The following days passed by in a blur of training and studying, with Tabitha acting as my constant companion. There was an undeniable tension between us that was at odds with that part of me that said it was wrong of me to even look at anyone other than Hannah, much less get to know them this closely. I did my best to ignore that side of me and focus on the here and now.
Cramming a multi-year course into just five days before I went on my first mission gave me plenty to occupy myself with, and I found it easier to pour into my studies or apply myself in the gym than it was to reconcile my own troubled psyche.
Friday evening arrived all too quickly, and I found myself loaded into the driver’s seat of a taxi cab armed with a 20-round hand cannon on my hip—the quartermaster took one look at me and figured I would have trouble reloading, so he handed me this thing and said ‘don’t miss’—and a silver-edged sword sheathed across my back.
Tabitha was riding in the back seat, furiously tapping away on her tablet. She was wearing black combat boots with some skin-tight matching leggings and a crop top. If it weren’t for her tactical vest, her fingerless gloves complete with silver studs in the knuckles, her little communication collar, and her thigh holsters, she would have looked like we were on our way for an evening at the gym.
I was pretty much just wearing jeans and a plain t-shirt under a similar vest to the one she wore—though sadly mine was less awesome and was giving more ‘background cop on a tv show’ vibes—, my holster on my hip.
“Our target is that little abandoned shopping mall by the coast.”
“The one that’s been condemned longer than I’ve been alive?”
“The very same. It’s a major vamp nest so we’re going to have to load up for pest control. I took the liberty of prepping your kit myself.” She tapped the backpack resting on the passenger seat—single-strap, so it was easier for me, how thoughtful. “Stakes, silver ammunition, UV flare-gun, the works.”
“No garlic?” I asked, knowing full well from all of our study sessions that garlic was about as useful at repelling a vampire as a skunk was at repelling a human being. If a skunk ran into your house, farted, and tried to stab you I’m pretty sure you’d merc that thing with extreme prejudice.
Tabitha glared daggers at me through the rearview mirror. “Shut up.”
I shrugged. “Fair enough. So what are we facing besides vamps?”
“Not a clue. Word on the street is that there’s going to be a breach in between dimensions somewhere in the mall around 11:30 p.m..” I glanced at the car clock to see that it was already 10:07 p.m., which gave us plenty of time to arrive and set up for a fight. “We won’t know what comes through until it comes through, but our job is to eliminate it.”
“I see. And if we can’t handle whatever it is just the two of us?”
“We can handle it.” Tabitha glanced back down at her tablet. “We have to.”
“Okay but what if we can’t?” I pushed.
The tablet clicked off, plunging us into darkness as the elevator rose up towards the underground parking lot. Her voice spoke in my ear, with her breath hot on my neck. Under different circumstances this would have been kind of hot, hell, it was kind of hot regardless.
“You’re not understanding me, Ryan. Failure is not an option tonight. We fuck up out here and we’re completely on our own. I’m already on thin ice with Aleksei and you’re underwater as it is. We either nail this mission or we might as well not come back. So whatever doubts you have? Shove ’em where the sun doesn't shine and forget about them. Got it?”
I tilted my head around to face her, my eyes adjusting to the darkness a touch faster than they might have a week ago but still leaving a lot of gaps for my imagination to filter through. I decided to picture her naked as she leaned over the back seat to speak to me this close. Our faces were inches apart, and after all our sparring sessions and studying I knew the contours of her body like the back of my hand, so my imagination had some real rocket fuel to chew on and get itself going.
“Yeah, I got it. We’re driving a taxi cab into the heart of a vampire nest to kill a monster we know nothing about, with no backup. If we fuck up, we die, probably. If we don’t die, the shadowy organization we work for will kill us, and quickly. If we kill the monster but alert the vamps, we die very, very badly. In short, everything needs to go real smooth tonight.”
“Bingo. Maybe you’re not as dumb as you look, hotshot.”
Perhaps my imagination was playing tricks on me but it seemed like she almost leaned closer as she said this. Whether she really did it, I turned back towards the front of the car and focused myself on the mission ahead of me, because she was right about how dire our situation was and we couldn't afford any distractions.
Tabitha sat back into the back seat, perhaps a little disappointed at the way I looked away.
Good.
The elevator rose into position in the underground parking lot and thudded into place a moment later. I backed out of the parking space and started the drive to our destination in silence.
