The Vampire’s Revelations: Book 12 of the Fatal Allure Series

by Woods, Martha

  “I’ve been considered worse before, no offense taken.” Vincent placed his knife down, running his hand down his face and sighing into his palm, “I’ve lived through countless wars and fights, I hope that you trust me when I say that they are always messy. If you want us to focus on everyone else then I’ll respect that, so long as you respect the potential danger that you will be placed in, can you agree on that?”

  “Of course I can,” I said, “I’m not ignorant to how dangerous all of this is, you saw yourself what was done to the shifters without us to help them. But if I can have even a single chance to make sure that it doesn’t happen to anyone else then I need to take that chance, don’t I? If I’m really serious about what it is that we’re doing here.”

  “...yes, you do,” He said, moving over to me and pressing his lips to my forehead, “I might think that you’re a fool for it, and I’m probably going to be worried sick the entire time that we’re doing this, but I’m not going to stand in the way of you doing what you think is right. That’s not the kind of relationship that I want this to be.”

  “Shit,” Damon groaned, rubbing the back of his neck and looking at us with a thoroughly unimpressed look on his face, “Really strong-arming me into not looking like an asshole huh? Alright, I’ll support you in this too.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep, but you’ve got to promise me that you at least won’t be there alone. You’ve got to be near at least another hunter, or a vampire, or something, I can’t be comfortable with you just being out there completely alone.”

  “I’ll stay near other people, don’t worry. I’ll go between whatever positions they’ve got set up, this is as much about protecting the shifters as it is making sure that everyone knows that they’re valued. What better way to show that than by sitting by them with coffee the whole time huh?”

  “Knowing some of the hunters that are gonna be standing there with you, you might want to bring by a bottle of whiskey. Most of us like a stiff drink before going on a mission, keeps our nerves down. Plus depending on how long we’ve got to stand there it makes us feel warm.”

  “You know alcohol doesn’t actually make you warm up right?”

  “No, but it makes us feel like it does, which is just as good. I can’t aim my gun if I’m shivering, I can deal with whatever the cold does after that.”

  “It makes you an alcoholic I’m fairly sure in your case.” Running my hands through his hair and tugging gently at what was rapidly becoming a shaggy head of hair, I smiled gently to myself and sighed in contentment, “For as much as we can be stubborn sometimes, I’m glad that we still work well together. I don’t think I would ever be able to work with anyone else the same way.”

  “You might be able to,” Vincent said, “You’ve got that skill, that’s why everyone flocks to you so easily. Me though? I’m done having other partners, I’m not interested in learning someone else’s quirks and getting over that initial awkwardness. The two of you, the friendship that we’ve somehow managed to work out in spite of how fundamentally different we were from each other, that’s all I’ll need or want from now on.”

  “That’s very sweet Vincent,” Damon said, shoving him aside to take over cooking, “It’s not quite valentine’s day yet though, you don’t have to sweet talk us so much.”

  He rolled his eyes, taking my hand and sitting down to rest on the couch. “I really do try with him, I hope you know that.”

  That night I was back at the warehouse, though I was looking down from a distance from one of the often-abandoned factories that lay around it. They’d picked this area specifically for its isolation, if they were going to be having wild parties more or less every night then it would just pay off in the long term not to have to worry too much about having to pay off property damage. If someone got too rowdy and decided to break windows down the street then they were more than welcome to, the werewolves and the local government couldn’t care less about this place.

  In terms of protecting and observing however this remoteness was both a blessing and a curse. If things went down and we were reduced to fighting in the street, the chances that we were going to be seen by any average citizens was incredibly low, and any that were likely to be in the area under their own power were likely going to either be drunk or strung out, neither of whom would be all that hard to convince they didn’t see anything to begin with.

  The curse came in the fact that we had to keep our heads on a constant swivel, that same lack of civilians not giving the enemy shifters any reason to hold back, and this part of town was filled with little holes and crevices that they could be hiding in at this very moment. Not a great thought by any stretch of the imagination, but it was one that we were going to have to just deal with.

  “Could you pass me that bottle?”

  “Oh,” I said, shocking out of my thoughts, “Sure, sorry.”

  Passing the half empty bottle of whiskey to the hunter on my right, bundled up in a coat so big and thick that he just had to have come from somewhere down south if he considered this to be cold, I watched him take a quick swig before closing the bottle up once more. “Thanks. Appreciate it.”

  “No problem, Mr...?”

  “Just call me George,” He laughed, “‘Mr’… makes me sound like I’m forty-eight years old.”

  “I thought you were actually.”

  “Ouch.” Placing a hand over his chest, he smiled to let me know he hadn’t taken serious offence. “I’m thirty-nine, but I guess this life really does age you huh?”

  “I guess it does, yeah.” Not that I had much to go off in terms of people to watch, Damon was the only other hunter that I was really familiar with and he was never going to age again, makes for a really hard comparison. “How long have you been waiting here?”

  “Since about… five this afternoon. I like to set up early in case someone might decide to come watching for anyone coming or going. When I got the word that you were going to be joining me tonight I figured that I should clean up a little bit more too.”

