Stooping, Nick fished up discarded clothing with the grace of some gangly stork. It didn’t look like she’d been living unfavorably, the room was cluttered but not in the way that denoted a lack of care or effort. Nick winced in realization that she might have been comfortable here…but vampires had a way of uprooting even the most placid of lifestyles. Tossing a wayward bra at the bag with the hint of red at his pale cheeks, Nick tried to not let the sheer incredulity of the situation throw him off balance.
The odds of running into Selena of all people were astronomical at best. One might suppose that with vampires targeting her, one might be more inclined as a hunter to cross paths…but tracking down fangs was a sketchy business at best. In the last month, Nick had killed two…but they had been more luck than anything else. Surveillance cameras, news stories, contacts, obituaries…tracking a dead man was tracking a mouse in a heavy rain, more dead ends and backtracking then most go-getters have time for. If a fang didn’t want to be found, they virtually disappeared…Nick was lucky vamps didn’t take him seriously yet…otherwise his job might be thrice as hard…even impossible.
“Weird? Nah…” Nick answered, trailing off. It WAS weird...a vampire attack on the same person was as likely as getting hit by lightning in the middle of a shark attack...and by one of the same fangs as from the wedding massacre years ago? Things were too coincidental for even Nick to dismiss. Selena had something the Fangs wanted…and if they didn’t move soon, they’d get it.
“I guess I didn’t expect to see you again…I mean after…you know.”
Smooth talking wasn’t ever his specialty…maybe it was that she looked so similar to his wife to be, it was a bit unnerving…like walking around with the faded contents of a photograph. “You look…well,” He concluded lamely with a half smile, grabbing an elusive sock and stuffing it into the bulging bag, “And your part time home beats mine any day…a bed is far superior to a backseat ya know.”
She zipped up her bag, and Nick was already moving to the door.
“We can catch up on the road. I’d like to be more then forty miles out of this town by daybreak, we can widen the gap during the day…when they can’t move."
The trick was getting out tonight…call it a premonition, but Nick felt there were more of those monsters…just lurking in the shadows.
To be more accurate, one of the ‘monsters’ was lurking in the kitchen of the elderly couple’s home…bathed in the incandescent glow of the refrigerator light. Pushing through various brands of yogurt, cottage cheese, and suspiciously lumpy milk, Artemis was looking for something solid to wash down his last meal. The blood of the old was like dipping your hand into a box of those assorted chocolates on Valentine’s Day…sometimes you got the creamy dark chocolate everyone wants to bite into…and sometimes you get the toothpaste taste caught on your tongue. Unfortunately, it was the latter for Arty. In the end, he mixed in almost half the bottle of Hershey chocolate syrup into the milk and downed it, grimacing at the way the milk had to force its way down his throat. He’d throw it up in an hour…but having a chocolatey aftertaste rather then that sour old man stink was worth the agony.
Arty’s acute hearing picked up the noises from the garage…no doubt the birds were getting ready to wing out of the nest. Derrik had done anything but the mission…now they’d get on the move and damn if humans weren’t hard to catch when they whisked around like nomads.
Lifting the home phone delicately off the cradle, Artemis placed the receiver against his pale face and dialed a number he knew he’d catch flak about later. The line clicked on the second ring, and only silence issued forth from both sides of the phone…as though the phone had been picked up by a ghost from both ends. Few could understand how much breathing played a roll into a sense of entity on either side of the line…and the undead did not breathe.
“Princey? Princey dear…this is Arty checking in, do you read me?”
There was at least ten seconds of silence before another voice answered. Artemis winced as he noted the edge of anger creeping into the voice which had ordered him here…things were not turning out swimmingly…not anymore.
“Artemis…where are you calling me from?”
“Err…about that sir,” Artemis back peddled, falling into honorifics as his humor stalled and died. “Turns out cell phones can’t stand a mist transformation as well as I’d hoped…and Derrik was regrettably…erm…torched sir.”
“Torched?” The word sounded almost as though it would melt through the phone and dissolve Artemis where he stood.
Artemis swallowed hard, a surprisingly human gesture after almost three hundred years. “There was an unexpected hiccup in the plan sir…there was a hunter on scene and he…he destroyed Derrik.”
“Did you deal with him?” the voice purred, the violence in the voice an almost palpable force.
“Err…no,” Artemis admitted, twirling the cord around one pale finger nervously, “It was an old friend of yours and he’s well armed...Nick.”
“Nick?!” The voice hissed, prompting Adrian to hold the phone away from his head with a pained grimace. “Murderous wretch, I’ll….!” But the voice paused…and then continued with a slightly quieter tone. “How…coincidental… don’t you think Artemis?”
“Quite,” the vampire agreed without thinking “Should I deal with him?”
“No,” the voice ordered, a smug confidence creeping over the anger “For now I want you to follow and observe them…Nick hasn’t surfaced for months and this opportunity is far to favorable to let you botch it up with your eccentric methods…don’t attack unless I order you to, merely follow them for now. You can do that can’t you Artemis?”
“Of course sir,” Artemis assured with a smile no one would see, “I won’t fail you.”
The voice did not speak once more and only the click of a call ended alerted Adrian that the Prince was not interested in his assurances. Frowning at the phone as he placed it back on the cradle, Adrian turned back toward the cracked window, his body convalescing with the surroundings till not but a faint trail of mist remained…as though he had never been there at all.
Stepping quietly into the night once more, Nick kept his eyes on the rooftops and shadows as they moved down the dark road. Idly, two fingers found the ring on his finger, twisting it back and forth as though it were the key to some elusive safe. As they approached the vehicle, Nick retrieved his keys and loaded what little supplies Selena had into the backseat, the duffel bags upsetting a pile of pictures and papers that cascaded to the floor. Slipping into the driver seat, Nick winked at his new companion hopefully as he switched the car into drive and pulled out into the road.
Before the first rays of sun had touched the silent house they had left, the jeep had long vanished from the small town, whisked away by the larger roads and hopefully…safety.
