Bait

Cain? A vampire? I laughed, “No you’re not.”

He raised an eyebrow at me.

I gestured him in and motioned for him to sit down. “Cain, you aren’t a vampire,” I carefully explained to him, “you might think you are, maybe you are just one of those humans who crave blood, but I guarantee that you aren’t a vampire.”

He looked like he was going to explode with laughter.

“What you saw today, however, was a vampire.”

“Riley, I’m not a wannabe or a ‘psy’ or whatever the kids are calling themselves these days. I am a true Vampire.”

I started to snort, but it was then that he revealed his true powers. It felt as if a hurricane had hit; coils of his power swirled around me, coiled up my arms, into every outlet, pulling on my organs, and all the while screaming to me what it was. Vampire.

It was instinctive. The vampire must die. I shot him in the stomach.

Sometime in between when the shot was fired and when it entered Cain, the horrid sensation of Cain’s power switched off. The bullet pierced his skin and kept on going to exit into the wall. He didn’t burst into flames; instead the flesh behind the bullet closed up like in some B alien movie.
If I hadn’t been watching I would have missed it.

I almost did anyway

“H-h-how?”

“How am I alive? Or how did I conceal my powers from you?” he looked like he was waiting for an answer. “Maybe you’re asking a different question; like ‘how big am I?’ or ‘how good am I in bed’ maybe-”

“Let’s start with ‘how are you alive?’” bad enough that I had to kiss a vampire every once in a while, but it really was crossing the line to let one into my bed.

He gave me a sort of devious look, “I’m alive because a normal person can’t kill a vampire.”

“But-”

“Let me explain, and I know you’re not exactly normal.” A pause, “the way that you kill vampires is with ah…what amounts to be their aura. Since you couldn’t sense me, you couldn’t use my aura against me. And so what it amounted to would be what a normal person trying to kill a vampire would be like.”

What the hell did he want from me? Revenge? I thought that he might have come just to exterminate the pest; me. But then why would he be telling me all this? Nothing about this guy added up.

“I don’t trust you.”

“Good” he says “but now it seems to be my time for a mysterious exit.” It was almost dawn.

He left without another word, and if I wasn’t on guard, I wouldn’t have seen his abrupt exit.

I buttoned up my trench, and headed for my real home. By the time I got there, dawn’s rosy fingers had already touched the sky. It always struck me as ironic that the night always began and ended with a bloody hue on the horizon. But then of course the day did too.

My apartment was a suburb blend of my two lifestyles. One could look at it and see what they wanted in me.

I went to the guest room and picked out a black pantsuit and lacy white blazer, and headed towards the shower. “Out!” I yelled at the makeup when I was under the water. I hated that I used my body that way. Hated that I had molded myself, compromised my integrity, for the vampires. Dancing and flaunting myself for the enjoyment of the demon spawn. Maybe the end justifies the means, but not completely. It was still degrading. But it was also the only way that the vampires got dead.
And I couldn’t even kill that one tonight.

This Goth chick, she wasn’t me. But she was a necessary evil.

I changed into the very professional outfit I had picked out, and applied natural, classy make up before heading to the kitchen. I was hungrier than three starving teenage boys and ate enough for four. I always ate a lot, though I hardly ever did in front of other people, and I never gained any weight.
I ended up with a shake, three mangos, a few popovers, biscuits, a bowl of spaghetti, a blueberry muffin, scrambled eggs, and a Belgium waffle for my breakfast. This kitchen got more use than my bedroom. This isn’t really saying much considering I hadn’t caught a wink of sleep since my parents died.

I left the dishes for the house cleaner. Now all that was left was deciding where to go today. The firm was the best option for the am, so I went there first. Much more simple than hunting vamps.
As I walked into the office suite, the entire office stopped for a second. “D-d-dr. Scar?” one of the secretaries asked.

