It was weeks before the guards even realized about the drip and by then the sound was so ingrained into my soul that I could track it simply by closing my eyes, even once it was long gone. I guessed that the largest gap between meals was the overnight and labeled the first meal arriving after that breakfast. From breakfast to lunch I forced myself into activity, setting a goal and not allowing myself food or drink until it was met. From lunch until dinner I would talk, to myself, to my hallucinations, sometimes I would sing just to get my voice back into working order. I had no framework to know which day or month it was so I just started with Monday, January 1, and kept going. Even the wrong sense of time was better than no sense at all.
It was more than a year after I entered the prison when the door to my cell finally opened once again. The warden stood there, looking none too pleased to see me not bouncing off the walls like a madman. Though a year’s worth of growth in my beard and hair I’m pretty sure I looked the part.
“It looks like even a degenerate like you has a friend or two out there in the real world.” He motioned the guard into the cell and he brought me up to my feet. He spoke like he had a mouth full of marbles, his head down like he had been called to the principal’s office. Maybe he got a little dressing down for keeping me down here for so long without any advocate. “Seems like your case got overturned somehow. Gunna take a few days to process you out but seems like you’re gonna be a free man. Until then we get to bring you back up top, get ya a shave or something.”
Turned out my guess was a little conservative, fifteen months had come and gone while I was in ‘the pen.’ That meant I missed Kaylee’s sixteenth birthday, I hoped she could find a way to forgive me. The lawyer for the prison explained everything that had happened while I was away. Lisa and Mara had acted as character witnesses for the defense as they fought to overturn the ruling. Colton had pulled some government strings to get a sample of the water flow we had stopped though there were few ways to actually test what it did outside injecting someone there was consensus that we had stopped a foreign body in the water from reaching its destination. Obviously, the prison and the courts would not admit culpability in the case since they could never reveal the findings to the public. The lawyer even had me sign a hefty non-disclosure agreement before she would even talk about getting me back out into the world.
They claimed they would issue a press release saying there was some sort of technical mistake that let me free but the damage likely had already been done. Most people would still only know my face as the guy who tried to turn everyone into werewolves. At best, they might believe I had a last-minute crisis of conscience and stopped the plan I, myself, enacted. None of that mattered to me if I got back out in the world, I had business to finish. I was nearly counting the hours until my freedom was returned to me.
My first sight after exiting the prison was the bright morning sunlight. I blinked at the difference from inside for a few seconds, breathing the air as if it were a different flavor. My eyes cleared and I saw two figures waiting for me at the end of the walk. Mara was leaning on a seemingly brand-new car with a sly smile on her face and Lisa was sitting cross-legged on the hood. The door behind me slammed shut with a loud clanging noise and they both looked up at the same time. Lisa jumped off the hood and nearly ran me over in her rush to give me a hug.
“Hunteeeee!!!!” She clung to me like a sloth clutching a tree branch. “How was life on the inside? Were you in a gang? Did the skinheads bother you? You didn’t drop the soap, right? They say if you drop the so…”
Mara pulled her off of me as she caught up. “Give the man a minute to catch his breath, after so long this isn’t quite as easy as just walking out a door. And that joke is in pretty poor taste these days.” I grinned my thanks at her as she produced a small box from behind her back. “A celebratory gift from a mutual friend of ours, she made me promise to deliver it by hand as soon as you got out.”
I opened the box carefully, Lisa watching me I did so. It was like not knowing what was inside the box was somehow causing her physical discomfort. When I finally got it open there was a note and a familiar-looking earpiece. The note simply read…
Hope we’re still friends,
This time, it’s your choice.
Love H-
My smile must have nearly split my skull into two pieces as I picked the earpiece up and placed it over my ear. The small sting was completely expected and almost even welcome. There was a long moment of silence before a crackling burst of static that cleared up almost instantly.
“Been too long, Hunter.” Holly’s familiar voice ran inside my head once again. It was a strange thing to have missed but it felt right to have it back.
“Good to hear your voice, Holly. We have a lot of work to do.”
~ * ~
Minutes later the three of us were heading down the highway back in the direction of Manhattan. Even though it had been over a year the three of us still left things off on the same page, yes, we had kept the city from having a death toll in the thousands and technically saved the day. Thorne and the rest of his werewolves had even moved farther out into the light, in part to assuage people’s fears of them, but they were even being acknowledged as real by the government. It seemed the time for covering things up had long since passed and they were finally coming around to sharing some things with the general public. Not to mention that the government trying to keep all this hush-hush while the alters were trying to play nice put most peoples cross-hairs on the politicians instead of the guy next-door who may or may not have feathers. There certainly was nothing like a common enemy to bring a diverse group of folks together. The next elections promised to be something truly special, and all that was good. The person responsible for all the mess in the first place had gotten away scott-free and there was no one likely to be able to make him pay.
No one, that is, except us.
“Did you bring what I asked?”
