I Hunt by Night

by Edward Kendrick

  “Good. Now, come up with a few ideas on how to deal with the bastards you believe need it. Not right this second. Think about it and then run them past me before you act.”

  “How will we find you?” I asked.

  “I’ll keep in touch. Maybe…” She grinned. “Lucas, you just got yourself a younger, bratty sister who showed up on your doorstep to get away from our repressive parents.”

  “You do know I don’t have a family,” I said.

  “Of course, but does anyone else know? The humans you work with, that is.”

  “Well, no.”

  “Then what’s the problem.” She got up, saying, “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Wait. What did you do with the girl?” I asked since she hadn’t mentioned her.

  “For the moment she’s staying with me until she’s better. She lost a fair amount of blood thanks to those sons of bitches. When she recovers I’ll wipe her mind, give her new memories to explain why she disappeared, nice ones, and send her home.”

  I barely got out, “That works,” before she vanished.

  “Oh. My. God,” Axel whispered.

  “Scary, huh?”

  “No shit! If we don’t toe the line, her line, we’re goners.” He slid over to put his arm around me. “Can you do it?”

  I nodded. “It’s not like I’ve killed up close and personal for the couple of months or more. Sure, I liked it when I did. It sated my hatred of humans for a short while before the urge hit again. Even taking out the bastards secondhand, as it were, helped with that. On the other hand, she made a valid point, as much as it riles me to admit it. Not all humans deserve to die.”

  “True,” he agreed. “I wonder how many of us believe that.”

  “Most, I suspect, or there’d be a lot less of them around.” I chuckled. “I don’t how many of us there are, probably damned few in comparison to humans, but if we all felt the way you and I did we could thin the herd without any problem.”

  He grinned. “Kill the real bastards and their supporters and turn the downtrodden to help in our fight. Pretty soon the world would be ours.”

  “Pretty picture, but it won’t happen.” I paused. “It can’t because if it did who would we feed on? Animals? Justin said that’s not an option except in dire emergencies.”

  “Yeah, so my dream of a vampire world bites the dust.” He laughed. “Guess we’re going to do it Dina’s way which means we’re back to doing research to pick the ones who need to be eliminated and then figuring up how to set it up so they end up in prison. Damn, maybe we should invest in the private prison business because for sure if we’re successful the state ones will fill up fast.”

  “Axel, honestly…” I shook my head, kissed him quickly, and got up. “Research, yes, but not tonight. It’s our day off. Let’s go have some fun.”

  “Such as?”

  “We’ve never gone dancing.”

  “Maybe I don’t know how,” he retorted.

  I hoped he was kidding. Still I replied, “Everyone can dance. If you really can’t, I’ll teach you.”

  “I can, so let’s do it.”

  We ended up at a club across town from where we lived, danced until…Well, if we’d been human, we’d have fallen on our faces from exhaustion by the time the club closed. But we weren’t, so we came home, stripped on our way upstairs, and made hot, heavy love…twice…before dawn arrived, and we fell asleep.

  * * * *

  The following evening, since it was Thursday and we were off, we set to work picking our next targets. Part of that involved roaming the streets looking for crooks that needed out special attention.

  The first few nights, after leaving work, we went to the areas where I knew drug deals happened. We parked, and then after going invisible, flew up to rooftops. From there we could watch until we saw a deal going down. At that point, I dropped down to the alley, went visible, and enthralled the dealer and his client. I held them there, while Axel went in search of a cop. Sometimes that was easy. Others…? Well, as they say, where’s a cop when you need one. But eventually he would find one and flagged him, or them, down. Using mind control so that they would obey without remembering him, he sent them to off to catch the bad guys. He’d follow, and alert me moments before they arrived, at which point I released my hold on the punks and vanished, leaving the cops to do their ‘duly sworn’ duty.

  “This is too easy,” Axel said a week or so after we’d started. “Besides, all they’re catching is the small fry.”

  He had a good point, so we changed tactics. When the dealer finished for the night, we followed him when he touched base with his supplier to check in. From there, it was a case of watching who the supplier got in contact with to get his shipment. “All the way up the line to the big bad,” as Axel put it. Once we knew who that was; we gathered evidence and passed it on, anonymously, to the cops. Invisibility was our friend because you can learn a hell of a lot when no one knows you’re there.

  The news outlets began running stories on the busts the cops made, which brightened our lives—and Dina’s when we let her know what we were doing.

  Being Dina, however, she began pushing for us to go after other crooks. The ones who hid behind the good names of their businesses to make fortunes they didn’t deserve. That ran the gamut from human trafficking to importing guns and drugs to insider trading and everything in between. That woman had incredible contacts that she brought in to help. Some were willing, other not so much so, but between the three of us we learned what we needed to do the job.

  It didn’t happen over night. Hell, I figured we’d still be at it when I was old enough to be considered an Adolescent. We also expanded our horizons, going from city to city as the spirit moved, and starting over again.

  Okay, Axel and I did. Dina refused to move and I could understand why. About a month after we met her we finally got to see where she lived. It was an estate in the mountains to the west of Denver that to some extent reminded me of Justin’s house, only bigger and more modern. But then, she looked and generally acted like a twenty-year-old despite her thousand plus years on earth, so that didn’t surprise me.

