Logan shook his head and said, “We trailed some deer, but never really hunted. The chase is most of the fun. Even wolves don’t just kill for the sake of killing.” The big blonde haired werewolf didn’t actually say they were wolves for anyone paying attention around them. They were all used to hiding the secrets of the supernatural creatures.
His eyes looked up noticing Charlotte’s return and the woman had Nick move into the booth just in case she had to return.
“Sorry, that was weird. I was just nauseous, but I feel better now,” she assured them quickly.
Raina was new to the group, but she asked Logan, “So I can say goodbye to most colds and flu then? How about allergies? I haven’t even thought about them since that night in the preserve.”
Charlotte shook her head answering this one, “I used to have several allergies and never notice them now.”
“Well, that will be nice,” the dark haired forest ranger replied. With a job that meant being outdoors, curing allergies was a big help. “Spring used to be very miserable depending on what was blooming. I guess I picked a great profession to have allergies,” she finished with a chuckle echoed by the others.
When the food came to the table, Charlotte went white and hurried back to the restroom. Something was definitely wrong with her and that worried everyone especially her brother the doctor. “If she doesn’t get over it quickly, bring her in to the clinic, Nick. I can do tests now and hide the results easily enough that I can bring in more unusual clients, if we need to do that. It’s another perk of working for a struggling clinic. As long as nothing illegal is done, I can make sure that a lost blood test isn’t a problem if I have to.”
“Don’t get yourself into trouble, especially legal trouble, since that will bring you under a microscope in a hurry,” the voran warned him. Too often people believed that they could get away with things and then found out that other eyes were watching them close enough that they were wrong. The courts were full of such cases. Logan was smart enough to hide his trail well, but it was still worth avoiding such actions if possible.
Nodding, Logan replied, “We’re still pretty understaffed. Even without trying to hide things, some of the tests get lost and we have to run them again. It isn’t the best organized place, though we do help a lot of people.”
“The stress isn’t getting to you?” Nick questioned one of the worries the werewolf had that originally made him quit.
Logan shook his head and his eyes spotted Charlotte returning once more. “No, I’ve had enough time to get a handle on that. I also understand what I am more than I did back then, plus I have had time to get over our parents’ deaths even if I don’t forget.”
Kate’s hand went over his looking guilty, but no one said anything of their past.
Charlotte stood next to the table and sniffed the food before sitting, “Ok, I think that did it. I’m good now.”
She daintily cut up her eggs and French toast, but pushed her sausage onto her brother’s plate. At his look, she smiled and said, “No sense pushing it and I don’t need it.”
A werewolf not eating meat was unusual, but Charlotte often avoided meat as another way to deny the animal inside of her. Logan ate and said nothing more of her sickness, since she was right and made it through the meal without any other problems.
Returning home, the werewolf used the bathtub soaking in the hot water until it was cool to both rid her of the dirt and grime of the forest, thanks to mud and rain, as well as relaxing her after being sick. Nick wasn’t greeted by the other girls who had given up and simply gone to bed. With the sun up and no one home, they hadn’t bothered to wait; so he turned on the TV to the news and opened his laptop to catch up on the world.
The “disturbance on Fulton Street” was on the sixth page. Reports citing possible vagrants and other strange sounds from the building didn’t raise any suspicions. While a popular area, the economy had created more homelessness, so finding a large space out of the rain was bound to draw a few. Traces of fires and food had been discovered, but no mention of anything found in the basement was mentioned.
It was a good thing, but it made Nick wonder if they had managed to slip away through an underground tunnel or perhaps the sewer system despite all the rain water pushing the system to near capacity. Had the basement entry simply been hidden so well that police hadn’t looked close enough to find it and the vampires hidden under the structure?
He hadn’t received a call from Alad and Lamassu despite the time being late morning. This was another cause for concern, so he tried dialing Shedu’s phone and received no answer. While the voran didn’t have the phones of the other two kasha, he assumed that they had their fallen leader’s phone. If they were ignoring him, that might mean they had returned to the building without him to finish the job. Though he might expect it of Alad, he had thought Lam to be more in control than that.
Charlotte returned from her bath looking refreshed, and dressed in a pair of cut off jean shorts and a white tank top short enough to expose part of her mid drift. Still toweling her mid length hair as she came to sit by Nick on the couch, she asked, “Something wrong?”
“Alad and Lamassu aren’t answering the phone and I haven’t heard from them. We were going to check the nest for a basement to get rid of the last of the vampires hiding there.”
Raising an eyebrow in question, the young woman asked, “Maybe they are still dealing with Shedu’s death? If someone like Eric had died, the houses would have come to a stop to give him a funeral before doing anything, I think.”
“Unless they knew part of the reason for his death could be found somewhere; and if they didn’t get revenge during the day, they might not ever get the chance. Then Ray and the others would be on their way as soon as possible, don’t you think?”
Releasing a big sigh, the woman couldn’t dispute his logic and replied, “Ray and some of the others definitely. This Alad is a lot like Ray in that way isn’t he? I mean he’s a bit impulsive.”
