Texas Hold 'Em (13 page)

“You’re going to sleep down there? With that thing?” An astonished Jacob turned toward me, still holding the refrigerator door. Clearly he thought I had completely lost my mind.

Jacob caught the look his word choice elicited from Lacey, who was busy pushing in front of him to rummage inside the icebox. But I was the only one who saw Megan’s involuntary wince.

Jacob stood up straighter. “No, it’s a
thing
all right. I’m not correcting myself.”

“As Lacey never fails to point out, it won’t be the first time, and I’m still breathing. I’ll see you guys later on.” I nodded at everyone, then headed for the ladder.

Megan was already standing at the bottom, positioned so she could catch me if I did fall. It didn’t inspire confidence. Despite her less than flattering precautions, I made it down without drama, though the task was painful and took longer than it should have.

I didn’t know what to expect, but this wasn’t it. The room was larger than I would have guessed, built when wood paneling was all the rage. It had a cot, shelves with supplies, and several weapons hanging on a pegboard. I took a second to admire a Saiga-12 automatic shotgun before resuming my evaluation of the room.

There was a whiteboard as well, and several computers. On the screens were the same camera images that were showing in his office. The room also had a small fridge, a TV, and a heavy metal door that Jacob had indicated led to an escape tunnel.

There was only one cot and it wasn’t large; we had to be practically on top of one another in order to fit, which neither of us particularly objected to.

Megan helped me onto it, then lay down beside me.

“I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Thanks; me, too!”

She smiled, resting a cool hand against my cheek. “Don’t ever take off like that again, okay?”

“I promise.” I leaned forward and kissed her. I had intended it to be more of a peck, but it rapidly grew into something more. Our lips parted and our tongues flirted with each other. Her body pressed up against mine. Despite the pain, I wrapped my free arm around her. Things were heating up, and at her first soft moan I pulled my head back.

She looked at me with a mischievous grin. “You know, we never finished the wine, and Lacey destroyed the fern. That means I still owe you a housewarming gift.”

“Cool. Maybe a cactus next time? I tend to forget to water plants,” I suggested.

“A cactus, huh?” Megan’s hand did some exploration until it found one part of me that was definitely not injured. “I
had
been thinking of giving you something a little more personal.”

I actually briefly considered it, which, taking into account my current state, was a testament to Megan. But ultimately I declined.

“Once I’m better, and more confident it won’t kill me, I fully intend to take you up on that offer.”

She smiled, giving me a lasting kiss before turning around and scooting back up to me so her back pressed against me. I put my arm around her, and in seconds we were both asleep.

Despite Lacey’s magical healing, I still hurt, and as the night progressed, sleep on the crowded cot came in irregular increments. Every so often I would move the wrong way and the resulting pain would jolt me awake. I would readjust, getting comfortable, and then Megan, still asleep, would snuggle right back into me like a cat seeking warmth.

I eventually got up at about two o’clock in the afternoon, careful not to wake Megan, who continued to sleep soundly.

Even though my leg was noticeably better than the previous evening, it still took twice as long as it should have for me to ascend the ladder. Considering I could walk at all, I shouldn’t have been complaining. Finally making it to the top of the ladder, I popped open the trapdoor and was greeted by an overexcited voice that I didn’t recognize.

“Door’s up! Is that the vamp?”

The source of the voice was a high-school-aged kid sitting at the kitchen table in front of a laptop. He got up and made a beeline toward me, his expression skeptical. I almost fell back down into the safe room as I was assaulted by his enthusiasm.

“Nah, settle down, boy; that’s just Chance. The vamp is still down there. Looks like she didn’t eat him after all,” said Jacob, showing genuine surprise that I hadn’t become a midnight snack.

Bryan opened his mouth to let loose with a smart-ass remark. “No, but I bet he ate—ow!” Lacey’s elbow stopped him mid-sentence.

“Let me guess: you’re the nephew, the one that set up all the computer equipment,” I said, shutting the trapdoor behind me.

“Kevin. Pleased to meet you.” We shook hands. His grip was strong despite his bookish physique. He was tall and lanky, but unlike myself, I guessed he felt more comfortable with a keyboard than a ball.

