Hunted By The Others (12 page)

On one’s (probably) last day alive, one apparently stood around for almost an hour waiting for a notary to stumble over the clauses in a contract before signing it.

The man was in his mid-forties, balding, lisping, and had glasses thicker than Arnold’s that he used to squint at the fine print. Arnold had driven me to a place not far from Sara’s, a little copy and print shop that had a sign reading
CHEAP NOTARY
! in the window.
Cheap
being the operative word.

The notary finally looked up at me across the counter, lips pursed in disapproval.

“It’s not my place, miss, but are you sure you want to sign this? It’s not too late to back out, you know.”

I fought back the urge to rub at my aching temples. “Yes, I’m sure. Can we get on with it, please?”

Looking even more displeased than before, the guy handed me a pen. I scrawled my signature on the
Human Notice of Willing Consent and Agreement to Binding Contract with Other Citizen
page and shoved the pen and paper in his direction. He picked up the pen and put his own neat, professional signature under mine, dated it, and stamped his seal on the page.

God save me, I’d just signed myself over to Royce.

I had a copy of the contract made and paid the guy. Taking my receipt and the contract with me, I devoutly hoped that Sara was right and Royce wouldn’t bother reading the contract over or examine it for anything but my signature before taking it down to the courthouse for filing. Arnold opened the car door for me once we got to the tiny parking lot, putting a hand on my shoulder before I got in.

“Try not to worry. We’ll figure out a way to get you out of this.”

Irritated, I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and slid into the seat, staring down at the papers clutched in my lap.

“It’s too late for me to get out of it. Once this gets lodged with the court, that’s it. Until one or both of us are dead, Royce can make whatever is left of my life miserable.”

“You can do the same to him, you know.”

Arnold shut the door and went around to the driver’s side. Once he got in and revved up the engine, he looked at me again, his green eyes bright but narrowed in seriousness.

“Vampires, even more than humans, hate when things don’t go the way they plan them to. Especially ones as old as Royce. They pride themselves on their ability to predict what others will do and keep the odds in their favor. It’s something of a survival instinct. As soon as he knows the contract is different, he’ll probably try to weasel out of it. Particularly if you show up with that belt on.”

I frowned at that, brushing my fingers over my temples. “I’m not sure how I can show up in his office pretending to have given in while wearing a bunch of stakes at my hip. It’s just not going to match the image of me meekly handing over a contract.”

The grin that suddenly curved his lips was alarmingly sly. “I know. I thought of that. We’re going shopping.”

Shopping. I was going to be branded a vampire’s toy tonight and he wanted to go shopping?

“It’ll be cold tonight, so you can wear a long jacket to hide the belt. I want to make sure you have the right look—you need to look like you intend to hurt him back if he tries to hurt you. It might make all the difference in whether he stands down or tries attacking you anyway.”

It took a minute to digest that. “You’re saying I need to look the part of the ‘fearless vampire hunter’ so he thinks twice before trying to bite me? But I have to hide it long enough to get close to him so he knows I’m actually a threat?”

He nodded, not taking his eyes off the road. “You got it.”

What exactly did a “fearless vampire hunter” wear? Combat boots? A trench coat? Reflective shades at night?

Thinking about that, as well as what I’d inevitably have to face tonight, I shifted around uncomfortably and stared out, unseeing, at passing buildings.

“Royce has been at least ten steps ahead of me every time I’ve dealt with him so far. Did I tell you I had some White Hats break into my place the other night? They tried to bully me into joining their cause. He knew they had come before I’d told anyone. Now here I am, doing their work, and not even getting a nifty white hat to wear while I’m at it.”

That startled him. He looked at me, horrified, before quickly focusing back on the road. “Don’t for a second even think that the White Hats are on your side. They’ll happily gut you and burn you at the stake for signing those papers, no matter what your intentions really are.”

“I know that. Jeez. I was just being facetious. Though it would be nice to go in with backup, I’m sure as soon as they finished up with Royce, they’d gun for me next.”

“Not necessarily in that order. They hate donors almost as much as they hate the vamps themselves.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“On another note, you should still be on the lookout for the focus while you’re with Royce tonight.”

I grimaced, wishing mightily that I didn’t have to worry about that stupid thing, too. I had enough of my own problems.

“Are you sure I really need to look for this thing? I mean, not that I like the idea of Royce having more power over anyone, but why not just let him keep it?”

Arnold frowned and tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “It’s too dangerous to leave it in a vampire’s hands.”

Oh really? And a power-hungry coven of magi are better guardians of this thing, huh?
What actually made it out of my mouth sounded a lot more civil than what was going through my head.

