by Martha Woods
“That would be best,” Tabitha said, leading me over to the bench outside my apartment complex. “We were discussing how we were going to trap Alvin and we thought that you should know everything. Including what could go wrong.”
Well, that didn’t sound good. So far everything had been sunshine and roses, so even though it was necessary I almost didn’t want to hear it for fear of breaking the mood. It was a stupid thought, and it didn’t last more than a second, but for that second, I wanted to believe that optimism would be the only thing I needed to carry myself through this task. I was a crime scene investigator, I’d been doing it for years and I considered myself to be pretty attuned to the realities of the world, I’d seen more than enough evidence and more than enough bodies to show that no, optimism was not the only thing you needed to make it through.
But it always feels different when you’re the one in the situation doesn’t it? Like the situation will be different for you purely because it’s you in the situation and not someone else. For all my experience and all my knowledge, at the end of the day I was a human being just like everyone else, wasn’t I? Hell, I’m sure most of the vampires and witches that I’ve met in the time that I’ve been aware of their existence have felt that way at least once in their lives. Tabitha certainly had, Damon had before Vincent and myself rescued him, even Vincent himself probably wasn’t immune to those feelings.
At least, I hoped that he wasn’t. The thought of him sitting in nothingness in utter despair was far worse than him punching against the walls and swearing that he was going to be out in no time at all, despite the odds. At least there could be comfort in bravado.
“So, what is it that could go wrong?” I groaned, “Of course, there are a million and a half things that could go wrong, but what do you mean?”
Tariq sat next to me, steeping his fingers and taking a moment to find the right words. “It’s less something that could go wrong and more something that we should be prepared for as an inevitability.”
“Well that sounds even worse Tariq, maybe we should get right to it before my heart stops.”
“Alvin is powerful, as you know. Very powerful, which is why there is a high chance that he may be able to slip through my fingers before I can properly trap him for the ritual.” He leveled a finger at my chest, nodding to himself. “Which is where you come in.”
“Me? What do you need me to do?”
“He will likely throw up an illusion or assume another form once everything gets bad for him, maybe someone who is involved with the fight so that we don’t recognize him. The rest of us won’t be able to see through it, but I’m absolutely sure that you will be able to.”
Tabitha nodded. “You’re very powerful, even without knowing the full extent of your powers. To you, a simple illusion would just look like… a faint shimmer over their regular form, maybe not even that. I’m nowhere near skilled enough to see through that, and Tariq’s expertise lays in… other areas.”
I chuckled when I remembered the looks on everyone’s faces after they had tried to set Tariq and myself on fire, only to have it swirl up and flung back towards them, Tariq having worn possibly the most manic grin I’d seen on someone in the last few years. She was definitely right about that; his talents most certainly lay in places other than seeing through disguises.
“So, I’m supposed to… what? Sniff him out like a bloodhound while everyone else flails around in a panic?”
Tariq chuckled, nodding slowly. “I wouldn’t have put it in those words, but that’s essentially it. If he manages to slip away then it is important that you be the one to grab him and drag him back, any one of us would be more likely to hurt or even kill a complete innocent thinking that it was him.”
“How am I supposed to get him back?”
“With your powers, beat him into submission, even just trick him into following you.” He shrugged. “So long as he is still alive and breathing it doesn’t matter what it is that you do to him, we just need a living sacrifice.”
I put my head in my hands, letting out a muffled groan into my palms and massaging my rapidly aching temples. Only a year ago, hell even a single month ago I would never have even considered being a part of a human sacrifice. I’m a cop, have I mentioned that before? I’m a cop, I should be thrown off the force for even just a momentary lapse of judgement, this job comes with very important responsibilities after all. Sacrificing a human being… I’m just a forensic investigator, not the fucking Son of Sam!
“Yep, I… yep, sure I can do that,” I sighed, “Can we just… have a normal week after this is over? Is that too much to ask? I just want to curl up next to the two of them and actually enjoy some sleep, maybe forget the world exists for the next year.”
Tariq laughed, patting me on the back and nodding. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll do my best to help you get some peace and quiet. It’s not fair that we’ve all been relying on you for so much lately.”
“Well you know what they say,” Tabitha said, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
He quirked his eyebrow. “Who says that?”
“Oh, that was Peter Parker, he was a comic character and he…” I stopped, brushing my hair out of my eyes. “Never mind, I don’t have time for this. Tabitha can fill you in on the rest, I’ve gotta go and check Faye’s progress on the cage.”
“I understand,” Tariq said, the both of them nodding at me as I started to walk away. “Be careful, remember what we discussed.”
“You too, I’m gonna take you at your word that I’ll have some peace and quiet. God knows I’ve needed a real vacation for the last few years.”
“You’ll have it, I’ll do my best to make sure of that.” He gave a final wave, before turning and looking down at Tabitha. “Now, tell me more about Peter Parker.”
