Siren Nights (Series Part 1) (The Lure) Page 3

  He had bought the old one too. He said Brett and I should work at a diner for “cover,” but Tony, his full name was Antonio de Cazadore, never really said what he did. Sometimes I got the feeling he never had to work for a living.

  He also said I didn’t have to live in a cramped apartment with three other girls, but as long as I could afford to not sleep on someone’s couch, I would.

  Your own couch was the only place you could be safe.

  I stared at the blank screen of the laptop, relieved it was no longer displaying that picture. Jason... a vampire? No way. He hadn’t tried to devour me in an ally or cast any magic at all. And he was walking around in the day.

  Then again...I remembered the long coat, brimmed hat, and gloves. And the day was overcast. Could it be?

  The thought made me sick. So he was another predator after all - a soul-sucking monster who’d think nothing of tearing me apart if it got him some blood.

  “We need a game plan, then,” said Tara. “Brett, where’d you tail him to?”

  “A bookstore on Second street.”

  “Know if he’s a regular?”

  “Not a clue…Just managed to snap a picture when I saw him prowling around. Then he spotted me and looked a little suspicious, so I booked it. You don’t want to make a vamp suspicious, right?” he laughed nervously.

  “Nah, you did right thing,” said Tony. “We’ll take it from here.” He turned to me and my heart sank again. He winked, “Up for a little book shopping?”

  ***

  Chapter 5: The Hunt Begins

  Claire’s face broke into a smile when she saw me. “Hey! Good to see you again! How was the book?”

  “Couldn’t put it down,” I lied with a smile. In truth, there had been little time for reading in the rush of planning that had followed.

  “Back for more, then?”

  “Sure, maybe.”

  Actually, I’m here to kill your brother.

  I examined her closely. She was light-skinned with a tinge of red in her cheeks, but that could be makeup. The morning sun shone through the window, but none of it was actually touching her. Was she a vampire too?

  For some reason, that thought almost bothered me more than Jason’s identity.

  I made a show of browsing before I moved back to the counter. “By the way, is Jason around?”

  “Not for a while, he’s out on a job. He’ll be back tonight, though. Around eight.”

  In my hands I held a book named Duchessa of Dawn, the sequel to the book I bought earlier.

  “Please.” I said.

  “Sure thing. By the way, the mob giving you any trouble?” She blinked innocently.

  I caught her meaning and laughed. “No, he’s been behaving.”

  “Good. Let me know if he gives you any trouble.”

  I frowned. “Sorry?”

  “I’ve got a few connections that’ll make any man ‘reconsider’ harassing you,” she replied. “If you’re a friend of my brother, you’re a friend of mine.”

  I couldn’t answer directly past the sudden lump in my throat, so I only nodded. I wasn’t sure what was more surprising, the fact that she offered to help me over something so trivial or the fact that she called me a friend.

  I was a horrible person, I thought, fighting back tears. Was I really going to kill her brother? If she was a vampire too, was I really going to kill her?

  I turned and fled with my purchase, without even a word of thanks.

  ***

  “How’re we doing?” asked Tara as I hid in an alley, panting.

  “Not great,” I said, moistening my parched lips. “I uh..wasn’t able to set up a date. He’ll be back tonight.”

  “Well, make it up as you go then,” she said, sharpening her nails on knife. “You’re the Siren, just shake your cans or something and he’ll follow you anywhere.”

  I flushed. “I don’t think it works like that...”

  “Oh? Can’t just bend over in that skirt and seduce ‘em like you did with Tony and Brett?” she asked acidly.

  I blinked. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Don’t play dumb. They’ve been drooling over your ‘assets’ ever since you joined,” Tara said.

  I looked down at the floor. Why was that somehow my fault?

  She sighed. “Look, I don’t mind as long as it’s not a distraction to the team. But then you have to use your powers for good and not just evil, okay?”

