“Is it worth it?” I ask in a soft whisper. “I don’t want you hurt.”
The bold young woman reaches out a hand and touches my arm. “Eventually I’ll want kids and stuff, which isn’t an option with you… but that’s years away. Wild, uncontrollably passionate sex with a friend?” She winks at me as she turns to leave. “It’s good enough for now.” Halfway across the landing, she looks back over her shoulder, tossing her spiral curls out of the way. “Don’t worry about tonight. You can make it up to me when I mix up a fresh batch of passion.”
Once she’s gone, I push away from the wall and a twinge of pain issues from my ribs. Despite resting earlier, I’m drained. Healing from the beating I took will take some time. The failed intimate encounter only reinforces how much I’m not up to par. Six months ago I could have ignored her voice in the heat of the moment and plowed through with my fantasy, but it’s becoming more and more difficult to find release lately.
My thoughts drift back to the man in the bar, Spike. His dark good looks and intense brown eyes watched my every move earlier. While I admit, the idea of being with Dria and Rafe consumes me, I’ve not thought of being solely with a man. Good God, could I be gay and not know it? I shake my head, confused, and try my best to knock loose the strange scent of the new werewolf from my head.
The solace of the warm makeshift bed in Dria and Rafe’s suite calls to me. I head back there, knowing I’ve got a few hours to kill before the next stage in the plan, which is setting the fake kill scene.
The dogs welcome me and we curl up together on the thin mattress. The rare peace of being with my pack cocoons me and I quickly drop off into a light sleep. Sometime later, voices crash into my awareness and I’m pulled from a doze. People mill about the space and Kujo grows restless beside me.
“Are you sure it was just one bracelet, Drew?” I crack open my eyes to see Dria stuffing her arms into a white, fur-lined parka.
“Yes, ma’am. She’s at the property perimeter, about a mile due west from the apartments.”
With a nod in my direction, she pulls on gloves and an insulated hat. “Let’s hope I get to her first and not Stan. The silver in just one of those will render her immobile and defenseless.” Grabbing a small GPS unit she heads out into the cold.
The shock of the outdoors
sends a spike of pain through my forehead. The first inhalalation freezes my nasal passages and tightens my facial skin. Ignoring the happy twinkle of the Christmas lights adorning every bush, statue, and pergola, I race into the deep twilight.
Soon, the well-traveled asphalt pathway ends and I’m heading over hard-packed snow that’s been plowed. The employees don’t often walk all the way to the main building, especially this time of year, and the semi-cleared roads work well enough for vehicles. It’s close to high noon and the sky is painted with the lingering colors of sunset.
The fierce beauty of this harsh land is breathtaking, and despite how this dreaded week turns out, I’m still thrilled to be here even after two decades. Once I veer off from the collection of employee buildings, the trek proves more difficult. After a quarter mile, the plowing stops and huge snow banks tower in three directions.
I climb to the top of the far one and take out the GPS to orient where I need to go. The air burns in my lungs as I note two blips on the screen. Crap, Stan must have been tracking her pretty close when she skirted the property line.
Slipping the tracker in my coat, I leap off the snow bank, grasp a nearby branch and drop softly to the ground. The quiet presses in from all sides as I walk and only the sound of my boots crunching through the crust of the snow can be heard. In a matter of minutes, I pass one of the signs indicating the resort’s property will come to an end and guests should turn around soon. Did Emiko not see it? They are placed pretty far apart. Were her map markings off or perhaps she lost it?
I sense a presence and whip around to find Stan walking silently in my footprints. “Vivian? Is that you?”
“Yes.”
“What are you doing out here?” His face looks dark in the low light; he really should have worn a facemask like most of the others. “Joining in the fun?”
Shit. I can’t believe I didn’t think up a viable excuse on my way here. “No, I… umm… thought you might have made a kill and was coming to check. Drew reported your and Emiko’s signals coming from the same small area.”
“Yeah, I thought I had her.” He stops in front of me and the skin of his cheeks appears cracked and sore. “But it’s like she’s disappeared.”
“I doubt she’d come out this way for long, the triggers to her bracelets start on those trees.” I point across a small clearing of snow-buried scrub bushes to some trunks in the distance.
“If she got too close she’d be stuck in one spot right now, right?”
I nod. “That’s the idea.” She’s here somewhere but I need to lead Stan away. “You haven’t come across her lying helpless?”
He smiles his big crazy-ass grin, “Now if I had don’t you think I’d be looking a bit bloody? I plan on drinking that bitch dry.” He laughs at his own joke then shudders from the cold. “Fuck, it’s bad out here.”
“Look, if you’ve been scouring the area for a while then she must not have triggered the silver poison in the manacles and she’s long gone.”
He raises one eyebrow in hope, “You feel like calling in to confirm that theory so I can search elsewhere?”
