Vampire's Shade Discounted Box Set

by Vivienne Neas

“Do you think something came up?”

  I shook my head and walked to my phone. I dialed Joel’s number, but it went straight to voicemail. Joel’s phone was never off. If he couldn’t be connected he lost his mind.

  “I’m going to take a drive,” I said. The blood in my veins tingled, and I felt like an itch crept in under my skin. I’d been around the block enough times to know that I shouldn’t ignore this feeling. I stopped at the door.

  “I want you to get out of here,” I said to Aspen.

  “To go where?”

  “To a safe house,” I said. I took a deep breath, bracing myself for my own words. “To mom’s house.”

  “But…” her voice trailed off. We’d never gotten rid of the house. I couldn’t let it go. It was like I was letting mom go, then.

  “Trust me, Aspen. It’s not safe for you. I’ve been working on… a case. And they guys are making this personal. I don’t want to lose you.”

  When I looked at her, her face was contorted with horror.

  “I don’t want you to be afraid. I’m keeping you safe before things get out of hand. But this one will get worse before it gets better, and I can’t risk you getting in the crossfire.”

  “Adele…” Aspen’s voice was soft and she looked down at the hands in her lap. “You’re not a cop, are you?”

  I hesitated before I shook my head slowly. When she looked up at me her eyes were shimmering and tears welled up in them. How long had she been pretending she believed me for my sake? We both knew she wasn’t stupid and we’d both been pretending.

  “Promise me one thing,” she said. “One thing and I’ll go.”

  “What is it?”

  “After this you’ll put to rest all the demons that are still chasing you.”

  I took a deep breath and blew it out in a shudder.

  “I don’t know if I can do that.”

  “Promise you’ll try?” she asked. And I nodded. Because for Aspen I would do anything. For Aspen I would change the world.

  “Get your bags packed,” I said, and Zelda jumped into action. I walked over to Aspen and hugged her. She wrapped her arms around me. I squeezed my eyes shut, regretting what I was about to do. I bit her in the neck.

  Aspen jerked and shoved me away hard enough for her wheelchair to move back despite the breaks. Her hand went to her neck and when she pulled it away it was red.

  “What the hell?” she cried out. With blunt teeth the bite was a hell of a lot harder because I had to break the skin. The metallic taste of her blood was in my mouth. “You bit me!”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “Who are you, Adele? You’re not the person I used to know, anymore. You’ve changed.”

  I sighed. I had, she was right. But hearing it from her hurt more than my own admittance to the truth.

  “You have to get to the house as fast as you can. I’ll meet you there as soon as I have some kind of lead on Joel.”

  I turned and walked out.

  Chapter 14

  When I pulled in front of Joel’s house there was nothing left of it. The entire place had been burned to the ground, a charred mark shaping out the floor plan and singed rubble lying in heaps all over the place. This hadn’t been done by human hands. Humans couldn’t burn a place like this, so that there was virtually nothing left. Not even walls.

  I knew who’d done this. Some master vampires had fire as their ability. And most of them were destructive. This was past a warning. This was their first move.

  I walked onto the property and stood where the garage used to be. The sun was sinking behind the horizon, casting long creepy shadows across the ground, making the burned lot seem so much more morbid. Any other regular family would be spending a Sunday evening inside with the family. I was the only that was out on a rest day, trying to do some form of chaos control. I could feel the people in the neighborhood around me, calm, peaceful, content if not overly happy. I was suddenly jealous.

  I kicked around a bit, ash flying up into the air in a grey cloud. My toe stubbed against a latch, and I scraped away the ash with my foot to reveal the trap door that led down to the pit.

  When I opened the door, the stairs that led into the ground weren’t blackened and charred like the rest of the place. The fire hadn’t gotten this far. It had served its intended use as a bomb shelter after all.

  I stepped into the darkness, and flicked the switch. The hum of the generator kicking in filled the air around me, and the pit lit up in a light-green flicker.

