The Undead Pool

Gunpowder pricked in my nose. I got up as Trent took the last shell from the rifle, tucking it in his pocket before gently setting the weapon on the nearest table. There was no blood on me. No blood on Trent. There was a growing puddle of it on the floor under the woman vampire, and I looked at the clock over the jukebox. They’d want to know what time she died to better estimate her rising, though by the look of it, it might be weeks.

Silent, Trent eased to stand beside me. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say that a date with you is nothing like having you work security. Let’s not tell Quen about this, okay?”

I slowly looked him up and down. He seemed to be taking this rather well, but then again, I’d seen him kill a man in his office. Flashing me a mirthless smile, he started scanning the place. “You see a tablecloth anywhere?”

To cover the dead vampire, I thought, shaking my head. The woman was still crying. I knew I should comfort her, but I was kind of pissed at her right now. Leaving her to cry, I found my shoulder bag and dug out my phone.

“How come you got a signal?” Trent said, grunting when he checked his phone and found the towers were back up. Unfortunately the 911 circuits were busy, with a recorded message saying to hold for a thirty-minute wait time.

“Nuts to that,” I said, thinking I wasn’t going to spend my night here with a dead vampire. Hanging up, I called Edden’s direct line. “Edden,” I said as soon as his deep, low voice came clear over the sound of ringing phones and tense voices.

“Rachel? I don’t have time right now.”

Impatient, I pressed the phone to my ear. “I’m in a bar on Hostant Drive. I’ve got two vampires under sleep charms and another dead, possibly twice from a hole in her chest.”

Edden went silent, and the woman stopped crying at the sound of Trent locking the front door. “Oh,” Edden finally said. “Did you call 911?”

“Duh! There’s like a thirty-minute wait time. Edden, is there a vamp war going on? They mentioned something about free vampires.” Suddenly itchy, I turned to the door, wanting to leave.

“If there is, it involves all of them.” Edden’s voice went distant for a moment, then came back stronger. “My God, it’s a mess. The I.S. is completely down. Looks like one of your misfire waves came through again. Hold on.”

“It’s not my wave,” I grumbled, one arm across my middle as Trent finally got the woman to get up off the floor and into a chair facing away from the blood and violence. “Edden,” I started when I heard the phone picked back up.

“Do you have the situation contained?” he asked, and my eyes met Trent’s. He probably didn’t want to be seen here with a corpse on the floor.

“Unless their friends show up. Yes.”

“Okay. Good. I’m sending someone right now. There’s a fire a few blocks from you, so it won’t be but five minutes. Just sit tight. Can you do that?”

I looked at the woman sobbing quietly to herself. It was more gentle, broken almost, but I remembered her fear and her outright decisive lethal action. Forty years of carefully built coexistence gone in five terrifying minutes. We were that close to losing it all.

“I’ll be here,” I said softly. “We could really use an ambulance while you’re at it. Someone was burned very badly at the fire. And thanks.”

Muttering something, he hung up. Not closing the phone, I called David’s number, but there was no answer and I didn’t leave a message. Trent was standing behind the bar, pouring vodka into a single glass when I texted Ivy that I ran into some difficulty but was okay and would be home a little later than planned. No need to tell her that vampires were behaving badly. She probably already knew that. I hoped Nina was okay. The safe houses would be busy tonight.

“You ever hear of free vampires?” I said as I went to the bar to sit and wait. Head shaking no, Trent set the vodka beside the woman and returned to stand beside me and lean against the bar, his entire body stiff with tension. “That was fun,” I said sarcastically, then noticed a darker anger in him, one deeper than the mess before us would warrant. “You okay?”

“I called to tell Quen that I was all right, and he informed me Ellasbeth is refusing to bring the girls home.”

Lips parting, I reached out. “What? She can’t do that! Ray isn’t even hers!”

My eyes darted to the dead vampire, unsure if that sigh had been caused by a muscle release or voluntary.

“Ellasbeth says that with the misfires impacting Cincinnati she has every right not to bring them into a dangerous situation,” he said. “That the estate is outside of the area doesn’t seem to matter.”

Worried, I gave his arm a squeeze. “I’m sorry. You know you’ll get them back. She can’t do this.”

His expression eased as his attention came back to me, and I suddenly realized we were inches apart. “Yes, I will,” he said softly. “How are you? Still shaky?”