I surveyed the room and saw that everyone else was awake and present. Bryan and Lacey sat squished together on the chair watching a daytime talk show, and Jacob was doing dishes.

Lacey must have persuaded him to cover the windows. Blankets hung over them as a precaution in case Megan woke up before nightfall, which was a given. She was almost always up by mid-afternoon.

“When Uncle Jake said he had a vampire here I thought he was lying.” Kevin’s tone and expression implied he still did.

“I’m not lying, Kevin, and you should go home. I told you it’s not safe here. That thing might be up any minute. We can work on scanning in the rest of the documents tomorrow.”

“And miss the vamp? No way.”

It was obvious this argument had been going on a while. Jacob was past exasperation when he shut off the tap and walked to the fridge to get himself a beer. He unscrewed the cap, then lobbed a shot that bounced off the rim of a plastic trash can and rolled under a chair.

He let out a long sigh as he sat down at the kitchen table.

“So, Kevin knows about the things that go bump in the night?” I asked Jacob.

“Oh, he knows all about ‘em. Doesn’t believe a lick of it, of course. Thinks I’m making it all up.”

“I believe what I see, and so far…” Kevin shrugged.

“Count yourself lucky,” I told him. “Your uncle’s right—it’s better not to involve yourself in all of this if you can avoid it. It’s dangerous, and I can tell you from personal experience that even part-time work at Game Shack has better compensation.”

“So why do you do it?” he asked me.

“I’m getting out. The only reason I got involved in the first place was because something happened to my girlfriend.”

“Uncle Jake said a vampire whacked her.”

I nodded. “And then he killed a lot of my friends and burned down my mom’s house. Like I said, it’s better to leave them alone.”

“So who is this bad boy that did all the damage? I take it it’s not the one down in Uncle Jake’s hidey hole?” Kevin asked.

“No, that’s Megan. The one responsible for the death of Kristi, and everyone else, is named Christian. That’s all I know about him. If you want more, you’ll have to ask your uncle. He’s the one with the guy’s history.”

Kevin looked at his uncle expectantly. Jacob closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling for a long moment. Then he took one long swig from his bottle, folded his hands in his lap, and began to talk.

“All right. I’ll tell you what I know. Best to clear the air and get it all out there; that way you know who you’re dealing with and why.

“It was the late eighties. The housing market here had crashed, the savings and loans were going under, and we were on a roll. My team and I had been killing monsters for going on fifteen years.

“We started with vampires, then branched out a bit. Got ourselves some werewolves, a witch or two… even a troll, if you can believe it. Man, let me tell you, trolls are tough. But don’t underestimate the rest of the fae-folk either. They might not be as brutally strong as trolls, but they make up for it in cunning, and some of them have right powerful magic. We went after a few, but never could catch one.

“My point is, we were hunters. Good ones. Or so we thought. Figured we’d had the state pretty much cleaned up, or at least the part we’d lived in. Of course, I know now that wasn’t true. Most of what we ran across were the ones living on the fringes of their society. Heck, back then we didn’t even realize they had a society, let alone a fringe that clung to it.” He killed the rest of his beer and continued.

“Anyway, it turns out we’d been going after the loners. The cast-offs, the ones that even the monsters consider criminals. A lot of these weren’t too smart. They didn’t have the safety net the others do, and were prone to leaving trails.

“I got good at sifting through the details in crime reports, news articles, rumors on the street, that type of stuff. Knowing what I knew about what existed, it was easy for me to pick out the anomalies.

“You see, I was looking at the information in a whole different light. What others attributed to a vicious animal attack, I figured might be werewolves. When some prostitute or gang-banger was found with a slashed throat, I marked it as a possible vampire attack. Plus, we had made a name for ourselves and were getting tips. Folks who encountered things they couldn’t explain found us, and we helped them out.

“That’s when I started to notice the conspiracies. When I guessed there might be a society. Some sort of vampire elite controlling things. Once you begin compiling all of the information, take a step back, and look at the big picture, it all becomes clear. You see the connections. You start to realize who controls what and—”

I cleared my throat. Jacob’s government conspiracies were bad enough; I didn’t think any of us was in the mood for an hour-long dissertation on vampire plots.

