Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires)

by Donald Wigboldy

  Waving off the idea, Lenora casually walked to stand behind the chair Vicky had taken. “Please, like there are any worthwhile candidates in the club. They’re just children or men that are dogs. I need a more cultured man, maybe someone a bit older that could teach me things?”

  “You’re still a child yourself,” Nicola stated. “Maybe you should enjoy that feeling before no man looks old enough to you, even a wrinkled old man.”

  Wrinkling her nose in distaste, Lenora came around the chair and settled next to Nick pushing Charlotte aside as if the werewolf didn’t matter.

  “There are always a few that will be older if you look for them. You seem to have found a good one, who still looks young,” Lenora stated before taking a sip of her drink.

  Unfortunately for the dismissive vampire, Charlotte did not appreciate being shoved aside one bit. Her anger was driving her to put out more pheromones in warning to threats to her potential mate. While the strange chemistry between her and Nicola had kept the werewolf from growing in hostility, Lenora’s nature made Charlotte as angry as Nicola.

  Sniffing the air, the derisive vampire asked, “Nicola, have you decided to wear some unpleasant new cologne or maybe it’s Nicky? You didn’t buy him that did you?”

  Covering her nose to show her disapproval, like a trap sprung, she missed as Charlotte’s hand found its way to her neck forcing the vampire back against the couch with a heavy thump that made the wooden frame beneath creak. The werewolf’s claws dug into the vampire’s flesh making her squeal in surprise and pain. Fangs grew in her mouth, but beyond that Charlotte held onto her humanity.

  Speaking into the blonde woman’s ear quietly, the werewolf warned her, “That isn’t cologne. It is the scent of a female werewolf in heat. If it smells bad, that means I don’t like you. I would guess that smells really angry to you right now, since I have to say that I really, really don’t like you at all.

  “Just because Nicola’s been nice enough to not rip your throat out, doesn’t mean I won’t. I mean, with my hormones all messed up, no one could really blame me if I accidentally killed you, now could they? It’s just the animal inside of me after all. I could tell everyone that I don’t remember a bit of the enjoyment of your blood on my hands after killing a brat like you. They’d probably believe me too.”

  Lenora’s eyes flicked from Charlotte, with her fangs altering her smile into a wicked grin and the slightest hint of color making her brown eyes appear amber, to Nick and Nicola as she pleaded, “Are you going to do something? I’m a vampire. You should be killing this thing not having tea with her.”

  Spreading his hands at the plea, Nick played along with the girls he was closest too explaining, “I’ve never killed a werewolf before, but I kill more vampires than I save. It would just be par for the course.”

  Nicola grinned evilly and added, “Why would I help you? I actually like Charlotte.”

  The blonde vampire eased back and Nick noticed no tension in her for the first time since Lenora entered the room. As if Charlotte were an extension of her anger, the vampire seemed content to let the werewolf do as she would. Even Vicki didn’t move except to take a drink from her glass. It was as if the red headed vampire were watching a movie wondering what the outcome would be.

  “You’re on a werewolf period?” Lenora asked sounding as if her throat were partially closed by the pressure of Charlotte’s grip on her neck. Blood was dripping down her neck from where the claws bit deeply. The question was her attempt to try and make the werewolf laugh or at least stop a moment to think.

  Instead, as Charlotte added a second declawed hand to the back of the vampire’s throat and moved to kneel on either side of the vampire’s legs, she smiled grimly before replying, “Big time, so I suggest you apologize to Nicola and leave.”

  “Sorry,” the blonde quickly gasped as she began to turn blue. She couldn’t turn her head to see Nicola, so it was all she could do. Releasing her grip, Charlotte sat on Nick’s lap with a thump. Her left arm encircled the back of his neck and shoulders as the werewolf settled comfortably on the mate she desired.

  Lenora remained brazen enough to rub her neck before standing up from the couch almost leisurely. “Well, good luck with her, Nicola,” the vampiress said sounding like she actually meant her rival well for once. Glancing down to the blood on her dress, the woman added, “I guess that I will need to change before I go mingle.”

  She looked to Vicki to follow her, while the red head glanced to the three virtually bundled together before sighing. She placed her feet on the floor and smiled genuinely at the three before shrugging. Following the bloodied blonde, the woman silently trailed after the woman to her bedroom.

  Nicola glanced over the back of the couch to see the two women disappearing into the bedroom. Her right leg kicked Charlotte in the rear playfully, and she ordered without malice, “Sharing means leaving me room. Get on your side.”

  The werewolf smiled at Nicola as she took a similar position on his other side. Her legs went over his rubbing against the vampire before both leaned into him from either side. Nick shook his head thinking how his life seemed to keep getting more complicated.

  When Marek, Jake and Audrey entered the living room from the rear entry to the sound of the television playing a late night show; the vampire leader was surprised to see who was on his couch. The usual crew of vampires, especially the younger ones, would watch television more than the man born more than half a century before the first tube versions were invented.

  “Since when do werewolves and vorans sit on my couch watching TV into the wee hours?” Marek asked with amusement. Charlotte and her brother Logan were well known to him, though neither had visited his club before that as far as he knew.

