The Utterly Uninteresting and Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant (13 page)

4.

The massive door, also marble, closed with an audible
THUD
behind us. The weremayor switched some mechanism to lock it in place, though for the afterlife of me, I couldn’t have told you why he bothered. The thing weighed several hundred pounds, so I’m not sure who could have possibly moved it besides him. Well . . . me, I suppose. Perhaps Bubba, if he were transformed. Albert could probably budge it, too. Zombies were surprisingly strong. And then, of course, if Neil had been in control of his magic, he almost certainly would have been capable. Actually, in light of the fact that everyone in the room could move the door, a locking mechanism made much more sense than I realized in the moment.

“Amy Wells,” he growled as he finished locking the door. “I’m very unhappy to hear that something has happened to her.”

“With the services of a good tracker, we hope to recover her,” Bubba said.

“I cannot merely assign you a tracker,” the hulking man said down to us. “This situation is somewhat . . . complicated.”

We all stood around quietly, uncertain of what to say next. Generally speaking, I’d learned over and over again not to pry into the life of someone stronger than you. Admittedly, that category had once consisted of a much larger percentage of the population, which might help explain my lackluster social skills; however, the principle was a sound one. The man stared each of us down, as though he were looking deep into our minds, past our souls, where we hid our deepest fears, and he was taking notes.

At last he let out a sigh. His shoulders appeared to sag a bit, and the tension in his neck relaxed. He was still an enormous, imposing man, yet somehow a good portion of the fear he inspired seemed to be diminished.

“Bubba Emerson,” he said.

“Yes, Mr. Alderson?”

The weremayor waved him off. “Please, call me Richard. I think you and I will soon be on far more familiar terms. Bubba Emerson, the things I am about to tell you are not secrets, per se. That said, I do not relish the idea of them being freely discussed. Do you take my meaning?”

“Quite clearly.” Bubba nodded.

“And the rest of you?”

“Implicitly,” I replied.

“Clear as day,” Neil said with more confidence than he possibly could have felt.

“Yup!” The last one was Albert. I have a feeling you already figured that out, though.

“Good, then here is what you need to know,” Richard said. “Amy Wells is currently acting as a private tutor to a therian in my town. This therian is very special to me, so I do not take the abduction of her teacher lightly. I take it, in fact, as a personal insult.”

Bubba let out a low pitched whistle between his teeth. I didn’t know much about therian society, but I could piece together that when a man Richard’s size said “personal insult,” this dilemma would likely end with someone spending a long time in a hospital contemplating the error of their ways.

“With that as the case, I will be personally assisting you in locating the mage,” Richard concluded.

“That’s great,” Neil said, relief practically dripping out of the kid. “I’ve got the things you can use to track her right here.”

“There is something I must attend to first. It will take some time, but I will be as quick as possible. I trust there are no objections?” Richard said, a tremor of growl slipping back into his voice.

We all nodded emphatically, quite possibly in perfect unison.

Rather than acknowledging us verbally, Richard strode across the room to another set of doors. The room itself was quite impressive, oversized furniture for someone of his mass, lush, ankle-deep carpets, paintings hung across the walls, and a roaring fireplace easily big enough to roast a pig in. When Richard reached the room’s edge, he threw open the double doors and revealed to us another space.

This one was painted pink, with small bits of furniture all over the place. Drawings hung on the wall rather than majestic framed artworks, and the pink, carpeted floor was littered with craft supplies. This room also held two new people in it, a small boy and girl. Upon seeing the doors open, the girl leapt from her position coloring on the floor and dashed toward our host.

“Daddy!” she squealed as Richard scooped her up in one of his massive arms. He set her on his shoulder, where she immediately entwined her hands in his hair to give herself a safe grip. She couldn’t have been more than five or six, with golden locks the same as her father’s, tied off in a pair of pigtails. Her voice was high and squeaky, peppered with levels of enthusiasm attainable only by children and drug addicts.

“You finished early today!”

“Not exactly, Sally,” Richard said. “Daddy still has some work to do tonight.”

“Awwww,” Sally moaned, pulling on his hair. “You always have to work late. You said tonight would be early. You promised.”

“I did not promise.” Richard sighed. “I said I would try my best.”

“Same thing.”

Richard cast us a quick glance and shrugged as if to say “Kids.”

“Sally, Daddy has to do a favor for Miss Amy tonight.” Richard
delicately plucked her from the perch on his shoulder. It looked like the endeavor wound up costing him about two five-years-old’s fists full of his hair, but he bore it with nary a grimace.

