Exsanguinate (22 page)

“
I
got here as soon
as I checked my voicemail, Chey. You’ve been contacted about Sheridan and Dakota? Are they okay?” Harris scrambled through the door. He grabbed a towel from the coat closet to dry his head. “Damn, that storm’s intense.”

“Did you park at the next lot over and walk into the parking garage?”

“Yeah. Why all the covertness?”

“I’m worried that you’ll be seen. C’mon inside.” I hugged him around the neck.

“Thank God they’re okay, Chey.”

Don’t cry. Your tears will be bloody… don’t do it!

“I’m in Dakota’s room. I can’t take any chances of Ludovic knowing I am getting any help. I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“Ludovic – that guy Dakota was seeing? He’s the asshole that took her and Sheridan?”

I nodded as we walked into Dakota’s bedroom. “What the hell, Chey? Don’t give up on her yet. Why are you already packing her stuff into boxes?”

Harris leaned and glanced around the room.

Sniff, sniff.

“I’m not packing up her stuff. I got a call from Ludovic tonight and I heard Dakota yell out GC89. So I’m trying to find anything in her room with the alphanumeric code on it. I have no idea what it means, and I haven’t seen anything in here that references it.” I pulled out a huge box of crap from under her bed and threw it up on top of the covers. “Maybe I’ll find something in here.”

Sniff, sniff.

“All right. We’ll at least we know they’re alive. What is that smell, Cheyenne?”

“Wish you could have been here sooner. What smell. I don’t smell anything other than you. You smell like a wet dog.”

He looked at the bottoms of his shoes. “Cheyenne, something smells wrong in here.”

I bit my upper lip. He stopped in mid-sentence.

Sniff, sniff.

“It’s like…” Harris leaned in towards me and with his right hand tentatively pulled up a lock of my hair as he took another whiff. “Holy mother of a monkey on a stick!” He dropped his hand and took several steps back.

“Harris? What’s the deal?” I raised my hands in a palms up WTF expression.

Cocking his head and scrunching up his eyebrows, Harris blurted out, “What’s the deal? Oh for fuck’s sake, Cheyenne. You’ve become a vampire. It was a damn vampire that bit you, wasn’t it?” His voice shook on the verge of panic as he took a few additional steps towards the front door.

“Wait. Don’t leave. What do you mean, vampire?” I stood in the doorway to block his exit.

What the hell? How could he possibly know this?

“You know damn good and well what I mean by vampire. This place reeks of vamper. I smelled it immediately when I walked in but thought you were burning that dragon’s blood incense you’re crazy about.”

I swallowed hard and turned around to walk back towards the living room, leaving Harris to stand alone.

He followed directly after me and got up in my face. “I’ll be damned. Roxas was right. He suspected that you had been bitten by a vampire. But we weren’t one hundred percent sure yet.”

“What are you talking about? You’re friggin nuts.”

“Am I? That scent intensified when you put that box on the bed. And then in your hair, that’s when I realized the vamper smell wasn’t on you. By Crom, it
IS
you!” Harris howled with laughter at the intensity of the moment as we walked back into the living room. He grabbed my arms and turned me on my heels.

Holding me at arm’s length by my shoulders he said, “‘Fess up, Chey. You can’t hide this from me.”

I thrust my fists on my hips. “By
Crom
, Harris, your inner nerd is showing again. Wait? Just how the hell do you know what a vampire smells like?”

“Well, technically, you and I are supposed to be mortal enemies. But that went out of fashion a couple centuries ago.” Harris let go and plopped into the recliner planting his feet on the ottoman. “I’m a werewolf, Chey, but I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

“So that conversation at the hospital with Roxas was real? Do you match your avatar inside the game? Unholy hell, Harris.
We … shared a house for three years in college. How could I not know?”

“We keep it hidden, just like you’re gonna have to keep your secret now, too.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” I sat down across from him staring as if I’d never seen the man before.

“Most folks say you’re already damned. I don’t know though if that’s true or not. You’re only the third vampire I’ve met.”

“Fourth. Roxas is a vampire too. He’ll be pissed when he finds out I told you.”

“Nope, third. Already knew about him when we met at your room. Pissed, nah. He’s crazy nutso about you.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty crazy nutso about him too.” Recollection of that day in the hospital flooded through my mind. “I vaguely seem to remember you guys talking about vampires and werewolves, but the nurse had just given more morphine. I thought you were talking about the game, so I didn’t think anymore of it, until a few hours ago.”

“He’s a great guy, even if he is a vamper. Not that I don’t trust him, we’ve been pals ever since you brought him on board with the team.”

“Listen. There’s a twist to this whole Roxas/vampire thing,” I hedged.

Harris looked at me with a ‘fess up look on his face.

