When a Stranger Comes Knocking
“Who the hell are you?”
“Excuse me?” the thin man asked, his brows furrowed behind his horn-rimmed glasses.
I sighed, disgusted at myself. I hadn’t meant to immediately come across as an asshole. That was never a sound tactic for being welcomed with open arms at a stranger’s doorway. Unfortunately, he’d surprised me. I’d been expecting a very different welcome.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not sure how things would have gone down otherwise. Best case would have been arms around my neck and luscious lips pressed against my own. Worst case would have found me immediately vaporized. What I hadn’t been expecting, though, was that the person who would answer the door wouldn’t be the blonde woman I was secretly - or not, depending on who you asked - in love with.
Turns out, I was batting zero.
“I think you have the wrong address,” Horn-rims said as he began closing the door.
“Wait! I’m looking for Sheila.” Saying her name aloud was odd, almost wrong - as if I were a child caught saying a curse word. Although it was cool outside, pinpricks of sweat broke out on my brow. Name-dropping had the desired effect, though. Recognition flashed in the man’s eyes and the door’s progress paused.
I realized that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. I’d stalked...err, followed...Sheila on Facebook for almost the entire duration we were coworkers at Hopskotchgames.com - long enough to know she didn’t have a brother. This fucker wasn’t old enough to be her dad. Thus, I held on to the thin hope that he was a visiting cousin or maybe some neighbor that had dropped by to borrow a cup of sugar and was just about to leave.
Yeah, I was grasping at straws.
The man looked at me expectantly. Blurting out nothing but a first name probably wasn’t going to get me invited to dinner.
“Sheila O’Connell. I’m a friend of hers.”
His beady green eyes narrowed behind the thick lenses and he frowned. “I’m sorry, but nobody by that name lives here. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”
Duh! I guess it would make sense that she’d at least be using a different last name. Remington had figured out her identity and tried to use her family as a bargaining chip against her. It hadn’t turned out so well for him and his team, but she had no way of knowing whether the information had been shared amongst her potential enemies. Also, it was quite possible she didn’t trust me not to spill my guts about her.
“She might be using an alias.” Even as the words left my mouth, I realized how utterly fucking stupid they sounded. I might as well have told this guy I was looking for Carlos the Jackal.
An unpleasant grimace creased his mouth and he sniffed the air. “Have you been drinking?”
“Um...” Oh crap. That sure as hell wasn’t going to help things.
I’d circled the surrounding neighborhood several times over the past hour, working up the nerve to approach the house. When that hadn’t panned out, I’d stopped at a strip mall a few blocks away and popped into a local chain restaurant - one that had a bar. A couple of shots of liquid courage were just what the doctor ordered.
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t my smartest move. A tequila-soaked stranger standing on the front stoop well after dark was bad enough these days. Hell, that didn’t even count the sword I was holding - wrapped in a towel, sure, but probably obvious to anyone with half a brain.
“Listen, pal, I don’t know who you are, but you need to back up and leave quietly. We don’t want any trouble here, but I won’t hesitate to call the cops.”
I couldn’t blame this guy for wanting to slam the door in my face and then dial 911 as fast as he could. Wait a second...we?
“Hold that thought,” I replied, reaching into my pocket.
His body tensed up and his eyes widened as his civilized brain tried to make sense of the fight or flight impulses racing through it. I’d been in his position not so long ago. Had I actually been packing a gun, his hesitation would have cost him.
It was going to cost him anyway, but in a slightly different manner.
I used the old vacuum cleaner salesman cliché and slid one foot over the threshold so he couldn’t immediately slam the door in my face. It was your basic wooden model - nothing overly reinforced - and it wouldn’t stop me if it came down to it, but I really didn’t want to have to force the issue. If Sheila was indeed inside, the last thing I wanted was to come crashing in like a bull in a china shop. That could spook her, a scenario that could end very badly for me.
What I had in mind, instead, was slightly more subtle, or so I hoped.
I pulled the glass vial from my pocket and held it up.
The look of tension eased from his face ever so slightly, only to be replaced with one of confusion. “Is that blood?”
“You betcha.” I uncorked the stopper. “Bottoms up!”
And with that, I downed the contents and waited for it to work its magic on me.
♦ ♦ ♦
It had only been three days since we’d returned from our epic ass-kicking up in Boston. Following the string of revelations that had followed, we’d all taken a day to get our respective thoughts back in order.
Though chaos began to reign in many places as the world edged ever closer to Armageddon, other areas hadn’t quite caught the hint yet. Hell, sitting inside my apartment in Brooklyn, one could have almost been fooled into thinking things were pretty much normal. That is, if a vampire conversing over a couple of cups of blood-infused coffee with his human roommates was normal.