  It looked a lot like it had on the video Joel had shown me when we’d met after Celia had trashed his place. But it wasn’t quite the same. Then it had looked like someone had left a warning. Now it looked like someone had fought for their life.

  A splatter of blood against the far wall drew my attention. There were more smears on the floor. I inhaled deeply, and recognized Joel straight away. He’d been hurt here, bleeding. There was no more blood than this.

  He was still alive unless they’d killed him somewhere else. And I had to find him.

  I rummaged through the rubble, looking for something, anything, that I could use to find a lead on him. There were a lot of papers lying around, most of them with information and data on it that I didn’t understand. His filing system was shot to hell, and all the gun cabinets and safes were thrown open. If there had been any weapons and ammunition, it had been taken.

  But I still didn’t get the feeling they’d been here to gain from his belongings. They were interested only and Joel. And that was because of his involvement with me.

  My stomach turned and guilt swirled around like nausea. A bitter taste in the back of my throat told me what I didn’t want to know. This was all my fault. If people died here, their blood would be on my hands.

  As a killer that shouldn’t have bothered me. But it did, because Joel was a friend. And Aspen… I took a deep breath. I couldn’t even bring myself to imagine what it would be like to lose her. There would be nothing left in my life, no reason why I was doing any of this.

  My hands grazed something hard underneath the papers I’d been fishing through, and I found a laptop. It looked like it had been caught in the fire. Which mean t it had been upstairs when the fire had started, and someone had moved it down here afterwards.

  Joel?

  To me that meant that there was something on it that was important. That he didn’t want to lose in the fire. Joel uploaded everything he had onto back up servers that were protected and out of the way. Whatever it was he wanted to protect wasn’t in the cloud of data online. It was only on this laptop.

  I tucked the laptop under my arm.

  When I turned she was standing at the bottom of the stairs. Her white hair caught the light streaming in through the trapdoor, and it looked like silk. She was smiling but her green eyes didn’t reflect any kind of emotion other than cold hatred.

  “Can Adele come out and play?” she said in a mocking voice. I rolled my eyes.

  “Not today, princess.”

  She scowled. I carried on looking through the pit, pretending to ignore her, but I kept my attention on her. She didn’t move, although I could feel contempt radiating off her in waves. She didn’t like being ignored. I kept moving, trying to mask the nerves that were bunching at the bottom of my throat, clenching my stomach.

  She took a deep breath through her nose, and then she cackled a laugh.

  “You’re scared of me,” she said.

  Well, yes. I was. Because I hadn’t been able to defeat her. I hadn’t been able to make any kind of progress on knowing how to get to her. And the memories of the previous fights with her, where I’d lost horribly, were too fresh in my mind. But I put on an emotionless smile of my own.

  “Being fearless is reckless. You have nothing to gain. I do.” I was talking about love. About emotion, about having something left in life that wasn’t materialistic. That wasn’t based on achievements. I didn’t think she understood something like that.

  “Well, if you wait l
ong enough, you won’t have anything to gain, either. The difference between you and me is that I have nothing left to lose, either. You, on the other hand, still do. And your time’s running out.”

  I lost my cool. I could only put on a face for so long. I put the laptop casually on a table, and turned to face her as calmly as I could force myself to be. I launched for her, faster and stronger than I’d been before. Fear and anger were a deadly combination if you applied them right. She laughed in a cackle again that danced around me, singing in my head, echoing through my hollow bones. She was quicker than I was, standing where’d I’d stood before I reached her.

  I turned and looked at her. She dragged a long black nail over the laptop. I wondered if she’d had those nails in the interview with Ruben, or if she could retract them like claws. When she smiled I realized she could take away the only lead I might have. I attacked again without thinking. This time I reached her before she had a chance to move and I managed to hit her in the face, a strong blow to the jaw. She stumbled backward and I got between her and the laptop.

  She hissed at me, eyes flashing rage.

