by Randi Darren
“That’s… normal here, too, I think,” Irene said.
“Is it a car chase then if they turn on their lights?” Sam asked. “Or do we risk the glamour?”
“I don’t know. Let’s hope we don’t have to decide,” Irene said.
Attempting to be the world’s best driver, Sam obeyed every traffic law and signal. The cop car stayed right behind them the entire way.
Eventually, this forced Sam to turn away from the secondary vehicle rather than lead the cop straight to it.
The chirp of a police siren behind Sam alerted him to the fact that he needed to check his mirror.
Looking in it, he found the patrol car had its lights on now.
“Great,” Sam muttered. “Let’s… pull over for now and see what happens.”
“I mean… okay,” Irene said with a sigh.
“If we run, they’ll call it in. Right? With any luck, I can just… nab the cop with a glamour and we move on,” Sam said, pulling the truck over to the side of the road. “Pulled me over for a yellow, gave me a warning kind of thing.”
“You hope,” Irene said.
“I hope,” Sam admitted.
The cop car door opened and the officer stepped out, heading Sam’s way.
“I… well. It would seem I can’t catch a break,” Sam muttered. “It’s a damned Cyclops.”
“That matters?” Irene asked.
“It does for a glamour. I can’t glamour the blind, nor a Cyclops,” Sam said.
“What, that old tale about them seeing the future for an eye?” Irene asked. “I thought that was mythology.”
“And you’re an undead witch,” Sam said, rolling down his window as the cyclopian officer walked up to the side of the truck.
Her hair was mostly hidden by her policeman’s cap, though Sam could see short raven-hued locks sticking out from the sides and rear. She had a build similar to Irene and Tiffany, but she definitely wasn’t out of shape or lacking.
Not to mention she was on the cute side, at least to Sam.
Even with her single eye. Which was larger in general and just above her nose, between where her two eyes should be. And it was a bright honey color. Sam stared at that large iris and was unable to look away.
“Afternoon,” said the officer, staring up at Sam.
“Hello there,” Sam said, smiling at her as he leaned partially out the window.
“Just go ahead and keep your hands on the wheel, sir. I’m going to step on up the side here and you can open the door, and we’ll speak from there,” said the officer.
“Oh, certainly,” Sam said, moving back into his seat.
I wonder if it’s because we’re so high up. We’re not exactly a big-rig, but we’re high enough to be one.
The officer suddenly appeared much closer and in the window. “Go ahead and open it, sir.”
Sam immediately complied, opening the door for the officer.
He found himself face to face with the woman now.
“Do you have any idea why I—”
There was a beep on her shoulder microphone followed by a statement that sounded like a code. Sam didn’t understand it in the least.
“Be on the lookout for an orange-and-yellow courier truck,” said the voice on the microphone. “Should have a male and female driver.”
The policeman’s eye literally jumped from Sam to Irene and back to Sam. Her whole body tensed up.
Fuck.
Grabbing the woman by the head, Sam kissed her and pulled her partway into the truck.
As he kissed her, he did something he hadn’t done in more years than he could count. Something he avoided at all costs because it was too easy to hurt people this way.
He fed on her directly, rather than on her orgasm.
As he drank in her Life Essence through the kiss, the cop spasmed in his arms and her body went limp.
Stopping before any lasting harm could befall the woman, Sam shoved her over across his lap and into Irene’s. He grabbed the cop’s legs, curling them partially, and then shut the door.
No one had seemed to notice the abduction, so Sam started driving forward again.
“…forty-two. Step away to confirm, please,” said a voice on the cop’s shoulder microphone. Sam had missed whatever had come first. His heart was pounding in his ears, and it felt like he was on fire.
Direct feeding was always a rush. It was as close as he could get to an actual high.
And to an Incubus or a Succubus, it could easily and quickly become addicting.
“Can you confirm and—” There was a harsh crackle of static over the microphone. “Check in?”
“We must be getting out of range,” Irene said, staring down at the wide-open eye of the stunned officer. “Did… you kill her?”
“No,” Sam said, pulling them quickly around back toward the secondary vehicle. They needed to get the hell out of here, and now. “Just stunned her. I took a bite out of her, basically.
“We’ll kill her and dump her once we get the loot moved to the other truck. Leave her in the first one.”
I’ll just… I’ll just drain her. It’ll make the killing harder to figure out.
Yeah. I’ll do it for that.
Sam glanced at the paralyzed and stunned cop, his mind already racing ahead to devouring her.
Feasting on her directly till she expired.
Reaching to her gun belt, Sam pulled out her pistol and then stuffed it into his camouflaged vest.
They could ditch it later—for now, it was safer with him than her.
Practically racing to the transfer vehicle, Sam desperately wanted to get out of the courier truck.
So much so that he was willing to do anything to make it happen. Even going so far as to lightly tap another vehicle out of the way.
“Oh my god,” Irene muttered, pressing a hand to her head.
“Need to get this done with and gone,” Sam said, pulling the steering wheel hard to one side and bouncing them down into an alley.
“I get that, but won’t this just make them come looking for a hit-and-run?” Irene said.
