Burning Days (The Firsts Book 17)

by C. L. Quinn

“It’s clear down there. I’ll drive the van around and bring up the body bags.”

  Clean up. The worst part. How to get the bodies out, clean the room so forensics would never find actionable evidence, and build the lie for the victims.

  After they bagged and lowered the vampires to Barkley’s dark van, while Ben and he secured them for the final ride, Jack prepared two syringes.

  He stood over the shocked men who had seen most of what happened from the beds they lay frozen upon. Now able to move, they sat up slowly, their eyes still unfocused as the compulsions dissipated. Squatting, he caught their attention.

  “Hey, guys, look at me. You’ve been rescued. You’d say thank you, but you’ve been compelled to stay silent and it may take some time for that to wear off. Now, I’m going to inject you with something that will help you sleep and make you highly suggestable. This will all just seem like a bad dream. First, I need your names and contact info, so...wallets?”

  While he spoke, Jack searched through one of the vic’s pants pockets and found the slim wallet that held the three things most people carried with them now. State issued ID cards that included all licenses granted to the individual, money card, and car fob for access to their vehicles. He took images of their ID’s, replaced them, and then injected each. As they fought to stay alert, they listened to Jack’s voice.

  “You were attacked by three psychos who get off on hurting people. When you wake, you will remember nothing other than the detail that they attacked you and brought you here. You’ll realize you’re okay, that you’re lucky to be alive, you’ll get dressed and leave without saying anything to anyone. When you get home, because you don’t want any trouble, you’ll forget this happened, put it behind you, and go back to your life. Remember mostly this. You’re okay, and don’t go home with strange women anymore.”

  A few minutes later, Jack verified they were unconscious, checked to make sure they hadn’t missed anything, that the small amount of spilled blood had been chemically erased, then closed the door behind him as he left. He verified no surveillance cameras, which weren’t common in these low-rent hotels, and moved around the corner to take his brother’s car.

  Half an hour later, he parked beside the van in an isolated quarry that Elias’s family had owned for decades. Jack lifted the woman from the van while his brother and Barkley handled the two men.

  Pressed and held by Jack, a round orange button started a massive fire inside the facility.

  “God, let’s get this finished. I really need to go comatose.”

  “We all do.” Barkley groaned as he hoisted the heaviest vampire up onto the slab. “You know what I’d like? Four good weeks of sleeping at night and seeing the sunlight. Like normal people.”

  “Except we’re not normal people. You come from a long line of hunters just like me and Ben. Could you give this up? Just walk away?”

  “For a month, yeah. Fuck, people who cook hamburgers for a living get a freaking vacation. Why not guys who save an uninformed public from monsters?”

  “I agree with you, my friend. No one’s ever created time-off for the good guys.”

  “I’m doing that right now.” Barkley worked while he outlined his plan. First, he used a specially designed ax to cut through the neck on his vampire, easily severing the head. “Here’s my proposal. For every vamp a hunter captures and kills, they get a day off; so, capture 35 in one year, you get 35 days off. With perks.”

  Ben laughed as he disconnected the second vampire’s head from his body. “Perks? Like?”

  “I don’t know. A hot escort for maybe a few of those days?”

  Jack snorted. “Seriously?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, you two, you never have any trouble. I don’t know why, but the ladies find you irresistible. Now, me, they find scary.”

  “It’s because you’re so fucking big. Once a girl gets to know you, she falls for you, you asshole.”

  “How often does that happen? That we are around long enough for a woman to get to know us?”

  Ben shrugged. Barkley was right. Hunters rarely spent much quality time, even at their home base.

  “Yeah, training and tasks like this…” Ben gestured toward the three decapitated bodies they were preparing to incinerate. “…kind of kills the mood.”

  Jack agreed. He pictured the angel of perfection he’d seen on the shore tonight. Wouldn’t she be shocked to see the culmination of his night’s work?

  No. Hunters tended to hang with hunters. Sex was loneliness and libido on the road, sudden hook-ups, quick orgasms, done and thanks kind of affairs. It was all he and his family had ever known.

