I thought about what Ben said the whole way home. He claimed he could keep me shrouded from being seen by anyone for an hour or two and he was good to his word. Ninety minutes later I was back in my own office. After the chaos of the past few days, it seemed surreal to partake in any kind of normal activities. First things first I called the hospital for an update on Lisa’s condition.

It took more than a little convincing to get anything out of the on-call nurse seeing as I wasn’t a direct relation. Finally, she told me Lisa was out of surgery and listed as stable. Her wounds weren’t as bad as the on-call paramedics had thought and she was resting comfortably with every expectation of a full recovery. I hung up the phone with more than a little bit of relief. At least the next time I saw Tony I would be able to survive the encounter.

“Holly, if what the dastardly demon says is true we’re going to need some sort of meet-up with the vamp hierarchy.” I picked up a stack of mail from my desk and flipped through the envelopes. “The prince or whatever you said rules the bloodsuckers.”

“Sure thing, hun, though they are notorious about keeping their people more behind the scenes than most.”

“Well if they won’t meet with me I could always just find an address and show up with a buncha weapons. Seems to have made some people more talkative in the past.”

“Good to know that you have ambitions beyond starting just one race war out in the streets. Should I cue up any other races and tell them to get their pointy things ready?” I couldn’t tell if her voice carried more sarcasm or honest worry. Probably equal portions of both. “I’ll see what I can set up and get back to you.” The connection went silent.

The mail was a collection of circulars from various charities. It seemed that once you got to a certain tax bracket you were automatically added to every mailing list there was. Mixed in with all the other junk was a letter from my lawyer, Lou Garraty, telling me he had already started the paperwork to fight for my daughter. We hadn’t spoken about it yet but he knew how important to me she was. Just as much as I knew how important his daughter was to him. He was probably the only lawyer I had ever met that I truly felt I could trust. Then again, if saving a man’s daughter from being eaten by a pack or barghests doesn’t buy you a certain amount of good will I suppose nothing can.

I hadn’t seen either of them in almost two years things had been so busy. Ever since I rescued her back when she was eight Becky always called me ‘Uncle Derek’ the few times a year we could get together for dinner. Now she was growing into a woman, just a little older than my own girl, and still clung to the name. She would stubbornly claim to always call me the same no matter how old each of us was. A smile crossed my face as I remembered the few get-togethers we would have as a pseudo-family. I had to take some downtime soon before all I had left of normal life was memories. I dropped into my chair with a sigh. I knew I should eat and rest, get back some energy for whatever came my way tomorrow but at the moment I just couldn’t force myself to rise.

~ * ~

I woke up who knows how much later to a noise right next to me. I moved without thinking and grabbed the gun I kept hidden under my desk and swung it towards the noise. Mara stood there with a cocky smile on her face.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine.” Mara glanced quickly down at the pistol aimed at her heart. “If this is how you react to being woken up I can see why you’re single.”

“Yeah yeah, how did you find where I live?”

“Cop, remember?” She tapped the badge hanging off her belt. “Not that you are the least known person out there in any case.”

“Yeah, well I may consider a change in profile after seeing what the news thinks about me.” I put the gun back away, I’d been running myself too hard if I could fall asleep at my desk like that. That might be just what happens when you go a week running mostly on painkillers. “How did you get past the door guy… I thought Greg was supposed to keep out the riff-raff.

“Female cop.” She winked. “Now do you want me to tell you what cab company I took over here or can we figure out what we do next?”

“All right, tell me how Thorne took the news about Claudia and I’ll tell you what I learned from the ash breather.”

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“Well, Stanton had heard enough of the call to know not to trust her. By the time I got back to the mansion they had her locked in her quarters waiting until they could figure out what to do with her.”

“Did you have trouble sneaking past the gun-nuts guarding the place?”

“Not at all, after the bullets flew with our hasty exit they pulled the perimeter back and wouldn’t let anyone within sight of the place.” She grabbed one of the chairs from next to the wall and turned it around to sit backward in it and continue her story. “Seems they thought the situation too volatile to risk more violence till they had an official word.”

“Good, maybe we can keep things from devolving further. Someone’s trying to put you and the ords on opposite sides and whip both into a frenzy. Did you get any new leads out from your camp?”

