Mencheres smelled blood even before he caught the earthy scent of ghouls
clustered on the ground floor of the decrepit warehouse. They showed no concern
when he walked inside. Another inhalation revealed it was vampire blood two of
them stank of. The other four didn’t have that coppery aroma clinging to them,
but from the predatory gazes they leveled on Mencheres, they intended to
rectify that.
"A young vampire went missing from this area
recently,” Mencheres said by way of greeting, ignoring the way the ghouls began
to circle around him. They looked to be in their late teens, and from the
energy in their auras, they were teens in undead years as well. "Short blond
hair, tribal tattoos on his upper arms, silver piercing in his eyebrow.
Goes by the name Trick,” he went on. "Have you
seen him?”
"Not smart to be out so close to dawn,
vampire,” the ghoul with the heaviest scent of blood drawled without answering
Mencheres’s question. Then the ghoul smiled, showing he’d filed all his teeth
to points.
Instead of inspiring fear, the sight annoyed
Mencheres. These ghouls thought they had the advantage because of the impending
dawn, but dawn would only sap the strength of a new vampire. Even with his
power level cloaked to where it would feel like he was only a young vampire, if
the ghouls were wise, they’d wonder at Mencheres’s lack of hesitation in
confronting them.
Then again, if they were wise, they wouldn’t
have killed Trick in the same area they used as a home. It had only taken
Mencheres an hour to track them down. Such stupidity wasn’t only blatant
disregard for vampire and ghoul law; it also endangered the secrecy of both
their races. In another mood, Mencheres would have killed the shark-toothed
ghoul without further conversation, then rounded up the remaining five for
public punishment later. After all, Mencheres didn’t require their confession
to know they’d killed Trick. Not with the scent of vampire blood on them.
The ghouls were lucky, because today, he wasn’t
looking for retribution over Trick’s murder. Perhaps it was a good thing he’d
lost his visions of the future, Mencheres reflected. Otherwise, if he’d
foreseen that this was
how he’d end his eons-old feud with the corrupt Law Guardian, Radjedef, he’d
question his own sanity.
But if he hadn’t lost his visions, none of this
would be necessary. Anger flashed in him.
After four thousand years of seeing glimpses of
the future, to suddenly have his visions gone was as crippling as it was
unexpected. He’d long lamented the frustration of having visions that some
people paid no heed to; but now that they were gone, for all his other powers,
he couldn’t protect those he cared for. A friend’s recent, accusing words rang
in Mencheres’s mind. Why now, when I need you the most, are you of no use to me?
Radjedef might have hated Mencheres for
millennia, but he was too clever to come after a foe who could counter most
hostile moves before they were even made.
Now that Mencheres’s visions were gone, this
was Radjedef’s best chance. As both men knew, Radjedef wouldn’t hesitate to use
his considerable power as a Law Guardian to manufacture charges against
Mencheres for crimes that had never taken place.
Radjedef was no stranger to bending the law to
suit his own purposes. It was something he’d done even before he had become a
member of the powerful vampire ruling council.
His old enemy might relish the upcoming
confrontation and all the bloody collateral damage it would doubtless involve
before one of them emerged a victor, but Mencheres would end this before it
started. It rather pleased him to imagine the frustration Radjedef would feel
at being denied the opportunity to implement his elaborate plans for vengeance.
So when the six ghouls pulled out their silver
knives, smiling in that cruel, anticipatory way, Mencheres simply stood there.
This would get bloody, but he was no stranger to blood. Or to pain. Both had
been his companions for far longer than these ghouls could even imagine.
He cast one look at the predawn sky, wondering briefly
if the sun shone in the afterlife.
Before the sun was high, either he or the
ghouls would find out.
Kira walked down Ashland Avenue, the second-to-last street before hers. A
sudden
breeze blew her hair into her eyes. They didn’t
call Chicago the Windy City for nothing.
She pushed stray pieces back behind her ears
and shifted her heavy backpack onto her other shoulder. After all the times
she’d toted her backpack to and from work, Kira would have thought it wouldn’t
feel as heavy as it did. Still, she was lucky her boss allowed her to use the
company car on stakeouts, and besides, many people who lived and worked in the
West Loop didn’t own cars. They just didn’t have to carry around the various
cameras, camcorders, binoculars, and other necessary stakeout items that she
did.
At least it had been a productive night. Her
surveillance of her client’s cheating wife finally paid off in the version of
several incriminating photos that Kira dropped off at her office before she’d
taken the Green Line back to her neighborhood. She could sleep in as late as
she wanted to today, and even her exacting boss wouldn’t have a thing to say
about it.