  Then she disappeared, moving around me in a blur and out of the door, the image of her fading long after she’d left. A cold feeling stayed behind, like frost that licked up my body. I shivered, and the nerves I’d felt before solidified and became a rock of terror in my stomach. She did know what I was talking about. And I was about to lose someone if I didn’t make a plan soon.

  Joel was my techy. He was the one I would have run to with this laptop to find a way to hack out the information. I had no idea where else to go. So I took out my phone and I did the one thing I didn’t ever in my life think I would do.

  I phoned Carl.

  “Listen, I need a favor,” I said into the speaker when he answered sounding as crisp as ever. Didn’t this man ever sleep? The only reason I was up and running was because life threatening events tended to pump adrenaline into me. Otherwise I would have been home and in bed too. I thought about bed and thought of Connor’s house. I pushed the memories away.

  Maybe Carl had a hell of a life too. Who knew what turned someone to a gun for a living?

  “Oh, the great Adele Griffin comes to me. What did I do to deserve this honor?” The sarcasm bled through his words.

  “Can it, Carl. I need help and it’s urgent.”

  He groaned into the phone. “What do you want?”

  “A technician that will help me crack a laptop that’s been… damaged.” I turned the piece of scrap around in my hands. That’s all description I had left for this thing.

  “What happened to yours?”

  “It was in a fire.”

  “Your technician?”

  Well, yeah, but that was not what I wanted him to know. “The laptop.”

  Carl chuckled like it was a joke.

  “Don’t you know someone? People are going to die if I can’t crack this thing.”

  Carl whistled through his teeth. “Sounds like you’ve been getting some action. Better than me, I’ve been hitting a dry spell for far too long.”

  I tried not to imagine what he meant by that.

  “I’ll give it to you on one condition,” he said.

  “What?”

  “I want in on whatever it is you’re doing.”

  “Are you crazy?”

  He took a deep breath. “There are days I think I might be,” he said and his voice was so sincere I had the feeling he wasn’t joking this time.

  “Fine,” I said. I needed it, I couldn’t turn him down now or Joel might die. If I was still alive he could get in on the action. I’d already sacrificed enough people. Why not another one I could kill myself over? Right.

  He gave me the number of a guy. “Used him a couple of times. He’s good, knows what he does. He should have some time for you too, his busy time is at night.”

  So, more technicians had the wrong friends. It was calming somehow to know this guy wasn’t straightforward vanilla. Maybe he wouldn’t chase me away with my leathers and guns.

  “Thanks,” I said to Carl and hung up before he could say anything out of line.

  I phoned the guy. His voice was gravelly over the phone, like he was talking to me through a sieve, and he sounded weary. After a bit of smooth talking I finally got him to agree to taking on a client he didn’t know. I guessed in his line of work being cautious could save your life. I felt the same way about strangers so I could respect that.

  I got an address and a meeting for eight tomorrow morning. My week was going to start with a bang. He’d had openings for tonight, but I had a rule about going to meet people in the middle of the night. I’d killed enough under the cloak of darkness to know I didn’t want to be the one that ended up on the other end of that food chain.

  The only thing left for me to do now was to go home. I took a deep breath and blew it out in a shudder. I didn’t want to leave Joel to fend for himself alone, but I didn’t have much of a choice. I would be no good to him if I were dead – I had to take care of myself first.

  My apartment was cold and dark when I arrived. I didn’t usually spend nighttime indoors. I was a nocturnal creature and the walls felt like they were closing down on me and suffocating me. I opened the curtains so I could see the inky black air with the pinpricks of stars stretching across it like a blanket.

  I stripped of my leathers and took a shower. I had the knife with me permanently now. The whole apartment looked different in the yellow light that replaced sunlight, and I didn’t feel like I was at my own home. When I crawled into bed I fell asleep straight away, but sometimes that wasn’t enough for me to escape my life.

