Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (14 page)

Parking a block south of the place where the encounter had happened, Nick found his way up to the roofs. It was strange how comfortable the voran was on rooftops, a place few humans tread and few cared to. A fear of heights was a bad thing to have for a voran or vampire on nightly patrols. Luckily, he had never had that fear. In fact, he had no real irrational fears. While Nick vaguely remembered having a few when he was young, maybe it was another part of being a voran.

Sniffing at the first roof that had been the initial attack on the vampires, the man realized many traits had upgraded after his fateful meeting with Marek so long ago. He often wondered if he used his skills the way God or nature wanted. While he killed the out of control vampires, Nick had taken pity on Marek and his band. Giving them some of his blood to keep them close to human, not animals out to kill for blood, and in fact making them into his allies against other vampires; had he in fact gone beyond his base nature and theirs?

Vivian, his mentor, had known of his relationship with Marek and never tried to change it. While she never encouraged it, he wondered often if the woman watched them together wishing she had the courage to befriend one of their kind. He had never seen the woman kill a vampire, but had to assume that at least part of her extended life came from use of her powers. To have them and never use them seemed a waste. It was part of what had made him leave her in a way.

While killing vampires wasn’t his goal in his heart; living isolated from the world, as Vivian had begun to do, was something he had done for a short time before he decided to move back into the world. He had maintained his relationship with Marek and through him his coven, even at his most withdrawn moments. The voran had felt a responsibility to keep them sane. It was either continue to draw enough blood to keep them from killing or kill them to end their misery.

Lost in the past, the voran’s attention to every detail in the present was still extended to his fullest ability. Despite any misgivings he might have, Nick still had to discover the identity of these new feline vampire hunters and the first roof yielded little to his investigation. Silver glittered in the moonlight from thin amounts spread across the black tarred roof. It had been enough to deter the vampires but not truly harm them other than making their skin a bit red. The vampire hunters didn’t seem to see his pet clan as a true threat. Twice they could have attacked and twice they had run away.

The roof that the creatures had attacked from had a lingering scent of feline. It was down wind of the building Marek’s team had been crossing. Without a voran’s sixth sense, they had never smelled a trace of the ambush. Neither had the rogue they had been pursuing. Somehow the hunters had happened upon them and been able to make it to the position before the vampires. Had they seen or somehow sensed the vampires coming and lain in wait?

Questions he couldn’t answer without finding the hunters had to be pushed back for later. There was little to be found on the second roof, so he moved on to the place of the rogue’s execution. While the word was strong, it seemed to be just that.

There were little signs of struggle, unlike the parking garage battle. This vampire had been fast, but once cornered it had proven weak. Was that because of a weapon used on it here, unlike the fight the night before; or was it simply an untrained fighter and rabbit to these lions?

Glitter was everywhere and Nick could see the casings left behind by the silver laced bombs. Like smoke bombs used to disperse a crowd, these would do little to harm a vampire as long as they gave way to the cloud. The small bits of dust from the dead rogue remaining from the clean up of the vampires clouded any possibility of discovering how it had been killed, but it mattered little, he supposed. It was the last part of the trail where he hoped to find the real clues to help him find these creatures.

Leaping to the next roof, he scanned the area with his senses. The smell of feline lingered and the voran was able to trace the pattern as he began to sort out three different individual scents. Two were
muskier, the males, while the third had a sweetness to her that made him think it must be a female. The smells were partially masked by that of the felines they must be at least partially transformed into, unlike werewolves; they didn’t maintain the certain after scent of the feline like they did of wolves. Even Charlotte, pristine in her bathing habits and well put together most days, held a bit of the animal on her that he could track whether she was in human form or wolf. These creatures were able to change their scents and probably bodies completely.

The three descended to the street two buildings beyond and cut to the east. Nick not only searched the ground for traces of their trail and possible changing area, but the walls and roofs of the buildings around them. Taking out a notebook, the man jotted down the building number from across the way. It had a set of cameras watching the street in front of it. He doubted they had the angle he needed to see his sidewalk where the cats had walked or run away, but the voran might get lucky.

A second building had a camera on his side. It monitored the front door, but there was a second camera inside pointing out. He wrote down the number.

Half a block farther along, the feline’s disappeared. While the smell of the cats was lost to his sense of smell, Nick knew enough of their base smells to follow both the musk and sweetness of the human side of these creatures. Passing two more camera covered buildings, the trail ended where they must have switched to a car.

Exceptional tracking or not, the voran couldn’t follow a vehicle. Using his phone’s digital camera, he took a picture of what may have been the tread marks of their vehicle. They were faint and likely to be useless to him, but there was always that chance. He walked another block finding more buildings with cameras. Writing down each, Nick hoped that maybe he could get lucky to catch the getaway vehicle on film with one of them.

Checking the time on his phone, the voran sighed. Two AM. Leaving now he would have to face Nicola for sure, but he could hope that Charlotte would be too tired to remain awake.

Maybe he was a bit of a coward, Nick thought with amusement.

The sword in its scabbard was thrown on a chair to his left as the third figure closed the door to the apartment hard. A light was thrown on by a brown skinned man dressed in black, who looked to the last to enter with a frown.

The man by the door was Arabic in looks and had a bit of an accent as he stated in annoyance, “We should have killed those three rather than playing with them.”

“Should we, Alad?” the bigger man asked sarcastically.

“We are here to hunt the evil out of this city. The dead need to be made to sleep forever to protect the living,” Alad sounded like he recited a text or order. “Shedu, those were vampires. Vampires are what we hunt.”

