Friday, July 6th, 2012
Jim Reynolds
sits at his table, morosely pulling at his beer. It wasn’t… fair? No, fair isn’t the right word. Life
isn’t fair. Just? Nahh, same thing.
It didn’t
make any goddamned sense, fairness
and justice be damned.
He and his
fellow Hunters had just started to get a solid trail on this bloodsucker,
Cochran. He’s moving in on a high-schooler,
which was depraved even by bloodsucker standards. They tended to avoid anyone under the
quarter-century mark, probably (Jim supposed) because missing minors tend to be
a lot more noticeable in the media than full-fledged adults. Then, on an odd Tuesday, they both fall off
the face of the map. What, did they fuckin’ elope or something?
He had seen
straights get turned before. Night owls,
shut-ins, overnight workers – pickings were easy in Las Vegas, the party never
stops and normal people tend not to notice when their mostly-nocturnal friend becomes
entirely nocturnal. Friends are understanding like that. Loners tend to be missed even less. Whenever Reynolds and his crew managed to
bring down one of those pests, it seemed that three more would spring up in its
place. Hopefully there were other
Hunters in the area “raising the stakes,” so to speak. But if there were, they sure weren’t part of
Jim’s Poker club.
It was pretty
rare in Jim’s experience for a vampire to turn a mortal and then just
disappear, though. “Rare,” as in, “never
happened once.” Vampires were
territorial to a fault, and while Jim had heard stories of them being driven
out by rival clans, that sort of thing only happened out in the sticks.
Then there
was the faked death. While it wrapped up
the girl’s disappearance into a neat little package, the deception was more
than obvious to an experienced Hunter like him:
the body wasn’t exsanguinated, the time of death was in the wee hours
rather than the early night, and the cause of death was pretty clearly exhaustion
rather than anything more immediate.
While mortals could die like that any day of the week, it didn’t make
sense for a bloodsucker to go to such lengths to make a kill – there was
clearly something else going on.
Still, things
just weren’t adding up. It was enough to
drive a man to drink. And so here Jim
sat at his favorite haunt, nursing his third or fourth beer and making circles
in his head. Going around in circles
wasn’t so bad, he had learned, as long as you noticed a thing or two for making
the trip. He and his crew had cracked
more than a few cases by sitting around and shooting the shit until one detail
clicked into another and gave them a new lead.
So what’s the detail, Jim thinks. Where’s
the new lead point to? He raises his
glass to his mouth…
…and sees his
ring: red.
Jim’s ring
was a fine piece. It looked for all the
world like a mood ring, black at most times with the occasional flash of
color. It was filled with stripes of
varying chemicals that reacted sympathetically to the presence of supernatural
critters: tiger’s eye for werewolves,
streaked turquoise for mages, fire opal for changelings… and blood agate for
vampires. He sips slowly at his beer,
watching as the steady red does not flicker for several seconds. He lowers his glass and sets his drinking
hand down on the table, stroking his chin with his other hand as he casually
eyes the jewel.
A full minute
passes. They’re not just passing through. They’re here in the building with him.
Jim leans
back in his chair and stretches his arms lazily, taking in the scene with a
practiced indifference on his face.
Drinkers at the bar, loose and bubbly.
A group of guys telling stories, presumably winding down after a week of
whatever the Hell they do. A couple out
on a date – maybe. Maybe. He watches the man, gauges his posture: open, not predatory in any way. The woman?
No, she’s just making small talk.
Two women in the corner – wait.
The white one
is clearly a teenager, the black one maybe in her thirties. Possibly coworkers. But there’s something vaguely familiar about –
no, not vaguely familiar, the white girl’s face just looks vague. Like it’s hard to
make out her features with any clarity.
Jim looks sidelong at the bar, tries to see the teen out of the corner
of his eye. There it is.
Holy shit.
That’s the Swain girl.
