A Mate Worse Than Death (23 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Tony kept her eyes and her NASH gun aimed at the mist as she listened to Phil, groaning his way across the floor. If she hadn’t seen two recent examples of a vampire’s feeding, she might have even harassed him a bit more about the amount of bellyaching he was doing. But at the moment, all she could think of was getting that damned thing netted and contained before it hurt anyone else. The slow walk backwards felt like it was taking forever, but just when she began to wonder if Serena had worked some kind of spell to turn the floor to a moving walkway that would have them repeating the same scenery over and over, like cheap 1970s animated kids’ shows, she heard a door open behind her and the voice of Officer Hiller.

“Ma’am, we are ready to assist you.”

“Great--” Tony’s appreciative comments were cut short by a hiss and the re-materialization of the vampire. It was standing on the floor a few feet from Phil and Tony, hunched and angry, its gaze on the demon.

“Tony,” he told her calmly, “that creature is two seconds from lunging for my throat. What do you wish me to do?”

Tony didn’t turn to look at him since she wanted to keep her eyes on the vampire. “We’re gonna give it what it wants. I’m going to step to one side and provide it an avenue to get close to you.”

“Already, I hate this idea.”

“If you can stop complaining long enough to hear it, you might change your mind.”

Silence.

“Okay then. Hiller?” she queried.

“Ma’am?”

“Who have you got with you?”

“My partner, Officer Davis. We both got high marks for marksmanship with the NASH guns.”

“Excellent! Okay officers, here’s the deal. We’re going to fake the vamp out. I’m going to step to one side, give it a clear run at Phil, then when it heads in, we all take a shot. I think at least one of us should be able to get the shot.”

“You only think that one of you can get it?” she heard Phil gulp.

“It’s really fast, Phil, so yeah. I think one of us should get it, but if not, it has to stop moving to sink its teeth into you, and if it actually does that--I’ll blow it away. I switched out my ammo for rounds with silver, just in case, and I plan to take a headshot if we can’t just capture the thing.”

“Not that I would question your ability to hit your target, but--”

Officer Davis chimed in, “Sir, you’re in good hands. She has the highest rating in the division.”

“That’s certainly...well, I’ll try to be...you know, Tony, if I have offended you in any way...”

Tony shook her head and smiled, “Just be alive when it’s all done, Phil. Just be alive.”

Azeem called for a WE-Evac, a Wyvern Emergency Evacuation unit. The Wyvern units could land in places that helicopters and dragons couldn’t. Their two legs allowed them more maneuverability in tight landing zones than either a Mundane mechanical or a larger, four-legged dragon, and their snaky tales tended to discourage FV media vans from parking close to a scene. Win-win. The FV casters weren’t much of problem out in the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains, but getting medical evacuation was, so the Lieutenant was greatly relieved when he heard the loud cry of the creature’s arrival.

Cal stood by Azeem, carrying the limp body of Heraphina. She had collapsed just after giving herself up. She seemed to be alive, but her breathing remained shallow and labored, and neither they nor anyone in the Sheriff’s office could ascertain the cause of her apparent physical distress. As Cal waited for the Wyvern’s teammate to dismount and come over for a hand-off of the patient, he looked down at Heraphina and suddenly realized that he, Cal Kelly, stood there, a pitiful armful of witch cradled to his chest, and he hadn’t thought once about warts in the twenty minutes it had taken the WE-Evac team to arrive.

“I’m cured,” he murmured, awestruck.

Heraphina’s eyes flew open and she screamed for a moment, and as she screamed, Cal screamed, dancing in place and trying very hard not to fling her as far away as he could. Everyone else in the vicinity started yelling at him, but Cal couldn’t hear the actual words. His ears were ringing with the sound of his and Heraphina’s mingled screams. Finally, her words began to penetrate his terrified fog.

“Ogre! Ogre, I hurt! Please make it stop! Make it stop!” She stopped screaming and looked up at Cal, begging.