“They already were looking for the truck, and not far from here. Won’t change much,” Sam said.
Up ahead was the transfer vehicle.
A rented moving truck.
Except there was a problem.
It had a cop peering into the rear of it with a flashlight.
Apparently someone in the neighborhood had broken in, then left the door open after seeing it was empty.
“Just not my fucking day,” Sam said, pulling them to the right and dodging down another alleyway.
Not far ahead of them on one side was the back entrance to a parking garage.
Leaning partly out the window as he drove up, Sam glamoured the parking attendant for all he was worth.
The young man jolted backward, his head rebounding off the wall, then stumbled forward a step.
“Open the gate, never saw the truck, and erase any camera or pictures that would be taken,” Sam growled.
“Yes, okay,” said the attendant, pressing some buttons in front of him.
The bar went up and Sam drove them into the parking garage, just barely coming in under the maximum height clearance, though there were some odd scraping sounds coming from above them.
Moving to a mid-floor, not quite at the top nor at the bottom, Sam pulled them into a darkened corner of the parking garage.
Sighing, he rested his head against the steering wheel and then flicked his fingers out, building a large, solid spell of Essence.
It would keep them hidden and provide them with a chance to discuss what to do without being seen.
“She’s… moving,” Irene said.
Growling, Sam grabbed the policewoman by her chest, and yanked her upright into a sitting position in front of Sam.
He kissed her hard and smashed her with a blast from his mind. Skewering her psyche just as it was starting to regain control over her body.
With a squeak, the
policewoman went rigid and then passed out, her body going completely limp. She collapsed partly back into Irene’s lap.
Letting go of the woman, Sam put his head back on the steering wheel.
“That’ll buy us an hour maybe,” Sam grumbled. Nothing was going his way right now. “Let’s go talk to the others.”
Twenty-Five - Absolute Chaos -
Getting out of the cab, Sam walked around to the rear door and then unlocked it. When he threw it up, he found himself staring down the barrel of an SMG.
“Oh, sorry boss,” Wren said, immediately dropping her weapon. “Wasn’t sure what was going on.”
“That’s fair.” Sam shook his head. “As for what’s going on… well… that’s easy to answer. Wrong. That’s what’s going on. Wrong. Because everything has gone wrong.”
“I’m so sorry, Sam,” Jes said, sitting between Tiffany and Hillary. “I really have no idea what happened. I had everyone trussed up and taken care of. I can’t even figure out what I did to set off the alarms.”
“Honestly, Jes… there’s no way of even telling whether it was you. Could have been something I did. Or Hillary. Or Wren. Or anyone. Or maybe it was nothing we did at all,” Sam said. “No way of telling.
“Is everyone okay? Stacia alright?”
“Ah… she’s… okay,” Tiffany said. “Her skin isn’t healing really well, but she’s not screaming anymore.”
“Yeah, that’s understandable. UV can be pretty terrible for vampires. Bring her over here. We’re hidden away for the time being.”
“What exactly happened?” Hillary asked. “It sounded like there was a cop behind us.”
Everyone began piling out of the truck one by one.
“This won’t be bad for her?” Tiffany asked, holding Stacia to her front in a far gentler way then he expected.
“No, it’s not direct sunlight. It’ll make her uncomfortable, but she’ll be alright. Besides, she can’t feed from me in the truck.”
“Feed from you?” Tiffany asked as she got down and walked over.
“Feed from me. Easiest way to get her healing is to feed her. And of all of us, my blood is the strongest due to my age alone,” Sam said, taking the vampire from the Were. “Here we are, Stacia. Come, have a drink. Just don’t rush it. Nurse on it.”
Sam put one arm below Stacia’s rear end and held her against his shoulder like he would a child. As he tipped her face into his neck with his other hand, he wasn’t sure she was awake enough for this.
“It’s alright. Have a drink. Just go slow,” Sam said, pressing her face up against his neck.
Everyone around him was stretching and getting their bearings. He felt Stacia’s head move slightly, and then her mouth closed on his skin. The sharp prick of her fangs was the only confirmation he needed.
“We were indeed pulled over by a policeman,” Sam said, turning to look at the rest of his crew. “I grabbed the officer and yanked them into the cab. Irene has them right now. We’ll kill them once we’re away and ditch the body. I don’t really care to leave any evidence behind right now, and I don’t think opening any more planes is a good idea right now. It does leave behind a residue, after all.”
“That makes sense,” Hillary said, lifting her arms above her head. Rapidly, she shifted her body parts in almost every conceivable way until she settled back down into her “normal” body and face. “That feels better.”
“Is it like… cracking your knuckles?” Tiffany asked the Doppelganger.
“Kinda, yeah. It feels like a reset. Back to normal. Ever do that with your different phases?” Hillary asked, the two of them in their own conversations.
“Sometimes,” Tiffany said, “But really…”
Sam ignored them, looking instead at Wren and Jes.
“We’ll lie low for a bit and then get moving, I figure,” Sam said.
“I don’t know,” Wren said, looking concerned. “Every time I ever worked for their organization, I always got the impression they had a lot more assets than I could ever think of.
