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Probably.
The repulsive odor was less present here
, giving me a pretty good indication I was in the right place. Once, I would have been able to smell the vampires themselves, but that part of me was lost, along with my super strength and blistering allergy to the sun.
The tradeoff was worth it. Becoming mortal had given me a life.
It also made it hard to see in the dark.
I took the AR-15 strap off my shoulder and switched the safety off. One thirty-round clip of silver bullets for an automatic weapon cost six hundred dollars. I didn’t pay out of pocket for my equipment, but I got a really stern lecture every time I practiced “wasteful weapon discharge.”
The government would want the spare bullets back.
Engaging the flashlight affixed to the top of the rifle, I took one last breath of fresh air and ducked into the cave.
The passage was wide but short, so even with my petite frame I needed to hunch to keep from bashing my head on the low-hanging rock. The walls of the cave were slick and wet, shining like polished gems in the light from my gun. I had flashbacks to the corridor in the basement of the vampire council headquarters in New York. Both the cave and that twisting staircase had a similar moldy aroma, and both served as a bleak reminder to how easily my life could be snuffed out at the whim of a cranky vampire.
After a minute of doing my best Quasimodo impression, the tunnel opened up and became a wider, taller space where I could stand at full height.
In here the dark was so thick I could practically touch it. The narrow channel of light from the gun was barely able to illuminate the path in front of me, let alone the entire cavernous space I’d just walked into.
This really was a perfect place for the vampires to hide.
This deep into the hillside, the stink of bodies had vanished entirely, blotted out by cloying dampness. Where I’d previously been so hot my clothes felt oppressive, now I was cold enough to shiver. The layer of sweat all over my body had now turned into goose bumps.
Sweeping the light across the floor, I searched for clues of where the vampires might be spending their sleeping daylight hours.
What I found were bones with bits of meat still clinging to the sinew, and heaps of discarded clothing.
Vampires like this gave the rest of them a bad name. For a brief period of time I’d been responsible for the Eastern vampire Council—one third of its leadership Tribunal—and I knew better than anyone how terrible vampires could be. But they were assholes, not monsters.
These guys were mindless killing machines who cared nothing for the destruction and fear they were leaving in their wake. Part of my job was managing the relationships between humans and supernaturals, and what this group was doing might set my work back by a decade.
It’s pretty hard to convince humans not to be afraid of vampires when they go on killing rampages and leave behind piles of body parts.
Normally, in the good old days, I would need an official sanction from the Tribunal to execute these pricks. But now, considering my previous leadership position and my new role within the government, I’d been issued a carte blanche license to kill, sanctioned by the Tribunal and the government alike.
It sounded way cooler than it was.
I was allowed to use my own judgment to decide if a vampire lived or died. It was a lot of pressure.
In this instance, however, I already knew how this was going to end the minute I smelled the rotting corpses outside.
I was the only one who would be walking back out of this cave today.
Four
If I were a vampire, where would I sleep?
Well, when I’d been a vampire, I slept in a cute one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, but that logic wasn’t going to help me here.
Given how dark it was inside the cave they could have been anywhere, but my gut told me to find a lower level, something deeper inside the belly of the hill. The human instinct would take them higher, towards the living spaces, but there was a greater risk of sun getting through those crumbling facades. They’d need to avoid that, bury themselves away from the light.
I found a couple small pebbles that were as close to perfectly round as I could see and walked towards another fork in the tunnel maze. The light from my AR-15 didn’t penetrate far enough to know which way the tunnels went, and I didn’t have a lot of time to waste. I needed to finish this off before sunset, or more people were going to die.
Starting with the left-hand tunnel, I tossed one of the pebbles down the path. It bumped twice before it stopped and rolled back towards me. All right. I did the same with the right-hand side, and this time the small stone bounced and kept right on rolling, skittering well out of the reach of my light.
Not a perfect science, but probably a good indication that way would lead me in a downwards direction.
