Reckless Abandon - The Secrets of Avelina Chronicles 2

15: Trey

Most of the time, Trey kept far away from council dealings. He had never felt like a true council member because he wasn't an elder or of pure blood. He knew how the elders felt about mixed blood vampires making decisions about the clan. They only allowed Damian to lead because he was so old and wise and had a mind made for military action and leadership. He was the exception to every rule the vampires had ever made and he was a good enough leader that no-one bothered to complain about his past. Trey had always felt like a fly on the wall...privileged to observe, but unable to truly participate with the others.

Now, he was breaking with tradition. Something funny was going on in the vampire world and he seemed to be the only one apart from Damian to feel it in his bones. If Damian couldn't do his job and investigate the way he would have before he took over leadership, Trey would have to do it for him. He might not have been able to read people's minds, but he had learned enough from his best friend to know body language signals that would help him. He was old enough and smart enough to figure out if someone was lying to him or keeping something back.

Having already made three cold calls to old friends, who might be close enough to the vampire underground scene to know something, Trey was getting frustrated at the lack of information he had. All he knew came from Knox, about the bite marks being consistent with vampires. He didn't even know if the number of killings had grown from the four he knew about. None of his friends could help either. They were heavily involved in the vampire trade, that Damian was powerless to end and he had been surprised to learn that in the past few days, Knox himself, had taken down four vampire clubs.

They had apparently been the backbone of the underground trade, handing off vampires to humans as toys and amusement items. The whole thing made him sick, but he was glad to know that Knox was showing leadership qualities his father would be proud of. He had certainly put the fear of God into the club owners. The trade was closing up shop in town because of it.

Now if Trey could only find out about the killings, he would have a double-whammy of good news to take back to Damian. He had one friend left to turn to, Theodore, who had a finger in every pie, just deep enough to be involved without being responsible or having everyone know his name. He had come up trumps before, on occasions when he and Damian had made the visit twice as threatening. It was Trey's turn to go it alone and get some answers. As soon as Theo saw him outside his door, he decided against scampering out the back way and invited him in, knowing it would do no good to run.

"Well, what do you want? Ain't you a council member now?" Theo asked with a sigh as he led the way through to the living room of his apartment. Trey was stalled from answering his question by the state of the room. There were half a dozen cardboard boxes scattered across the floor, looking suspiciously like packing boxes. The whole room was in such a state that Trey could easily assume that Theo was looking to make a quick escape before any trouble could reach him.

"That's right. I want some answers from you Theo and then I'll leave." Trey began, perching on the arm of the sofa. He was trying to touch as little as possible since the whole place was about as dirty and disgusting as an apartment could get. He was sure he saw a cockroach crawl across the carpet underneath the window at the far end of the room. He knew then, that he wanted to get what information he could out of Theo and leave as quickly as possible. But Theo wasn't playing nice.

"I don't know nothing about nothing. Don't ask me." He claimed and got up from his arm chair as if to see Trey out. But he held firm and made it as easy as possible for Theo to tell him what he needed to know without getting into trouble for it.

"I'm sure you don't. But say...hypothetically that you'd heard about strong human men being taken down by vampires and killed. What, hypothetically, would you make of it?" He wondered. He tried not to breathe as soon as he caught the faint whiff of decomposition coming from the bedroom. He didn't care what Theo got up to. He could keep dead bodies for as long as he wanted to, just as long as he answered Trey's questions and let him leave, quickly.

"Well...hypothetically, I'd think someone was preparing for war." Theo grinned at the out Trey had given him. A hypothetical situation wouldn't get him killed, that was for sure. So he didn't mind giving up everything he knew. After all, in a few days, no-one would be able to find him to kill him so it didn't really matter what he said any more. Not that he knew much. "That maybe they wanted strong humans out the way. Or that they'd managed to get their hands on certain spells from the old days, which would make these strong humans turn...after twenty days of being dead." He explained something that Trey hadn't even known was possible.

As far as he knew, people turned by vampires made the change over a matter of minutes, sometimes a few hours, but never twenty days. It just didn't seem possible. The dead body would already start decomposing. It would go through a human autopsy and be missing a good many organs that would be removed and slotted back in during the autopsy, in preparation for burial. It wasn't the most pleasant experience he could imagine. But it made a certain sense, when he considered the chosen few who had been killed during the killings. He knew from first hand experience that twenty days was possibly under certain conditions, but it was also cutting it fine. Hadn't Angela suffered because Damian hadn't managed to complete the transition, for her to become a vampire, within the allocated twenty-one days?

"Where would these spells be found? And what would they achieve?" He wondered, curious as to what had been uncovered. Though he wasn't in the lease surprised to see that Theo relished telling him.

"Old books in forbidden places would be the first place I'd look. And what they'd achieve would be well worth the hassle. The chaos of human lives lost a dozen at a time." He gloated happily. But Trey's mind was stalled on the information he had given. How was he going to break the next to his best friend that someone had found a way around Angela's suffering, by looking in the very vampire archives that Lucius could have granted him access to? His sister could have lived, as a vampire. Damian's first wife could have survived, to live a long, happy life with him.

"Bad news for vampires and humans. Pitting one against the other and showing the leaders as weak and unable to solve the problem. Not to mention the benefits of those dead humans being buried and dug up, turned to vampires and ready to join the war for the right side." Theo winked at him.

Trey didn't need to be told what side was the right side. He could pretty much assume that any friend of Damian's lay on the wrong side of the war. Someone was gunning for his spot on the council or his leadership of the clans, but either way, Trey wasn't going to let them succeed. Damian was his best buddy, he wasn't going to let anyone muscle him out of the job he had earned and been asked to take on by an elder and the last master of the Croiset clan.

"And how long would you say it would be before war breaks out? Or does the state of your place tell me it's already on it's way?" He wondered curiously. He wasn't exactly surprised to see that Theo's smile faltered for a second before he was forced to fake a grin of joviality. He stammered at first, cleared his throat and began again.

"You know me Trey, I'm always on the move. But, if war was coming, I'd be gone faster than you could say Jackrabbit. There are those who think Damian's too soft for the position he's in. That punishment should be reinstated...and dealt out to him first." He explained calmly. He bravely swallowed back his fear of Damian and Trey's authority, which could easily have him sent to the clan house prison to wallow away. Or as he'd heard someone suffered, be exposed to such a concentrated beam of sunlight that he literally blew up from the inside out. He didn't want first hand experience of that one, that was for sure. So, he decided to make one thing perfectly, crystal clear to Trey so that he was under no misconception as to his knowledge.

"That's only my opinion. Hypothetically, that is." He clarified, making Trey sigh at his pathetic attempt to get out of trouble. Desperate to get out of the rat hole Theo called an apartment, Trey didn't make an argument. He simply left and wondered on his way home, how he was going to break the news to Damian. He would no doubt insist, as he usually did, 'To the Victor go the Spoils'. And that usually meant trouble.