Quick Study

by Katherine Kim

  “Come on up. That’s all of them.” He called quietly. “There’s more not too far though, so hurry.” He was crouching over the body of one of the elves from earlier, when Shiny had brought them dinner. His gun was now slung over Darien’s shoulder with the first, and he was going through the man’s pockets.

  “Well, that’s probably the best I can get for now. Don’t need to be loaded down, just not completely unarmed.” He muttered. She saw that he was clipping a knife into his belt and picking up something that looked like a toy gun. Then he stopped for a moment and yanked the elf’s collar down and smiled. The guard’s necklace was the last thing Darien took before standing up.

  “What—“ Caroline was cut off when he dropped the necklace over her head.

  “It’s not much, but it will help protect you.” He said.

  “How? Didn’t help that guy.” Caroline pointed out.

  “I didn’t use any magic. That amulet won’t save you from being punched in the face repeatedly, but if someone slings a spell or something your way, that’ll deflect it. Well, it’s supposed to at any rate. I don’t know where he got it, they’re not super common.” Darien was leading her around the workstation in the middle of the kitchen towards the door that was, in fact, in the outside wall. Freedom here we come.

  Outside the house the stood in the darkness that clung to the building. Clouds drifted across the sky, occasionally obscuring a full moon so bright that it cast shadows. Her mother called it a spotlight moon and always sighed romantically about it. Right now Caroline wished for less romance and more dark-and-stormy-night. If any of the elf kidnappers glanced out the window they’d be seen instantly. There was nothing between them and the fence in the distance but lawn, even if it hadn’t been mowed very recently, there was still no chance of hiding. If she was cat, maybe it would be some cover. Huh, was that a thing too? Werewolves and stuff? She’d have to ask when they weren’t in danger of being killed painfully.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Darien whispered. “They’ve picked this place very well.” He scanned around and gestured towards their left. He almost faded into the darkness at the foot to he building, and Caroline was almost unable to follow him. But she had this weird feeling in the back of her mind. She’d noticed it first when they were exploring the basement but in the acute adrenaline of their escape she’d ignored it. Now, however, she really paid attention and the only way that she could think to describe it was that it felt like she had a compass in her mind and the needle pointed towards Darien rather than north. She just knew which direction he was in.

  She caught up to him while he was peering around the corner.

  “I know where you are,” she whispered.

  “I should hope so. You’re leaning on me,” he whispered back. Caroline took a deep breath to prevent herself from smacking this shoulder where he crouched.

  “I mean—“

  “I know what you mean.” He turned to her and smiled briefly. His voice carried stress and worry and curiosity. “I know where you are too. It’s one of the effects of our pact.”

  “Oh.” Caroline blinked. “Pact?”

  “Yeah. Because you allowed me to feed from you directly. And no, I’m not totally clear on all of the effects. Like I said, I’ve never done that before. I do know that I am deeply invested in keeping you safe though. More than I was as just a cop. I can’t really explain it, it’s like…” He shook his head and rubbed his hand across his chest, and she could hear his confusion and frustration. “We’ll figure it out once we’re out of here.”

  “Okay. What’s our next step, boss?” She asked.

  “See that pool house?” he pointed, and she nodded. Pretty soon that cloud there is going to douse the moonlight. We’re going to make a run for that building and we’ll get around to the other side, out of sight of the house. Then we can get to the fence and out. After that it’s a matter of just going till we hit civilization and I can check in with my team.”

  Caroline nodded and they crouched in the shadow, watching the slow movement of the cloud. As soon as the last glimmer of the moon’s white disc faded from sight, the two of them were pelting across the lawn towards their next shelter. They got there and Caroline leaned back on the wall, dragging in huge gulps of air.

  “I’ve never liked gym class, but I swear I am going to take it seriously from now on.” She gasped when she caught her breath.

  “Take a moment. We have a little time. Not much, but a few minutes.” He glanced at her before turning back to the corner of the small building. It was basically a whole separate house, as far as Caroline could tell. It was two stories, and was plenty big enough to have a couple of bedrooms. Rich people, she scoffed silently.

  “Ready?” Darien interrupted her thoughts, and she just nodded. Oh man was she ready to get away from this place. She watched him turn and start moving towards the fence, the cloud still hiding the moon. Guess our luck’s holding. Caroline took a step and watched Darien stop cold, like he walked into a wall, and started swearing.

  “What—“ she didn’t get any further when he spun on his heel and dashed straight at her. He bent down and scooped her up over his shoulder and tore back to the main house like the hounds of hell chased them. He didn’t stop until he was around the far corner and crouched between some bushes and the foundation of the house, burying them deep into the shadows even when the moon peeked out from the other side of the cloud.

  “What the hell, Darien?” Caroline whispered when he put her down to crouch beside him in the dirt and old mulch.

  “They have a shield ward around the place. I should have guessed they would but dammit. Dammit, dammit.” He scowled and muttered under his breath. Caroline had the feeling that he was swearing at himself.

  “Once again, explain the situation like I don’t know anything about magic?” Caroline nudged his arm. He glared out from the bushes then cocked his ear towards the side of the building he’d run around. After a minute he huffed a short breath then turned back to her.