  Was this enough to base a life on? He thought about his father.

  Elias Remington had fathered two sons, each with a different mother. Jack’s had been a hunter from Louisiana who hadn’t any interest in raising a child, so when the baby was born, she’d looked Elias up, drove to see him, said “This is yours,” and walked away.

  Ben’s mother had been the outcome of a night in a bar. Elias hadn’t even known that the boy existed until he’d ended up back in that same bar three years later. When the woman recognized Elias, she’d been thrilled, thinking that he’d returned for her and his son. When he’d made it clear that wasn’t true, she’d beat the shit out of him with a broom handle, and he’d let her. Once she’d finished, she’d left the bar. Later, in conversation with a bartender, Elias discovered that she was a heroin addict who neglected the boy. That night he went to her apartment to find a skinny two-year old covered in filth, no food in the apartment, and a lot of spent hypo glides lying on the floor.

  Elias hadn’t hesitated, he’d picked up the kid, said, “I’m your daddy,” and took him. He’d checked two weeks later and found that she hadn’t even reported him missing.

  While he’d been a good parent, the boys always well cared for, Jack couldn’t remember any tender father and son moments. Honestly, Jack wasn’t even sure Elias had it in him. An older female hunter who’d known Elias for decades told Jack that Elias had been raised by hunters without hugs or kisses, so he’d never known what it was to be held and loved. Jack had come to accept that his father had done the best that he could. He’d stepped up and raised his boys to the life he knew.

  “Well, that’s it.” Barkley smacked his hands together after he’d pushed the third body into the furnace. Beheading the vampires was to assure they didn’t “come back to life” before they could properly dispose of them and eliminate the evidence that could implicate a team of hunters. Locally, Elias had developed a good relationship with Florence’s law enforcement, and even three police precincts between Florence and Seattle, but beyond that, legally, hunters usually broke any number of laws on a nightly basis.

  “Good. Great work in discovery and execution, Bark.”

  “Thanks. Five more in the clan.”

  “We’ll get them, but not tonight. We’re all exhausted, so home, showers, bed.”

  Palming his keys, Ben slammed the door to the oven closed and turned. “You’re singing my song. I’ll drive you back to your car, bro.”

  Nodding, Barkley stowed his handgun and grabbed his keys.

  Another successful vampire hunt, three vamps eliminated, two victims saved, and no hunter loss.

  “Good night,” Jack whispered as he followed Ben from the building and engaged the security and intruder alerts. Finally, time to go home and sleep until the sun dropped again.

  He’d crashed. Jack woke startled, lying flat on his back, one eye popped open as he rolled his head to see scarlet streaks through his floor-to-ceiling balcony doors. The colors told him the sun was nearly gone and it was time to rise. Sitting upright, he swung a single foot to the floor, but that’s as far as he could get.

  What the fuck? One eye didn’t want to open, his head felt like he’d been hit by a…oh, fuck, yeah...a vampire!

  “Ahhhh…” His groan ended in a sigh of resignation. Massaging the swollen skin around his eyes, he rose and made his way to the bathroom. “
Not exactly the first vampire right hook I’ve taken.”

  Kicking the water to hot, just shy of too hot, he stepped in and let the heat pour over his head. Not for the first time he wondered what it would be like to work a “normal” job. And not for the first time, he laughed at the idea of Jack Remington, raised with a gun in his hand, wearing a conservative business suit or service shirt that said Hi, I’m Jack on the pocket.

  Hardly. Still, although it was part of the job, the injury hurt like a mother. Lathering up, he ran the scrubby over his chest covered with old scars, down to his belly, which sported the remains of a deep slice, and further, to his cock. As his hand curved around the thickness, the image of the beach temptress returned, the memory of full breasts and pale eyes. His fingers closed around the girth and started to move up and down, faster and faster the more he let his mind build a fantasy image of her soft hands cupping those breasts, her fingertips squeezing erect nipples, his mouth moving toward them. His moan muffled, Jack came, pumping into the streaming water, the release the best thing he’d felt in a long time.

  It would have been nice not to be alone, but he appreciated the dream woman’s erotic assist in the pursuit.