“Miss Amy is coming? Yaaaaaaay!” Sally began running around in circles, waving her hands like she was certain the secret to flying was just in how hard she flapped.

“No, Sally, Miss Amy needs Daddy’s help with something. That’s why he has to work late. Daddy has to go out to her.”

“Oh.” Sally’s disappointment could not have been more palpable. It’s curious that children can either be expert liars or utterly incapable of hiding their emotions, and the classification changes from minute to minute.

“I guess if it’s for Miss Amy, then it’s okay.” Sally relented after a few moments. “But tomorrow I want to have dinner with Daddy.”

“Daddy will try his best,” Richard said. “Now, if you go wash up, Daddy can tuck you into bed before he goes.”

“Okay!” Sally cried, dashing off into a connected room and slamming the door behind her.

“Sorry.” Richard turned and apologized to us, though precisely what for I had no idea. “She’s at that age.”

There was a derisive snort, and for a moment I was confused. It hadn’t come from one of us, and it hadn’t come from Richard. The girl was out of the room, so who was left? That’s when I once again noticed the other child in the room. He’d been sitting at the same plastic table, quietly coloring during Richard and Sally’s entire exchange. The boy’s skin was so tan it bordered on copper. His hair was an ink black. Noticing him for the second time, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something . . . off in the way he moved. Nothing I could pin down, just something different.

“Did you have a comment, Gideon?” Richard asked
the young boy whose attention seemed to be fully occupied by the act of coloring.

“Just that I happen to like you people best at ‘that age.’” Gideon didn’t even bother to stop coloring as he responded. I blinked in surprise. His voice didn’t fit with his form. Physically, he couldn’t have been a day over seven, and was likely closer to Sally in age. His voice was strong, though, strong and mature. More than mature—old. “Old” not in the way of denture cream and dinner at four. “Old” in the way of mountains.

“I suppose I can see the appeal,” Richard said, his eyes darting to the door Sally had sealed herself behind. A gentle smile, one I could have never imagined ten minutes ago, crested his chiseled face for a moment.

After that we were blessed with a brief bit of silence until the door flung open and Sally’s voice thundered forth from its interior.

“Daddy! Come read me a story and tuck me in!”

“If you gentlemen will excuse me, we can leave as soon as I’m done,” Richard said, heading toward the door. He paused as he passed the young boy. “Gideon, these people are my guests. Please treat them as such.”

“Yes, yes, laws of hospitality and etc. Nothing to worry about,” Gideon replied without glancing up from his paper. With that reassurance, Richard went into the other room and shut the door.

The four of us looked at each other at first, no one entirely sure what was going on or what to say about the situation. A few of us threw glances at the boy, Gideon, but it seemed I wasn’t the only one who was a little spooked by him. Our eyes dashed over his diminutive form, curious to get a better look, yet terrified of being caught. It was the boy who broke the silence. In retrospect, he might have been the only one who could have.

“So, something happened to Mage Wells,” Gideon said, setting down his crayons and standing from the small chair he’d been resting in. “I find that unfortunate.”

“Did she teach you too?” Albert asked.

Gideon snickered. “Other way around, deadling. Sally is very fond of her, though, and I am always displeased to see Sally sad.”

He began walking toward us, a simple endeavor, yet one that made me feel like I had swallowed a brick. I shook my head and tried to get control. I had never been a particularly brave person; however, fighting the urge to cower in front of a child was a step beyond even my usual levels of conflict aversion.

Bubba and Albert also squirmed uncomfortably next to me. Neil was the only one who seemed to be blissfully unaware of the aura being generated by this dark-haired child.

“A therian, a deadling, a bound mage, and blood eater. Not exactly the rescue party I would put together in this situation,” Gideon said.

“Me either.
”
The words slipped out from me before the overall feeling of dread could warp or silence them. Gideon smiled at that, and as he came within a few feet of us, he raised his eyes for the first time, gazing into mine. In that moment, I understood why I’d been so uncomfortable since I first noticed him.

The funny thing about becoming a vampire is how little things seemed to change for me. My weight, sure, and of course all the physical boons were readily apparent. The downsides (silver, sunlight allergies, etc.) were also pretty obvious. The mental aspect, though, that was more subversive. It manifested in realizing that on some primal, subconscious level, I regarded everyone around me as prey. I’d made peace with it early on and rarely spared a thought about the subject since. But I should have because when I looked into Gideon’s purple eyes, my brain slammed me with the realization that my mind had been too stupid to comprehend. It wasn’t just prey that existed in the world around me.

There were also predators.

5.