  “I’m not ‘trying’ to be distracting,” I said, teeth clenched. And I didn’t know how or why my “powers” attracted vampires either. I didn’t turn it “on” or “off.” They just kept attacking me. Tony and Tara killed them and Brett tracked them. I suppose we made a good team, but I felt out of place. It wasn’t a “talent” that let me stand with them as equals.

  “Whatever.” Tara pushed off the wall and started walking down the alley. “Anyway, just don’t forget your purse…Unless you want to die.”

  ***

  Chapter 6: Another Night on the Town

  I waited in the open air of a late-night cafe, sipping an iced latte. I glanced at the clock above the door; it was seven forty-eight. The sun had been down for about an hour and dusky haze lingering in the west was fading away to blackness.

  I saw him on the other side of the street, walking by. I stood up and waved, “Hey, Jason!” I wore a bubbly, excited smile - a practiced smile.

  He saw me and crossed the distance. He moved confidently with a long stride and unhurried pace, stopping and leaning across the table. “Hey yourself. Seems like we’re running into each other a lot nowadays.”

  “I suppose we are,” I said with a small laugh I hoped was flirtatious. “Care to join me?”

  “Why not?” He said with a shrug, “Just got off of work. You?”

  “Likewise,” I lied back. Actually I had woken up with a message on my phone to not bother reporting in today. “And what have you been doing all this time?”

  “Contract work,” he said with a grimace. “Consulting.”

  I hadn’t pegged him for an office worker, but appearances were deceiving. “Sounds well paying, at least.”

  “Yeah, you could say that.” he smiled at me. “My sister’s the real breadwinner, though.”

  That was interesting. “I didn’t think independent bookstores were big moneymakers.”

  “Well, that’s only a part-time job, really. She also sells books she writes herself.”

  “Oh? What kinds of books?”

  Jason shrugged, “Mostly old history stuff, about the Middle Ages and things. We moved here because a fan club sprang up here for one of her series.”

  “Wow, a fan club.” I shook my head. “So she’s famous then?”

  “I wouldn’t say so. Doesn’t take much to have a fan club these days, especially on the Internet.” He held my glance for the briefest of moments then turned away.

  It was then that I realized Jason wasn’t looking at my face at all or even my body. He was always looking at shops across the street or the sign above the cafe. When he did look at me, he would smile slightly, then shift uncomfortably and look down before returning to gaze at the scenery.

  We talked for what seemed like ages and I waited for... anything. But he kept his hands to himself and I regularly checked my phone to make sure I was still thinking clearly. I was.

  He was handsome and kind, but that was it. I felt nothing towards him, no sense of worship or longing. If anything, it simply felt relaxing to be around him. I felt I could say anything to him.

  Jason couldn’t be a vampire, I thought, before I looked at his hands again. He still wore gloves, I saw with a sinking heart.

  I checked my phone and saw it was almost nine. The cafe would be closing in less than an hour and he still made no attempt to get me alone.

  I stretched and watched his reaction. His eyes remained steadily on mine. “I’m getting a little cramped sitting here. Shall we take a walk?”

  “Sure.”

  As we got
up from the table, I pretended to stumble against him.

  “Whoa there,” he said, steadying me, before freezing.

  Heartbeats passed before he let go quickly and turned away. I almost felt insulted. Was my touch that off-putting?

  But he had felt something, I realized as we walked off. Was he avoiding contact with me on purpose?

  I had watched a few movies about vampires, including movies where the vampire was the hero, a good guy. They restrained their bloodlust, hunted other vampires, and protected humanity. But Tony and the others told me they were just a myth, propaganda produced by the vampires themselves.

  What if he were wrong, I thought with a pang of guilt. What if I was leading an innocent man into a trap?

  “Jason...” I began, before he cut me off.

  “Hold that thought,” he whispered, stiffening slightly but continuing to walk at the same pace as before. “Don’t look now, but we’re being watched.”

  I froze. “I said, don’t look,” he said, a little louder.

  I hurried to catch up with him. “Take my hand,” he said. “I’ll try to lose them.”

