“Do you have the time?” Axel asked Hathaway, getting a ‘you’re kidding, you’re asking now while I’m pissing’ look in return. At least that’s what I thought it was. Anyway, Axel caught his eyes and our plan was set into motion. “Remember,” Axel said after implanting the thoughts of what would happen into Hathaway’s mind, “When you hear the word ‘Alcazar’ you will do whatever you’re told next.” Then he released his hold.
For a second, Hathaway had a glazed look and shivered. Then he finished his business, zipped up, and I stepped aside to let him leave. We went invisible before going back into the dining room, and found a good place along the wall where we could watch what happened next.
::Alcazar?:: I said.
::I figured it’s not something that comes up in normal conversation.:: Axel chuckled.
::Probably not.:: I turned my attention to Hathaway.
He was commenting on the fact he needed another drink as he picked up his fork and knife to cut into his steak. His eyes widened in shock as he dropped the utensils, pushing the plate away. Then he hollered, “Waiter!”
The waiter hurried over while Hathaway’s startled companions asked what was wrong.
“What do you think is wrong,” he exclaimed, pointing at his plate. “It’s covered with flies.” He waved his hand, trying to shoo them away. Of course no one else saw them, because they weren’t there. “I want to speak to your manager,” he practically screamed at the waiter.
“Sir, what’s wrong?” the waiter asked tremulously. “Is it too rare?”
“Too rare, you stupid fool? It’s covered with goddamned flies.”
“Sir, there’s nothing there,” the manager said, having joined them. He turned to Hathaway’s wife, asking softly “How much has he had to drink?”
She was about to reply when Hathaway sprang to his feet and raced out of the restaurant. She and the other woman immediately followed while the woman’s husband asked for the check as he apologized profusely for Hathaway’s actions.
“I don’t know what got into him,” he said, handing the waiter his card. “I’ve never seen him act like this.” He sighed, turning to the manager. “I’ll admit, he did have a bit over his limit, but…” Shaking his head, he followed the waiter to the cashier’s desk and after paying, he left.
By then, of course, many of the restaurant’s patrons were talking about what had happened. From what I overheard, several of them recognized Hathaway.
::We did it!:: I said elatedly, remembering at the last second not to talk out loud since we were still invisible.
::You bet we did. This will be the talk of the town come morning, and we’ve barely started. Shall we go home and celebrate?::
I was all for that, so we did. The sex was spectacular, but then it always was. We meshed perfectly that way—and in all the other ways that counted, including coming up with the perfect plan to deal with the human scum that thought they were the be-all and end-all of existence.
Wednesday night, a week after we started tormenting Hathaway, we watched from the back seat of his Mercedes as he got in, shouting to his wife who tried to stop him, “Get your fat ass back inside. I’m fine, whether you believe it or not. I just need to get away from here for a while.”
He wasn’t fine, of course. We, or rather Axel, had seen to that. This time, as we peeked, invisible, through the front window of his house, Hathaway opened the wine cabinet in his fancy living room and screamed in terror, “Spiders. Get them off me.”
“Percy,” his wife had responded, shaking her head as she hurried over to him. “It’s your imagination, again. You have to make an appointment with your psychiatrist first thing in the morning. Please…” She rested her hand on his arm.
He shoved her away hard enough that she stumbled back and fell onto the sofa. Then he stormed out. By then we were in his car, still invisible.
Axel leaned forward, murmuring into Hathaway’s ear, “Alcazar,” followed by, “Go to Golden and drive up the Lariat Loop to Lookout Mountain.”
Normally, it would have taken about half an hour to get there. The way Hathaway was driving, he made it in twenty minutes. When we were halfway up the winding road, Axel whispered, “Beetles.” The effect was instantaneous. Hathaway screamed in horror, trying to brush them off his hands, arms, and the steering wheel.
::Our cue to leave,:: Axel said, and we did, hovering high above the trail as we watched the car swerve left and right and then veer straight off the edge of the road, through some low brush, and over the cliff. It hit the roadway fifty feet below with a resounding crash, hard enough to turn even a car as well-built as a Mercedes into an accordion.
“Think we should check on him?” Axel asked as we dropped to the ground and became visible again.
“Why bother? If he’s not dead, he’ll probably end up a vegetable which—” I grinned gleefully, “—would serve him right.”
“You’re evil,” Axel replied, giving me a kiss. “And I mean that in the best way possible. After all, it’s all in the eye of the beholder and as a vampire not a human, your kind of ‘evil’—” he made finger quotes, “—suits me just fine, so let’s go home.”
We did, flying down to the start of the Trail and then calling Lyft for a ride as long-distance flight was not within my capabilities yet. While Axel was a lot better at it, he admitted that going thirty miles wasn’t about to happen, especially lugging me, as he put it. I bristled at that, but it was pretty much feigned indignation. I knew he would have, if he’d been able to, and I’d do the same for him—when we were, say, a thousand years old and had the ability to do long distances while carrying something heavier than a feather.
