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Going by Stanley’s sweat output, the room is at 120 degrees Fahrenheit. He is positively dripping when he shakes his head, sprinkling the table with the stuff. “I have nothing to say to that,” he says hurriedly.
“So Loreley did everything she could to find out who did it and came up empty-handed?” I throw in, wincing at the roughness in my throat, drawing Stanley’s hysterical eyes to me.
His relief is palpable. “Yes, exactly!”
“But somebody had to have done it,” I prompt, raising an eyebrow and keeping the rest of my head as still as possible. God, my neck wound burns like a motherfucker. “So who else is there? Who did Loreley forget?”
“Waay-eeell…” Squirming in his seat, Stanley kneads his glass and stares at the table as if the answer to the meaning of life is written on it in fine print. “I can’t say for sure, but I think she kind of sort of left out the kiss in the Dark City district.”
Asha goes quiet, but her eyes light up. It makes my heart leap with sudden anxiety. “Another group of vampires in the Dark City? And Loreley let them converge into a kiss?”
Unusual doesn’t begin to describe it. A vampire kiss may be a more formal union than a shifter pack, but they are just as territorial. Not because of mere instincts, but because of something much stronger: Money. If you control the local market, you control the flow of money. And if you don’t want to get caught, you have to do it quietly, strategically, underhandedly. Nothing can ruin a perfect plan quicker than being crossed by someone who wants the same thing, but for themselves. Oh, and then there’s the Contract, but who thinks about that in the heat of a business day?
“This is way above my pay grade,” says Stanley quietly, leaning forward to keep the eavesdroppers at bay, “but I heard whispers they made some kind of deal to cut Loreley in and keep away from the better parts of the city. We almost never see them, with the exception of their, eh, envoy? He comes once a month with a briefcase, disappears into Loreley’s office for half an hour, and then leaves without it. Nobody is sure where they actually nest, and I think Loreley doesn’t even have contact details for them, plausible deniability and all that.”
Silence follows, filled only with Stanley’s nervous gasping. Somewhere in the back of a room, murmurs are followed by laughter and clinking glasses. I hear them as if through cotton. Asha breaks the uncomfortable silence, her voice dead and calm, cold enough to make me shudder. “Tell me everything.”
And Stanley does.
CHAPTER THREE
THE NEXT DAY greets us with a cloudy sky and some signs of really bad weather ahead. Stanley gave us a few different locations that we might want to check out, although for some of them, he couldn’t quite explain why. A lot of ‘people say’ and ‘everybody knows’, but Asha seemed to be content with that explanation last night.
I’m not sure how content she is now, after running in circles for almost six hours, from one place to the next, all over the city, and with nothing to show for it except burning feet. There are three more spots Stanley described we haven’t checked out yet, but I am starting to wonder if he was leading us on a wild goose chase. He would be a scarily good actor if he did.
The Border district is a place in between, whichever way you look at it; neither rich nor poor, neither new nor old, neither dangerous nor particularly safe. Maybe it’s because of where it is—right between the ghetto districts and the Central district—, or maybe because it is so big, but everything about the Border is boring at best, and forgettable at worst. Nothing much ever happens there, if you believe local news, but maybe that’s why Asha was so quick to decide that this would be it, ‘it’ being the last place we would check before contacting the vampire liaison and demanding some help. I agree with her assessment, though. Where better to hide than in a place that most people can’t for the life of them describe, as soon as they leave it?
Harsh wind greets us when we crawl out of the car. The weather seems to have finally made up its mind: The air smells like rain and lightning, and the streets are groaning for a good soak.
Asha seems to agree; she re-does her ponytail as she stares up at the clouds pondering, lips tucked against her teeth. Humming, she looks at the surrounding buildings and street. “Remember, we are hunting a serial killer vampire here. Most likely he’ll—or she’ll—be not much of a danger to Hunters, but still. Be on high alert and don’t bother asking questions this time. If you see a vampire, shoot first. They ain’t gonna be up to anything good if they are here,” she finishes and touches her gun furtively. When she turns and her eyes meet mine, she startles at my closeness, looking young and caught. Like a young girl who chose love at the wrong moment and is now paying the price.
Then her face closes up again, and she forces herself to straighten, tapping her sides to check her weapons. “If you don’t have extra bullets on you, I’ll be very cross,” she threatens with a slight upturn in her lips.
