Chapter Twenty-One
Christopher
Sal drove us around, letting me sniff out any scents of magic as we made our way through the city.
I had the window rolled down a little, letting in the air and scents.
I was in my wolf form, allowing me to pick up scents I wouldn’t be able to in my human form.
Benji sat next to me in the back, holding out his phone with the map already open in case I spotted something.
We drove around for an hour before I got the tiniest hint of wrongness.
It usually meant rogues, so we followed the scent, Benji guiding Sal through the streets as I focused on the scent.
We stopped in front of a rundown hotel, clearly waiting on some kind of reconstruction or demolition from the warning signs outside.
I shifted back and got dressed quickly as I recalled the scents. “I think there’s a few rogues in there and I smell a bit of vampire as well.”
“Witches?” Sal asked from the front seat.
I shook my head. “Not even a lingering scent of one.”
“This is fucking weird,” Benji muttered, pocketing his phone.
“I’ll go out first, then both of you,” Sal ordered and we nodded. It was best to follow Sal’s lead since he’d been alive the longest. Besides, I trusted him to protect us from any harm.
We followed Sal as he made his way around the hotel, clearly looking for another way in.
There wasn’t much activity around this area, mostly warehouses and other buildings looking like they needed some work done, but it would be the safest way inside.
We moved closely together, each of us on the lookout for danger.
It didn’t seem like there were any traps or surveillance out here, even with the smell getting more potent.
I could even smell it in my human form. Benji was the only one of us who couldn’t sniff out rogues, but even he seemed to notice the changes as we found the back exit.
Sal pressed his fingers in a shush motion and pointed behind us.
There was a scrap yard of sorts, looking abandoned like the other buildings.
Right behind it was what looked to be a vast forest. He then pointed to the wired fence and it was clear where the rogues had moved through to get to my town.
There was even fabric sticking to the fence, obvious enough to spot from a distance.
We’d found the source. I was sure of it.
Benji’s soft hand found mine briefly and squeezed.
I saw him do the same to Sal before we quietly opened the door.
It was endearing to see his thoughts of us had changed for the better.
He obviously cared for us now and I wondered if it was my werewolf’s doing or simply Benji being tired of denying something good in his life.
Sal and I would be good, perfect even. We would be everything Benji needed.
I had no doubts about that. Sal and Benji were everything I’d ever wanted for myself.
Before Sal could open the door completely, the smell of rain came and thunder boomed in the distance.
It was like a warning from the gods to either get inside or run away.
No matter what they wished for, we went in.
We entered into a hallway that smelled dusty and damp.
The burgundy carpet underneath us was mostly black in color from the many years of service and it was so worn down it didn’t even feel like carpet but more like floorboards as we moved further inside.
Benji had his gun out, something I hadn’t even realized he’d taken with him, but was glad he did.
Sal moved silently as we neared a partly open door, his eyes glowing red for a second.
Just that, one second they glowed and the next they didn’t.
He snarled and, to our surprise, kicked the door in. So much for subtlety.
“Gabriella,” he growled, and we hurried in after him. A vampire sat on a run-down couch, her clothes were filthy and it was obvious she was drained and needed some blood soon. She was alone and clearly knew Sal from the way her eyes lit up with recognition.
“Salizar,” she breathed, then smiled at our man like she had every right too. “And you brought me dinner,” she purred.
I blinked and she was in front of Benji, her fangs out and ready to tear into him. I blinked again and she was across the room, her face a bloodied mess. Sal looked fucking hot with her blood splattered against his skin, his fangs out and snarling at her.
“Mine,” he growled, then flew over to her just to kick her while she was already down. I held Benji in my arms, feeling him shake. He hadn’t expected to be so up close to a vampire today, and I mentally slapped myself for even allowing her to get close in the first place.
“S-sorry,” she mumbled, clearly too drained of blood to properly heal herself.
“What are you doing here?” Sal demanded, ignoring her apology.
“I’m trying to save Tom,” she sobbed, finally sensing Sal wasn’t her friend.
“Tom?” Sal tilted his head. “I don’t understand, are you not the one making all the rogues?
” If she wasn’t we were doomed. Sal had made a lot of noise and if any other vampires were here, they wouldn’t be happy.
Rogues we could deal with, seeing as they were sluggish in the daylight hours and just one open curtain would kill them.
“I am,” she confessed. “To get that damn book!”
So, she knew of the book, great. At least she didn’t seem like a mastermind, being here all alone and filthy.
“For Tom?” Sal questioned, clearly trying to piece this together for all of us.
“He’s a rogue,” she sobbed. “He wished for me to turn him and we thought since he was my bonded, he would survive it.”
Ah, so she needed the book to save her lover.
Sal ignored her sob story and asked, “How did you learn about the book?”
“A witch,” she sniffed, clearly lying as her eyes looked away from Sal as she spoke.
“I searched all over the world for a cure and finally found a witch who told me of the book. But the book had been stolen from them. They promised me I could get the answers on how to fix Tom if I helped them get the book.”
“They seem very interested in getting the book back,” Sal mused. I really hoped he knew she was lying.
“Very,” she replied with a fervent nod. “It contains vital spells for them and potions they need. They won’t tell me much, but I know they need it. They’ve sacrificed their own to get it back.” She then frowned, looking confused. “How did you know I was the one making the rogues?”
“Because I’m protecting the book,” he replied, taking her head clean off.
“Zar!” Benji protested. “We could’ve gotten more out of her!”