By the time we got to Amy’s office, I’d mostly recovered from my scare, though I was still a bit shaken. Thankfully, the raging impulse to run and hide and pray to whatever god happened to care about accountants had mostly diminished. It was still a bit embarrassing that I cowered in the corner while the rest of the team waited for Richard, but given what he told us when we piled into Bubba’s extra-large truck, I felt at least somewhat justified in my primal-brain-powered cowardice.

“A dragon,” I said for what was approximately the seventeenth time. “How do we have a dragon in our city? I mean, it seems like someone would have noticed.”

“Gideon likes to keep a low profile,” Richard explained, fidgeting as he tried to get comfortable. Despite the extended cab on Bubba’s truck, the two robust men had little space to move, especially with me, Albert, and Neil crammed in as well. “Dragons have a vast amount of magic. Taking the form of a lesser being is easy for them.”

“Can he turn into a dog?” Albert asked, eyes sparkling as untold shape-shifting possibilities danced through his head. Whatever panic mechanism Gideon had triggered in my brain, it clearly wasn’t installed in zombies.

“He can turn into almost anything,” Richard said. “But he usually stays in that form.”

“A child seems like a curious choice for a powerful dragon.” Much as Gideon terrified me, I couldn’t quite resist the urge to understand more about him.

Something flickered across Richard’s face, an emotion between guilt and uncertainty. I wasn’t so stupid as to dig further. Whatever he was feeling, it obviously didn’t engender a desire to chat, but at that moment, Bubba swerved into a driveway and killed the engine. We had arrived at Amy’s abode.

She lived in a reasonably-sized house surrounded by ample foliage. There was more greenery on her property than in the entire square mile around my apartment. There were other houses nearby, but none too close to hers. We were only a few blocks outside of downtown, so whatever Amy did to pay the bills, she must have been good at it. Lots this size, in this area, were far from cheap.

“Her lab is in back,” Neil said, darting out of the truck and speed walking around the side of the building. Albert kept up with him, though barely. Bubba and Richard took their time extricating themselves from the vehicle. The caution was understandable. With their size and strength, it would be all too easy to bend a door or break a window. Eventually they got free, and we followed Neil to a large wooden door in the back of the house. There were symbols scrawled all over it. They might have been magical; then again, they might have been Japanese, for all I knew. I was about to step through when it occurred to me that a mage might have security features in place more effective than just a dead bolt. None of the others seemed worried about it. Since they walked past and didn’t seem to disintegrate, I followed.

I hadn’t known what a mage’s laboratory would be like, but the one thing I didn’t expect was an actual, well . . . laboratory. Beakers, tubing, microscopes, three computers, a bevy of plants, and shelves of materials greeted me upon entrance. Not literally though. Animated tools—that I actually would have expected. Instead, I got a sterile environment that looked more like it belonged to a botanist than someone who dabbled in the arcane arts. Though the fact that about a quarter of it was wrecked or broken did somewhat dilute the effect.

“Shit,” Richard growled from the other side of the room. He was hunkered into a squat, looking at a pile of broken glass and burned book pages. There were scorch marks on the table next to him, as well as a half-melted, cylindrical beaker. I took a breath in surprise, and a very familiar scent caught my attention. It was one I could have picked out of a thousand, one my brain was unfortunately programmed to prioritize above all other things.

Blood. There was blood on the table. I moved over slowly and took a closer look. It was smeared across the corner, a solid swipe about three-inches long by two-inches wide.

“Looks like the kid was right,” Richard said. “There was a struggle.”

“The blood is fresh
.
No more than four hours old.” I spoke before I even realized the objective strangeness of such a statement, but fortunately none of the others were bothered by my blood-assessing abilities.

“Neil arrived at Fred’s place around two hours ago,” Bubba said. “So, whatever happened, it probably happened half an hour before six.”

“Why does it matter what time it happened?” Neil shuffled lightly as he spoke, eyes darting around the room with a frantic energy
.

“It matters because Amy is not some powerless human,” Richard snapped. “She is a mage with significant skills and a wealth of experience. There is a small list of things I can think of that can break into a mage’s lab, abduct her, and not leave behind a few pounds of flesh in the process. Knowing it happened at five-thirty tells us it was just after dusk, which expands the list. Whatever took her is powerful, and we’d better hope we figure out what it was before we catch up to them.”

“Oh.” Neil lowered his head and slunk quietly back over to Albert
.

“I’ve got her scent,” Richard continued. “Fred, what about you?”

“I think so. What do we do now?”

“We follow it.”

Our group went back to the truck, but when I went to climb in, I felt a massive hand close around my shoulder.

