by Sharon Green
"… might not know what's happening for a while yet," Sheldon Ford told the man on the floor with a horrible smile. "It's too bad I didn't have the time to trap more than the vampire's room, but that should do an acceptable amount of damage to those freaks. When they come storming down looking for me all they'll find is your body, since I'll be long gone. Consider this your payment for daring to cater to those my people consider subhuman."
The man was able to take only one step toward the man on the floor, and then I was next to him and had his wrist in my left hand. When I squeezed just a little his fingers opened, which let me take the hypo out of his grip.
"If anyone around here is subhuman, you're the one," I growled to the fool who stared at me in shock. "If you don't like someone you stay away from them, you don't decide to kill them off. Now you can tell me about those supposed people you just mentioned. Putting down fanatics is a hobby of mine."
"You – you freak!" the fool screamed out, rubbing his wrist a minute before closing his hand into a fist. "I won't tell you anything, and what's more –"
Suddenly his left hand went to his mouth, and before I could stop him he'd swallowed whatever he'd held. A moment later he began to convulse, and then he collapsed to the floor and kicked for a minute before lying still.
"He's dead," Eric said, the disgust in his voice a perfect match to what I felt. "Fanatics was the right word, Taz. They'd rather die than take the chance of being forced to talk about their friends."
"Which leaves us a big zero in the way of answers," I agreed with a nod. "Amiol, how's that other man doing?"
"He just seems to be bruised," Amiol answered as he continued to take the tape from the man's wrists and ankles. He used a pocket knife to cut the tape away, which means the man had to take the tape from his mouth himself.
"You must be the Rogues people I was expecting, which means I owe you more than I can say," the man told us in an unsteady voice as he sat up and rubbed at his wrists. "I'm Sheldon Ford, one of the owners of this hotel, and I hate to think about how close I came to being the late Sheldon Ford."
"That's the name your erstwhile captor gave us," I said after my teammates and I exchanged glances. "How did you end up a captive?"
"That man said his name was Arnold Vessey, and he said he wanted an apartment," our host explained, shaking his head. "I gave him the welcome speech I'd put together then showed him around, and he seemed to like what he saw. We came back downstairs, supposedly so that the man could get his luggage from his car, and then the lights went out for me. I woke up in my bedroom, taped and gagged, and there was nothing I could do to get free. When I saw the intruder come in here again and start playing with that hypo I nearly passed out, but then he all but froze in place and a few minutes later you folks showed up."
"Which means that you don't owe us any thanks, we're the ones who owe an apology," I said once Ford ran down. "You had trouble because of us, so if you'd like us to go somewhere else now…"
"Absolutely not," Ford stated as he forced himself to his feet. He was a tall man with brown hair and eyes, only a little different than the impostor. "I flatly refuse to let crazies tell me who I can and can't have as guests, and my partner Jack will feel exactly the same when he gets back tonight. But that intruder said he hurt one of your team members. How badly hurt is he?"
"He's not hurt at all, thanks to Taz," George put in as he materialized in the room. "I've just been checking out the rest of the house, but there aren't any other intruders. Now that things are quieting down, I'm going to take a closer look at the rooms upstairs."
Ford blinked when George disappeared again, and then he grinned.
"I'm going to love having you folks as guests," he stated as he looked at me and my teammates. "So what do we do now?"
"Now I get to call my friend who arranged for our being here," I said, putting the hypo down on the nearby dresser beside a kit the hypo must have come from before reaching for my cell phone. "I can hear Oldon and Freemont coming down, which must mean George told them all the action was over. Mr. Ford, do you think you can disconnect whatever it was the dead man put into the middle room upstairs? You'll have to be very careful doing it, in case the fanatic booby-trapped the arrangement somehow."
"What kind of something did he put in the room?" Ford asked, now looking more disturbed. "And please call me Shell."
"It was a very bright light putting out ultra-violets that would have destroyed our vampire teammate," I answered. "Maybe we'd better wait until we can get official help."
"That may turn out to be necessary, but I want to take a look anyway," Shell came back, still not happy. "I'm the one who will be taking care of any electrical or plumbing problems that turn up, but I won't mess with anything I don't understand. If I do need help I'll certainly let you know."
Once I nodded to show the man I agreed, he added his own nod and then left the room. I would have enjoyed being able to leave the room myself, but I wanted to make sure no one snuck in and made off with the body – or the body suddenly stopped being dead. Paranoia, alive and well…
Shell had stopped to speak to Freemont and Oldon, again doing some apologizing, so I found Allison's number on my phone and chose it. Her phone rang only twice before I had her on the other end of the connection.
"Hi, Taz, are you all settled in already?" she asked, happiness still clear in her voice. "If you aren't, take your time and we can talk again later."
"There's something we need to talk about right now, Allison," I disagreed immediately. "If there's anyone at all close to you, can you find a place to be alone? And finding another place might be best after all if you're in your office. We all have a problem."
There was a momentary silence and then Allison spoke again, still sounding happy and friendly.