“Stanton was absolutely livid at Claudia for going behind his back. She was apparently dealing with some biochemists to make a formula to create werewolves without having to nearly kill them first. She hoped to use it to make a pack of her own. New bloods wouldn’t know any of the old rules and she could use them to carve a little section out for herself to rule.”

I never figured she would want power that badly but I never could figure out those that chased that dream. It almost always worked out brilliantly in the short run but when it was over… well it tended to end bloody. I suppose I always wanted to follow dreams that had a little longer lasting effect. The only piece that didn’t fit was the amounts. A few drops changed some of the men in the warehouse, the amounts of chemicals we saw stockpiled would be enough to make a pack out of a city’s worth of people.

“Stanton sent men up to bring her in case she had anything to say in her defense but she was already gone. I think she knew how this would look and had an escape plan ready since no one so much as caught sight of her leaving. So that garnered us absolutely nothing for our effort.”

“Wait, if she was in contact with someone do you know from where?”

“Presumably from the mansion since they confiscated her personal phone while talking things out.” Her face broke into a smile. “And security digitally records all calls going in and out of the whole place. It might take some time but we may be able to get the phone number of her partner. I’ll get security to work on it for us.”

“Tell her I can probably do it faster.” Holly’s voice hummed in my ears. “I know what to look for more than they might… only problem is breaking into their system.”

“Holly’s on it,” I told Mara and I could swear I caught the hint of a grin.

“Maybe having her around will have its uses.”

“What’s the problem going to be, Holly?”

“Nothing, it was a problem how long it takes to get in but we’re past that now. I should have an answer for you. Okay, pulling a known call of Claudine’s for a voice ID. Filtering all the calls made over the last three days to those that match… Eliminating any calls made out of state and ones that only show up once… got it.” Her voice changed to perfect sweetness, doing a spot-on impersonation of a switchboard operator from an old movie. “Would you like me to connect you, sir?”

I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh.

“Sure, think you could send it to my desk line so Mara can hear? Not nice keeping secrets after all.” I grinned at Mara but something inside my head couldn’t get behind it. Every time I could almost think of her as a colleague the image of the monster she could become forced its way to the forefront. No matter how controlled she seemed most of the days, a beast is a beast… and it was only a matter of time before it won. Then someone, maybe even me, would be told to hunt her down. My mind balked a little at the thought. Thankfully the phone on my desk rang and let me forget about such things for a while longer. I hit the speaker button and waited as Holly connected us to the number she thought was Claudine’s contact.

I prepared myself for a front corporation, a burn phone, even a disconnected number but once more life proved it had a few more surprises in store for me. After two rings I heard the click of someone picking up the line.

“I expected your call much earlier, Mr. Hunter. I suppose human frailty does make us weaken as the years go by doesn’t it?”

“And who might I be speaking to?” I looked at Mara who shrugged helplessly. I guess this wasn’t anyone she knew.

“Well, you might be speaking to the president, or a pizza place…” The voice laughed, a harsh sound that contrasted with the silky smoothness of the words when it spoke. “But for now let us say you reached the party you were trying to. Is the detective there with you? She must be, after all, we saw her leaving Mr. Thorne’s place two hours ago.”

“I’m here… what does all this benefit you? The chemicals, the paranoia, the war… what are you working for?” Mara was calm, deathly so. It almost frightened me more than seeing her in a full-fighting rage.

“The telephone is such an impersonal device. Come meet me tonight and we can discuss things face-to-face. I’ll even throw in dinner if you want to sweeten the deal.”

“Fine,” I growled. I hated being jerked around and this guy was only toying with us. “Where and when?”

“Tonight, just past nightfall at the Crowley Building. I’ll have someone waiting to bring you up when you arrive.” The line disconnected.

“Holly, get him back. I wasn’t done with him yet.”

“Sorry Hunter, no trace of that number anymore. He must have had it destroyed rather than risk us calling back.”

“Crowly Building?” Mara shook her head with an incredulous look. “That’s right in the heart of leech territory.”

“That fits with what demon-boy told me.” I stood up and she rose with me. I filled her in on what happened at Ben’s while we went to arm ourselves.