As it turned out, one of the seemingly monumental tasks before us was a bit less daunting than we had originally assumed. Upon learning that Sheila, the last Icon of Faith - a girl who was capable of melting my heart in more ways than one - was alive, I immediately formulated a plan to track her down.
Using my not-so-insignificant programming skills, I began to code up an algorithm that would search online newsfeeds for any mention of a blonde warrior glowing with a brilliant white light. Assuming the power grid didn’t falter and she was keeping busy with saving people and other stereotypical Icon activities, I figured it wouldn’t be long before we’d triangulate her position and make contact.
Even that was unnecessary, though.
I had just finished writing up a subroutine to filter out any fetish websites from the results when Ed finally spilled the beans: the dickhead had a phone number for her.
“The fuck, dude?” I had so eloquently responded.
“I’m only supposed to use it in an emergency.”
“And the end of the world isn’t an emergency?”
“A company emergency,” he clarified. Ed ran Iconic Efficiencies, Sheila’s company, in her stead. “Besides...”
“Let me guess. She didn’t want you to tell me that either.”
His silence was all the answer I needed. Fuck!
“If it helps, it’s not a direct number; just a voicemail service. The point was for me to leave her a message and she’d call back.”
Despite being royally pissed off, I had to grudgingly admire that. She was taking precautions - probably more than I would have. Well, okay; it was definitely more than I had. Upon escaping from Switzerland, the nerve center of the vampire world, I’d done little more than make a beeline straight for home.
Ed wasn’t comfortable calling Sheila and outright asking where she was, and I was forced to agree it was probably a poor idea. If she truly was that squirrelly about the forces of darkness hunting her down, she’d uproot and run the second she smelled any deception - or so I assumed. A small part of me insisted that she was no more likely to go all black ops than I was, but the fantasy of her living out some Jason Bourne-style escape was too hot to resist.
Thankfully, my roommate was a lazy fuck at heart. All of his call logs were still on his cell phone. The concept of cleaning them out had seemingly never crossed his mind. A little online snooping confirmed that her calls had all come from payphones - jeez, I didn’t even realize those still existed - from the area in and around Rochester.
That made sense. Sheila’s family was originally from upstate New York. It wouldn’t be too much of a stretch that she’d want to be close enough to them in case anything happened.
Sally had taken care of the rest, calling in a few favors with a coven up that way. She told them to keep an eye out for an escaped thrall that coincidentally happened to match Sheila’s description.
I wasn’t too happy with getting other vampires involved, but her logic was hard to argue with. They knew the place and had the numbers to canvas a wide area.
“What if they find her and get too close?” I asked.
“She’s the Icon.” Quite frankly, that was really all the answer I needed.
Suffice it to say, it was only a couple more days before we had an address.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
I raised an eyebrow at the question, a smirk forming on my lips.
Sally gritted her teeth. “Before you continue along whatever sick train of thought you’re following, let me make it very clear that the only one who would be screaming is you...and not in a good way.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I lied, feigning innocence. “But to answer your question, I probably need to do this on my own.”
“I’m not disagreeing. I just think it’s stupid. You can barely say your own name around this girl, and yet, somehow, you think you’re gonna convince her to not only trust you again, but to join us on a suicide mission to kill this Vehron fucker?”
I winced at the thought of the other Freewill, the one I’d accidentally set free, the one who was infinitely more badass than me, the one who’d killed a good friend of ours and badly beaten another.
Pouring salt in that otherwise unpleasant wound, Sally had continued. “Keep in mind it’s also getting dicey heading north. Covens are dropping off the grid left and right. I have a feeling our friend has been recruiting.”
“What about this Brighton Coven?” I asked, referring to the vamps who’d sniffed Sheila out. “Think they’re still trustworthy?”
“Of course not. They’re vampires.”
“I mean, do you think he’s gotten to them yet?”
“No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“They answered my call.”
She had a point there.
“Be careful, Bill,” she said at last, her tone serious. “You just got back a few days ago, after being missing for months, and...”
“And...?” I asked, unable to help the grin on my face.
“And I just offered you a job in Pandora Coven. Pissing off your new master isn’t a good way to start a working relationship.”
“I’ll be careful. I’ve got a plan.”
“You? A plan?”
“Yes, it is possible.”
“Fine, but just in case...”
It was then that she reached into her purse and handed the vial to me. It was sealed so there was no scent, but the sight of the red liquid inside immediately registered with my brain.
“Is that...?”
“My blood. It’s not much, but it might be enough of a boost in case of emergency.”
I hesitated for a moment before accepting it, a lump forming in my throat. For all of her queen bitch attitude, I sometimes forgot what a good friend Sally could be. “Thank y...”
Of course, then she had to go and ruin it. “And if you ever tell anyone what I just did, I will smash that thing and shove the broken glass so far up your ass that you’ll be shitting sand for a month.”
Ah yes, I was truly feeling the love.
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