Chapter 3

Six years ago...

It was almost midnight. Brad and Ritchie had already retreated to their tents; Anthony was alone. Aside from the chirping of crickets and the crackle of his campfire, it was quiet. The pale light of the moon danced eerily on the ripples of the lake. He sat calmly in front of the fire, gazing out around the darkness of the woods. She was out there.

Anthony sighed, disappointed, and went back to his backpack for his roll of bandages. Maybe this is all just more campfire talk, he thought as he wrapped his hand—

Kaeli and Andy finally piled into the van and they were ready to go. Dorian didn't have to guess what they were doing while the rest of the team was getting ready, based on the slight ruffle of Kaeli's clothes and hair. So young, those two. So in love. Dorian remembered what that was like, when he and Melissa— Don't think of Melissa. We've got work to do. Chances were one of them was going to end up like him someday. They tried to hide their relationship from him, but there was very little about them that wasn't written all over them. If it were all up to him he'd keep them apart and spare them the inevitable heartbreak, but who was he to tell two people they couldn't be in love?

Andy pulled the door shut, and Dorian commanded, "All right, let's roll." Ethan turned the key and the engine rumbled to life. As the van pulled out, part of Dorian was feeling numb. It was just so hard to believe ... he'd actually found her. After all these years, it just didn't seem real. It was too good to be true. The one vampire he'd been searching for ever since...

... ever since what happened with Melissa. There it was again. It seemed there was nothing he could do that wouldn't bring her to mind again. He'd reopened an old wound, and it didn't want to close. But if this worked, if they could find Electra at this club and finally bring her down...

... then she can finally rest. After driving for about ten minutes, they came upon the neon-lighted entrance to The Deadly Rose, and circled around to a nearby alley to park the van. As Ethan turned off the engine, Jade whooped and hollered, bounding up from her seat. "All right! C'mon, Dorian, let's go kick some fuckin' vampire ass!" Her enthusiasm even startled Shadow.

"I'm not going in with you guys."

Every head in the van turned in his direction. "What do you mean you're not going in?" Kaeli demanded.

"Yeah, I thought you'd be first in line to want that bitch's head on a stake!" Andy added. "It's freakin' Electra Rose we're talking about here!"

"I know who we're looking for!" Dorian snarled, hardly able to believe himself that he was saying what he was saying. "But I think having me in there would make this job a bit more ... challenging."

Kaeli tilted her head. "How so?"

Dorian just looked at her, not knowing what he could say. He wanted desperately to charge through the front door, tear the place apart, find Electra and blow her fucking head off with a shotgun, but he couldn't. If she saw me ... if she found out I was there ... it's too risky.

"Fuck it," Jade sneered, "he doesn't want to party, guess we can't force him. He's the boss."

"I arranged for Kaeli, Andy and Jade to be on the guest list. You'll be going inside and conducting reconnaissance. Keith, Ethan and I will watch the back door with Shadow. Keep in touch at all times. You spot any vampires, report it right away, but do not engage, understood?"

Jade rolled her eyes and groaned.

"UNDERSTOOD?" Dorian glared.

"Yes, I get it," Jade moaned.

"We got it," said Kaeli.

The three of them stepped out of the van and moved off for the entrance. Dorian silently wished them luck, and then wished much harder, desperately, that he could go in with them. If only.

Dorian grabbed his shotgun and hopped out of the van himself. "Let's move," he said. Ethan and Keith both emerged from the front seats. "C'mon Shadow," Ethan commanded, and his loyal German Shepard obeyed.

Dorian was decked out with his 12-guage autoloader, a handheld bowgun concealed under his brown leather jacket, a Desert Eagle at his hip, and a dagger stashed in his right boot; his usual arsenal. Guns were more useful for hunting vampires than some people gave them credit for. You couldn't usually kill them with a gun unless you got a shot straight to the head or heart with a really powerful gun at really close range, but they could certainly hurt them like hell and thereby slow them down long enough for you to get in close and use something more lethal.

Ethan was much less consistent with his arsenal, so Dorian never knew what he was going to bring with him on a hunt. Tonight he was packing an Uzi and his custom-made repeating crossbow, along with a belt-full of metal stakes. Keith, never being much of a front-line person, at least not when hunting vampires, didn't carry much more than his revolver, which certainly packed a nice wallop, but had limited uses in this line of work.

They'd made their way to the alley behind the club when Kaeli's voice spoke through the transmitter in Dorian's ear, accompanied by some loud thudding music. "We're in."