“Yes?” I looked at her in mild irritation. That was all it took, the office buzzed around me with double speed. This was the purpose of my visit, to improve efficiency. The paperwork I could do at home.
I usually made my rounds to the businesses so that I would be at each of them once every two weeks or so. So for the morning I did boring owner work, which was fine because it was normal.
“Basically the numbers are liking you, doctor,” Tony was telling me, when my phone rang.
It was Jan, one of my private investigators. “Jan, I didn’t know you would be here so early or I
would have gone over there first. There is something I need to talk to you about.”

“Whatever it is can wait. Or maybe there is a connection. In either case we need to meet.” This was why Jan was one of my top investigators, she thought of everything. “Some guy came in asking to launch an investigation on you.”

Imagine their surprise when they discovered that I owned the company that they used to inquire about me.
“I’ll be there once I wrap up this meeting,” I kind of half smiled at Tom; “It’s almost over anyway.”
There was a click.

I arrived in front of the agency a bit after noon. I owned six buildings across town that I used for my various businesses. The majority of the businesses in those buildings were not owned by Scar, but at least I made a good profit from rent. This particular building was right across town from the one I had just left. I still had walked.

When I arrived, Jan gave me a look that was just as much irritable as inpatient before taking me into her office. Before she closed the door I noticed that there weren’t many detectives at their desks. Sure some of them were writing up reports, but most were either in the field or meeting with clients.
“Tell me what happened,” it was a demand not a request, “I want a play by play.”

She didn’t waste any breath at my abruptness, just plowed right in. “He came into the office and put a request through Cheryl.” That was normal procedure, Cheryl was the secretary. “She took down his info, and then sent him to me. After he had left, she told me that she had recognized you from the picture and referred him to me right away. When he came in, he said he was looking for a ‘Riley’ with an unknown last name, who spent time at some back-alley bar—it has directions to get there—and it had a detailed sketch of you in the file.”

“Did you already make a copy of the security tape?”

“I have it right here…” she pulled up a still on her screen and clicked ‘play’ on the board.

On the screen, a big hunk of a man entered the agency, and it took a second to compute what I was seeing. He moved like a vampire. If not for the sun that was clearly visible through the windows and the line on the bottom declaring it to be around eleven, I would have sworn he was from the ranks of the undead. It wasn’t his clothes or sinister expression. No, it was beyond that. I would have pegged him for a vampire even if he was wearing a dress and singing ‘kum-bai-yah.’ The grace of his steps and the lewd flow of his movements matched a vampire’s exactly.

But the issue of his vampirism was almost overshadowed by the oddity of his appearance. His eyes were the sharpest, brightest blue that I had ever seen on a man and sharply contrasted with the rest of him. Which was black and white. And not just a little bit. His hair was silvery, although not like the elderly, but like he had dyed it. His skin had absolutely no color in it. When I was little and would bake with my sister, I thought that the flour was the whitest thing in the world. I was proved wrong when she put in the baking soda. I had seen some pasty white people before in my experience, but never like this glowing, radiant white. It was unnerving. His bright white face encased his features which were charcoal black, somehow made even more so by the contrast. The colors must be off on this camera.
This man was scary enough that someone off the street could peg him for a vampire.

The appearance, however, could be faked, the precise grace of a Vampire could not be. A wannabe or someone who had never been in the company of a vampire would assume them to have splendid and serene grace. They would be correct in this part of the assumption. However, when someone tried to mimic the composure of a vampire for themselves, they tended to overdo the whole grace and fluidity thing. And they could never capture the predatory aspect. Not in the same way.

The point was that with one splenderific exception, I could tell the difference between a wannabe and the real deal. This one was the real deal.

I watched in fascinated horror as he made his way to Cheryl and started to fill out the standard issue forms. He reached into black and white coat that I was sure was made for a woman and handed her a folder that was the color of his eyes.

Someone as distinctive as him I was bound to notice, even if it was only to question his vampirism.
“I don’t understand why he would want to find me when I never have met him before in my life.” If he was a vampire than maybe I would know why he would want to find me. The vamps had been tracking down hunters for years. But I still couldn’t be sure either way. And I was certain that his motive rested in his identity.