  “A shield ward is like a magic wall. Think of it kind of like a filter. It will let some things though, like birds or rain, but both other things, like enemy attackers or bullets. There are plenty of ways around them, but I don’t have anything on me that can get us through. All my stuff was taken when they took me down that first time. Dammit!” He growled the last word. Caroline didn’t need any special skill at reading people to hear the anger and frustration in his voice that time.

  “So… nobody can get through the invisible wall then?” Caroline asked. Darien rubbed his hands over his face and listened hard again.

  “It’s worse than that, Caroline. It’s so bad I’m actually a bit off balance. The implications…” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment before continuing. The situation wasn’t already bad? “Shield wards have to be dialed in. If you’re under threat of attack by, say, trolls for example, you have to set it up specifically to keep trolls out and not the mailman.” Caroline nodded. That made sense.

  “I’m pretty good at reading wards. We’re all trained for it, it’s pretty standard stuff for our unit because we come across them all the time, but I guess I have a knack for it. That spell ward is for humans and other elves, which makes sense. But it’s also warded against vampires, trolls, ogres, tengu and brownies.” He sounded crushed. Almost hopeless as he spoke.

  “So… they’re really locked down then?” Caroline asked. “That’s pretty tough, but I bet there’s some way through somewhere.” She wanted to comfort him, because frankly, if Darien couldn’t help her escape, she was toast. There was no way she could navigate through this situation on her own.

  “You don’t understand.” Darien said. The look in his eyes was as bleak and defeated as the tone of his voice. “That’s a very specific group of people. They know about who is on my team. They know about me. Someone on my team is a traitor.”

  6

  Caroline managed to coax Darien out of the bushes and back into the house
. He decided that the safest place for them for the time being was right under the noses of their captors. They found a window that was cracked open and once Darien decided it was clear, they hopped inside and ducked through the darkened room to wedge themselves behind some armchairs in the corner. From there, they crept through the house to find somewhere more defensible. The elves inside were not quite in an uproar, but there was a significant amount of activity inside. Darien was adamant that fighting any of them at this point would only draw the whole group down on them.

  Finally, they crept into what had probably been a store room for the kitchen. It was full of shelves and there was a large mirror screwed unceremoniously to the back of the door. Dust lay thick everywhere in the room, and Darien guessed that it wasn’t big enough to be useful to the gang. Still he stood by the door, listening, for a long time before turning away and sitting beside Caroling on the floor.

  “So… no backup then?” Caroline asked.

  “Not unless we can figure out who it is. I’m not going to risk your safety.” He shook his head and snarled.

  “Do you have any thoughts on it?” she asked. She could hear the anger still simmering away in his voice. The betrayal must really hurt.

  “Not really.” Darien sighed. “I don’t know these guys very well yet, honestly. I transferred about four months ago, so I’m still the new guy.”

  “Wow. So tell me about them? What’s it like being a… what do you call yourselves anyway? Paranormal? Superhuman? Imaginary-but-not-really?” Caroline asked. Darien laughed, and she was glad. It was a definite improvement over depressed and angry.

  “Paranormal, if we have to. Mostly we just call ourselves people.” He shrugged. “A lot of us don’t have a lot of interaction with humans. It’s dangerous. Humans can be very… ummm…”

  “Don’t hold back now,” she said.

  “Reactive?” He glanced over at her.

  “You were going to say violent, weren’t you?” She screwed her face up at him.

  “Hey, I am the last person to cast stones like that. I know the reputation that my people have.” Darien shrugged. “But… it’s true that historically speaking humans have not reacted well at all when they discover one of us living nearby. Generally speaking, at any rate. You seem to like to imagine that things like us exist, but when presented with the reality, humans get scared and panic. Again, just a generalization, but that seems to be the way it usually works. You, Caroline, have surprised the hell out of me, honestly.”

  “Yeah? Well, it’s been one of those days, I guess. After being stuck in a robbery, caught, kidnapped, passing out, and imprisoned, I didn’t have much room for panic when the nice guy who tried to keep me calm and relatively safe turned out to be a movie monster.” Caroline shrugged.

  “Really?”

  “What?” Caroline shot him a quick grin. Darien just rolled his eyes and shook his head.

  “And your talent has helped you know friend from foe, which is an incredibly useful skill,” he continued. “I don’t think you’ve appreciated it, really, but think about it. How would most people react to everything I’ve told you? You’re not panicked at all.”

  “No.” Caroline drew the word out slowly. She frowned at the floor, and turned it over in her mind, looking at the situation. He was right. Pretty much anyone else she could think of would have lost it when they woke up in a basement dungeon, and then to have the person they were trapped with tell them calmly that he’s a vampire and their captors were elves? Even if they didn’t believe him they’d freak out.

  “You’re right, though. I can tell you’re not lying to me about all thins. But I’m not exactly calm either,” she confessed. “I’m just too wound up in it all right now to cry. I’m saving my nervous breakdown till later when it’s all over.”

  “You’re doing great.” Darien said. “Now we need a plan of some kind. I want to say we’ll get to a phone and call for help, but…”

  Caroline stared at the floor.

