Chapter Eleven
I unloaded everything that I was carrying on the kitchen table--small shopping bag, keys, loaded gun. The answering machine was blinking, so on my way to the bedroom to hang up my coat I hit the button. The tape whirred as it rewound, and then the first message played.
"Hi, honey bee--"
"I'm twenty-six, stop calling me that!" I cried from the bedroom.
"--this is your father. We haven't heard from you in a while, so I just thought I'd call and see if you were all right. Call me back when you get this. Bye."
The second message was basically the same as the first.
"Hey, sugar bean--"
"Argh!"
"--this is your mother. You haven't called me in almost a month, so I thought I'd check and see if you were doing all right. Call me back when you get this. Oh, and if Richard answers the phone, do try and be nice. Goodbye."
The third message really shook things up a bit.
"555 - 0779."
I walked out of the bedroom to stare at the answering machine. The tape was now rewinding again, so that it could be prepared the next time someone called and I wasn't there to answer. I continued to stare, barely hearing the whirring sound. Who the hell calls someone and leaves just a phone number? No name, no message, nothing. Mom and Dad could wait; I had a feeling that whoever the third caller was would not like to be kept waiting.
I reached for the cordless phone and dialed the number; thank God I have good memory when it comes to that sort of thing. The phone rang once before someone answered. "Didn't anyone tell you you're not supposed to leave home?"
I rolled my eyes. "So sorry, Morgana, if I had to pick up a few things."
Morgana laughed. "Who's the deadbolt for, Kayla? Surely you don't think it'll keep--oh, say, me--out, do you?"
My gaze flicked to the small shopping bag I had left on the table. How in the hell had Morgana known that I had bought a deadbolt? "Don't flatter yourself," I told her. "The deadbolt's not for your benefit."
She laughed again, a high, tinkering sound. It didn't really fit her. "Oh, so then it must be for your mysterious visitor."
Now I was starting to get angry. She knew about the deadbolt, and she knew about Vann? Damn Stavros; no wonder I had felt like I was being watched for the past two days. I was being watched! "How long have you been spying on me, Morgana?"
"Not long," she answered. "We work in shifts."
Now she was just toying with me. It was working.
"Why did you leave the phone number?" I asked. I just wanted the conversation to be over. I certainly wasn't on my way to liking Morgana any more. If anything, I was liking her less and less.
"The Boss wanted me to tell you that he's given you your first assignment." She didn't sound particularly happy. Yay. "You're going to be hunting down a rogue vampire. Nothing too difficult, I should expect."
"Great," I said. "Just tell me where and I'm gone."
"Now, hold on to your panties," Morgana laughed. "Stavros doesn't want you going alone. He's sending a few people along to help. Don't go anywhere--I'll be there in five minutes." Click. I slammed the poor phone down in its charger. I really hated that chick. I thought about where she could possibly be; Stavros' lair was at least twenty minutes away from my apartment. For all I knew, she could have been watching me right now. With that unsettling thought, I pulled all the drapes in the living room closed, just to make myself feel better.
In most books and movies, vampire slayers have some weird outfit thing that they were when they go slaying--like Peter Parker wearing the Spiderman suit under his regular clothes. The jeans and t-shirt I was wearing worked just fine for me. I'd have to wear a jacket to hide the gun and the knives I was going to put on my arms, but other than that, it was all good. I slipped on a shoulder holster with straps that crossed on my back, making it possible for me to have a gun on both sides. Next came the wrist sheaths, which put a knife on each forearm. Then I had a stake in my back pocket; my t-shirt was long enough to hide it. It would be a bitch to sit down, but I'd manage. Last but not least, a silver cross went around my neck. You couldn't go vamp slaying without a cross. Well, you could, if you were, say, Buddhist, but that's beside the point.
The cross itself wouldn't work against the werewolf I'd be working with tonight, but hey, it was pure silver. That had to count for something.