“I remember what you said to me over the phone yesterday. You said something about the end of the world as we know it. I take it that wasn’t just a lame reference to a song?”

His thin lips briefly quirked in a smirk, his grip on the wheel relaxing a tad. “No. You’re right, I did say that.”

The silence dragged on. I helped him along with an “And?”

“This thing is really, truly dangerous.” Brows lowered in thought, he stole a glance at me, then looked straight ahead again. “You heard about what Veronica’s body looked like when the cops found her, right?”

With a sudden chill of foreboding, I nodded. “Royce used that thing to do that to her?”

“I think so. There isn’t any other logical explanation for it. Like I told you before, that thing lets a vampire have a measure of control over Weres.”

I remembered the description in the newspaper. “So Royce drained her, and used the focus to make a Were savage the body?” Ew.

“Best as I can figure it out, yeah. I don’t have any solid proof, but it fits.”

“Okay, not that it isn’t bad enough, but what does that have to do with the end of the world?”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and I watched the emotions flitting across his face. He had a good poker face, but I could see that he was fighting an internal battle. When he finally spoke, the words were careful and measured, which meant he was likely hiding something else beside whatever he was about to tell me.

“Certain people have more will and finesse in using arcane objects than others. Royce is one of the oldest known vampires, and he’s not averse to stepping out into the public eye. He flaunts it, actually, which you may have already noticed, considering he was one of the first Others to use the legal system and the press to win over human support for things like equal rights for vampires. While what you may have already seen of his work is impressive, he is capable of a lot more than he lets on.

“Since it is in his hands, I’m assuming, based on what’s known of this thing, that he is perfectly capable of using it to start a war. While it might not serve his interests yet, I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to assume he might use it for that purpose sometime soon.”

Arnold paused and drove in silence for a minute. I had the feeling there was something else underlying what he was telling me, something he wasn’t saying and that I was just missing.

He continued. “He’s not happy with The Circle. What intelligence we have on him indicates he’s been gathering up similar artifacts and actually making some deals with the local Were packs. The newshounds weren’t too far off Sunday morning. He can use that thing to turn Other against Other in an all-out war, weakening the power bases of magi and Weres to a point where he can step in and take over.

“If he accumulates too much power, or creates too many other vampires, he can use it to overtake the city and spread outward from there. Remember, he’s been around at least long enough to have seen the rise and fall of Rome, the burning of the Holy Land in the Crusades, and learned firsthand from the triumphs and mistakes of some of the greatest military minds in our history. He knows what he’s doing, and I for one am not interested in seeing vampires overrun the planet.”

I listened to all that with a growing sense of unease, trying to picture the charismatic vampire as some kind of warlord or dictator. It didn’t fit with what I’d seen of Royce so far, but there was no doubt that Arnold was right about his growing power base. However, even if Royce did make it to the top of the Other food chain, there weren’t nearly enough vampires, Weres or magi combined to be able to overthrow any major government or country. What did Royce need with a dictatorship anyway? He already had most of New York under his thumb as it was.

I couldn’t figure it out. I guessed I’d just roll with the punches for now.

“You’re right, I’m not interested in seeing vampires take over everything either,” I said. “I’ll keep an eye out for the focus.”

I was careful to keep my voice from betraying any doubts or hesitation. What I didn’t tell him was that if, by some miracle, an opportunity presented itself to snatch this thing from the vampire, I sure as hell wasn’t going to be handing it over to The Circle.

Arnold took me to a specialty shop near Central Park. From the display in the window, it looked like some kind of tattoo parlor and leather fetish shop. I was leery of going inside, but once Arnold finally persuaded me to follow one of the heavily pierced and tattooed assistants through the “Staff Only” door in the back of the shop, I saw why he had brought me here.

The assistant led the way down a rickety flight of wooden stairs and unlocked a nondescript door marked
STORAGE
, half-hidden by piles of boxes and crates. We then entered the obviously less than legal part of the business, a large, well-lit room with an admittedly impressive array of body armor and weaponry on display in glass cases, hanging from racks and tacked on the walls. I was reasonably certain they didn’t have permits for any of that stuff, particularly the heavy caliber minigun under a lighted display or the neatly stacked boxes of incendiary grenades next to the register cheerily marked
ON SALE—30% OFF WHILE THEY LAST
!