Being a private investigator meant tuning in to
her surroundings, which came naturally to Kira, but her focus sharpened even
more when she rounded the next corner. Walking this particular stretch of road
during the daylight was fine, but now, it made her uneasy.
She was glad the sun had started to peek out.
The line of dilapidated warehouses were supposed to be gone by now, but the
lingering recession had slowed their razing and rebuilding. The stretch of
unsightly buildings meant the rent in her building farther up the block was
much lower than it would be once shiny new apartments replaced the
graffitilaced, abandoned units, but it also meant that she had to be watchful
now. Muggings weren’t uncommon in this area.
She was almost past the last of them when
raucous laughter jerked her head around. It had come from inside one of the
warehouses, and it sounded more ugly than amused.
Keep walking, Kira told herself, patting the pocket of her backpack where she kept a
gun. You’re almost home.
That harsh laughter rang out again, this time,
right on the heels of what sounded like a pained shout. Kira paused, listening
hard. If it had been later in the day, the noise from cars and pedestrians
would’ve drowned out anything coming from the warehouses; but with most people
still sleeping, she next caught what sounded like a loud moan. Whoever had made
that sound was hurt, and when it was followed by more of that ugly laughter,
Kira knew the two were related.
She slipped her backpack off, pulling out her
cell phone while walking faster toward the safety of her apartment building.
"Nine one one, what’s your emergency?” a voice
intoned after Kira punched in the
numbers.
"I want to report a Code 37,” Kira said.
"Say again?”
"Aggravated assault,” Kira amended, surprised
the dispatch operator hadn’t registered the police code. She gave the address
of where the warehouse was located.
"Sounds like the bottom floor,” she added to be
more specific.
"Please hold while I transfer you to that
station,” the operator replied. Moments later, another voice asked what her
emergency was.
"I’m reporting an aggravated assault,” Kira
said, not bothering with the code this time.
She gave the address and information again, her
teeth grinding in frustration as she had to repeat twice what she’d heard.
"So you never actually saw an assault?” the
dispatch operator asked.
"No, I didn’t go in there,” Kira said stiffly,
not walking now that she was close to her apartment building.
"Right,” the now bored-sounding voice replied.
"What’s your name?”
"I prefer to be anonymous,” Kira said after a
pause. She had a history with the police that wasn’t necessarily pleasant.
"We’ll send a car around,” the operator
intoned.
"Thanks,” Kira muttered, and hung up. She’d
done all she could. Hopefully it would be enough for whoever’d made that awful
noise.
But when she started to walk toward the front
door of her building, her steps faltered.
Instinct told her to turn around and head back
to the warehouse. It would be five to ten minutes before the patrol car
arrived. What if the unknown, injured person didn’t have that long?
Never try to be a hero, kid. Leave that to the shields.
Her boss’s admonition rang in Kira’s mind, but
instead of making her feel better, anger rose. If not for her ex-husband, she’d
be one of those "shields.” She’d aced the police academy, gotten her
certification in law enforcement, and she was just two blocks away from that
scream, not several minutes like the patrol car.
Mack’s voice, deep and scratchy, sounded
through her mind next: Save one life.
That had been her mentor’s credo. If Mack had
been more like her boss, Kira might be dead.
Not standing on a sidewalk debating whether or
not to help someone in need.
Mack wouldn’t have hesitated, badge or no
badge. Who did she want to be like, her old friend Mack, or her jaded boss,
Frank?
Kira spun around, heading back toward the
warehouses and the source of that
scream.
Mencheres let out a long moan when the silver knife slashed into his
sternum.
When the ghouls first started cutting him, he
hadn’t made a noise, and they’d drawn their blades even more slowly across his
flesh, taking his silence as a challenge. So he grunted, moaned, and even
shouted. It helped; they grew more excited, their cuts went deeper.
Soon, he’d have to choose between using his
energy to cloak the fact that he was a Master vampire, or using his power to
protect himself from the worst of the pain.
He’d lost too much blood to keep doing both.
But if his attackers had a grain of sense, revealing the extent of what he had
coiling inside him might make them run away. No, he couldn’t chance that. Pain
it was, then.
Mencheres dropped the mental barrier he’d
erected between himself and those relentless, seeking knives. Immediately, his
body felt like it was on fire, the silver causing an intense, agonizing
reaction as it sliced through him.
With his barrier to the pain down, a new
problem arose. Every new cut or stab wound roused the swirling energy in him
that craved retribution. Mencheres forced it back, concentrating on keeping his
aura tamped down, fighting his urge to kill the ghouls even though his power
demanded to be released.
