Standing Before Monsters (Vorans and Vampires) (30 page)

Nicola declared with a grin, “You are taking us somewhere nice tonight, Nick, now get dressed!”

Unable to not stare, the man simply closed his laptop and nodded in agreement. He wasn’t stupid enough to turn down such an offer, even if he did have to pay for it.

Chapter 17- Catch and Release

Followed by the girls into the bedroom, Nicola seized his hand as Charlotte closed the door. Slightly surprised since they were the ones who had told him that he was taking the them out for dinner, the voran was less surprised when the vampire kissed the gap between the forefinger and thumb before biting down to draw some blood.

“Don’t get any on your dress. I’d hate to have you change.” His eyes strayed to Charlotte, who was a vision in green.

A weak smile met his gaze and the werewolf spoke, “She said she hasn’t had any of your blood in four days.”

Already the two were even talking about things as personal as the vampire’s feedings? Nick had a feeling the two women in his life were already closer than he realized. They shared him and their minds apparently.

Charlotte sat on one of the chairs in the bedroom before sliding on her heels. Just a weave of a few bands, her feet were about as close to bare as she could get, an apt look for a girl more comfortable with bare feet than most shoes. These were high heels and Charlotte could walk in them as steadily as flats, so he had to guess that she was no novice to wearing them either.

Nicola was done with her suckling in just over a minute. A vampire needed very little of his blood and he could tell that the woman wasn’t really drawing much. The gesture was probably less for blood than the intimate touch Nicola shared with him as she took what she needed to maintain her hold on humanity.

Stepping on tiptoes to kiss him on the lips, he could barely taste any blood; but as a vampire she would hardly let any go to waste. Her fangs had already retracted and a little more color was back in her pale cheeks.

“One of the reasons I like using your hand is that it is easier to stay clean and tidy. As if I’d risk my dress before a night out,” she finished teasingly berating his voiced worry. “Charlotte told me you helped train a pair of new werewolves. When did you learn to do that?”

Opening the closet, Nick found his black suit. If the girls wanted to be fancy, he would do his best to live up to expectations. Taking off his shirt before answering, the man took out a dress shirt and began to button it up deftly. “I learned that I could do it today. Apparently I have a gift for it.”

Charlotte nodded to the blonde vampire, who had decided to sit on the edge of the bed to put on her black, high heeled, ankle boots. The brunette looked very proud as she said, “No one in the pack has ever managed to get a new werewolf to the point of changing at will on the first day. Nick trained Raina to the point of near mastery in a morning and managed to salvage another by mid afternoon.”

“Raina? We know her by name already? Should I know her as well?” the blonde girl asked pretending to be jealous. She knew that if Charlotte wasn’t jealous, there was little need to worry but she liked to tease.

Nick had his pants off and slid on black dress pants as he answered this question, “She is a ranger at the preserve where I originally discovered signs of the pack. She was one of two that took me out to scout one of the pack’s kills and tracks.

“Since I had been there, they must have decided to hire hunters to try and kill the pack of wolves. Raina was the liaison keeping an eye on a pair of hunters.”

“Oh, and is she pretty too?” the vampire asked looking to Charlotte.

“As if I have room in my life to look at any other women,” Nick said shaking his head as he sat on the edge of the bed to pull on a pair of dress shoes. They had laces and took a moment to finish.

Charlotte didn’t let the matter fully go as the man had tried to do. “I thought she was fairly pretty, and Nick made her strip in front of him. Supposedly it was to embarrass her to make the wolf come out, but I don’t know.”

The dark haired woman managed to make it sound like she wasn’t sure, even though she had been there the whole time. Charlotte added sounding a little disappointed, “He put down the fact that she hadn’t shaved her legs recently. Nick was kind of mean to her, I thought; but they say some men are mean to the ones that they like.”

Taking his tie into the bathroom, the man said as he let their teasing slide off of him easily, “Then maybe I need to start mistreating a couple women in this room.”

“Well, that would mean that you like us, but don’t you love us?” Nicola countered still managing to tease the man.

An expert in tying ties, he returned in a matter of seconds letting them wait on his retort. “Love is such a strong word,” the man countered evilly.

He finished his look adding the suit coat from the hangar and buttoned just one button. The girls stood together as if on cue. Holding the door open for the women, Nick waited as Charlotte passed into the hall.

Nicola, however, stopped to toy with his collar and say, “Well, we can always take our dresses off and see how committed to that strong word you are, if you’d rather.”

Chuckling in response, the man’s right hand found the small of her back and prodded very gently. “Any woman who asks their man to take them out somewhere fancy and he does it at a drop of a hat should take it while she can get it.”

Nicola smiled, nodded and followed Charlotte into the living room. Kate looked at the three of them and looked a little jealous, but still managed to smile. Logan shook his head briefly before saying, “You all look like celebrities going to a premiere or something.”

Taking the compliment and the keys to the BMW, Nick led the ladies to the elevator and onward to a restaurant with a view of the lake.

They had picked up the scent of the first vampire north of the bars and followed him in human form. To their surprise, he joined up with two more. Only three in number and with Alad and Lamassu still nursing their wounds from Friday night, Shedu wasn’t sure if they should try even odds. If the vampires found more of their kind, it could turn into a blood bath against the three kasha.

He had the strange man’s phone number from the day before, but did he dare use it? Should he use it? Barong had sent them in confidence to deal with whatever vampire threat was in Chicago. Was calling for aid from someone helping vampires not revealing weakness and perhaps even compromising their mission?

Their sect had been working to eradicate the blood suckers from the world for centuries according to the lore he had been taught. Kashas were relatively few, however, and vampires could spread like an epidemic in numbers which could wipe out the entire world in left unchecked. Perhaps they were so few, because they were actually losing the fight.

