The Hunt (23 page)

I let that little detail sink in, seeing her eyes widen slightly in understanding. Yes, I just admitted in a round-about way to killing an Ancient and carving into his flesh first, but it’s her word against mine if it ever were to come out. Besides, if I play this right she might wind up here in our seethe after this whole debacle ends.

“Asa said you wanted to talk with me, but I fear this whole adventure will be over before you have a chance. Could it be you are truly a pawn in this whole setup? That the crimes were charged against you conveniently when we put our request in to ‘buy’ a rogue for this expedition?”

I stare off in the distance, trying once again to reach into her mind. The silver still repulses me and I can’t break through. “Or could it be that someone in the Inner Circle really wants your valuable property for their own gain?” I tap a finger to my lip. “I don’t know. And it’s driving me crazy.”

I leave my perch and pace back and forth in her field of vision, her eyes tracking me the whole time. “If you are innocent, at least of the crimes they’re charging you with, I would love to thwart their plans for inheriting your holdings.

“Interesting loophole in vampiric society, isn’t it? The one to kill you drinks your blood
and
inherits your wealth.” The room’s dimensions only allow for three paces before I have to turn, hindering my preference of walking and talking out my thoughts. “Certainly paints a target on the back of any vampire master with no seethe to stand behind them… especially one so close to a crumbling governing body in desperate need of funds.”

I pause in my pacing and note the plasma bag is almost empty. Foregoing sterile alcohol wipes or sanitary gloves, I wait ‘til it’s done and change it out for a fresh one. “You worked so hard to get to where you were, didn’t you?” I glance to her eyes for answer; they still remain locked on me, no hint of emotion in the dark depths. “Why try to draw out my man, Asa, with the sword display and sliced words? Did you think the forced sex in the bowling alley would make him susceptible to your pleas?”

The minutes tick by in silence and I swap out the bag once more, waving the good doctor back into her suite twice to finish her tea and relax. I don’t want her privy to what’s being said and make her a possible target later because of the knowledge.

“Twelve years in silver was your sentence, yes?” I’m getting annoyed I can’t read her. “Blink once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no’.” Emiko blinks once. “Any idea what would have happened to your accumulated wealth while imprisoned?” Two blinks. I smile. “Without a seethe, the Tribunal appoints someone to ‘manage’ it in your absence. Convenient, huh?” No response, but it was rhetorical anyway.

“Bet you can figure out that if the Tribunal had a need, your estate would be ‘donating for the cause’ on your behalf.” Worry and tension plague me. To think some stupid little hunt planned at the urging of guests and my seethe could turn into such a mess. I pace again, the conflict boiling up inside me. Coraline, of all people, sent to deliver the fugitive? It can’t be a coincidence. The woman has hated me for centuries and would do anything to dig up dirt on me.

What has she been doing while the hunt is going on? Has she truly been occupied with her guards in the fun rooms or has she been picking through the brains of my staff looking for angles against me? Fear grips my heart as I start to think back. How many of the employees have ever been involved with one of my projected illusions? As far as I can recall, it’s been very few. I’ve only used the glamour-induced sex fantasies on the clientele. The anxiety I felt when Ivan threatened the individual safety of the people I protect is nothing compared to what I feel right now. Everything could crumble around me in a tangle of body parts and lies.

Coraline could trigger a domino effect within the council, exposing every secret I’ve kept hidden from my kind. The last manipulator? Try the biggest organized hunt across the globe our kind has ever seen. I’d be hunted like a damn dog and nothing would ever be the same again.

The anger within rises and I try to calm down. The Tribunal corruption started slowly from the bottom, creeping up little by little over the decades, until I’m not even sure if the eleven Ancients were aware there were two factions in their midst—those who skitter close to the black pit within their souls and those who have already fallen prey to the monster, but hide it well.

There’s a knock behind me. I sense Paul in the hall, no doubt with the chains in his possession. Opening the metal door, I usher the chef in. I speak to Emiko like the last minute wasn’t filled with silence, “What it really comes down to is trust,” I say to her. Taking the cloth covered silver chains from Paul’s gloved hands, I turn back to the immobile vampire. “And I’m not the trusting sort.”

Her face is still paralyzed, but her eyes reveal more expression than when I first uncovered her in the snow. It’s hard to discern if it’s fear I see swirling in their depths, or cold detachment and calculation. Am I being paranoid? Would a healing vampire, fully infused with fresh human blood, turn on the people under my care?

