“Lucky guess.”
“I like movies. So I caught a ride into the city. There’s a big cinema close to one of the whister ports in the Times Square neighborhood. That just happens to be where we patrol.” She nodded. “So I caught a show and was heading back knowing that karaoke would be over.
“I guess I should back up a little at this point and tell you that several of the teams have mentioned seeing this guy they called Jazz Man because of the dark suit and sunglasses. We’ve also been seeing a lot more action lately. Not just because there’s an explosion of vampire, but because it seems like we’ve been getting help. It’s hard to describe, but it’s kind of like we’ve been alerted when there are vampire.
“The other night I was sure I saw something and then, sure enough, there was an event. That’s what we call engaging vampire.” She nodded to indicate that she was listening and that she understood, not to indicate that she knew that before.
“Anyway. Back to tonight. I was walking back to grab a ride home and I thought I heard something. Well, I don’t know how much you know, but we’re not supposed to ever engage alone without a team. And especially not unarmed, which I was. But it goes against every single last instinct to walk away if we might be one slaying closer to making the world safe again. So I put my back to the wall and slid down the alley toward the sound, but everything went so quiet I started thinking it had been my imagination.
“I waited for a few minutes. And nothing. So I turned back and there was this guy, just inches away from my face. I didn’t jump and scream, but I’ll tell you right now. I wanted to. The only thing that kept me from it was pride. He was standing there smiling, dressed just like the others who’d seen him described. And wearing sunglasses. At night!”
“Sunglasses at night.”
“In a dark alley.”
“What did you do?”
“I can’t remember the conversation word for word. Basically I asked him if he was this Jazz man. He laughed at the idea and said his name is Jaxon Kell and that he’s a vampire over six hundred years old. But he’s not the kind of vampire we take out. He says he and his kind call them deadheads, that they’ve kept themselves hidden from The Order all this time because they didn’t have any reason to reveal themselves and we were doing an okay job of keeping the deadhead population under control. Until now. He said that his food supply is in danger of going away if something isn’t done. So he offered to help rid the world of deadheads.”
“Wow.”
“I know. He suggested we meet and talk more about it. He named Dublin Down and told me to be there in ten minutes. I asked why we didn’t just go together and he said he doesn’t want to be seen with Black Swan until we’ve come to an understanding.”
He set his cup down and looked at Gretchen like he was trying to see through her. “That’s where you enter the picture.”
“When you got to Dublin Down, he was sitting in the booth next to me.”
“Yeah. Just about gave me a heart attack.”
“Wow.” She nodded.
“So we sat in the back of the bar and talked about how his ‘kind’ might help us with our problem. He ate appetizers, spinach and cheese if you can believe that. And drank whiskey! He says he only needs blood occasionally and when he does it’s pleasurable for the lady and she doesn’t remember a thing.”
“Wow.” She repeated, feeling dumber every time she said it, but not being able to think of another word that so accurately conveyed her feelings.
“We left things that I would bring this to my Sovereign and that we would meet Monday night at midnight at Dublin Down. After I tell Glen what I know, the rest will be out of my hands.”
“All these centuries they’ve been hidden and they chose you to come out to.”
“Well, first of all, it’s just one. They haven’t decided anything. This is just one vampire gone rogue, who thinks he might be able to persuade others to join the cause depending on how the proposed partnership progresses. If it does. At all.”
“Yeah, still. It’s kind of a distinctive honor to be the one chosen to be the messenger.”
“It’s not a distinctive honor. It’s a dubious honor.”
She shook her head. “Selling yourself short.” She looked away and then shivered visibly. “So if you hadn’t gone to the movies tonight, I could have been bitten by a romance-style vampire!”
“What in hel’s name is a romance-style vampire?”
“It’s a vampire who uses sensuality to get what he wants. He doesn’t kill. He just…”
“Takes what he wants.”
“And wipes memories.”
“That’s pretty much what he said. Only he said they use a technique that would be called hypnosis in modern times.”
“Whatever.”
“So, yes. Judging by the way he was looking at you and the way you were looking at him…” There was both judgment and accusation in Falcon’s tone.
“That’s not fair. I was enthralled.”
“You weren’t enthralled a while ago when you said he was beautiful.”
“What is your problem?”
“My problem with that? You don’t know?”
“He’s not as beautiful as you, okay?”
Falcon’s face went from scowl to surprise to smile a mile wide. She hadn’t meant to blurt that out and was wondering if the near-bite encounter had disengaged communication between her mouth and her brain.
“You think I’m beautiful?”
She looked away, embarrassed, with no way to take it back. “Let’s just go back five minutes and pretend I didn’t say that.”
“Okay,” he said agreeably, but he continued to smile like he’d won a small lottery. “Believe me, after trying so hard to get some alone time with you, the last thing I want is to suggest we talk tomorrow, but I’ve got to get the Sovereign to meet me in his office and run through all this again.”
She nodded and set her cup down. “Of course.”
When she reached the door, he stopped her and turned her to face him.
“We still have a date for Friday, right?”
“If you want,” she said.
