Kindred (Kindred, Book 1) (5 page)

There was a five second delay before Nero answered, he's based in, surprisingly, Egypt. For some strange reason Egypt's a little hot-spot for vampires, who knew with all that sunshine.

Busy and you?

More so than usual. What's the goss?

They'd long ago got used to my language skills. We Kiwis abbreviate anything.

Can't talk here, meet us at the usual in 30 minutes.

Strange, but not unheard of. Clearly our site was being monitored.

The usual is a satellite phone with scrambler. Not all of our kind has them, they cost an arm and a leg, and they can't be used all the time. What with big brother watching, even with a scrambler, means it's usually a last resort. And to top it off, we need to hook into a teleconference type arrangement, which has to be initiated by one of only a couple from our group. I guess they're the oldest and wisest, I've never asked. Nero's one of them. I've only talked about four or five times before on the phone and they were only minor initiation type conversations.

There's no way I could afford a satellite phone with scrambler on a bank teller's salary, but it was a gift. I'm guessing from Michel, but I never asked. It just appeared on my bed one night after I'd been out hunting, there was a residual of power left in the room, a signature so to speak. No card to say,
here you go, have one on me
, just the low humming of a high level vamp. Usually I can tell if it's Michel, I just know his signature, but this vamp had taken the time to conceal his scent, if you can call it that. I don't know why, but I still think it's Michel.

It never occurred to me at the time, how he had entered my home. The old myths of them needing an invitation are actually correct. But, he's never been back in again. I've never invited him and I never will.

Half an hour can seem like an eternity when you're waiting on answers, but finally the satellite phone buzzed. I answered and entered my code, the one that changes weekly. You have to login to the website before the end of the week, to make sure you grab the code. I had only missed it once and I'd had a call the next day from one of the group, simply telling me the code and hanging up. I heard the static of other live lines now as my hook up to the conference had been accepted.

“
Kiwi here,” I said into the mouthpiece. Kiwi is my handle and if you didn't know, a native flightless bird of New Zealand. It's one of our icons, our symbols, and I feel very connected to it. I'm proud to be a Kiwi.

A warm luxurious voice said, “Nero welcomes Kiwi,” followed by acknowledgements from
Yankee, Islander, Citysider
and
Smurf.
Don't ask me where they get their handles from, it's a personal thing.

“
So, you've had some trouble too?” Nero's voice again, distinctive in it's heavy northern African accent. He never tried to hide it, neither did I.

“
Yeah, it's been chronic. Three in one night and one a level four master.”

“
Much the same as here. Crawling out of the cracks in the pavement they are.” This time Citysider. I'm guessing he's from London, but I'm not sure.

“
Why the sudden increase in activity?” Me again.

“
It has been foretold that this would occur.” Sometimes Nero talked like this, like all of what we do is from some bad B grade movie and he's the director influencing the scene. I'm guessing Nero's quite old, but sometimes, just sometimes, he sounds like he's as old as Michel.

“
What do you mean, Nero?” This time Yankee had piped up. No disguising that accent.

“
We are entering a difficult time, my friends. Our people are in danger.”

“
Being hunted you mean?” I asked, thinking back on what Michel had said.

“
Hunters have been preyed upon for centuries, my dear. It is nothing new.”

“
Yes, our kind have always been hunted, as we hunt them. We must be vigilant. Spread the word to your comrades, should you meet them, but do not mention this on the site. We are being watched from every angle and must remain calm. We overcame their dominance once, we will again.”

“
There were more of us back then, Nero.” Islander's thick south east Asian accent filtered through the line. “We are but the remaining few of a dying race. What can we do?”

You see, here's the thing. Often these guys allude to things. Things that I guess I
should
know about, but have never had the guts to ask. It's as though they all belong to the exclusive part of our club and I'm missing the link, or the invitation, to enter. It was high time I swallowed my pride and got some answers. I was just about to voice some of the questions that have long been on my mind, when Nero suddenly barked.

“
Disconnect, we have been breached. Stay strong Nos-”

The line went dead. All connections gone. I wasn't even listening to static.

To say I was stunned, was an understatement. So many questions were swilling around inside my head. The obvious: Why were we suddenly being hunted, why now? The old and faithful: What am I, other than a hunter, to these creatures? And the unfamiliar: What had Nero been about to call us? He had said
Nos-
before being cut off, but I knew there was more to the word than those three letters.

Reluctantly, I  switched my laptop off. I was so tired, despite the spike in adrenaline, I couldn't keep my eyes open. It was as if as soon as Nero uttered those three letters, my body began to relax into the safety of sleep. But I knew even in sleep, we were not truly safe.

At least, I never seemed to be.

The dream started as it always did, on a hill overlooking my parents' farm. Familiar, yet not. The lambs with their little tails waggling were in the distance drinking blissfully from their mothers. Oh, how I loved watching those tails waggle when I was young. Just like a puppy, they were in joyful, rapturous happiness snuggled in to the safety of their parent.

I guess it was how I always felt when these dreams came visiting; safe. Oh, I knew they were of Michel's doing. But still, a sense of safety always stole over my heart when I was here, despite the thought that Michel created this vision.

“
You look sad,
ma douce.
” For some reason his French accent and mannerisms were not hidden in this other realm. He lowered his disguise, like a mask, when here. Letting me see him bare.

“
It's all changing. Can't you feel it?” I asked without turning to face him.

“
Sometimes, change is for the good,
non
? Perhaps it is time.”