  “Hey. What were you doing when you got jumped by the bad guys?” she asked.

  “We got an anonymous tip that something was going to go down near the town hall today. It was broad daylight and that makes it tougher for the brownies to get around in a busy place like that, so a couple of elves and I were sent over to scout around because we can blend in easily.” He shrugged.

  “By yourself? Don’t you cops usually have partners or super spy earpieces something?” Caroline asked.

  “Have you ever seen an ogre try to blend into a human crowd?” Darien grinned. “It’s actually pretty funny. No, I don’t have a permanent partner yet. I’m still the new guy and the chief didn’t want me on his team in the first place. So I was sent to scout around the back and report back.”

  “By yourself.” She said. She wasn’t looking at him, but she sensed him still.

  “Yeah. By myself. I was supposed to call in from the coffee shop on the corner at two,” he said. “Obviously I didn’t do that, so they know something’s gone wrong.”

  “Is there anyone on your team that you think you can trust? Maybe I watch too many movies, but I have a bad feeling about this.”

  Darien fell silent, thinking through his teammates.

  “Yeah. I could maybe call Point. Well, I could call the switchboard and they could get him a message.” Darien frowned. “He’s been less ambivalent about my transfer than the rest of the team. I can’t really blame them, I guess.”

  “Why?

  “I, um. I didn’t leave my old team on the best of terms.” Darien shifted, wincing when one of the guns slid and banged off of a bruise.

  “Oh yeah? What’d you do, go rogue to catch an terrorist boogeyman?” Caroline asked. It clearly wasn’t, but at this point she felt that social niceties were a luxury she couldn’t afford. She needed as much information on this hidden paranormal society as she could get if she wanted to survive.

  “No. I um,” Darien shifted again. “The sort version is that I dated my boss and it didn’t end so well. She got really jealous and possessive, then she got angry and vindictive. The rest of the team thought I was sleeping my way up the ranks, and when it all came crashing down, I had to go somewhere else. It was kind of complicated and scandal-ridden at the end, and it turned out I was pretty seriously manipulated, and, well…”

  He hated the way whatever it was had ended, she could tell, and he definitely didn’t tell her everything. But he wasn’t lying. Just trying to avoid poking at a sore spot.

  “Wow. That sucks. Guess the old ‘don’t date at the office’ thing is a really good idea, huh?”

  “Yeah. Words to live by, when you get into an office.” He sighed.

  “Do your new teammates know about it? Is that why you’re not all buddies?” She asked.

  “No. They know I left my old team under a cloud, but not why. And part of my transfer agreement once I was cleared was that nobody would talk about it. Officially sealed records and so on.”

  “Wow. But you told me.” Caroline said.

  “You’re not technically on my team.” Darien answered, then a pained look crossed his face. “Besides, I can’t seem to actually lie to you. It’s not quite as strong a compulsion as keeping you safe, but it’s definitely in there.”

  “Well that’s certainly good to know!” Caroline grinned, her eyes twinkling. “I need to think of some really good questions. Maybe ask embarrassing questions about your childhood. Obviously.”

  “Obviously. I’m scared now.” Darien laughed.

  “Ok, so to review, so I’m sure that I’m keeping up. You’re a vampire cop captured by an elf supremacist group that robbed the local history museum that nobody cares about. Somebody on your team that knows what you are— and that’s a small group, you say— has tipped them off, and possibly set you up presumably to get you out of the way. I got caught up in it all by accident and now, because you drank my blood straight from the source you’re sort of indentured to me in a weird way. And we’re trapped in this house
with the bad guys because of a magic invisible wall.” Caroline ticked her points off on her fingers as she went. Darien nodded after each one.

  “That about sums it up, yes. There’s a bit more to pretty much every step in there, but we can talk about it all after we’re safe,” he said.

  “Okay then. So what we need to figure out right now is how to get in touch with your maybe-buddy Point, how to get past that wall, and I have to tell you my favorite question that we haven’t even asked yet is what the heck they wanted in that dusty old room where broken garbage goes to die.” Caroline said. “First, I’d say find a phone.”

  “Sounds good to me.” Darien nodded. “And it sounds like the search has settled down. They know we’re still inside the wall somewhere, but they’re not looking as hard anymore. Still, we need to be careful.” Caroline nodded, and followed Darien as he crept out of the pantry and back into the house.

  7

  The back of the house seemed to be fairly deserted. Most of the activity sounded like it was upstairs or in the front rooms where a TV was showing the news and someone was shouting. It was a big enough house that as long as Darien kept his ears open to hear anyone coming, they’d have plenty of places to duck into to hide

  They didn’t need to search far. They didn’t bother with the kitchen, except to grab some protein bars from the huge box of them by the fridge. It didn’t seem likely that anything useful would be in there, after all.

  The second room they searched turned out to be where the elves were tossing anything they didn’t want, but couldn’t leave lying around. They had obviously gone through the house at some point and cleared out all the stuff that was in their way and shoved it all in here, then just kept piling things in. Things like Caroline’s backpack and Darien’s wallet with his ID badge, for example. There was no trace of either his phone or his weapons though, and he swore under his breath for a full minute when they realized it.