by Jackie Ivie
They shut off their stunner. Zach’s muscles took a nosedive to exhaustion, and he just lay there watching three guys in matching camouflage outfits take over the coach. Two sat where he had been. One sat beside Reginald’s corpse.
“Who...are you guys?” Zach asked. He was trying to sound aggressive. Capable. In control. He wasn’t quite recovered enough. He sounded shaky and his words had a distinct gap in them.
“Calm down, buddy. We’re Hunters. Vampire Hunters. You’ll be fine in a moment.”
“You...bastards.”
“Okay. Maybe more than a moment. But don’t push it. We really don’t want to stun you again.”
“I don’t know. I think it might be fun.”
The one sitting beside Reginald’s corpse spoke. Zach would’ve turned his head that way, but it felt like he’d just finished an obstacle course. In double time. That was an aftereffect, but it would pass. He’d had stun gun training. He knew exactly how it felt and exactly how long it would last. All he had to do was bide some time.
“Enough, Eric. It was a good kill. You did well. Not bad for your first.”
Zach’s heart stopped momentarily. They weren’t even bothered by the dead man right beside them? Was he in the company of men who killed humans for sport? This job just kept getting worse. He only hoped he lived long enough to regain his faculties.
“Yeah. If I’m not mistaken, we just got Reginald Leach. So named for obvious reasons. Tough bugger. Originally from the U.K. This here calls for a celebratory round of drinks when we get back. Or two. I’ll buy.”
The other guy sitting on Zach’s bench spoke up. Zach took a deep breath, counted to three, and slowly sat up. His abdominal muscles were angry at him, but they worked. He swiveled on his butt so his back was to the door, and looked up at the two older gentlemen. He avoided looking anywhere at Reginald’s corpse.
“Or, maybe you should handle the bill.”
The leader reached down and pulled the hooks out of Zach’s shirt. He was looking directly at him. Zach raised his eyebrows.
“Me?”
“You see any other schmucks around here that just got saved?”
Damn him for being weaker than a toddler taking his first steps! Zach took another breath that shuddered. Lowered his chin. Glared upward.
“This is the third coach we’ve stopped tonight. Looks like it’s shaping up to be a wild weekend at the castle. You have plans there, do you?”
“It’s not what you think,” Zach replied.
“Hey. We never judge. We just hunt. Reginald here...he’s been a tough codger to track and we even knew where to look this time. Reggie’s done this trip before. He drains his victims before they reach the castle gates. He really likes pretty boys. I can see why he picked you. Looks like it’s your lucky day, chum.”
Zach looked down at the bottom of the seat where it connected with the floorboards. Glaring at them didn’t do much since he couldn’t back it up. All it did was make his neck and shoulders ache.
“So. How do we prove the kill?” The young one named Eric asked.
“He wore a signet ring. Left hand. Little finger. It’ll still be there. Look for it.”
Look for it? How stupid were these guys? They couldn’t find a pinkie ring? Zach flashed a glance toward the corpse before he could prevent it. And everything in his entire body froze. His mouth and throat went dry. His mind went absolutely blank. There wasn’t anything beside Eric except a pile of familiar-looking clothes wrapped about what looked like heaped piles of fireplace ash.
“What the hell?” he burst out. “Where is...Reginald?”
The leader laughed. “Right there. I know. Hard to wrap your mind around it. Blew me away the first time, too. Vampires get a huge dose of decomposition once they get a nice wooden stake through the heart. Reggie was over three hundred years old. Maybe more. May be finally rest in peace and all that.”
“He can rot in Hell,” Eric replied.
“Or that,” the leader agreed.
“You’re full of shit. All of you.” Zach said.
The leader chuckled. “Well. You’re looking at the proof, buddy. So. It’s your call. You can say yes and foot the bill for our drinks...or you can say no, this has all been a really well-staged bit of theater, and we’ll buy our own round.”
