Caught in Darkness (11 page)

“Don’t worry about it,” Allison
replied. “Anyway, I need to get through this chapter before I go to bed, so
I’ll see you tomorrow?”

An easy grin lifting her lips,
Veronica replied, “You know it.”

****

It would be accurate to say that
Seth’s mind was not entirely focused on his hunt. It would be more accurate to
say that his mind was largely focused on Veronica’s kiss. He certainly hadn’t
expected her to kiss him, but he wasn’t sorry that she had. And it hadn’t taken
his body any time at all to react to the taste of her. His reaction was verging
on dangerous, and it occurred to him to be concerned about what he might do if
she opted to kiss him again, but he couldn’t quite get there. Neither could he
guarantee that he’d wait for her to initiate another kiss.

The vibration of his phone in his
pocket drew him from his thoughts, and fear that it might be Veronica in need
of a rescue had him snatching the device up to his ear without a glance at the
Caller ID. “What is it?”

There was a beat of silence,
followed by faint, distinctly male chuckling. “Well, I’m not sure I’ve ever
heard you answer the phone quite like that. I catch you on a bad night?
Or day…depending on which time zone you’re in.”

The voice belonged to Corbin
Lee,
one of the few vampires Seth genuinely considered his
friend. Suddenly, for the first time in decades, Seth found he was embarrassed.
He felt like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
“Night,
and no, not really.
I was just…distracted.”

“Distracted?
You?
That’s surprising,” Corbin commented.

“I’ll tell you about it later,”
Seth offered as he stepped out of the building he’d been searching through. Another
dead-end, like every other possibility he’d investigated so far. “I wasn’t
expecting to hear from you. Is everything all right?”

“Yeah,” Corbin assured him. “I just
got to thinking that it’s been a while since we talked. Or, you know, a
comparative while. Are you on a job?”

“I am,” Seth replied. “But it’s
going slow.”
Although that was suddenly not so bad thanks to
Veronica.

“Sorry to hear it,” Corbin said. “I
won’t keep you, though. Just thought I’d check in, make sure you were still
kicking. We should meet up sometime when you’re not busy, if only so that we’ll
remember what the other looks like.”

Seth chuckled faintly, pausing
mid-stride to turn his gaze up to the dark, clear sky. The stars were bright
and their shine reminded him of Veronica. “I have a fairly good memory,
actually. But you might be right. I’ll call you when I’m off the clock.”

“Fair enough.
Happy hunting, old friend.”

“Likewise,” Seth said before
pulling the phone from his ear and disconnecting. It was good to hear his
friend’s voice from time to time—it was a good reminder of his humanity. Sometimes
he felt like he’d forgotten it, good memory or not.
Although,
tonight, it doesn’t seem so far away.

Shaking his head, Seth deposited
his phone back into his pocket and took a step forward before freezing. Suddenly
the messages his vampire-enhanced senses were sending him were actually
connecting with his brain, but it might already be too late. That depended
entirely on what kind of human he smelled behind him. A question that was
answered as quickly as he’d thought it, when the human—male—opened his mouth.

“Vampire,” the man called abruptly.
His tone made it clear that he wasn’t particularly fond of vampires, and the
age in his voice indicated that he’d come across one or two over the years. Without
even laying eyes on the man Seth knew he was a Slayer.

“If we’re going to communicate,”
Seth began slowly, holding absolutely still, “it might be easier if I turned
around.”

“As long as you keep it at a pace I
can see,” the Slayer replied coldly.

Seth carefully held his hands up,
palms open, and turned at a deliberately slow pace. The last thing he needed
was to have to deal with a trigger-happy Slayer. It was several tense seconds
before he was actually able to see the man, and he was unsurprised to note that
he didn’t recognize him. He could count the number of Slayers he’d encountered,
who were likely still alive, on one hand. That number was one, and the number
existed at all because Seth had seen a power and potential in that then-boy
that he hadn’t seen in half of the vampires he knew.