  There was only so much to be done there however, it was still an abandoned warehouse that we were sitting in, and it was still caked in layers of dust that had been here longer than some government officials had even been alive. A quick five-minute sweep with a broom wasn’t going to cut it in cases like this, still though, he’d at least moved most of the loose trash to the lower floor, no doubt by kicking it over the side. Points for effort.

  “I appreciate you going to all of this trouble, I hope I’m not going to be in your way with this.”

  George waved it away, blowing air through his lips and shaking his head. “Most of the time these observation jobs are just a lot of waiting and a whole lot of nothing, I’m glad for the company. I could show you a couple things if you wanted, keeps the boredom to a minimum.”

  “Oh yeah?” I asked, “What kinds of things?”

  “Come here.” He stood, walking across the room to a telescope set up near the window, cracked, yellowed glass opens just a little to allow a view outside, but not enough to expose us to the entire world. We had a view of the werewolves’ base from up here, a decent view of the sightlines and side streets around it, though we were far from able to see every part of the district. But that was why there were hunters in other buildings around us, all prepared, all observing, and all ready to go to war the second that things turned out not to be the way that they should.

  Walking over to the telescope next to George, I waited while he turned a few dials and turned it gently on its stand, peering through the scope for a second before nodding minutely and smiling at me. “Have a look through here.”

  Staring into the scope, I was expecting to see maybe a view of some corner, maybe a secretive passage that they’d become aware of and were keeping a very keen eye on. Instead of that I found myself staring down at a portly, middle aged man leaning back in a lawn chair and tossing peanuts into his mouth, his colleague sitting right alongside him and passing him more packets. Not
exactly what I was thinking I would see.

  “Is he one of yours?” I asked, trying and failing to keep the question out of my tone, “He looks… hard at work.”

  “Ha,” He chuckled, returning to his own seat in front of the window and taking out a cleaning kit for his pistol, “He might not look like much, but Pete is one of our best trackers that we’ve ever had, even if he isn’t so good in the field anymore. He gets a whiff of something off, he’s telling everyone, and he has never been wrong before, seriously I’ve worked with actual bloodhounds that don’t have the nose that he does. As long as he is still sitting there and enjoying his peanuts, we have nothing to worry about.”

  “That’s good,” I laughed, taking one last look at him before stepping away from the telescope, “So if he’s so good at sensing danger, why have the rest of you on lookout as well?”

  “Well Pete’s got to sleep sometime right? He’s getting up there in age, can’t handle a gun as well as he could a few years ago, guy needs some people to support him whenever we can spare it.” Disassembling the gun in his hands and popping a cigarette into his mouth, his next words were rough with smoke, “Besides, some of us like the chance to have a break. Gives us some needed time to decompress.”

  “I’ll have to keep that in mind,” I said, “Damon needs time away from me to think I’m pretty sure, but he’s kind of bad at making sure he takes it the right way. He thinks that I’ll be angry if he tells me he needs time for himself, but I know how strange things can get in your line of work.”

  I smiled in apology, suddenly realizing I was starting to ramble. “I’m sorry, I’ve only met you today and already I’m starting to spill things like you’re my therapist.”

  “No worries about that,” He said, taking one last deep breath before throwing the cigarette out the window, “We’ve all got to vent to someone, I just so happen to do it with people who get paid to listen.”

  “You go to therapy?”

  “No,” He laughed, “Not that kind of listening.”

  “Ah, I see.” Far be it from me to judge someone for wanting a listening ear, I kind of set up a listening post in the club knowing that exact thing.

  “You actually reminded me though, I need to call in and make sure everyone is doing alright on their end, can’t have everyone falling asleep already.” Reaching into his pocket and pulling out a small cellphone, he held his hand up in apology and began walking to the doorway. “I’ll just be five minutes, there should be enough here to keep your interest if you get bored. See you in a bit.”

  I don’t know why he seemed to think I couldn’t go more than five minutes without some sort of stimulation, I wasn’t in first grade. Though I will admit that a completely silent, dirty warehouse isn’t exactly the pinnacle of interest for someone like me, it’s only natural that my mind would start to wander and I would start looking for something to do. And given that the only things I could see were a pack of cigarettes and a telescope… I figured that the telescope was the better option.

  “Alright,” I said, leaning down carefully and touching my fingers delicately to the sleek brushed metal of the telescope, taking care not to move it too far from its original spot. If I wanted to see anything it was Pete trying to catch god knows how many peanuts in his mouth. Only, when I looked through the scope and refocused to see through the window, I noticed something very strange.

  Pete wasn’t sitting down anymore, he was standing by the window and frantically yelling into his cellphone, his friend standing next to him with a rifle at the ready all set to jump headlong into a fight if need be. What unnerved me first was the complete silence in which he was doing it, not a single peep of his voice heard across the distance even as he all but screamed whatever warning it was that he was giving.