The lone woman in the three carefully placed a mask on the table to the right of the doorway. Her gloves were added one at a time, the wrist guards made a thunk from metal bracers sewn into the leather.

“We hunt evil spirits and corpses,” she stated untying the cord holding her brown hair in a tail. “Did you sense evil in them like the ones we killed?”

Shedu shook his head and looked at Alad meaningfully a moment, the other man ignored him so the leader replied, “No, that is why I left them alive. We hunt evil and I didn’t sense that from these creatures.”

“These creatures?
They were vampires. What else runs across rooftops in the night?” Alad questioned in disbelief.

“Vampire hunters,” the woman replied pulling out a chair to sit on beside the table and began working on her boots.

Alad looked at her stunned by her words. “Those weren’t vampires who hunt other vampires. Their evil and darkness usually surpass the common rogues, Lamassu. These were nothing like them.”

Musing on the man’s words, the leader finally shook his head, “The reapers are as evil as the ones they prey upon. They do not discriminate between killing their own and the humans; but as Lamassu said, these appear to be hunters.”

“I wonder what Barong would make of vampires that are good?” the oriental woman questioned rising with her boots in hand before gathering her other items. “If my instincts aren’t wrong, they almost felt a bit human as if they were alive yet still dead.”

“Barong knows more about hunting the undead and evil than any of the guild,” Shedu stated with a nod. “Perhaps he has run across vampires like these before.”

Sitting in a chair that didn’t look like a hunter’s taste in the pre-furnished apartment the three rented, Alad replied disgruntled, “I still say we should kill them all. They’re supposed to be dead whether they act good for now or not. You know in the end they are all evil.”

“What about that strange presence last night?” the woman asked from the entry to the hall she was about to enter.

“The human?” Shedu questioned for clarity.

Alad added, “He had their stink on him, but he was human.”

“Perhaps he was a familiar to them. They hold humans under their power to serve them during the day or maybe a dhamphir?”

The dark haired woman shook her head having halted in the doorway to the hall as the conversation turned to her questions finally. “Thralls and familiars can’t move like a vampire and a dhamphir still reeks of death. This seemed human, but couldn’t be because of what he could do.”

Silence held the room as the three mused on the unknown human with the abilities akin to a vampire or even a kasha. Finally Lamassu shrugged and stated, “I am going to shower. That stray left his stink on me when he died. Argue as much as you want while I am gone.”

The two men looked at one another only a moment before Shedu wandered off into his room debating on calling the leader of their guild about these new problems. Alad turned on the television pretending to watch even as he contemplated the new threats.

With keys in hand, Nick chose to check the knob and it turned freely. The other locks hadn’t been thrown either, though should someone dare to enter an apartment with three werewolves and a vampire it would likely to be their own funeral. Still he locked the door even as he tried to ignore two bare feet sticking up over the back of the couch. Crossed at the ankles, Nicola’s legs were bare revealing her smooth white skin.

Walking in arm’s reach of the back of the couch, Nick passed by running his fingers along the side of her calf tickling the vampire enough to make her squirm and pull her legs down in response. Quickly sitting up to watch the man place his keys on a decorative plate with a handful of other ringed keys, Nicola greeted him jokingly, “I was wondering when you would decide to show. ‘Will he wait until Charlotte is asleep or until the sun comes up and I have to sleep’, I asked myself.”

Nick returned to the couch to sit beside the vampiress and more closely noted what she now wore. Red, lace lingerie panties and matching bra were as much to entice and tease him as they were comfortable enough to wear when the sun drove her to sleep. Her bare legs were thrown over his as she laid her head back on the throw pillow placed against the couch’s armrest that the woman had been resting on when he arrived. A judgmental look on her face, Nicola awaited his response.

Ignoring the question of his timing, the voran replied with business over explanation, “I tracked the hunters to their vehicle. Today I need to call some of my police contacts to see if I can get permission to review the cameras along the route.

“They changed along the way, apparently at will, like the werewolves we know. If I am lucky I will catch them on film in both forms and maybe the license of their vehicle.”

“And you could track them to where they are staying?” the pretty blonde asked hopefully. Though the coven hadn’t been attacked as much as been driven away; Nicola feared that they could be next on the list of attacks. Nick was equally worried. These creatures were complete unknowns. Even from myths he couldn’t place them.

“If they’re not driving a stolen car or hiding somewhere illegally, that is my hope. Finding them, I can talk to them to discover their motivations. While I am glad that they didn’t attack the coven to kill, their actions are certainly strange and don’t fit in with typical vampire hunter motivation.”

“You mean like yours?” Nicola asked with a wry smile tugging at her lips.

Sighing, the man replied as his fingers began tracing the lines of her legs making her eyes tighten as she fought the tickling sensation, “Marek and I basically grew into what we have become together. I don’t know what drives other vorans. Whether they fight without getting to know a vampire or have similar relationships to ours, I can’t know. Vivian is the only other one I know, though I believe that she has known others.”

“Speaking of relationships...,” Nicola began as he fell into the verbal trap, “what do we do about this one?”

“Yours and mine or Charlotte?” her eyed narrowed as she realized that he was already trying to stall. “You know I am committed to you.”

Nodding, the vampire pulled her legs under her as she sat facing him. “You haven’t been with me in that way,” she stated, not truly accusing as much as stating fact. After a little over two months since they had truly begun to date, little more than kissing or heavy petting had happened. It wasn’t just his old fashioned upbringing that made him hold back and Nick was pretty sure that she knew that. “Can we ever be close emotionally if you’re afraid to touch me sexually?”