Luckily, I was not alone. Kolchak's Crown Vic came screeching to a halt perpendicular to the alley, blocking it off. The doors opened and Kolchak and Ace jumped out. Man and dog came running at Dorian. Kolchak had a stake and what looked like a grenade in his hand. Dorian took one look at them and stopped, backpeddling. He turned and found me running up behind him.
Dorian took a long look at me and then at Kolchak, cocking his head at Ace, who was slowly walking behind Kolchak. I only saw it in profile, but I saw something like relief cross Dorian's face.
"Oh, it's you," he said to Kolchak. "Thank God!"
"Do vamps usually thank God?" I asked.
"You're not here to kill me, right?" said Dorian. "You didn't last time..."
"We have questions for you," said Kolchak. "Depending how you answer will determine your fate."
"That's fine," said Dorian. "That's great, in fact! Can we make a deal? Things are bad, man. Lemme make a deal, and you can... uh... take me prisoner, and I'll tell you anything you want."
"Is this a trick?" I asked.
Dorian quickly turned to me. "No, no, not at all, man. No trick." I had little experience with vampires, but I was surprised to see that they could sweat.
"What's the Rose up to?" said Kolchak. "Why did you run?"
"The Rose? The Rose is dead, man," said Dorian. "In Avalon, at least. If you're not going to take me prisoner, can you give me a ride out of town? Shit, it'll be dawn too soon. I'm fucked!"
"Explain," said Kolchak. "Tell me about the Rose."
"It's dead, man! They're all dead!" said Dorian. "Most of them, at least. All the big wigs in Avalon! I got a call from the last person I trusted - he told me to get out and run like hell!"
"Dead? The whole organization? That seems unlikely," said Kolchak, still considering the issue.
"Fuck, man, I don't know! I haven't been involved at all! I just got the call and I'm scared. I haven't done shit for like, a year! Haven't killed anyone, gotten what I could from blood banks and mobile blood donation vehicles. That's gotta be worth something, right? Just get me out of town, man!"
I had to say that my second encounter with a vampire wasn't really selling me on the whole "masters of the night" thing. Sure, he was supposedly a small fry that had cut connections to the main organization, but he still seemed... I don't know, weak.
Kolchak started to say something, but then Ace started growling, which suddenly seized Kolchak's full attention. Kolchak started scanning the darkness around us.
"What is it?" I said.
"Oh fuck," said Dorian.
I was confused until I was tossed out of the way from behind, by what seemed like a casual but incredibly powerful movement. Someone rushed past me, closing in on Dorian, who freaked out. I stumbled toward the wall of the alley, so I had a moment where I couldn't keep track of what was happening. When I finally hit the wall and steadied myself, I turned and discovered how quickly things had happened.
Dorian was dead - assuming vampires were even alive to begin with. But now he had a bloody hole in his chest where a man had just jammed his fist through. As I watched, the man pulled his hand back, Dorian's heart held tightly in his grip. Dorian began rapidly aging like the woman at the Night Market and fell to the ground.
The man who held the dead heart was kind of an imposing individual. He looked like someone from a hardcore punk show, one of the dudes who would try to start a fight if he could get away with it. He had a shaved head and was covered with tattoos - on his arms, his hands, his neck. His pale shaved skull and his face were one of the few places he didn't have tattoos. His bulging tattoo arms were easily visible out of the frayed edges of a white denim vest. Bulky rings covered his fingers... the ones not covered by blood which I could actually see.
Of course, none of those were the things which bothered me the most. It was instead his inhuman eyes filled with a berserk rage and his mouth. When he opened his mouth, his entire jaw expanded, showing circular ridges filled with countless teeth. He greedily stuffed Dorian's heart into that mouth, the flaps of his jaw closing around it. There was an ugly munching sound. There was no doubt about it, this was a revenant.
I quickly fumbled in my jacket for a weapon. I had a lead pipe, but nothing else. I didn't have a wooden stake, as I was still on a ride along for a stakeout, not for killing. And neither Kolchak nor I had expected to find a revenant.
