Chapter Two — The Stakeout
You’re probably wondering where Daphne is. Yeah, me, too.
Owens, Moreland, and I looked for her and Charly in Madagascar and even managed to meet with remnants of the Kalonoro, the local vampires who rule the parts of the Malagasy jungles where Charly took her to incubate after Moreland turned her.
The Kalonoro are tiny little vamps, no more than about three feet tall. The giants among them might reach four feet. They’re covered in hair that requires a little more hygienic attention than they seem willing to provide.
They also all sound like loud men. Even female Kalonoro carry a booming voice that could serve as a boat horn.
We were told that Charly and Daphne sequestered with a Kalonoro clan near a small village in the jungle, but that was the only information we were able to collect from the mysterious little creatures during our two-week mission.
Owens’ leave of absence from the Atlanta PD after the events at Jerrold Mountain and in Singapore didn’t last long. He had assumed he was on thin ice, considering he bucked just about every regulation on the department’s books, but instead he was credited with busting open the simple fact that vampires existed, something humans had suppressed for hundreds of years.
His entire world was one big high-five for months after that, but he wasn’t interested in accolades. He wanted to help me find Daphne.
I’ll never understand his turnaround. But there it was. We became much more than frenemies because of all that had transpired. We were friends. It was too weird to think about much, so I didn’t.
He’s still a vampire hunter at heart. His first instinct is to make us extinct.
I guess it’s a lot like war. We had gone to battle together, saved each other’s lives more than once, and bonded over a common enemy.
I still think he’s a bit of an asshole, but he’s my asshole, and I love him like a brother. His lifespan, though, is tiny. I won’t know him long. He’ll flicker out and die before I lose another hair. But this felt good, anyway. I’m always a sucker for a story of redemption. Aren’t you?
When he called me one late Friday afternoon, I figured it was important. We were friends, but not the kind who texted each other all day.
“We need to meet,” he said.
“Those aren’t the words I like to hear at the end of a halfway decent week,” I said.
“What if I told you I might, and listen, man, when I say ‘might,’ I mean that in its strongest sense of distant possibility, know where Daphne is?”
Owens would never joke around with something like that. He knew what she meant to me.
“I need to check out a house in Midtown,” he said. “And I don’t want to do it alone. For one thing, because everything indicates it’s a vampire den, but for another, Daphne might be there.”
I was too jaded to feel much excitement. Her disappearance had felt complete, as if someone had finished a mission designed to leave me with nothing but her shadow on every wall in every room that I would ever enter again.
That’s how it feels when someone you love falls away without warning. A part of them follows you, breathing upon your every move, sensing your next plan, your next thought, but unable to express themselves beyond a sensory perception driven by memory and a hunch that lodges in your head: “Hello, Jade,” she says, “No, not there. Try this instead.” This is done without words. It is pure contemplation, but it isn’t yours.
With that apprehension, I agreed to join my new friend.
When we met for coffee at Queen’s Coffee near Piedmont Park, Owens told me about what he called a spooky house, and someone named Chevalier.
“Technically, it’s not his house anymore,” I said after he finished the story.
“Huh?”
“Long story, man.”
“When has that stopped you?”
“Fair. Well, some title fraudster snatched his home’s title from under him.”
“Shit, Atticus, how do you snatch a title from a guy who’s probably not a legal resident?” Owens had taken to calling me by my real name. Atticus. Of the great Argeadai House of Vampires. Nephew of Alexander the Great. But, of course, Owens never mentioned anything beyond “Atticus.” In fact, I think he called me “Atticus” because he thought it would annoy me, since he knew I enjoyed using my adopted name, “Jade Mourning.”
I shrugged.
“How do you yourself, in fact, legally possess a title to your fucking grand estate in Buckhead? I’ve always meant to ask you, but it’s been so far down on my list of questionable shit about you that I’ve never gotten to it. Now it seems relevant.”
“Haven’t you ever seen those cheesy web ads that say, ‘These vampire real estate tricks will make you rich?’”
Owens rolled his eyes.
I continued. “Or, ‘this one trick will. . .”
“. . .Shit, Atticus, shut the fuck up. What do you say? Ready for an adventure? Hopefully something more successful than our last one?”
I didn’t know if he was referring to the Wurdulac of Jerrold Mountain or to a statistically significant portion of Singapore’s population getting wiped out by the Mouras Encantadas. Maybe both.
I leaned my chin on my hand and flitted my eyes his way. “You mean the one that forged this beautiful bromance?”
“What I’d give for a wooden stake right now,” he replied.
