Tenants and Tyrants (Book 5 of The Warden series) (2 page)

In terms of discretion this was pretty high in their repertoire. Heaton had once walked out of a police station with an unconscious Japanese fire demon slung over his shoulder. The creature was only a baby, and looked like a bald fox with red skin, but it wasn’t Halloween and the thing smelled like charred flesh. Not one policeman questioned him on the way out.

That was one of Heaton’s many great moments of stupid bravery. Sure, it was dangerous and against so many regulations, but like he said, if he didn’t look suspicious no one would question the sizzling pile on his shoulder. Considering it worked, there wasn’t much arguing with him after that.

Heaton opened the back doors to the van, and Daniel helped him toss the vampire into the back. “How can you separate the spectrums, if jealousy can make you angry and sad?” He continued to argue with Daniel’s dizzying logic. If it could be dignified with the title of logic.

“No, jealousy is its own emotion. You can feel multiple emotions, but jealousy only spawns yelling. Imagine you walk in on your girl screwing another guy. What to do feel?” Daniel shoved the wheelchair into a bush at the edge of the parking lot.

“Pissed.”

“No, first you feel jealousy. Then you add to it either anger, or sadness, or both, and sometimes neither, sometimes you just stand there gawking like a dumbass not sure what to do.”

“That makes no sense,” Heaton said pulling a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He rarely if ever smoked, but he occasionally lit one up just to remind himself why he didn’t want to be a smoker. Lately he had been reminding himself a lot.

“Okay, take the chick factor out of it.” Daniel scrunched his nose at the first puff Heaton let out after the initial light. It was Heaton’s favorite part. It was Daniel’s least favorite part because he usually blew it right in his face. Yet another passive aggressive move. “Let’s say you want a car. A nice sporty number, but you can’t afford it. You see some twenty-something twat driving one just like it, that his daddy bought him. What do you do?”

Heaton nodded. “A yell profanities at him to make me feel better.”

“Ah-haaa, you see?”

“You might be onto something, but I still think you’re talking out of your ass.”

Daniel shrugged not necessarily disagreeing with him. He heard footsteps behind them and turned to see Nevia slowly making her way over to the van. She was a self-confessed un-athlete. She hated running and only did it in emergencies. He couldn’t blame her, the stairwell was enough exercise to last him a week.

The barrel of her sniper rifle rested gently on her shoulder. Her on-the-job fashion put her in another pair of khaki slacks, an off the shoulder white cotton top, and a black ammo vest that when button all the way up emphasized her breasts. Sadly, the vest was unbuttoned; no doubt she needed to un-corset her ladies to get the best control on her aim.

“That is so freaking hot.” He couldn’t help but say it out loud in regards to the casual gun toting vision coming his way.

“Yeah, she is quite a package,” Heaton agreed. “You know I was thinking of shagging her.”

“What?” Daniel turned his attention back on Heaton. “You and her?” Daniel figured he was just kidding, but the straight face that was eyeing Nevia’s approach as fondly as he had just been, told him otherwise.

“Yeah, what do you think? Think it’ll screw up the mojo.”

“No.” Daniel had meant to say “no” to the first question, but the interpretation was already established. He couldn’t backpedal without making himself sound…jealous.

“Good, unless you had eyes on her.”

Eyes, hands, mouth, and then some. “Nah, I just don’t know if she would go for you.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing man, she’s just a pretty straight shooter, you know. Plus she’s pretty young. You’re in your thirties.”

“Dude, you shag women her age all the time and you’re older than me.”

Heaton had a point. Daniel was no one to give advice on relationships, and he certainly wasn’t one to judge him about the age difference between him and Nevia. Especially when he was skirting his forties, and had already slept with her twice.

“Yeah, I guess I have no room to judge,” Daniel conceded trying not to let himself get territorial over a woman. He usually didn’t remember the women he slept with, let alone have issue with sharing them with Heaton. In fact, Heaton had pointed out quite a few women for Daniel to follow him on.