“Yeah. Okay, so this is gonna sound weird, but Roxas isn’t really Roxas.”

Harris looked sideways at me.

“I know, just hear me out. His real name is Khaldon, and he’s been a vampire for like thousands of years or something.”

“What? Are you shittin’ me, Caz?”

“No, I’m not. Tonight I practically killed the guy because I thought Ludovic had done something to Roxas since I hadn’t heard from him since getting out of the hospital. Roxas said he was going to put in a new server in the cabinet with you.”

“Oh yeah – I couldn’t get away from my client. I had to cancel. You mean you hadn’t heard from him since Friday?”

“No, I hadn’t. So Khaldon and I went over to the address Roxas gave me for the 3D holo suit. I found this email, there was bloodwine in his fridge, and nothing was making sense.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Roxas is this dude named Khaldon? How did you hook up with him?”

“It’s a long story, but basically I had to meet the local vampire Lord, and Khaldon was assigned to watch over me. When Ludovic contacted me, I couldn’t get hold of you, Briggs, or Roxas, so I called Khaldon ‘cause he’s a hacker too.”

“Take a breath, Chey. Slow down. Then what?”

“After Ludovic threatened that he was going to hurt others that I loved if I told anyone he had contacted me, I realized I hadn’t heard from Roxas. That’s when I kinda went mental.”

Harris looked at me as if that wasn’t any new real news to him.

I punched him in the arm. “So I had Khaldon take me over to Roxas’ house. Khaldon found a bottle of bloodwine in the fridge, and we found this email on his computer ...”

“Wait. You went into Roxas’ house, nosed around in his fridge and computer files? Not cool, Chey – so not cool.”

“No. Well. It didn’t happen quite like that. Let me make you some breakfast, and I’ll start from the top.”

“Tell you what, I’m going to take Beano for a walk before he lets loose another noxious green gas cloud. I’m sure Stormaggedon could use a little time outside too. There’s a covered walkway between the buildings. I’ll have a chat with them. When I get back, we’ll talk through this. Have you contacted your dad to tell him?”

“No, I haven’t called him yet. It’s 2:15 in the morning. You’re going to talk to the dogs? Can you do that since you’re a werewolf?” I looked at Harris, confused.

“I’m shitin’ ya, Chey. Order a pizza and let’s open a bottle of wine. I have a feeling we’ve got a long night ahead of us.

“Thanks, Harris. I mean it.”

“We’ll see if you still think so when I give Beano my fleas.”

Harris stepped out the door with the dogs. I picked up the phone to order a meat supreme pizza. Do they deliver this late at night? If not, Harris would have to settle for a pound of bacon from the freezer. Now his carnivorous eating habits and monthly cyber-hypochondriac nonsense, all made sense.

H
arris returned
with the pups about the time the bacon finished thawing in the microwave. “No dice on the pizza – they stopped delivering at two a.m. and don’t begin delivering until eleven, so I’m making you an omelet.”

“Yeah, I was afraid of that. I sure do miss that twenty-four hour pizza joint by where we used to live.”

“I can’t say as if I miss that place – seemed like it was never quiet enough for me. Did you canines have a nice walk?”

“We did actually. I found out that you haven’t been brushing your teeth twice a day like you’re supposed to,” Harris quipped.

“What? How? Are you kidding me? Beano told you I haven’t been brushing twice a day?” My left fist clenched on my hip while my right waved my spatula around.

“Nah, but I figured since you weren’t eating as much, you probably weren’t, and now that you have all those extra canines you most likely will avoid your dental care. Proper hygiene is a must for vampires.”

“You haven’t changed a bit, have you? You are still as neurotic as the day I met you in lab. I bet you count how many loads of laundry detergent you get out of a container too.”

“Every time.” He winked at me.

“Come on, let’s eat. What do you want to drink? I have juice if you want. I want to eat and get back into the office. Ludovic is supposed to contact me at three a.m.” I gestured towards the kitchen, and we got out plates and glasses. He opened the fridge and seemed startled to see bottles of bloodwine.

“So you gotta tell me. How did you turn into a vampire, then find out Roxas was a vampire, and you hadn’t told me?”

“Where the heck have you been since I’ve been out of the hospital?” I retold last night’s events in detail and even though Harris laughed at me through most of it, in the end he was glad I didn’t have to kill Roxas.

“So you think Ludovic is watching you?”

“Or having me watched.”

“Somehow he knew I wasn’t home, and he called me while I was at Roxas’ house. Padme ran an unauthorized protocol on the house and couldn’t locate anything internally. So, yeah, I think he’s either got lookouts, or a camera on the penthouse somehow. That’s why I’ve got everything closed up. It was safer to bring you in through the maintenance entry.”

“Makes sense. Hopefully it worked.”

“Otherwise, he’s threatened he’s going to cut off more body parts and send them to me.”