“You know that’s a myth,” I said.
“Worth a try anyway. Well?”
“Well of course. I’ve been miserable for months.” I didn’t tell him about the powerful urges I’d been fighting. I couldn’t talk about that with Owens. I couldn’t tell him how close I had come the night before to draining Billy the title thief. Owens couldn’t understand. But Daphne’s long disappearance had made me despondent to my core. That Charly, her protector during her flight to Africa, was missing, too, added to it.
“I guess here’s the thing,” I said. “I think wherever she is, Charly is. Your police report doesn’t seem to mention a guy the size of a Russian tank.”
“What about the dude in the kitchen?”
It didn’t sound like Charly to me, but I didn’t have a good reason for suggesting that. Physically, I could see why Owens thought it might be him. All I had was: “The first thing anyone notices about Charly, despite his ridiculous size, is the fact that his big black bald head looks like it’s about to uncap itself and blow a geyser of steaming sweat into the room.”
“I don’t think...”
“And he was in a kitchen, for fuck’s sake. If that was Charly, the guy filing the police report would have mentioned Charly spilling a pool of sweat onto the floor.”
“He fits the description, Atticus. And if he’s watching over her for some reason without letting us know, don’t you want to know why? Maybe she’s sick, or whatever, but this, this ain’t right. Something ain’t right.”
I nodded. “Okay. How do you want to handle it?”
“We do this the old-fashioned way. The police way. We do a stakeout.”
“I thought the police way was to bust in with guns blazing.”
“Nah, I think we gotta be careful here. We have no idea what the hell is going on in that house.”
I told him about the title fraudster.
“So, wait. You were gonna eat this guy and he turns out to be a guy who’s illegally gained title over the house where maybe Daphne is being held captive?”
“Stop calling it ‘eat.’”
Now it was Owens’ turn to shrug.
“Fuck’s sake, Owens. That’s insulting.”
“I didn’t have any of this fraudster info on my bingo card before our chit chat,” said Owens, dumping a pile of sugar into his newly delivered coffee.
No wonder humans have the shelf life of deer ticks, I thought, as I watched him pour the sugar. “So?”
“So, same plan. We do a stakeout.”
“Does this mean I have to sit in a car for several hours trying to make nice with you while you stink the thing up with human scent? I’m gonna need a hazmat suit for this.”
“I’ll wear cologne.”
“You hate cologne.”
“The bigger problem is that you’re not easy to hide. It’ll be like trying to conceal a purple giraffe.”
“In the movies, you guys always have a van with gizmos and dudes in the back. I could just hide there.”
“Not the worst idea. I can probably arrange for a department vehicle big enough to do the job.”
“With tinted windows, right? I love tinted windows.”
“The works, dude. All kinds of electronic toys.”
“I’m liking this more and more. But won’t a big ass Chevy Suburban with black windows be sort of obvious? The other thing you always see in movies is a work van of some kind. I think it should be a work van.” I thought about it for a minute. “But damn, I do love toys.”
Owens sighed. “I’m sure I can work up a van with a few toys in it and a company name on the outside. Just like in the fuckin’ movies.”
“It all sounds fun, but I have a better idea.”
“Oh, goody.”
“You and Garrison sit in whatever vehicle you decide on. And I act as a listening device. I can stand outside and listen in. I’ll catch 90% of what’s being said inside. They’ll never see me.”
“I think Chevalier is a vampire. He’ll know you’re there. You fuckers have a sixth sense about that shit.”
“My man,” I said. “I’ve been practicing stealth for more than two thousand years. I think I can figure out how to stay hidden from one vamp for a few hours. You sure it’s just the one?”
“All indications. Except maybe the big guy. Charly.”
“It’s not Charly. Okay, so two then. Not a problem. I think we have a plan. Plus, it keeps us away from each other, which is how we get along the best.”
“We should write a kids’ book about how to frenemy,” said Owens.
“We’re more than that.”
“We aren’t.”
“Owens, I’m the best friend you’ve never had.”
“No wonder I’m such a miserable son of a bitch.”
We did a little more planning, then the three of us, Owens, I, and Owen’s partner, Garrison, rode out to Chevalier’s place in Midtown that evening.
The house was a massive old Edwardian, but it looked like one half of the top floor had been cut in half vertically. The gabled roof on the home’s east side halted abruptly so that the west side of the roof dropped into what looked like new construction with a flat roof. The west side of the home extended nearly to one of two iron fences fitted closely together that surrounded the property.
