Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon
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Authors: Ken White
Bandit's Moon
Night and Day
Book #3
Ken
White
Also by Ken
White:
Night and
Day
Bleeding Sky -
Night and Day 2
Blood for Blood -
Night and Day 4 - Coming June 2014
Copyright © 2014
Ken White.
No
part of this document or the related files may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form, by any means (electronic, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise) without the prior written permission of the
publisher.
All
characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real
persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Note
Thanks for
checking out Bandit’s Moon. I'd appreciate it if you left an honest review
when you've finished it. I'm always interested in hearing what you think.
You
can read regular updates on the Night and Day series at
http://www.vee-for-vampire.com
Or
find the series on:
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https://twitter.com/NightandDayBook.
Ken
White
March
2014
Contents
Chapter
One
The last person I ever wanted to
see again stepped into my office. My hand went to the pistol on my
hip.
He called himself Red. And the last
time I’d seen him, he’d been holding a couple of my friends at gunpoint,
threatening to kill everybody who meant anything to me. It wasn’t personal,
of course. Strictly business. Resistance business. Red was part of the
resistance against the Vees.
Me, I don’t hate vampires that way.
I’m no Vee lover, not like the neo-goths that flock to the uptown clubs at
night for a chance to rub elbows with vampires and maybe get nipped. Or
tapped. Or as it sometimes goes, worse.
But the Vees have been here now for
damn near six years and they’re not going anywhere, at least not anytime
soon. Those who’ve joined the Resistance, gathering information, making
hit-and-run raids against the Area Governor’s Security Force or killing the
occasional Vee civilian, won’t change things. So you have to learn how get
along and play the cards you’re dealt.
Like most people, my cards put me
in an internment camp for almost three years. The only good thing that came
out of that was that I met a vampire named Joshua Thomas. We hit it off,
became friends, and when they closed the camps and let us return to the
city, Joshua and I opened a detective agency. Night and Day Investigations.
I handled cases during the day, Joshua at night.
Then fourteen months ago, Joshua
was murdered.
It took some time, and some good
people died along the way, but in the end, I found the man who’d killed
Joshua. And punched his ticket.
Getting to know Joshua gave me a
different perspective on Vees. Working with Vees to find his killers, and
sometimes since, gave me a better understanding of what they’re
about.
They were all human once. Good and
bad. Their perspective, on what they were and what they are now, might have
changed. Their view of humans might have changed. But the good ones are
still good, and the bad ones are still bad. That goes for humans as
well.
I didn’t know Red’s story. I didn’t
want to know Red’s story. We’ve all got one, and in the end, we have to
make our choices. His choice was the Resistance.
And now, here he was in my
office.
I was doing end-of-the-year tax
stuff for Night and Day Investigations and wishing I’d paid more attention
in high school math class. When I heard the conversation in the outer
office between Cynthia, the day secretary at Night and Day, and a man, I
didn’t give it much thought. If it was a client, she’d send him through.
Cynthia knew that any break from staring at the columns of numbers would be
welcome.
The door opened and Red came
in.
It had been six months since I last
saw him, and from his appearance, they’d been hard months for him. His face
was drawn and pale, his hair disheveled. He wore a long tan trenchcoat and
carried an envelope. It wasn’t till later that I spotted the blood running
down his leg from somewhere under the coat.
He’d barely had time to close the
door behind him before I had the Glock on my hip out and aimed at his
face.
Red smiled. “That the way you greet
a new client, Welles?”
“I’m going to do you a favor, Red,”
I said slowly. “I’m going to let you turn around, walk out of my office,
and crawl back to wherever the fuck you came from.” I paused. “It’s a
limited-time offer, so don’t think too long.”
“Can’t do that,” he said. “I’ve got
a job for you.”
“Not interested. Beat
it.”
“You will be.”
I shook my head. “No I won’t. Now
I’d really appreciate it if you’d hit the road. I’ve got a busy day and
cleaning your brains off the wall would be an unwelcome
interruption.”
He shrugged and smiled. “I guess
you’re just gonna have to shoot me, Welles. I’m not leaving until we’ve
talked.”