Rain was pouring down over Eastport, providing a natural soundtrack to our journey.
The city was quiet this evening as everyone just wanted to be done with their work week, lock themselves indoors, and binge-watch their favorite shows for the evening. Good news for us, since it meant fewer people to potentially get in the way. Passing by all the restaurants and shops as we skirted through the edges of midtown filled me with a bizarre kind of melancholy. Something about seeing folks walking into a movie theater with friends and family made me ask myself some tough questions, like when was the last time I did something just for the fun of it?
Hannah and I used to go to that movie theater all the time.
She may have been the one that died, but I stopped living that day too. I stopped seeking out fun and enjoying the moments. The closest I came to that was my friendship with Derek, but that was exclusively a work thing. We never hung out after our shifts were done. And now, with this whole Tabitha thing, I was enjoying the flirting to no small degree, but if she actually leaned into it and asked me for something more intimate…I wasn’t sure I would go for it.
This monster blood was messing with my head.
Focus, Ryan.
I kept my eyes on the road and my hand on the wheel all the way to the dilapidated shopping mall. It sat on a natural rise in the terrain, overlooking the nearest pier and the ocean beyond. The dull drum of rain falling on the roof of our taxi cab and the complete lack of any lighting in the empty parking lot was helping to create a certain forbidden-fruit atmosphere. That ‘we shouldn’t be here, what if we get caught’ feeling that made teenagers do stupid shit.
At 10:42, I parked the cab in a random spot and pulled the keys.
“Why did you park here?” Tabitha asked from the back, sounding a little annoyed.
“I don’t know, the whole place is empty. I figured wherever was good, right?”
“Okay but we’re so far away from the nearest entrance and it’s raining.”
I glanced back at her, a bit of annoyance in my voice. “Don’t tell me you are afraid of a little rain, Tabitha. Aren’t dogs supposed to love the water?”
Tabitha kicked the back of my seat and glared at me. “I’m not a dog, Ryan! How would you feel if I called you a dinosaur just because your arm occasionally gets all scaly and huge?”
I blinked, recognizing her moodiness for what it was. Ah, pre-game jitters. Good to know it’s not just me. In an attempt to defuse the situation I held up the stump of my arm and felt it with my good hand, acting wounded.
“I would ask for some lotion. I didn’t realize the scaliness bothered you.”
Tabitha’s mood instantly shifted upon seeing my stump, and she started to look abashed.
Doubling down I added, “And if you think that’s huge you should really see my—”
“Stop messing around, Ryan. Park us closer,” she demanded.
I gave her a warning glance. “Say please and I’ll consider it.”
Her head tilted slightly like she was contemplating giving me sass, but she submitted. “Please, Ryan, can you park us a little closer?”
I nodded contentedly, already turning the key and getting us moving.
We parked and geared up. Tabitha shouldered an assault rifle with an ergonomic grip and stepped out into the rain with an ax slung over her shoulder—she was just trying to make me jealous, I knew it. She slid a pair of sunglasses into place over her eyes, fully committing to the tactical-babe look that she had going despite it being nighttime. And raining.
Still, she made it work.
By 11:03 we were inside the shopping mall, backpacks on and weapons at the ready.
Holding her assault rifle up with her dominant hand, Tabitha pulled a pair of golf ball-sized drones out of her pack and tossed them into the air. Each of them unfolded a set of stabilizing rotors and buzzed off through the abandoned two-story mall, scanning each of the storefronts and feeding information back to her which splashed across the interior of her sunglasses.
I kept my hand cannon holstered, but unlatched, and moved forward with my sword at the ready. With her rifle and supernatural reflexes, I figured she had us covered in the range department, but I needed to be ready in case anything got past her and came up close. Most of my training thus far had been about acknowledging how much faster or stronger most of the monsters we fought were compared to humans and anticipating their attack patterns so I could direct my attacks where they were going instead of where they were at. So far I was a lot better at that with my sword than with my gun.
We swept through the bottom floor and made it to the central feature of this once-grand mall. An indoor fountain below a massive skylight. The entire second walkway bloomed outward around this fountain, and each corner had little deactivated waterfall features built into the overhangs. This place was probably something spectacular back when it was still operational.