“So, I take it you guys didn’t want to take that vampire alive?” Nevia asked as she arrived. Her hair at her forehead was pushed up giving her the slight spike that changed her professional FBI agent façade into a rebellious woman who defied the standard for long hair. He wanted her to wear it like that all the time, but the spike was usually incidental.

“We were distracted,” Heaton said.

“You were arguing.” Nevia threw the rifle into the back of the van without regard to where it bounced. She was usually careful with her weapons, for safety reasons, but also because she loved them—oh so much. She must have been mad. “Again,” she stated as she looked over Heaton.

“Sorry,” he shrugged. The sarcasm in the apology was far from hidden. Nevia eyed his cigarette like she wanted to say something about the filthy habit, but she didn’t. She turned and faced Daniel with as much authority as a five-foot woman could muster against a six-foot man. As it turned out, a lot when the five-foot woman pulls a glock from behind her back.

“What is going on with you two?” She popped the clip and stuffed it in her back pocket. She released the loaded shell, kissed it, and stuffed it in her bra. He wasn’t sure why she had placed it there, but he was more than happy to watch her do it. “I keep hearing stories of your single-minded triumphs, but all I see is two bickering children.”

Daniel wanted to have the answer to that question as well, but he knew simply asking the question in the middle of a parking lot wasn’t going to get the answers he wanted. He knew that whatever was bugging Heaton had started when they had gone to free Cori for Ethan three months ago, and had slowly escalated to this passive aggressive, sarcastic, asinine behavior.

“Is it me?” Nevia looked back at Heaton, but he just puffed on his cigarette all the more. Leaning against the van billowing smoke, he was more the thug than before. “Am I coming between you? Am I screwing up the dynamic duo?”

She looked back at Daniel for the answer, but he had none. She had to know, that he didn’t have the answer. She couldn’t have been blind to Heaton’s behavior, not to mention she must have been able to smell whatever it was that was bugging him.

Daniel looked on the wafting haze with new eyes. Heaton wasn’t just taking back an old habit. He was protecting himself from Nevia’s nose. She had mentioned once, that being in a crowded smoky room, was like wearing blinders. It was why she enjoyed hanging out at the pub with them so much. Whatever Heaton was feeling he didn’t want her to know about it. Even though she was looking at Daniel for the answer, he knew the question was really directed at Heaton.

“Are we going to dump this body, or what?” Heaton interjected, completely ignoring her query. “Daniel wants to get to the pub.” He crushed out his cigarette on the van and slammed the doors shut.

“Here, here,” Daniel responded half-heartedly and shrugged at Nevia before heading to the passenger seat. Nevia got in the back, and Heaton climbed in to drive them to their first stop.

3

There wasn’t much to do with vampire bodies. They didn’t really try to kill them, but they were such a pain in the ass sometimes that they couldn’t avoid it. They prided themselves on taking live prisoners, but vampires came in many varieties.

The standard photophobes, that drank blood, were more like an infestation of humanoid ticks. They bred like rabbits, and drank blood from anything or anyone. Livestock was generally their preferred fodder, but they did occasionally venture into the cities. Hospitals were prime targets because they could drink from blood bags, coma patients, and the recently dead.

It was general policy to take them alive and relocate them. If they were one of the brave that dared to go after live conscious human blood, they were sent to Danato. The policy, however, left leeway in dealing with an over population of the buggers. When relocation was not an option, due to stressed food supplies, hunters are advised to…hunt.

Bodies were easily disposed of, since the creatures’ tissues decomposed at an exponential rate, in sunlight. A day in the sun and a vampire corpse looked more like a road kill animal, than anything supernatural.

The first stop therefore was essentially just a busy road that they could dump the body on the side of. Ditches were always a good bet. If the sun didn’t make them disappear fast enough the bugs would. Vampire corpses were like candy to ants and earthworms. They were also good fertilizer, a product idea that had yet to find an entrepreneur.