* * *
Rather than driving to Faye’s I figured I had enough time to spare to warrant walking, besides I’d been drinking, even just two drinks was too much for me to be comfortable with getting behind the wheel. Sometimes I thought that maybe I was a little too uptight about somethings, but there was nothing uptight about caring about the safety of everyone else on the road, there was a time for rebelliousness and it was not when you could be putting children in danger.
Not that I was certain that there were any small children roaming the streets at night. Unless they were vampires. Oh my god was there vampire children as well out there in the world? That must be terrible, stuck in the body of a twelve-year-old forever, no one would even pour you a drink. No wonder that girl went off the deep end in Interview with a Vampire.
Actually, becoming a vampire before you were in at least your mid-twenties sounds awful, no one would take you seriously, you’d constantly be carded if you wanted to go out at night, which is the only time you can go out, it’s the abysmal hell of your teen years multiplied by eternity. Not to mention what the temptation of all that power would do to you, I’d already felt like killing Ms. Cameron for making us learn algebra for weeks on end, imagine if I could have actually done that with no effort at all?
Oh right, you wouldn’t be able to go to school anyway, unless they had night school. Sure, you could probably stay with the other vampires and live your life that way like the triplets were, but what if you wanted to try and have something approaching a normal life? Can’t get a job without a degree, can’t get into university without a high school diploma, your done from day one.
Wow, maybe I’m tipsier than I thought I was, but there’s so much more to being a vampire that I’d never considered before. I’ll have to ask Vincent more about it when we get him back, I feel like he’ll actually give me a proper answer as opposed to whatever Joseph could cook up. Not that I wanted to say that I didn’t trust him but, well, I didn’t. Not to be overly personal considering that he was instrumental in helping me bring this alliance together, but he was still a power-hungry opportunist. I’m reasonably sure that I can count on him as an ally when it really counts, but t
hat doesn’t mean that he won’t try and trick me into doing a favor for him here and there.
I couldn’t blame him really, I’d do the exact same in his position.
But for now, I couldn’t shake the feeling of something tickling against the back of my skull. Not like someone walking behind me jiggling a feather against my skin, the kind where it was like an itch against your brain, where you could just sense someone watching you no matter how far away or what they were aiming to do. Given what it was that I planned to do in only a short few hours, there wasn’t much of a shortage of candidates for people that would be following me.
I took a left, walking further out towards the main street where the light was much brighter. There were more people walking around, even at this time of night, but my chances of drawing them out into the open were much higher this way. I just had to hope that they wouldn’t catch on before that.
I pushed my way through a small group of drunk students walking out of a bar, all of them quite obviously not of legal age to drink but that wasn’t my job tonight. I was suspended from the police force and sleeping with two men at the same time, one a hunter and the other a vampire, what right did I have to tell them how and how not to have fun? Still, that didn’t mean that I couldn’t at least find a use for them, in this case as a barrier between me and my anonymous tail.
Because if I had a hard time pushing through them, they would as well, except I didn’t have to worry about being hidden when I did it.
A grunted sorry and an errant shoulder here or there and I was through, ignoring the slurred protests and mumbled compliments on my ass. If they weren’t old enough to drink they weren’t old enough for me to be interested in anyway, no thank you. My passing through their lines, however, had done the job of riling them up more, all eight of the stopping in the sidewalk as they snapped out of their drunken, tired stumbling and loudly made plans for where to go next. Which only made it more obvious when they stopped in the middle of their plan making session to loudly ask why yet another person was shoving through them.
I turned as quickly as I could when I heard the protests, the sea of drunken teenagers louder than the horns of heaven while they tried to work out why so many people were taking it upon themselves to barge through their tight little group that was just trying to have a good time. Unfortunately, my anonymous tail was wise to my plan, shaking off one of the handier members asking what their deal was, shoving them aside and into one of the parked cars while they turned around to make their escape. When the student thudded against the side of the car and went down to the ground clutching their arm their assailant paused for a second, hiding their face but obviously considering to stop and help. Their urge to escape however was far more important, turning away after a second’s pause and running back off into the night.
Tempted as I was to follow them, I had a responsibility to help that student on the ground, I was pretty much the reason they were there, to begin with after all. Bending down to the ground it was apparent right away that they weren’t seriously hurt, they just couldn’t really get themselves up on account of the amount of alcohol that they had consumed, an almost dangerous amount if the smell from their breath was any indication.
“Wow… you’re pretty…” The drunken student tried to reach up towards me, or at least the second version of me that they were undoubtedly seeing, their hand sweeping through empty air and falling fruitlessly back into their lap.
“Alright, let’s get you up,” I said, putting their arm over my shoulders and pulling them up to their feet, not such an easy feat when you’re trying to haul up over a hundred pounds of almost dead weight. “God, how much did you drink?”
“Enough to have a good time!” He swept his hands down his front, trying fruitlessly to clear away some of the dirt caking his shirt. “You’re way nicer than that other guy, that guy was a dick!”
