Shrouds of Darkness (11 page)

“Because you didn’t say please,” I reply with a smirk.

“Goddamn it! I’ll give you a please and thank you as I ram my sword up your ass!” Quinn screams, practically frothing at the mouth as he once more tries to pull his blade from the scabbard hidden beneath his trench coat.

It takes Wyatt and two of the other young Sheriffs to pin the upstart’s arms to his side and force some sense of control back into him. Wyatt leaves his protégé in the grip of two other members of his posse.

He rubs his temples as if trying to massage out a migraine—or a stroke. It amuses me to no end to know that I can still aggravate him to such levels of frustration.

“Leo, would you please come with us?”

“I want
him
to ask me—nicely,” I say, indicating the hothead with a point of my chin.

“Goddamn it, Leo!”

It’s not often you can make a vampire flush. And I thought this wasn’t going to be any fun.

“Oh fine,” I say with casual flick of my wrist.

“Leave your weapons here,” Quinn orders.

I give Wyatt a look who responds, “Please, Leo. It will make it more comfortable for everyone.”

I shrug my shoulders as if the request does not bother me in the least. I stand and drop my gun and blade on the desktop then give everyone an intent look.

“If I need a weapon I’ll just take one of yours,” I promise them all.

Quinn’s smirk says that he’d like to see me try. At this point, I do my best to ignore him. He’s a puppy just aching to try out his recently grown big-dog teeth. I really have better things to do with my time so the more I cooperate the faster I can get this over with and be on my way.

I’m immediately flanked on all sides but my escorts are wise enough to stay beyond arm’s reach. Despite every one of us wearing heavy boots our combined footsteps hardly make a sound on the steel steps. Waiting on the curb at the foot of the stairs is one more vamp standing next to a black panel van waiting at the open sliding door. Finally, a face I recognize.

“Greg,” I say in greeting with a nod of my head.

“Leo,” Greg replies, trying but failing to keep a bemused grin from his face.

Greg was a Sheriff before I joined on. He is a big man and the only vampire I have met that keeps a full beard. We get along mostly because we share similar ideologies. We both despise politics and the bullshit that always accompanies it. He is just better at accepting things beyond his control, which is one reason why he is still a Sheriff and I am not.

 I am allowed to enter first and take a seat on the long bench that runs along the inside of the van. Wyatt and his entourage pile in after me. I am wedged between an Asian girl and a lean black woman with a nearly shaven head. Wyatt and Quinn sit in jump seats that fold down from the sliding panel door. Greg flashes me a look that speaks of regret and possibly an apology as he climbs into the driver’s seat. That concerns me more than just a little.

I’m not too worried. Despite their being numerous people that want me dead, if someone ordered me killed the attempt would have been made already. I do not need to see out of the windshield, the only viewable port in the van, to know we are heading for the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel. Nor do I need the salty smell of the air to alert me to the fact we are now crossing under the bay. I have dumped so many bodies here that if you fished them all out the water level would drop three inches.

The benefit of taking the toll road is that it only takes us half an hour to make the fifteen-mile trip. Quinn slides the door open and rudely shoves me out almost before we come to a full stop.

 I pause for my escort, looking up at the tall, black building stretching up to the sky with its hundreds of silvery reflective windows. Blood sucker headquarters, also referred to as the tower. It is where many vampire-owned companies and corporations keep their corporate offices. It is not solely occupied by our kind. Several corps run offices out of the lower levels of the building, completely ignorant of their predatory neighbors.

Quinn shoves me again. “Move it, asshole. What are you, a fucking tourist?”

I just smile at him as I rehearse several splendidly gruesome ways in which I will kill him. A growled warning from Wyatt to his underling makes him back off and we march in unison through the huge glass doors and into the lobby.

The interior is as decadent as one would expect from a den of evil. The walls are black marble and granite. Near the center of the five-story atrium, standing in mocking contrast to the masters of this warren of iniquity, is a thirty-foot tall alabaster angel standing upon a ten-foot dais holding an infant.

The woman has her wings outstretched as if welcoming everyone who enters the building and is smiling down serenely at the babe in her arms. Few know that her smile looks exactly like the smile of a vampire just before it sucks the lifeblood out of a human.

The two guards sitting behind the large security desk nod to Wyatt and let us pass without a word of challenge. The security in this building is all vampires; run by one of the few other vampires I consider something of a friend.

The doors of the elevator open immediately, as if it has been waiting just for Wyatt and his crew. Which is likely since it is a private elevator reserved for use by the upper ten stories of the skyscraper. It is no coincidence that every office on the last ten floors belongs to vampires. The last thing we need is to have some human wandering about the place. It would be like the kid that that fell into the lion pit at the zoo. Wyatt uses a key to gain access to the top floor.