I stared down the barrel of my gun
at him and he stared right back. After about thirty seconds, I lowered the
pistol and set it on the desk in front of me. In easy reach.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want to
kill him. I did. But even in an upside down world, murder is still murder.
The cops might not give me much heat about shooting a Resistance guy, but
it wasn’t about the consequences. It was about the act.
If he’d hurt or killed my friends,
I would have pulled the trigger without a second thought. I’d done it to
the man who killed Joshua and another who was involved. Blood for blood.
But he hadn’t. He’d threatened, but he’d gone no further. He didn’t have to.
I did what he asked to keep my friends alive.
In the end, Red’s fight was with
the Vees, and though I wasn’t onboard with it, he was their problem, not
mine. I wasn’t going to be their enforcer.
“So talk,” I said.
He tossed the envelope across the
room. It hit the middle of the desk and slid next to the pistol.
“Ten thousand dollars,” he said. “I
hear you charge six hundred bucks a day for your services. That’s
what...sixteen days and some change?”
“I told you, I’m not
interested.”
“I want you to find somebody for
me,” he continued. “A woman. Human. Her name’s Katarina Schleu.”
“Look in the phone book,” I
said.
“Not listed.”
“Then hire somebody else. There are
plenty of detective agencies in that phone book.”
“I don’t want somebody else,” Red
said. “I told you the last time I saw you, you don’t give a fuck who you’re
up against, you don’t care whether they’re human or skeeter. You keep your
eye on the ball.”
Skeeter was a term for vampires
that seemed exclusive to the Resistance. Southern for mosquito.
“That’s when I’m working a case,” I
replied. “I’m not working your case.”
“When you find Schleu, I want you
to kill her.”
I laughed softly. “Oh, now I get
it. You’re in the wrong office. Hitmen R Us is on the third floor. End of
the hall. Their door looks like a window, but just go ahead, open it up and
step on through.”
“You’re a funny guy,
Welles.”
“So are you,” I said. “I’m a
private detective. You’re looking for an assassin.”
“You’ll want to kill her when you
find her. Trust me on that.”
“I wouldn’t trust you on anything,”
I said. “So that’s it? That’s your pitch? Ten thousand dollars to find some
woman and kill her for you?” I shook my head. “You know, we all go through
the heartache of losing a girlfriend, but there are other ways to work
through the pain.”
I picked up the envelope and tossed
it back to him. It hit his chest and dropped to the floor.
“I’m paying for sixteen days, but
you only have six to find her and kill her. After that, it doesn’t
matter.”
“What happens in six
days?”
“Christmas Eve,” he
said.
I felt the hairs on my arms stand
up. Christmas Eve. For humans, it meant one thing. The day before
Christmas, celebrating the birth of Christ or the imminent arrival of Santa
Claus.
It was also a holiday for Vees, but
not one that had anything to do with Christ or Santa.
Six years ago, on Christmas Eve,
the war between the vampires and humans began. Only we didn’t know it at
the time. It was closer to the beginning of January before the Vee hordes
began sweeping across the country, swallowing everyone and everything in
front of them. By the first of February, it was over. They won. We
lost.
“I didn’t ask what day it was,” I
said. “I asked what happens?”
Red was silent for moment, then
said, “Armageddon.”
“Very dramatic.”
“Very bad,” he said. “Bad for the
skeeters.” He paused. “Worse for us.”
In spite of myself, I was getting
just a little interested in what he was saying. If whatever this woman was
involved in was bad for Vees, and Red still wanted it stopped, it was worth
hearing a little more. The Resistance was usually pretty callous about any
blowback on the human population from their activities. Apparently not this
time.
“You’re going to have to be a
little more specific,” I said. “This vague shit ain’t gonna cut
it.”
“I’ve told you what I can,” he
said. “Katarina Schleu needs to be found and killed no later than midnight
Christmas Eve. You’ll figure out why on your own by the time you find
her.”
“Any reason why you can’t just send
your buddies in the Resistance out to track her down and cap
her?”
“It’s a big city and we don’t have
a lot of time.”
“Neither do I.”
“Yeah, but it’s what you do. We
have other pursuits.”
I stared at him in silence for a
few seconds, then said, “I’ll think about it. To find somebody in six days
with no leads is going to force me to call in a lot of favors.”