Zach pulled his wallet out of his inside jacket pocket. Selected a prepaid credit card. Slid it out. And handed it to the leader.
CHAPTER TWO
The rest of the journey was uneventful...if watching the remains of a supposed vampire drift down from the seat opposite could be called that. Zach hadn’t managed to extinguish the lantern fully, but he’d impacted the amount of light it shed. It was very dim in the coach interior. He could change that, but he didn’t bother. He didn’t want too bright a light shed on anything at the moment.
Every sway of the coach sent more of Reginald’s remains from the carriage seat. The ash streams were running in rivulets now, flattening the old-fashioned suit even more. Verification wasn’t possible. There wasn’t anything substantial to check. Nothing skeletal. Not even a hint of a bone. There was only a pile of men’s attire. The short arrow had even been pulled out of the clothing and given to Zach. He held it in his right hand, glancing occasionally at it as he rotated it between his thumb and fingers. He had a canister containing a blast of Holy Water and a large, fairly heavy silver cross in his other hand.
And why?
Because he’d asked for them.
The Hunters had departed as if his offer was a signal. The middle guy had taken the credit card. They deserved it. That was quite a performance. Well worth a round of drinks. They could have a nice start on a party if they wanted. Zach didn’t care. He had more. He didn’t carry anything an identity thief would benefit from. All his credit cards were prepaid. Loaded with one thousand U.S. dollars each. Easy to use. Untraceable.
As they were stepping over and around him, the leader had told him to enjoy his stay at Castle Kraven. And then the three men had a nice chuckle at Zach’s expense. That’s when Zach had asked them if there were vampires at the castle, too. The answer was cryptic and impossible.
This is old country. There are vampires. Watch yourself.
That’s when he’d asked for weaponry. That’s why he still held it in his hands more than half an hour later. That was also the reason he couldn’t seem to take his gaze from the remains as it slowly disappeared across from him. This was all so surreal. Impossible. Totally improbable. And he knew better. Years ago, he’d figured out the truth about every unexplained part of this existence. If you didn’t believe in something, it didn’t have any power. As far as he was concerned, supernatural events fell under four rules.
Rule One – paranormal things did not exist.
Rule Two – ignore them.
Rule Three – disbelieve.
Rule Four – every event had a logical trigger. Find that and you reveal the truth. In other words, refer to Rule One.
None of which helped right now. Because he’d been here. His muscles still ached in places from being zapped with an electrical charge. He’d seen a man impaled by the arrow he now held. He’d seen the pits on Reginald’s face that supposedly came from Holy Water spray. He held a physical grenade containing more of it. He hadn’t actually seen the ‘turning-to-dust’ obliteration phase, but Reginald had disappeared. And those were his clothes slowly flattening into a pile of cloth on the opposite seat.
Two plus two did not equal four here.
While he wasn’t admitting to anything, it was disquieting. The coachman acted really strange, too, as if it was all in a night’s work. The man hadn’t even checked on his remaining passenger after the Hunters had set him free – whatever that entailed. Zach pondered that, too. He hadn’t checked on the driver, either. He could have. His muscles functioned enough for that. But, he hadn’t. He’d kept his gaze on the inside of the door the Hunters had latched shut as they exited, a bit later the carriage had shifted slightly as the dri
ver boarded, and then the horses had started moving again.
That’s when the ash pile had started sifting off the cushioned bench and onto the floorboards. Zach had regained his seat despite his complaining muscles in order to avoid any contact. They expected him to believe the guy had been a vampire?
No way.
Zach smirked and went with Rule One. The sway of the coach altered, slowing and then drawing to a halt. A panel opposite him opened. A man stuck his nose through it. Full bearded man. Large. Looking none-the-worse for his treatment at the hands of Vampire Hunters.
Zach shook himself mentally and slapped both hands between his thighs to hide his weapons.
“Still with me kid?”
Kid?