A tiny chirp sounded from the far end of the mall, then two more echoed back from the left and right as those little drones reported back with the all-clear.
“All clear,” Tabitha reported, somewhat redundantly. “Vamps must have gone underground. Good. They’re not who we came here for. That is.” She pointed to the part of the mall that had been holding my attention since we made it in.
The anomaly.
A crackling bundle of energy floating above the derelict fountains and looking like a miniature aurora glowing in the center of the shopping mall. Bright lights flashed across the storefronts and static crackles filled the air.
Tabitha lowered her rifle and let it hang from where it was clipped to the front of her vest.
“Alright, Ryan, time to show me what you’ve learned. What are we doing first?”
Oh shit I hate pop-quizzes. Sighing aloud, I examined my first battlefield carefully.
“Set up some sensors in each of the corners of the top floor and in the intersections of the bottom floor. Deployable countermeasures along our escape route, all keyed to your HUD, and then you take up position on overwatch while I stay down here and run point.”
Tabitha blinked. “You were doing so well right up until that last bit. You should go up top while I stay down here.”
I shook my head and pointed the tip of my sword at her weapon. “You’re the one with an armor-piercing assault rifle. You’ve got the range. I’ve got a pistol and a sword, so I’m better suited to melee combat right now.”
“This is also like your fifth day even knowing monsters exist in the first place. Besides, I can wolf out if things go sideways, you can’t.”
“Perhaps not, but I do have this, which comes in handy,” I held up my stump and waved it slightly. It would have been impressive if I could make it grow the dinosaur-limb on command, but oh well. We play with the hand we’re dealt, not the cards we wish we had.
Tabitha frowned. “That’s unreliable at best. You should let me take point on this.”
“No. You’re the more experienced Agent. If things go sideways you can always drop down and help me, but if you stay down here and leave me to look after you, who’s to say my instincts will be in the right place? What if I think you’re killing it but you’re actually losing? Also, nobody back at the Bureau really expects me to make it through this mission anyway. Aleksei pretty much shoved me into the suicide mission. I’m expendable, you’re not.”
Tabitha looked like she wanted to argue, and even started to close the distance between us so she could give me a piece of her mind, but we were interrupted by a sudden flash of red from one of her drones.
Her assault rifle came up and leveled at something high over my right shoulder, spitting a burst of three rounds out. I spun in place just in time to see a humanoid figure topple from the second story and crumble to ash before it could impact the ground floor.
“Vamps,” Tabitha announced casually.
Movement caught my eye from behind her and a pair of vampires melted out of the shadows. Pale skin, red eyes, and horrible fangs. They moved towards us with blinding speed, and I moved to intercept them. Relying on my training, I moved to strike them where they were heading, not where they actually were, and brought my sword around at neck level as they approached. I poured all of my strength into this attack, really swinging for the fences, and was rewarded with a double kill.
Two vampiric heads sailed into the air, and both of the bodies crumbled to ash.
Some part of me panicked a little as I realized this was the first time I had ever killed another sentient being, but the staccato bursts of Tabitha’s rifle spitting silver shards into the night air rooted me back in my new reality.
Monsters were real and they were threatening my new friend.
I was going to make them pay.
Back-to-back, Tabitha and I moved toward the central fountain as more and more vampires swarmed out of the shadowy recesses of the abandoned mall. The muzzle of her rifle coughed golden flashes and struck every target she aimed at; sinking into their vampiric hearts and minds and reducing them all to ash.
Feeling a little left out, I sheathed my blade and unholstered my pistol.
A vamp leapt over the second-story railing and started plummeting to the ground with his fangs bared. I set my sights right where his head would be when he landed and pulled the trigger a fraction of a second sooner than my eyes told me to, as these things were just too fast for the mortal eye to properly track. I was rewarded with a big burst of ash as the vamp’s skull blew apart and his body disintegrated in the wake of my bullet.
One shot, one kill.
I fired three more times and killed four vamps thanks to a pair of unlucky bloodsuckers grouping up letting me get a two-for-one. But for every vamp we killed, three or four more seemed to emerge as if from nowhere.
“How many of these things are there?” I shouted.
“Keep firing!” Was the only response Tabitha gave me.