"Anybody giving off a vampire vibe?"

"Oh yeah," she said. "The bouncer, for starters. In a very big way. And I stress the word 'big.'"

"Seriously," he heard Andy agree. "The guy looks like Shaq on steroids!"

Ethan made an impressed smile with a breath that was halfway to being a laugh. Keith just looked unnerved. "Keep scanning the area," Dorian commanded. "Look for anything that might point in Electra's direction."

"Yes sir," Kaeli replied.

Kaeli's transmission ended. Dorian looked at the building they stood behind, and his blood burned at the knowledge that only a few concrete walls stood between him and the creature that destroyed everything he ever cared about. If only he could take a crane with a wrecking ball and break those walls down ... And while he was wishing, he might as well ask to have Melissa back. None of it was going to happen.

Shadow went off barking madly, just a split second before the back doors of the club opened and a skanky-looking guy carrying two trash bags to the dumpster emerged, his attention instantly turning to the roused dog. Shadow was trained to give them this kind of alert when he smelled vampire, and even the most experienced hunter couldn't spot a vampire as fast as a dog could. One of Electra's low-rent employees had just wandered into their crosshairs. "Oh, shit," he said.

BOOM! Dorian let a blast out from his shotgun, leaving the vamp on the ground with a huge, bloody wound in his chest, screaming his vampiric scream of agony. He only screamed for a moment though, before Ethan stepped up and shut him up permanently with one of his stakes.

"And here I was thinking we'd be getting the quieter part of this op," Keith quipped as Dorian reached into his pocket for his cigarettes.

"You know what they say," Dorian said through his lips that were holding a cigarette as he went for his lighter. "Expect the unexpected."

Anthony sat at the bar alone, carefully scanning the crowd. The light patterns were erratic and the music was deafening, but that didn't bother him. He was used to it. There were plenty of succulent young girls here tonight, and all he had to do was pick one.

The first one he saw that caught his attention was a buxom blonde in a rainbow-striped halter-top and a denim miniskirt joking around with her friends. She'd probably do just as fine as any other girl, so he focused his attention on her. Focus ... He reached out with the power in his eyes for her... Come on, look this way... Look at me. The girl obeyed the voiceless mental command and looked in Anthony's direction. And then she froze, her eyes becoming locked to his from across the room. He wouldn't have been surprised then if she'd just blithely dropped her beer without even noticing. He had her.

Come here. To the utter confusion of her assembled friends, the girl began walking in Anthony's direction. With every step she drew closer, and Anthony was better able to see into her through her eyes. And as she came closer, and he was able to see deeper into her mind, he began to realize how fortuitous he had been in his choice. This one was naïve and impressionable. Easily controlled. She might even make a good addition to his little harem.

"Hi, I'm Caitlyn," she smiled.

"Caitlyn," he said, taking her hand and bringing it up to his lips. "Lovely." He gave her hand a quick, light kiss, his eyes never leaving hers.

"Wow," she breathed, her eyes wide and her breath heavy. "Thank you Sir Galahad!"

"So tell me, Caitlyn, what are you looking for tonight?"

"Oh, just a ... just a good time ... you know."

"And have you found that? Are you having a good time here?" You are now.

"I am now."

Anthony grinned. She was almost too easy. Almost. "That's wonderful." He concentrated his gaze on her eyes, boring into her delicate psyche. "Would you like me to kiss you?"

"Yes I would," she said without a second's hesitation.

"Because I'm not going to." She gave whimper of disappointment, but then Anthony added, "At least not yet. Right now I have other things in mind." He gently reached a hand up and brushed her hair away from her neck. "Don't be afraid."

"I'm not afraid." The look in her eyes was one of absolute truth. She was not afraid at all. She was just putty in his hands.

Slowly he leaned in towards her and brought his lips to her neck, and gently bit into the soft, tender flesh of her neck, tasting the sweet nectar of her blood. He concentrated on holding back the meta-toxin in his fangs; he wanted to be able to taste her again. Having every victim a vampire fed off of either change or die was such a shortsighted development on the part of evolution; it made so much more sense for victims to be reusable. It had taken a lot of practice, but Anthony had finally reached a point where those he drank from would only turn if he wanted them to.