Chapter 9
Over the following month, Axel and I used the same tactics with three other bastards who deserved to die. Different fears, different conclusions, all satisfying as far as we were concerned…up to point. One committed suicide without our help. The second went mad and his wife had him committed. The third man owned his own plane. He was on his way home from a business meeting on a Wednesday night when it crash landed as it approached the runway at Centennial Airport, south of Denver. That happened after Axel, who had flown up to the plane moments earlier, made him believe there were snakes crawling all over the cockpit.
As I said, what we had done was satisfying, but it wasn’t enough as far as I was concerned.
“There’s hundreds, thousands of humans who need to die, and that’s only here in Denver,” I complained when we returned home after the plane crash. “We’re barely scraping the surface.”
“I get that you’re frustrated, but short of, I don’t know, poisoning the city’s water, there’s no way we can hurry things up.” He pulled me into his lap. It was a very nice one, with an interesting bulge, but I didn’t let it distract me.
“I wish that was an option,” I grumbled.
“We have a lifetime to do this,” he replied. “In our case, that’s a very, very long time. Hell, half of them will have died off before you become an Adolescent.”
“Like that’s supposed to make me happy? Besides, they’ll be replaced by others who are equally as bad and you know it.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Still, we’re doing the best we can without catching the eye of the cops, or older vampires who would do everything in their power to eliminate us if they knew we were behind all those deaths.”
He was right, which pissed me off. He knew it and did his best to take my mind off the subject for the time being. He was more than successful, as always.
* * * *
During the same month, soon after we’d dealt with our second target, Axel got a job—with my help. It was mid June, and the bouncer at The Hub decided to move on, giving Parks his week’s notice. I found out the following night, at which point I told Parks I thought I knew the perfect man for the job. When I got home, I discussed it with Axel.
He was hesitant at first. “I’m not some big bruiser who’ll put the fear of whatever into troublemakers.”
&n
bsp; “True, but you’re strong enough to deal with them, or you can compel them to behave or get out.”
“There is that,” he agreed. Then he grinned. “It’ll make it easier to keep an eye on you, too.”
“Smartass.” I patted said ass, which earned me a laugh and a kiss.
Axel came to work with me Tuesday night, met Parks, and—as I had during my interview—used mind tricks to get hired as the new bouncer.
When he came out of Parks’ office, he hurried over to tell me he was now gainfully employed. “To top it off, I convinced him to give me Wednesdays and Thursdays off, and that I’d work from eight until closing. Go me!”
I laughed, and then introduced him to Nick, who was behind the bar with me.
“I’ve seen you around,” Nick said. “You’re a friend of Lucas’s, right?”
Axel nodded seriously before grinning. “You could say that, since we’re living together.”
“Lucas…” Nick shot me a sour look. “You never told me you had a roommate.”
“I don’t,” I replied. “Well, I do, but he’s a lot more than that.”
“Damn. You’ve been working here for almost four months and you never let on.”
“Sorry, it’s…”
“I asked him not to,” Axel said, jumping in because he knew I was floundering. “I have an ex who would love to get his hands on me, again. The less people who know where I am, the better.”
“Damn, man,” Nick replied. “Okay. If he shows up here…” He rolled his eyes. “I guess if he does, he’s going to know, isn’t he?”
“That I’m working here, yes, but that’s it. Lucas and I will continue acting like we’re only friends and nothing more.”
“Hope you can pull it off,” Nick said before going down the bar where a man was waving for attention.
::Thanks. How the hell did you come up with that so fast?::
::Bad TV.:: Axel laughed in my mind.
::Good TV right now,:: I retorted, and then got back to work while Axel went over to the soon-to-be ex bouncer to let him know he was going to be his replacement and watch while he dealt with carding anyone who looked under thirty—a safety measure to be certain no under-aged kids slipped in.
Soon after closing, Axel and I paid a late-night visit to our next target. Not that the man knew, of course. We were only scoping out his house, from the outside as we couldn’t enter without an invitation. We saw what we needed to and set things in motion. Everything went according to plan and he was dead two weeks later—and I was bitching that we couldn’t do more, faster. Axel calmed me down, but it didn’t change what I was feeling. It took something else to take my mind off that…in spades. That happened the following Tuesday.
* * * *
::We may have a problem.::
I turned to look at Axel as we got to the end of the alley behind The Hub, on our way home after closing. His car was parked in a lot a block away. ::What sort of problem?::
::You’re not strong enough to sense them,:: he replied. ::Two vampires, Adolescents from what I’m feeling. Down there.:: He pointed to alley across the street from where we stood.
I almost asked why they were a problem. From what I could see, they were in the midst of feeding on a couple of kids who I first took for members of the city’s large homeless population. Then I realized from how they were dressed that that wasn’t the case. No homeless guy, or girl, wears new clothes from an upscale boutique or department store. They were, down to their shoes and the fancy watch on the guy’s wrist. I still couldn’t figure out why Axel thought we should be worried. Then the taller vampire finished feeding. He let the young man fall to the ground without sealing the bite wounds. That was obvious from the blood still flowing from his throat.
The shorter vampire finished moments later, just as Axel and I made it across the street and entered the alley. The pair must have sensed that I was one of them, because the taller one called out, “You picked a pretty donor, boy,” and laughed.