Kolchak also took a firmer grip of his weapons, but did not move to engage as the revenant finished eating Dorian's heart. I finally got my pipe out. I decided that if we were going to fight a revenant, we were going to do it while we had some sort of advantage. If this were a human opponent in a fight, I would say that starting something while they were eating or relieving themselves would be unfair, but since this was a revenant, I granted no such courtesy. I lunged forward, swinging my pipe overhand for a strike.
"No -" I heard Kolchak start to shout during my movement. Unfortunately, at that point I had so much momentum, nothing was going to stop me. I brought down the pipe, and it slammed down upon the revenant's head. If this were a normal man, a zombie, or even a ghoul, that would have caved in their skulls. No such luck with a revenant - either they had reinforced skulls, or my blow was more glancing than I thought. But it did seem to hurt, and the revenant stumbled a few steps.
I felt good about myself. I had just whacked an alpha predator in the head. I moved to follow up my strike, but the revenant had recovered extremely quickly. I had barely gotten my arm back before he leap upon me, his circular jaw unfolding to give me an up close view of all his sharp teeth. He pushed me back against the wall of the alley. The pipe dropped out of my hand as I grabbed his wrists, doing my damnedest from keeping him from either crushing me against the wall or lunging in to bite my neck off. He was much stronger than me, so all I succeeded in was making him lunge very slowly. His mouth was getting very close to biting distance...
With a growling bark, the revenant was pushed off me by the large form of Ace. Maybe a dog wasn't any stronger than a revenant, but when leaping, Ace had great momentum, so he tackled the revenant. His jaws bit down into the revenant's shoulder.
I pulled myself off the wall and crouched to grab my lead pipe. Ace was thrown off the revenant, a yelp escaping as Ace hit the wall near me. The revenant pulled himself off the ground quicker than I expected, just straightening himself up by the time I had reclaimed my pipe.
"Guard your eyes!" shouted Kolchak.
"What?" I said, not knowing what he meant. Something landed on the ground between me and the revenant. Like in the Night Market alley, the world flashed brightly. But this time I was staring at it instead of away from it. So rather than just having my vision messed with, I was fully blinded. I heard the scuffle of footprints and a fight, but all I could do was stumble to the side where the wall was, using it to brace myself while I blinked furiously, trying to see something other than white starbursts.
The noise of the fight lasted only a few moments, probably feeling longer than they were due to my blindness. Then I heard a body hit the ground and then there was silence. I suddenly felt something on my free hand, initially making me yelp, but I relaxed in a moment when I realized it was Ace's cold nose.
"What happened?" I said cautiously, not being sure of the battle's victor.
"It's dead," said Kolchak, his voice breathless and tired.
"I can't see anything," I said, feeling like I was talking to him across a great distance.
"You looked?"
"I looked," I said glumly.
"Your vision will come back soon. In fact..." I heard him walk away. I heard the glove box of the car at the end of the alley open and close. I heard him come back to me. "Okay, this may sting. Or not. I have no idea."
"What are you -" I didn't get to finish that sentence as water splashed into my face. At least I hoped it was water. It was not cold, but instead just uncomfortably room temperature. "Why did you do that?"
I rubbed my eyes of the water and started
blinking again. Somehow that had helped. My vision started coming back quickly, but it was blurry.
"Sometimes water helps," he said, as I saw him crouching on the ground. I saw Dorian's body to my right, so he was crouching over the revenant.
"This is bad," he said.
"A dead vampire and a dead revenant?" I said. "Aside from my poor performance, I call this a win."
"Look at this tattoo," he said, pointing to the revenant's neck.
"I'm not going to be seeing any tattoos right now."
"He's a member of the Family."
"That weird revenant cult at the farm you mentioned? They do seem like bastards."
"This complicates things in many ways, and none of them good," said Kolchak. "Dorian was his target. Combine that with the warning Dorian got. Something big is going on."
"But what?"
"Race war? Turf war? Hard to say at this point," said Kolchak. "I'll need to check some targets and contacts."