This Slayer was older, somewhere in
his mid-forties, which was actually rather impressive. He was only slightly
shorter than Seth, meaning he was just shy of six-foot, and he had dirty blonde
hair with not a small amount of natural silver highlights. His hair was
beginning to thin and he had far too many wrinkles around his faded, weary blue
eyes. He was missing half of his left eyebrow and that eye was locked in a
permanent squint, but he stood proudly. He was past the prime of his life, he
knew it, and he wasn’t afraid to prove that he’d lived as long as he had for a
reason.

Seth almost hoped he could find a
reason to like this man.

“Tell me,” Seth began, letting his
arms fall back to his sides. The Slayer’s loaded crossbow was aimed at the
ground, but he wasn’t a fool—he’d seen many a vampire fall to their pride. “Is
there a reason you didn’t shoot first?”

“I’m new in town,” the Slayer
declared.
“Still working out the lay of the land.
You
answer my questions, maybe I let you live.”

‘Maybe’ always equaled ‘not in this
lifetime’ when it came to Slayers, but Seth opted to pretend that he was green
enough not to know that. The nameless Slayer wasn’t the only one who had
questions. “I’ll tell you what I can.”

Slayer’s eyes narrowed at the faint
undertone of suspicion he heard in Seth’s words, but he refrained from pointing
it out. “How big is your Family?”

Good question; that depends on how
you define it. Aloud, Seth replied, “You know I can’t give you a number. But
it’s established.”

“Nearest Pack?”

“Not sure.” That much, at least,
was the complete truth. He hadn’t bothered to research the location or size of
the nearest werewolf Pack. If they were a problem, after all, there wouldn’t be
such a solidly-established Family in the area.

“Have you seen other Slayers in the
area?”

Interesting
question.
Slayers weren’t the tightest-knit group, but they certainly
communicated with each other more regularly than they did with the enemy. Seth
was beginning to think this Slayer was looking for someone or something
specific. “No.”

“Well, you’re not very useful, are
you?” Slayer asked, a mocking smirk curving his lips.

“You’re asking odd questions,” Seth
returned pointedly. “I always assumed that Slayers did their homework before
moving somewhere new.”

Slayer’s eyes narrowed darkly. It
was obvious that Seth hadn’t exactly earned any points with that comment. “And
I always assumed vamps had the good sense to run while they could.” He lifted
his crossbow fluidly, finger squeezing the trigger before it was even level.

The slim, pointy piece of wood tore
free of its resting place, aimed straight for Seth’s heart.

Seth dashed to the side and
forward, spinning around the Slayer until he had the other man’s trigger wrist
in his hand. The wooden arrow buried itself in the dirt well beyond where Seth
had been standing a full second later.

Tightening his grip pointedly over
the Slayer’s wrist, Seth said, “I’ll give you one warning: don’t push your
luck. I won’t bother you without reason, but if you come after me rest assured
I will fight back.”

“Burn in Hell, fang,”
the Slayer spat, reaching behind his lightweight coat for something that
smelled suspiciously wooden.

Seth wasn’t particularly surprised
by his response, and he felt only a twinge of remorse as he tightened his grip
enough to snap the man’s wrist. It was a clean break, but it would slow him
down. All he wanted was time to get away.

The Slayer cried out, cursing, and
dropped his crossbow. He spun in, toward Seth, and tried valiantly to stab him
with the stake in his other hand, but Seth moved back and the stake sliced
through air.

“This is your warning,” Seth
reminded him, holding the Slayer’s angry gaze with one of his own for a long
moment before dashing out of sight. And all the way back to his car he was
cursing himself. It had been sloppy to let the human sneak up on him. Not to
mention having a Slayer prowling the city was going to make his life a lot more
complicated.

He could only hope this didn’t
somehow come back on Veronica.

****

Veronica and Allison stepped out of
the karaoke bar near eleven o’clock on Tuesday night, laughing. “Oh my god,”
Allison gasped, a big smile splitting her perfectly-tanned cheeks and lighting
her hazel eyes, “I can’t believe I never did that before!”

“Neither can
I
.
How did I ever let you get away with bailing on all those college-karaoke
nights?” Veronica teased, walking half a step ahead of her friend as they
rounded the first corner between them and the public parking lot. The bar had
its own parking, of course, but it was sparse and had been full when they
arrived, so they’d been forced to park in the metered lot across the street and
down a block.

