“Bring her back to me, Vein. Bring back my life.”
~* ~
Vein took the private elevator down to the garage level. His car waited for him, as he had known it would. The others were already in the back, and the trunk was loaded with the equipment they expected to need. He’d only visited Johndrow out of a sensation of grudging respect. If Vanessa saw something in this man to look up to, the least Vein could do was to acknowledge it. That was as far as he was willing to go, however.
He had lied to the elder on several counts, or, at the very least he hadn’t been fully forthcoming. Foremost among the things he’d left out of their conversation was the fact that he was pretty certain he already knew where Vanessa was being kept. He’d followed the weak thread of the blood bond since the night of her capture, and after countless weaving, spiraling drives up and down the streets of the city, he’d managed to pinpoint where that bond was strongest.
Since the meeting with DeChance, Vein had been obsessed with two things. He needed to find and free Vanessa from whomever, or whatever had taken her so easily, and he wanted revenge on the magic man and the woman. Vein had worked long years to earn the respect of his small band of followers. They weren’t old in the blood, and there wasn’t a very bright bulb among them, but they were loyal. Seeing him bested publicly, and with such indifference, had been a blow to his ego, and to the loyalty and courage of his small posse. For the moment it was on the back burner, but it was an insult that couldn’t be ignored. That’s how Vein saw it, anyway.
He stepped off the curb as the sleek limo pulled out of its assigned spot and drew up beside him. The rear door opened and Vein slid inside. The others waited, all dressed in the long dark overcoats and dark sunglasses they preferred. It was an affectation, and Vein knew it. The world around them changed every few decades. Styles came and went, and with each transformation of that outer world, a more subtle shift ran through Vein’s own. This new wave was born of bad movies, old westerns, cheesy gothic novels and a simple desire to be “cool” that had not faded with the years. Vein was young enough to have clear memories of the time before he’d met Vanessa, and even in those early days of America, the long coat and gruff demeanor was in style. It hadn’t changed that much over the years, and for the first time in the history of humanity, vampires were “cool” just by existing. It was a good time to be undead, and Vein intended to make the most of it, regardless of the edicts and warnings of the elders. It was his time.
“Did you find everything?” he asked.
A blonde man in the front seat nodded. His hair was cut in a flat top, and his collar was turned up, shielding his face from view. This was Bruno, who was the youngest in the blood, but had been the oldest at the time of his transformation. He appeared to be in his mid forties, and it bothered him that he didn’t fit in well with the others, all of whom had given up the breathing life in their twenties. More than once he’d been mistaken for their father, or some sort of teacher with his class on a field trip. He was tall, broad, and a half-notch smarter than the others. Vein counted on him when there was anything more than the simplest of planning involved.
“Right here,” Bruno said, patting the seat between himself and the driver, who paid no attention to him at all. Kali had been eighteen when she was taken, and beautiful. She, like Johndrow, had been taken against her will, and her attitude had never improved. She hung with Vein and his crew because they paid little attention to the rules, and because Vein had promised her that eventually he would help her hunt down the one who had changed her. She didn’t speak unless spoken to, and most of the others steered clear of her when Vein wasn’t present. She liked that just fine.
Vein watched her for a moment as she pulled out of the private garage and onto the streets. He felt a special kinship with Kali that he lacked with the others, and he knew he’d have to pursue it eventually. Everything in its time.
“We had a little trouble with some of it,” Bruno said, breaking the silence. “That was expected, though, and we handled it.”
“We’ll deal with that when it’s over,” Vein said, dismissing the matter. “If we succeed, no one is going to begrudge us the few things we took, and if we don’t?”
He shrugged, and none of his companions felt compelled to fill in the blanks. If they failed they weren’t likely to be coming back at all — at least not in any condition for immediate punishment. All of them had issues with the elders in one way or another, and this was put up or shut up time. They’d been saying for years, at least since they linked their various cars to the “Vein train,” that they knew how to handle themselves, now it was time to prove it.
The sun had dropped the final few feet below the horizon and the city was drenched in twilight. Some street lights flickered on, others awaited more complete darkness. Businesses were caught in that dead zone between daylight and fluorescent splendor. Neon kicked in here and there, but was mostly silent, that gaseous, humming incandescence saved for the darker shadows. Bright lights to keep the city safe, dark, beautiful colored neon to lure them back into shadows. Vein loved the twilight.
They saw their goal long before they reached it. The Tefft Complex was a huge, gleaming structure of reflective glass windows, steel, and concrete. Lights winked out of offices up and down the north, east, and west face of the building, visible from anywhere in the downtown area. It wasn’t the tallest building in San Valencez, but it was one of the most imposing, and, as Vein had discovered, it had a secret. Like a giant, metallic bone stretching up into the darkening sky, he knew it had a core that wasn’t visible to the casual observer. The Tefft Complex had a hollow core, and it was in that central, sealed section he knew Vanessa was being held.
There were several businesses housed in the complex. There was a small, foreign bank, a jewelry importing firm, an insurance company, and even a small coffee shop on the first floor. Banks of elevators rode smoothly up and down the walls of the skyscraper, and if you walked in through any of the main entrances, you’d see that they ran in a tight circle near the center of the rear wall. The southern face of the complex had no windows, and the elevator shafts did not actually run across that back facing wall — and they were not all visible.
It had taken some doing, but once Vein had determined he had the right building, he’d started digging. When it came to the darker side of the city, what seemed apparent on the surface was almost always deceiving. The Tefft Complex proved no exception to the rule. There were at least two elevators in that structure that could not be accessed through the lobby. There was also a large section of the building itself that was accessible by no obvious means, but that certainly existed.
A little more digging, and he was certain he’d found the flaw in the facade. While the elevators didn’t open into the main lobby of the building, there were maintenance halls between the shafts, and they extended to the hidden shafts, as well as the others. Private elevators weren’t uncommon, and they required the same types of maintenance and service that public elevators did. Vein and his crew were very adept at climbing, and it didn’t seem likely that an elevator shaft would cause them much trouble.
What they might find once they entered that closed level he could only guess, and the guesswork was what made him nervous. Johndrow was right about one thing — they were less equipped than DeChance against most magical attacks. Strength and speed were on their side, but the innate weaknesses of undeath were too widely known and easy to emulate by magical means.
It was a problem. Vein had sent his followers crawling through all the darker pits of the city in search of charms, protections, and weapons that might give them an edge, or, barring that keep them from being destroyed. The haul was a small one, but surprisingly potent. He grinned, thinking about it.
On the corner of Oak and Vine, there was a small gift shop that specialized in occult items. Though she wasn’t always there, it was known that this shop was run by the woman called Amethyst, the one who’d humiliated Vein so easily in the alley. Her specialty was amulets, charms, and crystals, and though most of what she sold in the shop was powerless, meaningless junk, you could find the better items if you knew where, and how, to look. As it turned out, Vein wasn’t the only one in the city attracted to Kali. Amethyst had an apprentice.
Kali had talked the guy out of five amulets that would protect them from magical detection, and one larger crystal meant to deflect spells. In addition, Vein had purchased a blood crystal. There was little magic available to the undead, but magic didn’t always reside in the practitioner. Often it was imbedded in an object — a talisman, or a scroll where the words were enchanted to act of their own volition once the bearer spoke them aloud. Blood crystals were among the only enchantments unique to the undead, and Vein had gone to a lot of expense to acquire the one he wore around his neck.
The crystal had only one purpose. Once he placed a drop of his own blood to it, the stone would swing out to the length of the thong that held it around his neck, and it would stretch in the direction of the strongest blood bond. In this case, he intended to use it, once they’d managed to break through the security of the inner building, to