  “Since I had to start sharing Nick with Charlotte,” Nicola sighed before getting up. Moving to the kitchen; the blond, still wearing her party clothes though her boots had been kicked off for awhile, found a glass before pouring some orange juice and vodka together.

  Moving towards the blonde vampire, who he had once thought he loved; Marek asked as he judged her face for hurt or pain, “What do you mean you’re sharing him?”

  With a giggle that the girl didn’t completely mean, she replied, “Not that way.”

  Shaking his head and realizing that he was unlikely to get the full truth from the vixen, Marek wandered into the living room to sit in the chair held earlier by Vicki. He noted that Charlotte looked tired as she leaned against Nick, and his keen senses also noted a strange scent in the air. “I probably don’t want to know what this is all about, but you might want to know that we ran into your felines tonight.”

  Nick sat up straighter disrupting the brunette slightly making her pull her legs off of him to cross them in front of her before leaning back into the voran as if she was meant to be there. “You fought them?”

  “Not exactly,” Audrey said as she found her way onto Marek’s lap. While not always the warmest of relationships in touching, the two had been in love for decades. She still surprised him from time to time with her sudden shows of affection however. In fact, the vampire thought that Audrey had been unusually so all night as if something had made her want him more.

  The woman continued to clarify after putting her arms around his neck settling her legs on her long time lover, “We never even got close enough to see what they really looked like. They had heads of cats or lions or something along the line, but they were using smoke grenades with bits of silver inside to blind and choke us, as if their stink wasn’t enough,” she finished wrinkling her nose.

  Marek nodded even as Jake settled into the chair directly opposite them with an aggravated sigh. “They threw the grenades at us to block our path; then set a trap of them on the roof of the vampire they’d slain. By the time we were able to regain the roof to look for them, they were gone.”

  Jake added, “I couldn’t find any sign of them even by scent.” Gesturing to Charlotte, he offered, “Maybe one of them could track these things,
but I couldn’t.”

  Looking unsure if she should be offended, Charlotte let the man slide. Nicola rejoined them taking back her spot and position with her legs draped over Nick. This time the werewolf didn’t join her, but simply remained sitting in the crook of his arm.

  Audrey resumed the conversation as she nodded to Nicola, “I was sneezing even before they attacked like you thought might happen. The grenades still caught us off guard. These three are definitely vampire hunters.”

  “But they didn’t attack you except to drive you away?” the voran asked analyzing the strange encounters. “I wonder what makes you different? Could voran blood make you enough like a human that they don’t feel the same about you?”

  “There were three of us tonight,” Jake replied, “and you were maybe an unknown last night that they didn’t want to face. Rightly so, if they knew what you could do.”

  Looking at his right hand a moment, Nick contemplated the aura blades that he could project from his hands and other points in desperation. He wondered if they would have any affect on these new creatures. While they could kill lesser vampires and stun elders a bit, werewolves usually reacted like they had been hit by a taser; though he had never intentionally tried to kill one of them anyway. What, if anything, could they do to these cat people?

  There were too many unknowns and the distraction of Charlotte wasn’t helping him find out what they might face. It was obviously becoming a greater concern as their patrols were beginning to run into these unknown hunters. Worrying about his people being on the wrong side of these cat hunters made him wish that there was a way to track them, but that was impossible so far.

  When Charlotte began to yawn, he started to excuse himself, but Nicola joined him telling him, “Give me a minute to grab some clothes. I’m coming over so we can all talk.”

  Wincing, Nick confessed, “We took the Mercedes.”

  Rolling her eyes irritatedly, the vampiress shook her head complaining, “Of course you did. Fine, I’ll get mine and follow.” She looked at Charlotte meaningfully and asked, “Maybe you want to ride with me, mine’s a convertible and it’s a nice night out for the top down.”

  Without fear, Charlotte nodded and smiled. “Sounds fun.”

  Nick suddenly really wished he could bow out and go on patrol.

  Chapter 8- Red Lace

  As Nick took his Mercedes back from the valet, Tara, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he should check out the scene of the latest encounter with these strange cat ninjas. Since the girls were taking Nicola’s Miata, the voran would have the car to himself to go check. Once the sun began the day, the likelihood of finding anything would become improbable since he would have to wait until the following evening. Checking roofs and leaping from buildings was hard to keep unnoticed at night with security cameras in so many places, but by day too many eyes would be traveling through the area.

  Picking up his cell phone, he speed dialed Nicola. “You two go back to the apartment and get settled, I want to check the building where Marek ran into these cats first.”

  “Coward,” the vampire giggled through the speaker. “You just don’t want to sit down and talk things out with the three of us.”

  “There shouldn’t even be things to discuss,” he sighed, “but this will be the only chance I get at this with it fresh.”

  While the vampires all had extremely good senses, including smell, Nick had been a hunter and tracker before meeting Marek. Even in the modern world and its cities, there were things that the voran might notice that the others would not.

  “Don’t take too long or we really will think you’re being a coward,” cautioned the girl still sounding amused at his expense.