I smile in return. Of course I have. Thirty extra rounds, three magazines, stuffed down my boot, belt, and jacket pocket, ready for grabs should the need arise. I don’t think it will, though. If it does, no amount of bullets will make a difference, because things that survive thirty-plus bullets don’t fuck around.
The warm, unsteady breeze howls along the walls of the dilapidated building in front of us. The rumor mill mentions a defunct hospital, Stanley said, and then told us in great detail how to find it, as if a giant fucking behemoth of a building might be hard to find. I didn’t understand why until now. Were it not for the O and the TAL still dangling from the brick wall, I wouldn’t have dreamed that this was once a place to bring the sick. If we had come at night, we would have driven right by it. Luckily, we’re not stupid enough to hunt vampires at night.
Old oaks seam the outer property wall, leaning onto it like old men. In some places, the wall has given way, crumbling onto the broken pavement and filling the potholes there, leaving light blotches on the exhaust-blackened rock. Ivy climbs the barred metal gate at the front, roping the bars together for eternity. The wings gape open, though, and the ivy leaves just enough room to snake through. And of course there will be vampires inside; it’s a spooky ruin. Where else would they be?
Asha ducks through the ivy like a feral cat, popping up from the vegetation further in. She looks around, then turns and waves at me. I follow her, not half as agile as she is. I’m good in the athletics department, but she? She is art. Next to her, everyone would feel cumbersome.
We make our way towards the main building, straining our eyes in the bleak daylight as we watch the perimeter. I have trained for this, trained to the point of broken bones, torn ligaments, and painful sprains just to make sure I could handle any situation, but doing it for real? Shit, my heart is about to punch a hole through my lungs.
The red brick building is covered in graffiti, not just tags, but big, swirling, colorful depictions of dicks, cannabis leaves, middle fingers, and peace signs. The big broken windows sit in between the sprayed murals like dead eyes, and I can’t help but feel paranoid as we get closer. Asha stops when the disproportionally small side entrance comes into view, taps my shoulder, and points. A trampled trail leads through the unkempt grass to the door, disappearing around the left corner of the giant complex.
There’s somebody here. And they are smart enough not to use the main gate. A homeless person wouldn’t give a shit about leaving traces, but a criminal would. Vampires would. My stomach contracts into a heavy, pulsing knot.
We both pull our guns, pointing them down as we creep closer. My mind spins with useless quotes from the Hunter’s Handbook, things like signs of unsound walls or where the best places to store magazines are when in a swampy area, bullheadedly sabotaging my futile attempts at calming myself. I let Asha take point and follow her in short sidesteps as I monitor the overgrown garden at our back, my feet moving on autopilot. Tall grass and wild bushes wave at me as the wind gets stronger, my gun whipping back and forth as I scan for attackers. God, I hope I don’t shoot a rat and blow this whole thing.
The soft thud of boots on stone informs me that Asha has reached the steps in front of the door, and I move in closer as she climbs them. A gust of moss-heavy air ruffles my moussed-back hair, and my neck prickles warningly, feeding into my frustration. I can’t see anything!
And just as I turn, a pale, broils-riddled man-creature appears in the dark doorway like a specter and snags Asha through it as if she weighs nothing. Her scream echoes, then the thud-thud-thud of three shots floats towards me from somewhere frighteningly far away.
Shit, shit, shit!
EVEN AS A teenager, I thought that heroes running into danger were utterly stupid. If you hear something creepy when you’re alone in a cabin in the woods, don’t go out with a flashlight to look, for fuck’s sake, barricade the doors and make sure all the knives, axes and rifles are exactly where you are. Then hunker down and slice everything that tries to get close to you into ribbons. Survival is just as easy as that.
But much to nobody’s surprise, once I hear Asha scream, I charge into the spooky building, and to hell with sanity. I’ve been trained well enough to handle my gun even when I don’t have time to think about it, and I don’t just run like a headless chicken, but I don’t check the rooms beyond making sure nothing jumps at me while I run past, quick little glances left and right as I hunt after the echoes of my own steps. Rooms after rooms lurk along the dark hallway, their doors long gone. Big earthen tile shards sprinkle the rotting floorboards, sporting giant algae and fungus growths.