As I drape a thin chain over her chest, I find I can’t be bothered with arguing the point within myself. This week has turned out to be much more than I bargained for, more than any of us could have foreseen. Trust the facts or follow your instincts? Until I can confirm exactly what is going on with this woman and her setup with the Tribunal, I’m happy remaining on the side of extreme caution.

Not having a lock to secure the chains under the table, I rummage around in the medical drawers looking for something to attach them. Long plastic zip strips, used for God knows what in a clinic, will work nicely. Sliding back the black fabric at the end of the chain, I slip the sturdy plastic through a link, careful to avoid contact with the draining metal.

“Want me to get under the table and attach them?” Paul asks.

I shake my head before crouching down and repeating the steps on the dangling portion hanging past the other side of the elevated end of the table. One slight touch and a painful burn slides up my right index finger. I jerk away, cursing myself for not at least wearing latex gloves.

“You okay down there? Something smells bad.”

“Fine,” I grind out through gritted teeth. The plastic threads through the intended link and I secure the chain tightly under the table. I scramble out and take the next strand of silver from Paul. This one I loop first around the left wrist, then the right, wrapping the length over and over before binding the ends with another plastic tie.

I continue with the same method on her feet. When I’m done, she looks like something out of an old
Spy
vs Spy
comic. The black-wearing spy trussed up with black cord, but in this case it’s with silver hidden under the fabric.

“Good job,” says Paul. “Think it will hold her?”

“It should.”

“Would it hold you?”

Odd he would ask me that. Is he curious or still learning the bounds of what we can do as vampires?

I project to his mind, preferring not to answer aloud in front of Emiko.
It would hold me physically, if you get my drift.
No vampire is strong enough to break that much silver.

He bobs his head once in understanding and looks across the room. Dr. Cook comes back in. She examines the full drainage bag and pulls gloves on to swap it for a fresh one.

“This flush will take all the plasma we’ve got and still might not be enough,” she says.

“Switch to blood when you run out,” I say. “Ten pints in the average body, right?”

She nods. “But from my experience, your breed takes more.”

“Really?” says Paul. “Like how much more?”

Margery looks to me and I answer, “About thirty to forty percent. We’ve got enough blood on hand. We might as well use some to flush the poison as well.”

A tingle of sensation heralds my husband’s mental voice piping into my thoughts,
Hon, we’re about to start staging the scene. You need to be here for this, right?

Yeah,
I check the time to see it’s close to three.
I’ll be there in a few.

“Dr. Cook?” I ask. “You can handle the rest from here?”

“Yes, dear. I’ll call you if I encounter any problems.”

Paul and I leave the clinic with the full bag of poisoned blood, and I inform him the group is ready to prepare the fight scene.

“What will I be doing?” he asks.

“Why, you’ll be the dead Emiko, of course.” The smile on my face must look gruesome because he turns about two shades of green.

The SCIF room in the basement
is currently unmanned while Drew and Asa help to prepare the fake kill spot. We’ve scouted locations and settled on the northern-most point on the property, near the windmill field. A dozen self-heated windmills churn in the Arctic air, gathering power for the vast resort.

After a brief connection with Dria to let her and Paul know where to find us, I decide to throw myself into this part of the plan with some fun. I deserve to let off a little steam after having to endure the sickly-sweet and stabbing comments from Coraline in the bar. God, that woman is annoying.

Drew and Asa stand close together, examining the spot we picked. Asa drops the bag with the weapons in it at his feet. Without warning, I run full tilt at their unsuspecting backs and knock them face-first into the ice-crusted snow. A full belly laugh rips from my throat and I spring off them, awaiting retaliation.

“Come on, you two. Lighten up. We have to make it look like an actual fight took place—”

Asa barrels into me and launches us both back several feet to land on a snow-mounded, scrub bush. His features are hidden behind a white ski mask, but mirth dances in his dark blue eyes. “You mean like that, boss?”

I laugh again and put two feet between us to shove the vampire off. “Here, Drew—catch!” I push as hard as I can and Asa’s muscled form sails through the air. Instead of catching him, Drew decides to side step and let’s his seethe-mate crash in a heap.

“Won’t it look suspicious if we’ll all caked in snow when the Tribunal member shows up?” Drew asks, a faint trace of annoyance in his voice as tries to brush the snow off himself.

Asa stands up. “Who put the stick up your ass? We’re supposed to look like we fought her.”

The little bit of sunset light we had earlier is gone and the patch of field we picked lies at the farthest reach of the security lights close to the last windmill. The bite of the cold and the tackling brings a carefree moment to the week and I don’t intend to let lanky, big-nosed Drew ruin it for me. I nod my head at Asa, who takes up a spot behind the other vampire.