Nodding, Nick said, “I’m going to get changed and head over to the unfinished building and see for myself.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Dressed like that? You might manage to distract him from revenge,” he chuckled placing his hand on her exposed stomach and rubbing her smooth skin admiringly.
Grinning, the woman ran her hand up the arm and said, “Flatterer, fine I’ll put something less enticing on for you, but this is just a tank top for Pete’s sake.”
He leaned over making her lie back onto the pillowed arm rest to kiss her on the lips. “I can’t help it. You look good.”
Breaking quickly after, Nick looked on Nicola lying in his bed as he changed with Charlotte. A last kiss on the blonde vampire’s cheek sent the two out of the apartment wondering what they would find at the Fulton site.
Chapter 28- Hidden Souls
He had called Detective Tucker en route to the nest. Giving Fred the place and approximate time that the two reapers had taken off in their car, he hoped that it would be a true lead like his finding the kasha; but realistically he knew most vampires didn’t go through the DMV or necessarily bothered to use their own vehicles.
While Marek and his people had been able to work the system with a little help along the way to both own a club and multiple cars, many vampires simply used glamour or stole what they wanted from their human prey. Still it was worth a shot and was something that he could use to help sway the kasha if they were on a rampage, as he feared might be the case without Shedu’s guidance.
He knew Fred would do what he could while the trail was still fresh, but now it was up to Nick and Charlotte to make sure that Alad and Lamassu weren’t just making things worse for everyone. They arrived after parking down the street from the building where police tape had come to stand out starkly against the green painted plywood walls along the street.
Charlotte marveled as they walked up and said, “That’s a big building.”
While the comment was obvious,
it was no less impressive in size by daylight than it was in the dark when it appeared massive and forbidding. “The reapers hit it with just ten men, while the others numbered at least forty. There were very few attackers, but the forty were concentrated on the lower floors. Even forty vampires trying to defend such an open, large building meant there weren’t a lot per floor.
“They were armed with guns and other weapons with silver on them, so they were pretty prepared even so. It was supposed to be a trap for the hunters, but they wound up decimating each other while we waited for them to wear down. It worked better than I would have thought.”
As they neared, Nick halted closing his eyes to try to sense for the vampires he had felt the night before. They were still hidden directly beneath the structure, which surprised the voran. He would have thought that they would have attempted to leave to avoid discovery. Since they hadn’t left, the man guessed that the entry must be well hidden and wondered if it was even on the ground floor of the building.
While checking for the vampires, he had also felt the two kasha as well. Alad and Lamassu were on the southern roof and had so far erred on the side of caution with a handful of police monitoring the entry and walking around the outer wall. Another group of humans was apparently trying to make sense of the concentrated fires distributed around the various floors. There was no wood ash or other remnants of normal fires to find, so the voran could assume that they would be confused.
“Lam and Alad are here, but haven’t made their move on the nest yet,” he said to the woman walking beside him as they walked across the street to the pair of police officers guarding the entry.
“Sorry, folks, but there’s a crime scene here, so you need to move along,” the dark skinned officer said with a wave of his hand. His eyes were covered by his mirrored sunglasses, but his set jaw made Nick understand that he didn’t want to be bothered.
Pulling out his press pass and a second pass given him as an outside consultant to the police force, Nick gave the man a firm smile and nodded, “I was called in to investigate. Strange scenes like this are my specialty.”
He could see the man’s brow furrow having never heard of such a thing. His contacts had been able to get him special license to get behind the tape years ago, but the authority behind it still remained.
His partner seemed less likely to balk and he didn’t disappoint, “Well, if you have the badge, I guess it’s all yours, but what about her?”
“She’s my assistant, if you don’t mind?”
Charlotte smiled prettily and both officers couldn’t help fighting smiles of their own. In tight jeans, and almost as tight of a t-shirt; the beautiful brunette could sway almost any man.
“Well, make sure not to touch anything or disturb the examiners while they work,” the first officer said apparently looking over Charlotte from behind his glasses. Gaining a nod from the second officer, who didn’t have glasses masking his appreciation of the slender brunette; the two moved inside of the plywood walls and police tape.
Once inside, Charlotte asked, “What are we looking for exactly?”
“The door or whatever that the vampires use to go below ground. We can wait for them tonight to see if they’ll just come out, but getting them by day certainly minimizes their effectiveness and alertness to fight.”
His eyes and sense of smell were well beyond simple human abilities, and while vision might not discern their hiding place he was hoping that maybe smell might detect a common trail to a door or hatch. They started by circling the outside of the building looking for traces of passage, either visual or of scent. With Charlotte along, a werewolf whose sense of smell even in human form exceeded his own; Nick hoped to discover the secret of the hidden vampires.
