by Greg Howard
“You again,” Alexander growled.
“Let him go, Montgomery.” The woman’s voice was steady, authoritative, and carried not the slightest trace of fear.
Alexander tightened his grip. An icy, wet tongue traveled up from the base of Cooper’s neck to the lobe of his ear. Cooper jerked his head away, unable to free the rest of his body.
The woman raised her weapons and took a defiant step forward. “Don’t push me, Anakim.”
A moment of silent standoff ticked by. Cooper didn’t have any idea who had the upper hand, and he wasn’t sure one outcome was better than the other. Though he wanted to be free of Alexander, the woman seemed equally dangerous. Alexander shoved Cooper down onto a blue double-ended sofa. Cooper stayed low and scanned the room, trying to get his bearings. He needed to find Lillie Mae and get the hell out of there.
“How did you find us this time, traitor?” Alexander’s voice brimmed with contempt.
The woman crept forward. “You know Jericho keeps tabs on every rogue Anakim still in existence, Montgomery.”
“Jericho.” Alexander spat the word out like sour milk on his tongue. “So earnest and resolute in your holy mission. You already won the war. What more do you want? Still trying to buy your way into heaven with your tiresome, self-loathing righteousness? Spending your years wallowing in pathetic servitude while waging war on your own kind?”
The woman raised the weapons higher. “You are not my kind, you vile monster.”
Cooper eyed the door, calculating how long it would take him to cross the room.
Alexander chuckled. “And what are you now? The Jericho sheriff in these here parts?” He spoke with an overdone Southern accent that sounded foreign and silly in his elegant voice.
“Something like that,” she responded.
A blur of gray rippling air sailed in through the window behind her. Tiny black particles converged in mid-air and materialized into the form of Creepy Underwear Model.
Cooper stared, transfixed by the spectacle, his grip on reality slipping away with each passing second. Sliding off the sofa, he stayed low and edged back toward the door.
The woman spun around to face Stephen. He hissed at her through bared fangs.
“She got away from me.” Stephen seethed at her like he would rip her head off at any second.
The woman’s expression when she looked at Stephen was steady and measured. Not the way she’d regarded Alexander with brazen loathing. There was something different in her eyes that Cooper couldn’t quite read. Something almost tender.
Alexander bared his fangs at the woman and hunched his shoulders. “Should have known you would show up. With your endless affinity for the Phipps line.”
Cooper slowly stood, the name of his grandmother’s house registering. Maybe this woman knew how to find Lillie Mae. Keeping a watchful eye on both Alexander and Stephen, she wielded foot-long daggers in each hand, looking very much like she knew how to use them. Cooper took another step—only a few more to the door.
“If that’s the way you want to play this, Montgomery, then fine.” The woman moved toward Cooper like a silk sheet billowing in the breeze, slipping right between the two men and floating across the floor. She was like them.
Returning to her original form in front of Cooper, she glanced at him over her shoulder while tucking one of the daggers in her belt. Her beauty was without question. With a face as smooth as porcelain and voluminous waves of raven-colored hair dancing around her shoulders, her eyes were so dark they sparkled with the reflection of the lighted chandelier. Her vintage black riding coat could not conceal her warrior figure. The air around her was wet and cold, like it was with Alexander and Stephen. She returned her attention to the two men and reached out to Cooper. He stared at her outstretched hand, reminding himself that if she was like the two men, then she too had sharp fangs, alarming strength, and mind-raping abilities.
She glanced back at him again. “Please. Trust me, Cooper. If you want to get out of here and find Lillie Mae, you must come with me now.” Her speech was taut with tension and well-traveled deviations of a subtle Southern accent.
Cooper quickly pondered his options. He could make a run for the door and take his chances with finding Lillie Mae on his own, or take the woman’s hand and pray to God she was on his side. At least it appeared she wanted to protect him from Lillie Mae’s captors. He looked over at Alexander, who hadn’t moved an inch. Either he didn’t think he could stop them from escaping, or he knew Cooper and the woman didn’t have any chance of getting out of there alive. Cooper took the woman’s hand in his. Her skin was cold and chilled his instantly. The touch sent a prickle of anxiety down to his core.
