Paul Larkin had been the Area Leader of Melbourne for almost half a century now, having been appointed by Jordan Findley in the mid-60s. The fact that he was related to Jordan’s wife shouldn’t have made any difference since Paul had proven himself in the field time and again before the appointment, but as he stared out at a sea of stars and wondered which one was Janette looking down on him now, he questioned his abilities ever so slightly.
Something was amiss, he was sure of it. He’d been talking to Aaron frequently over the last few days. High numbers of missing persons were one thing, but when trackers stopped working and nearly all activity came to a standstill, it didn’t sit well with Paul or the rest of his team.
Around him, six members of his crew, three Hunters and three Guardians, loaded up a van. It was the first time they’d be going out into the field in about five days, which was unheard of. Everything around here had been dead, which was a drastic change from the undead they were used to. The day before, a tip had come in that someone was lurking around an old abandoned movie theater in one of the less populated parts of town. The Independent Hunter who had made the call was a valuable scout, and Paul didn’t hesitate to bring part of his team together to go and check it out. A little bit of potential action was better than none at all.
A quick check of the time on his IAC told him it was almost midnight, the perfect time to catch a bloodsucker on the prowl. Give it a few more hours, he’d be back in his bed, satiated on the blood of an innocent victim. Go too early, he would still be biding his time, waiting for the humans who were stupid enough to step into his web too drunk to notice him until it was too late, or too far separated from their packs. Vampires were killing machines, instinctively able to hunt down and annihilate the most intelligent of all prey—humans. It didn’t hurt when humans put themselves in positions of vulnerability, however, and that’s when these lethal creatures were at their most deadly.
“We’re all loaded up.” Becky’s voice brought him out of his thoughts, and he turned to smile at the Hunter. Her short, curly brown hair fluttered in the light breeze, and he saw an eagerness in her eyes that stemmed from a lack of recent opportunity.
“All right then,” he said, patting her shoulder and heading to the driver’s seat of the black passenger van. Steph, a Guardian who had been around almost as long as him, Tanner, a hulk of a Guardian with ebony skin, and Patsy, a pixie of a girl with a deadly aim, climbed into the way-back while Becky and the other two Hunters, Jeb and Derrick, fought over shotgun, which Jeb eventually won, and the other two reluctantly climbed into the middle seat.
As he pulled away from the headquarters building on the outskirts of town, Paul had a feeling in his stomach he couldn’t quite put his finger on. It had been ages since he felt this way, like there was an electricity in the air, like it had a heartbeat and pulsated around him. He took a deep breath and tried to calm his nerves, running a hand through his dark hair.
“You okay, boss?” Jeb asked, nudging him gently in the upper arm.
Paul turned and looked at the young man whose smattering of freckles reflected his love of the beach. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just thinking about what happened in KC, that’s all.”
His cover wasn’t completely untrue; ever since Aaron had alerted them of what had gone down at LIGHTS headquarters about six hours ago, it had been at the forefront of his mind. Paul was aware that the Vampires were acting strangely—all of the Leaders were—but as to why or what could be expected, no one really knew. The thought of headquarters being infiltrated by a Vampire army, or informants fighting their way through Guardians the way Aaron had described in order to destroy Hunters while they sat in their homes, was unbelievable to him, and it seemed the world had been tipped on its side.
Paul drove along mostly deserted streets, headed toward the movie theater, thinking this should be fairly routine, but he wasn’t willing to let his guard down until they either destroyed this Vampire or determined that whoever was hanging out in the abandoned building was not one of theirs.
This shift in the atmosphere seemed to correspond, to the best of Paul’s recollection, with the blue moon back at the end of January. There had been a turbulence in the air that night. He’d been standing outside, admiring the stars, as he often did, when a sizzle blowing on the breeze caught his attention, and off in the distance, he’d heard what sounded like hundreds of whispering voices. Like the hiss of a snake, it slithered through the air, filling his mind with thoughts of dread and foreboding. He couldn’t put his finger on what had happened, but in his mind, that’s when the atmosphere had been sent askew. Ever since then, the world had been off kilter, and something told him the situation would only get worse from here.
He made one more turn onto an abandoned street and brought his mind back around to the business at hand. This part of town was mostly uninhabited, at least by anyone who could be considered a contributing member of society. He imagined any Vampire hanging out here was running a few miles over to a busier part of town to find sustenance. Otherwise, they may be able to find a stray drug addict or homeless person, but most of the buildings for a two-to-three block radius were abandoned and in various states of disrepair, including the movie theater, some empty stores, a few large residences from a bygone era, and of course, the old insane asylum down the street.
Paul pulled the van to a stop about two blocks from the cinema. They’d already looked at blueprints and discussed when and where the pairs would move into action. It should be a routine hunt, but after what Aaron had described in Kansas City, Paul wasn’t about to take any chances. He turned and addressed his team one last time. “Don’t do anything foolish,” he said. “If you have the shot, take the shot.”
There was a chorus of various agreement, and then the doors quietly opened and they shuffled out, not making much noise at all, not even when they closed the vehicle’s doors.
Paul had already decided to take up position on top of a taller department store building on the south side of the theater so he could monitor any movement in or out of the building. He trusted his team to move in and get the job done. While other Area Leaders complained that they just couldn’t get enough skilled Hunters, Paul knew he had three of the best in the world in Becky, Jeb, and Derrick, even if a couple of them were relatively young. While Patsy could’ve used a little more work, Steph and Tanner were topnotch Guardians, and he trusted this would be a pretty mundane mission.
The teams moved into position, and Paul used the fire escape to agilely leap to the roof of the department store in just a few hops. Once he was satisfied this location would work, he hunkered down and began to monitor the IACs of his teammates.
Tanner and Becky were already in position to come in from the front entrance of the building, which was boarded up, but that would be no problem for someone of Tanner’s stature. He could easily pry the boards off of the masonry without making a sound. Steph and Jeb would come in from the exit around back, and Derrick and Patsy had circled around to the west side where there was a large window that would give them access once they made it through an equally moveable plywood board.
“Okay, we’re in,” Becky’s voice came over the IAC. Paul followed along through her IAC as they began to move through the building. All three teams had gained entrance and were carefully picking their way through broken glass and large pieces of plaster that had fallen from the walls and ceilings over time, among other discarded items that littered what was likely once polished marble tile.
“Patsy, is that a stairwell in front of you?” Paul asked.
“Affirmative. It looks like it goes up to a balcony section.”
“Why don’t the two of you head up that direction?” Paul advised, watching as the small woman headed up the stairs, her Glock in front of her. Derrick, a tall muscular man with sandy blond hair, was right behind her, his Beretta at the ready.
“Steph and I are going to head down to the basement,” Jeb explained as he found an access door. Even though no scent came through the IAC, Paul almost felt a puff of dank, musty air hit him in the face as his teammates began to descend rickety wooden stairs in the pitch black.
“That leaves the two of you to investigate the main floor,” Paul reminded Becky and Tanner.
“We’re already on it,” Tanner replied, his voice deep but smooth.
