by J A Campbell
“Alex,” I gasped as I came to the heavily bandaged person in the hospital bed.
His eyes fluttered open, bloodshot, not focusing well. “Kat?”
“It’s me, I’m here.” I wanted to touch him, hold his hand or something, but anything I did would just cause him more pain.
Walter stood next to me.
“Walter is here too.”
“You came.” His lips twitched as if he might try to smile. “What time is it?”
“Shh, don’t worry about any of that.” I sank down into the chair next to his bed.
“Hey, you were,” he trailed off for a moment and one of the monitors beeped out of sync before he continued, “you were right. We should have stopped sooner.”
“Just relax, Alex. It’s going to be okay.”
“No, it’s not. I haven’t got much time, and I know it.” He mustered some strength, his words stronger. “Family is in danger. The job was against the Mob. We didn’t know it until it was too late. Please, protect my family.”
“Of course, Alex. I’ll do what I can.” I had already formulated plans.
“And, one more thing. I know kids really aren’t your thing, but...I need you to raise Jin and Kevin.”
I glanced at Walter. His eyes were wide.
“Walter doesn’t need to raise another set of kids and their aunt.” He shuddered, and the effort must have cost him, because he fell silent for a few minutes.
Walter came and put his hand on my shoulder. For once I didn’t worry about him detecting what I was.
“Kat, promise me you’ll raise my kids. Charity and I have talked about it. She agreed.” He shut his eyes and his breath caught. For a moment I thought he was gone, but then he took another breath. “It was her idea.”
“I, yes, Alex, anything for you guys.”
“You can teach them how to survive.”
He was starting to fade, voice weakening.
“Alex, I’ll take care of everything. Just, just rest, try and pull through.”
He smiled. “You always do. You’ve been the best friend, Kat. So glad we met.” This breath was his last.
“Alex.” I didn’t know what else to say. I’d experienced so much death that I thought I had grown immune to it, but it turned out I simply hadn’t lost someone so close to me in a long time.
Walter squeezed my shoulder and I let him pull me into a hug.
We stayed that way for a moment, until a nurse, alerted by some hidden alarm, came into the room.
“I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
We nodded and Walter led me from the room.
“Want food?”
I shook my head. “But you should eat.”
He gestured and I followed him numbly. We found a corner in the cafeteria, fortunately out of direct sunlight, though the sun was starting to descend finally. “I’ll be right back. Are you sure you don’t want anything?”
“Just coffee.” I could drink that, and it would make Walter feel like he was doing something.
I stared at my hands while I waited for him to return, not thinking about anything. Trying not to think.
“Are you going to do it?” Walter set a cup of steaming black coffee in front of me, then dropped creamer and sugar on the table.
“Thanks.” Though I normally drank it black, I fumbled with the sugar, managing to spill it all over the table as the packet split when I tried to open it. “Damn it.”
“Do what?” I finally asked.
“Take the kids.”
I looked up and met Walter’s eyes. “He wanted me to. I’m not convinced it’s the best idea.”
“It’s either you or me, Kat. Their Aunt Margaret would ruin them. She’s not a bad person, but she’s so unlike Alex and Charity.” He didn’t continue. He didn’t have to.
“If we can arrange it, I’ll take them.”
He nodded. “Good. Now what about the Mob? I get the impression you have more contacts than I would expect.”
I clenched my fists, splattering scalding coffee all over my hands and the table as the foam cup crushed in my hands. “I will handle them. It will be done before the week is over. You need to not ask any questions.”
“I promise.”
“Me, too.”
One of the staff interrupted us to help clean the table. I assured her I was okay and gave Walter another hug.
“I have to go. Get me as much information as you can, and I’ll handle the rest.”
He handed me an envelope. “That’s everything I have.”
I took a deep breath. “Go take care of the kids. Stay someplace safe. Call me Sunday.”
He nodded again and I left, vision going red around the edges. I wasn’t normally for slaughtering humans, but they were far from innocent, and I was far from feeling anywhere near normal.
“You’re insane,” Hawk, the leader of my House, said after looking at the information Walter had given me.
“You don’t know the half of it.” I sank down into the chair across from his desk.
“What’s the other half?” He arched an eyebrow.
“Well...I’m going to need you to figure out how to make up some legal documents that will allow me to adopt their kids.”
I’m not sure I’d ever seen Hawk speechless before. He was centuries older than me, had ridden with Genghis Khan in life, and seen and done even more after he was turned into a vampire.
“You what?” He finally managed.
“You heard me.”
“Ekatarine, I don’t even know where to start in the litany of why this is a bad idea.”
I continued to stare at him.
“You’re going to do it even if I don’t help, aren’t you?” He pressed his hands together in front of him, elbows resting on his computer desk.