"Stakes,” Mencheres said, calling him by the
name the others had used. "Are you inexperienced, or is this merely the best
you can do?”
The ghoul snarled at the insult, hacking a deep
line in Mencheres’s thigh as a response. Another ghoul took hold of Mencheres’s
waist-length black hair and sawed a hunk of it off at the shoulder.
Mencheres’s anger rose again, dark and deadly,
seeking to merge with his power to be given form. He forced it back, knowing if
he released his control for even an instant, all of the ghouls would die. And
they hadn’t served their purpose yet.
"Put the knives down
and get away from him,” someone gasped.
Mencheres swung his gaze toward the sound with
the same amazement the ghouls showed. Had he been so distracted by his own
thoughts—and the ghouls by their torture — that a human
had actually managed to sneak up on them?
The proof stood on the other side of the room,
posture in a classic shooting stance, gun pointed at the ghouls clustered
around him. The woman’s eyes were wide, her face pale, but she held her weapon
in an unwavering grip.
This was a complication he didn’t need.
"Leave now,” Mencheres ordered. Her warm mortal
body would be too tempting for the flesh-eaters to resist if she didn’t flee at
once.
"Well, well,” Stakes drew out, leaving his
knife embedded in Mencheres’s thigh.
"Look here, guys. Dessert.”
A clicking sound indicated the woman’s thumbing
back the hammer. "I’ll shoot,” she warned. "All of you, put your knives down
and get away from him. The police are already on the way . . .”
Her voice cracked as Stakes moved away from
Mencheres. Most of what they’d done to him had been blocked from her view by
the ghoul’s body, but when Mencheres was fully revealed to the woman’s gaze,
she stared.
The ghouls charged.
Mencheres knew he should do nothing. Should
stay lashed to the building’s support beam, pretending to be helpless, and let
the ghouls kill her. After all, he’d had an objective when he set out to this
place, and it didn’t involve saving a reckless human.
But in the single second that it took the
ghouls to reach the woman, another thought rose within Mencheres, overcoming
his practicality. She’d tried to save him. He could not let her die for it.
Power ripped out of him, slamming into the
ghouls. The bloodied ropes around Mencheres began to unwind themselves,
whipping about like snakes as Mencheres blasted more of his power into the six
ghouls. The strikes were weaker than normal from his blood loss, but the sudden
high-pitched shrieks coming from the flesh-eaters ended as abruptly as their attack
on her. By the time the ropes all fell away, and Mencheres strode over to the
woman, none of the ghouls could even move.
Mencheres kicked Stakes of out the way to
reveal the woman underneath him. She was gasping, blood coming from her mouth
in a thin trail, more pouring from the gaping wound in her stomach. His
hesitation had been costly. The ghoul managed to wound her mortally before he’d
stopped him. In mere minutes, the woman would bleed to death.
She stared up at him, anguish showing in her
expression, followed by a horrified understanding as she glanced down at her
stomach.
"Tina,” the woman whispered. Then her pale
green eyes rolled back into her head, and she passed out.
Mencheres didn’t pause this time; he sliced his
fangs across his wrist and held the wound to her mouth. No blood flowed. Of
course—the ghouls had drained all his blood.
He swept the woman up in the next instant,
taking her to the pole he’d so recently been lashed to. Then Mencheres scooped
up a handful of blood that pooled on the floor, forcing it into her mouth. Her
pulse was now erratic, her breathing almost nonexistent, but he ignored that,
making her swallow.
Sirens
approached. The police were almost here, just as she said they would be.
Mencheres scooped up another handful of his
blood, rubbing it onto the gouge in her stomach. The woman’s hot blood mingled
with his, but only for a moment.
Then her bleeding stopped, the edges of her
flesh pulling toward each other as she began to heal inside and out from the
regenerative effects of his blood.
Two car doors slammed. Mencheres left her on
the red-smeared floor while he went over to the ghouls. Their eyes were the
only things that could move as he stared down at them.
"If you had killed me at once, you might have
lived another few days,” Mencheres said coldly. Then he flexed his power in a
short, controlled burst. A popping sound preceded six heads rolling away from
the ghouls’ bodies in the next moment.
Footsteps approached the warehouse. Mencheres
paused, glancing over at the woman. She’d regained consciousness, and she was
staring at him, her pale gaze riveted with shock and horror.
She had seen his fangs. Watched him kill the
ghouls. She knew too much for him to leave her here.
"Police,” a voice called out. "Anyone injured
in here . . . ?”
Mencheres snatched up the woman and flew out of
a broken window before the officers had a chance to gasp at the carnage they
found inside.