“Are you asking me to cheat for you, Stan?” I say in a sweet, you-don’t-really-mean-that tone.
“Christ, every time I feel like I get close, she gets away.”
I pat him on the back and turn him around, walking side by side with him the way I came. “At least you’re still in the game. You, Stephen, Jet and three of the wolves are all that’s left.”
“You’d think with most of us leaving footprints we’d have found her by now.”
“Yeah, but two days with lots of feet and paws running off the trails can make it much harder to discern.”
A howling wind whips through the trees. “Well, if it was easy, it wouldn’t be worth it, right?” he says.
I nod my agreement and take my leave when we reach the snow banks at the end of the plowed trail. With a gentle mental push, he buys my excuse that I plan on checking the sensors north of here and we part ways. He’s heading back to warm up and plans to head back out when total darkness descends again this afternoon.
Stan’s mention of the footprints has given me an idea. Who would stick to the ground when off a trail and have their whereabouts revealed so easily? If I were hunting, I’d be checking the trees more than anything else. With that thought in mind, I leap up and pull myself into the nearest one. A few steadfast evergreen branches block me from being able to see too far, so I jump to the next tree and start to weave my way back to where I last saw Emiko’s blip on the GPS.
The dark thrill of tracking prey fills me. Sure, it’s not a fair rendition of a sanctioned execution when she’s paralyzed by silver and I have a tracker on her, but my killer instincts don’t care. My pulse quickens as excitement sings through my veins. The challenge of being an enforcer brought the creature within me too close to the surface for my liking. Reveling in the power of taking a semi-immortal life and doling out savage justice can quickly entice even the most stalwart vampire to embrace their inner beast and not look back.
For every vampire, always locking one’s baser nature away becomes harder and harder through the years. A few decide to no longer fight it… those are the minority an enforcer stalks and destroys. Like a rabid dog too far gone for medical help, the best thing to do is put them down.
With each leap through the faded light, I push myself harder. Each calculated landing becomes whisper soft, barely rustling the branches. Every few jumps I stop and listen, searching for a sound of the poisoned vamp. Then again, what do I expect to hear when she’s paralyzed?
I take out the GPS to verify her location and see I’m pretty much on top of her. An orange hue paints the forest and up ahead I make out a wider shadow on a trunk, mid-way off the ground. A few more hops and I’m standing behind the black-clad enforcer. The branch sags under the additional weight and I step to a lower one to prevent it from snapping.
Emiko sits with her chest snug against the trunk and her arms wrapped around the trunk in a hug. Wondering how she stayed upright with her arms not dangling, I lean to peer around the other side. Her wrists are bound together, ensuring she won’t slide off and plummet to the snow beneath.
“Clever,” I say. “Or maybe more accurate would be ‘innovative’.” Emiko’s face remains hidden behind her black ski mask, but her eyes are open. “Cat got your tongue? Oh, yes. You tried to flee the property and got zapped? Must not be your first time being silver-poisoned because you had enough sense to climb the tree and bind your hands around the trunk before full paralysis set in.”
Not waiting for a response, I slip a folding Spyderco knife out of my pocket and cut the strip of cloth tying her hands. One small push is all it takes to send the petite vampire crashing to the ground. Her body bounces off several smaller limbs in its descent and lands in an ungraceful heap in the snow.
“Whoops.” I don’t try to hide the humor in my voice. I like to think of this as two pros meeting face-to-face on the job, where one messes up and gets caught by the cops. Classic idiot move.
I descend the tree and stand by the assassin face-down in the snow. “You’re lucky it’s me and not Stan who found you. He’s got a serious hard-on for cutting your heart out and drinking you dry.
“I can’t be sure, but I think one of the perimeter sensors may have been more sensitive than the others. Perhaps you got too close and it triggered only one bracelet?” I shake my head. “Whatever it was, you were lucky.”
Reaching down, I drag the limp form up and toss her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Personally,” I begin while trudging through the snow, back toward the apartments, “I don’t think you were trying to escape. You’ve been running these hunters ragged the whole damn week. Only two and a half more days to go? You don’t seem like the type to bolt unless there’s no other choice.”
I pick up my pace and start to move as fast as the crusted surface will allow. “I’m taking you to see Margery Cook, our resident doctor. She’s got plasma we can use to flush the silver out of your system and get you up and running again.”
“I know you can hear me, so I’m going to tell you what we found out. We know about your husband and his six kids, three of whom are still alive and have wisely pulled back on the court case against you.” A gentle probe of my mind to hers reveals nothing. I can’t discern her thoughts or emotions. Damn, must be the silver blocking me.
“We also uncovered the connection between the property, the video will, and two of the drained bodies left on the Tribunal’s doorstep. Makes no sense you’d kill off the two key witnesses supporting your claims to your former husband’s extensive holdings.
