by Jamie Davis
“Is it him?”
“I can’t tell for sure, but I don’t think so.”
Quinn moved up and slid sideways through the narrow opening made by the partially open door. She looked down as she did and saw the body wasn’t the vampire. It was a woman wearing the light blue shirt and navy pants of a metro employee.
She bent down and lifted the body by the arms to shift her back and out of the way. As she did, something slid off the woman’s chest to the floor. It looked like a small circuit board with a rectangular box at one end. It wasn’t any bigger than the end of her little finger.
Quinn set the woman down so she leaned against the back wall of the dusty storage closet. The small room was nearly empty, containing only a broom and a few cardboard boxes. She bent down and picked up the circuit board. It was sticky with blood, so she held it by the edges between her forefinger and thumb.
“Come on in. It’s clear.”
Clark opened the door just enough so he could enter and then closed it. He glanced down at the woman’s body and shook his head. Quinn was sure he’d noted the puncture marks on her neck where the vampire had fed on her.
“Damn, I’d hoped no one would find him. This room looked like no one had been in here for a while.”
“Maybe he lured her in and then attacked her?” Quinn suggested. She held out the circuit board. “Is this your tracker?”
Clark took it from her, cursing again.
“It was on top of her. He must have found it when he woke up after sundown. What do you think?”
“It doesn’t matter. He found it, and that puts us back to square one, or worse, maybe. Now they’re sure we’re looking for them.”
“You think they didn’t know we were still around?”
“It was a possibility. Now they’ll be waiting for us.” Clark stood and turned to the door. “Come on. We need to get out of here. It won’t do to be here when someone else comes looking for her.”
“Shouldn’t we call someone?” Quinn asked.
“We can do that after we leave. I want to be far away before we do. Let’s get to the car and then head back to Spring Grove.”
Quinn glanced at the dead woman leaning against the wall. She’d be found eventually, another random attack that would go into the unsolved murder bin at the local police station, forgotten by all but her family.
“I’ll remember you,” Quinn muttered to herself.
“What’s that?” Clark asked.
“Nothing. Let’s go.”
Clark pulled the door open a crack and checked the corridor outside, then slipped through, followed by Quinn.
She pulled the door shut behind her and tried to assume an ordinary demeanor as she followed Clark back to the parking garage.
They almost made it back to Clark’s car when his phone went off. He pulled it out and checked the screen, then put it to his ear.
“It’s Clark. I’m busy with something. Can I call you back?” There was a brief pause, and Clark’s expression changed from annoyance to concern. He looked at Quinn and pointed at the car with urgency. “Get to a room where you can lock the door if you can’t get out of the house. Do you have a weapon? Anything?”
Quinn ran to the passenger side and yanked the door open. She jumped into her seat and slammed the door.
Clark was already behind the wheel, digging for his keys with his free hand. “Just hold on. Do whatever you have to, just hold on. We’re on the way.”
He threw the phone on the console and started the car, peeling out of the parking space and racing for the garage’s exit.
“Who was that?”
“He’s a Sylph, a kind of fae. He owns a corner grocery downtown and lives down the block. He says two people dressed in black leather are trying to break in. They’re carrying swords.”
“Slayers?” Quinn asked, knowing the answer already.
“Sounds like it.”
“Can we get there in time?”
“It’s not far, and we’re right off the downtown expressway. Maybe ten minutes if we hurry. I hope he can hold on.”
Quinn nodded and clicked her seatbelt on as Clark gunned the engine and accelerated up the ramp onto the expressway leading to the center of Baltimore. They’d been one step behind the slayers since they’d lost the ability to get into the VR system. This was the closest they’d come to catching them in the act.
She hoped they got there in time.
Chapter Seven
Eight minutes later, Clark slid to a stop at the curb in front of a small home in West Baltimore. The few people still out on the sidewalk took one look at the two of them as they got out of the car and bolted into their houses.
Quinn figured she and Clark looked scary, dressed in black and carrying bare steel. She had her Bowie in hand already. Clark had drawn his gleaming short sword.
He led the way, ignoring the rapidly retreating residents. Quinn followed as he raced up the steps to the front porch of the two-story brick home. Clark must’ve heard the crash of broken glass coming from inside because he leaned forward and didn’t slow as he hit the wooden front door.
The door jamb had splintered under the force of a previous assault, so the door swung inward to slam against the wall inside. Clark pointed up the narrow stairs straight ahead. “Take the upstairs. Watch your back.”
He kept going past the staircase to check the rest of the first floor while Quinn bounded up the stairs two at a time. When she reached the top, she checked the first door she came to. It was a small bedroom, unoccupied. She backed out to continue her search.
A twinge of biting cold flaring in the amulet scar on her chest surprised her. She realized just in time what it meant and ducked. Maintaining her direction, she turned her dodge into a backward somersault.
The longsword blade passed through the air where she’d been standing a split second before. The black-clad figure behind her overbalanced when the swing didn’t connect. Quinn used the stumble to take a swipe of her own.