He risks a
closer look: the black woman has an
ashen cast to her, not like she’s got dry skin, but like she hasn’t seen the
Sun in days. Jim looks lazily to his
right. He’s got a few in him, to be sure
– but this is his new lead. This is that
odd chance that comes up in every case, and he’s got to make good on it
somehow. Good thing he’s got backup.
Jim pulls out
his smartphone and opens his Facebook app.
He posts a message to the Gravediggers Poker Club: “Not sure if bluffing or clueless: pair of hearts loses to a spade flush, right?” He sets the device to vibrate and leaves it
on the table in front of him. A server
brings a pair of burgers to the women.
True to form, the vampire noob makes funny faces at her food at
first. A buzz interrupts his
surveillance.
Ken Wu
replied: “Damn skippy.”
Jim “Likes”
the comment. Seconds later, Stacy
MacIntyre replies: “Tonight as well as
any other night.” Jim sets his phone
down and takes another small sip of beer.
Another push notification sets his phone a-buzzing: Don Harper has “Liked” Jim’s post.
Jim finishes
his beer slowly over the course of the bloodsuckers’ meal, and orders another
one out of courtesy when his server stops by.
Where the fuck is Evan? Whatever.
Two-to-one odds is still good in Jim’s
book. The women stand to leave after
paying their server, and Jim makes a point of busying himself with his
smartphone as they pass.
He posts
again to the Poker club page after turning on his GPS function: “Well, rules is rules. Hand’s over, time to ante up. (At PT’s Pub, Las Vegas, NV.)”
“Little
blind,” Stacy replies.
“Big blind,”
Don replies.
“Call,” Ken
replies.
Still no word
from Evan. Jim makes a five-count after
the bloodsuckers leave, then lays a pair of twenties on his table and walks out
while sending a text message to Don: “I
think I left my nine-iron in the garage.
Could you grab it before our tee time?”
The reply
comes seconds later: “Sure thing, man.”
Jim turns
left, heading East down Sahara. After a
few seconds, his ring begins fading to black – he turns around and double-times
it to the end of the block. Bright red
again. Jim’s phone buzzes in his
pocket: a text from Evan reads, “Shit, I
was changing my oil. On my way, man.” Maybe they’ll makethat flush after all.
The vampires
wind their way through the streets, leaving suburbia and heading through the
business district. Jim hears the squeal
of metal on metal as he turns into an alley between a grimy warehouse and a
sterilized office building. Rounding the
corner, he sees a fire escape well out of his reach – looking back and forth,
there’s no other access to the higher floors of the other buildings. He glances at the rooftops, and a smile
spreads slowly across his face: the
building is only four floors high, well below the neighboring buildings. The bloodsuckers are trapped like mosquitoes
in a net. He texts Don his location with
the accompanying code to pass it on to the others, then paces back and forth
along the alleyway, listening to the steady reassuring whoosh of traffic along the street.
After a few
minutes, three of his fellow Hunters join him in the back alley. Don hands a 9mm pistol to Jim without a word,
and Jim jerks his thumb up at the roof.
“We’ve got ‘em
cornered,” he whispers. “They went up
the fire escape, and there’s no way to the other rooftops.”
“Locked and
alarmed?” Stacy fishes a small
leather-bound set of picks and an electronic device from her purse as she
speaks.
“Yeah,” Jim replies,
“Unless they got careless.”
“No problem.” She looks at the keypad to the right of the
door, finds a jack, and fishes out the appropriate cable. “We’ll be inside in no time.” Don and Jim grunt their assent; Ken stands
silently aside and draws his pistol.
Stacy pushes a few buttons on her PalmPilot, and after a few beeps, the
alarm deactivates. She puts a turning
tool into the deadbolt and sets about raking the pins – the bolt slides back
within seconds. “Probably mastered,” she
whispers as she opens the squeaking door, “Easy-peasy.” Jim takes an extra flashlight from Don and
whispers,
“I’ll look
out. I’ve, uhh, had a few.” The others nod their silent assent.