“Burying your head in the sand and pretending it doesn’t exist won’t make them go away. It’s what they want you to do,” said Jacob.

“Make what go away?” asked Lacey, before I could stop her. It took a full thirty minutes more to reel Jacob in from the conspiracy theories and back onto what he knew about Christian. At least I was sure Lacey wouldn’t be making that mistake again.

Jacob went up and got another beer to lubricate his well-worn throat before settling back down to his story.

“So mostly it was my hard work that found the things. It’s all about research and patience, though I admit that the occasional tips we got helped. Word travels. We’d help a guy who would tell someone who would pass it along to someone else, and so forth. Come to think of it, in those last years, we got a lot of tips. We got to be well known in the community.

“Well, as it turns out, we stumbled upon Christian through one of those tips; otherwise, I doubt we ever would have found him. He was smart. Unlike the others we had hunted, this guy was hiding in plain sight. He operated in human society. He had a house; he was connected to the movers and shakers in town. The human ones. We never would have suspected that he was one of the vampire elite, the master vampire of Texas.” He looked straight at me, deadly serious.

“But one day I got a call. It was a woman. She was out of it—not sure if she was wasted or just slow, but I knew she was scared. Said she had escaped from a house full of monsters. She said they had locked up a lot of girls like her. Kept them imprisoned. They used them for blood, and worse. She managed to escape one day; they couldn’t follow her out into the sunlight. She made it to safety and called me.”

“Who was this woman?” I asked.

“Never found out. We only talked on the phone. In retrospect, the call was a bit fishy. But she said she got my number from a mutual friend, a guy who had provided a tip to me in the past, and as it turns out, the tip was legit—or most of it was, in any case. The vampires were where she said they would be, and they had no idea we were coming. Those captive girls she was talking about were another matter, though; we never did find them.

“So I did what I do—collected intel. Got us some drawings of the house from the planning commission, found out what I could about the grounds. Back in those days we didn’t have Google Earth. I actually had to work for
my
satellite pictures.”

He eyed me. “Do you hear what I’m saying, Chance? We thought a whole mess of girls was trapped in that house being used by vampires for food, pleasure, and worse—and we still didn’t go rushing in like some half-assed fools. We planned first.”

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.”

“So, anyway, we put a
plan
into place. Robert pulled out all of the stops on this one. He was absolutely giddy about finding a real nest. We had always suspected they grouped up like this, and not the ones and twos we had been used to finding.

“The first order of business was getting in and rescuing the captives. After that, we’d take care of the vamps. It was a sunny Sunday afternoon when it all went down. Dallas was kicking Chicago’s ass in the playoffs….

“Time to go,” said Robert.

“Man, you gotta be kidding me.” Fred’s eyes never left the TV screen. It was only the first quarter and Dallas was already up 10-0 on the Chicago Bears in the NFC wildcard game.

“Turn it off. We’re burning daylight, fellas. You know the plan. Paul’s already en route with the tanker.” Robert was busy loading weaponry into a large green bag.

“And you sure it’s legit this time?” asked Jeffrey. Despite Robert’s order to shut off the TV, he sat unmoving next to Fred on the couch.

“Yes,” I said. “I’m telling you we got ourselves a nest! At least ten of them have got to be holed up in that place. In one afternoon we’ll be able to bag more vampires than we can in three years.”

“You’re sure it’s a real nest? Not just a couple of bums squatting in an abandoned house? You know, like the last time.” Jeffrey bounced a small Nerf football off my head.

“Do that again and we’re going to have a problem,” I told him.

“Relax, you two; it’s all cool,” said Craig. Craig was perpetually stoned but somehow managed to get it together when the shit hit the fan.

I chucked the football back at Jeffrey, but missed him. The ball landed in a half-full bowl of chips, sending them flying all over the coffee table.

“This is the real deal. The vampires have got themselves a whole compound. Never seen nothing like it; vampires hiding right out in plain sight. I’m telling you, this lady’s tip was golden.”