Radiance (Brotherhood of the Blade Trilogy #3) (15 page)

“What?”

“
No vehicle,” the counter guy said.

“
But I reserved it with a credit card.”

The customer service rep, if you could call him that, at least had the decency to look sheepish. “We were supposed to have a 10-passenger van for you, but when it got turned in, someone had upchucked in it—it’s completely trashed. We need to send it out for a major detail.”

“
Sacré bleu!
” Ambra said and groaned.

“
I have to get us all somewhere,” I said with urgency in my voice. “It’s a matter of life and death!”

“
That’s what they all say.” The rental agent showed me his empty palms and I quelled the urge to head-butt him.
No, I should save that move for the vampires.

“
What can you do for me?” I asked, trying not to grit my teeth. As much as I loved Los Angeles, there were things about it which I did not love. Frustration from customer service was one of my pet peeves.

“
Well…”

“
I need transportation. I have a critical situation,” I said.

“
I’m fresh out of multi-passenger vans,” he continued. “How about two or three smaller vehicles?”

“
No, we have to travel together. Get me one vehicle, please—any kind of people mover that will hold my group and our luggage. I don’t care what it looks like, as long as we all fit in it and it doesn’t stink.”

“
I’ll see what I can do.” His fingers moved over the computer keys in a blur. “What do you all do anyway?”

“
We’re…stuntmen.”
And more.

He stopped typing. “What about her?” The rental agent looked askance at gray-haired Joan, who frowned.

“I’m a professional fencing instructor,” she said, her back stiff.

“
Cool. What do you call yourselves, if anything?”

“
Cirque de l’Étoile du Matin
,” I improvised.
Circus of the Morning Star
. I wasn’t going to tell this dweeb that we were Brotherhood of the Blade and Sisterhood of the Scythe. I sure as hell didn’t want him knowing we were all armed to the teeth.

“
Are you anything like Cirque du Soleil?” he quipped.

“
Yes, except in
Cirque de l’Étoile du Matin
, we’re a lot more bad-ass because we do it all at night.” The lies got easier. It was actually kind of fun to make up stuff about us.

“
Uh-huh. I see. Night stuntmen and stuntwomen. Well, let me just reserve you a vehicle from National Drive.” He held out his hand for my credit card. I handed it over.

“
I’ll get you a discount. Don’t worry.”

“
With your competitor?”

“
Yup. I smell an accident coming,” said the Enterprice guy.

“
Oh, come on. That hardly ever happens in Southern California.”

To his credit, the agent laughed. “I figure that your stunt group is much more likely to smash up a vehicle than say, your average mom, dad, and two point five kids on their way to Disneyland.”

Ambra drummed her nails on the counter. She had her quirks and among them was a certain lack of patience. She did not suffer fools gladly.

“
So, you’re just going to foist us off on your competitor?” I asked.

“
I thought I might.”

I shook my head.
Well played, sir. Well played.

Not long after that, we found ourselves on a courtesy shuttle to the National Drive rental place, just outside the airport. Our group and all of our stuff filled the entire bus. We were a motley crew—a bunch of vampire hunters, a werewolf, and the bus driver.

The courtesy shuttle bus driver was a cheerful gal named Denise, according to her name tag. She had big brown eyes, long brown hair cut in a feathery style, and a loud, but pleasant voice that had no need of a microphone.

Denise greeted us all individually when we got on her green and white bus. When we schlepped and stowed our luggage and were settled in our seats, she took off right away into the airport traffic—it parted for her amid honking horns. She honked right back.

“Jerk!” she screamed out her window, the grin never leaving her face.

“
Don’t worry,” she called back. “I’m good at this. Just hold on.” She steered that boxy bus through heavy traffic like it was a sports car.

When the traffic light suddenly changed, she coasted to a stop that I hardly felt.

“How did you do that?” I said, amazed. I was in the seat right behind her.

“
It’s called a chauffeur’s stop. I learned it when I was a limo driver for a bunch of royal princesses who didn’t want to be jostled. Heaven forbid that they would ever wear a seat belt or hold on.”

“
I’m Corbin!” Corbin said, his tongue hanging out at pretty Denise as if he needed a window to hang his head out of and a tummy rub from her.

“
Corbin,” I said quietly as Denise grinned in the rearview mirror at our werewolf. “I know we’re going bye-bye in the car, but your tongue is out again.”

He pulled it back in. “Sorry. Trying to blend in. Not flirt. It’s my first time out of Switzerland in quite some time.”

I smiled at him. “You’ll catch on. Just be as human as you can.”

“
Right. I used to do it. I think I remember how.”

Denise looked in the rearview mirror and said, “I noticed you all have the same boots.”

“I know it looks kinky, but we all like to dress the same,” I said. Ambra blushed and looked out the window. I think it was the only time I had seen her full-on red-faced.

“
What do you all do?” asked Denise, her eyes zooming in on mine in the mirror.

“
Stuntmen and stuntwomen,” I lied cheerfully.

“
Are you in Los Angeles to make a movie?”

“
Yes, we are.”

“
I used to work as a courier at Sony Studios in Culver City,” she said. “Is Sony making the picture?”

“
No, it’s an indie production shooting on location,” I replied.