When he had drunk to his satisfaction, he released her to find her in a bit of a trance, with her beer cup blithely dropped on the floor. And then Anthony noticed the other girl that was ogling him. About 25, brown hair reaching just past her shoulders, big brown eyes, green tube-top, shiny black shorts, and looking at him like she knew what she was. She began reaching a finger up to her ear. Anthony didn't know what she was up to, but he had a feeling it wouldn't be good.

He fixed his gaze on her eyes and her motions stopped. She stood trapped under his gaze, trying her darnedest to move. She was strong; much stronger than Caitlyn, at any rate. She was doing all she could to fight him. And she really did seem to know what he was. And as he dug deeper—which was much more difficult with this girl than with most of the girls he encountered—and began sensing hostile intent towards him, he began to realize what she had to be.

A hunter.

Won't Electra love that. As much as this constituted a threat, Anthony figured the last thing he should do right now would be to make a scene with the hunter. He had best finish his business with the simpleton, then bring this to Electra's attention. He broke contact the hunter's eyes and looked back into Caitlyn's. He definitely wanted to have more fun with her; she was too easy a plaything to pass up.

"Come back again next week," he whispered to her. "I'll be waiting here for you." That was the usual drill for training a slave: manipulate her a little, arrange a second meeting, then manipulate her some more, and over time she would eventually become his obedient little toy. He imagined this one would be a quick and easy conversion. Hell, he might even have her by their third meeting.

She nodded, her eyes still wide, and then turned and wandered back to where her friends were. With that done with, Anthony turned his attention back to...

Shit! The hunter was gone.

Kaeli shoved her way through the crowd. She'd definitely found a vampire in here, but right now she was more concerned about the victim. She needed to find that girl and get an antidote to her fast. She watched the girl as she turned and walked, following her as best she could, but as she dissolved into the crowd all she could do was guess where she went and try to find her there.

That had been a weird moment there, when the vampire looked at her. She'd happened to spot him feeding by the bar, and was about to report it to Dorian when he'd seen her, and when he looked into her eyes it was like everything in her system just froze. She'd stood there with her hand hovering in mid-motion of going to tap the transmitter in her ear, and she'd tried desperately to move, but as long as he kept staring into her eyes, all she could do was stare back. She couldn't even blink.

What did this mean? What were they dealing with? Did this vampire have some kind of hypnotic power? That would certainly explain why the girl hadn't even put up a struggle. He'd bitten her, and she'd just stood there and let him do it, and now Kaeli needed to find her before she started to change. When that girl walked away from him, she'd completely forgotten about reporting to Dorian; her priorities had just changed in a big way.

When she spotted the blonde hair and rainbow-striped halter-top she was looking for, she moved in, happening to overhear the chat that was going on. "Hey, who was that guy?" some girl said.

The blonde girl looked back towards the bar. "I don't know, he didn't say his name."

"Well you seemed pretty eager to see him."

"I don't know why, he just looked at me and suddenly I just felt like going over and talking to him." She suddenly began sinking to her knees, and one of her friends had to catch her. "Whoa, suddenly I feel kinda faint."

"Pull your hair back."

The girl and her friends instantly looked in Kaeli's direction. "Who are you?" one of them asked.

"Pull your hair back," Kaeli repeated.

"What are you—" the girl started to say.

"Just do it."

Hesitantly, the girl reached a hand up and pulled her hair away from her neck. One of her girlfriends gasped. "Oh my god, Caitlyn, you're bleeding!"

"What?" The girl reached up and touched her neck, her fingers coming away crimson and wet. "Whoa, how'd that happen?"

"So you don't remember exactly what happened with that guy just now?"

The girl—Caitlyn—gave Kaeli a curious look. She pondered for a moment, then said, "Not really, it's all kind of blurry."

"You're gonna have to come with me."

"What? Why?"

Kaeli quickly took her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. "Just trust me. That guy did something to you, and something's going to happen if you don't let me help you. Now come on, this'll be quick." With that, she began walking for the door, pulling the girl along behind her.

"Um, okay ... what did he do to me anyway?"

Kaeli didn't bother to answer. She immediately tapped her transmitter as she walked. "Dorian, I got a girl whose been bitten, needs an antidote fast."

"Gotcha, I'll send Keith to meet you out front."

Andy's voice spoke up: "Did you see the vamp that did it?"

"Yeah, he's over by the bar—" She turned to look in the direction that she saw him before, and found his barstool empty. "Damn, he's gone." She sighed, and said, "Dark hair, long ponytail, red collared shirt ... handsome, in a dark and sinister kind of way."