  “I know it’s overkill for one person,” she said as she showed us around the two-story, six-bedroom mansion, “but I needed somewhere away from the city. I fell in love with the openness and the view, especially on a moonlit night. And—” she shot me an admonishing look, “—I bought it legitimately, so I didn’t have to enthrall the previous owner, to say the least of getting rid of him permanently.”

  I ducked my head to acknowledge her words, which rated me a smile, a pat on the arm, and her saying, “You’ve been forgiven…this time.”

  “Just don’t let it happen again, right?”

  “Precisely.”

  She made certain it wouldn’t by backing us monetarily when Axel and I moved east; buying the homes in one or another of the cities we’d chosen. We had to have a base so that we could deal with the human crooks we were after.

  When we arrived in a city, the first thing we did was find a house. Then, once it was ours, we went looking for jobs. Somehow, we always ended up working in bars or clubs. At the start, they were ones like The Hub but over time we worked our way up to fancier places where we could make contact with people who knew people who could lead us to the SOBs we were after.

  Dina would appear on and off to help us or, as she put it, “To get a taste of life in a different area of the country.”

  The world changed over the years, as was to be expected, but the crimes the rich and entitled humans committed didn’t, except to fit the new normal. Our lives changed, too. Among other things, Axel and I made a pact to invest half of everything we earned. Not a real chore. Our needs were negligible as we don’t eat; a major expense for humans.

  It was maybe fifty years after we’d cleaned up our acts, as Axel insisted on calling it, and we were packing up, getting ready to move on—again. The whole ‘not aging’ thing required we do so, as always. Dina appeared while
we were putting boxes in the van Axel had bought prior to our third move.

  “Where are you heading this time?” she asked, jumping up to sit cross-legged on the van’s hood to watch us work.

  “To the east coast. Not New York City, though. Maybe Richmond or…” I shrugged.

  “If I may make a suggestion,” she said before jumping down to go into the house. We followed, wondering ‘Now what?’

  After we’d settled in the living room, which was bare of everything except the furniture, which we were leaving behind, she said, “Wherever you land, buy a building and turn it into a high-class club. You can afford to, and it will give you a great in with the kind of people you’re after. Better than you had this time around, when you were merely working at a good club.”

  I looked at Axel, lifting an eyebrow in question.

  “I’m not sure,” he said after a long moment. “How could we run it when we can’t be out during the day?”

  Frowning, I turned to Dina for help. She smiled, shaking her head. “You two can figure out something. You’re clever young men.”

  “Dina…” I grumbled.

  She grinned, said she had places to go and things to do, and in her usual inimitable style, vanished.

  “Women…” Axel chuckled. “Okay, I like the notion, if we can come up with something that’ll work.”

  We tossed around a couple of ideas, things like hiring day managers. “If we can find ones we can trust,” he pointed out.

  Then I snapped my fingers when it hit me. “We play into what we are.”

  “I don’t think advertising we’re vampires would be a good idea,” he retorted.

  “No, but…Consider this. We bill it as a club for denizens of the night. People who come out after dark in search of a classy place away from the hoi polloi. Okay, we can’t put it that way, but if we imply it.”

  Axel nodded slowly. “With a dress code. At least suits and ties but semi-formal or formal preferred, akin to what vampires wear in bad movies. In fact, that can be the advertising point. The club only a classy vampire would be caught dead in.”

  “Yes. We decorate it accordingly—black, blood red, touches of gold. Fancy chandeliers and wall sconces, maybe.”

  “Yep. It won’t open until after dark and shuts down at…” He spread his hands in question.

  “We’ll need to check the licensing laws,” I replied. “But these days they seem to be pretty liberal. At lot more than they were back when I first started bartending.”

  “A hundred years ago?” Axel teased.

  “Fifty and counting, smartass.”

  “We don’t want to get too dark and dramatic with the décor,” Axel said. “We’re going after the city’s bigwigs so we can weed out the bastards we’re after.”

  “What, we don’t want to cater to what used to be called Goths, back in the day?”

  “The kids who wish we were real?” He smirked. “No way.”

  “Exactly. Not that they’d be able to pay the cover charge.”

  “We’re going to have one?”

  “You bet.” I patted his knee. “It’ll make the place seem even more prestigious if it costs them big bucks just to get inside.”

  Grabbing my hand before I could move it, he pulled me close enough to kiss me, murmuring afterward, “This whole scheme is really turning me on.”

  A quick glance at his crotch showed he wasn’t lying, so we took a break to do something about it. It wasn’t until we got upstairs that we remembered we’d packed all the bed linens. Of course, at that point we didn’t give a damn. We screwed our brains out and then, being relatively practical vampires who knew we were wasting drive time if we didn’t leave now, we put our planning on hold until we’d loaded the last of the boxes in the van and were headed out of town.

  “Get online to look for available buildings,” Axel suggested, since he was driving. My laptop, the best money could buy, was fully charged, so I did as he suggested. I was thankful that in this extremely high-tech age there was never a problem with dead spots since what we’d used to call ‘the boonies’ were almost nonexistent.