  Fifteen minutes later, dried off, he slipped on his typical attire, army green tee shirt and stone-washed jeans, grabbed a reheated slice of pizza and headed to HQ. At his side, Jack carried a 10 inch dagger, 8 inch knife, and a rapid-fire Hi-Q 200 handgun, the newest on the market. His bike carried three high-voltage tazers and extra ammo for the gun.

  On one handlebar hung a tiny silver cross, representative of the old idea that vampires could be repelled by religious artifacts. The idea was silly and untrue, but the cross had been hung there by a sweet little hunter in Maine five years ago. She’d been a bright light in his dark career; two days of hunting and sex, so anytime he saw it dangling there, it made him smile.

  Headquarters was thirty minutes down the Pacific highway and ten minutes deep into a wooded area owned by Elias. Jack walked in to an office filled with monitors and keyboards on one side and an obscene number of weapons on the other.

  Elias Remington, at one of the terminals, looked up.

  “Ah, you’re here. Good job last night.”

  “Thanks. It was Barkley’s catch.”

  “I’m aware. Still, I give credit to any hunters who take the monsters. None of us does this alone.”

  Jack glanced at the screen his father had been perusing. Uncomfortable with praise from his father, Jack changed the subject. “True. So what are you after?”

  “Surveillance for a small band reported outside of Portland. Joey found a kill in an alley three days ago he’s certain is a vamp kill. He’s been watching a foursome that seems suspicious.”

  “He’s alone?”

  “For now. Dado is heading to him. He’ll be there by tonight.”

  Nodding, Jack joined Barkley and two other hunters already there, greeting them with a salute.

  A booming feminine voice from the entrance of the building made them all jump, except Elias.

  “What the hell are all you lazy-ass hunters doing hanging around here when there are fangfaces to kill?”

  A whirlwind blew into the nearly airless charmless room. Sanquinetta was back from her loan to a hunting group in North Dakota.

  Uniquely striking, the vivacious woman brought five feet ten inches of womanhood into what was a mostly masculine hunting group. Large breasts often encased in leather led her through the door after her loud entrance that basically announced Sanquinetta is in the House.

  Whenever any hunter was given a choice for a partner, most of the time, if she was available, San was their choice. Not only was the nickname her preferred address, but it was also her nationwide hunter’s handle.

  “Oooh, I can see how much you all missed me!”

  “Welcome back, San. I’ll be upstairs,” Elias commented quietly before he picked up his keys and bounded up the stairs to his chambers on the top floor.

  Jack moved forward to tug on one of several long purple braids that entwined through Sanquinetta’s naturally curly black hair. He noticed that even though she’d been on the road for two days, she still wore her signature glitter eyeshadow.

  “Hi, San. Glad you’re back. And since you are, and I don’t see any new holes in you, I assume the hunt went well.”

  “Oh, yeah, it did. Then, I had me some fine intellectual stimulation with the intended victim whereupon he thanked me repeatedly for several days following my service.”

  Shaking his head, Barkley grinned. “I’m sure it was a hardship for him.”

  “It was, very hard. He’s a teacher, college level, and he is not used to what Sanquinetta brought. Let’s just say I got a great big A plus, and teacher’s gonna need a few weeks to recover.”

  Jack took a mug of steaming coffee from the FP unit.

  “You’re a force of nature, like a hurricane.”

  Sanquinetta turned to him. “I’m a hunter. I take it where I get it. We fight hard, we play hard, and when we’re lucky, we love hard.”

  She moved up to him, her natural perfume enveloping him. Huge dark, pink-glittered eyes looked into his as she enveloped his face in hands with bright scarlet fingernails.

  “Jack, babe, we’re good at what we do, but what we do is dangerous. Any job could be the end of you so you need to get out and play all you can. Take some risks with people, babe, not just vampires.”

  She ran one of those long fingernails over his crotch.

  “There’s a whole lotta man here just waiting for Disneyland.”

  Across the room, Barkley nodded, only it was on his own behalf. He needed more than just battles and beheadings too. “San has the right idea, Jack.”

