by John Conroe
It looked just like every picture or drawing she’d ever seen of a big-headed, big-eyed gray alien, except taller. Maybe all of five feet tall. It was fast, too, swinging its long-handled tool at Omega’s agile fliers. A Vorsook, in the pasty gray, naked flesh.
It turned and leapt at her, empty hand outstretched to touch. The touch of a super-telepath. Like that was gonna happen.
Her kukri flickered and the Vorsook’s hand disappeared in a spray of greenish blood. The alien looked at its stump for a silent second but then a drone flashed by, laser flickering, and the Vorsook’s left eye vanished in a puff of smoke. It squealed a hellish high-pitched sound that Nika felt in the bones of her skull. Her knife chopped down from overhead, thunking into the middle of that huge forehead, the squeal ending like a switch had been flicked.
The alien collapsed, surrounded by the swarm of deadly little drones. Nika stepped back and took a breath. In well over a hundred years as a vampire, she’d seen much violence. But this brief struggle had been the most shocking.
She reached for her phone. “Already placing the call,” the AI Omega said.
“Well,” came Lydia’s voice from the speaker not two seconds later. Then the screen cleared and her face was visible on the screen.
“Warehouse cleared. Tell Stewart to send an Oracle team. This place is totally Vorsook,” Nika said.
“You’re sure?”
“Staring at a dead one right now.”
“Okay, getting drone shots on my tablet. Ugly fucker, huh?” Lydia said.
Lydia had grown up with strict New England parents. To this day, she almost never dropped an F bomb. Nika had noticed that the few times she had, the subject was usually the Vorsook.
“Couldn’t capture it live?” Lydia asked, face twisted in interested disgust.
“It almost ate my mind. Strongest mental adept I’ve ever been near. It would own any human, were, or Darkkin that got near it,” Nika said, slumping back against the spacecraft’s smooth interior wall. “Tell Stewart we’ve got a UFO for him. Looks like they brought it through a gate, piece by piece.”
“Well, haven’t you been the busy little bee. How bad is this thing?” Lydia asked.
“It almost had me, Lyd. Omega’s drones saved me.”
“Would it have taken Tanya? Or Chris? Or the kid?”
“I don’t know. All three can block me when they choose. Declan could maybe build a ward against it if he was prepared. But think how bad that would be if it got one of them and controlled them?”
“Okay, let’s get that beanpole man-boy witch to see what he can brew up. Omega’s already got hold of Stewart and the local team is on its way. You can assume control and oversee the cleanup.”
“Negative. I’ve got a baby to get back to its mother,” Nika said.
“A baby? What the hell?”
“Yeah, don’t know. It was kidnapped earlier and I followed the kidnapper. He led me to this place with all these treasures.”
“How will you find the parents?” Lydia said.
“I am monitoring a large number of frantic cell phone calls in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood east of here. The community is marshaling the friends and neighbors of a young couple who are frantically searching for their infant daughter. I am ninety-four percent certain that the infant in the car seat is the same missing child.”
“What did we ever do without you, Omega?” Lydia asked as she lifted a brow at Nika on the telephone screen.
“You mostly succeeded, but at great and costly effort,” the AI said back. “Mostly.”
Nika stayed till the Oracle crew arrived, seven big black SUVs full of serious black-clad men and women.
Oracle was running the Joint Task Force of government units that was leading the intelligence efforts against the Vorsook. Team Demidova reported (as much as they reported to anyone) through Nathan Stewart.
The Oracle team treated Nika with cautious respect, most of them watching her from the corners of their eyes as they began to efficiently process the scene. But her job here, at the factory site, was done, while her final task was yet incomplete.
“Come along, little one. You have a date with your mother,” she said, expertly buckling the car seat into the back of her rented Mustang. “Good thing I have little zaykas of my own to watch over, or I would never get this right.”
Fifteen minutes later found her cruising slowly along the streets of a neighborhood on the eastern part of the city, a neighborhood that buzzed with more activity than a school night should bring.
Omega guided her to the correct address and Nika drove smoothly by it, the porch of the little house crowded with people who studied her tinted rental with suspicious eyes.
She drove another three blocks, parked, unbuckled the carrier, and slid into the shadows.
It was harder to get close to the house than it had been to infiltrate the warehouse, the neighborhood watch being much more sensitive with one of their own missing. That’s not to say it was actually hard.
She easily found the watchers in the darkness, and just as easily tweaked their perceptions to guide their attention in other directions.
Approaching the back of the house, she knelt down and scanned the inhabitants with her mind. The baby’s mother was easy to find—a well of black despair and heart-shattering anguish, exhausted and destroyed, lying in a back bedroom.
Nika called to her, placing a little thought in the young woman’s head. Her baby—in the backyard. The mother hardly stirred, but that was to be expected, as she was completely exhausted. NIka did it again, adding another layer of certainty to the suggestion. The young woman might have had a touch of talent, as she rather suddenly came up out of her resting place, the second nudge enough to get her full attention.