"That sounds like a good idea, but I'm going to have to call you back," she said. "I just got another call, this time from Mother Nature, and she doesn't allow call-backs. It won't be long, and then we can chat."
"Sounds good," I agreed, and then we both switched off. I kept the phone out and in my hand while looking over at my teammates. Freemont and Oldon had just come into the room, which was very good timing.
"Allison is really fast on the uptake," I told everyone. "She understood immediately that she could be bugged, so she's going to call me back. I just hope she uses a phone other than her own."
"In case the bug is in her phone," Amiol said with a nod of understanding. "But I've been thinking, Taz. Maybe I ought to go upstairs with Shell, to give him some backup. In case you were right about that light device being rigged to hurt anyone playing with it."
"That's a good idea, but only if you're very careful," I said after almost no hesitation. "You'll need to protect the both of you, and if you can do that you and Shell might also want to check out the other rooms. As a just-in-case."
"No problem," Amiol agreed with a grin, then he strode out of the room. The others watched him go, then Eric stirred where he stood.
"I think I'm missing something here," Eric said slowly as he carefully chose his words. "If Allison's phone is bugged, won't the enemy already know we've found out about them?"
"All the enemy will know is that there's a problem, which is what that lump on the floor was supposed to produce," I explained. "He must have reported in right after leaving us, and that's why he hadn't already killed the real Shell before we got down here. His people will have no idea that we stopped the fool, so they'll be feeling really good. We'll just have to make sure it's a while before they find out the truth."
"I think I have a different truth for you," Oldon commented as he stared down at the body. He held his hat again, and certainly hadn't taken off his coat. "That isn't really a body, at least not a dead one. His life processes have been slowed way down, but he's still alive."
Freemont and Eric made sounds of surprise, joining the small noise I made. I hadn't heard the sound of a heart beating, so that had made me assume the man was dead. Eric had obviou
sly done the same, which left the two of us feeling like fools.
"So he's waiting until 'the body' is left alone, and then he can come alive again and escape," Freemont said, doing the same kind of staring at the "body" that Oldon was. "I'm sure we're still here in this room because of your suspicions, Taz, which means your paranoia deserves a second set of thanks. And I have a question for Oldon."
The vampire looked at Freemont with encouragement in his expression, so my partner smiled.
"Do you think you can … take control of that man even though he's unconscious?" Freemont asked. "If you can, then we can have him come to us instead of running to his friends when he's awake again."
"Now, that's what I call a constructive question," Oldon answered with a grin. "I've never tried taking control of someone who was unconscious before, but there's no harm in experimenting. If the trick works we'll be ahead of the game."
"And if the trick doesn't work, George will have to take over," Eric put in with his own amusement. "He can watch the 'body' until it revives and then follow the man, all without anyone knowing he's there."
"I think George will be watching no matter what," I said, really enjoying the direction of the conversation. "If George is there we'll know what's happening, so we won't have to guess or hope. I'll have to tell Allison to make sure there's no autopsy done immediately–"
At that point my phone rang, so I answered it. I was hoping it was Allison calling back, and it was.
"Tell me what's wrong, Taz," she said as soon as I answered the call. "I'm in a small office that's currently out of use and I'm on the office's phone."
"Hopefully that will do it," I said. "We're at the hotel we were brought to, but it wasn't the real Sheldon Ford who met us. The man had knocked out the real Ford, and had set up a trap to destroy our new vampire member."
"Damn it, one of my people has been bought," Allison snarled, her anger so clear it was almost as if she stood right next to me. "No one else knew your team was coming back to the city, and only a few of my people had the details about when and where. I grant you it's possible that someone put bugs in our offices and I'll check out the point, but I think we'll find that someone has taken a bribe."
"Or they belong to the group out to destroy us," I corrected, making sure she understood all the angles. "We avoided the trap and grabbed the impostor before he could kill the real Ford, but the impostor took something and now he's on the floor. We thought he was dead, but Oldon tells us the man is still alive. I want you to know that, to make sure any autopsy is delayed, but to all intents and purposes let's pretend the man really is dead."
"That's a good idea," Allison mused, obviously thinking about all the ramifications. "Once he wakes up we should find out all we want to know when he gets where he's going. I'm going to send out a small team to look over the hotel and dismantle what was put in Oldon's room, and then they'll bring the 'body' here. You aren't going to leave the intruder unguarded until they get there, are you?"
"Of course not," I assured her. "And once you have the 'body,' don't set any guards on him. I'm going to ask George to do our looking, and also any following afterward."
"And there's a second good idea," Allison approved, her tone warm. "We probably won't get anything from the man's fingerprints, but we'll still make the effort. And please make sure his cell phone is available, so we can find out who he's been in touch with. Even if he wiped the log, our people might be able to retrieve the data."
"Taz, tell Allison I found the man's cell phone, but he wiped the log," Freemont put in as he looked up from the phone he held. Freemont was the only one in the room who couldn't hear both sides of the conversation, but that hadn't stopped him from using his head.
"Allison, Freemont says the man did wipe the log," I passed on. "But it occurs to me that his cell provider should have some information on the man, even if that's a burn phone. And he had to have bought it somewhere."
