took her about…” she lifted her wrist and squinted at her watch. “… an hour ago.”
I swore under my breath in a way that was very unbecoming for a lady.
“How could you just let her go?”
“Because I’m her nurse not her warden,” she said matter-of-factly. “Claude is with her.”
“Claude is a damn driver.” I sneered and spun around, running for my bike. Zelda called after me, but I didn’t hear what she was saying. I was already pushing the helmet over my head and I had the bike started and reeling down the road in a flash.
I was overreacting. I knew I was. But it had been a hell of a week and if someone was on my case and knew what I was, how was she saf
e? My heart hammered in my chest and I struggled to breathe. Shopping wasn’t a bad thing, was it? Aspen was a grown woman. But she was also half-vampire, and with her teeth she looked pretty mythical. And she was in a wheelchair.
What if someone decided they didn’t like her? If they accidentally saw her teeth even when she knew how to smile and speak to conceal them? She was so vulnerable. If something happened to her and I couldn’t save her… it would all be my fault. Again.
I shook my head while I flew towards the mall. I tried to get rid of the images that flashed in my mind’s eye. Aspen had just been a teenager when her whole life had been ripped apart. She’d only had me, and even then I hadn’t been able to save her from a life that was worse than death.
I pulled into a parking space for motorcycles and ran into the mall. I dialed Aspen’s number in the run and to my relief it rang.
“Adele,” her clear voice rang over the speaker.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“I’m at the mall. I’m shopping.”
“I mean what shop? Let me come find you.” I swallowed the excess spit in my mouth from running.
“You’re here? I’m at the food court.”
I hung up and made my way to the food court. The mall was busy this time of the morning, and I pushed my way through bustling groups of people. Finally I spotted her at a table with the chair removed for her wheel chair, drinking a soda.
“What are you doing here?” she asked when I collapsed on a chair next to her and tried to catch my breath. The air came in ragged gasps and burned my lungs on the way in and out. No matter how fit I was, the kind of fear I kindled about Aspen got me breathless and heaving every time.
“I just wanted to say hello,” I lied.
Aspen narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re checking up on me.”
“I’m not. I just… Shit Aspen. What if something happened to you?”
Aspen sighed and put down her soda with a clunk. “Don’t you think you’re being a bit much?” she asked. I knew I was but I wasn’t going to admit to it. “I’m just shopping. I’m allowed to get out of the house and have a life, you know.”
I nodded, looking around the food court, scanning for anything that might look like trouble.
“Claude is here to help me,” she said and nodded toward the burger stand where I saw the driver standing in line. “And besides, what’s going to happen to me? The worst already had and I survived it.”
I looked down at her wheelchair and her words snapped around me like whips.
“I’m sorry,” I said, even though I wasn’t. The only thing I regretted was that she felt I was being over-protective. I wasn’t sorry at all for the fact that I was overprotective. I just needed her safe. I wasn’t going to let her get hurt again, even if it killed me.
I offered her a smile that she returned after a moment of hesitation. “Well, after that episode, I think I’m going to head home and have a shower. I’m still sweaty from training.
Aspen nodded. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And don’t worry about me, okay? I’m perfectly fine.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to sound confident about it. I turned and walked away.
I’d almost reached my bike when my phone rang. I pulled it out and looked at the caller ID. It was Joel.
“Can I come over?” he asked. Joel never came over to my place. No one did. I didn’t like showing people the dump I lived in.
“I’m still out. Let me come to you. I’ll be there in ten.”
“No, don’t do that,” he said and his voice sounded panicky. “Stay where you are, I’ll come to you.”
“What’s going on?”
“Someone trashed my place. I have footage, and I think you need to see this.”
I arranged for him to meet me at the mall, at a coffee shop on the other side so I wouldn’t run into Aspen and make her think I was keeping an eye on her. I put my helmet back on my bike, and weaved my way into the crowds again. My eyes felt gritty when I blinked and my head thumped dully. I was running on eighteen hours with no sleep, and with sleeping in yesterday morning and training twice as hard today my clock was off and my body complained.
I found the coffee shop we’d agreed on and found a table in the back where the hum of voices all around us could drown out conversation. I texted Joel where to find me, and leaned back, waiting. I hated being out in public like this. There were people around me everywhere, groups of three laughing, couples staring into each other’s eyes… it was all very normal.