Nika could feel every little bit of trepidation as the mother moved toward the back door, driven by an impulse she couldn’t name and didn’t trust, yet unwilling to ignore because any possibility might be the one. In some ways, that awful anxiety—that tiny seed of hope fighting with the logical certainty that her baby could not, would not, be magically returned—was more painful to experience as a telepath than the horror of imminent death.
Nika had experienced it all, riding the thoughts and emotions of a thousand minds over her years, but this was the most sharply real, the most heart-wrenching, twisted knife feeling she’d ever ridden.
She was a Guardian of the Coven, sister to the Young Queen, high-ranking officer of the fastest growing company on Earth, associate of God’s Own Warrior, and yet she was overcome with a sudden intense need to call New York and check on the safety of her young charges. It didn’t even help knowing that the twins were snug in a virtual fortress, guarded by heavily armed, highly motivated killers, two of the most dangerous individuals on the planet, and the most advanced AI in human history.
A young woman’s face appeared in the window of the back door. Her grief-reddened eyes blinked in the sight of the blonde vampire dressed in black and standing in her backyard. Nika raised one hand and pointed at the porch in front of the door, bringing the mother’s eyes down below her initial line of sight.
The car seat sat, tiny occupant facing the house, three feet from the door. The door burst open and the mother shot out onto the porch, collapsing to her knees to gather her baby from the carrier. Nika had removed the impulse to sleep from the young one and the little daughter woke, smelling her mother’s familiar and comforting scent.
Eyes wide and flooded with tears, the mother, whose name Nika heard was Sonia, looked up at the vampire.
“Peace, little sister,” Nika said in perfect Spanish. “The ones who took her are no more. She is safe, untouched and perfect.” Then she started to step back into the gloaming.
“Why?” Sonia asked.
“Why did they take her? I do not know. They will never take another,” Nika replied.
Sonia shook her head. “Why did you save her?”
Nika was startled by her own sudden tsunami of emotion that welled up at tho
se words. “Why? Because we don’t harm babies. We protect babies,” she hissed, her hand moving toward the pocket where her phone sat.
Sonia pulled back at the sudden vehemence of her words, her heart rate thundering clearly in Nika’s ears. She cradled her baby girl, who she called Luisa in her own head. The blonde telepath drew a deep breath and pushed her emotions down, allowing the anger to fall off her face.
“I have seen you—on television. You are with Her… and Him,” Sonia said. “You are an Angel like them?”
That brought a smile and unbidden chuckle. “No, I am Darkkin—vampire. But yes, I call Her sister.”
Sonia stood slowly, clutching Luisa to her in both arms, shaking her head. “No. You are Angel too.”
Nika just gave her a final smile and shake of her head, then pulled back into the darkness.
She cruised back by the house on her way toward the airport, neighbors and friends now crowding four and five deep around the porch, celebrating the miracle, Sonia and Luisa surrounded by immediate family. Sonia raised her head and looked at the deeply tinted Mustang, pausing in her explanation.
Then she raised a hand, a clear salute to the driver she couldn’t see but who she somehow knew was her personal hero.
The crowd turned and looked at the powerful car, confusion and suspicion on most faces changing to awe as the young mother continued her story, pointing at the car and giving a final wave.
Maybe Sonia had more than a touch of talent, to feel so strongly about the unseen driver of a mysterious car, Nika mused.
The rental car chimed with an incoming phone call. Nika had never connected her phone to the Mustang’s systems, not that it seemed to matter with Omega around.
“Hey Nik, you headed back yet?” Lydia asked.
“What’s the matter? Need me to get the twins to sleep?”
“You’d like to think so, but I got secret weapons,” Lydia replied.
“A giant furry nursemaid and a middle school babysitter named Toni who sings a mean lullaby,” Nika replied.
“Yeah, well I’ve only got the kid on the weekends that she’s down from Vermont. But listen, you need to get your ass on that plane and get back here. Things are heating up,” Lydia said.
“Things?”
“There’ve been seven thwarted school mass shootings in the last three days and at least seven homicides with a decided occult pattern to them.”
“All the shootings were prevented?” Nika asked.
“Omega is monitoring all social media, weapons sales, and health records. He’s taken over the background check system and is failing purchases left and right. Then he sends the FBI. But it’s all a pattern.”
“Demonic?”
“We think so. Chris has been having visions again. Some of those visions were actual murders.”
“Great. We’ve got Vorsook building aircraft and now an upswing in demon stuff,” Nika said.
“Thanks to your work, I am now reverse engineering that Vorsook craft. Earth will benefit from their advanced designs. Also, I have asked my Father to look into shields against powerful telepathy. He will need your help to test his theories,” Omega interjected.
“Which leaves the A Team for demon work,” Nika said.
“And you know how I love it when a plan comes together,” Lydia said.