Zach’s mom had told him before she died that he’d enjoy his youthful appearance one of these days. Right now wasn’t one of them. He would’ve liked looking closer to his real age. He lifted his chin, wrinkled his forehead, and wondered if that might help him appear older. More experienced. Someone to be leery of. More like a man with a third degree black belt. One who’d inherited his father’s private investigator business along with all the debts, and added the sideline of bounty hunting. The same man who’d delivered ten bounties since that day – with only four delivered alive. He sure wished he looked more like that man than a barely legal kid with a case of testosterone overload and rich parents who didn’t care what he did with their money.
“Yeah,” he finally answered.
“Good. We’re almost there. You watch yourself at the castle, you hear?”
“Watch myself?”
“You are over eighteen? That wasn’t a fake passport you flashed me?”
“It wasn’t fake.”
“Well. Whatever. I can’t stop you from doing what you gotta do. You just watch your back. Got it?”
The panel shut. Zach regarded it for a few moments. There went the wrinkling the forehead theory. Maybe he needed to work on his delivery. Lower his voice range. Try the mascara trick again – applying a brownish-black shade to the wisps of hair atop his upper lip. Nah. It would probably just make him look creepy, like before, when he’d tried it in his senior year.
The horses started up again with a lurch that sent one of Reginald’s sleeves over the seat edge. Dust ran out of the wrist opening. Zach watched it. Vampires did not exist. Rule One. But somebody wanted him to think he was going right into a nest of them. Or coven. Or clutch. Or whatever a group of them were called. How did he know? He was a bounty hunter. Not a vampire one.
He had one thing in his favor – the element of surprise. He settled the arrow/stake into the back of his trouser band, point downward, feeling it rub against his backbone. The grenade was an issue. He mulled with shoving it into a front trouser pocket next to his handcuffs, creating a bulge nobody would miss. He discarded that idea. It would be uncomfortable, it would probably knock against the cuffs making noise, and he had enough trouble. He wasn’t here for a good time. He was here for Leroy.
Period.
He settled with hooking the grenade on his belt. Left side. The cross was ornate and heavy once he got it on his neck chain. The crucifix pulled on the chain, settling between his pecs like it belonged there. Zach tucked it beneath his shirt. Great. Now he not only looked young, he looked cocky, too. Well. In his line of work, you used what you had and made it work, until you got where you needed to be.
Young and cocky?
Zach pulled out a comb and started spiking his hair.
~ ~ ~
The third coach of the evening pulled into the yard, circling the fountain on its way to the front entry. Ruxanna’s fingers tightened on masonry as she leaned forward. Tiny bits of stone crumbled from the battlements at her grip. This had to be the one! This was the last carriage of the weekend. The last chance that the disconcerting feeling she’d been suffering all eve meant something.
It had to be him. Her mate. Her one. Her only.
It had started at sunset. She’d risen with the strangest awareness. If she’d been alive, she’d have investigated. It was that unsettling. And the source couldn’t be pinpointed. It was akin to a second sense. A premonition. The hint of wind passing over one’s scalp. Odd. She’d taken a few moments to evaluate it, sitting atop her stone slab in the crypt. Almost feeling the cold. Sensing damp. Smelling decay. She’d focused on each one for a bit, but all that had answered was the quiet pall of the real dead. So she’d dismissed it.
But the impression hadn’t ceased.
It was there again as she’d selected tightly woven stockings, focusing on how they felt in her fingers. The slide of silk was almost tangible. She’d affixed them atop her thighs after selecting black lace garters adorned with pink satin rosettes. The black silk skimmed her legs with a film of darkness, shadowing every nuance of her limbs...adding to the strangeness. She’d run her fingers along the hosiery, straightening the lines down the backs of her legs, and could almost feel the stockings against her fingers!
Almost.