“Of course I want.” Without warning or fanfare he pulled her gently into his body and teased her mouth with a soft kiss that burned hotter than any touch she’d ever received from any man anywhere.
When Falcon pulled back, she had to stop her hand from reflexively reaching up to touch her lips with her fingertips. Like a teenager.
“There. We got it over with so we won’t have to worry about the dreaded first kiss, where it will be, when it will be, and whether or not we’ll like it.”
“Did we like it?” she said stupidly, wondering if Falcon was a vampire, because she felt too mesmerized to be sure what she was saying.
He chuckled. “I did.” He put his forehead against hers. “If it was any other night, I’d be all over showing you just how much I liked it.” He stepped away. “But duty calls.” She turned and reached for the doorknob. “Just a minute.” Again, he looked out to make sure no one would see her leave. “Coast is clear. I’d walk you back to your place, but…”
“I got it,” she said. “Good luck with your, ah…”
“Thanks.”
“Will you be able to let me know what happens?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask. Since you’ve been directly involved, the Sovereign may give you clearance for information, but he’ll probably want to talk to you about it first.”
“Okay. ‘Night.”
“Night.”
Falcon’s head was spinning. His world had been turned upside down by a kind of vampire that shouldn’t exist then shaken up by a kiss that left him as sexually rattled as a teenager. He called on his years of discipline to put that aside and concentrate on the task at hand, which was calling Glendennon Catch long after office hours for an emergency meeting.
Glen was spooning with his wife, sleeping as soundly as was possible for the head of Jefferson Unit in a time of cr
isis. That meant that he got even less sleep than most veteran vampire hunters, who were characteristically plagued by nightmares. In short, the Sovereign needed every minute of sleep he could catch and interruptions were not especially welcome.
Glen’s phone buzzed on the nightstand. His first response was the child in him hoping that if he pretended it wasn’t real, it would go away. It only took seconds for the mature Glendennon to claim his mind and direct his hand to reach for the phone.
“No,” Rosie groaned. “Not again.”
Glen gave her a pat on the butt as he rolled over and put his feet on the floor. “Yeah,” he said, sounding every bit as groggy as he felt.
“Sovereign, it’s Falcon. I’m sorry to wake you, but if I sit on this until morning you’ll be pissed.”
“What is it?”
“Again. I’m sorry, but I need a face to face.”
Glen ran his hand down over his face and tried to wake up. “My office. Ten minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Falcon stopped by the Caraffe, the all-night barista station in the Hub and picked up two large coffees. He hoped it would make a middle of the night meeting go down a little easier. He got there first and found the door locked so he leaned against the hallway wall to wait.
He heard the elevator ding seconds before he saw Glen walking toward him with the effortless swagger he’d picked up sometime between being the temporary acting Sovereign as a kid and the real honest-to-gods Sovereign as the adult he’d become. Falcon had to remind himself that they were close to the same age, which meant he wasn’t a kid anymore either.
Glen’s eyes went straight for the coffee cups Falcon was holding. As he turned his key to the door of his offices, he nodded at the cups. “Good thinking. I could almost forgive you.”
He switched on the lights.
“I didn’t know how you take it,” Kris said.
“Doesn’t matter. I have all kinds of coffee paraphernalia in the conference room.” Falcon extended the cup he was holding for Glen when he reached for it. “Thanks. Let’s sit in here.”
He opened the door to the conference room and turned on the light.
While Glen went to the cart that displayed sweeteners and stir sticks, Falcon looked at the thirteen chairs around the oblong table. One at the head, six on either side. Assuming Glen would take the chair at the end, he sat in the one nearest and put his coffee cup on the table.
He was glad he didn’t have to tell the story to Rev Farthing. That guy scared the bejuices out of him.
Glen bent down to get the cream out of the built-in mini fridge. “This was your night off, right?”
“Yes. It was.”
“How in tarnation did you manage to attract an emergency on your night off?”
“Well, I guess that’s part of the story. To start with, I need immunity for whatever punishment goes with taking evasive action to avoid karaoke.”
Glen finished stirring his coffee and sat down with a small smile. “No. But I’m warning you. Do not attempt to make me laugh. I’m not pleased about leaving the comfort of my wife’s warm and cuddly body to sit here and joke about karaoke with you.”
“It’s no joke, sir. My friends had plans so I decided to jump a whister to town and catch a show.”
Falcon recounted the story faithfully, in greater detail than he’d given Gretchen, including the fact that Gretchen had become an unwitting part of whatever chapter in the annals of Order history was unfolding.
“I made her swear not to breathe a word of this to anyone and, I know I don’t have the authority to do this, but I kind of halfway threatened her with her career.”
“Good man. Giving an operative a healthy sense of self-preservation is a time-honored tactic. Keeps things shipshape.”
It occurred to Falcon that the Sovereign had taken to peppering his speech with nautical terms and phrases. But if people knew what was good for them, they didn’t question the Sovereign. At least not to his face.
“Yes, sir.”
“So the bottom line is that you believe this…”
“Jaxon Kell.”
“I know. I know. I just haven’t decided whether to call him Jazz Man or Jax or that damn vampire.” Falcon nodded, but concluded there was no response to that. Glen was more or less processing things verbally. And it was a lot to process.