During my last few days in prison I had only enough access to a phone to arrange a pickup for the day I got out but I also managed to make one special request. Mara smiled broadly as she held up a plastic evidence bag, inside it was a blood-encrusted knife, the very same knife she had stabbed the vampire prince with so very many months before. If my plan worked this would lead us right to wherever Toussard had holed up for the last year. It still brought a small chuckle to think of the proud, arrogant prince of New York from a year ago hiding like a cockroach under a fridge somewhere.
“Holly, see if you can find a current address on one Theodore Aster, associated with the White Tower, at least he was eighteen months ago… ID was… 23… I think there was a five in there. Do your best.”
“Ever the champion for accuracy, aren’t you?” Holly purred in my ear as we continued driving towards the school. The White Tower wasn’t really a tower per se, and it certainly wasn’t white. It was a smallish ten-story tenement building that the local wizard’s school had purchased for its students. Since magic could be considered one of, if not the, most destructive weapon in the known universe they try to keep everyone and everything cataloged and recorded. Though some magic users showing up fully trained and not on their books gave rise to rumors of a so-called ‘black tower’ out there somewhere. With no real way to seal a person’s abilities once they were trained the question of what to do with washouts from the program was a hotly debated one. Many considered the only safe way to keep such power in check was to execute those students not performing up to their potential. The ordinance never went into effect but there was a noted upswing in grades after the rumor was circulated, then again, maybe that was the point.
“Found him, Hunter, still with the tower, living up on the ninth floor. Looks like he’s made a bit of a reputation for himself in the last year, moving up in his course standings significantly.” She gave me the room number as Mara pulled us into the parking lot. The building looked more rundown than it actually was, the inside was in much better shape than the outside. Somebody figured that no one in their right mind would be hanging around a run-down neighborhood like this and would keep collateral magic damage to a minimum. Judging by the number of calls ARC would field a day involving any variety of problems from my neighbor turned into a raccoon all the way to help I’m on fire I’m not so sure how effective that plan turned out to be.
The three of us walked inside, expecting some sort of lobby or greeting area but instead, there was nothing but a small circular chamber illuminated with neon blue lights on the walls and floor. We stepped into the small alcove and the blue glow intensified to the point where it momentarily blinded us and we were outside a door with the number 921 written in gold embossed letters. Lisa let out a delighted squeal at the magic elevator, I am sure it was installed to impress visitors but so much of magic was over-styled to make up for lack of substance. A neat trick, yes, but letting on that I thought so would just serve to stoke someone’s ego so I knocked on the door.
When Holly had said Ted had straightened himself up over the last year I had mentally rolled my eyes but the man that answered the door was completely unrecognizable to me. Gone were the ripped jeans and t-shirt badly in need of a washing, instead he dressed in a smartly tailored pair of slacks and a button-down shirt that, at first glance, I would say was made of silk. This simply could not be the same snot-nosed kid that trying to take a hit out on me last year.
“And here I thought for the slightest moment it was going to be good news, I somehow knew it wouldn’t be in you to just forget about me.” He opened the door wider and waved us inside. “Come on in, let’s hear what you need.”
“Not like you to make friends with the magic people, Hunter.”
“Not to mention one that’s such a cutie!” Lisa barely avoided walking into the door since she refused to take her eyes off Ted.
“Not really friends, he took a potshot at me outside Nate’s when this whole mess started. By my guess, he was put there by Toussard just to lead me to your front door.”
“And because tall, dark, and brooding here didn’t send me to the hospital or the principal’s office my name pops to the top of the list when he wants to get some spell cast without an official request, right? Been expecting this house call for over a year, almost thought you had forgotten about me but I’m not that lucky. Though to be honest, I suppose I owe you for your heavy-handed version of scared straight. What do you need me to do?”
“This knife…” I tossed the baggie at him; he caught it with one hand and looked it over. “I need to you find me the bloodsucker that got stabbed with it, his blood is all over it.”
“Wow, don’t ask for much, do you? Just need me to track one of the most dangerous and grudge-holding creatures in the newly magical world. Too much to ask that he’s just some nobody?”
“He’s the prince,” Lisa shouted. “We’re gonna go kill ‘im!”
“Of course he is, I’m not going to be able to do this myself. Do you mind if I call a couple of friends in on this, might prove interesting.” Ted already had picked up the phone and dialed before any of us could respond.
“Joe… need your help, man. Got a sample of severely aged vamp blood here. Yes, I know that since the blood is refreshed from victims so it might not match the current magical signature of the host… yes I know you were working on a solution, that’s why I’m calling you. You know what, get Chrissy too, I want to see if we can incorporate her scry-3D thing also… yeah I got all the materials just need the two of you to oversee. You got it… thanks…”
“What the hell was that about, I thought you understood we wanted this off-book!” I did not need a word of what we were doing filtering back to Toussard and he most likely had people everywhere reporting to him.
“Don’t worry, they’re good for keeping things quiet. Besides, we need them.”
“Why is that now?”
“Remember all those guys at Apple cranking out programs a decade ago for every little minutia of life? Well, it turns out, you want to track an ancient blood-sucking ravenant from a possibly corroded source… there’s an app, or more appropriately a spell, for that. Now order some pizza, this is going to take a while.”