Chapter One
The view from Hampstead Heath was deceptive. Lights blazed in the distance. They signaled security. Safety.
Like I said—deceptive.
“Avoid the water,” I advised. “There might be a parasitic demon in it.”
Kami cast a glance at the pond. “If there isn’t a demon, there’s definitely some other kind of parasite I don’t want any part of. Can you believe people actually used to swim in that mud hole?”
Once upon a time Hampstead Heath was the largest park in Britannia City. That was before the Great Eruption when ten of the world’s supervolcanoes threw a party at the same time. They invited all the monsters they’d been hiding and triggered the Eternal Night because sunlight couldn’t penetrate the thick layer of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. Vampires eventually seized power and Hampstead Heath was overrun by creatures great and small. Residents avoided the area if they could help it. Whereas Hyde Park and Regent’s Park adapted to the changes, Hampstead Heath succumbed to it like the Titanic to an iceberg.
“Seems quiet here. What exactly are we looking for?” I asked.
“The complaint wasn’t very specific. That’s why I said to load up on weapons.” Kami inclined her head in my direction. “And you apparently chose to ignore the directive. I only see Babe.”
I sliced the air with my beloved axe. “I thought you just wanted an excuse to test out the new crossbow.”
Kamikaze Marwin loved weapons the way vampires loved blood. The stocky blonde relished the way they felt in her hand, their sound when they made contact with their intended target, and the damage they could inflict. I discovered this fact about her very early in our friendship when we were two frightened teenaged orphans fighting to survive in the tunnels of Britannia City. If there was a discarded piece of metal or a scrap of rubber, rest assured Kami found a way to weaponize it. Now she acted as the banner’s resident expert. If there was a new weapon making the rounds, she’d hunt it down and master it before the rest of the knights managed to learn its name.
She patted the strap of the new crossbow. “That may have been an added incentive.”
I peered at the expanse of darkness. “If they’d invest in more lights in the park, they might reduce the number of threats.”
“Or they could try a ward.”
“That’s too tricky. They’d end up keeping everybody out.”
Kami shrugged. “Seems like that’s the end result anyway.”
A flash of movement close to the ground caught my eye. “On your left.”
“Saw it.” Kami’s voice dropped to a whisper. “What are you thinking?”
“Not sure. Too small to be anything significant.”
She cast me a sidelong glance. “Can you win it over?”
I reached out with my mind and tried to latch on to the nearest creature.
“Anything?” Kami prompted.
“Nothing noteworthy. Pretty sure it’s a rat.” And you couldn’t swing a cat in this city without hitting a rat the size of a feral hog. Vampires and rats were the clear winners of the Eternal Night.
“Let’s talk to the client,” Kami suggested. “Maybe he can give us more details.”
Gerald Latham lived nearby, hence his cry for help. According to Gerald, he’d requested help from his landlord, but the plea was summarily dismissed. Mitchell Dansker owned half the buildings between Hampstead Heath and Hampstead Village, as well as a smattering of other buildings gifted to the vampire by House Lewis as a show of gratitude for helping the royal vampire family secure the city during the Battle of Britannia. It seemed that Dansker liked owning properties more than he liked caring for those who resided in them. Thanks to a community fund request, Gerald scraped together enough money to pay our fee. Given the lengths he went to, I wanted to take his complaint seriously, but I was beginning to wonder whether Dansker was right to ignore the request. Just because the vampire had a reputation for callousness didn’t mean his decision was a bad one. Even a stopped clock was right twice a day.
The avenue of houses between the Heath and the Village were once grand historic homes worth millions of pounds when the city was still known as London. Gerald Latham lived in a ground-floor flat of one such house—a detached Edwardian—and the rest of the 7500-square-foot house was occupied by two other families. It was the kind of house my mother would’ve stopped to admire and then regaled me with facts about its construction and likely inhabitants prior to the Eternal Night.
Looking at the red brick facade, I felt a pang of loss. My mother had been a bright spark whose light still managed to influence my daily life.
Kami rang the buzzer for Gerald’s flat. Minutes stretched as we awaited a response. Finally the front door opened and a craggy face appeared.
“I didn’t hire you to fight the critters here. You’re supposed to be out there.” He jerked his chin toward the park.
Kami simply smiled. “Gerald Latham, I presume?”
“No, I’m the queen. Who the bloody hell do you think I am?”
I tried a friendly smile. “Mr. Latham, may we come in? We’d like to ask you a few questions that would help us complete our assignment.”
He shook his head. “Women. Always needing more. I knew I should’ve hired a knight from a regular banner, but they were more expensive.” He yanked open the door. “Come in, but wipe your feet. If you’ve been traipsing through the park, you’ll bring the mud with you.”
Kami and I exchanged glances and each took a turn wiping our feet on the doormat.