“Lighten up, Drew,” I say while extended an open hand to him in an offer to shake. “Life doesn’t always have to be so serious.” He reaches for my hand as Asa silently kneels down behind his legs. I reverse my hand right before Drew clasps it and push him square in the chest. He tumbles back over Asa’s bent form to land flat on his back.

Our combined laughter rings out across the half-lit space, to be quickly swallowed by the howling wind. “Oh my God, dude,” Asa begins when Drew gets back to his feet. “You looked like such an ass.”

Pouring on the vamp speed, Drew lunges upright and races at me like a small, agile receiver-turned-lineman and I’m the quarterback holding the ball. The force of his impact sends us farther than before and I have no doubt we’re successfully making the area look like it’s seen a battle.

Back and forth, we knock each other over and more than once I get a dousing of snow down my back. In a few minutes, Dria and Paul step into the picture and I’m sure they heard our laughter way before they reached us.

Dria looks dashing as always in her white, fur-lined long coat, red hair billowing under her facemask and past her shoulders. Paul stands slightly dejected at missing all the fun. Asa rams him for good measure and the chef soon lies stunned, on top of another squished bush. He comes up smiling and whips an ice ball at the other vamp’s head.

My wife surveys the scene with a critical eye. “Looks good. Now we just need to add some blood,” she says while holding a dark medical-type pouch high, “and a severed head.”

Paul’s laughter at being included in the fun quickly dies out mid-chuckle. “Where are we getting a head?”

“Illusion, remember?” Vivian motions to the base surrounding the nearest windmill. “Go grab a head-sized brick. I’ll do the rest.”

Paul removes himself from the bush and goes to find a suitable ‘head’. Asa rips off his facemask and begins flapping it to shake the snow from the surface. “Is Coraline really going to buy that I could be the one to kill Emiko?”

I clear my throat. “I let it slip that she raped you after we discussed Vivian’s rightful killing of Vikram.”

Asa voice comes out heated and high-pitched, “I never said she raped me.”

Dria pats the younger vampire on the cheek. “You never said ‘yes’, did you?”

“Well, no, of course I wouldn’t have agreed to have her mount me like monkey in the damn bowling alley.”

“She didn’t give you much choice, did she?” Dria asks.

Asa’s face shuts down and he slips his ski mask back on. “Whatever.”

Surprisingly, it’s Drew who comments next. “You can’t control your body’s reaction to stimulus. Just be thankful she wasn’t a man.”

“I bet he would have fought harder if it was a man,” Paul says. Dria shoots him a look and Drew punches him in the arm. “What? It’s obvious, right?”

Asa stalks to the edge of the clearing and faces away from us, clearly unwilling to have the conversation continue.

Drew says in a quiet voice, “Paul, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Don’t you get it?” The wavy-haired vampire shakes his head and looks toward Asa. “It just would have been much worse if it were a man.”

“Can we get back on track, please?” I say. “Tommy called me a little bit ago. Stan, Jet, and all the Weres left in the hunt are in the dining room right now warming up. Coraline was last seen talking to Stan.

“With the way she was drilling me for information, she’s got to know by now that Vivian went out in the cold to check the silver sensors. I’m sure—given the right encouragement—Stan will tell Cora anything she wants to know. The whole point to telling the council member about Asa was so she could have a reason to believe he’s the one who beheads Emiko.”

Asa whips back around to join in the conversation, “Yeah, I get it now. But let’s face the facts—could I really have been capable of killing her on my own? Will Coraline buy it?” He snorts. “Hell, I’m not so sure I would.”

“Which is why,” Dria says, “you’ll be paired up in the killing with Drew.”

Drew straightens a bit. “Good addition. After all, I did kill Ivan.”

I dart a glance at my wife, certain she might betray a slip of a smile at the boldness he’s showing. She had to practically push him into the act, now he makes it sound like he was into it all along. Her practiced calm is in place and through our connection I feel she’s amused.

Dria whips out the folding knife she keeps handy and slices the top of the blood bag open. The coppery smell of fresh pennies wafts up through the cold air. “Let’s start tossing this around to make the site look more legit.”

Paul’s teeth lengthen and he clamps a gloved hand over his mouth. His eyes close briefly in shame and he takes a moment to collect himself. “I’m sorry,” he mutters from under his glove. “That smells really good.”

“The silver isn’t detectable by scent, but it is by taste. This stuff has so much silver in it, one drop in your mouth and you’d know instantly something was off.” She hands the bag to Drew. “Put some on both of you as well, and tear your coats. She wouldn’t go down without a fight.”