  The second was when I noticed that the silence was everywhere, not just keeping me from hearing Pete but keeping me from hearing everything, like all sound in the building had been snuffed out without a word of warning. Not even the water was dripping onto the floor anymore, everything had just fallen silent.

  “George?” I called, my voice bouncing off the walls back towards me without so much as a reply, “George are you there? Pete doesn’t look calm, I think that he’s seen something! George?”

  I started walking towards the doorway that he had walked through, straining my ears to hear even the smallest bit of conversation between him and the other hunters, but none was to be found. If I could just find him and explain what was happening, maybe everything would start to make sense.

  Then with an explosion of pain in my nose and a muffled crack from around the corner, everything fell silent once more.

  Chapter 6

  “Is she alright?”

  “She’ll be fine, just give her a moment to get her mind back together. You did hit her very hard after all.”

  Voices, wonderful. Just what I need when I’m trying to recover from what was one of the worst headaches that I’d had in recent memory. Going off of context and the throbbing pain in my nose, I can safely assume that the circumstances weren’t exactly natural.

  “Oh good, she’s waking up. I was almost worried that you’d killed her.”

  “That would be a first.”

  “What would? You killing someone or me worrying about it?”

  “Ugh, god…” I groaned, “Can you people please shut up and give me a glass of water or something?”

  “Of course, my apologies.” A cool glass was pressed to my lips, I was so thirsty and my head was pounding so hard I didn’t even hesitate before gulping deeply, luckily enough only drinking water. In hindsight they could have made me drink just about anything then and I absolutely would have done so. “Now, if you don’t mind, I would like to have a little conversation with you about this situation that we’re in.”

  “Who the hell even are you?” I asked, “And why can’t I see?”

  “Your eyes are covered with a rag, just in case you woke up while we were moving you. Let me take care of that right now…” The knot was undone on the back of my head, relieving some of the pressure on my temples and bringing the light back in a profoundly disorienting way. “As for who we are, I’m pretty sure that you can connect the dots on that.”

  Sure enough when I looked around me it didn’t take very long to know exactly who I was with, the trees swallowing up all hints of light outside of their bounds and the leaves orange with the lights of the fire in front of me. The people who had so graciously given me water and untied the rag around my eyes had all the telltale tics of shifters, constantly shifting in place at whatever noise or smell they sensed off in the darkness, eyes glowing in the light of the fire like a cat. There were exactly two reasons why I knew that these weren’t Nathan and Caleb’s shifters, those being that all of them were currently resting in a hospital trying to recover from the wounds they’d received last night, and the fact that if they’d wanted to talk to me they wouldn’t have broken my nose and dragged me off into the forest, they would have just called my number. Which meant that this situation that I was in was… very much not good.

  “If this is some kind of show to intimidate me or make me so scared that I give everything up can we just… not do that?” I sighed, “I’m tired, and I don’t want to be doing this anytime soon, can we just pick this up another time?”

  Much to my surprise, and irritation, they actually looked sympathetic, one of them even extending their hand to put on my shoulder before pulling back at the look on my face. I guess I can really be intimidating without realizing it.

  “We know that this isn’t a situation that anyone wants to be placed in, believe us, we don’t want to be doing this just as much as you don’t want to be here. But it was the only way that we could get to talk to you.”

  Rolling my eyes, I didn’t even bother hiding the hostility in my voice when I asked, “Talk to me about what?”

  “About this little rodent problem that we have, and that unfortunately it seems we’ve passed onto you.” Even
without hearing that voice before in my life, I knew exactly who that was in an instant, that tone that brooked no argument, that crept under your skin and dug so deep that you could feel it scraping against your bones. This was definitely the man that we’d been looking for.

  “I don’t think that anyone knows your name,” I said, “Do you mind telling me before you go off on your speech?”

  “Clark,” He said, “My name is Clark. And I have spent a good part of the last few weeks trying to finish what was started years ago, so you can imagine my irritation when there is another setback, can’t you?”

  “I suppose I can,” I said, “But I usually get annoyed when I lose the remote, or when I order the wrong kind of coffee. I don’t get annoyed when my plans for murder don’t pan out.”

  “‘My plans for murder’... yes, that’s one way to put it.” Waving away the others and taking a seat in front of me, his eyes seemed to bore into my own. “You seem surprised that I’m not denying it.”

  “I… a little bit. It’s strange, most of the people like you can’t wait to justify yourself and call yourself the good guy.”

  “I gave up all pretense of being a good guy when I became a hunter all those years ago, and I disposed of it even further once I was cast out. Trust me, I am fully aware of what it is that I intend to do to these people, and I have no compunctions about expanding the list of those that I will do it to if need be.”

  “So this is to scare me into doing what you want, of course. Why am I not surprised?”

  “This isn’t about intimidation Amy, if I was going to intimidate you into giving me what I want I would have attacked someone close to you, maybe held a knife to their throat, or cut off a few fingers until you handed over the shifters on a silver platter. I’m very creative when it comes to getting people to give me what I want, I can assure you that there are things that I could do that you would have never thought of. But this isn’t about that.”