Hawk’s office was in a deep sub-basement of a club on the outskirts of Charleston. Victor, another member of our House, ran the place, and it was one of our havens in the area. Some seriously expensive engineering had gone into making a waterproof basement at sea level, but the House had the money. The cave-like walls weren’t decorated, beyond making them look like rock instead of concrete. A server sat along one wall, and random and not-so-random wires, monitors, towers, and computers were scattered everywhere. Hawk had embraced the twentieth century with the enthusiasm of a gamer getting the latest and greatest game system, except that his playing field was the world. It wasn’t so much that he was into politics, but more that he studied and waited, like a chess master, until the pieces were set just right, and then he moved to strengthen our small House. Sometimes it was financial, sometimes it was property acquisition, sometimes it was to literally manipulate other Houses.
He could do what I asked; I just wasn’t sure if he would, since it would drastically impact House Veronis.
“Do you even realize what you’re asking?”
I tilted my head, not sure where he was going with this.
“You’re asking to bring humans into our House.”
“Oh.”
“Oh.” He nodded.
I hadn’t considered that angle.
“Hawk, they’re kids. At least one of them probably inherited a full set of Hunter abilities.”
“Exactly.” He pushed back from his chair and came over to stand next to me. “Look, I know Charity and Alex were friends, but how exactly do you plan on raising a human child, let alone two?”
“I suppose I’ll have to figure it out.” I stood so I was looking at him. His half-European heritage had given him some height, so he was taller than me, but not by a whole lot.
Hawk shook his head. “Go. I’ll have what we need to take out this nest of scum that killed your friends soon. We’ll make a decision on the children later.”
I supposed that was the best I could ask for.
“I’ll meet you at your place later, with a little backup.” He gestured for the door.
His lair emptied into a perfectly normal looking hallway, reasonably brightly lit, with a complement o
f art and modern fixtures. I followed it to the end and went up the stairs that led back to the main levels of the club. I left the back area and walked through the light crowd of people in the front, nodding to a couple of vampires I knew, and headed out into the parking lot.
Frowning, I slowed as I observed several young men standing around my car. There were five of them: a couple of Black men and three white. It wasn’t uncommon for the Firebird to attract attention, but I didn’t like the way they were looking at the old bird.
“Might want to think twice,” I said, projecting my voice as I stalked toward them.
The men turned toward me.
“Or what?”
I didn’t answer, just kept walking.
“We asked you a question, bitch.”
I rolled my eyes, though they probably couldn’t see.
“Seriously, I’m not in the mood, so leave.”
They laughed.
“What exactly are you going to do about it?” The man-child talking to me—blond hair, surfer-tanned white skin, and way too much confidence—looked me up and down, obviously not concerned.
“Well, if you damage my car in any way, I’ll kill you. Otherwise, I’ll just beat the shit out of you until you’re too broken to do anything but cry.”
A couple of the guys shifted at that.
“Hey man, I think she’s serious. Come on, let’s go,” one of them said.
“What is she going to do?” The testosterone-filled guy in front laughed.
I took a final step forward, grabbed his wrist, twisted hard, throwing the idiot to the ground, and smiled when he cried out in pain as his wrist snapped.
“Jesus,” one of the others said.
“Hey, we’re sorry. We were just admiring your ride. We’ll leave.” The four faded away, but the one I’d injured got to his knees, cradling his wrist and glaring daggers at me.
“This isn’t over, bitch.”
“Yes, it is,” Mario, one of the bouncers at the club, said as he came up behind me. “What do you want done, boss?” he asked me as he hauled the idiot to his feet.
“Just make sure he won’t ever bother anyone like this again.”
Mario smiled, fangs gleaming in the parking lot lights. “Shouldn’t have pissed her off, dude.”
The idiot cried out as Mario dragged him back toward the club. I sighed, climbed into my Firebird, and hoped Hawk came through with information soon. I needed to get this aggression out of my system before I went off the deep end and took it out on someone who didn’t deserve my anger.
Breaking the kid’s wrist was petty. I didn’t have to do it, shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t bring myself to feel bad. Maybe I would later. Maybe not.
Hawk walked into my sitting area a few hours later. “I have what we need, but we’ll probably need more time than we have tonight, so we will set out at sunset tomorrow.”
“Okay. Is it going to be difficult?” I didn’t expect so, but it would be good to know what I was getting into.
“No. Just bloody. How far do you want to go?”
“Anyone left alive cannot trace anything back to Jin and Kevin, ever.”
“We can do that with mind control. We’ll take out the main family, then, and their troops. Everyone else, we can wipe their minds. I have a few people who are quite good at mind control and won’t mind missing out on the killing. I’ll give them their instructions.”
“Good.”
“Tonight I’m going to arrange an information ‘leak’ to make the main target think he’s in danger. Which, to be fair, he is. Hopefully, he will pull in all of his troops and we can kill them at their house and burn the evidence. I’ll have a crew ready for cleanup just in case.”
I blinked. That Hawk knew what to do didn’t surprise me. Of course, he knew what to do. That he could arrange these sorts of crews that quickly did surprise me. Large scale killing wasn’t exactly something our House engaged in on a regular basis. The last time I could remember was when I was still young.
“Do you want to know?”