I noted the back wall had a section with a carefully hand-crafted wooden sign over it declaring
HUNTER’S PLAYGROUND: FOR THE EXPERT EXTERMINATOR
. From what I could see, it consisted mostly of wooden stakes with faux-leather grips, fragile-looking vials of holy water probably meant to shatter on contact, crucifixes, crossbow bolts and arrows that ranged in size from a bit thicker and longer than a pencil to as long as my arm, UV flashlights, and some other odds and ends I couldn’t quite make out.

Arnold headed toward a fairly normal-looking guy perched on a stool behind the register, leaning against the counter and reading a paperback. Unlike the assistant who showed us down, this one had no piercings or visible tattoos, and was wearing a plain white button-down and slacks instead of ripped jeans and a T-shirt with some obscure band’s logo on it. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t figure out where I’d seen him before. His features were nondescript, neither handsome nor ugly, and he didn’t seem to recognize me either once he looked up. I dismissed the nagging sense of familiarity as nothing more than my imagination.

“Arnold,” the guy said, a smile slowly curving his thin lips, “haven’t seen you around here in a long time. How are you, man?”

“Could be better.” The mage smiled back, though it was a grim, cheerless thing. He reached over the counter to shake the guy’s hand, tilting his head toward me. “Jack, this is a friend of mine. She needs some extermination equipment.”

Jack came out from behind the counter, leaving the paperback behind and extending a hand in greeting. When we shook, I had to make an effort not to withdraw immediately, as his hands were dry and calloused, sandpaper rough. His gaze was as empty as his smile, but he led the way without comment over to the portion of the wall I’d been admiring from afar. I was shocked-but-not to see there was also a decent selection of cutlery on display in a glass case below the more mundane stakes and holy waters.

“We need some body armor and some decent cover-up. What do you have in her size?”

Jack looked me up and down, his gaze and expression reminding me of someone looking over fruit in the grocery store for bad spots. It wasn’t pleasant being under his scrutiny, but I stood there and took it and inwardly vowed to get back at Arnold for putting me in this position.

“Well, we don’t have much on short notice. I might be able to trim something down, but I need to know what kind of weapons she’ll be using so I can work with it.”

“Stakes,” I said sourly, figuring I could do some of this myself.

“What else?”

I must have looked blank, because he turned to Arnold after a couple of seconds and raised a brow, his expression hinting that I’d said something rude or stupid.

Arnold shrugged and turned to me. “What weapons do you know how to use? Guns? Knives?”

Irritated, I gestured at the rows of guns on the walls. “Do I look like the kind of girl who carries hardware like that in her purse? I don’t use this stuff, Arnold. The most I’ve ever done was pop a few shots in a shooting range with my dad when I was a teenager.”

Jack grinned at that, his expression finally betraying some amusement. “A novice? Interesting choice of hunter, Arnold.”

We both shot him a look that had him holding up his hands and backing down, still amused despite our glares.

“Take a look around and see what catches your eye. I’m going to see what we have in the back in the way of body armor.”

Once he stepped away, disappearing through a curtained alcove, I put my hands on my hips and turned to look at Arnold. “This was not what I thought you had in mind when you said we were going shopping.”

His look was all too calm, even bland. “Where did you think we were going to go? The mall?”

“I don’t know. I thought whatever it was would at least be street legal.”

He shrugged, spreading his hands in a helpless gesture. “Not much help for it, I’m afraid. There isn’t enough time or any kind of easy way for me to take anything else from the vaults. It’s either this or go somewhere that will broadcast your presence to every side that’s looking for you right now, including any tail Royce put on you. Or go in with no protection at all.”

I muttered darkly at the injustice, but chose to keep most of my thoughts to myself. I picked up a set of bolts, read the hand-lettered label that proclaimed
GUARANTEED TO EXPLODE ON CONTACT
! and quickly put them back where I found them. Sidling a little down the aisle to the handguns on display, along with a series of different caliber silver bullets, I tried to figure out exactly what kind of hardware I wanted to carry around with me. I’d already decided on a handgun, since I had no intention of getting close enough to use a sword, stakes, or daggers, nor the know-how to use those or a bow or crossbow. A rifle or shotgun would be too big and unwieldy, and there was no way I was even going to think about carrying grenades in my pockets.

After some internal debate, I pointed out a matching pair of silver pistols with tiny, built-in laser sights and black grips that appeared to be small enough to fit my hands comfortably. Probably expensive as anything, but I figured I could deduct it as a business expense. Arnold nodded his approval, and while we waited for Jack to come back out, I started poking around the UV flashlights.

Jack came out a few minutes later with some folded-up material in his arms, setting it on the counter of the gun case. “Decide what you want?”