"Exactly," Allison agreed. "The people I'm sending will be ones I'm sure of, but we still don't want them to know what we've just discussed. I'm going to hang up now, unless you have something else you need to talk about. I want to get those people on their way to you."
"No, that's it for right now," I said. "Just check for bugs everywhere, so next time I call you won't have to go into hiding."
Allison laughed shortly, a sound of faint amusement behind annoyance, and then we both disconnected.
"All right, I've tried the experiment," Oldon said from where he crouched next to the intruder. "This rogue should now be under my control, but we'll have to wait until he wakes up to know for certain."
I nodded to show I understood, but there was another point I began to understand as well. Oldon had called the man a rogue, which might be the only way he could make himself act against someone. If that was true, the vampire had to be operating under a set of rules that most people weren't able to match. Talk about a code of honor…
"It looks like the device in Oldon's room wasn't trapped, because Shell was able to disconnect it," George reported as he materialized near us. "I also haven't been able to find anything out of place in the other rooms, but Shell is going to check them out anyway as a just-in-case. How are things going here?"
"Things are getting interesting here," I answered, giving my partner a smile that had very little amusement in it. "Oldon told us that our friend on the floor there isn't really dead. He took something that slowed his body down enough so that he looked dead, but he'll be coming awake again at some time. I told Allison to make sure an autopsy isn't started on him, and also not to have him guarded."
"So that he can be followed when he wakes up and just walks out of the morgue," George said with a nod. "That's a good idea, and I'll be the one watching him, of course. We do want to know where he goes once he's free."
"It's possible he won't be going back to his friends," Freemont put in with a better smile than mine. "Oldon tried putting the rogue under control, but we won't know if the effort worked until the rogue wakes up. If he comes to us instead of going to his friends, we'll be able to ask him where the others are."
"That and a few other questions," George said with another nod. "Good work, teammates. We'll get them before they get us."
Eric, Freemont, and Oldon all agreed with George, but I spent a moment noticing that Freemont had obviously picked up on Oldon's use of the word rogue – and had used it himself on purpose. I'd known all along that Freemont was a sensitive, but now I knew for certain that he was just plain sensitive too.
In just a few minutes Shell, accompanied by Amiol, came down to tell us that it looked like none of the other rooms had been disturbed.
"I tried using a spell to make sure of that, and the rooms seem to be clear," Amiol confirmed. "But at the same time I noticed a problem that we'll have to fix as soon as possible. We have five rooms, but only one coffee pot."
Those of us who were living made sounds of shock and dismay, sounds that made George and Oldon grin and laugh. Those of us who were bothered by the very important point Amiol had brought up ignored the two barbarians among us, but we didn't have long to discuss the matter. Five minutes later someone rang at the door, and when Shell answered the door the someone, along with three others, turned out to be Allison's people.
"I think you know why we're here," the first man said as he held up an ID after they all came close to the room we were in. "I'd like someone to guide two of my men to the room that was booby-trapped, and the third and I will take care of the body."
Shell volunteered to play guide, so he and two of the newcomers went upstairs. George looked at me before disappearing, which meant he would keep an eye on what went on. The other two men came into the room and looked down at the body, one of them immediately crouching next to the unmoving rogue. That man produced a device that he used on the rogue's fingers, taking fingerprints the easier, high-tech way.
"He isn't in the system," the man reported once he'd finished his job and done something with the d
evice. "But there's a good chance he's a licensed driver, so we ought to be able to identify him that way."
While the man spoke he pulled out a camera and took the rogue's picture, then he sent the picture somewhere. Probably back to his office, so someone could run the photo against the Motor Vehicles database. Meanwhile the first man had bagged the cell phone Freemont handed to him then did the same with the hypo and its kit, with the second agent using the time to check the rogue's pockets.
"No ID of any kind, but there are car keys here which ought to help," the second man said, holding up his find for the first man to take. "If we can locate the vehicle, we should be able to trace the ownership."
At that point there was another ring at the door, which the first man went to answer. The second batch of newcomers turned out to be morgue people, who put the rogue into a black body bag and then onto the gurney they'd brought in. After that they were able to wheel out the gurney, and the rest of us were able to leave the room we'd found Shell in.
The two men from upstairs came down, followed by Shell, and they had the light device that had been put in Oldon's room. The device didn't look particularly sinister or threatening, especially when it had been put in a big plastic covering, but it had still come close to ending our vampire teammate.
"I've located the vehicle the dead man came here in," the first man who'd spoken said as he came back inside after the morgue attendants had left. "We'll have the vehicle towed to an impound lot, and then people will go over it to see if they can find anything worth knowing. I was asked to tell you that someone will be back in touch with you if or when something is found."
We all nodded to acknowledge receipt of the message, which let the last two officials turn and leave. Shell closed the door behind them, then turned to us with a weary smile.
"Since the subject of coffee has come up, why don't we all go into the kitchen and get some," our host suggested. "After we relax a little, you folks can go and choose your rooms. "I'll take all the keys upstairs, which will let me give the appropriate key to each room's occupant."