From her crouched position, she swung her Bowie knife behind her, twisting so she jammed the blade into the attacker’s thigh. The slayer recovered from their mistake and jumped back, although they landed awkwardly. Judging from her assailant’s grunt of pain, coupled with a pronounced limp as they backpedaled away from her, she’d caused some damage.
Quinn rolled up to her feet, her blade held before her to counter an incoming sword strike. Her shorter blade gave her a distinct disadvantage against the longsword her opponent wielded in the present close quarters. She resisted the urge to charge in, instead holding her place, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to dance away from a swing of the longsword.
This gave her a good chance to get a look at her opponent. It was a woman about her own age, but not anyone she knew. That meant Myles and the rest of the remaining VirSync team had recruited new candidates to work with them in their twisted VR assassination program.
A thought occurred to Quinn. Maybe this woman didn’t know it was real.
Quinn held out her free hand, palm out. “Hey, I don’t know what they told you about the VR system. You need to know this is all real. You’re killing people.”
The woman sneered and a pinpoint of red light flashed in her eyes as she spoke. “It’s too late to save this one, Huntress. We’ve changed the way we recruit now. You’ll find we don’t make the same mistakes twice.”
The slayer was already possessed and had become one of the demon-kinder, their souls subverted by the invasion of a demonic presence brought to this plane by the vile magic Myles Hickman and the others from VirSync used, under the direction of the vampire lord, John Handon.
Quinn had to keep this one talking while she waited for Clark to hear her and come up to help. She put on an air of defiance. “You made a fatal mistake. You’re still here, and we came to stop you.”
“Oh, you’re the one who made a mistake, foolish girl. We already killed the fae creature who lives in this place. We were waiting to see if you showed up.
Where’s your master?”
The woman followed up her statement with a careful lunge in Quinn’s direction. It wasn’t a complete attack since she couldn’t put her full weight on her injured leg, but it was enough to make the huntress take a few steps back to avoid the longer blade.
“I have no master,” Quinn countered. “My clansman will be here soon enough. You won’t be alive to see it, though.”
Quinn took a chance and darted in before the woman began her return stroke. The huntress brought up her blade to counter the reversed sword swing. Sparks flew as the demon-kinder’s sword met her blessed silver Bowie.
It was Quinn’s turn to grunt as she realized her mistake. The demon-possessed woman was much stronger than she was, and Quinn hadn’t taken the precaution of supplementing her strength before coming into the home.
The weight of the sword pressing against her blade knocked her backward. Quinn teetered on the top of the stairs for a second and almost managed to regain her balance, but her heel slipped off the carpeted step and she fell backward with a yelp.
She tried to catch herself as she tumbled down the stairs, arms and legs flailing as she tried to break her fall.
Quinn hit the floor at the bottom of the staircase hard enough to knock the wind out of her. She tried to get back to her feet while she assessed her injuries. It didn’t feel like anything was broken, but she was battered and bruised. Worse, she’d lost her knife. She looked around in a frantic search to find her weapon before her opponent came down the stairs after her.
The other woman started to follow Quinn, but a male voice from somewhere upstairs stopped her. She smiled mockingly at the huntress lying at the bottom of the stairs, then turned and disappeared. There was a flash of reflected light from somewhere around the corner, out of sight on the second floor. Then there was silence.
“Quinn,” Clark called as he ran back to the front of the home from where he’d been searching in the back.
Quinn climbed to her feet, still searching for her knife. She found it lying on the fifth step up and snatched it, then turned to face Clark as he raced up the hall to where she stood.
“What happened?”
“I found them. They were upstairs. There was a woman, and I heard a man’s voice, too. She attacked me and forced me back until I fell down the steps. I wounded her, though. She won’t be running marathons any time soon.”
“What about Dizzy?”
“Who?” Quinn asked.
Clark dismissed the question with a wave of his hand. “It’s a nickname, never mind. I meant, the guy who lives here?”
“I didn’t see anyone else. The female slayer indicated they had accomplished their mission and were waiting for us.”
Clark cut her off and raced up the stairs. “Dizzy, where are you?”
Quinn followed him.
They found Dizzy, a thin, gray-haired man, lying in a pool of blood in the front bedroom. The wooden door had been kicked in. It appeared they’d caught him hiding in the closet. One of them must’ve pulled him out by his feet while the other finished him off with several vicious sword thrusts to the chest.
Clark knelt and checked for a pulse, then shook his head. “He’s still warm. They must’ve killed him just as we arrived,” he said. The hunter stood and stared out the front window for a few seconds.
Quinn waited while her mentor gathered himself.
A siren wailed in the distance, which snapped Clark back to the present.
“We have to go. We’ll have a hard time explaining why we are standing here with edged weapons next to a body with those wounds. Get back to the car.”
“Where will you be?” Quinn asked.
“I’ll be right behind you. Dizzy was holding something for me. I want to see if they got it from him before they killed him.”
Quinn wanted to ask what he was talking about, but she knew this wasn’t the time to do that. She headed down the hall to the stairs. She’d wait for him in the car out front. She paused only long enough to wipe the thick black blood from her blade. It had come from the wounded demon-kinder, and she knew from Clark it was caustic and could damage her blade if not cleaned off soon after a fight.
