Josh suddenly leaned across the table and said, “You’re really, really pretty, and you’ve got a great body. Why don’t you like me?”
It took me a moment to find my voice. “Because you’re loud, obnoxious, and rude, and you get worse the more you drink.”
He fell back in his chair. “Shit. I’m hot, you know.”
“Not every girl wants to combust.”
Lizzy giggled, and Jolene looked down at her lap, her hair falling forward and hiding her face, her shoulders shaking. I thought I detected strange squeaking noises.
It got late and Lizzy called a cab. I begged off, telling her I would take the bus. I still hadn’t received my first paycheck and was living off my tips and my shift meal at the bar.
As I rose to go outside with Lizzy, Trevor leaned close and said, “I would enjoy taking you out to dinner sometime. Maybe a movie?” He slipped me a bar napkin with his name and a phone number.
“Maybe,” I replied. He wasn’t much taller than I was, so it was easy to meet his eyes. He was very handsome and nice, and I found myself wanting to say yes. “I work most evenings.”
“I know your schedule.”
I put the napkin in the pocket of my coat and bid everyone good night, then walked outside with Lizzy.
“Did you have fun?” she asked as we stood outside the club.
“Yeah, I did. Thanks for inviting me.”
“Trevor likes you. He’s so dreamy, and he really is a nice guy.”
“Why don’t you have a boyfriend?” I asked. “Maybe Trevor?”
She shook her head. “Trevor and I dated for a year in college, but he’s a little too vanilla for me. I think the two of you would fit nicely, though. As to most guys, I scare them,” she said. “Guys get kinda weird when they find out I’m smarter than they are. And the nerds I meet at school don’t turn me on at all. Are you going to be all right? Women normally don’t walk alone this late at night.”
“If someone hassles me, I’ll tell them to back off because I know the girl in the pink car.”
She laughed. Her taxi came, and I waved to her as it drove off.
It was four blocks to the bus stop, and as I walked through the drizzle, I calculated if I could spare the money to buy an umbrella. Since I didn’t have one, I threw up a small shield over my head. I justified it to myself because it was dark, late at night, and very few people were on the street.
Walking past an alley, I heard a noise. I stopped and peered into the darkness. A bar of faint light illuminated a figure dressed all in black, balaclava covering its head. I immediately shielded myself. It turned to me, then gathered itself and leaped to the top of a building. It looked back at me once, then disappeared.
I had discovered the Hunter. I immediately shielded, and my first impulse was to head in the other direction as quickly as possible.
Bracing myself, I made my way down the alley, where I found a vampire with his head lying several feet away from his body. I could understand the shocked look on his face. I had seen it before when I decapitated a creature who thought he was invincible and immortal.
But what captured my attention was the young girl wearing a red minidress, probably around my age, who was lying a little farther away. Her dress was pulled up around her waist, and her bloody panties were ripped to shreds. Her throat was savaged, not a neat, simple bite. The vampire had no intention to leave her alive, feeding as he raped her.
I checked her pulse just in case, but she was dead.
I stood over her, feeling helpless. She, and others like her, was the reason I had embraced my role as a Hunter. There wasn’t any room for ambiguity, no debate about right or wrong. If I had come along before the Hunter did, I would have killed the vampire myself.
Without a phone, I didn’t know what to do. I left the alley and looked around for a pay phone, but those had become rare over the past few years. I struggled with myself, on the one hand, knowing there wasn’t anything I could do to help her, and on the other hand, not wanting to leave her in that filthy alley for the rats.
In the end, I walked back to the club to call the cops. I found Blair’s card in my pocket and gave it to the bouncer. “Can you please call this number? There’s a girl in an alley.”
I don’t know what he saw when he looked at my face, but he didn’t ask me any questions and made the call.
A few minutes later, a dark car pulled up in front of the club. The orange-haired witch I had seen at Blair’s office and a tall, dark-haired man got out and approached me where I stood with the bouncer.
“Ms. McLane?” the witch asked, showing her badge and ID to me and the bouncer.
“Yes.”
“Are you the one who called us?”
“Yes. It’s a couple of blocks from here. Between here and the bus stop.”
“Why don’t you get in and you can direct us.”
So, I did.
“I’m detective Mackle,” the woman said as she put the car in gear. “This is detective sergeant Bailey. Which direction?” I could tell that Bailey was a mage.
When we got there, we walked down the alley—the cops with pistols in one hand and flashlights in the other. A couple of inquisitive rats ran from the lights, but otherwise, the scene was just as I had left it.
“Oh, Jesus,” Mackle said when her light fell on the girl. She turned away and threw up. I had to admit, it looked a lot worse in the light.
Bailey was on his phone, and he sent Mackle back to their car. She strung that yellow crime-scene tape across the alley entrance, and then came back, handing him a pair of rubber gloves and some covers that he slipped over his shoes.
“Ms. McLane, if you’ll come with me,” she said, motioning back to their car.
I was glad to comply. The dead vamp didn’t bother me, but my stomach wanted to rebel every time I looked at the girl. It didn’t take a genius to figure out she had been walking to my bus stop from either the club I was at or one of the others in the neighborhood. Her bad luck was that she had left the bar before I did. I almost felt guilty the vamp hadn’t found me first.
