Death Deceives: Book Three (Mortis Vampire Series) (22 page)

After a few minutes, my patience was rewarded
when the cigarette butt was dropped to the ground. A boot heel stomped it and mashed it to death, choking out the scent of burning paper and tobacco. I plastered my back to the wall when the human walked past the alley. He cast a cursory look into the darkness and moved on.

When his footsteps faded, I checked that the way was clear and flitted down the street. Footsteps
and low conversation told me that more soldiers were somewhere nearby. I winced when we passed beneath a streetlight, expecting alarmed shouts to ring out but we remained unspotted.

Casting a glance back to make sure
that all of my shadows were behaving themselves, I did a double take when I noticed that something had changed. My feet tangled and I almost tripped. Thanks to my quick reflexes, I didn’t sprawl on my face but merely took a couple of quick steps to catch my balance.

Halfway down the next alley, I leaped up to a much newer
and far more secure fire escape and headed to the roof. It was clear of soldiers so I turned to confront my diminished following. Instead of four imp shadows, I now only had three. I was far from upset by this but I was concerned that one of them seemed to be missing and I hadn’t heard or sensed its disappearance.

“Why have you stopped?” one of the remaining three asked me.

“Do you see anything wrong with this picture?” My gesture encompassed all three of them. They looked from me to each other then back at me. It was difficult to tell since they were uniform black but I believed their expressions were blank.

The middle one took another look then made a startled noise. “One of us is missing!”

“Where did he go?” asked the one on the left.

“I heard nothing,” the one on the right said.

They looked at me suspiciously and I threw my hands up. “
I
didn’t do it. Something must have nabbed him when we were in the alley.” All of my concentration had been on the smoking human. I assumed theirs had been as well.

“What could have done this?” True distress came from the one in the middle. It was weird to see such a large creature wringing its hands
in fright.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Keep your eyes open and let me know if you see anything strange.” It was the only advice I had to offer
them.

Working my way across the roof, I jumped
across to the next building. I kept away from the edge and stayed low so I wouldn’t draw any attention. The three imps followed me closely, hunching down but still managing to tower over me. They swivelled their heads on constant lookout for whatever had snatched their brother. I was hiding it well but I was quietly shaking on the inside.

Crossing several more roof
tops, I finally reached the police headquarters. A gap of fifteen feet separated me from my goal. The roof was much lower than the building I was currently hunkered on. If I jumped from here, I’d be sure to make too much noise and draw unwanted attention when I landed.

Spying a half open
window on the second floor, I decided it would be my best way of gaining entry. I’d have to be quick if I wanted to exploit the oversight. My entrance wouldn’t be subtle but at least this side of the building was far less exposed than the front. Four guards, two at each end, watched the entrances of the alley and only occasionally bothered to look behind them. When they did, none tilted their heads back to examine the windows.

I lacked a handy fire
escape to jump from this time so pulled open the door leading to the interior stairwell of the building. Since the humans had either been eaten, kidnapped or evacuated from the area, it was still inside.

Descending to
the third floor, I opened the door leading to the apartments and trotted to the end of the hall. Peering out through the dirty window, I saw that it wasn’t quite lined up with the window across the road. It would have to do. Pushing on the window, at first it didn’t want to move but finally shot upwards with a screech. Startled murmurs came from the two closest soldiers. They clicked their flashlights on and searched the nearby shadows. When their probing didn’t flush out any imps or vampires, they gave up and went back to their posts.

While they’d been searching
, I’d launched myself into the air and landed neatly on the windowsill I’d been aiming for. Carefully brushing aside a set of metal blinds, I and my entourage crept inside what turned out to be an office. From the tiny size of the room, I figured it was a secretary’s lair. The scent of perfume still lingered. Pictures of an attractive brunette posing with what seemed to be friends and family sat on the desk. I pondered briefly whether she’d made it out of the town alive or if she’d ended up in one of the cages in the cavern of doom. For all I knew she’d already been spitted and eaten.

Two of the imps
were huddled near the wall during my brief search. I looked around for the third one didn’t see it anywhere. My four normal shadows were still all accounted for.
How strange do things have to get when you start thinking having four shadows is in any way normal?
Badly spooked now, I turned in a circle but there were definitely only two black imps present.

“And now we are two,” one of them said
with dark foreboding.

“Did you see
any
thing?” I asked them.

The shadow shook its batlike head. “We saw and heard nothing.”

“It’ll be our turn next,” its clone whined shakily.

There was nothing I could do about their disappearance so I returned to the task at hand.
Maybe they’re disappearing because your body is assimilating the imp blood,
my subconscious suggested. It was possible that they were only a temporary manifestation and were fading one by one. I admit I liked this theory better than some unseen, unheard entity somehow disposing of them.

Walking around armed wouldn’t aid me in gaining allies. Soldiers tended to shoot at something they saw as a threat. It would be sensible to be seen as nonthreatening
as possible considering that I preyed on humans for food. Leaving my weapons and backpack beneath the missing secretary’s desk, I hoped the room wouldn’t be searched any time soon. Closing the window to hide my entry point seemed like a smart move. It slid down without a sound.

So far so good.
Now I just need to stumble across the Colonel and try to convince him to team up with me.
Stepping out into the hallway, I waited until the imps stepped out after me then closed the door. I detected a large number of humans in one of the rooms nearby. Most were either sleeping or speaking quietly. They were working in shifts and for some of them it was nap time.