“Anyway, you think he might be the real deal?”
Falcon felt like he’d been put on the hot seat. He didn’t want to take responsibility for a declaration that he, out of all the knights who’d come before, had the distinction of crossing paths with a species of vampire no one knew existed. Except the immortals, and they had conveniently failed to share.
What Falcon had wanted was to bring the information to his superior, unburden himself of the facts he’d collected, and then let somebody smarter than he figure out what to do next. He didn’t really want the fate of the world to rest on his instinct, or intuition, or lack thereof.
“Honestly? I was hoping you’d tell me.”
Glen stared for a few beats, took a sip of his coffee, stared a little while longer, then said, “Can’t say I blame you. You did the right thing setting a meeting.”
“Thank you. If you don’t want me to go along…”
“Hold it right there. Don’t start trying to weasel out. You’re going.”
“Yes, sir.”
To Falcon’s amazement, Glen smiled. “In a way I’m sorry the meeting isn’t tonight because I guess I feel kind of, ah, excited? I mean what if it all turned out to be true? This…”
“Damn vampire.”
“This damn vampire could be the answer to our prayers.”
Falcon nodded slowly. “It’s getting from here to true that’s the tricky part.”
“Yeah. So you know what we’re going to do?”
“No idea, sir.”
Glen sat up straighter and pressed a pedal with his foot. A section of the table slid away seconds before a computer monitor and keyboard rose out of the console the table top rested on.
Pulling himself up to the keyboard, Glen typed in a query and said, “Hawking’s on patrol tonight.” He could have looked at the time on the screen in front of him or at the watch on his wrist but his eyes lifted to the giant old-fashioned wall clock that had been there throughout the tenure of Sol Nemamiah and Rev Farthing.
“They should be back in about three hours. I’m going to have Ram get in touch with his sister and get her here before Monday night. She’s going to that meeting with us.”
“She is?”
“Yes. She may be royalty in both Ireland and Scotia, but she’s also psychic. Not the TV kind. The real I-used-to-work-for-Black-Swan kind.”
“Oh.”
“We’re going to take her with us. Maybe you and I don’t trust our intuition, but that elf can do an evaluation without ever asking a single question.”
“That’d be a handy talent to have.”
“Yeah,” he chuckled.
To Falcon’s amazement, Glen seemed wide awake and in a pretty good mood.
“You go get some sleep. I’ll take it from here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Falcon got up to leave, but when he got to the door, Glen stopped him. “Kris.”
He turned around. “Yes, sir?”
“You did good.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Once Falcon was in the hall headed toward the elevator he felt a huge relief. He supposed that on some level he’d been afraid that the Sovereign would think he’d been the victim of a hoax or prank. He hadn’t dared hope that he’d be thanked, but the power of recognition should never be underestimated.
In the elevator he pulled out his phone. Glen hadn’t told Falcon he could keep Gretchen updated, but he hadn’t seemed concerned about her being in the loop. He knew she might be asleep. So he texted.
FALCON: You awake?
GRETCHEN: Yes. You?
FALCON: Funny. Calling.
She answered as soo
n as she saw the Caller ID light up.
“Hi.”
“Hi. Just finished the meeting with Glen.”
“Glen? You call him Glen?”
“Not often, but you know. We kind of go back. He’s like a year and a half older than I am.”
“I guess that’s right. What did he say?”
“He didn’t seem bothered about you knowing, which is to your credit I think.”
“Good to know.”
“He’s going with me to meet Jax tomorrow night and he’s trying to get Ram’s sister to go with us.”
“Ram’s sister? You mean Sir Hawking’s sister? The princess?”
He heard the excitement in her voice and couldn’t help but grin. “You’re going fangirl about Aelsong Hawking?”
“Oh my gods. Aren’t you?”
“No. She’s just an ordinary elf.”
“Ordinary elf? You’ve met her?”
“Yeah. She’s pretty much a female version of Ram.”
“You mean the ordinary elf Sir Rammel Aelshelm Hawking, prince of Irish elves, and legendary vampire hunter extraordinaire?”
Falcon laughed. “When you put it that way, he sounds like a big deal.”
“He is a big deal!”
“Do you go fangirl when he comes into the Operations Office?”
“Well, yeah. DUH.”
“This is beginning to wear on my ego. Should I be jealous?”
“Yes. You, the only trainee to ever be decorated for valor in the history of Black Swan, should be jealous of Sir Hawking.”
Falcon enjoyed a moment of silence while he soaked in the pleasure of knowing she’d read up on him. “He’s married.”
“I know.”
“I’m not.”
“I know that, too.”
“So. You have to work in what? Five hours?”
“Yes.”
“I guess I should let you get some sleep.”
“You can let me try, but I think my heartrate speeds up every time I try to go to sleep.”
“Look at it this way. You know all those days and nights that just run together and didn’t make a mark in your mental journal? Well, you’re never going to forget this one.”
“You’ve got that right. I’m betting neither will you.”
FALCON: Resistance (KBS Next Generation Book 1) Page 11