Well, this would be fun.
Despite the interior changes, the house managed to retain its charm. There were gleaming wooden floors and a set of curved windows at the front that filled my heart with the kind of joy usually reserved for animals and chocolate.
“Grade II Listed?” I asked.
Gerald looked at me with keen interest. “Heard of that, have you?”
“My mother was a history teacher.”
“Usually I’d moan about vampires changing everything, but I’m glad they got rid of them listings or else I wouldn’t be able to live in a place like this.” He glanced upward, presumably to admire the cornices on the ceiling since that was the only detail worth ogling. “The landlord is rotten in plenty of ways, but he keeps this building looking spiffy.”
“We need to know about the creatures,” Kami said. “We did a brief survey of the park, but all we saw were rats.”
Gerald tugged his earlobe. “Exactly.”
I peered at him. “Exactly what?”
“Rats. They’re infesting the whole area. Any minute we’re going to get a new plague and you’ll know where it originated.” He jabbed an angry finger in the direction of the park.
“Mr. Latham, you don’t hire a knight because of rats,” Kami explained. “They’re a regular feature of city life.”
“But they’ve been digging in my rubbish bins,” he objected.
Kami sighed. “They’re rats. That’s what they do.”
“They haven’t bothered with the bins until recently. They’re growing bolder every day, the bastards.” Gerald folded his arms and scowled. “I should enjoy a reasonable expectation of privacy. I can’t do that if I have to worry about rats invading my space.”
“If you’ve thrown something away in the bin, doesn’t that mean you no longer want it?” Kami asked. “Why would you expect any privacy in something you don’t own anymore?”
He scoffed. “What do they teach knights nowadays? You two know nothing about the law.”
“We’re not adjudicators,” I reminded him.
“Get rid of them rats. That’s what I’m paying you for.”
Kami blew stray hairs out of her eye. “Technically you haven’t paid us anything yet.”
“And I won’t if you don’t take care of them rats. I’m tired of finding my bins knocked over and dragged halfway down the street. Mrs. Lundy found a letter I’d discarded and she’s four houses down. Read it from start to finish, too, the nosy thing. It’s not just the rubbish either. My upstairs neighbor has a baby and she’s afraid to take the boy out in the pram.”
One of his comments stayed with me. “You mentioned they only started digging in the bins recently. Did anything change, like maybe you’re using a new type of bin?”
His scowl intensified. “Blame the victim, is that it?”
“No, Mr. Latham. I’m only trying to help. There’ve always been rats in the park and if they haven’t been this much of a nuisance before, there has to be a reason why that’s changed, right?”
He hesitated. “I suppose.”
Look at me making sense notwithstanding my lady parts. Gold star.
“If you can think of anything that’s different…” I began.
He ran his tongue along the front of his teeth, a habit I detested. “There’s a new family moved in next door a couple weeks ago. Maybe they’re drawing the rats closer to the neighborhood.”
“Why would a new family attract rats?” Kami asked. “This street is full of flats. You must have people moving in and out all the time.”
His face hardened. “Because they’re vampires, that’s why.”
Ah. I was beginning to grasp the true reason for Gerald Latham’s complaint.
“Mr. Latham, I can understand why you’re not overjoyed having vampires as neighbors, but last I checked, vampires don’t attract vermin,” I said.
Kami’s face grew flushed as the realization hit her, too. “What did you think would happen? We’d march next door and rough them up for you? Scare them out of the neighborhood? That’s not what we do.”
“You knights have a certain reputation. I only want you to make it clear what will happen if they make trouble for the rest of us.”
I blew out a breath. “They have every right to live here, same as you.”
He balled his hands into fists. “Not the same as me. They occupy most of the city. This street may be owned by one, but the rest of us are good people who don’t need the threat of vampires in our own backyards. My other neighbors upstairs—their girl Kari even ran off after the vamps moved in. I guarantee it was because of the son. That boy has trouble written all over him.”
In Gerald’s mind, it wasn’t really that his expectation of privacy had been violated. It was that his sense of security was under threat. His home was his castle and that castle now had a moat filled with alligators.
“Have the rats really been attacking the bins?” I asked.
“Yes,” he bellowed. “And if you’re not going to do anything about them, you can take your leave.” He ushered us toward the door. “Next time I’ll gather the extra coin and hire a real knight.” He glared at us for good measure before slamming the door.
Kami and I stood on the doorstep in a stupor.
“Which reputation of ours do you think he was referring to?” she finally asked.
“Not the violent one. If we were as violent as everyone claims, we’d be thrilled to blow up a bunch of rats and rough up a vampire family.” I glanced down the quiet street. “To be fair, I feel like most people feel that way, even the ones without violent tendencies.”