Poor Cal teared up and clutched her tighter, “It’s gonna be okay, old girl, just hang in there! The WE-Evac is here is get you to a hospital. You’ll be fine in no time, am I right?” His voice broke on the last word because he could only hope so. Their case might depend on having Heraphina’s evidence, so he wanted her alive. But deep down, he found room in his overflowing heart for a little pity for the witch. She didn’t ask to be a witch. Everyone couldn’t be an ogre, could they?

Azeem cleared his throat. “Cal, hand her off to the med tech, now!”

Cal looked down, very far down, to see a little gnome in flying gear who was holding up his arms to take the witch.

“Hey Lieutenant, this little guy can’t carry her, can he? She’s double his size.”

“He isn’t going to carry her with his arms.”

“Oh,” Cal shook his head and apologized to the gnome. “Sorry, man, it’s been a real freaky day, right?”

“Freaky is a normal day for me, detective. Now, let’s get her loaded onto Ethelyne before she gets impatient.” As if on cue, the wyvern stomped one of her legs and long curls of smoke rolled out of her nostrils. The gnome’s arms were out to about the right width to hold Heraphina, and when Cal very gingerly placed her in his arms, he realized that the air above the gnome’s arms was where she was cushioned. The gnome wasn’t holding her; he was moving her with a magical cushion of air.
“Nifty trick,” he said. Then he added, “We’ll catch up to you at the hospital in Charlottesville.”

“Very good, sir. Hopefully, we’ll know what is to be done by the time you arrive.” And with that, the gnome trotted to the Ethylene, who put
her body low to the ground. The gnome secured Heraphina in a glass tube strapped behind his seat that looked far too much like a coffin, and then they were off, the wyvern leaping gracefully up high enough to get through the thin tree canopy where the officers had awaited the team’s arrival. She flapped off into the distance, her tail whipping behind her and acting as a rudder.

Cal stood and watched the creatures disappearing toward the east until Lieutenant Azeem brought him back to earth.

“Calvin Kelly!” he heard the Lieutenant growling.

“Sir!”

“Get your mind back on the here and now.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We need to search the perimeter. Gather the deputies and bring them and the Sheriff over so we can divide up the search.”

“The search, sir?”

Azeem stared at him for a second. “That witch has addled your brain.”

“No, sir!” Cal paused for a brief moment. “Okay, maybe a bit. But, what search?”

“We still have a vampire to find.”

Cal blanched and nodded and hurried off to ass
emble the rest of the officers.

“Shoot!” Tony, Hiller, and Davis all shot at the vampire, but it screeched at them and slashed out with its nails, dodging the nets, two of which actually landed on Phil, hampering any attempt he might have made to get away from it. Unfortunately, since the nets were law enforcement grade magicks, he couldn’t free himself from them, nor could he stop the vampire, which was coming at him, or rather at his thigh, once again.

“Tony! Those aren’t the teeth I want hovering this near my--”

“Jumping Jove on a pogo stick! Really?” she said as she turned and shot her net, this time, hitting the vampire. As it went down hissing, trying to crawl away but unable to manipulate the magical trap, Hiller and Davis got on either end with their NASH guns pointed at the thing that had been a beautiful Being and was now an undead, keening wretch.

Tony leaned down and pointed her f-light at the nets lying over Phil, de-activating the spell that made them so useful. She drew the nets carefully off of him, making sure not to jar his leg, all the while giving him hell. “You are unbelievable. You have a vampire heading right at you, ready to suck you dry, and all you can think of is sex.”

Phil looked over at the two male officers, who looked back, faces carefully deadpan.

“I don’t know why that occurred to me, dear detective, but it must be my twisted sense of humor,” Phil told her, his voiced choked.

Tony heard sounds that suggested snickers from the two officers near her. “Uh huh.” She muttered, “And Cal wonders why I gave up on dating. Stupid frigging testosterone swamped...” She flipped up her f-light and contacted the officers on the perimeter. “Any signs of Melinoe?”