I was just putting my hair up in a ponytail--couldn't have it getting in the way--when the doorbell rang. How polite, she was using the doorbell. And here I was expecting her to just kick down the door. I ran into the living room and opened the door as the bell rang again. Morgana was standing out in the hallway, along with Chase, and a blonde man I had never seen before. Morgana glared, Chase waved, and the blonde man shielded his eyes. "Could you please put that away?" he asked.
I was confused. Morgana rolled her eyes at me. "Vaughn is a vampire--get rid of the cross."
Oh, shit. Hurriedly I slipped the cross inside my t-shirt. It was cool against my skin, and I shivered before I could help myself.
"Thank you," the vampire called Vaughn said, lowering his arm. He was quite attractive, for a vampire. Blonde, curly hair, cornflower blue eyes, fair skin. His accent was Eastern European. Romania, Bulgaria, someplace like that.
"No problem," I said, but I didn't really mean it. After all, he was powerful enough to hide the fact that he was a vampire. I hadn't been able to tell until Morgana said something. Hiding my cross didn't make me feel comfortable at all.
"Are you ready?" Morgana asked impatiently.
"Let me get my jacket," I said, and then turned to walk away. Morgana's next words stopped me.
"May we come in?"
I turned back to face her. She was smirking. Vaughn looked surprised. Chase looked furious. She had put me in quite a pickle, so to speak. She and Chase could have forced their way in, but Vaughn would have been stuck outside until I either invited him in, or dropped dead. I could flat-out refuse, but then Vaughn wouldn't be able to come in for as long as I owned the apartment, or until I died. If she had said, "May I come in?" then it would have been all right, because I could flat-out refuse, but not bind Vaughn from my place of residence forever, but she had used "we" because she knew exactly what it would mean if I said no. I would be shutting Vaughn out of my home for the rest of my life--or at least, my ownership of the home--and insulting one of Stavros' vampires. Not good.
So I did the only thing I could do. "Go to hell."
She smiled. It wasn't a refusal, so technically Vaughn wasn't expelled from my place of residence forever. However, I hadn't exactly invited them inside, either. So of course, just because she could, she took a few steps into the apartment, and just stood there with her arms crossed, like she was challenging me. Chase, good guy that he was, stayed in the hallway with Vaughn. I hurried into the bedroom and pulled on my jacket as quickly as I could. Once it was secure over the guns--they hung pretty low, so I didn't look like a walking scarecrow--I grabbed my keys and ushered that bitch out of my apartment. I so did not want her staying in there for very long. I locked the door behind me--but we all know how useless locked doors are.
They had come in Chase's Jeep. I got stuck sitting in the back with Vaughn. Better than sitting in the back with Morgana. We had been driving for about five minutes in the most awkward silence ever before I finally asked, "Is anyone going to tell me what's going on?"
Chase gave his sister an annoyed glance. I assumed she was supposed to have elaborated more when I called. "A little girl was murdered by a rogue vampire," Chase said. I put a hand over my mouth. Vampire victims were a dime a dozen, but the fact that it was a child, a little girl. Murders are always worse when it's a child. What he said next was even worse. "Last night she rose as a vampire. Stavros had to send someone to exterminate her. She killed a morgue attendant."
I looked out the window, concentrating on the cars that drove past us, just to keep the image of a little girl vampire running amock around the morgue out of my head. "So we're going to get the vamp before that happens again," I said, and looked back in time to see Chase nod. "Why does Stavros care?"
It was Vaughn who answered me. "In the Los Angeles territory it is illegal to kill or turn children. It is a rule Stavros keeps to most adamantly." I thought back to Antonio. He was a child vampire--could he be the reason that Stavros was so bent on upholding that particular rule? Who knew. Vampires are so confusing.
"I don't see why we had to bring her along," Morgana said to Chase, acting as if I wasn't even there. "The three of us could have taken care of one lone vampire. Hell, we probably don't even need three."
I looked at Vaughn. Was she insulting both of us? It sounded to me like she was insinuating that her and Chase would have been just fine on their own. Vaughn just smiled. Either he was good at hiding his reactions to Morgana's slander, or he just didn't give a fuck. Chase didn't answer his sister. Atta boy.