  After a long sip of the highly caffeinated coffee, Jack lowered his gaze to meet Sanquinetta’s. “No, you’re right, I agree. If I had been you last night, I’d have joined this vision of perfection I saw on the beach. I’d stopped to eat a sandwich Stacey made for me and saw something moving down there. After I grabbed the binoculars, I saw a woman that had to have been a dream.” He took another long sip, smiling after he lowered the mug. “And she was naked.”

  Sanquinetta whistled low. “Jack Remington, you go back to that beach tonight and see if she comes back.”

  “She won’t. She saw me. No woman is going back to a place where she catches a perv staring at her.”

  “Take a chance, Jack. If she was that hot, you ain’t gonna get her off your mind until you check it out. And when you do, if she’s there, you get your hunky ass down to the sand and meet her. You wanna spend your days all alone in that big beautiful house you bought?”

  “San, I think we all are.”

  “No way, buddy. Just because my pappy raised me as a hunter doesn’t mean that’s all I am. Someone will come along someday and when he does, I’m gonna become a housewife with a kid and a dog.”

  “Bullshit. You’d be bored within a month.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I still plan to give it a try.”

  Reaching for some cookies that looked homemade, Jack shrugged. Damn, these cookies were homemade. It had to be Stacey.

  “I hope you do. I hope it’s all you ever dreamed of. You deserve that life, safe, happy, and God knows, you shouldn’t let this DNA die.”

  “You know it. I’m gonna go enter my report.”

  As she walked past Jack, she touched his palm.

  “Jack, go back to that beach tonight, or tomorrow night, but if that woman’s there, take the leap. Go talk to her. Honey, she ain’t gonna turn down all this pure bottled-up manhood.”

  “Lady, you could almost make me believe day is night.”

  “Wouldn’t that be interesting? Leap, Jack. I’m off to finish my job, then get some sleep.”

  Jack helped Barkley search surveillance video for the remainder of the vampire group he’d discovered.

  An hour later than everyone else, Ben showed up, tardy, which was getting common lately, and hungover.

&nbs
p; “Coffee, dudes.” Wheezing his order into the FP, Ben took a huge gulp as he joined Jack and Barkley. “So, what are we on? Looking for the other five?”

  “Yes, with no luck,” Barkley answered.

  “They’re camera shy.” Jack watched Ben struggling to focus. Something was going on. His brother had binged after they broke up last night? That didn’t make sense. Ben had been running on empty, just like Jack and Barkley; he should have gone straight home to bed. It seemed to Jack that another surveillance was needed. He had to find out what his little brother was up to.

  Suddenly, his life felt overwhelming.

  “Barkley, Ben’s going to help you finish this. I need a little fresh air.”

  Ben and Barkley stared wordlessly as Jack, usually the last to leave, headed out the door.

  Back in the cool night air, Jack perched on the seat of his bike. He hadn’t been lying about that; he really did need some air.

  Last month had been an especially bad month. Over those thirty days, they’d identified and eliminated sixteen vamps, over twice what was typical in a month’s time. Twice the battles, twice the beheadings, twice the guilt and stress. Twice the deaths.

  They were vampires, killers, so he didn’t carry any regret for them. The attempt to keep the executions humane made the task less awful, but in the end, they were all aware that they were killing vampires who used to be people. It left a hole in his spirit that an argument could be made that he was a justified murderer.

  Innocents would die if the hunters didn’t do what they did, every hunter knew that and accepted the reality without question…it had to be done.

  Starting the engine, Jack moved slowly down the hidden lane that led to HQ, back onto the Pacific highway, his mind busy with concern for Ben, his need for a break before pursuing Barkley’s new vampire group. Approaching the overlook he’d stopped at last night, he slowed, smiling. Perhaps Sanquinetta was right. Perhaps his moon goddess would be there again and perhaps he should follow his orders to go down and meet her.

  “You’d probably scare the shit out of her,” he whispered out loud as he slid into the graveled spot above the beach. Staying on the bike, the straddle pushing against his cock, he spoke again. “She won’t be here.”