“What about this club he describes? Maybe you saw him there?”

I hadn’t, but maybe the club was key. And I knew I would have to come to terms with Jan’s appearance there, however obtrusive that seemed. The club was part of my night time activities and I took a lot of care to separate the two worlds. “I would have remembered him, he is quite distinctive.”
“Hell yeah.” She murmured under her breath.

“Let’s take a look at that file.”

The file turned out to be the same bright blue that the camera had captured. Shit. Did that mean that the other colors on the film were correct too? That he was as paper white and charcoal black as the camera said he was? Could anyone’s eyes really be that shade of blue?
I opened the file and a grayscale photograph of me looked into my face. I don’t usually show up so well on photograph, so the person that took it must have been—whoa! It wasn’t a photo, but a carefully drawn piece of artwork. Someone must have taken hours on my eyes alone to draw them with so much expression. Each line was carefully drawn and smudged to create something alive. “Lust” it was saying. The person who had drawn it obviously lusted after me.

But who in that club would hold such attraction for me? I may have struck lust into the hearts of men, but that was fleeting. Honestly, they had the attention span of a goldfish.
A horrible thought struck me.

“And if you are sure you don’t know him…” a nod from me, “than we can entertain the two possibilities I can think of. Either you have some sort of stalker; someone who say you and feels something for you even though you don’t know him. Or that someone else drew that picture, and for some unknown reasons this guy has it. Err…what’s his name?” she tossed her blonde curls behind her shoulder and pulled out the forms my maybe stalker had filled out. “Oh here it is! His name is Wycott Sims.”
At least if it was a stalker than there wouldn’t be strange vampire forces at work. Although…”we don’t usually get stalkers here. It’s psychologically unpleasing.”

“You mean because they enjoy doing it themselves.” Another reason why he couldn’t possibly be a vampire. Please let him not be a vampire; I didn’t even want to fathom a vampire who could walk around in the sun.

“Also because hiring another person to do it would be too public for them. They would like to keep under the radar. But…” I add, “It's not the option I am most concerned about.”

“You’re going to explain whatever it was that you wanted to see me about in the first place, right?” if Jan wasn’t so perceptive than I wouldn’t bother to be telling her this.

“I was meeting my friend at that bar—the one in that file—my friend is the bar tender there. Anyway, I kind of led this guy on. And I mean he wasn’t exactly my type pr anything like that…” here I sounded like I was trying really hard to convince myself, “but I need to find out about him. He said something that made me think he knew something about my family’s death.”

It was something that I never talked about with anyone, but could use to justify my actions now. I couldn’t exactly tell her that the vampire who had killed my parents was long dead and that I hunted vampires now because of it. Imagine how that conversation would go.

It was imperative that I found out about Cain’s shielding abilities and this Wycott guy’s possible resistance to the sun. One, maybe even two ubervamps were enough to question my entire world. How many more had slipped under the radar?

“Then I’ll bring my a-game,” she assured me.

I gave her Cain’s name and a description before we turned our focus back to Wycott.
“Have you done a background check yet?”

“Yeah and he has got a strange card and besides ‘name: Wycott Sims, age: twenty-five,’ there really isn’t anything useful. No criminal charges or suspicions and no license or registration for anything other than a car. It could be a fake. Especially because the records only date back from tree years ago.”

“Did you find a residency?”

“Not any that are registered to our guy, but that could just mean he lives in a house registered to someone else.”

“Run him through facial recognition, maybe another name will pop up.”

I got up and made my way to the door of her office. “I am trusting you on this one. Find them both, but don’t let on. And pretend to investigate for Sims. Keep him close.”

“Of course” she said

“Oh…and Jan?” this was the hard part.

“Yeah”

“I you are going to investigate that club you are going to have to wear particular clothing.” I gave her the address of a gothic boutique, “charge the company card.”