With the entry on the northeast corner and going clockwise in rotation to the big building, the two actually minimized the first part of the search, even if it was the longer walk. Nick hoped to catch something either outside the overhang of the open stone floors or be close enough to catch something nearer the edge. Their walking of the grounds wasn’t unnoticed, however, as they passed in view of the kasha on the southern roof. Some of the investigating police and examiners spied them as well, but no one made a move on the two until after they had come around to the open ground on the north side of the building without finding much more than crossing trails into the fortress of the open stone building.
A pair of detectives by their dress walked over to the two walking the cleared north side of the square giving them curious looks. The woman with dark hair and eyes appearing of Hispanic background stated with a thumb towards the structure, “What are you doing out here? The building is where the action of our crime scene is.”
Nick smiled at the two and nodded, “We were getting the lay of the land first. Foot traffic outside leads inside, so discovering where they come and go lets me get an idea for how many people might have been here and how they came and went.”
The detective’s partner a older, taller man with brown hair starting to gray said simply, “There’s a gate right there. It isn’t hard to figure out where they came in or even why. Bunch of squatters found a big place to hide at night which kept the rain off their heads.”
Nick nodded at the simplicity of the man’s observation, though in some ways his answer was also correct. The vampires had used the structure and some of the building material sitting unattended to created basic structures within the huge shell of a building. Restaurants and businesses surrounded them or were very close, which gave them access to victims nearby, but also meant places like meat companies around them would be quiet at night for their activity.
Following the detective’s logic as he didn’t want to actually let him know the truth that the voran knew, Nick mused, “So a bunch of squatters organized, took over this place when no one was looking, and used some of the plywood and other building materials to make places to stay? No one in the surrounding buildings ever reported them coming or going through the single open gate area? So you are telling me that none of them tried to go over the fence? It’s only about six feet high; so to avoid being noticed none of them chose a different entry point?”
The detective opened his mouth wanting to dispute the fact, but couldn’t as Nick added, “There are a couple big pieces of machinery that might make a secure place to sleep as well, if they weren’t all together and communal living. I mean men and women in such conditions always get along peaceably, right?”
Charlotte added, “Though the police were called because of shots being fired and explosions. Some weird roaring and all that shooting inside obviously mean that they were getting along really well.”
“How did you know all that?” he asked suspiciously.
Nick took over the discussion and said, “Detective...?”
“McTeer, Detective Patrick McTeer and my partner, Detective Anna Sanchez; we were called in to check the place out and find out if it was gang related or something else.”
“And was it gang related?” the voran asked appearing inquisitive.
“I can’t comment right now, but you’re a reporter; if you’re supposed to be a special consultant then I’m sure that you will figure it all out and tell us,” the detective said crossing his arms defensively. His partner looked uncomfortable with his dealing of Nick and Charlotte, but he was older and probably senior to the woman.
Shrugging at the detectives, the part time reporter said, “It happened after most of the businesses were closed for the evening, even the restaurants nearby; so finding eyewitnesses will be unlikely. Those who had reported gunfire also gave the TV news crews enough to start, so it isn’t exactly a secret. What I am here to do is to get deeper into what happened as an independent reporter.
“I can also give my findings to my contacts in the force, which is another reason why I am here,” he reminded them of his right to be there as Nick fingered the two passes on a canvas necklace dangling the two cards.
With the two detectives not giving them any space, he
suggested they lead the way inside, though his eyes were on the subfloor that he had not even realized was there from the south or west. A slope led down below the main eight stories and was probably designed to be either a parking area or for trucks to supply the building. A sign on the southwest corner inferred that there would be food courts and areas to sit. He wasn’t sure if the lower part would be a food center and sales area like several of the buildings downtown had, but if that was the case then the sloping floor for food trucks made sense.
What made even more sense was that this was likely to be the place the remaining vampires had found to disappear. The police had barely given the basement a glance since there had been no gunfire or fiery explosions there. Merely looking for evidence of fighting, vandalism or obvious habitation might not lead them to look closer at a hidden door. He needed to get down there without being noticed or they would have to stake out the nest until nightfall or longer to see if they could end the threat.
“If you need to go to the third floor or above,” Detective McTeer was saying as he tried to control the man with the credentials to invade his crime scene, “then you will need to use stairway one on the east side of the structure. Number two is cordoned off because some idiot decided to drop a pipe bomb or something in the stairwell. Forensics hasn’t determined exactly what was used in the explosions so you need to stay out of those zones as much as possible to avoid contaminating them.”
Nick nodded, though he knew that there was little that he could do to confuse the bomb experts and forensic scientists. There had been no true bomb, just vampires dying from silver weapons, which would be unlikely to fit any of their usual lists of materials used in explosives. He merely had to humor the detectives until they tired of him, so that he could move to the truly interesting point of the building, which was outside of their narrow thinking.
On the first floor, they could see remnants from the fighting the night before, but with no bodies or blood thanks to the clean up of Nick and Marek’s people they were at a loss. Detective Sanchez was more forthcoming on that note as she said, “There was definitely a fight going on; but other than shells and blackened stone from explosions or fire, there isn’t a lot that we’ve found to point the fingers at a gang or anyone really. Homeless people don’t usually arm up the way these must have been.
Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) Page 38