There was no love lost between me and rats. I’d endured more than my share of them as a teenager. Even so, I had no interest in wasting valuable time and resources protecting Mr. Latham’s garbage and pushing his bigoted agenda.
“Why don’t we at least take a look at the bins while we’re here?” I suggested. “Maybe we’ll notice something unusual.”
“Good idea. He did say the issues only started recently, so it could be down to something he’s overlooked.”
I eyed the house next door. “Because he’s been too busy looking at the neighbors as the cause.”
We ambled around the corner to the alley between the two houses where the bins were located. There were three sets of green bins on one side and only one bin on the other. I wondered whether Dansker displaced any human tenants to make room for one vampire family.
The row of bins began to shake and Kami and I drew to a halt.
A creature exploded from behind the bins. The containers shot in all directions like oversized shrapnel and the contents followed suit. The stench alone was enough to knock me off my feet. Wet noodles slapped my face. I spit one out of my mouth and focused on the creature looming in front of us.
A fox.
Not the kind of regular fox I occasionally saw slinking down an alley. This one was larger and more substantial. Like the oversized rats, this one seemed to be on steroids.
It wasn’t the rats messing with Gerald’s beloved rubbish. It was this guy.
Kami aimed her crossbow at the fox.
I scrambled between them. “No, don’t!”
The fox saw an opportunity and took off.
Kami lowered her crossbow. “I wasn’t planning to kill it. I only wanted to scare it away.”
I glanced in the direction of the retreating fox. “Mission accomplished.”
Kami stared at the mess. “That thing was big, right?”
“It wasn’t small.”
“What’s going on here?” a voice demanded.
I turned to see a couple watching us with a mixture of interest and revulsion.
“You live here?” Kami asked. She pulled a noodle from her hair and tossed it on the ground.
“Upstairs.” The man pointed to the flat above Gerald’s.
“You have the missing daughter,” I said.
“She isn’t missing. She just ran off,” the man said. “She’ll come back when she’s tired of being cold and hungry.” He slung an arm around his wife’s shoulders and squeezed. “Isn’t that right?”
The woman nodded, but I could see a question in her dark eyes.
“Do you think something happened between her and the vampire boy next door?” I asked.
They seemed equally astonished by the question. “We haven’t even met them,” the man said. “Kari’s been upset about other things. Teenage girl drama. I’m sure you know all about that.”
Kami and I remained quiet. Our teenage drama would have been remarkably different from someone like Kari who had two parents and a roof over her head.
“If she doesn’t come home, feel free to contact us.” I produced a business card and handed it to the mother, but the father intercepted it.
“Thank you, but I have every confidence she’ll arrive back home within the week.” He tucked the card into his pocket and I had no doubt I’d never hear from them whether Kari came home or not.
“Have you noticed a problem with rats encroaching on your territory?” I asked.
“Did Mr. Latham call you?” The man laughed. “I swear he gets more paranoid every day.”
“Yes, we’ve noticed it,” the woman said. “But this is the city. There are always going to be rats.”
“And foxes,” Kami added.
The woman shot her a quizzical look. “We had foxes in the rubbish, too?”
“What do you think caused this mess?” I asked.
“Don’t worry,” Kami said. “We just scared one half to death, so I doubt it will come back to bother you.”
“Did you wound it?” the woman asked.
“We don’t kill defenseless animals if that’s what you’re asking,” I said. “We told Mr. Latham the same thing. It just seemed hungry and frightened.”
The man glanced at his wife. “I’ll set traps. I don’t want to risk you getting attacked if you come out here alone.”
“Honestly, you’re better off securing your bins,” I told them. “That’s the temptation. If you take that away, they have less reason to be so close to the house.”
He nodded. “Thanks for the tip. I assume part of your service includes cleaning up the mess you make?”
Kami opened her mouth with what I knew would be a smart remark, so I shook my head at her. It wouldn’t take us long to clean this up. I had the feeling if we didn’t, his wife would be the one out here on her hands and knees.
“We’ll take care of it,” I promised.
He maneuvered his wife around the corner of the house toward the front door.
Once we finished the thankless task, Kami looked at me and smiled through the muck on her face. “I could use a drink after this.”
“I don’t think there’s a pub in the city that would be willing to have us in this condition.” Not even Hole, which was exactly as its name suggested.
“The Crown then. Simon won’t mind. His clientele are almost all shifters anyway.”
I snorted. “I dare you to suggest that shifters smell in the middle of the pub. I’ll be the one in the corner belly laughing.”
Kami nudged me with her elbow. “No, you wouldn’t. You’d have my back.”
I would. Kami was my best friend and I’d protect her no matter how many shifters she knowingly insulted. It was part of our unwritten pact that we made as teenagers. In this world of darkness and uncertainty, at least we knew we could count on each other.
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