Ken heads in
first, clicking his flashlight on and checking the corners before sweeping the
floor ahead of him. A pair of forklifts,
stacks of pallets, and odd boxes among the conveyor belts cast ominous shadows
against the walls – but nothing is moving, and he takes a couple steps into the
darkness. Don and Stacy follow, clicking
their flashlights on and deactivating the safeties on their pistols. Ken stays on the ground floor, sweeping his
beam back and forth, while Don and Stacy head to the upper floors.
Where the fuck is Evan, Jim wonders as
metallic footsteps echo from the stairs inside.
Presently, his phone vibrates, and Jim shoves the pistol down the front
of his trousers after checking that his safety’s still on.
“Almost
there, don’t start the party without me.”
“Too late,”
Jim types back, “I’m DDing, but everyone else got started pre-gaming.” Jim pockets his phone and draws his pistol
again, glancing back and forth down the alleyway.
Ken Wu sweeps
the beam of his flashlight back and forth along the ground floor, with occasional
jerks upward to make sure his fellow Hunters are proceeding safely. The pair of footsteps make a fourth staccato
rhythm, indicating that they’re heading up to the roof. He turns off his flashlight and lets his eyes
adjust to the darkness. Don examines the
roof access door: just a knob, with a
thumb turn on the inside. He unlocks it
and slowly opens the door. Flashlight
beneath his pistol, he makes a quick sweep of the rooftop, widening his search
as he steps clear of the doorway.
A pair of
hands snake around the corner faster than Don can react: one hand pinches his wrists together as a
forearm rises beneath his elbows, and then he is thrown head-over-heels as his
shoulders are forced forward beyond his center of gravity. He drops his pistol, tries to recover, but
his assailant turns him over on his face and torques his shoulder out of joint
in a ruthless arm bar.
Stacy thumbs
off her safety as soon as she sees Don tumble off to the left ahead of her, and
raises her pistol just as the second bloodsucker comes into view. She doesn’t have time to look down the
sights, though, as the spry young thing dives at her and tackles her down the
stairwell. Pain, vertigo, then an
opalescent flash as her vision goes dark.
Ken hears a
scuffle followed by the ring of metal stairs and rails from above. He looks among the shadows, ready for a secondary
assault, but none comes.
“Don? Stacy?”
No answer. He raises his
flashlight straight above himself as he turns it back on, but sees nothing
through the grated stairs or above the landing beneath the roof. “Shit, man, get in here,” he shouts to Jim as
he runs for the first staircase, pulling back the hammer of his pistol.
Jim clicks on
his flashlight as he enters the building, thumbing off his safety and jerking
back the slide as Ken’s footsteps follow his light up the stairs. He follows Ken to the second floor, a dozen
seconds behind. Ken races up to the
third floor as a metallic clank is
followed by a third set of running steps.
Jim casts his beam about frantically, catches a shadow rounding a corner
behind a pile of boxes, but is soon forced to focus on the stairs beneath him
to keep his footing. Jim picks up his
pace and rises to the third floor as Ken races across the catwalk, following
the vampire. Just as he passes a
stairway to the top, a weight slams into him from above, and he screams as he
feels three of his ribs crack against the railing. He drops his pistol, struggles to recover,
but his assailant is behind him quicker than he can think, her arm pulling his
neck back into a perfect choke hold.
Ken’s
flashlight turns back at him, blinding him, and he hears Ken shout, “Don’t
move!” Time seems to move in slow
motion: two footsteps sound in the
darkness, Ken’s flashlight turns a few degrees, and then jerks upward as he is
pinned to the catwalk. A black woman is
caught briefly in the beam, her green T-shirt flaring bright in passing as Jim
begins to see spots. Painful seconds
later, the flashlight clicks out, and Jim’s vision begins to grow dark. He loses his sense of time, tries to struggle
free, but the choke hold tightens. A
voice sounds faintly in the distance, then another nearer to him, and time
passes. He senses dully that his arms
are pulled back, there is a sharp pain in his neck, and everything goes black.
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