With his shoulders squared and his stance widened, Stephen blocked their path to the open window. “We can’t just let her take him.” He and the woman stared each other down—her eyes filled with sadness, Stephen’s full of rage.
“We cannot take him by force, Stephen. You know that.” Alexander relaxed his posture and retrieved his brandy snifter from a side table, as if the bizarre situation was an everyday occurrence. “Don’t worry. He’ll be back, and he will be more than willing to give me what I want.”
Stephen obeyed with a huff and moved across the room to Alexander’s side in an instant.
The woman guided Cooper to the window in fewer steps than made sense to him. She slipped her arm around his waist and pulled him close. “Hold on tight.”
He barely had a chance to comply before they both shot out of the window and soared up into a cold, dark sky.
Chapter Eight
Though the face staring down at him was familiar, the fog filling his brain cloaked the name. The man looked down on him. A memorable, woodsy scent peppered the air. As soon as the man smiled, Cooper remembered his name.
Randy.
“Hey, Red.” Randy touched Cooper’s forehead with the back of his hand. Still in uniform, he looked authoritative and regal. Crinkled lines of worry around his eyes faded. “About time you woke up. I was about to drag your ass down to Georgetown Memorial.”
The persistent ticking of the grandfather clock drifted in from the hallway. Cooper massaged his temples and looked around. He was back at Phipps House with no recollection of how he got there. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, Randy pushed up against Cooper’s waist, the closeness of their bodies as comforting as it was awkward. He sat up, giving Randy a little more room. No need to make the straight guy uncomfortable.
Cooper circled his temples with the tips of his fingers, his mind a soupy bowl of bizarre memories and images that didn’t make any sense. He tried desperately to put all the pieces together and came up empty. It must have been a dream. A really bad dream.
He ran fingers through his tangled hair. “What time is it?”
“It’s after midnight.” Randy sat up straight. “I was out looking for Lillie Mae. Drove by and saw all the lights on. Knocked, but I couldn’t get anybody. The door wasn’t locked, so I let myself in and found you here, asleep on the couch.”
Cooper slung his legs over the side of the sofa, stood, and went over to the front window. He pulled back the drapes. The SUV sat in the driveway. Maybe it had been a dream. It seemed so real. Releasing the curtains, he slowly turned back around.
Randy stood in front of him and raised an eyebrow. “You okay, Red? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Cooper didn’t know where to begin. Didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t. He thought he’d seen freaking vampires tonight, for Christ’s sake. He couldn’t say anything to Randy that wouldn’t sound completely insane.
“No. I’m fine.” He sat on the sofa, glancing back over his shoulder at Randy. “I guess I just fell asleep on the sofa like you said.”
Randy frowned and pulled back the curtain, peering out into the dark night, like he wanted to see for himself what Cooper had been looking at. “Sorry, but nothing to report on Lillie Mae yet.”
A twinge of worry pinched Cooper’s stomach.
His gut told him what he remembered was real, not a dream. If that was true, then that freak Alexander had Lillie Mae hidden somewhere at Warfield. He needed to get back and find her, but he didn’t want to lead Randy there and risk putting him in the crosshairs of those… whatever the hell they were.
Randy walked back to the sofa and stood in front of him. “I haven’t made it out to Warfield yet, but I found something interesting about the place.” He pulled the small spiral notebook out of his back pocket and flipped through a few pages. “The current owner is a Stephen Parker.”
Cooper looked down, hoping Randy hadn’t registered any change in his expression at the mention of Creepy Underwear Model’s name.
“Before that,” Randy continued, “it belonged to an Alexander Montgomery. Now there’s a pompous-ass sounding name.”
Cooper looked up at him, careful to keep the muscles in his face relaxed. “Any clue who they are?”
