“Back so soon?” The night clerk glanced up from her post behind the reception desk, first at me, and then out the window. “It gets pretty cold out there at night, even this late into the spring. You’ll get used to it.” She had seen me leave minutes earlier.
“Yeah.” I smiled sheepishly. “Thought I was ready for a night on the town, but…I decided I’d rather stay in and watch a movie.”
She laughed. “I won’t tell anyone.”
It didn’t hit me until I stood in my room three minutes later with the remote control in my hand that this jackass who called himself Orion had managed to make me into a joke without even trying. Instantly, my feelings shifted from muddled confusion to anger and resentment, as if a fog had lifted from my brain. If there was ever a time I realized how much I still had to learn, it was right in that moment.
“Shit,” I whispered. The reality of the situation was that he had chased me back into the corner without taking a single step forward. And he probably knew it, too. Sighing in frustration, I raked both hands through my hair, letting it fall angrily down my back.
It was safe to assume that Orion hadn’t been kidding about watching me—if he really was the regional clanmaster, he’d have eyes in a lot of places. And that meant he could pop up wherever he wanted, unannounced. I was determined not to be caught off guard again.
Next time, I vowed, he won’t be so lucky.
Lian and I had mapped out more scenes of as many murders as she had information on, and in the days following my first encounter with Orion, I hit the pavement hard.
Most of the sites we had pinpointed, especially the older warehouses and rundown houses, were long since cleaned up or degraded, but the air still hummed with the residual energy of violence. Sometimes it was difficult to find a quiet moment away from the eyes of the city to commune with the spot, but patience and perseverance proved to be my best friends. I spent the next few days walking around in phantom worlds of blood and death, terror lingering like a memory in the fresh mountain air.
The work was haunting and draining in equal measure, and it left me chased by nightmares filled with creatures whose faces I couldn’t see. But despite my best efforts, the perpetrators’ identities remained unknown to me for days. If I saw any of them, it was only as silhouettes, vanishing like smoke on the wind. The thing that stuck was the power of their energies. Like Orion’s, but not quite the same. His was unlike anything I had seen or felt before.
It made me certain that something bad was going down in Anchorage.
On my way back to the hotel, a shadow caught my attention from between two homes. A small passage, flanked by tall wooden fences.
When a scream tore free that direction, I sprinted toward the sound without hesitation. Fingering the stake on my belt, I retrieved it, and followed the curve of the passage. A thin layer of snow crunched under my quick steps when I happened upon two vamps cornering a young boy who hugged his school bag, shaking. Terror flooded his huge eyes when he looked my way with a pleading expression of help.
“For hell’s sake,” I started, lifting my stake, twirling it in my hand. “You bloodsuckers are so predictable.”
The darkhaired one swept his gaze up and down my body, his attention stopping on my stake, then threw his head back with laughter. “Come over here, and I’ll show you what a real weapon looks like.”
I rolled my eyes at his cliché line. The second vamp sneered in my direction, nostrils flaring.
Just then the young boy slipped free and darted out of their grasp.
The fiends twisted in his direction, but I called out, “I bet you two can’t take me on.”
Vampires had egos to match their bloodlust, and as predicted, they both turned in my direction, leaving the boy alone.
A deep guttural sound tore from one of their throats, and with the wind growing colder, I didn’t have time to tap dance with these monsters. They came at me.
Inches from their grasp, I threw myself into a low forward roll right between them.
Throwing myself to my feet, I spun around and drove the stake right into one of the fiend’s back, right over the heart. He arched, his knees already buckling as he gurgled his protests.
Except, the second bastard moved faster than I expected. He tackled me and threw us both to the wet, cold ground. Stars danced behind my eyes from the impact, and I struggled to suck in a breath with his weight pressed down on my chest, laying on top of me. We were face to face, and I gagged at his putrid breath.
I shuddered as I stared into his dark eyes where only my death waited.
“Get off me,” I growled, bucking against him, shoving a fist into his chest. I quickly slid my other hand down my side and grabbed my switchblade on the ring from my pocket.
“You chased away my meal,” he snarled.
While I clawed at his face. His hands snatched my wrist, distracted enough as I rapidly slashed my weapon at his head.
He turned his attention to the attack, reacting a split second too slow. My blade jammed right into his eye. He flinched backward and there was a scuffle as I shoved him off me and I rolled to my feet. My heart thundered in my chest because I didn’t have much time. My attack was a distraction, nothing else.
I threw myself to the first culprit, scrambling to pull the stake from his back.
A shadow fell over me.
Frantically, my fingers snatched the weapon, my muscle tightening, heaving out the stake.
I whipped around in a sliver of a second, weapon raised and swinging around toward my attacker.
Silvery eyes shone.
Lips peeled over razor-sharp fangs, his snarl echoed through the night.
No hesitation.
I plunged the stake right into his chest as he rushed into me, throwing me off my feet once more.
My lungs emptied of air, and I gasped as the dead weight slumped over me, trapping me. He gurgled over me, blood dripping into my hair.
Seconds was it all it took for such a fatal blow to a vampire to render them useless.
“Fuck!” With all my strength, I drove my palms into his shoulders, rolling him off me.
He slumped onto his back like a sack.
Up on my feet, I dusted myself of snow and used it to clean the blood out of my hair.
I stared down at the two vampires. That was what I should have done earlier when I crossed paths with Orion, not drooled over him.
I sighed at myself as I collected my stake and took out my phone to call the cops. I would report bodies found in the alley so they were collected before anyone stumbled over them. Dead vampires once staked remain withered husks of themselves, fangs withering away and only their human body remained. Meaning discovering they were vampires was close to impossible. Sure, there would be inconsistencies in the results, but not many humans jumped to the conclusion of vamps in autopsies. So, I did my best to clean up after myself as much as possible at each fight.
I walked away, the cellphone pressed to my ear, and headed back on the street to continue my checks.
The moment I hung up from the police, my phone suddenly buzzed in my hand, and I checked to find it was Lian. She checked in with me every day, to ask about my progress and make sure I wasn’t going totally insane. “How are you?” she asked, barely veiling the concern in her voice. “Find anything useful?”
Inevitably, I sighed and shook my head, even though she couldn’t see me. “Not yet. All I know is, they’re a different breed up here. There’s got to be something in the water.”