“More body parts? What the hell, Chey?”

“Because I wasn’t in my apartment, he gave me a pop quiz. Even though I got his stupid question right, he wouldn’t let me talk to Dakota – so I went off on the bastard. He threatened I would be receiving a Fed Ex package today.”

Harris gulped. “Listen, Chey, I want to run a tracer on his IP address. How much time does he spend with you on the phone? Does he give you a time limit before he hangs up?”

“Roxas tried doing that earlier, but he said every time the server called his connection, the line would jump to another IP.”

Harris’ face grew red. He opened up his shirt collar a bit more. “You got a fan?”

“In the other room. You okay?”

“I’ll help you track down this asshole, Chey. It really pisses me off to hear this has happened.”

“Uhh … let me go get that fan now before you blow yer gasket.” I had never really seen Harris upset before, and now that I knew he was a werewolf, I thought it was all a little bit creepier. I wasn’t sure I was ready to see him wolf out.

We moved into the office and he whistled. “Damn, Chey, you have seriously been building haven’t you.”

“I wish I could share the beta results on the prototype suits, but until I get my sisters back, I can’t even think about work.”

We got seated and logged into the portal. I was anxious to see if any messages had been sent while I was out.

“Harris, do you think that maybe GC89 is referencing a geo-cache? Do you have any of Dakota’s old geo-cache archives?”

“I think so. You’re right, Cheyenne. That’s how she catalogs them. I totally didn’t make that connection. Dammit! I have several of her books and they all begin with GC and then the number. Why didn’t I catch that?”

“Where are those books now, Harris?”

“Hmm. Not sure. I remember scanning a few of those into the database when I needed inspiration to set my own caches. I have a couple of boxes she gave me under my bed at the house. When I leave here today, I’ll go get them.”

“Okay good. I’m gonna tear apart her room some more and see if there is anything specific about that one location.”

“Have you thought about checking Dakota’s intranet account? She creates geo-caches all the time. Have you tried that?”

“That’s a fantastic idea. I’ll log in and check.”

I opened up the portal on two machines and neither account had any messages, except ones for Dakota. It was full of messages from Briggs. “Oh crap,” I muttered.

“What? Did he contact you?”

“No, but Briggs is goin’ nuckin’ futs looking for Dakota. I think we need to contact him and get his ass down here.”

“How about after we get through whatever is gonna happen here in a few minutes, I call him up and talk to him.”

“Are you sure that’s something you want to do? I appreciate the gesture and all, but …”

He gave me the hand. I knew there was no point in arguing anymore. Years of living with him had taught me when he was done.

I just grinned at him. “Thanks, I really appreciate the help. I feel so weird, so lost, like everything has changed since Halloween night.”

“Well, think about it, little sis. You died, became a vampire, your sisters have been kidnapped by another vampire, you find out Roxas is a vampire and is this Khaldon dude. The only thing that hasn’t changed is Beano.”

I smiled at him.

“Oh, and don’t forget, I just found out you’re supposed to be my mortal enemy as well.” Harris smiled and punched me in the arm. “If there’s gonna be any fighting it’ll be me and you against the baddies. However, trying to convince my pack to fight among vampires – well that might be a different story.”

I grimaced at both our realities.

A ping popped up on my computer screen and a text message rolled across the monitor. I motioned to Harris to begin the trace and to monitor the databases. We needed to determine where this transmission originated.

[Fang Boy] Who do you know who has a birthday this month?

I thought about this for a minute. Who has a birthday in November?

My father’s birthday is in November.

I froze with terror. Ice water cascaded through my veins.

Afraid to answer the question, I chose a generic route.

[Lady Cazenove] I know several people whose birthdays are in November.

[Fang Boy] Perhaps so – but which one is related to you?

I didn’t respond to the instant message but hollered at Harris instead, “You gettin’ anything on this creep?”

[Fang Boy] Unscramble These Words to Learn Your Next Clue

“Chey, he’s using an anonymonizer IP off of a proxy server. Damn, I hate this guy. Looks like this address is coming in from Germany. Is that where you think they are?”

“I don’t know. We weren’t able to get a firm location last time. We might have to wait to see if he uses the same IP address again.

[Fang Boy] odnw noe Ethre nda cninsouot og.

[Fang Boy] When you figure it out, call me on Dakota’s phone.

[Fang Boy] Do you understand?

[Lady Cazenove] Yes. How long do I have?

[Fang Boy] The sooner, the better. They don’t get to eat or drink until you answer me. Don’t keep them waiting!

[Fang Boy] Be online at 8 a.m. sharp for your next clue!

“I hate this fecker!” I screamed.

I typed into the chat window, but the message indicated the user chat had gone offline and the message did not go through. “Shite – I hate word scrambles – I totally suck at them!”