"How bad was it?" I asked.
"The mayor and three councilmen are dead, as are half a dozen police officers. About twice that many are in the hospital. Some of the vampires got away. We don't have a good count on that."
"Liz? Belinda?"
"They're fine. Liz is mad that she can't come here to see you herself."
I smiled then a thought occurred to me, wiping the smile away. "What about the vampire bodies? We've got to..." I started to sit up.
Ware held up a hand. "We took care of the bodies. All burned to ash. Those vampires aren't coming back." His face turned grim. "You appear to still be a target. Last night a vampire tried to get in here. He walked right past the guard at your door. If I hadn't been here..." Ware shook his head. "I tell you, staff does not like having gunfire in their hospital."
This time I did sit up. "You've got to get me out of here. They'll be back. More people will get hurt."
"Doctor says..."
"You know how I heal, James." I worked the fingers of my left hand. The muscle had barely started healing, but I could move them. "Just get me some food. Real food."
It took some time, but James got me released. This time he had clothes for me. And not only had he returned my dagger, but also my Kahr and the old revolver.
My most recent rental was still parked at the safe house. He stood near while I opened the door.
"So, this is goodbye?"
"I still haven't been able to get in touch with Matei. And nobody's answering at the office. I need to find out what's going on."
"I could drop a line to Nashville PD."
I shook my head. "As you've seen, I'm a target now, a big one. That means anyone near me is a target, too. Give my love to Liz."
James reached out and brushed the back of his fingers across my cheek. "Tell her yourself when you come back."
I leaned into his fingers. "Nashville. It's only five hours. What's that?"
"Nothing," James said.
James let his hand fall. I looked at him for a moment then leaned forward, rising on my toes, and kissed him.
"Take care, Detective." I put a foot into the car. "Your city needs you."
"And you...Dani. Make sure you come back here. Soon."
I smiled and sat. James pushed the door closed and stepped back.
My vision blurred as I backed the car out of the garage. Five hours, right? That was nothing.
Just over five hours later, I pulled into the parking garage next to the building containing McIntire Investigations.
Nobody had answered the phone when I had tried to call on the drive down, neither the office nor Matei's private line. I presumed Matei was still missing, but I did not know why the office would not answer.
My worry grew as I rode the elevator up to the fourteenth floor. The doors slid aside with a ding. Two lefts and I stood in front of the door to McIntire Investigations.
Dark. I glanced at my phone to confirm the time. After office hours, but someone should have been present. After all, with a vampire owner, the staff would be in the habit of working late.
I tried the door. Locked, of course. I punched in my key code. There was a click and the door opened.
I frowned as I stepped into the office. I flipped the light switch. Nothing.
I was suddenly aware that standing in the doorway I presented a perfect targeting silhouette. I drew the Kahr and stepped to the side, out of the light. Stepping sideways, I worked my way around the edge of the outer office to the inner door.
I paused and listened. Nothing. I opened the inner door and slipped through.
Only a glimmer of light illuminated the inner hallway, spilling around the blinds of the single window at the far end. Once again, I flipped the light switch but, again, nothing happened.
My first thought was vampires but...not only was it still daylight I did not feel the presence of any.
The first room I reached was the break room. Not just no lights but the normally ever-present hum of the refrigerator was absent. So not just lights then, I wondered. Power off entirely?
My small office was the third one down. When I opened the door, two large windows let in the early evening sunlight. One thing caught my eye, a large envelope sitting on my desk, my name printed in block letters with a signature that looked like Matei's below it.
I sat in my chair and picked up the envelope. Under it a folded piece of paper. I picked it up, company letterhead, and another slip of paper fell out of it. I caught the paper and saw that it was a check, made out to me. I opened the letterhead and my eyes grew wide as I read the contents.
McIntire Investigations had closed business. The letter was a reference, a good one, and the check was my severance payment.
I frowned. I had never been much of an investigator. Follow the occasional spouse as part of a divorce case, that was about it. I was a vampire hunter. Working for Matei gave me an opportunity to do that. Without McIntire Investigations providing a paycheck, how was I to do that?
And why now? Just when the Secret had blown wide open.
EPILOGUE
When I returned to my apartment I found the power still on. After my experience at the office, I was not sure it would be. I sat at the kitchen table and opened the envelope from Matei.
The envelope contained a folder of several official documents and a letter, written in Matei's neat, calligraphic handwriting.
Dani,
If you've received this package...well, there is no need to be melodramatic. You know the rest.
