Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (20 page)

Nicola added, “We manage to keep her symptoms from getting too out of hand, but time between treatments keeps shrinking. If the full moon doesn’t fix or reset her cycles, Nick might have to sleep with her.”

Looking pained at her blunt report, Nick met Marek’s eyes which revealed his amusement and the vampire replied, “Some would say that isn’t a bad plan. The werewolf is beautiful. While I am more into blondes and redheads, if she wasn’t a werewolf...”

Red headed Audrey appeared beside him as if called to listen to Marek’s wandering eye, “She’d probably neuter you for trying, if I didn’t first.”

Recoiling in surprise, the elder vampire quickly recovered and put his arm around the shoulders of Audrey extra lovingly as he tried to dig himself out of the hole he had dug for himself, “As I was saying, I do prefer redheads. I was just remarking that for those who like that look, she is a beautiful woman.”

Staring at him looking unconvinced, Audrey quickly looked at Nick and added to the man, “Nicola seems resigned to share you with Charlotte. I suppose if it were life and death, I might permit Marek to be with another woman someday; but he better not plan on it any time soon.

“You on the other hand, Nicholas, seem determined to not sleep with the wolf.”

Nick could feel heat in his cheeks and could guess that he was a bit red from yet another frank speaking vampire. Age or being undead seemed to loosen their tongues that way, though his old age had not made him the same way. Still he answered as frankly as he could make himself admit, “I didn’t join Nicola on a whim. You know me. When I commit to someone, it is forever.”

Shaking their heads at him collectively, the vampires seemed less convinced. Audrey spoke the thoughts of the group he had a feeling as she said, “Human rules of monogamy can’t be held as absolute. Even they have societies and other examples of a man with multiple wives. Nicola may be my best friend, but we’ve shared Marek off and on though she’s preferred other men since we met. Still, we’re vampires and can live forever. We can’t reproduce that way. Having children means turning others with our blood and their deaths.

“A commitment of monogamy because of children or worries of children are moot. Don’t you think?”

Unconvinced, Nick simply replied, “If the full moon fixes Charlotte, I think it would be better to avoid that treacherous slope of thinking, Audrey; but thanks for your opinion anyway.”

He wasn’t trying to be rude, but the idea still went against the thinking he had been raised to believe.

After escaping the lair, Nicola’s occasional questioning looks as he drove, made the man realize that he might be the only one that couldn’t see being with Charlotte as anything but a betrayal. Trying not to sigh each time he thought that way, the voran turned the car north towards the first of the bars they would canvas looking for hunters and vampires.

Chapter 12- Peace Talks

“You look preoccupied,” Detective Tucker said sitting in the booth across from the voran. The diner they had chosen for the meeting had a fifties feel to it with some older music playing in the background.

For Nick, the music wasn’t old, it was just music. He had lived through those years, so they were his past; but they were memories easily recalled despite the passing of decades. It was a simpler time though it had its problems like every decade seemed to have. The world changed. The technology and dreams about the future changed, but in the end it was all much the same for the voran.

“It’s a full moon tonight,” the voran stated cryptically. His mind was on Charlotte and her condition. What he might have to do despite Nicola’s blessing still weighed heavily on him, but the man pulled his mind back to why he was here. “So did you manage to discover anything?”

Pushing a manila envelope across the table for Nick to look at as the waitress came to take their order, the detective ordered coffee and a burger since it was nearly noon. The voran opened the envelope
finding pictures of the car from the front. In Illinois, the vehicles had plates on both the front and back. It played to his favor as he could clearly make out the plate, which the detective had blown up for him.

Among the handful of pictures, two sheets of paper drew Nick’s attention. “You found them?”

“You gave me pretty big bread crumbs to follow my friend and they checked out. I ran the plate through the DMV. It’s a used car recently registered to a Shedu Kalan. He’s from India by way of Japan as far as I could trace with the passport. As long as he didn’t have a forger create it, the info should be real enough.

“I even managed to find an address. He rented out a place near the middle part of the city. I could see about staking it out myself, but I thought maybe you and yours might want first shot at them. If I list them as persons of interest in the robberies we started this up as, we might spook them to go underground.

“Based off their appearance from the video, my guess is that they’re very good at hiding their tracks,” the detective stated without saying aloud why their appearance mattered. Though no one should have followed either of them or be listening to their conversation, it was still best to stick to the more mundane facts.

With a nod to the man, Nick agreed. “Their kind usually is. Just like the ones I’ve known for a long time.”

The dark skinned man sat back as the waitress returned. Nick had replaced the pictures of the two men sitting in the front seat of their CR-V only keeping the address out before sliding the envelope to the side out of reach of possible accidental spills. After the woman had deposited the coffee and burger for Fred and a plate of chicken fingers for the voran, the detective leaned in and said, “You haven’t changed a bit since we met. Just how long have you known some of these people for anyway?”

“It feels like a hundred years for my oldest acquaintances,” the voran replied understanding that no one would believe that he meant it more than metaphorically. No one who looked as young as Nick
and his vampires would be believed to be over a century old after all. No one lived that long without wrinkling up at the very least. “Not everyone has been around as long of course, but my oldest friends date back a long way,” Nick stated with a smile.

Leaving the idea of people over a hundred years old to gestate in his mind; Fred countered, “It must be hard to keep the time secret. How have they kept out of the headlines with their particular habits?”

“They move a lot. Papers can be faked or bought and nowadays computers are easy enough to adjust or have certain people plant what is needed,” Nick said quietly. “They do what they need to for survival just like we all do.”

Chuckling, the man shook his head and replied, “Maybe I shouldn’t ask. The odds are I wouldn’t want to know some of the details of what’s been done.”