I pointed out the guns and he unlocked and opened up the case, placing the twin pistols in my hands. They were a bit heavier than they looked, but the grips were comfortable and the laser sights were a huge plus. If I had to hit a moving target, I’d probably miss by a mile since I was never much of a shot to begin with. However, I was fairly confident these looked badass enough to make even the hungriest Other think about finding its meal elsewhere.

“I’ll take them,” I told Jack, “and some clips with speedloaders if you’ve got them.”

He nodded assent, but held up a hand in caution. “Don’t fire these anyplace where cops might be able to see you do it. The bore was altered so the bullets won’t be traceable, but if you don’t have a permit and since there’s no serial numbers on these, you won’t be able to sweet-talk your way out of jail if you’re caught with them. Or out of the hands of their maker if he finds out the cops got their hands on some of his work.”

Oh, that was comforting. With more than a little trepidation, I nodded agreement before asking, “What did you find in the back?”

His lips quirked in a secretive smile, like he knew something I didn’t. He probably did. Carefully unfolding and laying out the black clothing he’d pulled out, I frowned on noting that they just seemed like a normal pair of black tights and a turtleneck save that the material was a bit thicker than usual.

“Ever see one of those nature shows where some divers go swimming with sharks?” His crystalline blue eyes betrayed nothing.

“Sure, maybe once or twice.” I eyed the clothing speculatively.

He placed his hand over the shirt, showing pearly white teeth in something approaching a predatory grin. I had an urge to step back, but fought it down and listened.

“Then I’m sure you’ve seen that they wear a different type of diving suit, one that’s meant to keep the sharks from taking a bite out of them. Same principle with this, only a tighter weave and different material. It’s a bit more flexible, too. Feel it, tug at it, you’ll see what I mean.”

Miniature chainmail? I reached out to finger the sleeve of the sweater-looking part, getting the feel of it. It was pretty thick, and I could feel another layer of something hard but somewhat flexible underneath the slick, silk-like black cloth. I did as he suggested, taking part of the sleeve in each hand and tugging at it to see how much it gave. It barely stretched, and I kept pulling as hard as I could until I was reasonably reassured that he was right—the material wouldn’t tear easily. Feeling a little uneasy still, I gestured at the case of knives and swords a little farther down.

“What about something sharp? Will it stop those?”

He shook his head. “Depends. This isn’t meant to stop bullets or knives, it’s meant to slow down or stop an Other from being able to claw at or bite the protected areas. If they slash at you with claws or a knife, it should protect you. With the strength of an Other behind a knife stab? Probably won’t save you. They won’t be able to bite through, though, and I believe that’s what you were most worried about, yes?”

Considering the vamp and Were viruses were usually transmitted through bites, yes, it was. I nodded, trying not to feel sick with worry and not succeeding well at all. He gathered up the clothing and guns, taking everything over to the register to ring it up. I reached for my purse, cringing internally at how much this would probably cost me. Arnold put a staying hand on my arm and stepped forward with a thick bundle of cash, handing Jack a few bills off the top. I glanced at him in surprise, and he answered me with a sly grin.

“Call it a bonus. The Circle owes you for this.”

Jack placed the cash in the register and handed a handwritten receipt over to Arnold. He placed the guns in small wooden cases lined with red cloth, along with a clip for each. Then he threw that, more ammo, and a shoulder holster for an easy cross-draw along with a little tissue paper on top into a plain white paper bag on top of the neatly refolded clothes, handing it over to me. Once I took the handles, he walked us over to the door leading back to the storage area. He gave me a grim half-smile and spoke a few cryptic words before shutting and bolting the door behind us.

“Pleasure doing business with you. Glad to see you made the right choice.”

I glanced at Arnold as we started up the rickety stairs. “Any idea what that was about?”

He shrugged in an uninterested way. “No. Maybe he just meant you picked a good gun or something.”

We left and headed for his car. While he unlocked the doors, I peered into the bag, poking through the boxes to take a closer look at the clothes beneath, hoping they would fit. Then I slid into the leather seat and fiddled with the radio. Since the day was fairly warm, he put the top down, then slapped my hand away from the knobs and tuned to a preset station playing some kind of techno rock.

“Let’s hit the mall, get you a jacket, then grab some food and head on back to Sara’s.”

He eased the car into traffic. I tilted my head back against the headrest, closing my eyes and just trying to enjoy the fact that I was in a convertible with a reasonably good-looking guy who’d just paid for a bunch of stuff that would probably help save my life.

All I could think about was that, in less than eight hours, I would have to face Royce and put those signed, notarized papers in his hands.