“None, ma’am. It’s like she vanished into thin air.”

“Literally, as in you had her and she vanished into thin air or figuratively, as in by using the word ‘like’ you mean you never had eyes on her at all?”

Tony’s tart response suggested what the answer should be, so there were several uncomfortable minutes before the office admitted, “Figuratively, as in, we never saw her.”

“Officer...?”

“Officer Chan, ma’am.”

“Have you worked Super division before?”

“No, ma’am,” he answered quietly.

“Let’s not make this the last time? Speak literally when reporting in this division. There’s too much room for confusion! What with the magic and all, y’know?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Now, inside, we’ve got a contained vampire, and outside, you have a van with a cage that will hold it. I’m going to use a spell to get the cage down and then back up to you. You’ll need to open the door to the van so you’ll know when the cage reappears in the van with this vampire inside. Put at least four officers in the van to run it back to headquarters. Put only non-humanoid Supers in back with the vamp! Then you and the rest of the officers come on down here. We’re going to take a look around and see if we can figure out where that damned nymph went. Okay?”

The fact that Tony wasn’t giving him vamp-sitting duty must have made him realize that he wasn’
t completely out of favor, yet.

“Yes, ma’am!” he told her, far more enthusiastically.

Ten minutes later, the cage that had materialized in the room next to the vampire dematerialized and left in the van, one snapping, angry, undead creature inside. Two Natty officers drove the van, and two goblins rode in the back. Vampire abilities tended to work better on Natural humans or creatures with a Natural-looking form. Anything that didn’t have a human form, like an ogre, a dwarf, a gnome or goblin, couldn’t be enthralled by a vampire’s gaze. Anything that did have a human form could, which explained how the former Haldis Holstrom had lured both Lilith and Signa Engstrom to their deaths. Both Beings appeared as Natural-looking humans unless they took on one of their other forms. Lilith must have known Holstrom from the dating site and Signa had been Haldis’ little sister. They had seen someone they knew, and in trusting what they thought was her, had lost their lives. The saddest part of this would be telling King Holstrom of Swan Island in the Netherlands that two of his twelve daughters were dead. Tony really hoped the Lieutenant would take that one. Especially since one of the dead daughters had killed the other, and that killer still needed to be...well, put down seemed to be the best way to say it. Was it possible to kill something that was already dead? Tony shook her head and decided to leave the philosophical questions to the people who weren’t on a deadline.

She looked around at the officers standing in Phil’s office. One of the officers, a gnome, had medical training. Once Tony found out, she and another uniform moved Phil over to his couch and she had Officer Green attend to the bullet wound. The Officer Green started to cut open the leg of Phil’s sinfully expensive jeans, but just as she began, Phil transmuted them to a pair of silky black boxers, which made the officer giggle. Since the medical training included magical medicine, she soon had him in a happier state of mind, good enough that Tony moved away to concentrate on managing the situation. The other officers moved in around her for instructions.

“We last saw Serena there,” she stopped and pointed at the wall behind Phil’s desk. “She pressed something on the desk, and the wall opened.”

“Oh cool,” Davis murmured. “A secret passageway.”

Phil called in over the heads, “Or an illegal portal.”

His comment was met with silence, and then all eyes turned to him.

“Crap. That makes a lot of sense. Please, tell me you didn’t know about that portal,” Tony asked him gravely. Producing and concealing illegal portals earned the owner a felony charge and a trip to Lock Up for a long stay-cation from everyday life. The Powers That Be really did not like uncontrolled entries and exits between the Realms and Mundania. The legal portals scanned for intent and filtered out the worst problems for the SCI divisions world-wide. Illegal portals? No filters. A big
bag of ugly, all the way around.

“I cannot believe that you would think this of me! I did not know about that portal,” he told her. “You can believe that because I would have contacted the Powers That Be and asked them to shut it down. You do not think I would want that sitting right behind my back while I am working? I have told you before that I have many, many enemies. With that portal at my back, I might as well have had a target between my shoulders for the past few months.”