“I’m sure some of it would have a statute of limitations based on age,” Nick smiled in amusement. Cold cases could be opened, but more basic files of birth and the things they needed to hide their existence would only be searched by someone checking on them specifically. Getting doctors to make certificates of birth to help them wasn’t very hard for creatures that could glamour humans into doing what they needed after all. A desperate enough vampire would even dare the sun, usually during winter, to create what was needed where they needed it.

Nodding though with less mirth than his friend, Fred changed the subject saying, “I can look into those silver thefts you mentioned on the phone, but they’re not in my district so it’s a little trickier. There was also something else you might want to check. A set of smoke grenades leaving traces of silver nitrate in an alleyway created a big disturbance Friday night.

“I was able to get some of the details since a friend of mine was running the crime scene. Blood was found in several places. It was labeled feline blood from at least two species, but they couldn’t be identified. So far they are labeling it as a dirtied crime scene making it hard to decipher that part. They also found a strange dust pattern, but he wouldn’t go into that since the cat part had made him more curious.”

Rubbing his chin thoughtfully, Nick thought to himself instead of aloud for fear of anyone hearing. Feline blood might be nothing, but it was unclassified because of the possible contamination. If they were human cat hybrids, then science was unlikely to be able to identify the breeds of the unique creatures.

“I wonder if our trio ran into trouble,” was all Nick would consider aloud. “If they were playing vigilante, maybe a rival gang caught them.”

Understanding the voran’s play on words, the detective added a little more information, “It was a closed alley with high buildings. If they did chase someone from a rival gang, it’s likely they had to fight their way out of a trap. Sending in people to check it out might have to watch out for more activity without police around watching their backs.”

The warning was understood. It wouldn’t be the first time a new clan of vampires had moved in from the north. He just hoped they weren’t like the last. Then again, some of these could just be remnants of Cyrus’s army gathering together and becoming organized for self preservation.

When their food was finished, the two men went their separate ways. Nick called the apartment and heard Charlotte’s voice. With caller ID on his phone, she had probably seen his cell identified and hurried to answer.

“Nick?” the woman asked sounding more surprised than anything else.

“Hey, Charlotte,” he greeted less formal than he might have been with the detective. “I need you to write down an address. My contact came through and I am going to check it out now.”

Now concern came through the speaker as the woman warned, “Nick, Logan and I could come as back up. With Kate added, we’d outnumber them, since Marek’s bunch won’t be of much use to you until tonight.”

“I don’t want to pick a fight,” he reminded her, “and besides I’m human so what danger would they see coming.”

A slight pause was broken by a sigh as Charlotte revealed reluctantly, “If their sense of smell is as good as ours, then they’ll smell her on you.”

Meaning Nicola, the voran felt less concern, but he reminded her, “I doubt that they’ll attack before they are sure. Having her smell on me isn’t the same as being one of them, but since we don’t know how they’ll react, I am calling you with an address.

“I’ll call you when I get there. If I don’t call back within an hour of that, then it’ll be time to call in the cavalry.”

“Nick, this doesn’t sound like a good idea,” Charlotte refused to give up the idea of backup. “You don’t know anything about them.”

“I didn’t know anything about werewolves when I walked in and sold chocolate for the daughter I didn’t have; but look how that turned out,” he chuckled.

“Yeah, the idea makes me itch all over,” she retorted in light of her current condition.

“Speaking of which, do you feel any better or worse with the full moon so close?”

“Pretty much the same, I’ve been using the wash cloth and towel from your shower for a rub down more often though,” Charlotte answered with a sigh of frustration.

“Hang in there, Charlotte. Now write this down,” he said giving her the address and apartment number.

Sitting in his Escape after circling the apartment building one time, Nick came to the conclusion that this wouldn’t be as easy as he might hope. If he planned an assault, it would be easy enough for a voran or vampire to leap onto the terrace of an individual apartment to break in through a sliding glass door; but to enter and reach the front door he only had two entries.

While some apartment complexes had exterior walkways to each front door, this was not one of those. There was a front and back door; and both were glass but also security doors that would only open for a buzzer inside or a key. While he had learned the skill to unlock some doors, standing in front of it for any length of time could bring the police ruining both his plan and his day.

Venting a sigh, Nick decided to try the rear. At least there he wouldn’t have his back to the street. Pulling into a spot marked guest, the voran started to unlock his door when he noticed another car roll into the parking lot. He was in luck as a middle aged woman was trying to carry a couple bags of groceries along with her purse. He let her close in on the sidewalk as she adjusted first one bag and then another.

“Do you need help?” the man asked as he walked casually towards the sidewalk and gestured to the bags.

Naturally the woman was suspicious and asked, “Do you live here?”

“No, I am visiting a friend on the third floor, Shedu Kalan.” At the shake of her head at the name, he clarified, “An Indian fellow, the eastern ones not the Native American kind, or maybe you’ve seen his roommates a slim Asian girl and another man with dark hair?”

The descriptions were enough as well as the increasing weight of the bags she was barely able to hold any longer. Offering again with a gesture to her bags, the woman gratefully let him take them both and led him to the door. After her key let them inside, he followed her to the elevator going to the second floor. Bringing her groceries to her door and depositing them there to avoid the woman’s discomfort of
him waiting for her to open the door, he waved to the woman, who had never introduced herself to the stranger.

Taking the elevator up a floor, it didn’t long for the voran to find number thirty six. He had felt for their feline essence and that of the supernatural, but he could only feel the energy of someone who felt very human. While his radar was letting him down, at the door Nick could smell both the scent of three
cat like creatures and old blood. Judging from the description of the crime scene from Friday night, he could assume that they had not escaped uninjured.