“Lydia Chapman, did you just quote a defunct television show? I’m gonna tell Declan you’re a bigger nerd than he is,” Nika said, smiling.
“Just get your ass back here, Guardian. We’ve got work to do.”
“Don’t we always.”
Sitting Pretty
One of the most vital things a young parent can have is a good babysitter. They can literally mean the difference between sanity and a mental breakdown. A good babysitter is hard to find, worth their weight in gold, and usually highly coveted. If you have children with additional needs, finding that perfect sitter is so, so hard to do. So protect your sitter at all costs.
The black Cadillac limo slid into place in front of the imposing tower named Demidova. The wheels had no sooner stopped when the front passenger door opened and a man in a black suit slid out. He took two long strides and grasped the handle to the rear compartment. His head swiveled around, checked everyone and everything in sight, then he opened the door.
A black-haired preteen girl slipped out of the car, wearing black jeans, white canvas sneakers, and a white shirt with red flowers. She had a string bag backpack on and a tablet computer clutched to her chest with both arms. Gleaming silver links peeked out at the collar of her blouse, indicating some kind of necklace hidden underneath. She smiled at the door handler, then moved straight for the imposing doors of the high rise.
Inside the building, a rectangular guard station greeted all arrivals, carefully manned with no less than four guards, each with a military background. The newest guard, on his first day in fact, looked up to see a very pretty middle school girl enter the building, tablet cradled, absent smile on her face. Black hair, black eyes, obvious Hispanic heritage, and the promise of becoming a future heartbreaker.
“Sid, what’s up with the kid?” the new guy asked his orientation mentor.
The dark-skinned ex-soldier looked up from his computer and took in the approaching tween.
“Toni’s here. Joe, alert the penthouse,” Sidney said, giving the girl a smile.
“The alert already went out. Damned computer did it by itself,” a third guard answered.
Sidney nodded but didn’t take his eyes off the girl. “Hi, Toni. How was your trip?”
“Hi, Sidney. It was pretty smooth I guess,” she said, then turned to the new guy. “Hello. I don’t know you. I’m Toni,” she said, holding out her right hand.
“I’m John. Nice to meet you, Toni,” John the new guy said, bemused.
“I’m the babysitter. I don’t live here so I only come down when they need me for special events. Like daytime things,” Toni said matter-of-factly. “Sometimes weekends.”
“Babysitter? Wait… for the…” John asked, smile slipping away as he realized who she must sit for and with.
“For Cora and Wulf,” she said.
“Forgive me, Toni, but all the other sitters are… well…” John said, confused.
“Older? Scarier? Vampires?” she asked helpfully. “Darkkin aren’t very good daytime sitters. They get too sleepy and the twins get into trouble.”
“John, Toni here is Chris’s goddaughter. You know, the one he blew up New Hampshire over?” Sidney said.
“He did not blow up New Hampshire, Sidney, and you know it. He only bombed one old missile silo way up in the boonies,” Toni said.
“Tomato—toma-toe, kid,” Sidney said, smiling.
“Anyway, John, I’m the daytime sitter for special events,” Toni said, giving Sidney the kind of nuanced glare that you might see from a grown woman.
The center elevator in the big row of elevators pinged its arrival.
“It was nice to meet you, John. ‘Sos is here and I have to greet him or his feelings get hurt, unlike other people I know,” she said, tossing her hair and giving Sidney a stormy look.
“Toni! You wound me!” said Sidney, the tough ex-Navy Seal, clutching his broken heart.
Her frown flashed into a smile at his performance before clouding back up into mock anger. She tucked her tablet under one arm, pulled out her phone, and studied the screen to the exclusion of all else.
Across the room, the elevator doors opened and a huge black and tan wolf bounded out, eyes locked on the young girl like she was prey.
“That’s him? The wolf-bear?” John, the new guy, asked.
“Yeah, his name is Awasos. Now watch this,” Sidney said, leaning back and crossing his arms.
Around the busy lobby, people had all stopped and turned to look at the giant wolf now stalking toward the young girl, who for her part had started to type furiously on her smartphone keyboard, a wave of emotions flashing across her face. The slow stalking sped up, going from a car
eful pacing to a flat-out run. Nails clicked on the hard floor, people around the room freezing up, looking shocked or beginning to panic. Eyes flicked at the guards, who were leaned back, relaxed and calm.
Six feet from the girl, who had still not even looked up, the giant wolf splayed out both front paws, sliding to a halt. His body then shimmered and blurred, the image expanding before clearing to reveal a truly enormous Kodiak bear with the same black back and tan body. The ursine giant stood up on his hind legs, head fully fifteen feet above the floor, paws spread out, each tipped with claws as long as small bananas.
His body leaned forward, like he was about to fall upon the girl and devour her. She took one final look at her phone, sighed in frustration, then lifted her head and stepped forward to hug the gargantuan bear.