  I did, tentatively, and the moment our hands touched we took off, down the dark and empty streets.

  As we ran, he raised his other hand and I saw something like smoke fly from it. The streetlights flickered once and dimmed. They still were visible, but the streets were suddenly dark, as if the lights had lost their power to illuminate anything other than themselves.

  I stumbled in the sudden darkness. “Stay close,” he said in response and I felt him steering us between cars I could no longer see.

  “Left coming up,” he said and turned sharply. I felt a breeze pass my face and my knuckles scraped brick briefly. We were running through an alley again.

  Each turn was precise, made without hesitation; the darkness was clearly no obstacle to him. I realized that even if Brett and the others were tracking us via infrared scanners, there was no way for them to follow quickly. Not in this total darkness. Where was he taking me? I thought, scared but unable to let go or stop.

  At last, we stopped, and I nearly fell over, lungs burning. He, however, seemed fine. Vampires didn’t get out of breath, I supposed.

  As I straightened, I saw we had stopped in front of an apartment building. And the streetlamps were back to normal, casting a flat, deathly fluorescent light on the streets before us.

  “Sorry, gotta take a short detour here,” Jason said, letting go of my hand. “I don’t know who was following us and I think I lost them, but I don’t think it’s safe to part just yet.”

  I nodded in relief and followed him through the door and up the stairs.

  He knocked on room two twenty-eight; the sign on the door read “Evans.” “Sis, open up!” Jason barked.

  “All right, all right, I’m coming,” a voice replied, Claire’s. “Keep your shirt on, pretty boy.”

  Claire opened the door. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, arching an eyebrow when she saw me. “Mob again?”

  “I don’t know,” Jason said quietly.

  Catching his serious demeanor, Claire’s smile fell off her face. “Okay then.” She quickly shut the door behind us.

  It was then that I realized that the entire side wall was covered in clocks - cuckoo clocks, novelty clocks, schoolhouse clocks, and even one enormous grandfather clock. Other than that, it seemed a normal enough apartment, with a bookshelf and worn armchair the only pieces of furniture and a few paintings. The largest painting, twice the size of the others was of a sobbing woman wearing a red dress, sitting on the floor, while a man in black stood over her. His face was stern and he appeared to be saying something.

  As we entered, the grandfather clock chimed. I turned to look at it; it read nine twenty-three. That was odd... why was it ringing?

  Claire’s eyes narrowed. “Hold on. I think something’s trying to track us. Sit down, please.” She headed for the hallway. I awkwardly took a seat in the only chair in the living room, while Jason sat down at the two-person dining room table.

  She emerged from the back, holding a pair of long metal rods, bent near the base at a ninety degree angle. “Hold on. This is gonna seem crazy, but bear with me for a moment.”

  I nodded. My mouth was suddenly dry again.

  She stopped in front of Jason and waved the rods over him with no visible reaction. Then, she turned to me.

  As she approached, the rods swiveled in her hand to point at me of their own volition -- or more importantly, at my side. Uh-oh, I thought nervously. Before I could react, Claire crossed to my side and ripped open my purse.

  Brett’s spy cam, in all its hideous electronic glory, stared back at us.

  ***

  Chapter 7: Imprisoned

  I dreamed about the night I lost my virginity. I was thirteen.

  The door in my mind swung open and there was darkness beyond. I lay between a smooth cotton sheet and a down comforter. I pretended to be asleep.

  Crossing the room in swift, sure strides, a man sat down beside me, laying one hand on my side. I still pretended to be asleep.

  He knelt beside me and whispered my name. I managed not to react.

  He turned me on my back and kissed me on my lips. This time, I couldn’t ignore him so I pretended to be rudely awakened instead. I flailed my fist and hit him on the back.

  “Relax,” he said, grabbing my wrist. “It’s me.”

  That was the problem, I thought, squeezing my eyes tightly. I had known it was him from the second the door was opened. No, from the moment my mom had left the house and told me that her boyfriend would be over soon to look after me and my brother.