There hadn’t been much sensation attached to donning her black lace lingerie ensemble. Nothing special had occurred while fastening the hooks of her corset. But when she’d pulled the rose-shaded satin dress over her head, she’d gotten another vague hint of awareness. It wasn’t the dress’s uniqueness. All of her clothing was in shades of rose. But tonight, the heavy satin had actually felt chilly as she’d donned it. The dress fit snugly, especially as she pulled the lacings through their holes all down the front. She wanted it tight enough, every tiny stitch pulled as she moved. That’s how all her dresses were crafted. But this was the first time it had actually felt tight.
That’s when she’d requested a maid, something that brought her the servant as well as her partner, Malcolm. She’d wanted her hair combed and arranged. That shouldn’t be such a curiosity. But something had brought a hint of suspicion to Malcolm’s light shaded eyes, set within his sallow face. The wretch better not be jealous. He was the ninth partner she’d selected over the centuries. Most of them she allowed to die of old age. Two had been eliminated early.
She only half-turned them for a reason.
Malcolm shouldn’t give her one.
The carriage came to a standstill below her. She had a perfect view, especially if she craned her neck. One of her doormen rushed to the lead horse’s head, quieting the team. She watched the coachman jump down. Move to the side of his equipage. Lower a set of steps. And then he opened the door and waited. Ruxanna pulled her lower lip into her mouth and focused.
Held her breath.
A young man stepped out, jumping the steps without assistance. He was taller than her doorman. That was a good sign. He was dark-haired. Wide-shouldered, if his jacket wasn’t lying. And from this angle, he looked very handsome. But excruciatingly young. Teenaged. From the looks of things, if this was her mate, she’d have to raise him first. Or wait for him. Disappointment accompanied the drop of her shoulders. She released her lip next, and then let out her pent breath with a long, drawn-out sigh.
She’d been wrong, after all. This couldn’t be her mate. It was beyond consideration. But that didn’t stop the weird impression of awareness. The stirring of her senses. That must mean he was still out there. Somewhere close. And then it hit her.
She’d just breathed.
“Ah. The last arrival is here.”
Malcolm’s voice preceded him onto the parapet. Ruxanna turned and studied him. He rarely bothered her. And never on the battlement. He liked to greet each client, find out what they wanted, and then he liked to watch.
“Is there a reason you are up here, Malcolm?” she asked.
“We had a slight problem with the last...gent.”
“Really?”
“Yes. He wanted three women at once. Sounded promising.”
“You film it?”
“I started to, but then he showed his real colors. He tried to cut them.”
“Did he harm anyone?”
“Oh no. No. He had Jessie and Etta. I bar
ely saved him in time.”
“Really?” she prompted.
“He’s suffering a bad case of black and blue bollocks. Possible broken nose. And he screams like a woman.”
The young man below them – who might be her mate – wasn’t an observant sort. He didn’t notice he was being watched, or if he did, he was really good at projecting otherwise. Ruxanna watched him bound up the steps as if anxious for his evening to start.
“He’s in the dungeon?”
“That’s why I’m here, Princess. We’ve already got him shackled to the wall. Waiting on us.”
“Can you handle it?”
“There will be fresh blood. And I’ve got a new guest to greet.”
“Ah. No. No. I believe I’ll greet this guest.”
Malcolm’s brows rose. They were bushier than she remembered, and quite gray. She hadn’t noticed how much he’d aged lately. She hadn’t noticed him at all. Because it hadn’t affected or interested her.
Right now, it did both.
She wondered if he realized he was authoring his death warrant. That was a shame. It usually took years to get another partner to handle the day-to-day managerial and financial aspects of her business. Hire, recruit, and then pension off the staff. Pay the utilities. And the bribes if any officials happened by.
“Let me check him first,” Malcolm said.
“Check him?” Oh no. That pleasure was going to be all hers.
“What if he’s a Hunter?”
“Oh, Malcolm. Please. If I need you. I’ll call for you.”
Ruxanna tipped her head in dismissal, lifted her skirt, and sailed around him.
CHAPTER THREE