“Are you all right?” Mackle asked.
“Yeah. Are you?” She still looked a little pale.
In answer, she said, “I see a lot of ugly things on this job, but that took me by surprise.” She shook her head. “Why did the vampire have to do that?”
“Rage,” I said, and shrugged. “He was punishing her, or maybe all women, or maybe he just had a bad day at the office and she happened to land in his sights.”
She cocked her head to look at me for a long moment, then said, “Why don’t you tell me what you saw.”
So, I told her. And when Blair and the forensics team showed up, I told Blair. And when Frankie Jones showed up, I told it all again.
“You think it was a Hunter,” Jones said when I finished.
“It was a Hunter. Don’t ask me how or why I know. I haven’t lied to you yet, except about the broomstick, so don’t make me start.”
Her eyes widened, and then she nodded. “Fair enough.”
“I really flew in on a mop.” I don’t know what prompted me to say that, but it got a startled bark of laughter from her before she sobered again.
Jones drove me home around four o’clock, and I was dead tired. When I got out of the car, I leaned back in and said, “Ms. Jones, I’m on your side. All I want to do is live my life in peace. I don’t have anything against vampires, or werewolves, or anything else that goes bump in the night as long as it leaves me alone. But until an old vamp manages to establish dominance in this city, things are going to get worse, not better. Fasten your seatbelt. You’re in for a wild ride.”
Chapter 12
I woke up far past my usual waking time. A look at what I had in the fridge and the cupboard helped me decide to blow off my morning run. Instead, I took a shower and caught the bus down to Rosie’s.
I had borrowed Sam’s computer and his credit card to buy a monthly bus pass, which cut a significant amount off
my transportation costs and gave me more freedom to explore the city. But that morning I had a specific menu selection I wanted to try.
Sam raised an eyebrow when I walked in and plunked myself on a barstool.
“A full Irish with coffee,” I said. A full Irish breakfast totaled about fourteen hundred calories, and I looked forward to enjoying every one of them.
“That will destroy your slender girlish figure,” he said as he poured my coffee. “Take care, Lassie, or you’ll end up looking like me.” He grinned and patted his stomach.
“I’d have to order it a lot more often,” I said, grinning back, “but I’ll take your warning under consideration.”
I took a sip of my coffee, then said, “I had a rather unsettling experience last night,” and went on to tell him of my encounter with the Hunter and the dead girl.
“You’re sure it was a Hunter,” he asked, “and not some other kind of ninja wannabe?”
One of the kitchen staff came out with my breakfast. An egg, Irish bacon, sausage, baked beans, fried potatoes, black pudding, white pudding, and half of a grilled tomato. When the girl had gone, I said, “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve seen a Hunter before.”
That got me a raised eyebrow. “You said it, and you said he.”
“Yeah. I wasn’t sure at first, but the more I think about it, size—height and bulk—make me think it was a man. Sam, he jumped to the top of a roof, at least twelve feet up, as easily as someone might jump up on this bar.”
He chuckled, holding his stomach. “Easy for you to say. I doubt I could climb onto this bar.”
“Sam, I told Frankie last night that a Hunter wouldn’t be here just to take out a few rogue vampires. There’s a reason he’s here, and with the Master of the City gone, things will be chaotic until a new Master appears and establishes control. But the Hunter would know that, so why did he take out Carleton? There’s something else going on.”
“You seem to know a lot about Hunters.”
“I read a lot, and I once had access to an arcane book on Hunters and the Illuminati.”
He chuckled again. “The Illuminati? I thought that was an old myth.”
“Frankie Jones doesn’t think so. She asked me what I knew about them when I gave my statement yesterday.”
That drew a long look. “Interesting.”
“I thought so. Sam, how many high-ranking people in this city are paranormals?”
“A lot. Jones and her boss, the DA, at least one member of the City Council, and a state senator. There’s also a shifter on the Council. The head of one of the largest corporations headquartered here is a mage, and Carleton owned the company that hauls the garbage. That’s one of the reasons trash pickup is at night. And the Catholic bishop here is a witch. A white witch, but a witch just the same.”
Well, that put a number of things in perspective. With the City of the Illuminati gone, along with the entire ruling Council, those Illuminati out in the world who had infiltrated government, industries, and churches were suddenly on their own. I knew for a fact that few of them knew each other. The Council kept a tight rein on their subordinates, and while the station chiefs in London, Munich, and Cuzco had more knowledge and understanding of the organization’s strategies and goals than the average member, no one had the whole picture. Two members of the Order might know each other for years without knowing the other was part of the Order.
But when directives stopped coming from the City, highly placed insurgents would take whatever measures they felt necessary to enhance their own and the Order’s goals. And since the major goals were power and wealth, that was what they would pursue.
Calling in a Hunter, or multiple Hunters, to facilitate an ascent in position would be a logical action.
“Is something wrong with your breakfast?” Sam asked.
“No. Why?”
“You stopped eating.”
I realized I had a forkful of egg and sausage halfway to my mouth. I shook myself out of my reverie and chomped the mouthful.