::Pretty?:: Axel spat out, but only to me. ::Let’s show them ‘pretty’.::
I was willing; because it was obvious from the taller one’s actions that they planned on leaving their victims unhealed and probably without wiping their minds of what had happened. ::Rogues?::
::Damned right they are.::
We were almost to them when the taller one grabbed the girl from his companion’s grip and they vanished—which let me know they’d both gone invisible, shielding the girl from our sight, and flown…::Where are they? Can you tell? They’re too young to have gone far while carrying her.::
Axel pointed to the rooftop directly above where they’d been standing. “They went up there, from what I could sense. For now, though…” He shrugged as he knelt beside the bleeding young man and licked his wounds to seal them. “We can’t go after them until this one revives so that I can wipe his memories.”
“Well, hell.” Not that I cared on one level that they had taken the girl with them. She was, after all, a human. On the other hand, the fact they were rogues meant they might do something to her before leaving her to be found—probably bloodless and possibly raped—by the cops or some other human. That could reveal the fact that vampires walked the city which was not something I or Axel wanted. If it didn’t bother us that our existence would be revealed, we wouldn’t have been so careful to conceal our presence, and make our kills appear to be ‘normal’ deaths, for lack of a better word. Even when I was eliminated the drug dealers, I made it look as if they’d been taken out by an enemy, and Dex’s death had been, as I’d hoped, put down to a wild animal.
Axel did as he’d said when the young man came to. Then he sent him off with, he told me, the idea that he’d dropped his girlfriend at her place before heading home himself.
“Now what?” I asked.
“A damned good question. First, we go up—” he gestured to the rooftop, “—to see if I can find any trace of where they went. Don’t count on it, though,” he added as we did. “I’m not old enough to sense any but the strongest clues.”
When we landed, he turned slowly and I knew he was searching visually and mentally for anything which said the rogues were still in the area, although obviously not on this rooftop. Even I, as young as I was, would have known if they were standing close to me.
“We’re shit out of luck,” he said, shaking his head. “At least we got a decent look at them, although it doesn’t do us any good right now. They’ll do whatever they like with the girl and then dispose of her before we stand a chance of saving her.”
That pissed me off. Sure, she was a human, and a well-to-do one from the way she was dressed. Even so, she didn’t deserve to become their sex toy, if that’s what they had in mind. “We need help,” I said.
Axel shot me a questioning look. “Got someone in mind? For sure I’m not walking into a police station to report we saw her kidnapped. ‘Yes, officer, two punks grabbed her in an alley.’ They’d want to know why she was there, why we were there, and what the guys looked like. We couldn’t answer any of those questions honestly.” He smiled briefly. “The why of us being there, maybe. To take a piss. The rest? Uh-uh.”
“That’s the last thing I want to do, too. Let’s get out of here,” I said. We took the quick way to Axel’s car, going invisible and flying. As soon as I was in the passenger seat, I took out my phone to scroll through the saved numbers and then made a call.
“Now, this is a pleasant surprise, or is it?” Roland said when I let him know it was me.
“That depends,” I replied and then filled him in on what had happened. “Is there someone here, Middle-Aged or Old, who can help us find the rogues?”
“Where is ‘here’?” I let him know, having forgotten that I’d been less than truthful when I told him and Justin where I was going the night I left Justin’s home for good. “I can think of one person,” he said. “Give me a few minutes to contact her and I’ll call you back to let you know if she’s willing. I suspect she will be. She’s deat
h on anyone she considers a rogue.”
That was a bit scary, considering Axel and I were ones. I guessed we’d deal with that if the time came. Right now we needed her help so I thanked him and ended the call.
“Who was that?” Axel glanced at me before returning his attention to the road.
“A good friend of my Sire’s. I figured he’d be a safer bet than Justin.”
“Oh?”
I grimaced. “Justin and I parted on, shall we say, less than cordial terms. I was glad to get out from under, and he was happy to be rid of me.”
“Ah, yes. You told me that. You trust this Roland, I take it.”
“I do. He’s one of the good guys.”
Axel chuckled. “For a vampire.”
We’d barely entered the house when my phone rang. When I answered, Roland said, “She’s willing to help. I gave her your number. Good luck.” Before I could thank him, he hung up.
Seconds later my phone rang again. I didn’t recognize the number, but hoped it was Roland’s friend, or whatever she was to him.
“Lucas Barrett?” a woman asked.
“Speaking,” I replied.
“We have a mutual acquaintance who suggested we should get in touch. Give me your address.” Short and to the point. I did, she said, “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” and ended the call.
“This could be interesting,” I muttered, putting my phone away.
“How so?” Axel wanted to know.
“She sounds very…bossy?”
“Not too surprising if she’s an Old vampire, or even late Middle-Aged. They tend to think they deserve respect for managing to survive for so long.”
“When it comes down to it, I suppose they do. I can’t imagine what it would be like to live for a thousand years, or more, which an Old one would have.”
“Personally, it would bore me stiff,” Axel replied. “Or it would have until I met you.” He hugged me quickly, leaving it at that. Probably because there was no telling when she’d arrive.
I Hunt by Night Page 8