My vision was almost back to normal. I could see that Kolchak had driven a stake into the body of the revenant. That didn't kill them, but it paralyzed them. But I also saw a big knife stuck through the revenant's jaw up through to the brain. As I learned from Kolchak, that also killed them as effectively as beheading them. If I had any doubt before, this body showed me how lethal Kolchak was. He had done that in the brief seconds the revenant was blinded. He didn't even seem to have broken a sweat.
"So where do we go next?" I said.
"Now? It's getting closer to dawn, so we go home."
"After all that?" I said. "I'm ready for more."
"Ready or not, we work with the night," said Kolchak. "We have different lives during the day and we stalk our foes only at night. Now we go home."
Vampire Money
Kolchak dropped me off in South Egan. When the car came to a stop, I wondered if this was it. My ride along was over, and I'd never see him again. It was interesting riding with him, but there seemed more going on than I could know in one night. Things weren't finished and I wanted to find out what was happening with that sudden attack on Dorian. And I wanted to learn more about how Kolchak hunted. It was way better than dwelling on the mess I had made of my life.
Hesitantly, I asked. "So how do I contact you? In case you need help... uh... running down those leads tonight."
Kolchak turned and gave me a long look, his eyes appraising me. Finally he reached into the backseat and grabbed a briefcase. He opened it up, revealing that it was filled with a large number of identical mobile phones. He pulled one out and locked the briefcase again, throwing it into the back to where Ace sniffed it. He turned on the phone, rattled off the number to me, then put it into his jacket.
"You're not planning for this to be a long relationship, are you?"
He shrugged. "We'll see how things go. Otherwise, I like taking precautions."
I shook my head and got out of the car. The sun was already coming up. I had been up all night and I was beat. Much of the last twenty-four hours seemed like a dream - or a nightmare in the case of the farce at Mikkel's. I was happy to go up to my apartment and get in bed.
With a sigh of relief, I saw nobody was waiting at my door. That was a legitimate concern. Both my brother and Yasmin had recently shown up at my door in a cloud of concern. And this time I wouldn't have the strength nor energy to deal with them. With relief I unlocked my door.
I went to bed, falling straight into strange dreams of mutation and flash grenades, heart ache and disappointment. When I woke up midafternoon, the memories of all the dreams scuttled away, leaving me drowsy and a little confused. There were no calls on my phone. It seemed everyone at the intervention was treating it seriously. But I wondered if the fallout from that extended farther. I also didn't have anything from Dickie, Meat, or Paulie. I had called Meat and Paulie a few times the day before, leaving messages for them to get back to me. They hadn't been at the intervention, but maybe they were warned by Mikkel to not contact me?
Dickie not calling me was its own thing. After the fight, he could go fuck himself. I'm sure we'd be cool again in a week. I hoped.
I checked my funding campaign and my Matreon account. Both were inert and terrible. I had no jobs for money lined up, no hunter ride alongs, nor any other work. My friends had abandoned me. The other hunters seemed to be avoiding me. In the stark light of the afternoon, my life didn't look too good.
I tried calling Kolchak, to let him know I was game for more work. It was the only thing I had going for me. The vampire thing was confusing, but we had killed a revenant too, so we were at least doing some good work.
"Who is this?" answered Kolchak. His voice was neutral, almost stilted. He didn't say hello. I wondered if he was with people where he couldn't talk.
"Uh, it's Szandor, we met last night."
"Call me back after dark. Not ever before." And then he hung up.
Well, okay. Maybe he has a day job or something. He had to pay for his hunting somehow.
That left me with a few hours to kill. I thought about going down to Twin Eagles and spending my time there, but I decided I didn't need to see people or run up my tab even more. Besides, drinking for a few hours before going out to hunt seemed counterproductive. Especially with Kolchak being Mister Caffeine-For-Alertness.