The second stop, and last stop, was their usual pub. It wasn’t a cool dance club, and it barely fit more than fifty people, but it was within walking distance to all three of their flats, so they could pretty much drink themselves stupid and not risk lives on the roadways. The sidewalks did have a tendency to slam into them on the way home, but that was usually just caused by a lack of determination.

Daniel stepped into the bar and paused to greet it with open arms. “Home at last.” Heaton bumped past his arms, not the least bit amused by his display.

“Let’s get a table,” he said on passing.

Daniel lowered his arms and stared after him. He really wanted to deck him for that. Bad mood or not, the bar should have been off limits to outside stresses. He could feel Nevia looking at him, and he looked at her.

The thin smile that she usually offered him was gone. She wanted to know what was going on with Heaton, and the fact that she couldn’t smell him through his skanky habit was probably driving her nuts. He wanted to talk to her about it, but there were two things working against him. One, no matter what, Heaton was his friend and he didn’t want to gossip about him behind his back. And two, he was trying to keep his distance from her.

After two hot incidents at the prison, Nevia had put the damper on any further requests for sex, and there had been many. It took him a while to realize that him begging her for sex was not just pushing her away, but turning her off. The more he wanted her, the less she wanted him. In the end, he just had to avoid being alone with her, because try as he might, he couldn’t stop making advances.

“Table for three.” He shrugged and prompted her to lead. He wasn’t usually a gentleman, so it was no surprise that she narrowed her eyes at him before moving through to follow Heaton.

Heaton had chosen a table in the midst of everyone. The remaining empty glasses on the table would sit there for hours, before the barmaid would come get them; and even then, it would only be because they were running low on clean ones. As he sat down, he saw Nevia reach for the glasses. She would pick them up and take them to the bar, and fetch them all fresh pints. He grabbed her wrists and shook his head. “Don’t do that, Nevia.”

“Jordan,” Heaton hollered over the din and bad selection on the juke box before Nevia could say it. He rolled his eyes and threw his head back. “She’s only told you three billion times.”

“You know I’m really in the mood for a dark beer, if you wouldn’t mind, Jordan.” He gave her a certain look that he hoped implied, “please take your time.” For good measure he wiggled his finger along the underside of her arm where he was still holding her wrist. She glanced at Heaton before pulling her hands from the glasses and heading up to the bar. “What’s up man?” Daniel dared to let honesty take a turn at chiseling away Heaton’s bitterness.

“Nothing,” he said avoiding his eyes.

Daniel leaned on the table and regretted not letting Nevia take the glasses. He didn’t like her cleaning up after people. She was better than that. She was better than a beer fetcher too, but it was her way of hazing herself into their little group. After the last three months, she was more a part of the group than she realized. Heaton was dangerously close to losing his position though. Pretty soon they would be colleagues instead of friends, if he kept his crap up.

“Did I do something to piss you off?” Daniel asked. Heaton looked at him like he should have already known the answer to that, so he wasn’t going to tell him. “Ever since the transmorph incident when we saved Cori, you’ve been…a dick.” Daniel didn’t want to add insult, but the description was apt.

“You mean when you and Jordan saved Cori.”

“Whatever.” Daniel leaned back again. “Is this not working? Nevia, you, me, do you want to go back to the dynamic duo.”

Heaton scoffed. “You know I don’t have to stay in this job.”

“What?”

Heaton leaned forward to voice his thought more clearly without hollering. “I can transfer out any time I want. This isn’t a prison sentence for me, like it is for you.”

“Is that what you want?”

“I’ve been thinking about it.” Daniel couldn’t help but feel the knife in his back. It was surprising how painful it was. Heaton was right, he was under no obligation to stay with him. He had essentially been assigned to him as a parole officer, but he could be replaced. Daniel just hadn’t thought that he would want to. Four years with someone in a life threatening job, made for an intense bond. The fact that Heaton was saying this to him so casually was more than a slap in the face. It was a wound to his heart.