  Parking a block south of the place where the encounter had happened, Nick found his way up to the roofs. It was strange how comfortable the voran was on rooftops, a place few humans tread and few cared to. A fear of heights was a bad thing to have for a voran or vampire on nightly patrols. Luckily, he had never had that fear. In fact, he had no real irrational fears. While Nick vaguely remembered having a few when he was young, maybe it was another part of being a voran.

  Sniffing at the first roof that had been the initial attack on the vampires, the man realized many traits had upgraded after his fateful meeting with Marek so long ago. He often wondered if he used his skills the way God or nature wanted. While he killed the out of control vampires, Nick had taken pity on Marek and his band. Giving them some of his blood to keep them close to human, not animals out to kill for blood, and in fact making them into his allies against other vampires; had he in fact gone beyond his base nature and theirs?

  Vivian, his mentor, had known of his relationship with Marek and never tried to change it. While she never encouraged it, he wondered often if the woman watched them together wishing she had the courage to befriend one of their kind. He had never seen the woman kill a vampire, but had to assume that at least part of her extended life came from use of her powers. To have them and never use them seemed a waste. It was part of what had made him leave her in a way.

  While killing vampires wasn’t his goal in his heart; living isolated from the world, as Vivian had begun to do, was something he had done for a short time before he decided to move back into the world. He had maintained his relationship with Marek and through him his coven, even at his most withdrawn moments. The voran had felt a responsibility to keep them sane. It was either continue to draw enough blood to keep them from killing or kill them to end their misery.

  Lost in the past, the voran’s attention to every detail in the present was still extended to his fullest ability. Despite any misgivings he might have, Nick still had to discover the identity of these new feline vampire hunters and the first roof yielded little to his investigation. Silver glittered in the moonlight from thin amounts spread across the black tarred roof. It had been enough to deter the vampires but not truly harm them other than making their skin a bit red. The vampire hunters didn’t seem to see his pet clan as a true threat. Twice they could have attacked and twice they had run away.

  The roof that the creatures had attacked from had a lingering scent of feline. It was down wind of the building Marek’s team had been crossing. Without a voran’s sixth sense, they had never smelled a trace of the ambush. Neither had the rogue they had been pursuing. Somehow the hunters had happened upon them and been able to make it to the position before the vampires. Had they seen or somehow sensed the vampires coming and lain in wait?

  Questions he couldn’t answer without finding the hunters had to be pushed back for later. There was little to be found on the second roof, so he moved on to the place of the rogue’s execution. While the word was strong, it seemed to be just that.

  There were little signs of struggle, unlike the parking garage battle. This vampire had been fast, but once cornered it had proven weak. Was that because of a weapon used on it here, unlike the fight the night before; or was it simply an untrained fighter and rabbit to these lions?

  Glitter was everywhere and Nick could see the casings left behind by the silver laced bombs. Like smoke bombs used to disperse a crowd, these would do little to harm a vampire as long as they gave way to the cloud. The small bits of dust from the dead rogue remaining from the clean up of the vampires clouded any possibility of discovering how it had been killed, but it mattered little, he supposed. It was the last part of the trail where he hoped to find the real clues to help him find these creatures.

  Leaping to the next roof, he scanned the area with his senses. The smell of feline lingered and the voran was able to trace the pattern as he began to sort out three different individual scents. Two were muskier, the males, while the third had a sweetness to her that made him think it must be a female. The smells were partially masked by that of the felines they must be at least partially transformed into, unlike werewolves; they didn’t maintain the certain after scent of the feline like they did of wolves. Even Charlotte, pristine in her bathing habits and well put together most days, held
a bit of the animal on her that he could track whether she was in human form or wolf. These creatures were able to change their scents and probably bodies completely.

  The three descended to the street two buildings beyond and cut to the east. Nick not only searched the ground for traces of their trail and possible changing area, but the walls and roofs of the buildings around them. Taking out a notebook, the man jotted down the building number from across the way. It had a set of cameras watching the street in front of it. He doubted they had the angle he needed to see his sidewalk where the cats had walked or run away, but the voran might get lucky.

  A second building had a camera on his side. It monitored the front door, but there was a second camera inside pointing out. He wrote down the number.

  Half a block farther along, the feline’s disappeared. While the smell of the cats was lost to his sense of smell, Nick knew enough of their base smells to follow both the musk and sweetness of the human side of these creatures. Passing two more camera covered buildings, the trail ended where they must have switched to a car.

  Exceptional tracking or not, the voran couldn’t follow a vehicle. Using his phone’s digital camera, he took a picture of what may have been the tread marks of their vehicle. They were faint and likely to be useless to him, but there was always that chance. He walked another block finding more buildings with cameras. Writing down each, Nick hoped that maybe he could get lucky to catch the getaway vehicle on film with one of them.

  Checking the time on his phone, the voran sighed. Two AM. Leaving now he would have to face Nicola for sure, but he could hope that Charlotte would be too tired to remain awake.

  Maybe he was a bit of a coward, Nick thought with amusement.

  The sword in its scabbard was thrown on a chair to his left as the third figure closed the door to the apartment hard. A light was thrown on by a brown skinned man dressed in black, who looked to the last to enter with a frown.