Ultimately, I hung around my apartment and then got some takeout for dinner. Nothing fancy. I ran down to the curry place a few blocks over and got their cheapest plate. The thing is, the entire time I was out, I felt like I was being watched. Did I have evidence of it? Nope. But when you do something so primal and physical as beating monsters to death, you get clued into the universe. I didn't have the weird Spider-sense that Mikkel had, but I was still aware of things. I knew the twitch of danger, and I knew the pricking at the edges of your consciousness when you were being watched. I felt it the whole way to and from the curry place. I expected a curry ambush at any moment, but none came. I made it up the stairs to my apartment with tension, unlocked my door, and closed it. I stared out the peephole to see if my watcher was bold, but no one ever showed up in the hall.
I ate my curry cautiously, the TV turned down low and the lead pipe on the couch next to me. If someone burst through the door, I'd be ready. But no attack came. I finished my curry and then sat on the couch, paranoidly stewing until my phone finally rang. It made me jump.
"It's me," said Kolchak from the other end when I finally answered. "I'll be at your curb in two minutes. Don't make me wait." Then he hung up.
It seemed Kolchak was definitely not a fan of phones. Other than tossing out my curry in the trash, I was ready to go. But I didn't put away my lead pipe. I still had every reason[9] to believe there was someone in my hall who had followed me. I slipped my jacket back on, silent unlocked the door, then jumped out into the hallway ready for an attacker. While I did manage to scare the old lady with the tiny dog across the way who ran back into her apartment, leaving her yappy dog and her bag of trash in the hall, I did not meet with any attackers. I sighed, ignored the dog, locked my door, and went downstairs.
True to his word, Kolchak's Crown Vic was sitting at the curb. I opened the passenger door and slid in. Ace slobbered affectionately on the back of my head. It was a benign movement, but it was unexpected and I jerked forward in surprise. I involuntarily thrust my head forward and hit my forehead on the sun visor, which had been left at a weird angle. I sighed as I rubbed my head.
"You alright?" said Kolchak as he pulled out into traffic.
"I'm fine. What are we up to now?"
"I made a list of all the known Vengeful Rose associates, their probable lairs, and backup safe houses. We're going to go down the list. We'll shake this tree and see what we get."
"You've had all these addresses and never used them?" I said. "You could taken out a lot of vamps."
"They're just probable," he said. "Never known for sure. They're all either pieced together from surveillance or came from... interrogation." By the way he said that word, I think he meant
something darker than what the police used. "Could be they're wrong. Could be I show up, I get one Sanguine, then suddenly all my other intel is bad as they all switch where they live based on my attack. Could be the info I got are all traps, setup to catch me."
"So we're going into traps?"
"Could be," he said, slurping some coffee. "You said you like action."
"With real targets, yeah," I said. "Traps not so much."
"Well, then start betting there are no traps!"
First stop was a building in Asher. I'd say warehouse, but it felt like a shack because it looked like it was falling apart. The doors didn't sit properly on their hinges, the windows were broken. I think I saw a hole in one of the walls in the alley.
"Are you sure this is the place?" I said.
"It's what I have written down," said Kolchak. "But it may be that its appearance is exactly this way to deter people."
We cautiously got out of the car. Ace came with us, seeming to know the usual tactics. Ace hung back a bit, ready to rush in and close enough to alert us, but not ahead so someone could see or hear a dog. Kolchak and I slowly crept up to one of the doors that was off its hinges. I looked in through the gaps.
"Dead body," I breathed, my voice barely a whisper. I tried looking through at various angles, but didn't see anything more. "Don't see any movement."
Kolchak crept to a broken window a few feet to one side. He carefully peered up and looked in. He stared for a long moment and relaxed. "Looks clear."
"So... we just go in?" I said.
"Yup," said Kolchak, throwing the door open.
It turned out Kolchak's intel was correct. This was a vampire lair. Unfortunately, the resident vampire was now dead on the ground. The heart was missing and the body showed the advanced aging I had seen in the other dead vamps. But unlike the others, this body had been left to age and it now looked more like a mummy than anything. Kolchak pulled out his photo to try to compare it to the corpse, but he was having trouble.
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