“We’re in the back,” Richard informed me. I hopped into the bed of the truck, then scrambled out a few seconds later when Richard bounded over the side and nearly landed on top of me. The truck dipped down under his weight, losing several inches before rebounding most of the way back up. I climbed back in and found some space near the tailgate while the others entered the front. Bubba turned the keys, and the engine barked harshly to life. Richard pounded once on the roof and pointed south, further down the street we’d traveled to get here. I sniffed experimentally and found that I could still pick out the scent of Amy’s blood in the air.

“Thank you for doing this, by the way,” I said, raising my voice over unmuffled engine sounds and the wind blowing past us. “I didn’t get to say it back at your club.”

“Sally does not have the easiest life. My position makes great demands on my time, and I must leave her alone far more than I would like. Amy is not just a teacher to Sally—she is a friend. She adds a level of familiarity and happiness to my daughter’s life. That is not something I care to see taken away from her. The one who owes thanks is me, for bringing her dilemma to my attention.”

“I think that credit goes to Neil. He’s the one who has been screaming his head off until someone would listen.”                  

Richard slapped the roof again and yelled “Left!” so loudly that I imagine everyone in the neighborhood suddenly turned that direction in their sleep. He turned back to me as Bubba yanked the wheel and sent us onto a worn, blacktop road. “Yes, her apprentice is very loyal. Not that I’m terribly surprised. Amy has a way with people.”

“Sounds like it.” I drew in some air and confirmed I could still smell her. I probably could have found out where she went by veering around to see when I could and couldn’t smell her, but I had no idea how Richard was able to pin down her direction so effortlessly. It could have been that his sense of smell was that much stronger than mine, or it could have been that he’d practiced his. I had never really been chomping at the bit to expand my vampire repertoire, though since meeting Krystal, my horizons were definitely widening.

“I’ll introduce you, when we recover her,” Richard said. He lapsed into silence save for the occasional thud on the hood and hollered direction. I wondered if Bubba would need the number of a good mechanic to buff out the dents in his roof, then realized Bubba was the kind of person who was perfectly capable of fixing that himself. We were nearing the heart of the suburban community, a large park that was partially obscured by trees. I could make out a winding sidewalk that seemed to wrap around the edge as well as branching off toward the center.

We passed a gazebo situated on a small lake, and it hit me: Amy’s smell was stronger here. Much stronger. Evidently, Richard reached the same conclusion because he yelled for Bubba to find a parking spot. The truck lurched around, eventually coming to the park entrance where a small, wooden sign informed visitors it was closed for the day. It was the kind of sign used in neighborhoods full of nice, law-abiding people who have great respect for the rules. It shattered to splinters as Bubba drove over it.

“We could have just moved it,” I said to no one in particular.

“Therian Emerson is a good man, but not the most delicate.”

“You can say that again.” The truck shuddered to a stop and I hopped out, eager to put a little distance between me
and Richard when he exited. The others were still in the truck, so I headed forward and tested my nose’s abilities. I stepped onto the grass, my loafers immediately growing damp. The scent was less intense than it had been in her laboratory. Probably because by the time she got here, the cut had stopped bleeding. I could still find her scent, but it was duller, muted. The damn thing was everywhere, though. If she wasn’t in this park, she had been very recently.

I turned back to relay my findings to the others when I felt something wrap around my leg with incredible speed. There was a rustling sound, a snap of motion, and suddenly I found myself being hauled further away from the parking lot. I flipped over on my back and found my abductor was a long, leafy vine. Breaking it should have been no problem. The issue at hand was that I couldn’t bend forward far enough to reach it. Inwardly cursing myself for not sticking to my morning stretches, I clawed uselessly at the ground, tearing out chunks of wet sod, but not visibly slowing down.

When I was able to glance back, I saw the others hadn’t noticed my kidnapping yet. I opened my mouth to yell for them; however, that was when the vine stopped pulling me on the ground and lifted me into the air. I twirled about, spinning helplessly as I rose
.
I was very thankful that vampires couldn’t throw up. What I was somewhat less thankful for was that my shifting view treated me to the occasional look at what the vine was connected to.

The creature was twenty-feet tall and resembled a pile of moss with vines and branches sticking out. It had no discernible eyes or face. In fact, the only thing it
did
have aside from foliage was a mouth. Oh, and teeth. A giant mouth with rows and rows of what looked like very sharp teeth. I know this because as I was dangling in its grasp, that mouth was opening wider and wider. With those contextual clues, even Albert could have figured out what was going to happen next in this process. Now was clearly the time for action, so I resolved myself to do what I did best.

“HEEEEEEELP! SOMEBODY HELP ME!”