Despite the towering height of the building, our ascent is swift and the doors to our elevator silently open to deposit us into another foyer, though significantly less grand than the one on the first floor. We march past another security station, turn down the first hallway on our left, and step into a large open room that occupies a significant amount of real estate of one of the floor’s corners.

Other than a few concrete pillars, the room is nearly bereft of furnishings. The only exceptions are a couple couches, a large television, and a foosball table that occupies the very corner of the room. I am very familiar with his room. It is the dayroom and training room for the Sheriffs.

No one is offering me any information and I’ll be damned if I’m going to ask. I wonder how hard it will be to make Quinn go for me. Probably not hard and I’m minutes away from finding out simply to break the boredom with something more entertaining than challenging someone to a game of foosball. Fortunately, the sound of a pair of familiar voices entering the far end of the room breaks the tedium.

“I don’t understand why you’re blocking this, Vincent. We’ll have our people at the monitors at all times. It will help us keep track of not just our own people, but we can spot potential prey, clean up the gutter trash, and most importantly, make me some damn money.”

That was Percy
LaRoche
. He was one of the few people here I actually tolerate. Percy is an old southern gent that seems to hold few grudges for being on the losing side of the civil war. He is big fellow, a bit on the heavy side, and his graying hair makes him look fairly invested in his fifties.

The other half of the polite argument is Vincent. An apt name since he looks a great deal like Vincent Price when he was in his sixties. Vincent is the head of the enclave, an elected position. That does not make him an uncontested power however. The position is mostly a figurehead though he does guide the politics and workings of the local vampire community and wields a veto power for anything brought before the Council.

Vincent is an old vamp too. I don’t know how old but I am pretty sure he was around for the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I would bet my left testicle he supported the losing side too and is still bitter about it.

He is not my friend and is the primary factor of my self-employed status. Several years ago, a German diplomat friend of his came for a visit and quickly began abusing our hospitality. Vincent and I had a disagreement about the limits of diplomatic Immunity. Besides, I was also tired of cleaning up his messes.

Vincent politely asked his friend to leave. My solution was less subtle but far more permanent. Baron Von Wurst-in-ass was not only a vampire but also a “former” Nazi so sadistic his antics would make Himmler puke. While he was in his luxurious hotel suite packing for his return flight, I lined the floorboards and inside roof of his town car with C4.

I used shaped charges so the explosion made a glorious Nazi sandwich. Other than blowing a crater in the street and shattering every nearby window, there was virtually zero collateral damage. I was justifiably proud of myself. Vincent was not.

He told me I overstepped my authority and risked exposure of the enclave due to the overwhelming attention from the feds that my solution posed. I argued that my oath of upholding the laws of the enclave and expeditiously destroying rogue vamps overruled his political convenience. The end result was my being fired and earning the enmity of the most influential vampire in the western hemisphere.

“Mr. Malone, how nice of you to stop by,” Vincent calls out with barely veiled hostility as he breaks away from Percy and stalks towards our little group. “I seem recall telling you that if I ever found you anywhere near this building I would have you killed, you miserable little prick.”

I look purposely at my escort. “I don’t recall being given a choice.”

“I don’t recall having made a distinction.”

I roll my eyes at his attempt at whit. “What’s the matter, Vincent, you miss me?”

Vincent gets close enough to me to totally violate my personal space and it takes all my self-control not to step away. “The only thing I miss is functional kidneys so that I may piss on your grave when someone puts you down like the rabid dog you are.”

“I’m so sorry my continued existence brings you such disappointment.”

“Don’t be too sad, I have already commissioned a latrine for the homeless to be constructed atop your gravesite. I shall take my pleasure in the end.”

“I always thought you did. Nice of you to finally push your coffin out of the closet.”

I know it is not the wisest thing to do in provoking the leader in a room full of already hostile vampires, but my mouth has long overruled my brain. As I suspect, Quinn is eager to jump at me. High-strung kids like him, convinced of the near immortality and the invincibility their recently vampiric transformation makes them feel, are often quick to test themselves.

It’s a lot like the old west. A gunslinger gets a reputation for being the meanest and fastest gunman around. Most people are smart and leave him the hell alone. But there are always a few hotshots that just have to test him, have to beat him so they can immortalize themselves. I have a well-deserved reputation for being particularly lethal and all Quinn needs to do is kill me to claim top dog.

I know he is going to jump even before he does and I am ready for it. I already have my target picked out; the nervous kid with the shifty eyes. I lunge while Quinn is in midflight, yanking the sword free from the scabbard he keeps beneath his long jacket before he can even register the fact that I moved.

I spin towards Quinn and catch his blade with the one I just borrowed inches from my face. The young tough would surely have pressed his attack but Wyatt punches him in the side of head and sends him sprawling to the floor.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” Quinn shouts at Wyatt as he springs to his feet and glares daggers at his superior.