Splitting their number, the kasha waited until the three vampires stopped. Their kind liked the heights. There was a peace up above the humans and a good vantage point to see future victims. The
kasha were cats and could play the same game like the creatures they often resembled.

Lam’s chain crossed the distance from the building to his right striking with precision despite the vampires’ excellent hearing causing them to react. The spike pierced the calf of one as Alad’s grenade
exploded over their heads further panicking the vampires. Worry for their comrade was distanced as the other two considered the options of fight and flight.

Adding to their worries, Shedu leaped across the building they had just crossed moments before. A dark furred panther head and claws were only noticed as the kasha landed on the roof in a roll. They were great leapers, but lacked the controlled jumps of a vampire; still he was up and attacking the closest one before they could do much more than sneeze as the kasha’s scent disrupted their faculties further.

He attacked the closest of the vampires with his claws and the undead responded in kind. These were not trained and equipped creatures like they had come across a few times in the city and certainly not like the ones Nick consorted with brandishing silver coated swords. Even so, they were vampires and dangerous, strong and fast.

His claws caught at the vampire’s protective jacket, a garment not needed for the warm spring night. Only a vampire would keep wearing a jacket in warm weather as if it made him look cooler as he killed his victims. Flesh was torn with the hits and Shedu drew out a taste of the evil spirit inside the creature he fought. He wouldn’t try to take it all as Lamassu had done the other night, only taking a spirit with two or more made the process safe for the kasha. One on one dealing with the writhing evil could debilitate one of them until they could dominate and destroy the spirit within them. Stories of kasha trying to prove their ability by taking vampires alone regularly led to some falling into the same madness of the vampires they killed.

When kasha had to put down their own, it harmed them all to the core.

Alad was with him now and Lam after cinching the chain on the far side of the street as well. The girl was attacking her target restricted by her chain assisted by the tiger form of Alad. As they converged on the wounded one, the third vampire turned to run.

“He’s getting away,” the tiger declared dodging an attack from the wounded vampire.

“Take care of these two first!” Shedu ordered as he breathlessly struggled with his own problem.

With two kasha fighting the tethered, wounded vampire; he succumbed quickly and they drew out his spirit tearing his essence apart in the process sending it to the beyond. Leaving it a charred corpse, they quickly attacked the one fighting Shedu from behind and, as a team; the kasha reduced it to another lifeless husk.

“Why did you want the last one to get away?” Alad asked in complaint. Shedu wanted to shake his head, as he realized that the man just couldn’t look at the bigger picture. As Lamassu had said, Alad was too fixated to ever be a leader. His mind wasn’t flexible or able to do anything other than attack.

“Hopefully, he will lead us to their lair. It seems obvious that these three knew each other, so it stands to reason that he might have more friends. If we can find out where their refuge is, we can destroy the entire nest in one try during the day.”

Having learned a lesson from the voran, they sprayed silver nitrate on the dead bodies. Reacting with the undead virus in the corpses, charred flesh quickly turned to dust and began to blow away with the breeze. Alad was chomping at the bit as they cleaned up after their fight; but when Shedu took the lead using scent to follow the vampire, the tiger assumed his role as follower without complaint.

Several blocks of twisting and turning paths taken by the vampire in his attempt to fool his pursuers, eventually led them half a mile to the northwest. It was a boarded up furniture store that had closed recent enough to have only have the beginnings of vandalism, but the windows were dirty from the parts that could be seen between the slats of boards. Some of them had been boarded up or otherwise covered from the inside and Shedu realized that much of the building had been made safe against the sun by the vampires who now resided inside the building.

“Can you make out how many are inside?” Lam asked the men on either side of her as they looked at the old store from their vantage point across the street. There were no guards on the lookout for pursuers to worry about showing their lack of diligence about being attacked.

Shedu answered, “I don’t see any movement around it, but the trail leads here.”

“What if he simply went through the building to slip around to the other side?” Alad questioned the logic aloud.

Waving him on, their leader nodded, “Feel free to circle around, but be back in fifteen minutes. I don’t want to remain here too long, if it is the right place. There are enough scents of the undead around here to assume that there is at least a dozen inside, unless you are right that this is a simple stopping station to throw off pursuit.

“If we stay too long, we risk being noticed and if this is the group from the other night we might have to run again.”

Alad looked disgusted at the thought of running from vampires, but even he had to admit that they hadn’t done very well the other night. The tiger moved off leaving Lam and Shedu to watch out for more.

“If there is a dozen of more, can we handle them even by daylight?” Lam asked curiously.

Frowning slightly, he didn’t even bother to look at the woman as he said, “You want me to call the voran, don’t you?”

“He also has more resources than us,” the gray striped cat said using her night vision to scan for predators as a gray tail wagged lazily behind her. “If you told him of the nest, he might even ask for werewolves to come help us.”

“We met him for a moment and yet you like him that much? How can we trust him or ask him to trust us?”

Chuckling, which was harder with a feline mouth, the girl replied, “How can we not? He found us and didn’t bring the vampires or werewolves to kill us. Not that he didn’t appear quite capable of killing us himself yesterday.”

The woman paused and Shedu could tell that there was something else that she had to get off of her chest. “You froze yesterday. He could have killed Alad and me, if he had wanted; and all you could do was stand there and look confused. You were slow Friday night too, though that was beneficial since you were able to disrupt the vampires’ attack. What is wrong with you Shedu?”

Her questions were valid and worse than that, he had been asking himself much the same questions. He had frozen when the voran took the others down, but that had been because they attacked him and Nick was simply defending himself. The voran had initiated no attacks, just counterattacks caused by the impetuous natures of his associates.