I shook my head. “No, I guess it’s not important. Just surprised you have all the resources lying around.”
“I’ve always had cleanup crews ready. I run most of the operations on the East Coast for the various Houses. Keeps them in our debt.” He smiled a very toothy, fang-filled smile.
“That does make sense. Okay, where am I meeting you tomorrow?”
“I’ll pick you up. Your car is, um, conspicuous. We can’t control every element, but we can lessen the risk.”
“Great.”
“In the meantime,” he handed me a box. “Get comfortable with these. We’re going to make it look like a rival group hit them, so we’re going in with guns and knives and ditching the evidence later.”
“Wait.” I frowned when something he said caught up to me. “You can drive?”
“Kat, it’s the twenty-first century. Of course I can drive. I just don’t do it very often. It’s usually faster on two feet.”
He clapped me on the shoulder and left while I stared after him. I had known Hawk for centuries and he still surprised me sometimes.
I set the box he had left with me down and opened it. Inside were two .45 Colts, similar to the ones I already carried, and a large number of already loaded magazines.
Smiling, I set to familiarizing myself with the weapons.
“It worked,” Hawk said as I climbed into a rental car the next night.
I was never happy as a passenger, but I was going to have to deal with it for now.
“Good.”
“They’re all gathered and expecting an attack. They won’t expect vampires, however. Everyone is already getting into position. No one knows why we’re hitting these humans, other than that they’ve insulted a House, and no one cares.”
“Sounds good.”
Hawk glanced at me for a moment before nodding. “I’m not used to seeing you this angry.”
“It’s been a while.”
“Yes.”
Neither of us elaborated on our House’s history. We didn’t need to. We still felt Justin’s loss every day. Someday, we’d get the revenge we wanted. That anger burned deep and hot.
Hawk parked the car at a store parking lot and we both slipped out. He left the keys on the seat and I suspected didn’t intend to come back. Fingerprints weren’t an issue, so we didn’t have to wipe the interior down and however he’d acquired the vehicle, I doubted it could be traced back to any of us.
I followed Hawk into the woods and we ran, vampire fast, for a time, before I sensed others nearby.
Hawk jumped up into the hardwood canopy and I did the same.
“There will be guards in the woods. That’s not our job and will be handled by others unless we come across them directly. We head for the house.”
Hawk and I ran across the limbs, jumping gaps and sprinting through the trees. The forest had been allowed to encroach on the old manor house, and Hawk and I leapt the gap with ease, flying through the air and landing lightly on an outside balcony. We crouched down and studied our surroundings. I sensed the largest concentration of humans inside. There were sentries posted on the grounds, though each passing minute snuffed out more and more of the small sparks we could sense as potential food sources.
“In we go?”
He nodded.
Smiling, I spun, standing and kicking out with one smooth motion. The doorframe splintered inward under the force of my kick.
“You could have tried the knob first,” Hawk said.
“Shooting’s about to start. No more need for stealth.”
Hawk nodded and we stalked inside.
No one in this room, but I sensed life in the hallway. I kicked open the next door too, turned and fired. No one in the house would survive the night.
As if my shot was the signal, gunfire sounded throughout the house. With vampire speed and efficiency, we cleared the house. It didn’t take long until we made it to some sort of safe room.
An intercom crackled to life as we studied the obstacle.
“As you can see, you have failed. Your children’s children will know the sorrow of your failure as we hunt them for sport, sell them as slaves...”
I shot the intercom.
“I was enjoying his last words,” Hawk said.
A couple of the other vampires chuckled.
Shaking my head, I went over to the door, gave it an experimental shove with my shoulder to see if it would give easily to vampire strength then shrugged. “Think I’ll just pull it off the hinges.”
“Don’t break a nail,” Hawk said.
I sighed and did something I rarely did, hardening my nails into vicious, nearly unbreakable claws. I jammed those into the tiny gap between the door and the frame. Metal shrieked and I yanked.
I did have to give the door some credit. It took a fair bit of effort to pull open, but the work only took me seconds, so in the end it wasn’t really that good of a door.
The occupants of the room, an older man, a woman who was probably his wife, and a bunch of armed men stared, jaws hanging open, as the door flopped to the ground.
The older man recovered first, aiming a gun at me. I was faster, bringing my .45 up and squeezing the trigger, once, twice, more, until everyone in the room was dead.
“Did they have kids?” I asked Hawk.
“Adults, already handled. Two still involved with the family business, one who had managed to get out. We handled her differently.”
I nodded. The ringing in my ears faded rapidly as my healing powers fixed the damage the gunfire had inflicted.
“Leave the guns, people. Cleanup team will burn this place to the ground. I’ll handle the security system.” Hawk moved into the safe room, sat in front of some monitors, and did something for a few minutes before he nodded, satisfied.
I dropped my weapons and Hawk and I left through the front door. We disappeared back into the woods, confident that Hawk’s cleanup team would take care of the rest. Not that we left much evidence anyway, especially with the security tapes handled.
“Feel any better?” Hawk asked once we were well away from the area.