Down the hall and around the corner, I located
a large meeting room that had been turned into a makeshift barracks. A window in the door allowed me to examine the soldiers sleeping on thin mattresses on the floor. None were the man I sought so I moved on.

Three more rooms had been converted into sleeping quarters and none contained the Colonel. Moving to the staircase leading down to the ground floor, I heard humans bustling around down there. The night
wouldn’t last forever and I had a lot of explaining to do to the American soldier when we finally met. I contemplated deliberately running into a human so he could direct me to his boss.
What’s the worst they could do to me
? I’d had so many attempts made on my unlife by now that it didn’t bother me much that the soldiers would undoubtedly also try to kill me. I just hoped I didn’t create a mass panic once my identity was discovered.

Shrugging inwardly, I took the stairs and pulled the door open. Instead of an open space, I found myself in a rabbit warren of corridors. Footsteps approached then veered off in another direction. More footsteps came from the opposite direction and also stopped short of reaching me.
Jeez, what do I have to do to get discovered around here?

Turning left
, I rounded the corner and almost ran into a soldier. Preoccupied by the clipboard in his hands, he only noticed I was standing in front of him when he was right on top of me. Halting, he looked up and his mouth turned into a circle of surprise. His eyes moved behind me and saw the two hulking shadows flanking me like a pair of bodyguards. Hitching in a breath to scream, he dropped the clipboard and fumbled for the gun at his hip.

Before he could unleash his
scream of terror, I grabbed him by the chin and redirected his gaze. Our eyes met and the fright washed out of him, leaving a goofy smile in place of his former alarm.

“Take me to Colonel Sanderson,” I commanded him
before he could begin telling me how wonderful I was.

My hypnotized guide kept trying to stare at me as he led the way. This resulted in him tripping over his feet and sprawling to the ground. He didn’t land quietly and a pair of soldiers came running to help
him up.

Uh oh,
I had time to think before they lifted the guy to his feet. Both saw me and my strange entourage at roughly the same time and instantly recognized me. Before they could scream for assistance, I made them mine. Now I had three men in my thrall. “Where is Colonel Sanderson?” I asked the original soldier.

“
He’s in the meeting room, ma’am.”

I hid a snigger at
being called ma’am. Being an Aussie, I usually only heard the term on TV or movies. “How many other people are in the meeting room with him?”

“No one
at the moment, ma’am,” one of my latest conquests rushed to reply.

“The Colonel
requested some time alone to plan, ma’am,” the third guy said earnestly.

“You’re so
gorgeous,” my first captive said with a resurgence of his goofy smile.

“Yeah, I know,” was my absent reply. “Let’s go, boys.
Take me to your leader.” As soon as I said it, I felt like an alien invader. In a way, I kind of was.

During our relatively short journey, we encountered several more soldiers. By the time we reached the door to the
meeting room, I had eight men surrounding me. All were staring at me worshipfully. “How pathetic. Humans have no willpower,” sniffed one of my imp guardians. The other snorted its agreement.

The door to the room
was closed but not locked. Opening it a crack, I searched it quickly. Apart from the tall, thin, blonde guy standing with his back to me, the room was empty of people. A large, rectangular table with a dozen battered wooden seats took up most of the space. Maps were spread out on it and the American leader was staring at one intently.

While I entered the room silently, my entourage
of humans scuffed their feet, bumped into each other and generally made a racket. The Colonel straightened and spun around. The hand hovering over his gun hesitated then dropped to his side when he saw who had interrupted him.

Seeing him in the flesh
rather than on TV, I could tell how tired he was. The stress of his job had cut grooves into his forehead. “This is an unexpected surprise,” he said calmly, taking in his mesmerized soldiers. His gaze flickered when he spied the black silhouettes. He recognized them as being imps and groped for his gun again.

“Don’t bother, they’re just shadows
. They can’t hurt you.” Of course, that went both ways. No amount of gunfire would harm my rapidly dwindling number of companions.

“How?
What? Who?” The Colonel was searching for coherent questions to ask me but couldn’t quite wrap his brain around what he was seeing. He made a valiant effort and gathered himself. “We’ve been searching for you.”

“
Now you’ve found me.” I could tell that he didn’t appreciate my attempt at humour. “We need to talk,” I said then had a sinking feeling when his eyes flicked over my shoulder.

“I am
more interested in putting an end to you than in speaking with you,” he replied and gave me a small, hard smile.

Feet scuff
ed the floor behind me and a cold metal object was pressed up against the back of my head. Another soldier must have followed the rest of us to the meeting room and had just pulled his gun on me. “I wouldn’t do that if I were-” Before I could finish my warning, the soldier pulled the trigger.

My skin, bone, flesh and brains
splattered the floor. Staggering forward a step, I placed a hand over the gigantic hole where my forehead used to be as everything went blank for a few seconds. Then my freaky healing powers kicked in and my body repaired itself.

Whirling around, I stared into the soldier’s eyes and he became my instant slave.
“The other human is getting away,” one of the imps informed me.

Hearing
a door open behind me, I realized what the imp meant. The Colonel was fast for a guy in his late forties but not anywhere near as fast as me. Moving with unnatural speed, I popped up in front of him. Unable to stop his momentum, he bounced off me and hit the floor.

Scrambling back, he shielded
his eyes with a hand to stop me from beguiling him and tried to control his panic. “What do you want?” he asked me with quiet desperation.

“I just want to talk, Colonel,” I said as soothingly as possible
considering he probably thought I was there to eat him. “I promise I won’t bedazzle you if you don’t try to shoot me.”