by Dean Murray
"Okay, you all know the drill. Stay far enough away that he can't scan you with his power. We need to anticipate his route enough that we can keep eyes on him at all times."
I turned the rental car on and started watching the alleyway to the back of the bank out of my side view mirror. It wasn't surprising that our target hadn't come around to the front of the building, but it did make things more difficult.
I dropped the car into gear. "I'm in motion, I'll head to the road just north of us and take station on the east corner. Jasmin, can you see him?"
Jasmin had snuck onto the roof of the building next door to the bank.
"Yeah, I can see him; he's headed north. James, keep moving south. Jess, if you hurry you should have time to reposition to the corner on the west."
I'd forgotten how much I hated driving inside of cities. I didn't have time to screw around and I now had enough money to replace the rental car several times over, so I drove aggressively and ended up trading paint with a couple of cabs before I managed to get into position.
Jasmin's voice in my Bluetooth earpiece was a constant reminder of just how little leeway I had.
"He's headed your direction, Alec, are you there yet?"
"No, but I'm just about there, is there anywhere to park once I get there?"
"Not really, you might have to ditch the car."
I took a deep breath to stop myself from grinding my teeth. Abandoning the car wasn't feasible, not until we were positive that he wasn't going to jump into a car of his own after just a block or two of walking.
The light ahead of me turned yellow and I gunned the engine to get through before cross traffic started moving.
"Okay, I'm here, can someone tell me what I'm looking for?"
I wasn't actually quite there, but I was close enough that I might be able to spot him if he was already at the corner.
"Slacks, a white collared shirt, not much skin showing…"
"And huge sunglasses?"
My interruption didn't even make Jasmin lose a beat. "Yeah, that's the guy. He must be pretty old if the sun is bothering him that much."
I watched the vampire cross the road and continue east. I was in the turning lane with a red light. A cab behind me honked, obviously unhappy that I hadn't turned right when there was a break in the traffic, but I ignored the growing line behind me. The longer I stayed here, the better.
The vampire was walking at a good clip, but not fast enough to make me think he knew he was being followed. He probably just wanted to get inside so he wasn't exposed to the sun. The really old vampires sunburned easier than most people and they often had a hard time getting their eyes to adjust to the light.
My light turned green to a chorus of honks and I turned right onto the road the vampire was walking along.
"James, how close are you? I can see a place to ditch the car if I have to, but I'd rather not do it unless you are close enough to pick it up right afterwards."
Jasmin muttered a profanity. "James, you've got to unmute your earpiece. Nobody can hear you."
"Sorry, I turned it off so the sound of the wind didn't drown the rest of you out. I'm headed north right now, Alec. If you need to ditch the car you can go for it, I should be able to get there before anyone drives off with it."
I pulled up next to the open spot and pushed the computer-assisted parallel-park button as I watched the vampire out of my rear-view mirror.
"I've got eyes on him. Jasmin, you can relocate if you want; I can't imagine that you'll be able to see him from up there for very much longer."
Jess cut in before Jasmin could respond. "I moved up one street to the north, the foot traffic is pretty bad on this one, but I think I'm gaining on him. Do you guys want me to stop at Coral Avenue or should I keep on and stop at the next one?"
I hadn't been paying enough attention to the street signs. Everything about this operation felt thrown together. I quickly checked the name of the street in front of me. "Yeah, wait on Coral, I'll let you know if he turns and heads your direction."
The next fifteen minutes were stressful. I had to ditch the car when the vampire turned south on Coral, but James made it to the vehicle before anything happened to it. It seemed impossible that the vampire wasn't worried. The fact that his people hadn't checked in after trying to mug us should have had him spooked, but I was pretty sure that he would have lost us if he'd been trying to do so. It was all we could do to keep him in sight.
James stayed with the car while Jasmin, Jess and I bracketed the target. The only thing that allowed us to get away with it was the fact that we were so much faster and had so much more endurance than normal humans.
As long as the vampire kept moving in a straight line things weren't too bad, but every time he changed directions it forced one of us to swing around wide, racing down an alternate set of roads to get into position so that we could maintain a perimeter around him.
The vampire finally disappeared inside of a large, fifty-story residential building and I sighed in relief.
"My bet is that this is where he lives, but stay alert and make sure that he doesn't slip out the back."
I waited a couple of minutes and then followed our target inside to confirm it was his actual home. I knew we'd found the right place before I'd even taken my second step inside. The stench of vampire was thick; it was layered over every other scent in the lobby the way that only happened when someone passed through a place multiple times per day.
I stepped back outside and walked over to the small café where everyone else was waiting for me. Once I was safely under the canopy, and therefore hidden from view, I waved the other three over.
"It's the right place, there's no doubt about it. We'll need to stay here and watch in shifts, at least two of us at all times, to make sure that he doesn't leave, but once it gets dark and things calm down we're going to go in and take him out."
Jasmin nodded, but she didn't look very happy at the idea of going up against a vampire old enough to do the things that I'd described earlier.
"You're sure this is the smart thing to be doing, Alec? This guy could be incredibly dangerous."