“Negative.” Randy sat on the arm of the wingback chair opposite the sofa. “But here’s the odd thing, and, granted, the records are pretty old, so this is probably a mistake. It seems that the property has been passed back and forth between Stephen Parker and Alexander Montgomery for almost a hundred fifty years.”
The words hung in the air as Cooper processed them. It had definitely not been a dream. Of course, he couldn’t explain it. It was all too ridiculous to begin with.
Randy closed the notebook. “I mean it obviously has to be descendants of these two guys, though the records didn’t indicate that. No juniors, no the second or the third, just those two names.”
“Obviously.” Cooper entwined his fingers into a ball and rested his elbows on his knees. He stared down at the closed Bible on the coffee table, replaying the night’s events over and over in his head. The woman. He needed to find the dark-haired woman. She knew those men—Alexander Montgomery and Stephen Parker. She also said she could help him find Lillie Mae. But she was one of them. Like them. He touched his index finger to the spot on his neck where Alexander’s teeth—or fangs—grazed him and a chill latched itself onto his bones.
“Coop?” Randy’s voice lured him back into the moment.
Cooper looked up into Randy’s questioning eyes. “Right. Two names. A hundred fifty years. Weird.” He knew all he needed to know about the current status of Warfield and its owners. What he needed was to find the woman in black. Go back to the kitchen house at Warfield and find Lillie Mae.
Cooper stood and stretched his arms out wide, forcing a deep yawn. “Man, I feel like I could pass out again.” He knew it was a lame excuse. He didn’t have time to think of a better one. He just needed Randy to leave. A glint of disappointment passed over Randy’s eyes. Cooper could just imagine what he thought.
Your grandma is still out there missing, and you want to go to bed? Wimp.
Randy stood and moved toward the door. “You probably should get some rest.” Terse disapproval laced his words. “There’s nothing else you can do tonight. I’ll be back in the morning to look in on you. In the meantime, I’ll check in with dispatch. Make sure there’s nothing new on Lillie Mae. Keep your phone close by.”
Cooper nodded. “I’ll do that.” He followed Randy down the hall to the front door. “And thanks, Randy. I appreciate everything you’re doing.”
Randy grabbed his coat off the rack and pulled it on. “Don’t mention it.” He flashed a forgiving smile and opened the door. “Get some sleep, Red.”
Cooper closed the door behind him and peeked through the sidelight. Randy strode down the walkway to his car without looking back. Letting go of the fabric, Cooper wondered how the hell he would find his mystery woman in black. He didn’t even know her name. The hairs on the back of his neck sprang to life. He spun around, his back hugging the front door.
The dark-haired woman stood right in front of him.
Chapter Nine
She crossed her arms over her chest and looked at him, no discernible expression on her face. Cooper couldn’t even tell if she breathed, for God’s sake. Her presence unnerved him. He didn’t know exactly what she was, but standing only a few feet away from her only confirmed his suspicion that she was not human.
“I think that was wise.” The woman uncrossed her arms, placed her hands on her rounded hips, and shifted her weight to one side. “And you are not going back to Warfield. That is final.”
Like hell he wasn’t. He cocked his head at her. “Who the hell are you, and what makes you think you can dictate what I can or cannot do?” He leaned in and crossed his arms. “For that matter, what the hell are you?”
She sized him up with a single sweeping glance and took a step toward him. “My name is Betsy.”
“Betsy?” He huffed. “You don’t look like a Betsy.”
She shrugged. “What do I look like, then?”
Cooper studied her, from her sure stance to her squared shoulders to her unusual height. The image of her with those daggers was still in his mind’s eye. “I don’t know,” he said. “But sure as hell not Betsy.”
She smiled thinly, extinguishing it before it fully materialized. Without a word, she turned on her heel and walked down the hall like she owned the place. Cooper supposed he was expected to follow. He did so with a healthy dose of reluctance. He wasn’t used to not being in control of a situation, and he didn’t care for the feeling at all.
