Authors: John Urbancik
He heard nothing.
The moment’s pause passed quickly. He stuffed the end of the flashlight in his mouth, kept the gun in hand, and pulled himself up.
The rungs, though showing some rust, were solid.
At the top, he peeked over the edge. He saw the outline of blacked out windows. Nothing else through the dark. He took a deep breath. Then pulled himself up and over the top.
Nick rolled forward, snatching the flashlight and swinging its beam first ahead of him and then to the right.
One of the beasts launched at him, misjudging Nick’s leap and pouncing on his legs.
Nick shot a hole in its ugly white head. It fell sideways, almost over the edge. Nick pounded a stake into its chest before it could react. A fountain of blood, black in the dark, spewed forth.
Nick turned from the first beast to check for others.
Two more. He shot one. The other ducked and rushed forward. Didn’t help, since Nick was still on his knees. Two shots, one to each knee. Silver bullets might not kill them, but the beasts couldn’t walk on broken legs.
He staked the second. The creature spit up a sticky black phlegm. Eyes bulged.
Nick put a stake through the back of the third.
A quick check revealed no more.
He waited a moment, rose, and swept the flashlight beam from end to end, across the ceiling, through the rafters, along the edge. He watched the windows. Listened.
Heard only the whimpering of three wounded beasts. Mindless. Bone white skin. Not a hair on their bodies. Faces distorted. Vicious teeth.
In Nick’s vast experience, this was the most common vampire.
He withdrew the knife from his boot and proceeded to cut off their heads
.
6.
.
Witching Hour.
Jack Harlow opened his eyes.
The bed was comfortable enough. The ghost sitting at the end of it hadn’t made a sound; she still looked away, either ashamed or coy.
The sleep had done him good. Jack felt rested, alert, anxious to get out into the night. He sat up. “You’re still here?” he asked the ghost.
“You’re warm,” she said.
He showered. Ghosts, when they did appear, never concerned him; what could they see of him they hadn’t seen before? With very few exceptions, spirits had little impact on the physical world. They affected the senses, primarily vision, sometimes touch (a chill in the air, a breeze, rarely more substantial than that).
He kept the water cold and the shower brief, then toweled dry. The ghost never moved from the bed; she neither wavered nor vanished. Nor did she attempt to hide her face when he climbed off the bed.
She’d been a pretty girl, a teenager when she died. Blonde curls, eyes clenched shut. She wore a simple bathrobe, relatively modern; she hadn’t been dead for centuries or even decades. Maybe only weeks.
“You’re going out,” the ghost said.
Jack nodded, then remembered she couldn’t see that. “Yep.”
“It’s awfully late, isn’t it?”
He glanced at the clock. “
.”
“Awfully late.”
“Not by my standards,” Jack said. Then, fresh cash in his wallet from a hard day’s work, he went out.
By 1, Jack found a club around the corner from last night’s bar, on Court Street, The Precipice, by the red letters on the blackened window facing the street.
The lights were low. Always were. Smoke filled the air, poorly circulated, shrouding the dance floor in a haze. The walls had been painted black, lined with irregularly shaped mirrors. Booths along one wall. The dancers were in the back, under a chandelier of prisms; rainbows danced across the room.
The bar was toward the front, U-shaped, attached to one wall and reaching half way toward the dance floor. Jack went straight to the bartender and bought a beer.
He never danced. Rarely mingled. But the atmosphere drew him like a moth to light. As alive as he’d felt after a good four-hour nap, it was the throbbing bass line that powered his heart. Kept the blood moving. Kept him sane. Compulsion drove him to seek out the underground, to walk so near to the darkness that he felt its breath—but never its caress. He believed himself immune to the things he saw.
Why should tonight be an exception?
Jack finished the beer too quickly. The bartender happily brought him another.
7.
Change is sudden.
Sometimes the build-up can stretch for decades or centuries. But one moment, it happens; one chapter closes, another begins. But change needs no lead-in. It comes and goes at will, perhaps randomly, perhaps by the design of some higher power. Perhaps fate.
There are few other constants in the world.
Like when a caterpillar emerges from its cocoon, a butterfly now, its metamorphosis complete—skin shed, legs lost, wings grown—change is irrevocable.
8.
While Liz danced, Lisa Sparrow checked herself in the mirror. The bathroom was small; she’d waited most of ten minutes to get into a stall. When she finally got to the sink, it only ran cold. She rinsed her hands, touched up her lipstick, and generally liked what she saw.
Of the music, only the thunderous beat made it to the bathrooms. They weren’t in the bar itself, but through a back door into a hallway shared with another club and a few shops.
She told Liz she’d been here before.
When asked if that was a good thing, Lisa had no real answer. Nothing had happened, good or bad; she’d gone out dancing, apparently with someone other than Liz, and went home. Slept. Woke the next morning to her regular routines. Exercise, shower, work, dinner, and either another night out or reading at home.
If anything, the crowd felt darker this time. Black leather, silk, lace, dye. It wasn’t quite a gothic crowd, but closer than she’d remembered. The music was all 80s, mostly danceable, though once or twice the deejay inadvertently cleared the floor.
Lisa slipped out of the bathroom, surrendering her tiny spot at the mirror to someone else.
The hall, oddly enough, was nearly empty; no one lingered outside the clubs. The bouncer checked her wristband and let her back in. But something in The Precipice had changed.
She recognized this as surely as she knew the difference between night and day. To her ears, the music was muted, the lights dimmed. Eyes were on her. From every shadow, every booth, every corner, someone watched, studied, evaluated her.