"Yeah, I'm sure. It's not just a matter of needing to get the rest of the money out, either. I'm not going to go down in history as the one who let the vampires find out about us. Even if he's as powerful as I think he is, he still won't be able to stand off all four of us."
**
Jasmin and I took the last shift, me because I wanted to keep an eye out for any problematic developments, her because I didn't want to stick James with her in her current state.
James and Jess showed up a few minutes before three a.m. It was late enough that I was starting to think longingly of my pillow, but I knew that waiting until then to attack was the prudent thing to do. Vampires supposedly needed just as much sleep as humans, and this vampire was still maintaining his cover at the bank, so attacking this late almost guaranteed that we'd catch him asleep in his bed.
Jess handed me a thin black roll of cloth. I unrolled it enough to confirm it was a ski mask just like I'd requested, and then stuffed it in my pocket.
"Were they hard to find?"
James grinned and shook his head. "Considering that it never snows here it was ridiculously easy to find them. This place has a very robust criminal side to it."
"Yeah, well, the street thugs are probably just taking their lead from the bankers."
Jasmin accepted her ski mask and nervously played with it as I stood and stretched. "Okay, we do this just like we discussed. Try not to kill the lobby clerk, but make sure he's down for the count. Once we find the vampire's apartment we go in hard and fast so that we've got our claws inside of him before he's had a chance to realize anything is going on."
I waited while everyone nodded and then led the way back towards the vampire's building. I'd spent the day looking for cameras on the street, so I knew exactly where we needed to hood up. The ski mask slipped over my face without any fuss and then we were stepping
inside of the lobby.
The desk clerk was fiddling with something on his computer monitor and didn't look up until we were less than ten feet from him. His hand darted towards the phone as soon as he saw me, but he never even had a chance. I crossed the distance between us in two quick bounds and slammed his head into his mahogany desk. I checked his breathing and his pulse and then followed James over to the elevator where he was busy dismantling the security camera that had recorded our entrance.
Jess had shed her clothes while I was taking care of the desk clerk. Once James signaled that the camera was out of commission, she took off her mask, handed Jasmin her clothes and her earpiece, dropped down onto all fours as the elevator arrived and then darted inside and sniffed the buttons on the panel. I stuck my head inside of the elevator, but the stench of vampire was too overpowering for me to pick out anything.
Jess sneezed a couple of times and then staggered back out and shifted to two legs, adjusting her ha'bit as she leaned against the wall. "I think he's on the twenty-fifth floor."
I handed her phone back to her. "Okay, good work. Stay here with an open line and make sure he doesn't leave without us realizing it. Don't engage him. If he shows up make a run for it. If you can circle back around this way we'll try to set up an ambush of some kind."
"Okay, hopefully it doesn't come to that."
I turned back to James who was shooting the stainless steel elevator a distasteful look. "I take it you'd rather take the stairs?"
"Yeah, as bad as that's going to suck, I'd rather not spend any more time surrounded by that stink than I have to."
It was almost enough to draw a chuckle out of me, but I just waved him towards the stairs. "You've got point, I'll take tail."
It wasn't the right formation. Jasmin should have been point, but she was so jittery that I didn't have any choice but to put her in the middle.
I turned my phone on and slipped my earpiece in as we started upwards. Jess answered on the first ring.
"I assume we're going to want to ditch our phones as soon as we're done here?"
"Yeah, that goes without saying, but I appreciate the reminder."
We took the stairs two at a time, reining ourselves back a little to make sure that we didn't arrive at the twenty-fifth floor winded. Even so, it only took a few minutes to make it to the floor in question and the three of us exited the stairwell moving with well-practiced silence.
The scent trail led from the elevator around to the right. We followed it until we arrived at a single door that had to belong to the vampire. James started to move forward as if to crash through the door, but then stopped and put his ear up to the cool metal.
He waved me over before I could ask him what was going on and as I got closer I realized that the door hadn't been soundproofed very well.
"…I pay you for results, not excuses. No, if I had any clue where they'd gone I wouldn't need you. All I can figure is that they decided to try and make a run for it after they saw how much those kids were carrying."
There was silence for a couple of seconds while the vampire listened to whoever was on the other end of the line and a smile crept out onto my face. It was ironic that the vampires' own nature was working against them like this. If their boss had even a shred of faith in their loyalty he would have made a run for it himself after they failed to report back to him. Instead he'd just assumed that they'd taken the money and run.
"No, they haven't taken a plane. I've got normals in place watching all of the outbound flights. They have to be trying to make it out by boat…no, they wouldn't just go to ground, not for more than a day or so, at least. Any longer than that and their conditioning would start pushing them back to me."
My smile started to fade as I realized that the phone call was a double-edged sword. It meant that we knew he didn't suspect us of having been the reason his people had disappeared, but it also made our attack less likely to succeed. We couldn't go through the door right now and risk him saying something to whomever he was talking to, but by the same measure we couldn't just wait outside of his door indefinitely.
I stepped away from the door and walked back down the hall, making sure that I was far enough that the vampire wouldn't be able to hear me.