I turned then, to look at his face, to try to decipher his meaning. Of course, facing him here is always hard. Like his accent, his attire is different in my dreams. Almost as though this is the Michel he would want me to see on a daily basis, instead of the prim and proper, upstanding businessman of the city. He was wearing casual dress pants, still elegant but not stuffy, with a dark blue long sleeved shirt, open at the neck with his sleeves rolled up. The pants hugged his hips and the length of his legs like a glove, and the shirt set the colour of his deep blue eyes off to a “T”. I could see his bare chest through the opened buttons at the top of his shirt. The desire to reach out and touch his perfect cream coloured skin was electrifying.

“There's so many questions and somehow I think you would know the answers, wouldn't you?” I looked into his eyes, daring myself to fall into the swirls of blue and indigo that lived there.

“
Yes.” One word, nothing more.

“
Then why don't you tell me?”

He smiled then, a leisurely smile that made his face glow in the sun that reached us. Yes, in my dreams Michel could stand in the sunlight. Maybe another trick to make him appear more human, who knows. All I knew is, I loved the sun dancing along the cream and golden skin on his arms. How he must miss it.

“Not here,
ma douce
. Come to me when you are ready and we shall talk.”

“
I'm ready now.” I'd had enough of hiding from the truth. I had known for some time that there was more to me than meets the eye. Obviously the supernatural magnet and being in-tune with the vampires had been a hint, but deep down, I knew there was more. I had known it from the first day I met Michel.

It had been a couple of days after my first intrepid meeting with a vampire. There was a sudden summer storm and deep black clouds had rolled in to cover the city. Not unheard of in Auckland, if you know anything about this city, you'd know it has a high rain count. Even in the heat of summer, rain continues to fall.

I was at work. Still my first week at my new job - Business Banker for the Bank of New Zealand in Queen Street, a job I was so proud to have landed - talking to a customer across the counter from me. He was from one of the local businesses, making his daily deposit. I'd counted his coins by hand already and was just running the notes through the counting machine, when I sensed a presence.

You see, here's the thing. You know I said vampires don't like the sun, they try to avoid it and all that. Well, yeah, they do, but it's not impossible to go out in daylight. If there's enough cloud cover and they're not in direct sunlight and they're a mega-master level vampire, they can get away with it. Hell, for all I knew, there was a lot more that Michel could get away with, he just didn't care to show me it all at once.

So, there he was, standing just inside the doorway to the bank. I could actually see how tall he was against those coloured strips they have on the door jam, to tell you the height of a fleeing bank robber. Well, he wasn't fleeing and he came up to the red. Over six feet tall. He just stood there and looked at me, this strange look on his face. But the thing was, it was as if no one else could see him, just me. The customers all walked around him. Not up to him or through him, or anything like that. Somehow they knew to avoid him, but they still didn't acknowledge him. Which was strange, because he glowed, not obviously, but in some ethereal way, where you couldn't take your eyes off it. It was just so compelling.

My customer was jabbering away about the latest trend in fashion this season and hadn't noticed my statue-like appearance. Lucky. It wouldn't have been good to stand out on the first week in the new job. And suddenly Michel was in front of me, across the counter. I had no idea where my customer had gone to and when I glanced down at my hands, the counter was bare. The deposit slip sitting in its shelf, completed, my terminal screen back to the new customer page. Somehow I had lost several minutes,  I had no idea how.

Michel smiled at me. It was open and friendly, yet there was more to it than that. I couldn't open my mouth, I couldn't breathe. I knew beyond a doubt that he meant me no harm, but I also knew my life had changed and that this being across the counter was to blame. It was at that moment that I knew for certain that I was different. That there was more to me than being a girl from the farm and a bank teller in the city. But I also knew, somehow, as though Michel was telepathically telling me, that I was special. Special to him.

I know, I know, it's sounds a little hokey, but what do you expect dealing with a more than five hundred year old vampire. And that's the thing, all of a sudden he let me see. He let me feel his power, his age, his intentions. He let me see him. And you know what? It didn't scare me. At least not then. It felt like....well, it felt like home. Weird, didn't even cover it.

As quickly as he came, he was gone and I was left shaking from head to toe like a leaf.

You don't forget your first encounter with a Master Vampire, I certainly won't forget Michel.

I looked at him now, waiting for him to answer. “Are you so sure you are ready,
ma douce
?” he asked with that knowing smile. It irritated me, that smile. But it was all him, nothing I could do to change that. There was no point getting upset about it, he'd only smile more. Like a bloody Cheshire Cat.

He was right though. I wasn't ready to face him here, he had too much control in this place. But in the real world, I could resist. Another visit to
Sensations
was on the books it seemed.

He knew my answer before I gave it, with the shake of my head. He slowly reached up to trace the outline of my face with the fingers on his right hand. The shot of fire that went through me felt real, burning in my veins, spreading throughout my body. I shuddered a breath out and fought the urge to lean into his hand. It's only in these dreams that I let him get this close. In reality, when I get summoned to his club, I rarely let him closer than a kiss to the cheek, or my hand in his. But here, I don't know, it just seems safer, not real. As though I can allow that part of me, the part that longs for him despite what he is, free reign.

It's all an illusion. These dreams may not be reality, but they are real. When I wake, I will still feel his touch, still smell his expensive cologne around me, on me, still hear his whispered words inside my head. And he will remember too. He makes sure I know that. That he visits in my dreams, that he is actually there.

So, why do I let him get so close here and not in real life? It's amazing what the mind can tell you. It can shelter you from the harsh light of day and have you believing any number of falsehoods. I let Michel close in my dreams because, although they are real, they are still to my mind, a dream.