“A martial arts master maybe?” one of the other werewolves put in as a thought. They all glanced to Ray Chan, who noticed the looks with a frown at the assumption that all Asians were martial artists.
It was Lex that answered the question, more or less, as he said, “He had some training, but I don’t know if he was a master. I’ve never run into a human that could fight like that, but maybe a well trained guy could pull it off.
“Does that mean we want to write him off as just a karate guy or something? If we do and run into him again, we can’t just figure a normal smelling person is easy prey.”
“Obviously,” Eric chewed his words angrily and spat them out. “You’ve become complacent. Most of you I plucked from the cattle you were and I’ve tried to train you, but for those of you that figured we couldn’t be beaten. Here’s your lesson. We are not invincible and need to start being smarter. This isn’t the first run in that hasn’t gone the right way for us lately.”
Vanessa, a fiery redhead, frowned at Eric’s last words. “You mean that girl. Ramon grabbed her and tried to turn her, but it doesn’t seem to be taking.”
Their leader returned a frown on the woman. “Some college girl turns up and seems to be immune to the wolf. That’s never happened before that I’ve ever heard. This city seems to have come up with a lot of unexplainable crap. I’m beginning to wonder if bringing the pack here was a good decision after all.”
“Ice and snow and now freakish humans that we can’t sniff out,” the redhead snapped at the air with her words. “Other than some fresh meat, what are you looking for here, Eric?”
In a near blink, the pack leader had crossed the floor and lifted the woman by her shirt to slam her into the wall. “Do you question me, Nessa? I’ve been doing this a lot longer than any of you children. Chicago and its suburbs have plenty to offer us. There’s a sense of peace out here that isn’t always easy to find as well as the chaos of a big city.
“We’re werewolves. We can rule a forest or a city here. The night is ours to take and I need strong followers. Maybe Chan and Lex aren’t the wolves I thought they were and Aubrey, what are you? You didn’t fight and got zapped into submission. Maybe I should put you through a wall or kick you out of the pack?”
The three all repeated their apologies as Eric released Vanessa who rubbed her injured chest and shoulders. Frustrated with his pack, the leader turned his back on them heading into the basement. The girl in question was being held there.
The creak of the fifth stair stabbed at his sensitive ears. He’d have to make one of the offending members try and fix it. If they made it worse, he’d probably lose it and kill them, of course.
“Problems, boss?” Ramon asked from where he sat guarding the girl in a cage meant to hold initiates to the wolf. Despite more than one attempt to turn her, however, this girl didn’t appear to be one of their own.
“Yeah you look like you got bad news,” Miguel added from across a table the two were using to play cards.
A growl of annoyance was his answer. In his frustration, his hands struck the bars of the cell causing a dull ring that brought the girl’s face up in fear. His eyes didn’t soften as he looked at this mystery. Was there something to worry over here? She might be immune to the wolf, but the girl was merely a human that could be killed if not turned.
He had held off killing the girl, because Ramon had a thing for her, even if he wasn’t allowed to do anything about it at the moment. Eric had forbid it when the man had dragged her back to the house thinking he’d already turned her. When Eric’s teeth still couldn’t pass the change over to the young woman, he had kept her caged to try and figure her out.
Looking on the girl, Eric had to admit that she was quite a beautiful young woman. A college girl too, so he assumed that she was at least relatively intelligent. That was until they told him that she was studying drama. An actress? Great.
Her dark hair was a bit mussed, which didn’t harm her looks to a werewolf’s eyes. The creatures were usually a bit wild in their looks, though a few acted more like show dogs preening their looks, he had to admit. Dark, brown eyes set above full cheek bones and a perky nose, had fear in them nearly bringing tears. The girl had cried a lot since she had been caged, but for the moment the tears remained dammed.
Even her lips, which were fairly plump and sexy when they weren’t quivering from fear, were amazing. The face was near perfection with her tanned, Latin skin tone atop a body with long, lean lines as well as a woman’s hips and breasts. She was a Latin beauty, but Eric was fairly immune to her charms, he had brought in the two red heads, which were more, his taste.
“What are you? I wonder,” Eric mused as his anger died while studying the girl. “Could there be more than coincidence that we found you and now those idiots find a human that can out fight two of my boys?”
His words caused the other two to get a bit agitated. They wanted to ask what had happened, but knew better than to disturb their leader by asking questions that they might not need the answers to. Eric felt their moods and nearly smiled. These two were smarter than most of the house upstairs apparently.
The girl finally got up the courage to plead, “Please, let me out. I won’t tell anyone about you. Really! No one would believe me anyway. Please, just let me go!”
“No,” he stated flatly before turning to go back upstairs.
Chapter 9- Back to School
Cars passed by in a never ending stream and the noise of a winter street in Chicago remained a backdrop to most passersby who hurried quickly to their destinations. It was still cold as winter seemed to refuse to end. Single day spring warm ups had tried pushing their way through the cold’s death grip, but winter still ruled the city.