  I had nightmares about Joel, burning alive, throwing his laptop out at me, yelling for me to get to Aspen before she burned too. The sounds of bullets splintering tiles came out of his mouth every time he called for me.

  I tried to get to Aspen but hot black tar stopped my bike’s wheels from turning. When I got off and tried to run my feet sucked into it and I had to fight for every step.

  When I finally got to Aspen’s house it was dark, and Zelda was there, beckoning me into the black. Aspen’s voice called out to me, clear and crystal as always, music in the night. I couldn’t see anything but I followed the sound of her voice, feeling around for her in the dark. Flames started licking around us, consuming the house, lighting up the place enough for me to see. I found Aspen and wrapped my arms around her frail body, but she felt stronger and firmer than usual. When I pulled away again it was Connor staring back at me.

  “Where’s Aspen?” I asked him, drawing back. I didn’t want to touch him. The warmth that flowed from him threatened to suck me in, and my memories of Aspen slipped away from me like bathwater down a drain.

  “She’s right there,” he said, pointing at someone behind me. When I spun around it was Celia standing behind me. Her hair was white, her eyes a brilliant green. When I looked at Connor again, frowning, he looked like her too. They both laughed and their cackling surrounded me like a storm.

  I sat up, the darkness in my room folding around me. The nightmare slowly faded, but my heart hammered in my chest and I was hyperventilating. I swung my legs off the bed and leaned my head down between my knees. I focused on getting my breathing back to normal.

  When I looked up again the night sky had a silvery quality to it, anticipating dawn. Thank god.

  I got up and climbed in the shower again. I turned on only the hot water and I stood underneath the scalding stream. The drops hit my skin like a thousand needles. I ignored the pain on my leg. The graze was a lot smaller but still there. At least it didn’t bother me anymore, not like before. Steam fogged up the entire bathroom, hanging in the air like fog, an artificial sky, and I couldn’t breathe in the humidity. But at least through all the pain and discomfort I knew I was alive. I was back in reality.

  I got into running clothes, found my chain, and stepped out of my apartment. The hallways and the lobby smelled dusty and moldy, and I wondered how I’d surv
ived in this place for so long. When I finally stepped into the crisp morning air I took a deep breath, and ran.

  I ran until my muscles screamed at me, until my legs felt numb and my chest burned every time I took a breath. My neck and shoulders were rubbed numb with the weight of the chain. I ran until I couldn’t run anymore, and then I turned around and started the run home.

  Finally it rolled onto seven-thirty. I got dressed into my leathers and suited up. My knife in the thigh sheath, my S&W in my shoulder holster under my jacket, my SIG at my back. I glanced at the Carbine but decided against it. I needed Carlos to let me in. I did make sure I had the black chain in the bike’s compartment, though. Just in case. I always fell back onto my saying – luck favored the prepared.

  I got on my bike and navigated the streets of town. He was a couple of blocks away from my own place, but in an even worse part of town. I hadn’t been sure that was possible at all. The street looked like the garbage removal just skipped it on garbage day, and there weren’t even stray cats around. If the cats didn’t bother, you had to know.

  I found the apartment he’d described and buzzed the first intercom on the list. None of them were marked. The wind picked up and a chilly finger sliced through me, despite the leathers. It was the kind of cold that came with foreboding.

  The door buzzed open and I stepped into an apartment building that looked like it had been abandoned decades ago. The decorations inside were old, the wallpapers seemed like golden floral print under the dust and the carpet was once a deep red. I could see this on the few patches that weren’t worn down to the concrete beneath. It, too, was dusty.

  A chandelier hung from the ceiling with real candles in it, all burned down to a pile of wax and black quick, and the elevator behind it still had a steel gate in front of the wooden door that closed it.

  I walked past reception where a visitor’s book was open and signed here and there with curly handwriting, but there was no doorman. Not physically anyway. The presence that hung in the lobby made me wonder if he still hung around from time to time, checking in from the afterlife.