Scarlet Dawn (7 page)

His scent would continue to haunt her until she found him.

Whimpering, she finally allowed the tears to fall freely.

“Zane… you son of a bitch! Where are you?”

S
erena frowned, stepping through the automatic sliding glass doors—the motor groaning against the added pressure of her aura as she forced them to open faster—and stepped into the building that was to be the new clan’s headquarters. She took a moment to look around the waiting room, the scene and décor offering the cover of a typical human office building, and scoffed.

This
was the clan’s headquarters? She hadn’t even
talked
to the people in charge and she already wanted to line them up for a piece of her mind.

Smack. Smack.
Slu-u-u-urp.

Serena suppressed a gag as she turned towards the secretary, the source of the repulsive sounds, and sneered.

Okay, they HAD to be messing with her.

“I swear to fucking Christ,” Serena grumbled, “if I’m being
Punkd right now I’m gonna tear Ashton Kutcher’s heart out and eat it!”

“Ma’am—
smack slu-u-urp smack smack—
do you have an appointment?” The lanky sang girl perched behind a FAR-too-large desk called out to her. Starting towards her, Serena became increasingly aware of the
painfully
thick layers of eye make-up and neon pink lipstick as she blew an equally neon pink bubble of gum.

All of that artificial personality surrounded in two auras: a puke-orange cloud of overconfident air-headedness and a reeking-yet-invisible layer of syrupy perfume that must have come from the discount rack at K-Mart.

Pop!

“Oh I am
so
ready for supper, Ashton!” Serena growled and offered a silent prayer to whatever deity would listen that she wouldn’t upchuck then and there.

“Ma’am?”

“Yea… uh, hi,” Serena looked around again, shaking her head. “Kind of an elaborate hoax you guys are putting up here, isn’t it?”

“Can I, like, help you with something?” She rested her bony chin on a palm with spider-like fingers that ended in fake nails painted with even
more
neon shades.

“How in the hell do you type with those things?” Serena couldn’t hold back a disgusted sneer any longer.

The claws on the secretary’s opposite hand began rattling an impatient rhythm on the desktop. “Do you, y’know, have an appointment or whatever?”

Serena blinked at the question, suddenly curious as to how many brain cells this creature must have lost in what she could only assume had been a lack of blood in her diet. “Uh. Yeah… I’m here to meet with whoever’s running this
joint. Pardon the phrase, but will you take me to your leader,” Serena frowned.

“My… leader?
Smack pop pop smack
”

Serena suppressed the urge to tear out the girl’s gum
along
with her tongue. “Yes. Your leader: the head honcho, the big cheese, the man in charge? Am I even making a dent here or is there too much neon paste caked in your skull to hear me? I’m from the Clan of Vail and we were informed that you would be assisting us.”

More neon eyelid exposed itself as the girl narrowed her eyes, “Uh-huh. Well, let me just see if they’re, like, available.” The secretary turned to her computer screen for less than a second before turning back to Serena. “Oh poo. It looks like you, like, just missed them and junk. But I can
totally
leave a message for you.”

“…
just missed them… and junk?” Serena frowned, feeling her temper begin to rise, “And you,
like, totally
don’t know when they’ll,
like
, be back…
and junk
?”

“Nu-u-
upe,” the rhythmic clacking started up again along with an increased rate of chewing, “But I’ll totally tell them that you came asking for them,” she snapped another bubble with her gum. “I’m sure they’re, like,
sooo
wanting to meet Vail Clan Barbie and all.”

“Listen up, Play-
Doh ho! I’m about two red cunt-hairs from leaping this desk and leaving my own personal message for your bosses with your insides. So here’s how this is going to work: I’m going to,
like
, not kill you—‘cuz I’m feeling generous… and junk—and you’re going to keep that dead meat you call an ass planted on that chair while I go upstairs and check for myself. In the meantime”—she leaned over the desk enough to turn the computer monitor on—“I’ll let you start a personal list of all the ways you just proved all of
this
”—she gestured to their surroundings—“to be every bit the
joke
I knew it was!” Serena began to turn away from the large desk and headed towards the elevators as she heard the secretary hit a call button.

“Security!”

Before Serena could cross the distance to the secretary to rip her head off, two large therions stepped into the room and took her at each arm, dragging her towards the automatic doors.

“Really? Is all this necessary?” Serena growled. “I only came to speak with your clan’s leader! If anybody should be getting dragged out it should be My-Little-Bone-Me bitch back there!”

“The Leader’s out on business at the moment. Try back later,” one of the guards said.

“Once you’ve had a chance to cool down,” the other finished before pushing her through the doors.

Serena growled, catching herself as they threw her out the doors and raised her middle finger at them.

“Up yours, you limp-dick fuckers!”

“I knew there was a reason I liked you!” A familiar voice called to her.

Turning, she spotted Axle and rolled his eyes, “You’ve
gotta be shitting me! All this nut-fuckery over you showing up in my town and you just—
plop!
—hang out on the new clan’s goddam doorstep?” She shook her head, “Axle Travers, the elusive therion rogue! Goddam joke! You know what? Fuck it! You and they can go suck a dick! I’m going home!”

“You remembered my name?” Axle smirked, “The infamous Serena Vailean honors me.”

Serena glared, “On second thought, kicking your ass might just be the perfect thing to vent my mood right now!”