Somebody didn’t want people knocking on the front door of that house. There were two gates, one for each iron fence, which were about three feet apart. Both gates appeared to be equipped with electronic and deadbolt locks. The exterior fence was lined with tall, pointed spires that looked sharp enough to use at the end of a spear.
It was dark outside, but I could see all that because two floodlights illuminated the upper half of the home. A set of light blue lawn lights lit up the ground.
Owens didn’t have time to work up a van in this short amount of time, so the three of us sat in a big dark blue Chevy Suburban with the kind of tinted windows I like. Garrison handed me a necklace with a small device attached.
He looked like he had lost fifty pounds. I barely recognized him, especially with his new Van Dyke beard. “It’s a little like a body cam, but we can hear you whisper. Don’t talk loud, cuz we’re wearing these.” He pointed to an earbud. “You’ll blow our eardrums out.”
“Ozempic?” I asked.
He looked at Owens, who shrugged. “Huh?”
“Never mind,” I whispered as I bent my head down to leave the vehicle.
“Hey!” Owens whispered loudly. “That’s not how a stakeout works!” I proffered a sexy grin and escaped the big SUV.
As soon as I closed the door, a clap of thunder echoed through the clouds above. A bolt of lightning struck nearby, immediately followed by another, more explosive thunderclap. I felt no surprise when all the lights around the house flickered out.
I grabbed one of the vertical rectangular bars of the gate and used my arm strength to help whip my legs over the two ten-foot-tall wrought iron fences, landing on the balls of my feet, my legs bent like a predator poised to strike.
I found it amusing that Chevalier had built the fencing to prevent human intrusion without any thought to a vampire hurdling his first line of defense. I assumed there would be more obstacles in my immediate future.
There was a fair chance he already knew I was there. There was an equal chance that he was like me, and any extensive video camera system he was using was mostly for show, not so different than my estate’s Calacatta marble floor.
A hard rain began to pelt my body. It only took a moment for the long drapes of my hair to soak through the back of my yellowing, faded Nirvana t-shirt. I whispered into the device, “Owens, you don’t have a weather app on your phone?” No response. I gleefully imagined his stream of epithets with Garrison helplessly looking on.
Through the driving rain, I noticed a figure dragging a body around the front corner of the house to the side. Only one person I knew was that large with the kind of agility he was displaying.
“Charly?” I yelled, forgetting Garrison’s request to keep it quiet. “Fuckin’ Charly?” I strode toward him, but he disappeared with the body around the corner like a deer escaping into a copse. “Charly, man!” I ran to the side of the house, my feet sloshing through an already flooded lawn of tall, unkempt grass. “Charly!” The storm made it difficult to track where Charly went.
When I reached the side of the house, Charly wasn’t there. I ran to the back in the pitch black of night. Strobes of lightning illuminated the old Edwardian like paparazzi bulbs lighting up celebrities. Even though I can see at night as well as any other nocturnal animal, the rain complicated things, making everything blurry. The flashes of light were welcome, but not very helpful. Charly had always been an elusive cat when he needed to be.
“I’m going in, fellas,” I whispered to the device hanging from my neck. But then I felt Charly’s unmistakable vice grip on my shoulder.
“For what?” he growled. I tried to spin around, but he held firm. I backed my head into his with a bang, then turned to face him after he released his hand.
“Charly, fuckin’ hell, man,” I stammered.
When I looked into his eyes, their yellow tiger sclera were gone, replaced by thick, dark film. The soft black marbles his eyes had become revealed no pupils. He glowered at me, hissed, showed his fangs, and I ran out of the yard toward the SUV, hearing Charly’s heavy feet in pursuit.
Author’s note: Raw and unedited (mostly).
It’s my habit to make about 1,000 edits, rewrites, etc when writing a novel.
This is a first iteration. There may be many more, but this will be the only public viewing of this work in progress.
The title is a working title and has a good chance of changing.
In other words, this is raw, unedited, and almost certain to change, possibly in major ways.
It helps to be familiar with characters from the first book in this series, Psalm of Vampires, but my goal is for this second novel in the series to stand on its own.
Question for readers: If you haven’t read Psalm of Vampires, are you reaching the point where it doesn’t matter? Or are you lost? Are you getting any sense of the characters? Or are you lost? Thanks for all and any input!
All feedback is welcome. If you enjoy this and enjoy the process of following a constantly changing work in progress, please restack and share with others who enjoy this kind of fiction.
Thanks for reading!
Here’s the Prologue and Chapter One.
You can check out the first novel in the series on Amazon, where it’s free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
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