“I was definitely missing out,”
Allison agreed. “But thank you for not giving me the chance to maintain my
ignorance.”

Veronica rolled her eyes at her
friend’s choice of words, saying, “You’re welcome, Ali. And I really am sorry
about missing your party.”

Allison shook her head, smile still
curving her lips, and replied, “Don’t be. This way I sort of got two parties!”

“You make a good point,” Veronica
decided, turning enough to grin over at her friend. “So you’ve sort of made up
for skipping last year, but don’t use this as an excuse to skip next year, got
that?”

Allison gasped dramatically, coming
to a stop and holding a hand over her heart, exclaiming, “Bite your tongue! I
would never do such a thing!”

Veronica was stopped as well, and
she lifted her loosely-curled fists to her hips as she prepared to mock-lecture
her friend, but her comeback was interrupted by a distantly-familiar male
voice.

“Veronica Wyndham.”

The girls’ laughter died in their
throats at the heavy tone and both turned their attention forward, to the man
who had just stepped up in front of them. He was only a couple of inches over
Veronica’s five-six, appeared to be in his mid-to-late-thirties, and had
thinning brown hair. But none of these were the details that jumped out at
Veronica, whose eyes widened almost as soon as they’d landed on him. She’d seen
him before—at the park on Saturday. He was one of the Wilson brothers—the one
the other two had been talking to.

Allison stepped properly up to
Veronica’s side, a somber, curious expression on her face, and casually asked,
“Who are you?”

Wilson cut his dark, shaded eyes to
her and scowled. “No one,” he replied shortly. He returned his attention to
Veronica and thrust a torn-off piece of paper at her. “This is for you.”

Finally finding her voice, Veronica
asked, “What do you want?”

His scowl darkened and he shook the
paper pointedly, saying, “To deliver a message. Take the damn paper.”

Allison was looking between them, her
expression slowly shifting to confusion, and she carefully asked, “Veronica?”

Swallowing, Veronica reached out
and took the paper. Her eyes automatically drifted down to it, and from what
she could make out in the glow of the building lights it looked like an
address. “What…is this for?”

“You’ll figure it out if you go
there,” Wilson replied, arm falling back to his side. He turned without another
word and started walking away.

“Hey,” Allison began, still
sounding confused, “wait a second! What’s going—?” She cut herself off when
Veronica’s free hand landed on her shoulder pointedly.

“Ali, let it go,” Veronica said
quietly.

Allison turned her attention to
Veronica, frowning now, and demanded, “What’s going on, V? Do you know that
guy?”

“Not really,” Veronica mumbled, her
eyes drifting to the scrap of paper she still held. “I’ve seen him
before…once.” She fell silent for a beat, her mind racing. Why had one of them
approached her? What was the significance of the address? Were they taunting
her? What should I do about this address? There was a pit quickly building in
her stomach as she considered numerous—and largely extreme—reasons that they
would be trying to get her to go somewhere specific. She needed to call Seth.

Veronica started when the paper was
suddenly snatched out of her hand, her eyes snapping up to Allison to find her
friend shining the light of her iPhone over the paper with a thoughtful frown. “It’s
not important,” Veronica tried to say, reaching for the paper.

Allison turned, taking the paper
out of reach, and clucked her tongue. “Uh-uh. It is important, I can tell by
the look on your face.” She drifted into silence for a beat before finally
looking up and asking, “Is this related to that thing you told me you can’t
tell me about?”

“…Yes,” Veronica offered carefully.
Sometimes Allison was incredibly difficult to read.

Eyes darting back to the paper,
Allison asked, “And whatever’s at this address is important, right? I mean,
that’s why shady people do even shadier things like handing mysterious
addresses to virtual strangers.”

“This isn’t a mystery novel, Ali,”
Veronica said firmly, again reaching for the paper. This time she managed to
successfully snag it out of her friend’s grasp and she added, “Don’t worry
about it, okay?”

Sliding her phone back into her
pocket, Allison declared, “Oh, I’m not going to. And I don’t read mystery
novels—I don’t have the time. Now come on.” She turned before the words had
even left her mouth and resumed walking.