“Are you sure we’re safe here?”
“I mean, as safe as I can make us with a simple disguise,” Sam said.
Stacia was drinking from him in a very gentle way, but he could tell she was rapidly regaining her strength. Her arms and legs were slowly tightening around him as she clung to him.
“Do you think they could track us, or…” Wren paused in mid-sentence, looking off to one side. Then she sniffed the air twice.
“Hunter,” she said. “Hunter’s on us. We need to go. Now.”
Sam didn’t know what a hunter was, or how she knew, but he trusted in Wren. She’d survived as a hitman for too long for her instincts to be bad.
Peeling Stacia off of him, Sam set her down in the bed of the truck and pushed her in. “Everyone pack it in! Time to go!”
His team got moving immediately, jumping into the back of the truck quickly.
Sam reached up, grabbed the hanging cord attached to the handle, and jerked it down. Slamming the rolling door shut, he left it unlocked.
“Doors unlocked, just in case,” he called, running around to the driver’s seat.
“What’s going on?” Irene asked as he got in, shoving the cop’s legs out of the way.
“No idea. Wren said it was a hunter, and that we needed to go,” Sam said. Turning the truck’s key, Sam got the vehicle rolling and started heading straight for the ramp down.
“They sent a hunter? I… I don’t… Oh, heavens no,” Irene said.
“What’s a hunter?” Sam said, not bothering to stop for the gate guard. He just drove the truck right through the wooden bar, shattering it and sending it out of the parking lot.
“It’s a demon. A lot like a dog. They’re rare, but they’re called out sometimes. Usually to track someone down,” Irene said.
That’d be why Wren knew it then.
Demon.
Pulling the wheel hard to one side, Sam brought them skidding out of the alley and onto a main street.
And almost straight into a black SUV with black windows and flashing blue-and-red lights pulled up to one side against a curb.
“The Fed?!” Irene asked incredulously. “The Fed let loose a hunter!?”
“Apparently,” Sam said, then threw up a quick disguise over the truck. Everyone inside it would look like very old Asian men to anyone who looked.
Several people in black windbreakers turned and watched Sam roll by. Then they scrambled to get into their SUV.
“Damn,” Sam said, watching the SUV peel out from the curb and move in behind their truck.
Looking ahead, Sam realized he had no choice now.
Calling up his Essence stores, he tried to figure out how he was going to lose the cops, get out of the city, and get back to Alison’s place.
A siren behind them began to wail, the sound rising up.
There was a clatter and bang from the back of the truck, and then the sound of gunfire.
“I think we just started a gunfight in the middle of a car chase,” Irene said, staring into the sideview mirror.
“Yeah, I think so, too,” Sam muttered.
The frame of the cab next to him made a pop noise, and then the windshield shattered. A round had gone in through the rear of the truck and come out the front.
“Holy shit,” Irene said, getting down low in her seat.
This just won’t do.
Reaching out with his Essence, Sam smashed all the traffic in front of him to one side or the other. Cars bounced and clanged off one another, and Sam began to pick up speed faster and faster.
He didn’t want to floor it, though, just in case someone in the rear lost their balance. They could come tumbling right out of the truck if he wasn’t careful.
“Wish I could see,” Sam muttered.
Irene said something under her breath and then flicked a hand at him.
A small oval of magic spun up where a rear-view mirror would have been, then coalesced into a flat plane.
The SUV was rapidly falling away, and Sam could see that the driver was slumped over the wheel.
Far behind them, several normal-looking cars and two more black SUVs were racing up toward them.
Either some of the Fed is on Jena’s payroll, or that’s a lot of unmarked cars.
Knowing Jena, though… they’re all working for her.
Sam looked up ahead of them. There was an underpass that dipped into what looked like a hill.
Clenching his teeth, Sam started to build up a wall of Essence that’d fit into the tunnel entrance.
From behind them, Wren began firing again, the bark of a full-sized rifle loud as she laid fire down in short bursts.
Glancing to the viewing spell Sam watched Tiffany kneel down next to Wren, firing her SMG in a similar fashion.
A blood-red blob was lobbed out from deeper in the truck. It arced through the air and smashed through a windshield. The car exploded into bright crimson fire.
A hand came out offering a magazine to Wren when her rifle stopped firing.
Looking back to his own problem, Sam wasn’t sure they’d fit into the tunnel. He’d smashed all the cars out of the way, but that didn’t give him a perfect shot in. It looked like he might be just a bit too wide.
Grunting, Sam lashed out at one car in particular that was just too far in the middle.
It flipped up over its side and landed on its roof atop another car.
With a whoosh, they entered the tunnel and everything got dark.
Sam slammed down the wall behind them and kept them moving.
Keeping his eyes ahead, he continued to blow cars out of their way as they raced along.
Coming out the other side of the tunnel almost as fast as they entered, Sam was blinded for a second.
And smashed into the rear end of a car that was stopped dead in front of them.
Plowing through it, Sam jammed the gas down. They couldn’t afford to slow down right now.
Slashing with his hand, he launched the car to one side and bulldozed all the cars in front of the truck to one side as well.