Looking around the club as she spoke, she suddenly stopped when she spotted the object of discussion up on the landing above. "Wait, there he is, I see him!" And then she saw the woman he was talking to, a redhead in a red leather halter and black leather pants. He seemed to be talking to her, while she seemed to be scanning the crowd below. "He's up on the landing, and he's talking to this woman—"

The woman looked at her. And Kaeli froze. Even from this far, she could see what almost looked like a violet glow coming from her eyes. She was trying to continue talking. She really was. She was trying to turn around and continue out the door. She was trying to just look away, to blink even. She couldn't. It was just like with the guy ... with one little difference. This time she actually felt afraid.

"Kaeli? Kaeli what's going on?"

"Um, hello?" That was the girl, who waved a hand in front of Kaeli's face. Caitlyn's hand coming in the way of their locked eyes proved sufficient to snap Kaeli out of her thrall, and she had no intention of falling back into it. She continued for the door as fast as she could without looking back.

"What's going on here?" the girl asked. Kaeli ignored her again.

By the time they made it to the door, Caitlyn was starting to stagger along, and Kaeli had to pull a little harder to keep her moving. She was quite ungrateful for the way she was being slowed down, particularly when she again passed by the huge bouncer. She'd seen thousands of vampires in her life, but she couldn't remember ever seeing one that intimidated her so much. Andy's earlier assessment seemed fairly accurate: he really did look like Shaq on steroids. He stood at least seven-and-a-half feet tall, and wore a green muscle shirt to show off his musculature of steel, with biceps the size of basketballs. To think of a guy already built like that having vampire strength ... Kaeli shivered, imagining what trying to take him down would be like when he could very conceivably defend himself by throwing a car at them.

"Your friend party a little too hard?" the bouncer asked, looking straight at her. Kaeli tried as hard as she could not to cringe. She knew he could smell the blood from the girl's neck.

"Just can't keep her away from those tequilas," Kaeli played along, meeting his gaze squarely. She turned away from him and continued moving.

"You have a real good night now," the bouncer said ominously. Kaeli paused for a moment, fighting the urge to turn around and jump kick that vampire in the face. As tempting as it was, there was no way that would end well. She composed herself, and kept moving.

When Keith appeared around the corner of the building, Caitlyn began looking a little suspicious. "Who's he?" she asked. Then she turned back to Kaeli and added, "Hey, you still didn't tell me who you are!" As she continued to speak, her head began to sway and her eyes began to flutter, and her voice grew gradually weaker. "I mean ... w-what is this, any ... way ... what's ... going..." Her eyes rolled back and she passed out in Kaeli's arms. The blood loss had finally gotten to her.

Keith pulled one of her arms over his neck while Kaeli did likewise with the other one, and they carefully carried her to the alley where Ethan and Dorian were waiting. "You have the antidote?" Kaeli asked Ethan.

Ethan produced a vial of clear liquid from his belt. "Always."

As Ethan began readying the syringe, Dorian asked, "Kaeli, what happened in there? You suddenly broke off transmission!"

"Well, that woman the vamp I saw talking to, when she looked at me it was like ... like my body just froze up. I was honestly trying to talk to you, but as long as she kept staring into my eyes I genuinely couldn't move. It was so weird..."

Dorian looked at her with fierce determination. "What did she look like? Red hair, purple eyes..."

"Lots of leather," Kaeli nodded. In Dorian's eyes, she could see it: "That was her, wasn't it?"

Dorian nodded. "That's Electra." He hadn't said anything, but Kaeli could tell that his interest in bringing down Electra Rose was about more than just eliminating a powerful and influential vampire. There was something personal about this.

Dorian tapped his transmitter. "Jade! Andy! Kaeli says she's seen her up on the upper level. Red hair, violet eyes, lots of leather. Keep a close eye on her, but do not engage, that's an order."

"Got it," Andy replied. "Yeah, I see her."

"Jade, do you copy?"

"Yeah, I hear you boss. Watch the bitch, but don't attack, I got it."

Ethan had just finished rubbing Caitlyn's arm with cotton and was ready to give her the injection. "There's something else—" Kaeli started to say, when Keith suddenly cut both her and Ethan off:

"Wait a minute! Why isn't Shadow barking?"

All eyes turned down to Ethan's loyal German Shepard, who was watching the situation intently, but remained totally silent. "If she's been bitten," Keith went on, "he should be able to smell the meta-toxin in her blood, and he'd be letting us know, wouldn't he?"