In my nighttime career of murder and mayhem it was difficult to remember a day time life that looked so ordinary. I wondered what my life would have looked like if I didn’t have Aspen to worry about. If my mother was still alive. If my father wasn’t locked up in a metal cell with no light so he wouldn’t fry or dematerialize.
Joel arrived just in time to snap me out of the spiral my thoughts were pulling me into.
“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, sitting down. He looked about as panicked as I had felt a half hour earlier. He looked at me, and then let his eyes slide down and back up my body.
“You look different.”
I rolled my eyes. “Don’t remind me.”
“No, it looks good. The whole I-actually-do-have-a-heart look works on you.”
I punched him lightly on the shoulder and he leaned back in his chair, ducking away from me.
“I’m not here for insults,” I said.
“Only you would take a compliment as an insult. If I told you you look like a serial killer, I might get you to smile. You’re all backwards, Adele.”
“Are we here to discuss you, or me?” I asked irritably.
“You’re right,” he said. “Well, someone got into the pit and trashed everything. All my computers are ruined. When I got there this morning it looked like a hurricane had been through it, all my papers were scattered. It’s a hell of a lot of money in damages, too.”
“I didn’t know people knew about your work place,” I said. Joel was discreet in his dealings.
“Only three people do, and you and I are two of them.”
“You said you have footage?”
He nodded and produced a laptop bag that I hadn’t noticed him carrying over his shoulder.
“This one’s fine, though,” I said, nodding at the laptop.
“I keep this one on me. It has all my cameras linked up to it.”
I didn’t know Joel had cameras everywhere. I hadn’t noticed any, and for me that’s saying something.
“They’re thumb-tack cameras,” Joel said as if he’d read my mind. “No one’s supposed to see them. I invented them myself.” He said it like he wanted a pat on the back. He wasn’t going to get it from me.
“Do you have more where those came from?” I asked instead. He nodded, a smile slowly creeping across his face. “I could do with some surveillance at my place.” It was a compliment if I wanted some too. “Maybe Aspen’s as well,” I added.
“I won’t be able to set it up for you straight away, I have to sort out the pit first and find them. I also need to check your system to see if it’s up to date enough to run them.”
I thought back to my computer. Unlikely, but maybe Joel could do a bit of magic.
“Pity you can’t do it soon. I have a feeling someone’s on my trail.”
Joel flipped open his laptop. He pulled up a screen split four-ways and a black and white tape showed the pit. Someone in black clothes appeared and started ransacking the place, throwing over tables, kicking monitors and cabinets over.
“What was he looking for?”
“Not he, she,” Joel said, and the next frame showed the person from the side. It was clearly a woman, and she had white hair. She wore a bandana over her mouth so it was impossible to see her face properly, but I was pretty sure I knew her.
“How did she know we were linked?” I asked.
“It’s her, isn’t it?” Joel asked. “I knew it was.
“What did she want?”
I took a deep breath and blew it out again. A warning I could believe. A hit would have been death. I was pretty sure that even the other night’s attack on me had been more of a warning. I knew how I fought to the death. I doubted she would have fled from an unfinished job.
“I’m going to have to find her and put an end to this nonsense.” It was one thing if I got beaten up. It was different when the people I cared about were thrown in the mix.
“Don’t plan your revenge just yet,” Joel said. “I get all the information my servers find sent to the laptop. Back-ups and all that. This came through just before the system went offline.”
He clicked on a tab at the bottom of the screen and pulled up a website address. The newspaper article appeared on screen.
Connor O’Neill, king of Westham’s Business District and part of Westham’s
social elite went missing after a troubling report came to light that suggested he
is involved in Vampire Trafficking. Connor O’Neill, third generational owner
of O’Neill & Grodin Inc. was one of the forerunners for vampire-human
equality and backed this by employing vampires. O’Neill & Grodin Inc. was
one of the first companies to implement this employment structure with many
other companies following suit. To date his company employees are 30% vampire
which ranks as one of the highest in the country.
Questions are being raised by partners and stockholders whether the vampire
employment was a cover, where some are going as far as saying that O’Neill used
it as a front to attract vampires which he then shipped off to work in illegal
blood-banks in the middle-east.
Vampire trafficking is a relatively new concept and there is a fresh market for it,
where vampires are used for anything from scientific experimenting and the search
for a viable antidote to ‘cure’ vampirism, to fetishes and fantasies. With the life
expectancy being so high, and vampires’ ability to heal so fast, they are sold at an
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