A few minutes of silence later, we pulled into one of those five-car parking lots you get in parks. And hey, we were in a park. Go figure. "What are we doing here?" I asked as we all piled out of the Jeep.
"When a vampire goes rogue," Morgana said, not looking at me as she strapped a sawed off shotgun to her back, "their mind breaks. They go insane. Not insane like humans, but much worse. The vampire wouldn't have been able to stay in its lair, because rogues are skittish around humans. It would have gone someplace where it wouldn't be bothered, someplace where it could prey upon weaker humans who couldn't fight it off."
"And that place is here?" I asked, peering into the darkness beyond the parking lot.
"Well, it's a start," Chase said, coming to stand beside me. I looked up at him, hating the fact that he was like, ten inches taller than me. He wore jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt. There was a utility belt around his waist, holding a gun and stakes. He looked good. I mean, really good. Maybe it was the way his ass looked in the jeans. Maybe it was the gun. I just don't know.
He sensed me looking at him and smiled down at me. "What?" he asked.
"Nothing." I shrugged off the jacket and threw it in the backseat. "Let's get this party started."
The four of us set off into the darkness. The path was wide enough that we could all walk shoulder-to-shoulder. I was between Chase and Vaughn, thank God. Morgana and I might have tried to kill each other--much less an insane vampire that was on the loose. It wasn't long before we came to a stone bridge that went over a creek. Well, it was a little big to be considered a creek in my book. A miniature river? About ten yards away from the bridge, we stopped.
"If the vampire's still in the park, it'll be under there," Vaughn said, his voice barely a whisper. I had to strain to hear him, but I knew that Chase and Morgana could hear him just fine. Damn it. "No direct sunlight--during the day people will walk by, thinking it's just another homeless person."
Through a series of whispers and complex hand motions, we decided to approach the bridge. Chase and Vaughn would go over one side, and when the vampire ran in the opposite direction, Morgana and I would have the drop on it. Why I got stuck with Morgana, I don't know. I would have been much happier with Chase, or even Vaughn. Slowly, we all approached the bridge. When we were halfway over it, Chase and Vaughn jumped over the edge. A gunshot sounded, followed by screech that sounded like a cross between a bird and a monkey. The vampire took off running, and off Morgana and I went, over the edge, on to the pavement below.
I pulled the gun under my right arm and quickly transferred the weapon to my right hand. This particular gun was loaded with silver-plated bullets. They wouldn't kill a vampire, but they would sure hurt. Morgana, with her extra lycanthrope stamina, ran ahead of me, and ended up somehow in front of the crazy vampire. It stopped abruptly, hissing at Morgana. She hissed back. Nice. The vampire turned away from her, and found me only a few yards behind it. I'm deadly accurate up to one hundred yards away with a gun, which made fifteen or twenty yards so not a problem. I fired into the vampire's right shoulder, causing it to turn ninety degrees to the right. It turned back to face me, angered, and I fired a matching shot into its left shoulder.
By this time Chase and Vaughn had showed up, and we quickly surrounded the vampire. Vaughn and Morgana each grabbed an arm, holding the struggling vampire in place. The vampire's hood had fallen back, and you could clearly tell now that it was female. Her long, platinum blonde hair was dirty and oily--even vampires need to take showers, you know. Her eyes were glazed over and red. Dried blood was caked around her mouth.
And still, despite all that, I recognized her immediately.
Chase had gotten a stake out of his belt and was just about to shove it through her heart when I made potentially idiotic decision. "Wait, Chase."
All three of them looked at me like I had grown another head. "What are you doing?" Morgana hissed.
I just shook my head. I was still staring at the rogue vampire we had captured. In the past five years, I had killed twenty-four vampires. It would have been twenty-eight, but four of them got away. Mikhail, Winter, Greghor, and Elizabeth were the only vampires left out of Mikhail's line, the four vampires I wanted to kill more than anything.
We had just captured Elizabeth.