Few noticed the man in the long, black jacket. He wasn’t overly concerned with the weather as he searched the area outside of the college library buildings. Nick wasn’t sure which of the two main libraries the girl had been spending time in at the time of her disappearance, but it mattered little for this kind of search. He was looking for the supernatural details that may be lingering.
It had been three days before he had learned of the girl, known as Lena, having disappeared, so he worried that time would have worn away at any evidence left behind. Unlike the police, who were looking for human reasons for the girl to have been kidnapped, he was looking for signs of werewolves that could be scent related.
The quad was large enough for winds to swirl and confuse, but Nick had been doing similar hunts for over a hundred years. His expertise could often overcome what a human detective could not. He entered the smaller of the two libraries and decided to question the librarians. They had probably been through hours of questioning by police by now, so the answers he needed should be fresh.
Looking up at the man as he walked up to the counter, a woman of middle age raised an eyebrow questioningly. “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”
With a gentle smile, Nick simply said, “I was hoping to get a few details of the girl who disappeared.” “Lena?” the woman asked. Her face showed the conflict warring behind her eyes. “Are you with the police, young man?”
A smile twisted the corners of his mouth; he had to be nearly a hundred years older than this woman. “No… Andrea,” he said reading the woman’s name badge, “I am a reporter. I was hoping to get some information to write an article to get the story out to the people. The more who know she’s missing, the more eyes that can look out for her, so hopefully we can help this girl out. I’m sure we all fear for her safety.”
The woman’s face echoed her fears. Nick hoped to play upon those to get the information. It seemed to be working as she asked, “What kind of questions? The police seemed to be sure they had things in hand.”
“Well, where do you think I heard of Lena? My contacts in the force let me know, so I could come down and help.”
“Fine. Do we need to go somewhere quieter?” she questioned as her eyes looked around them.
He chuckle
d. “We’re in a library. How much quieter of a setting do we need?”
The woman laughed realizing that her wording was indeed not what she meant. “We have offices where we wouldn’t be interrupted, if you’d rather.”
Once they were in the office, Nick set about getting what he needed. “Do they know which area she was last seen in?”
“She was last seen by some of the students Monday night studying at the common tables here.”
“Have the police found any unusual people inside the library? Can just anyone walk in?”
The woman smirked, “You made it in, didn’t you? It’s not that hard really. If you have a student badge you can withdraw books, but that doesn’t mean someone else couldn’t come in with a student to look around and use the resources here. It’s just not that strict and really never was a problem until just recently.”
Nick raised an eyebrow at her phrasing of her answer. “Is Lena not the first disappearance?”
The woman looked worried and glanced around as if someone could have been listening into their conversation in the office. “Well, I’ve heard of two other people missing this semester and I believe two others from the fall semester as well.
“They weren’t all said to be from the library or anything, but people leaving the school happens often with little notice. Some of these kids ditch so many classes that when something actually does happen to them, we’re the last to know.”
He jotted that tidbit into the back of his mind. Maybe his sources in the police and FBI would have more information on these other occurrences. It was beginning to sound like some predator was definitely working the area to have so many noticed that a simple librarian would be able to come up with the information.
It wasn’t a question of intelligence. Unlike teachers that took roll call of their classes for credit, a librarian rarely knew most of the people coming through their doors. Not every student asked questions or talked with the workers. In fact, Nick would guess that they would know less than ten percent of the students, especially in a school serving about fifteen thousand students each term.
He wrapped up their conversation shortly. The other librarians and student help all said they would answer more questions, but Nick figured he had the most important clues for the start. Unlike many reporters, the man needed the basic information only to start his true search for clues.
Walking the library starting with the study tables that had been pointed out, Nick began using his above average senses. He noticed more than a few stares as he took deep breaths trying to pick up on inhuman scents. The idea of smelling for someone like Vivian came to mind. The man could hardly search for a scent like his own when he didn’t really know how he smelled to the predatory races. Vivian, though one of his own, had never really smelled odd to him until after Marek had pointed out the taste of his blood.
While inferior to a vampire’s sense of smell, especially pertaining to blood, Nick’s nose often caught what they did almost as quickly. His sixth sense was more useless when the actual creatures weren’t present, since it was almost a sense of their auras. A base smell had no aura to find.
The table the girl had been sitting at had been sat in enough to throw away any idea of using her smell to track them. Several students looked at him as he studied the last chair the girl had been seen sitting at that night.
“Something wrong, mister,” a boy that must have been a freshman asked. At well over a century, Nick could still tell fresh meat from the more jaded upperclassmen.
“Did you happen to know, Lena Vega?”
The boy shook his head. It had been unlikely in such a big school where schedules made strangers of people in the same grade and crowded classrooms kept everyone but the eager question answering people anonymous.
As he leaned on the back of the chair thinking, the voran finally caught it. Almost too sweet, the smell of a girl’s perfume laced with another smell, the smell of a voran’s blood. At least, he was pretty sure that was the scent.
A second smell he knew was found as he went into the stacks. The girl’s scent was there as well as that of nature and an animal. Even a couple days old, the smell of werewolf was noticeable now that he knew how to look for it.
