Creature of Habit (Creature of Habit #1) (16 page)

Chapter 27

Grant

I accelerated onto the street leading to the paper mill, the one that was edged by the river. Caleb and his companions were in the area, their victim minutes away from a horrific death.

I pulled to the side of the road, away from street lights. No need for any passersby to become suspicious. Olivia's vision had been specific enough for us to easily find the location. Before we got out of the car, I asked, "Can you see anything else?"

Olivia's eyes were wide and her entire demeanor was on edge. Her red hair seemed darker in the shadows of the car. Her eyes had turned a shade darker.  She hadn't fed recently. "Yes. Only one of the vampires is a fledgling. He’s wild. Almost completely feral. The other is older. He is very much in control and I'm pretty sure he’s training the young one. These two will feed on the human while the leader, Caleb, watches."

Elijah and I exchanged looks before moving outside the car. I spoke quickly and quietly, handing out instructions.  “I want you and Olivia to take the fledgling and the other one. You have the most experience with them and Olivia can anticipate their moves if necessary." I looked them both in the eye to make sure they were prepared to follow my directions. They both nodded yes without argument and let me continue. "Caleb is mine. I've been tracking him too long to let him slip away now, and hopefully I can get some information from him before I end him."

We moved quickly through the night, hiding in the shadows. It was still wet from the earlier rain. I caught Caleb and another vampire’s scent mingled in with the damp, marshy air and the sulfur from the mill. The wind whipped around us, bouncing off the walls of the building, making it hard to locate their exact trail. I closed my eyes for a moment and strained to pinpoint their location.

“What the fuck?” a man, a human, said off in the distance. A heartbeat matched his voice while another less human voice spoke up. “Hayden, you must control yourself. Caleb has not given you the approval to feed…patience…”

“Olivia what do you see?”

“There’s a man dressed in a uniform. A security guard perhaps? He’s backed into a wall, under a towering pile of lumber.” Olivia described his attempt to draw a firearm. His fingers fumbled with the latch, wasting precious moments on a weapon of no use.

“The fledgling is barely hanging on by a thread,” Elijah said, sniffing the air. “He’s starving.”

The three of us made our way to the back of the mill, toward the loading docks where the lumber was stored. We darted though machinery and stacks of materials, trying to find the exact location.

A strong breeze blew past us and I hissed, "To the right." We wove around to the other side of the platform at top speed. I kept my thoughts on the vampire who patiently taunted the security-guard.

Another scent wafted by, this time familiar.

“Caleb,” I announced, breathing in. “The Predator is here.” But as I made the announcement I knew we were too late. A loud, guttural scream bounced off the brick warehouse walls and the scent of thick, coppery blood tinged the air. We rounded the corner as the two vampires ripped the flesh from the arms and neck of the human they held captive. Blood poured to the ground and the vampires made no move to stop when we came in view. A ring of red stained the fledgling’s mouth and he only moved away when pulled by the older vampire. The victim’s panicked screams were cut short by the undeniable sound of his neck snapping. Caleb merely glanced in our direction as he dropped the man's head and proceeded to wipe his stained hands on his pants.

The vampire abandoned the body as we came into view and motioning for Hayden, the fledgling, to do the same.

“Finished with dinner?” Elijah asked in a causal voice. The fledgling growled. “Your handlers should teach you some manners. You’ve made quite a mess.”

Elijah never missed a beat and lunged at him, snatching a piece of his ear as he flew over his shoulder. Hayden took the bait and ran after Elijah in a flash of feral anger, clutching the side of his head. He snarled in pain, but his hunger and rage outweighed any other feeling. They disappeared from view, the sound of their fight muffled by the wind.

The handler, with his ebony skin and black, hollow eyes, dismissed Olivia's size and chased after Hayden, also disappearing from view. Caleb's eyes were on Olivia, I watched as he licked his lips and leered in her direction.

She scowled at Caleb and said, “In your dreams.”

I feared for a brief moment that she would ditch our plan, and go after the Predator, but she turned away from Caleb, chasing the vampire through the plant.  Caleb watched her go, eyes pinned to her back, only shifting his attention when she darted out of view. He walked forward with a confident swagger. Seemingly unconcerned about his fighters, he casually glanced over his shoulder, his long, greasy hair swaying behind his back and said, "They should keep each other busy for a while."

He angled his body in a relaxed pose and announced, "Grant Palmer. We finally meet." The swarmy grin was still in place and it was taking every ounce of strength I had not to rip it off his face.  "I've been following you for some time."

Following me? Impossible. I scoffed at him, unbelieving.

He smirked and said, "I’ve been keeping track of your side venture much longer than you have been aware of me and my little exploits." My eyes were glued on him as he gestured to the lifeless body on the ground. "At first, I thought you were a rumor or a myth. That the stories told of a vampire who protected this city from others of his kind was nothing more than an urban legend."

He rocked on his heels a bit, shoving his hands into his back pockets. He was filthy, his face and hair covered in dirt and debris. His clothing was worn and tattered and he had the appearance of a homeless person. It was the standard look for those of our kind that lived a more nomadic life as it allowed them to go unnoticed and able to move more freely. His voice and his appearance were contradictory. His tone was refined, the words he uttered calculated and educated, yet his entire presence was abominable.

How had he found me? I thought of all of my systems in place, the security, the ’human’ life I lived. The fact someone had penetrated my efforts had me dumbfounded.

When I didn't respond to his musings, he continued. "I admit, I was intrigued. I stumbled upon other vampires who assured me it was true, and that not only were you helping humans, you hailed from a nest of non-flesh eaters. A large coven. So I conducted my research and to my astonishment, they were correct."