“So it got us to thinking—who stands to gain the most with you out of the picture?”
I let her stew on this information and continue the rest of the trip in silence. In a little while the six-story, brick apartment building comes into view. The lobby is mercifully empty as I make my way down to the clinic next to the doctor’s apartment. The waiting room is unlocked; so I dump the unresisting vampire on the couch and head next door to have the doctor open the exam room.
A ring of the buzzer brings the auburn-haired physician to the entrance. “Vivian? What are you doing here? I never see you in the building.”
“I need access to the exam room, plasma, and fresh blood. One of the rogue’s manacles was triggered and she’s been poisoned with silver.”
“Oh, dear.” The bespectacled older woman nods, “I’ll open from in here and meet you.”
I head back the way I came and wait. In a brief moment, the doctor’s head peeps around a metal door leading deeper into the clinic. “Come on back while I get things ready.”
“Alley-oop,” I say while hoisting the limp woman into my arms. I don’t like that I can’t read her mind. There are still unanswered questions regarding how deeply she’s involved in the plot. I could kick myself for thinking my enemies in Argentina could let an opportunity pass to dig up dirt on me. The past is the past; I wish they’d realize that. No need harping over what can’t be changed. Best to move forward and make the best of things.
I lay Emiko down on an examination table with the back end raised. With her head and heart elevated, a flush should work well.
“How much silver is in her system?” the doctor asks.
“Ten CC’s.”
“Double that and she’d be in a coma. Even five flushes might not have helped.”
“That was the idea.” At the doctor’s shocked expression I shrug, “She’s dangerous, Margery. We couldn’t take a chance.”
“Let’s start with the plasma and see how she progresses.” The doctor hangs a full, pale yellow bag on an IV pole and gets the drip started in Emiko’s left arm. Outgoing tubing is inserted in her right arm and drains into a very large, empty pouch.
How much do I reveal to the motionless vampire? Should I tell her of our plan to stage her death or keep her here out of the way while we try to save her from the Tribunal’s corruption?
“How much human blood do you have on hand here?” I ask.
“Quite a bit. Since the seethe has grown, we’ve been taking pints from employees like you instructed. Let me check the fridge.” She bustles over to see and a thought occurs to me—I can’t leave Emiko here as she is while she’s recovering. She could hurt the doctor or any of the employees for that matter. “Twenty units. We’re good to go.”
I nod while stepping away for a moment. I open up a mental connection with my husband.
Rafe, can you grab a set of the cloth-covered silver chains we’ve got in the dungeon room?
Planning a little fun I don’t know about?
Nah, I want to secure Emiko while she’s getting the poison flushed out. I don’t trust her here while she’s healing.
I take it you made it safely to the doctor’s with her? No problems?
I ran into Stan, but other than that, no. I told him Emiko was nowhere in the vicinity and he went off in another direction.
Okay. I’ll have Paul bring the chains up.
Thanks, my love.
A glance back over my shoulder reveals the Asian vampire still hasn’t moved. The bag to the right is slowly filling with her tainted blood and the first pint of plasma looks half-gone already. “Dr. Cook, she’ll need to be restrained.”
“This one? She’s not going to be able to move for hours.”
“I’m not taking any chances. The chains go on whether you like it or not.”
A sigh comes from the fifty-something physician, “Fine. You going to tell me how to do my job next, too?”
I smile at the woman’s brashness; she’s the one of the few humans on the property who would even think of giving me attitude. “You mean I might know something more about vampire physiology than a human?” Her head whips around and she shoots me a glare. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“I’ll be back in ten. I left some tea to steep.” As she leaves through the connecting door, she mumbles something close to “redheaded smart ass” under her breath. I’m alone with Emiko and the drip of the plasma and her infected blood is the only sound in the tight space of the examining room.
“For the record, I really don’t think you were trying to escape. Like I said, it makes no sense when you were clearly ahead of the game against the hunters.” I lean over the prone form of the rogue and peel up her ski mask. Smooth, pale gold skin stretched across a broad face with delicate features comes into view. Her dark-brown, almond-shaped eyes are no longer locked in place, but fixed on my face. “The full paralysis could take hours to wear off, but it looks like your eyes are able to track.”
I settle on the edge of the table so she can still see me while I talk. “I’ve got things I need to do and I’m going to have to restrain you for the safety of my employees. Not that I think you’ll launch off the table and suck them dry, but I’m not willing to take a chance.
“I heard about you carving up Sanji. Interesting method you chose in which to communicate. Did you know the same technique of thirteen strokes for ‘guilty’ was used on an Ancient several centuries ago? Although, from the story I heard, there was only the one word carved and not two. It was never proven—the body turned to ash in the sun.”