She spared a quick glance around the first floor, then walked out to the front porch. There was no one on the street, but she spotted curtains moving in several darkened windows and knew the neighbors were watching her. The sirens drew closer, and she decided it was better to wait in the car. Clark would be in a hurry when he came out.
As she sat in the car, she remembered the cold sensation she’d felt, warning her of the pending attack. It came from the spot on her chest where the amulet had left its mark. She didn’t know how it had happened, but somehow a part of the amulet’s power must have transferred into the mark seared into her skin.
It wasn’t the same sensation as what she experienced when she’d worn the actual amulet. It was more like a memory of what it had been before. She wondered if that was why she could still access some of her skills, but with difficulty?
Clark walked out the front door and down the steps to the car. He moved quickly but didn’t run.
Quinn looked over her shoulder down the street behind them. The sirens were much closer now.
Clark climbed in the car and started it, then accelerated to the corner and went right at the intersection. Behind them, flashing lights turned into the street, stopping in front of the home they’d just left.
“Cutting it a bit close, weren’t you? Did you find what you were looking for?”
“No,” Clark said, shaking his head. “I searched as long as I dared. He might have hidden it so they couldn’t find it, but that’s probably wishful thinking. I suspect they wouldn’t have left without it. Did you see the person you heard at the top of the steps? Were they carrying anything?”
Quinn shook her head. “I only heard him. It sounded like a guy. Other than that, I couldn’t say. What were you looking for?”
“It was an old clan talisman, an ancient silver dagger. I was able to salvage it after the purges, but at the time, I didn’t have a place to keep things like that, so I gave it to Dizzy to hold.”
“We have plenty of daggers, knives, and swords. Why do we need another one?”
“This one had secrets inscribed on the blade in old runes. Some of them might have helped you recreate your amulet, or at least the magic it contained.” Clark shrugged. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t say anything to you about it. I was going to get with Dizzy at some point to check it out. I didn’t know I was running out of time.”
A thought occurred to Quinn. “How are the slayers identifying these people to attack them? They aren’t attacking random people who happen to be mythical creatures living here in secret. There must be a method to all this. Was there someone who knows which ones might hold ancient hunter knowledge, as this guy did?”
Clark drove on in silence, but Quinn could see him thinking through what she’d said. She waited for him to answer.
It was nearly two minutes before he answered. “I wonder if I somehow exposed them to danger without knowing it?”
“Was there a list somewhere of the people you entrusted with information and artifacts?
“The only person I told was Joshua, but he’s the keeper. It’s his job to keep all of those things safe. I can’t believe he’d do anything to betray that sacred task. I guess there could be a security leak in his precautions he doesn’t know about, though.”
Quinn wanted to know more about the keeper. “Have you heard back from him regarding your request to meet? Maybe he can help expose the problem.”
Clark shook his head. “He hadn’t answered before we left tonight. I’ll check online when I get back to Spring Grove. I want to talk with Taylor when we get back. It’s even more important now to get the VR system up and running. If we can get to the slayers faster, we can stop them before they attack anyone else.”
“Taylor is doing the best she can. She insists she can figure out a way around the mag
ic needed for the program to run.”
“I know you want to protect her, Quinn. She’s got a lot on her plate right now, but I can’t help thinking we’re running out of time. It’s time to consider breaking the rules and bringing another person into the group. We need a new spell caster. If we don’t get that system up again soon, something is going to tip the balance in Handon’s favor for good, and we won’t be able to stop them in the last battle.”
Clark was referring to the final conflict for the disposition of Earth between good and evil. If Handon and his minions won the fight here in Baltimore, it could open the door for the netherworld to take over other areas across the world. For centuries, the hunter clans had prevented that from happening. Now that they were gone, she and Clark were the only ones standing in the way of the netherworld taking everything over.
“Let me talk to her in the morning,” Quinn said. “If she’s not close to finding a solution, we’ll go with plan B and get someone else.”
Clark nodded and they continued driving back to the hideout. It was getting late, and it had been a long two days. Their hunter genes kept them going longer than most people, but even they needed sleep at some point.
Chapter Eight
Quinn got up early the next morning. It was just before dawn, judging by the faint light on the horizon. It had only been a few hours since she’d gone to sleep, but she’d never needed much sleep, even as a child. Her mind still churned through the jumble of issues facing her and their tiny clan. Foremost in her thoughts was the strange revelation that she still possessed a link to the destroyed amulet.
As she walked down the stairs and started toward the kitchen to get something to eat, she heard a grunt from the opposite direction. Changing course, Quinn went down the first-floor hallway to the large meeting room they’d cleared to use for training.
Clark stood in the center of the room, running through a series of moves with his short sword. His chosen blade, modeled on the Roman gladius, gleamed in the light of a single fluorescent fixture overhead. He slashed and thrust with it as he worked through the footwork that accompanied the attacks. Quinn waited by the door as he finished. He walked to where he had left the sword’s sheath and belt.