She swapped mags for her rifle and followed her own advice, hopping up onto the fountain as she reloaded. With a cry of defiance she sprayed the incoming horde with some blind fire from her hip to keep them at bay, then tapped a key on her wrist-mounted control pad. All three of her tiny drones suddenly sped into the midst of the growing horde and detonated, wiping out a whole chunk of our enemies in one go.
We could do this, I thought to myself as I leapt up beside her.
No sooner had that thought crossed my mind than all hell broke loose.
The anomaly activated ahead of schedule, and with a blinding flash of light, sound, and water; a seam between dimensions tore open in the center of the shopping mall. With a rush of warmth, pure sunlight flooded the mall; reducing the weakened vampiric forces to a cloud of ash and forcing those who had yet to join the fight to flee in terror or risk joining their brethren in their fiery graves.
I could have cheered if not for what came with that sunlight.
A giant lion padded out into the mall, radiating sunlight from his mane and scanning around the darkness curiously. This guy was closer in size to an elephant than the lions I was familiar with, and his mane was so majestic that the sunlight seemed to be radiating out from it rather than…no wait, the sunlight really was coming from his mane.
Holy shit that’s cool.
Behind him, the seam suddenly sealed itself; stranding him here in our world.
“Hello?” he called out in a rich timbre. “Kassana, are you there? Is this…hell?”
Tabitha’s eyes grew wide as she gently lowered her rifle to the fountain and unslung her battle ax. Using hand signals, she motioned me to flank him and use my blade to stab him in the heart while she went for his head.
I grimaced, and started to sign back, but she was already on the move.
Forced to follow her lead, which I was not thrilled with, I moved off to the lion’s right hand side while Tabitha swung around on his left. My eyes darted into the shadows, where dozens of red eyes peered out at me with malice in their hearts.
An itch started at the base of my skull. The kind that made me think maybe this was a bad idea. If we killed this thing, we would still have a fight on their hands with all those vamps. But maybe, just maybe, we could find a solution here.
I broke with Tabitha’s plan and started backing up, standing dangerously close to the shadows where the vampires could get me, and judging by their hissing and snarling they really wanted the chance.
“Hey!” I shouted.
The great sun-radiating lion turned his head towards me and I got my first look in his eyes. They were flashing an intense golden light that made the Carnisaur’s red eyes and even Tabitha’s yellow werewolf eyes literally pale in comparison.
“Who goes there, creature of darkness, and why do you not shine?”
Who does this lion think he is, Shakespeare?
“Welcome to Earth, we’re happy to have you. As to your question, uh, people from my world do not typically shine, unless they are going to a rave. I am no creature of darkness as far as I am aware. Although maybe that means something different depending on where you are from.”
“Where I am from…I am from everywhere, small one. For I am of the stars and to their light I shall one day return.”
“I see. So you’re…visiting. What are your plans while you’re here, out of curiosity?”
Behind the giant gleaming lion, I could see Tabitha giving me four different variations of ‘no, please stop, you’re going to get us killed’ in every possible way she could communicate without making a sound, but I ignored her.
After a moment spent pondering this, the lion spoke. “I had not given it much thought. As I roamed the starfields I came across a curious blossoming of light, when I examined it I found myself here, in this…strange and dark land. What do you call this place, oh great voice in the darkness?”
I could get used to this guy. I did my best to match his energy with my reply.
“We call it the Oceanfront Galleria. It used to be a shopping center but recently it’s been taken over by vampires who are living in the shadows, drinking the blood of innocents and attacking my friend and me on our way to uh, greet you upon your arrival. They’re real pests, but they should not bother you so long as you keep on shining like that. Do you have a name, oh great wanderer from afar?”
The lion perked up and shone a little brighter at hearing the title I had given him.
“Oh yes! You may call me Alynoractis Poth Vugani the third, Duke of Proximos and heir to the gleaming throne.”
I nodded respectfully. “Well met my liege,” I had no idea if that was even the correct honorific for a duke but I went with it anyway, “I’m afraid the locals here might struggle to remember such a worthy title. Would it please you to be known instead as Alan for the duration of your stay?”
The great gleaming lion paused in consideration.
“‘Alan’ does have a nice ring to it. By what name are you called, polite shadow?”
The vampires were still snapping and snarling in my ear, Tabitha was still virtually leaping out her skin trying to get me to just attack this guy, and I was pretty well convinced I was going to die no matter what before the night was through. There was absolutely no way I was going to pass up an opportunity to fudge my identity a little.