  “It needs to be in an upscale part of the city,” he commented, laughing when I replied that I wasn’t stupid.

  By the time that we needed to find a motel I’d come up with several places which might work in each of the cities we were considering and had bookmarked them. We stopped at a national motel chain, got a room, and after hanging the ‘do not disturb’ sign on the door and closing the drapes, we washed up and fell into bed.

  * * * *

  Six months and an almost depleted bank account later, Axel and I held the grand opening of Club Erebus. The name came from the Greek deity who was the personification of deep darkness and shadows. It seemed fitting without using the ‘this is a vampire club’ idea which, after due consideration, we thought might put off the very clientele we were after.

  “Playing into a vampire theme is, well, too teenaged Goth,” Axel had said when we were debating names. After some thought, I’d agreed.

  All our employees, male and female, were young, beautiful, and human. They had no idea we weren’t—human that is. In my personal opinion Axel was at the top of the scale when it came to looks, and he seemed to feel the same about me.

  The opening went off without a hitch. We had sent out invitations to all the influential people in the city from the mayor on down. For that night, only, we waived the high cover charge while making it clear the event required formal attire. To a man, and woman, everyone dressed as if they were going to meet royalty.

  Dina attended, of course. She arrived looking like a very different woman from what Axel and I were used to. Wearing an elegant forest green dress and matching stiletto heels, her long dark hair immaculately coifed, she was more Kate Middleton at her most refined than the casual ‘teen’ we knew and loved.

  Although she had visited us while the two-story building we’d bought was being turned into the club—with our living quarters taking up the entire second floor—she hadn’t seen it in all its glory. As a result, she began to explore the three rooms which comprised Club Erebus.

  The first room past the entryway was the bar. The walls were a deep wine, the bar and the furnishings were dark ebony wood, with wine cushions on the chairs and banquettes. Lighting came from an ornate crystal chandelier in the center of the room with matching sconces along the walls.

  To the right of the bar, through a wide arch, was the dance floor, done in deep grays and blood-reds. Behind it, running the width of the building was the dining area. It was the lightest of the rooms, with dove gray walls, wine carpeting, and brushed steel tables and chairs—the chairs upholstered in velvet that matched the carpet. A huge fieldstone fireplace took up almost the entire length of one of the shorter walls, with sofas, chairs, and side tables scattered in front of it.

  Dina rejoined us twenty minutes later at our table by the dance floor. We’d chosen it because it would be easier to talk to each other without being overheard thanks to the band a few feet away. We could have used mind-speak, but people might have wondered why we weren’t talking.

  “I’m impressed,” she said. “Not only with what you’ve done with the place, but with your guests. They’re the pick of the litter.”

  I snorted. “I don’t think they’re dogs. Okay, I could be malicious and say there are a couple of older women that are real dogs.”

  “Lucas, be nice,” Axel said, swatting my arm. “They’re our bread-and-butter.”

  “If I’m correct in whom you mean, Lucas, one of the women, that one in the too-tight navy gown, is the wife of a man you should check out.” Dina nodded surreptitiously toward a couple seated across the room from us.

  “That’s the mayor.” I looked at her in surprise. “He was supposed to be a drawing card, not a target.”

  “Then you’ve killed two birds with one stone,” she replied with a smile. “From what I picked out of his mind, he’s got his fingers in a few pies he’d rather the go
od people of the city not find out about.”

  “That’s three clichés in a row, Dina,” Axel said, chuckling.

  “The thing about clichés is they’re often true, so there.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

  “Now is that any way for a grown woman to act?” Roland asked, sliding into the empty chair across from her.

  I was startled to put it mildly and it showed in my tense “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I happened to be in the neighborhood,” he replied without blinking an eye.

  “You live in New Orleans. This is hardly ‘the neighborhood’.”

  “Lucas has a point, Roland,” Dina said.

  “The world is my neighborhood,” he replied roguishly while flagging down the waitress. When she arrived, he ordered a bottle of wine—“Your best red wine, preferably a Burgundy or a Cabernet Sauvignon.”—and then looked at me. “Unless you can suggest another choice.”

  “No. We carry an excellent Burgundy.”

  The waitress smiled, asking Roland, “With four glasses?”

  He smirked. “That would be better than our chugging it straight from the bottle.”

  She blushed then left, returning moments later with a bottle of Burgundy and the glasses—but not before Dina tapped Roland’s arm a bit harder than was necessary, telling him he was being a naughty boy.

  The waitress uncorked the bottle and poured a bit into Roland’s glass. He tasted it, proclaimed it perfect, then she filled all our glasses and moved on to her next customers.

  After taking a sip, I asked Roland, “Why are you here?”

  “Paying my respects to one of my favorite young men. I’ve been following your career since the day you left Justin. I will admit, for a time I considered stepping in to stop you, even though I knew why you did what you did. The only reason I didn’t was the fact you seemed to learn from your experiences and began to target humans who deserved what you gave them. Rather commendable in my estimation. Then you met this young man.” He turned to Axel.

  “His saving grace?” Axel asked.

  Roland wagged a hand. “Once you decided to step in, which you could have done much sooner, you know.”