  Pretending otherwise made me feel better. So after I couldn’t pretend to be asleep anymore, I just pretended to be someone else.

  It was someone else who he was kissing. It was someone else’s hand whose hand he was grabbing and moving to grab something “she” didn’t want to think about. It was someone else who he was undressing and whose legs he was spreading. It was someone else who pleaded with him to stop, only to be told that he just loved her so much.

  It was someone else so I could wake up now. Yes. I could wake up. I could vanish away the memories as quickly as they appeared.

  Wake up now, I told myself. My limbs were leaden and unresponsive and his hand was between my legs, searching for something. He would find it soon.

  Wake up!

  With a strangled cry, I jerked awake in an unfamiliar room.

  I wasn’t in a bed, but was propped up in an armchair. Panic gripped me. Where was I?

  I looked around for that man, head swinging forward and back, mind racing. There was no one else there. The room was empty.

  Then I remembered. I was twenty-four, not thirteen.

  I was at Jason’s house, in his room.

  I had been captured by a vampire.

  ***

  It was a shame that I had encountered an urban vampire instead of one of the classy, nobility types, I thought numbly as I poked through Jason’s poorly maintained apartment. The apartment smelled musty and unused. As if it were someone’s second residence that had been set up and promptly forgotten. The only piece of livable furniture in the room was the spacious, faded red armchair I had fallen asleep in.

  No coffin either, not that I had expected one. So did vampires just not sleep at all?

  The rest of the room seemed normal enough. There was a closet with dark clothing, a lamp fixture on the ceiling, a small bookshelf with DVDs, but no TV to play them on. A wooden desk was covered with dust and my empty purse next to a power strip; mostly unidentifiable black adapters filled half of the sockets.

  The sole exception was a full length mirror propped behind the armchair. The border was wrought in cast iron and despite not being affixed to anything, the mirror was impossible to move. And overlaid atop it, worked into the mirror’s frame was a thick iron grid, almost like a cage, made of bars the width of my fingers.

  As to exits, there were two doors and a
shut window behind black curtains, which I had opened to let in light. “Please step away from there,” Claire ordered in a commanding voice that called out to me, the one time I had examined the window in detail. Surprised and a little frightened, I had done as I was told.

  One of the doors led to a personal bathroom with a stand-up shower. The other, which I had been led through earlier by an apologetic Jason, was jammed shut.

  All in all, there wasn’t much to do but peruse Jason’s DVD collection... and think, for once. It wasn’t very pleasant with my memories. The nightmare was still fresh in my mind, keeping me wired up.

  With effort, I settled back into the armchair and drew my knees in and decided to drown the recollection with thoughts of the present.

  I was all alone in a vampire’s house and I had tried to kill him. Why did I do that?

  “Before you romanticize vampires, remember that each and every one of them is a serial killer,” Tony had told me the night we had first met. “The younger ones have killed dozens of people and the older ones have body counts beyond any human killer, beyond any single human atrocity. Over many centuries, they have killed thousands of people like cattle.”

  It seemed impossible that Jason had killed that many people, I thought, but maybe he was one of the younger ones.

  “They see us as prey,” Tara helpfully added, “Helpless victims that they can devour at their leisure. We’re different, though.”

  Hunters, they told me, stood against the monsters of the night and protected the people. They had been given supernatural gifts to rival that of the vampires, such as inhuman strength and deadly accuracy. Their families were dedicated to tracking down and eradicating vampires.

  I hadn’t questioned that story then. I had, after all, nearly been killed by two vampires only five minutes before and they had saved me. Questioning them seemed ungrateful.

  But now I was starting to wonder, and the more I wondered, the guiltier I felt. Who were hunters, really, and why did they have the powers they did? Why did no one else know anything about vampires or hunters? And why were vampires drawn to me? They had never explained, simply mentioning that they tended to target the vulnerable and innocent. But while I wasn’t very strong, I was far from innocent.