The paranoia came suddenly, without warning—and without precedent.
There, on the dance floor, she saw Liz. Her friend danced with eyes closed. Swaying alone . . . but in slow motion, as if through honey, as if every graceful movement met resistance.
Reflections—off the prism chandelier, off beer bottles, off eyeglasses—blinded Lisa. Her heart raced to catch the frenetic music.
She almost stumbled.
And then she saw him.
Clichés raced through her head: tall, dark, handsome. Steady, penetrating mocha eyes. He exuded warmth, confidence, unpretentiousness. He’d been scanning the dance floor—no, the whole bar—but when his eyes found Lisa, they stopped dead.
Her stomach dropped. Palms sweat. She bit the corner of her lower lip, something she never did.
He looked hard, rough around the edges, but not in an overbearingly masculine way. She sensed softness, almost felt it. He was muscular, but not because of a gym—he’d earned his honestly.
Lisa’s vision funneled to this stranger. Others no longer mattered. She barely heard the music. Didn’t feel her feet on the floor. She’d dreamt of him, not of him, not exactly, but of someone who looked and smelled and seemed just like him, and she’d dreamt of him often enough to be concerned, concerned and excited, excited and overwhelmed.
She met his gaze, met it and kept it without faltering, without hesitation, without a second thought.
1.
Jack Harlow stared, a moment
, at the woman in front of him. Short, auburn hair; eyes of jade—or brown, he couldn’t be certain. Sexy black dress that hinted more than it revealed. Fit. Subtly curved.
And absolutely devastating.
He could not tear his gaze away. Whatever other thoughts he’d had . . . they all vanished. Blood paused in his veins. Mouth dried. He lost the ability to speak, couldn’t even put a solid thought together.
There might have been a bar, a street, and a city beyond that, country, continent, and world, but not then. That moment, the galaxy condensed to the five-foot, six-inch beauty before him.
He opened his mouth, found no words, closed it again.
She was
perfect
.
There’d been girls in the past, short relationships that were entirely physical. But he’d never been stricken before. Never felt protective. Jealous. Possessive, even.
They stared at each other for an impossibly long time. Ages ended. Cities and mountains crumbled to dust. The universe imploded to a single atom and exploded again. Time warped, catching Jack in slow motion. Caught, yet unconcerned with escape. Trapped—spellbound—in a moment of pure, unadulterated bliss.
She broke free of the spell well enough to manage a single word. “Hi.”
He smiled. Jack Harlow rarely smiled. “Hi,” he said.
“I’m Lisa.”
“Jack.”
“Hello, Jack.” She smiled now, too, brilliantly and gorgeously. She lifted her arm slowly, to shake hands, to introduce each other the way thousands of strangers did every day and night.
A sense of nervous awe washed over him. Jack Harlow had never been nervous, and never awestruck, in all the length of his memory.
Eyes still locked, he accepted her hand. It was warm—no, hot to his touch. Soft but solid. And, in his hand, right where it belonged. She glanced down at their grip. Neither let go. The cold air on where they’d touched would be unbearable.
When she looked up again, still smiling, not releasing his grip, Jack’s breath caught in his throat. Her eyes flashed from brown to green again with the movement.
2.
Nick Hunter had nailed three of the bastards tonight. But half an hour past
, he hadn’t found any others. It was entirely possible there had only been the three, that they’d resided here long enough to leave their stench everywhere, but Nick doubted it.
The warehouse district had nothing else.
He sat on the edge of the roof, legs dangling, looking out over
Orlando
. Downtown stretched a few blocks east and south; the surrounding streets were more suburban in nature. He liked it. Cozy. Quiet.
A good place to vacation, perhaps take a week off, see what real people were like.
He liked to dream.
He sometimes wondered if he hunted the wrong places. What if trolling the East Coast of the
United States
left them free to do what they liked in
China
and
France
? Did Italian vampires have free reign over
Milan
? He’d never been west of the
Mississippi
. Never any need. He killed as many beasts as he could find and never ran out.
Granted, some nights he found nothing: an abandoned nest, the grisly remains of victims, even a self-immolated beast. But he always found clues, hints, suggestions.
His was important work.
This was his turf.
This city sprawled in all directions. In Nick’s experience, the creatures tended to gravitate toward urban areas. More meat. Less publicity. Unless the town was small and isolated enough to be completely controlled—he’d heard of that, but never seen it.
He scanned the streets, though from here he could make out no details.
Ultimately, hunger drove him from the warehouse and into downtown. He’d get a slice of pizza or something before continuing his hunt. The bars would begin closing soon, and the creatures would come out to feast.
For now, the streets were quiet. Friday, Saturday, they might get a little more crowded with officers directing traffic at the corners, kids passing out bright flyers for clubs or concerts.
Finding pizza was easy. Cheap and greasy and decent.
Wandering the streets, however, bored him. He detected nothing, saw no telltale signs of activity, smelled none of their awful residue—at least, nothing recent. They’d been here, walking these streets, passing for human while feeding on blood. Everyone seemed normal. No pale faces, no elongated eyeteeth, no misshapen features.
He knew several types; while the ugly beasts he’d slain earlier were common, he would still recognize the ones that had been more fortunate in their transformation. Passable as human, they had an easier time at their own hunt.
It wasn’t until half way till dawn, after the streets had cleared of all but a few stragglers, the clubs had closed and the barkeeps had gone home, that Nick Hunter gave up on downtown and turned his attention to the outlying residential neighborhoods.