“She was minutes away from entering blood rage,” Sal spat, kicking her limp body away from us. “Either the witches refused to feed her, or she’d used too much of her own blood to create the rogues, no matter what reason, she was left on the brink of going feral.”
“Seriously?” I asked, eyeing the dead vampire on the ground. “They could’ve been killed themselves if that happened.”
Sal shrugged. “I doubt they’d let her live long enough, which is why we need to hurry.”
“You think they’re on the way to kill her off?” Benji asked, looking around the room in horror.
“That, or they’re done with her and won’t return here.”
“They’ve never been here,” I informed them, knowing that with certainty. “I smell no witches or magic.”
“Neither do I,” Sal sighed. “But I do smell rogues. Let’s take care of them and return to the hotel. We need to find the witches after, but that likely won’t happen today with no leads.”
“How did you know her?” Benji asked, pointing to her corpse.
“She was working on becoming a member of my coven a few hundred years back. She got rejected because of Tom.”
“What did Tom do?” I asked, thinking there couldn’t be much a human could do to offend a vampire, or at least not much a sane human could do.
“Tom tried to seduce Altaur into transitioning him. He thought that was what Gabriella had done when she bit him but instead he woke up tied to the vampire forever. He’d never wanted her.
He just wanted to become a vampire. I doubt Gabriella ever realized the truth,” Sal explained, heading for the hallway.
“You might need to shift for the next part. I sense around fifty newly turned rogues.”
“Is that why she was so close to going feral? She’d turned them all today?” Benji asked, taking my clothes as I stripped.
“Perhaps,” Sal mused. “What I’m wondering is how they can keep making so many rogues without regular vampires in the mix.”
That was something I’d wondered about as well. It was a fifty-fifty chance most of the time if a vampire turned rogue or regular, and that was if we dismissed the thirty percent chance of not surviving at all. Many didn’t. Also… “How could they even get this many people here without notice?”
“Another question I would like the answer to,” Sal said, gesturing for me to get on with it. I just smirked and shifted, my black wolf taking over once again. I could smell everything with clarity and moved to walk in front, guiding us to the rogues.
“I smell mud and damp ground, a scent that feels foreign here,” I informed them, sniffing around the hallway. Yes, it was definitely damp earth, like a muddied forest ground, or similar.
“Maybe a basement?” Benji supplied, looking cute with my clothes around his neck and waist. He needed both hands to shoot and none of us had thought about bringing a backpack with us.
“Could be,” Sal said. “I mostly just smell the rogues. No humans, though, so she must’ve turned all of them.”
“But then again, those who didn’t survive, couldn’t she just feed from them?” Benji asked.
“I have a small theory,” Sal began. “Maybe she couldn’t feed at all now that Tom was turned. I can’t feed from anyone other than you two, if you were turned, I couldn’t feed anymore, at all.”
“You think she tried feeding from him after he was turned?” Benji asked.
“I think the reason for her creating so many rogues and not regular vampires, is simply because she’d fed from a rogue, Tom.
That’s my only theory on how this would work otherwise.
The witches wouldn’t trust her to be this hungry if they were around her unless they were sure she couldn’t feed from them. ”
“That doesn’t explain why she was ready to eat me,” Benji muttered.
“Actually, it does,” I said. “You’re a bonded human so you likely smell similar to what Tom did and her response was instant. If she was so close to going feral with hunger, she might have acted on instinct alone.”
“This is all so confusing,” Benji groaned. “When I took this job, I thought a few days max and then I would be back home in my small apartment, sleeping for a few days and then on to the next task. I did not sign up for this shit show.”
“None of us did,” Sal reminded him. “But we gained so much from it and I will never regret getting you two.”
My tail was wagging with happiness at those words. A man like Sal who seemed so cold and detached to the outside world, said such honest and sweet things about me. I couldn’t help but feel flattered and loved as we made our way to the rogues.
“Of course they’re in the basement,” Benji grumbled as I began to descend the stairs leading down to a dark open room. The door had been closed to keep them in, but we knew by night they would’ve found their way out on their own, rushing toward the library like the other nights.
“The smell of mud is much sharper down here,” I told them, getting a faint hint of fresh air as well. There might’ve been a window or something they could escape from.
Once we’d descended the stairs, we were greeted by thirty to fifty rogues sitting on the damp ground, swaying in place. It was almost like they were in a trance as they waited for the sun to go down.
“Kill them all?” I asked, getting ready to attack.
“Yes, even if the lack of fight takes the fun out of it,” Sal sighed.
“Fun?! You think it’s fun killing rogues?!” Benji asked, tone outraged.
“Well, yeah?” Sal replied, looking at Benji like he was stupid for thinking something else. “I’m a vampire, Benji.”
“And that makes you enjoy killing?” Benji asked, his tone irritated.
“Yes,” Sal replied easily and that honest tone had Benji blinking up at him. I doubted he’d expected that response.
“Wait, really? Being turned makes you enjoy killing? It isn’t just you that enjoys it?”
He was too cute, our human.
“The most fun is to kill humans,” Sal continued, not even noticing how Benji’s eyes widened in horror.
“I joined all the wars I could just to have fun with the soldiers, as did other vampires. We’re made to kill humans, and at one time, it was the only way we fed.
Being a vampire today is much different and I rarely get to kill humans anymore.
Not unless they’re really bad and we have a reason for it. ”
“I wish I’d never asked,” Benji whispered, but he sounded less afraid and more intrigued now.
“Let’s get started and then get out of here,” I said, rushing toward the rogues, my fangs and claws out.