I pull my wife to the side while the three vampires take out weapons from the bag Asa brought, pour blood on the blades and fling the droplets across the tramped snow.
I’m sensing some discord in your mind. Are you having second thoughts?

The plan is sound. I just feel like there are too many things still unspoken.

All the evidence points to Emiko being set up, correct?

Yes.

Well then, what is it?

I couldn’t read her because of the silver poison. I anticipated we’d talk and I’d find out what was truly going on.

You’re assuming she’d have something more to add to what we already know.
My wife nods.
But what if there is nothing else to know? She could be just as blind as to why she’s been dragged into this as we initially were.

Dria begins to pace across the clearing. Since it tamps some of the spilled blood in place and makes the scene look better, I don’t bother to stop her. I can sense tension coiling in her, reminding me of a cobra about to strike.
Don’t you need to calm down if you plan to cast an illusion this big?

She whips back to face me. My wife’s expression is hidden behind her ski mask, but her green eyes snap with anger. “Paul, lay down in the snow. Be very still.”

“What?” he stammers. “Right now?” One cold look from Dria has him scrambling to obey. “Is this spot good?”

She doesn’t answer him. “Asa, bury his head in snow. Drew pour some more of the blood on that brick and then dribble some all over the snow where his neck is. Paul, don’t swallow any or you’ll get sick.”

Lie still and don’t swallow?
Paul flays his arms and grunts.
Sounds like direction in a badly-filmed porn.

We all laugh at his observation, except for my wife. Dria has opened the link between the seethe members once again, and those of us who can focus enough to build up a thin personal wall, do.

Dria paces to the edge of the clearing and goes still. I can tell by reading her mind she’s starting to lay the glamour in her thoughts. Once she’s ready, she’ll project it to the scene and hold it in place with her concentration.

In an instant, the stench of death fills the clearing. The unglamorous side not often revealed in movie and TV shows. Blood, urine, feces, and the stench of meat gone slightly bad wafts upward… it’s enough to make one lose their appetite for hours. The rank smells cling to the insides of my nasal passages, forcing me to breathe through parted lips.

Asa’s voice cracks across the clearing, shattering some of the hold the spell has on me, “You might be overdoing it a bit, Vivian. Sanji’s death scene didn’t smell this bad.”

The cloud of death lessens a bit and the layered image of destruction fleshes out. The cleanly-sliced skin near Paul’s neck transforms before our eyes to take on a more feminine size. His body shrinks in appearance and changes to the slim, black-cloaked, tiny frame of the deadly ex-enforcer.

The brick-like paver stone covered in blood turns into Emiko’s severed head, complete with the face mask pulled up to reveal her delicate, smooth features frozen in death. The stub of her neck lies in a bloody patch of snow and long black hair trails behind, resting limp on the trampled ground.

“How does it look?” Dria asks.

“Scarily real,” Asa says with a shake of his head.

“Excellent,” says Drew, a note of awe in his voice.

“How do you plan on dealing with the heart removal part?” I say while gesturing to Paul’s chest. The young vampire twitches, drawing a smile from me.

“Make a small snowball using some red snow. When it comes time for Asa to finish the kill, he’ll use the handle of his silver knife and motion like he’s cutting her heart out.” Dria says it all so matter-of-factly it all seems to make perfect sense.

The tension and fear I have coiling in my gut over whether this illusion is the best thing to do shrinks a little. But it’s still there. We’re taking a huge risk. And all for what? Some Asian assassin we don’t know well, but who has been used as a pawn by those she trusted? Dria’s end game, when Cora and her crew leave, is to offer Emiko a chance to join our seethe. It might work as a viable option to the ex-enforcer. Or it might be tossed back in our faces and then what the hell do we do with Emiko?

Dria ends the illusion and touches my arm, strengthening our connection and effectively cutting out the others for a brief moment.
She can always refuse and change her identity. It’s a big world and as long as she avoids the Tribunal she’ll be fine.

And that worked for you so well, right?

Hey, I managed to avoid them for a few hundred years.

Yes, but they always knew you lived… and were out there somewhere.

Good point. But they never connected me with Ceara, the young vampire killed in Mikov’s seethe centuries ago. The fire that swept the whole compound remains one of many unsolved large executions throughout the recorded history of my kind.

You’re too recognizable now,
I say.
There is no way you could pull such a disappearing act again.

Dria turns to look at the mock battle scene.
Let’s hope we never have to find out.
“Asa, place the call to Jon. It’s time to lead Coraline to the scene.”