When I finished chewing, I asked, “Do you have any contacts in DC or New York?”
He shook his head. “Why?”
“You said there had been a rash of beheadings in other cities.” If my guess was correct and the Illuminati were making a push, there were more of them in New York and Washington than anywhere else on the continent.
“This book you mentioned.”
“Yes?” I suddenly wondered if I’d said too much.
“You think it was true?”
“The person who wrote it thought it was true, and the person who gave it to me certainly did.”
He nodded, seeming to drift off into thought.
From Rosie’s I went to the public library and went through the hassle of getting a library card without a driver’s license. Luckily, I had my rental agreement, and with that and my passport, they finally decided I was entitled to borrow their books.
What I did was reserve time on a computer, which was in a tiny cubicle with a huge red sign admonishing me that I was not allowed to access any porn sites, and also telling me that such sites were blocked and I couldn’t see them anyway.
Looking up the DA and Frankie and the bishop was pretty straightforward. I wasn’t sure what I was trying to find but hoped that some pieces of information might help to identify a thread that would lead me to a network of mages who controlled Westport. The bishop didn’t worry me since the Illuminati were all mages. But I read everything I could find about him, thinking that in a pinch he might be an ally. I chuckled when I discovered that his sister ran a tea shop advertising herbs and “natural remedies.”
Frankie turned out to be the daughter of the DA’s former law partner and had gone to his university. From the DA’s Wikipedia page, I followed threads of information through the organizations he belonged to. One of those was a private club, the membership of which was secret. But a Google search turned up twenty more influential individuals, all in the Westport area, who claimed membership in that club.
Little information was available on The Columbia Club, but comparing public information about its members was enlightening. The members included a Westport city councilman, a state senator, and at least two of the members who might be classified as heads “of one of the largest corporations headquartered here.” Frankie’s father was also a member, as was the mayor’s chief of staff. It appeared that paranormals had an inordinate amount of influence in the city.
Pairing that with a shifter on the City Council and Carleton’s waste disposal business, I wondered how they managed to keep the conspiracy theorists from going bananas. But somehow Blair and his bosses managed to keep it all quiet. Actually, I thought, that might have been the true purpose of Blair’s unit.
From the library, I hiked a mile to the building where the Columbia Club’s address was listed. I found a private mailbox company, and when I enquired about getting a box, the guy at the counter assured me of absolute confidentiality and that my address would appear as a real address, not a mailbox. That left me with nothing, since I couldn’t find an online presence for the club. No web page, no announcements of meetings, no charitable activities.
I found a pay phone in the lobby of a chain restaurant, and pulling Trevor’s number out of my pocket, I gave him a call.
“Trevor,” he answered.
“Hi. This is Erin.”
“Oh, wow. Hi, how are you doing?”
“Okay. Hey, Jolene mentioned that you’re a computer whiz.”
He laughed. “I do okay. What’s up?”
“I need to find out about a group, a private club, and I can’t find anything about them online. I was hoping you could help me.”
“Possibly. Are you sure they have an online presence?”
“I’m thinking they might not. Could I come over and talk to you about it?”
“Sure.” He sounded eager, and I felt a little guilty if he thought I was interested in dating him. At least I didn’t think I was interested, but I got a warm, happy fee
ling when I thought about him. He gave me his address, and I pulled out my map of the city.
The distance between Trevor’s house and Rosie’s surprised me. He lived in a suburb south of the city near the coast, and Rosie’s was on the west side. It took me over an hour to get from the library downtown to his place by bus.
The bus dropped me off at a train station, and I walked three blocks to his house, a small rancher among similar houses with neatly trimmed front lawns and flowered borders. Many had children’s toys on the front lawns or basketball hoops hanging over the garages. It vaguely reminded me of the neighborhood where I had lived with my parents.
Trevor was dressed in a t-shirt and jeans when he answered the doorbell. He opened the screen door, and I saw that he was barefoot and his hair was damp.
“Come in,” he said with a smile. “This is a pleasant surprise.”
“Well, as I told you on the phone, I’m trying to find out something about a particular group, and I’m striking out. Jolene told me that her magic involves finding and tracking, but you’re the cyber expert on the team.”
“Jolene was being modest. She does okay with computers. So, what is this group?”
“It’s called the Columbia Club. I discovered its existence because a number of paranormals in high positions here in Westport listed membership in it, along with various civic and charitable organizations. But when I tried to look it up, I came up blank.”
“Come on back.” He led me to a bedroom filled with computer equipment instead of a bed. I wasn’t sure what computers cost, but I recognized that he must have had tens of thousands of dollars invested. For the first time I realized that Lost and Found was a real business. And I was asking him to help me for free.
He sat down at a keyboard, and three monitors came to life. “So, the Columbia Club? And it’s kind of a private organization?”
All my adult life, I had gotten what I wanted by manipulating people, even Master Benedict and the heads of the Hunters’ Guild. The people I had met at Rosie’s offered me friendship openly, asking nothing in return. Some had even put their lives on the line for me. All Sam asked was honesty. I suddenly realized that since I was a child, I had never had a friend, had no idea how to be one. Wasn’t even sure what the word meant except in an abstract sense.
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