She started towards him and sighed as he smirked and turned to run, heading into the alleyway neighboring the clan’s building.

“Really, numb-nuts? That’s a dead end!” Serena scoffed and rushed after him, only to find the alley empty. “What the fuck?”

“Up here, buttercup!” Axle called from above her, where he was hanging upside-down from a fire escape rung that he’d locked his knees around, “You’re probably going to want to up your game if you want to vent that mood of yours!” He laughed and pulled himself up and over edge of the ladder, and jumping to the rooftop.

Serena smirked, “All right, you spritely fuck! Time for some fun!” She jumped onto the fire escape and began to climb up to the roof.

Axle was sitting on the opposite corner of the roof by the time she arrived. Smirking at the sight of her, he lifted his left arm and pressed the watch around his wrist to his ear.

“I think my watch stopped…” He mock-pouted.

“Your pulse is next!” Serena took a step towards him.

As her foot landed, Axle did a back-handspring that returned him to his feet. Seeing that speed
was
a factor, Serena decided to cut the play short and simply use her vampire speed to cross the rooftop before he’d even had a chance to blink. Unfortunately, before she even had a chance to shift her focus into overdrive, he’d already taken advantage of a nearby antenna, which he vaulted over to clear the distance to the next rooftop.

Accepting the obvious challenge, Serena smirked and rushed across the rooftop in overdrive and using the superhuman speed to propel herself after him. Once her feet left the roof, the laws of physics took hold and the once time-frozen world came alive as she dropped out of overdrive to avoid watching the world—and her airborne leap—pass by at a snail’s pace. Slamming onto the other roof, her boots skidded with the excess momentum and she overshot Axle, who’d banked to the left to allow her to pass.

“Decent moves,” he offered, already standing on the roof’s ledge. “Though that ‘faster than a speeding bullet’ shit won’t do much good in a game where
jumping
reigns supreme.”

“Game?” Serena panted, the exertion from jumping in-and-out of overdrive so quickly already taking its toll on her vampire system. “Since when is me kicking your ass a game?”

“No no,” Axle wagged a finger at her. “You see, you kicking my ass is the
prize
you win. The game, however, is parkour.”

“Huh?”

Axle pouted, “You know, parkour? Free running?”

Serena tapped her toe, “So
jumping
reigns supreme in the game of free
running
? Tell me, you didn’t think this banter through all the way, did you?”

“Probably not,” Axle shrugged. “I was too busy planning out the part where my buddies snuck up behind you while I was
delivering
the banter.”

“What?” Serena threw up her aura in a defensive shield behind her as she spun to face off against…

A vacant rooftop?

“Oh you have got to be
shitt—” Serena sighed, “You’re already gone, aren’t you?”

Turning, she confirmed her suspicions, spotting Axle already sprinting across the rooftop two buildings ahead. “You cheap little shit!”

She began to rush after him once more. Jumping across each building at the pace he did; neither gaining nor losing a pace on him as they entered a more urban area. As the rooftops became less and less flat and more littered with rises and ladders, however, the capacity for Axle’s notorious elusiveness became that much more evident. Every time that Serena thought she had a drop on the therion, he’d throw himself between a railing gap or flip from a ledge only to land in mid-sprint like a cat on a beam no wider than his arm. Though combined agility and speed threw off Serena, who found herself forced, again and again, to compensate for a missed opportunity at grabbing him by fumbling across a light post or catching herself on a balcony.

Finally settling into her own groove, Serena focused less on trying to capture Axle and more on simply keeping up. The hunt soon became a chase, which soon after that became a test of skill.

Serena no longer cared if she got to feel her knuckles against Axle’s jaw; she just wanted to prove that she wouldn’t be so easily eluded.

And Axe—judging from the excited swirl of his light-green aura—knew it!

If Serena made a move to gain height on him, Axle would find another path to end up right beside her; if she tried to take the low path to increase the obstacles, he’d not only meet here there, but expertly dodge and roll over everything in his path.

Winding up side-by-side in a full-sprint along a pair of scaffolding beams at a construction site, the two leapt into the air and freefell for eight stories before landing on the roof of a
meat-packing facility. Serena stumbled, her bowing her knees to cope with the force of the landing while Axle hit the roof in a tucked roll that carried him several meters ahead and allowed him to roll gracefully to his feet.

Panting, he turned to face her and offered a nod, “You’re good.” He smirked and shrugged, “But I’m still better.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” she grinned back, trying—and failing—to not look as winded as she was. “Where’d you learn to move like that anyway?”

He frowned and, obviously confident that Serena was done chasing him, plopped himself Indian-style on the roof, “I grew up on the streets; a ward of The Council’s so-called care, which pretty much meant I got to come-and-go from whatever establishment they tried to plant me in. Let’s just say that when it comes to caring for abandoned youths, our people aren’t exactly on the ball.” He shrugged, “Anyway, when you’re always being chased down for this or that—either because somebody caught you stealing something or because they realized you’d jumped their gates a few weeks earlier—you learn how to run. And when the people you’re running from are people like you, you learn how to run
faster
.”

Serena frowned, feeling a familiar tug of pity at Axle’s story. “I suppose that’s true enough,” she sighed and, deciding there was no point in pretending she still planned to chase him, followed his example and sat down; her left knee pulled up to her chest. “Most of the therions I know focus more on strength than speed, though.” Serena sighed and looked over at him, “Have you always been on your own?”