“
What’s the movie about?”

“
Vampire hunters,” I said easily. “They can’t start shooting without us and we’re late. Late for an important date, if you get my drift.”

“
Ohhh
,” she said. “Sunset is in an hour. They need you there now.”

“
I see you understand.”

The light turned green and Denise gunned it. She maneuvered that big shuttle bus in and out of traffic as if she knew that we were vampire hunters.
For real.

Denise radioed ahead that we were VIP clients and that a movie studio was holding up production for us. She chattered back and forth with the dispatcher, even flirting. Finally, she looked in the review mirror and said, “Your multi-passenger van is almost ready. You will enjoy curb service and thank you for driving with us.”

And just like that, we were there.

“
Have a happy day,” she said as we got off the bus with our luggage.

Corbin grinned at her in a human way,
finally
without his tongue falling out of his mouth. I was so damn proud of him.

“
Goodbye, Denise,” he said.

She gave him a smile and a wave.

Just before I got off, she said to me, “You can’t fool me. I know what you all do.”

“
Is that so?”

“
You’re bounty hunters, right? Like on the TV show?”

“
What makes you think that?”

“
I heard metal clinking like you’re all packin’.”

I winked at her and got off the bus.

In short order, we were in a white multi-passenger van, our stuff was loaded and we were back in business.

I drove the van, not because I liked to be in charge, but because the rental agreement was in my name and because I knew Los Angeles like the back of my hand.

“It’s a good thing you know your way around,” Ambra said, as if she could read my mind. She was riding shotgun.

“
Yeah, it’s my old stomping grounds.”

I got us on the freeway. It was a slow merge into heavy traffic. “Hurry up and wait,” I said. “This is the non-glamorous part of being a vampire hunter.”

“Are you still homesick for Southern California?” Ambra asked.

“
Not for the freeway,” I said, sighing at the stop-and-go traffic. “But I am for the sea and surfing. For fish tacos at the beach and barbeques on soft summer nights at home. For my family’s old hacienda. For my daughter, and looking for the green flash with her on the ocean’s horizon at sunset.”
Sometimes, I am even homesick for Megan…
Ironically, I felt guilty for thinking of my deceased wife in Ambra’s presence. Strange, I used to feel guilty about thinking about Ambra after my wife had been killed. It had taken me a long time to face her death and embrace this new life.

Ambra could read the catch in my throat and the expression on my face. “We
are
going to get Kristin and bring her home.”

“
I think this might be our last chance…to get her from Griffith Park.”

“
From Vampire Central Station,” Joan said.

“
Exactly,” I replied. “It’s like this vortex where vampires are drawn together. They have created this society, this culture...”

“
Their lair is going to be a den of death and suffering,” said Corbin and let a howl loose.

I nodded. “Yes. I hope Kristin is going to be all right.”

Ambra pressed her fingers into my shoulder, kneading it.

“
Have faith,” Mikhail said and then he looked out the window, his lips moving. I knew the former priest was praying.

“
I know what they smell like,” Corbin said. “Like turned earth in a dank forest.”

“
Even like mushrooms,” I said. “I don’t quite have your acute sense of smell.”

“
It’s better than most humans have,” Ambra said. “You saved our butts on the road from your old house when we got jumped, remember?”

“
Yeah, he went over the cliff, grabbing his crotch after you kicked him and I shot him with a silver needle out of my blowgun.”

Ambra took her hand away and checked her weapons. “It seems like a long time ago.”

“To me, it feels like yesterday,” I said.

“
That’s because the pain won’t go away until you get Kristin back and kill the vampire who killed your family.”

“
Did it help you?” I asked.

“
I don’t want to talk about it now,” Ambra said. “Focus on the current mission.”

Her eyes sucked in the sight of thousands of cars and she turned on the air conditioner full blast, like the Swiss girl she was.

“It’s only in the eighties, Fahrenheit. Are you hot?”

“
Oui
, how did you guess?”

“
Because I know the temperature doesn’t feel right to you unless you are on skis and doing your favorite thing.”

“
You know me very well.”

“
These are my old stomping grounds, like I said.” I paused. “It feels eerie to be home again. Surreal.”

“
In what way?” Joan asked.

“
Like I’m trapped in an alternate universe. I’m in Los Angeles, but my entire family is gone. I feel very much like a bewildered George Bailey, searching madly for something or someone familiar to cling to, like in
It’s a Wonderful Life.”

“
We’re going to find Kristin and bring her home to Switzerland,” Ambra said with a surety that was more bravado than confidence. She reached over and squeezed my shoulder again. She knew exactly what I was thinking. “
Do
you wish none of this ever happened? Like in the movie?” she whispered.

“
No, I wouldn’t wish any of you away for anything. Not the circumstances that brought us together, of course, but the end result—of us as a group of vampire hunters who live together and support each other—I wouldn’t take that back for anything.”

“
I believe it with everything in me, you’ll soon get your life back as a father,” Griff said.

“
I pray every night that I do.” I suddenly realized that I had said that out loud.

“
We’ve got your back,” Mikhail said. “And God is on our side. In the battle of good versus evil—”

“
Good will prevail,” said Corbin.