In the sitting room, Betsy eased around the perimeter, running the tips of her fingers over the wallpaper, like the faded patterns housed some distant memories for her. She stopped in front of the fireplace, gently touching each of the family pictures on the mantel and lingering a moment on each before moving on to the next. It was an odd thing for a complete stranger to do, and also a little creepy. As if she was taking inventory of his life.
Cooper stood at one end of the mantel and waited, his patience quickly waning. “You said you could help me find my grandmother.”
Betsy rested her hand on an eight-by-ten sepia-toned portrait of Lillie Mae. She couldn’t have been more than nineteen or twenty in the picture. Betsy caressed the glass over his grandmother’s face with the back of her hand, as one might on a small child’s cheek.
Cooper’s uneasiness returned. “Well?”
“Sit down, Cooper.” Her tone was calm and even but left no room for discussion.
Cooper shook his head and took a seat in the wingback chair. If he was going to get the help he needed, it obviously had to be done her way, or no way. All the more irritating.
The woman rounded the sofa and stopped in front of him. “It’s good to finally meet you face to face.”
Cooper stared up at her, his impatience giving way to impertinence. “Nice to meet you too, Betsy. I’ve never officially met a vampire before. This night is turning out to be a real winner.”
If he had offended her, she did not show it. She floated down onto the sofa like a feather drifting to the ground. Leaning forward, she slipped something between her delicate fingers. It was the picture of the young girl he’d found in the Bible. That seemed like days ago, though it had only been a few hours. She studied the image with a melancholic distance clouding her eyes, the same way she’d looked at Stephen Parker earlier at Warfield.
“Do you know her?” Cooper asked, pointing to the picture, not really expecting a straight answer.
Betsy was quiet and pensive, but finally answered. “Her name is Sally Parker.”
“As in Stephen Parker?”
She gave a quick nod. “They were brother and sister.”
“That picture was taken in the 1800s. There’s no way…” He realized how naïve the words sounded as soon as they left his lips. More absurd clichés tumbled around in his brain. Stephen Parker was some kind of freaking undead being. Of course he could have had a sister in the 1800s. Cooper shook his head and ran fingers through his hair. He needed a drink. Or a Xanax. Or both.
Betsy laid the picture down on the coffee table and fixed her dusky eyes on him. “I am not a vampire. I am a slayer.”
>
Her response was so matter-of-fact, it was comical. Cooper chuckled. “A vampire slayer? Like Buffy?”
She crinkled her brow, cocked her head, and then shook it. “Vampire is an insulting word, much like the misnomer, witch. Vampires are the product of legends and fairy tales, a vain human attempt to explain away what they cannot understand.” She clasped her hands together in her lap. “I am Anakim. And Anakim, I am afraid, are quite real.”
Cooper stared straight through her. There was that word again. She’d called Alexander Montgomery that. “So let me get this straight. You’re telling me that you are a vampire-like creature, but you also hunt them down and kill them.”
“You make it sound so simple. It is not,” she replied. “And why do you sound so incredulous? You have powers that are clearly not of the natural world, do you not? Why is it so hard to believe other supernatural beings are out there?”
She had him there. He’d always known the world was a bigger place than the familiar dimension where most people lived—a dimension of malls, reality television, and smartphones. He’d seen ghosts since he was a kid. He could make things happen with just a thought or the wave of a hand, if he dared. But he’d never considered a race of undead bloodsuckers.
“And the creepy guys at Warfield. Alexander and Stephen. They are vam…Anakim, like you?”
Betsy shifted in her seat and pushed her hair back over her shoulder. “That is correct.”
Cooper took a moment to process the insanity. “So you hunt and kill your own kind.”
She scooted up to the edge of the sofa, twisting her hands one inside the other. “All Anakim are an abomination, a blight on this world that must be eradicated. But, right now, we must talk about you.”
Cooper leaned forward in his seat. “Look, my only concern is getting Lillie Mae back home safe and sound.” He could live forever not knowing the shit going down in the shadows around him. He stood and paced across the floor, boards creaking under every step. “Damn it. I should’ve just told Randy the truth. Maybe he could help.”