He paused and I heard a crack, the sound of a hole tearing in my psyche. A vivid image of my family home in Black Mountain flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning. Just as quickly though, the image disappeared and my thoughts were once again blank.

“How?” I tried to grasp what transpired between us. I’d heard his voice before but nothing like this.

He smiled. "Like that? It’s a little trick I picked up along the way. Are you saying you haven’t noticed before?”

I considered the way he’d taunted me—how this seemed so personal between us. A link? I wasn’t sure, but I’d seen crazier things.

“I’ve seen how the seven of you live, mingling with society. Co-existing amongst humans. Even your leader who works for the Council specializes in human-supernatural relations. It’s as if all of you feel like you can meddle in the affairs of the rest of us.”

This information left me unnerved, rattled at him being in my head. It was one thing for this vampire to know about me. It was another entirely for him to have information about my family and our work. A glimmer of amusement crossed his face.

"Oh yes, I know all about your family. Some of them more than others in fact." He raised an eyebrow tauntingly and sent me a flash of a dark room, rows of iron framed beds, pushed flush against the walls.
A prison? Was this where he kept the abducted?

"I know you left them some time ago to live this renegade life. That twice in your afterlife you have rebelled against your family. The first time killing less than desirable humans and then later, now, living above the rest of us, attempting to control and manage our nature."

Caleb tilted his head, his stringy ponytail spilling over the shoulder of his cracked leather jacket. "You have lived such a troubled life, struggling between good and evil. I, on the other hand, embrace my inner demon. The irony is where you like to save and sympathize with the humans that surround us, I relish the moment their heart pulses its final beat."

The flood gates opened and a thousand deaths ticked from his mind into mine. I attempted to push away the images of murder after murder, throats torn, limbs shredded, the bodies of lifeless innocents cast aside for one demon's hunger.

“You are not a God, Grant Palmer, and you will not tell me where I can and cannot hunt.” His voice was clear and determined. He looked over at the dead security guard and shook his head, "In fact, this man here, you can take the blame for his death."

I took the bait. "How so?"

"All of this, the murders, the kidnappings, it has all been to bring you to me. All of these deaths were to lure you into my game. To teach you a lesson about playing God.”

I cocked an eyebrow at him and asked, "If you knew everything about me why didn't you just come find me and take me out when I wasn't prepared?"

His mouth broke out into a huge grin. "Now where's the fun in that?"

I rolled my eyes dramatically and declared, "I'm here. So let's do this."

We were ten feet or so apart, with a dead man lying to our left. In an instant we could be at one another's throats. I waited for the right moment.

Caleb's demeanor remained non-plussed. "As much as I would like to end this game now, I can't. You added in an extra player and I have been forced to change my plans. This, right here, is my effort in sportsmanship, to let you know of the new rules. You see, you have something of mine and in return I’m prepared to take something of yours."

He spoke as though this truly was a competition, the ramblings of a mad vampire. The bits of his thoughts I could read were cryptic and confusing. I had something that belonged to him?

"Why do you think I'm going to play your games? The others will have caught and killed your men by now and I will kill you. You obviously didn't research me enough if you think I'm stooping to your childish level," I told him, adjusting my knees so I was crouching slightly, preparing to attack.

Caleb shook his head at me slowly while taking a step forward. "I wouldn't be so sure, Grant. Like me, you have the spirit of a competitor. I doubt you like to lose, especially when the stakes are so high." He revealed another image, this time of Amelia sitting with her friend at a table.

A low growl rumbled through my chest as I absorbed the picture. It was his memory, crystal clear. I could make out every detail of her delicate features. I realized the image I saw was from earlier this week. Amelia wore the same clothing she had on at work.

He howled with laughter, bouncing on his toes with excitement. "I knew you would be interested. Oh God, this makes it so much better, don’t you see? I’d planned to just take what was mine. But your inability to resist the frail humans you surround yourself with has made this a much better game.”

“Keep her out of this,” I growled.

He ignored me. “You'll want to know that, as we speak, Sasha is gathering some information for me about your favorite human."

I hissed loudly and lunged, landing on his chest, forcing the two of us to fly across the pavement and smack into a concrete wall. Bits of stone fell at our feet. I pushed my shoulder into his throat and reached for the sharp blade strapped to my thigh.

He laughed, the pitch bordering on hysteria. Once he regained composure he said, "I should have known you were too impatient for this type of challenge. You're too temperamental and entirely too predictable. This is why it was so easy for me to draw you out in the first place."

I shoved my shoulder into him once again, crushing him into the wall. "Stop. Talking," I growled. The tip of the blade pushed into his side. "Your reign of terror is over. And you're wrong. I do decide where and when you feed when you are anywhere near this city."

I spun him around and had his face smashed into the wall. My foot was planted firmly in his back and all it would take was one easy twist to tear his arm clean off his body. Through gritted teeth he spat out, "If you kill me now, Sasha will exact my revenge. She’s already in position."

He opened his mind again and gave me a view of Sasha and another vampire standing outside Amelia's apartment. He must have taken them there earlier. Anger shuddered down my limbs and as an act of incredible strength I dropped the blade, clenching his arm with both hands and tore it from his body.

I flung it behind me and faced Caleb, who now screamed in pain. Grasping his shoulder, he leapt to higher ground, on top of a mountain of lumber. He shouted, "Each time you take something from me I will do the same! You’ll regret your lifetime of fear-mongering and intrusion into the lives of others. I will take the thing that is most important to you and turn it into mine. And then, when you least expect it I will return and take over this city and hunt you down."

I jumped up the pile of wood, scrambling up the side, but when I reached the top he was gone, completely out of sight.