“I am Lord Ryan of Hilltop Castle, Keeper of the balance, slayer of Carnisaurs, and most humbly, your polite shadow. You may call me Ryan.”
Alan nodded appreciatively. “Well met, Lord Ryan! I am honored to make your acquaintance. Tell me. What is the customary greeting in this strange land of ours, from one Duke to a Lord?”
A grin split my face and I found myself winking at Tabitha and then gazing over into the shadows. “It is customary to greet our guests with a royal hunt.”
At 1:46 a.m., Tabitha and I walked out of the Oceanfront Galleria and strode to our taxi cab in silence. Our clothes were covered in ash and blood, and we were both running low on energy at that point. It took me a second to find the keys, and we both offloaded our significantly lighter backpacks into the trunk of the cab before crawling into the driver’s and passenger’s seat.
We both took a second to just breathe before I lifted the keys to the ignition.
From the sunroof of the mall, a faint glow emitted as Alan the solar lion prowled around, excitedly searching for more vampires to play with.
“Do you think the Bureau will let him stay here?” I asked.
Tabitha nodded tiredly. “He’s not hurting anyone and you explained the rules to him. The Bureau only hunts monsters, not friendly magical creatures. Alan seems content here. The next time we pick up on another anomaly with the same signature as the one that brought him here, we will try to send him back. Considering we just wiped out one of the largest vampire nests in the city? Aleksei ought to be pleased.”
Stifling a yawn, I smiled her way. “Not bad for my first night, huh?”
Tabitha’s eyes were drooping as she looked over at me with a weak smile. “No. Not bad at all, hotshot. You uh…you surprised me back there. I thought for sure you were just going to help me kill him. That was the mission after all.”
I shook my head and leaned back in the driver’s seat. “It didn’t feel right. He just stumbled into a bad neighborhood, no reason he needs to get shivved for it. Poor guy’s first words upon arrival were ‘is this hell,’ like no, I’m not about to kill some dude having the worst day of his life.”
Tabitha’s eyebrows flashed upwards as she glanced over towards the light emitting from the sunroof. From the looks of it Alan was roaming around pretty quickly. “Does he look like he’s having the worst day of his life anymore? No, Ryan, he’s having the time of his life hunting those vamps. You did that.”
With a shrug, I wiped some vampire ash off my shoulder and pulled the wooden stake out of my hand cannon holster. Where the gun had ended up I had no idea, I lost track of it after fumbling the reload somewhere in the employee-only section of an old retail store. “I know what it’s like to lose your bearing,” I admitted. “Alan is just some guy thrust into a rough situation, helping him out and letting him see the fun that can be had in this new world is the least I can do.”
“I only wish more people saw it that way.” Surprising both her and me, tears suddenly rolled out of Tabitha’s eyes. She reached over and grabbed my hand, squeezing it affectionately. “Most people don’t look at a giant beast and see ‘just some guy,’ Ryan. They see a monster that needs to be killed and they hop to it. You saw something else in him…the same way you see something else in me. It makes me feel human.”
Our eyes met. The sunlight streaming out of the mall and the rain hammering on the roof, her eyes locked on mine, and the fine layer of ash coating our clothes all instantly got committed to my memory. Screenshot taken. Permanently downloaded to the hard drive.
My eyes went to her lips and I almost, almost leaned in. My tongue even slipped out to wet my own lips when I caught myself and glanced at the wheel. My ears reddened.
What am I thinking?
Tabitha squeezed my hand once more and let it go.
“We should get back to headquarters. Are you okay to drive?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak.
“Okay good ‘cause I’m exhausted. This week has been so stressful, honestly. If you don’t mind I’m going to catch a few winks. Wake me up when we’re pulling in so I can initiate the handshake protocol. Oh, and Ryan? Thanks for not dying back there. It would have been an awful lot of paperwork.”
I snorted out a bit of laughter and she smiled at me, and for the first time in a while things actually felt…okay. Like maybe there was a place for me in this strange new world after all.
True to her word, Tabitha reclined her chair and instantly fell asleep.
I hesitated, soaking in the sights of a moment I was sure I would never forget, then put the cab in drive and pulled out of the parking lot, setting my sights on returning to headquarters.
I was already starting to think of it as home.