New leads led him to Halsted, and the smell became lost to the wind and the many people who traveled the sidewalks and streets. Her smell had followed the same path. It had to be her scent with the accuracy of matching paths. Had Lena been taken or simply convinced to walk with the animal? Was it even a relationship that had lulled her in to be taken?
Nick knew that he could do no more here. The girl in his vision had indeed been taken by werewolves. Now the question was if he could find her before something bad happened.
Night.
The predators were out and a moon nearly full was overhead giving them extra help. The prey never knew to look where the beasts would be. They merely looked to the shadows that a human would use to attack. They watched streets and alleys, when the darkest of shadows would strike from above.
The squad of four leaped from rooftop to rooftop running at near full speed. They had picked up the scent of two more rogues. The creatures were in almost the same place as Nick’s kill. As Marek led his three companions, he wondered at the timing.
So many rogue vampires striking the same area seemed more than coincidence. They weren’t fighting with his people over territory as far as he could tell, and yet, this almost felt like it was a testing of their defenses. Did Nick’s kill even get figured into such a test? Was the voran an unseen variable that Marek’s enemies would not be able to factor?
The vampire often wondered if he should consider the man a friend or just an ally. The problem of such questions was that they sprang up at inappropriate and often inopportune times. He pushed the thought of the voran from his mind as they closed on their quarry.
A scream sounded that faded into a gurgling that probably would’ve been missed by mortal ears.
Marek made a hand gesture to Marcus sending the vampire left to leap onto the roof opposite the remaining three. The jump was about 50 feet, but easily crossed with a vampire’s powers. Another hand gesture reminded Edgar and Audrey to be ready.
When the first of two dark shapes appeared on the roof ahead of them, not even Marek felt completely ready for the surprise. They had known that the rogue was just ahead of them, but he had been on the ground. He had sensed them coming despite the wind.
The new vampire spotted the three and bared his fangs in a grin that revealed no fear. In fact, the clawed hands invited them to try and fight. Marek was surprised by the bravado in this vampire. He seemed new, a young vampire of maybe a few months. The smell of his sire was still in his skin.
Marek worried that Marcus was on his own and facing off against the other creature they had been following. He signaled Edgar to go help their comrade and he shot across the void to the far roof where the second vampire had indeed been in a stare off with Marcus.
Audrey slid to the right and Marek moved slightly left to split the enemy’s attention. He had watched Edgar break off and merely shrugged as if to say they should have kept all three to fight this freshly bitten whelp. The audacity was beginning to annoy Marek. He was over one hundred thirty-five years old and had fought and killed more than a hundred other vampires in his time. Rogues popped up all too often and needed to be put down when they got out of hand.
A blade slid from its hiding place up his sleeve. Laced with silver, the weapon could harm its wielder as easily as an enemy, but Marek had learned to use it well against his enemies. The rogue moved in a blink of speed that would’ve been lost on a human, but Marek was no human and had speed that could match such a move.
The girl kept back letting her leader start the fight.
Slashing towards his target, the silver blade cut only air. The rogue caught part of Marek’s jacket as its claws tried to reciprocate with their own cuts.
Marek dodged and tried to kick the man. The low attack was avoided as
the vampire leaped the leg and dove for Marek’s chest with claws seeking to stab into him. Clawed hands were swept aside by Marek’s left hand with his own claws slicing into a forearm.
The rogue skipped backwards dripping blood from his arm. If it had been the dagger, the arm might have been cut or burned from the elbow down. Marek frowned. The two began to go round and round stabbing and slashing at each other trying to find holes in the other’s defenses.
If only the blade would hit, the battle would be over, Marek thought in frustration.
A set of claws marked his side cutting through jacket and shirt beneath to his flesh. Marek drew in a hissed breath feeling the pain. How was this whelp so good so fast? Marek should have all the advantages in the fight, but it was evenly matched, perhaps even weighted to his enemy’s side, he thought.
They closed again and Marek timed the retaliatory attacks perfectly. The blade caught the rogue’s shirt, but as it passed through, the silver met and penetrated skin. A flare of fire burned the flesh and was gone again in a moment, but the pain went to the creature’s brain and distracted it from the task at hand.
A second stab of the blade slid the dagger into the vampire’s right shoulder. More flame scorched its shoulder and clothing around the wound. The blade came free for Marek to harm the beast more, but intellect won the war against instinct and anger.
As the rogue fell back in a daze of pain, Marek rushed him driving the man to the ground. “Who are you and who sired you? Did he send you to test me?”
The rogue’s eyes started to clear and a bark of laughter was all the answer he could get.
Placing the dagger upon the skin of the vampire’s neck caused the flesh to smolder. “You’re too well trained to be just some dumb yearling. Talk and I’ll let you live.”
“Live!?!” the rogue screamed in reply. The eyes were manic, but there was no fear in them. He was undead and being killed again held little strength over him. Marek couldn’t understand that exactly. He remembered vaguely, the early days of the loss of control being a new vampire, but he had conquered much of that weakness for blood in part due to Nick and his voran blood. Marek had once hated what he was and nearly killed himself to be free of the undead curse.
Vorans and Vampires (Book 1): Voran the Night Guardian Page 7