One cannot live as long as I without making plans for a great many contingencies. Recent events have concerned me, so I have updated those plans. I expect that somebody will buy McIntire Investigations now that I am no longer present but that someone will not be vampire or dhampyre. I could not justify passing it to you as, so far as the rest of the world knows, you are only a junior investigator at the firm.
Depending on exactly what has happened, you will find various documents. They will set you up as an independent investigator and allow you to continue your calling of ridding the world of those vampires whose actions threaten all. I understand that you consider all of us a threat but I also trust that you will first pursue those whose indiscriminate violence draws attention that none of us want.
There is a second set of plans against the possibility that the Secret is revealed. You will see those if that is what happened.
The documentation is authentic. All computer records match. I have provided funding that will help you get started.
You may not believe this, but I do wish you well. If it helps convince you, consider that my own safety, my own unlife, is dependent on you and people like you keeping other vampires hiding in the shadows. If their presence becomes known, war against them could easily spill over onto me. I prefer my comfortable existence.
If it is already too late for that, I will deal with that situation as best I can.
Take care and good hunting,
Matei.
I stared down at the letter for a moment, then set it aside. I opened the folder containing the other documentation.
I flipped through the documents, my eyes growing wider with each one. A subchapter S corporation, licensed for private investigation in...Indiana? A completed form for an Indiana carry license. I would still have to pay and submit fingerprints, but I had no doubt the state police would approve the license. Matei would not leave that to chance.
Descriptions of several possible office locations in Indianapolis and a broker recommendation to arrange the deal. The card for a moving company.
And to top it all off, a statement for a rather substantial account. Or not so substantial. I'd seen some of the expenses of McIntire Investigations, and that was with Matei's Push to smooth many things that would otherwise require money. It would last maybe six months, then I'd have to be making enough money on my own to cover expenses.
Indianapolis, huh?
I sat up and looked around the apartment. Aside from my m
odest cache of weapons, there was nothing I could not leave for the moving company.
Between the drive down from Indianapolis and the cross-town trip to my apartment I had spent most of the last six hours driving, I thought as I bundled up the documents. What was five more?
Frontispiece
About this Work
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
EPILOGUE
About the Author
Other works by David L. Burkhead
About the Author
David L. Burkhead is an Indiana writer of Science Fiction and Fantasy. He has also written on technical topics for The World & I magazine and High Technology Careers.
In addition to his writing, he works in a consulting laboratory in Atomic Force Microscopy and Nanotechnology. His work ranges from measuring samples in the Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) to refurbishing used AFM's for resale to writing software for measurement of AFM images. More than half the DVD production in the world, and the development of Blu-Ray, is supported using measurement software he wrote.
David L. Burkhead is one of the originators of the SpaceCub concept. In 1994 David and Geoffrey Landis proposed SpaceCub, a reusable manned suborbital rocket that would carry human passengers into space and back again. SpaceCub was intended for tourism and "thrill rides." In this way SpaceCub provided a model for private businesses to make money in suborbital flight, an approach that could, with incremental improvements, lead to private manned orbital flight.
David and Geoff presented the SpaceCub concept at the 1994 Northeast Space Development Conference, the 1995 International Space Development Conference, and other venues. Short articles appeared in Popular Mechanics and the Brazilian magazine Istoé and David was interviewed about SpaceCub for an AAAS radio broadcast. Shortly after these events, other people started talking about reusable, suborbital rockets to carry humans into space. As a direct consequence, Peter Diamandis created the X–Prize foundation and the original Ansari X–Prize. The prize goal could have been taken directly from SpaceCub's proposed specifications: a reusable rocket carrying passengers to an altitude of 100 km. This prize lead directly to the development and successful flight of Dick Rutan's SpaceShip One and to the ongoing work by the Rutan's and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic. Rutan and Branson, in offering private suborbital tourist flights, continues the model originated with SpaceCub.
Other works by David L. Burkhead
"Jilka and the Evil Wizard", Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy Magazine, Winter '91
"The Future is Now", Analog Science Fiction & Fact, April '91
"Match Point", Analog Science Fiction & Fact, February '93
"EMT", originally published in Analog Science Fiction & Fact, December '93
"Splitting Seconds", Analog Science Fiction & Fact, January '99
"Her World Exploded", Analog Science Fiction & Fact, April '05
"Time for Tears", Marion Zimmer Bradley's Sword & Sorceress (anthology), pub Norilana books, 2011
Survival Test, 2014
The Hordes of Chanakra, 2016
Big Blue, 2016
Alchemy of Shadows, 2018
Roaming the Universes, 2018
You can find an updated list at my blog: http://thewriterinblack.com/
The Unmasking (Dhampyre the Hunter Book 1) Page 24