“Yeah, yeah he was…” I patted him on the back, shoving him towards his friends. “You be safe, don’t drink too much alright?”
He waved his arm at me, definitely ignoring the advice just like I would have when I was his age. Oh well, the amount of aspirin he’d be swallowing tomorrow morning would be more than enough of a punishment, it was for me after my first time. It only lasted for a week or so, but for that short amount of time, it was very educational!
It made me almost happy to see him and his group stumbling off together, arm in arm as they sought to go out and do something dumb that they would never remember until someone pulled it up on their phones in front of their family. It was nice to see that even though my world had been wrought with discovery and sorrow, fear and violence, at least there were still some out there who could take what they were given in life and find something fulfilling to do with it.
But even with that reminder literally right in front of me, that reminder to just go with the flow and worry about tomorrow when it came, I couldn’t help but wonder about who was following me. I hadn’t gotten a good look at their face, they’d turned to quickly for me to make out anything other than the side of their chin, but I could swear that they felt familiar.
I could swear that they felt like Rick.
Which was absurd, he wouldn’t follow me around like that, he wasn’t that unprofessional. And he definitely wouldn’t just shove some innocent person down to the ground like that and just walk away without helping, that wasn’t the man that I’d looked up to for so long! But, then I suppose that I only had to look in the mirror to know that everyone’s been changing lately, why would he be so different?
I’d already started to consider him kind of a coward for how he had been handling the case, hell in a heated moment I had almost called him one, which would have probably ended up with me handing him my ass and my career over to him on a silver platter. He was already investigating me for murder (Which again, I didn’t murder either of the people he suspected I had, I was just nearby at the time), calling him a coward on top of all that would just be incredibly ill advised.
Not that it would matter, I’d burned enough bridges at work by now that killing the secretary would just be the cherry on top, the rest of my team were already sexist asshats who seemed unable to tell their own asses from a hole in the ground, while simultaneously ignoring the body that was buried in said hole. Every case I’d investigated in the last year had been connected somehow to the paranormal which meant that there was no way for me to actually use the skills that I’d spent years studying legally, as there was no jury on earth that would ever believe “A warlock did it.”
What am I supposed to do if he’s actually following me? Try and convince him that I’m not going to go visit my friend the witch to see her progress on building a cage to keep the true murderer of those women prisoner while I sacrifice him to bring my second boyfriend the vampire back from literal purgatory like I’m some avatar of Dante? What sane person would ever even think that they would have a life like this? No wonder he thinks I’m crazy, I’m starting to think that I’m crazy!
Well whatever, at this point I’m not so much trying to prove my innocence as do the right thing if anyone has a problem with that they can sit and spin for all I care. I know corruption has been a big problem lately, in the last few years our own precinct had at least three people taken off duty with charges placed against them but come on it’s like the rest of them really do want to arrest the wrong people! So, either the rest of my team is utterly corrupt or they are astronomically incompetent, either way, they should not be allowed to investigate scenes or call themselves a cop anymore.
Maybe after all of this is over I’ll see if I can do something about that, Joseph does owe me a favor after all. It’s not like it would just be petty revenge, I’d be keeping the public safe! The petty revenge is just a bonus.
So, focused on thinking about the possibility of Rick following me and the utter loathsomeness of my colleagues, I hardly noticed that I was still walking until I almost bumped into the door of Faye’s shop, hand slapping against the gl
ass as I just barely stopped myself crashing into the glass face first.
Fumbling for the handle I pulled the door open, stepping in from the cold night and letting the familiar atmosphere of pulsing magic and calming scents drift over me, the aura so much more pleasant than the rest of the city lately. Assorted candles and charms adorned the shelves, different materials and products floating across the aisles to their proper places, the store is closed and not having to worry about onlookers. And behind the counter there she was, the punk rock princess herself, eagerly twisting screws in and carving runes into the metal of the rapidly advancing cage that was so integral to our plan.
In her hands anything was possible, there wasn’t a single person that I trusted more to do the job than her, though I expected that in her own way she would never let me hear the end of it. Not that she was boastful per se, there were just… some looks that she could give you occasionally where it was obvious that she knew how valuable to you she was. Not that I could begrudge her, I’d come to her for help more times than I could count, at that point, you deserved a regular ego boost.
“Hey Faye,” I said, walking up to the counter. “How’s it going?”
She grunted to acknowledge my presence, her tongue between her lips while she leaned in close to finish the etching on one sliver of metal. The design was intricate, beautiful, and judging by the pulses I could feel coming off of it, extremely powerful. I don’t care what tried, nothing was going to be coming out of there once it went in, this was a one-way ticket.
One she was done she placed the tools back on the counter below her, blowing a breath to clear the metal dust away before nodding in satisfaction. “It’s going well, the design is almost finished and the enchantments are ninety-percent complete, just need to finish putting it together and wrap up the final details.”
I nodded, knowing that it was going to be ready in time but still needing to ask. “When do you think you can have it ready by?”