"Jess, we need you up here. Grab the desk clerk and take the elevator. Maybe if someone shows up they'll just think he's using the bathroom or something. It's not much, but we need every edge we can get right now."
I waved Jasmin back to the elevator to help Jess with the doorman and then rejoined James at the door.
"…I don't care, just make it happen. I want a status update in four hours."
There was a muffled impact that I was pretty sure was his phone hitting the sofa, and then what sounded like bare feet moving across tile.
James looked at me expectantly, but I was still trying to make a decision when Jasmin and Jess arrived. I'd put on a confident front for the others, but I was worried about going up against this particular vampire.
In a lot of ways mentalists were the most dangerous vampires to tangle with, and this one had nearly overpowered me from several feet away. I'd been sure we could take him if we had surprise on our side and caught him half asleep. I wasn't as sure we could take him in a standup fight, at least not without losing someone from our side.
Jasmin and Jess quietly lowered the doorman down onto the carpet and I finally decided that we had to move now or risk having the building surrounded by police at some point in the next hour or so once people realized that the doorman was missing.
I double-checked to make sure that there wasn't a security camera in this hall, and then ripped my ski mask off, shed my clothes, and unleashed my beast.
The transformation swept through me and took most of my worries with it. Part of that was the fact that I'd already made my decision and it didn't do any good to second-guess a plan once I was committed to it, but mostly it was the fact that my beast was looking forward to this particular fight.
My beast saw things as being much more black and white than most people did. For him vampires were bad, they were dangerous and they preyed on the humans that legends said we'd been created to protect. As far as my beast—my wolf—was concerned, the only good enemy was a dead enemy and he couldn't wait to make sure that this particular vampire would never again pose a danger to us.
It was a heady, addictive feeling, but it wasn't my first time dealing with it. I forced my beast back into a corner of my mind, not far enough back to trigger a transformation into human form, but far enough that there wasn't any question who was in charge. I was going to fight this vampire, but I was going to do it on my terms, fully aware and calculating.
My transformation was the signal that the others had been waiting for and they all followed suit in a multi-pointed surge of power. A few seconds later everyone was ready and I charged forward, throwing all of my considerable bulk against the door.
The vampire had chosen well. The door was well-constructed and the locking mechanism held despite the titanic forces I unleashed upon it, but the hinges gave way and I stumbled into the apartment as the door went flying into a wet bar only a few feet inside of the entryway.
James was less than half a step behind me with the girls mere inches behind him. We must have made for a fearsome sight, but the vampire reacted with the kind of smooth reflexes that were inevitable after centuries of infighting against other vampires.
We'd managed to catch him by surprise, but I hadn't counted on the apartment being quite so big. Our massive hybrid legs devoured nearly ten feet with each stride when we were running like this, but even so it took us too long to reach him.
He held his hand out and a sword flew across the room towards him, arriving a split second before I did. I slashed at his neck, but he knocked my claws to one side and probably would have taken my head off at the neck if James hadn't followed up my attack with one of his own.
The telekinesis was a bad sign. Most vampires had only one supernatural ability. The fa
ct that this one was enough of a telekinetic to grab his sword like that meant that he was probably even older than I'd expected.
Jasmin nipped at the back of his leg, but was forced away as his blade nearly sliced off her front paw. Jess tried for an arm and got an elbow to the side of her head that sent her sprawling. The vampire ducked under my next attack without even looking at me, and I suddenly realized that he must already be inside of our heads.
"He's reading your minds, don't overcommit!"
The fight ground to a halt between one second and the next as James, Jasmin and Jess all took a step backwards and turned most of their attention inward in an attempt to push the vampire out of their minds.
Their actions were understandable, but it was a mistake. I unleashed my beast, pointing him at the clear, almost invisible tendrils invading our mind, and grabbed a nearby chair. The improvised projectile spun as it left my hands, blurring towards our opponent.
I nearly got him. He slapped the metal projectile to one side at the last moment with a blast of telekinetic power that sent it into the floor-to-ceiling window behind him, but his response was delayed. I was already moving towards him, trying to capitalize on his distraction, but that didn't stop me from worrying.
My worry proved justified a split second later when Jasmin threw herself at James.
I tried to take the vampire's head off with the claws on my right hand, but even as he ducked away and slashed at my leg with the curved edge of his sword, I had visions of him taking all four of us over at the same time.
James managed to interpose his elbow between Jasmin and his throat, but it was a close thing. A heartbeat later Jess sailed through the air and wrapped her jaws around the back of Jasmin's neck. It was a killing hold, but it didn't have to be. From there Jess could hold onto Jasmin and for the most part control her.
Almost as soon as Jess got ahold of Jasmin, James took a swipe at Jess. I yelled out a warning as I grabbed two more chairs and threw them at the vampire, but if Jess hadn't been paying attention she still would have been killed. She released Jasmin and darted to the side, getting just far enough away that she was able to roll with the force of James' blow. She came up bleeding, but still alive, which was more than I'd had any right to hope.