Stalked By The Game

Chapter 7 - Laying The Groundwork

::MICK

'Well, doesn't someone hate you. Who did you kill this time?'

Fair enough question and Alex knew it. Everything either came down to women or killing. If it had been Alex, it would have been women but with me, no chance. Unless I was bleeding them dry, I'd been avoiding them lately. That wasn't really the question I wanted answered. I wanted to know what moron hated both a vampire and a hunter enough to want us both dead. That was strange, even for my adventures. In all my years, I'd never been told anything so bizarre.

'You got a lifetime?' I asked him.

He laughed. Glad someone was amused. Can't say I was worried. I'd come out on top of the last attempt but I'd bet my ass that there was someone involved who had seen that little sideshow go down and was taking notes for next time. If this idiot tried it again, I'd take my odds of coming out of it than the hunter's every time.

Actually, I'd been disappointed by her moves if I must say. I'd expected a lot more from the infamous Ari Nicholls than what I'd got. Was kind of like finding out Santa wasn't real. The only link I had to anything was Benny and he'd be running scared for awhile so I had no chance of getting anything out of him. Didn't want to waste the time hunting down the waste of space either. He'd resurface when he thought there was money involved again.

'So what's the deal now? Are you skipping town, getting ahead of the trouble?'

I shook my head. No way was I going anywhere when there was the chance of kicking a few heads in for some fun and I would love to get my hands on the asshole responsible for that last charming plan. There had been nothing worthwhile in any of Benny's rantings, other than whoever was in charge was someone pretty new on the scene. Whoever they were, they must have a fair bit of power which could only mean one of two things. They were either old, at least as old as Alex and I or more so. Or it might just be a case of baby vamp with a powerful master.

We each take on a chunk of our master's powers when we're turned. The woman who turned me had been at least three hundred so I had a leg up power wise before I even got going. Add to it the years I'd been undead and my own instincts, that's what made me who I was. I'd always been in trouble as a human, cracked more than a couple of skulls in drunken bar fights so really, nothing had changed.

'What I want,' I told him jumping over the back of the arm chair and landing directly in it, 'is to track down this guy and make him bleed.'

'Wow, that's kind of sedate for you.'

'I didn't say how I was going to do it,' I reminded him.

I had every intention of killing the bastard eventually but I planned to have some fun first. What else did I have to do with my time now? Well, apart from following Nicholls, waiting to see where the trail for his ass would lead her. I planned to stake out the house where the attack had gone down. I figured if she was going to return anywhere to pick up a trail, it would be from there. Who knows, maybe stupid had left some clues behind for us to follow.

I wasn't in a hurry to move, enjoying the plush surroundings of Alex's place for as long as I could. He was one of the few vamps I knew who had a permenant residence. He liked his stability, liked this dinky little town. I think that had more to do with his current squeeze, Jaynie. Pretty little blonde thing with pale blue eyes. School teacher or something naff like that. He liked the normal things that the relationship offered him, the one constant in his life.

I didn't think Nicholls would be moving very fast at the moment. She may be alive, but I'd almost bled her dry. That takes a toll on the human body, even one as strong and trained as a hunter's. That's the one problem they all dealt with and it gave us an incredible advantage. They were human in every sense of the word. No powers, nothing supernatural about them. Just humans with specific training to do a job. Most of them had had some form of martial arts training, boxing or crap like that but that was as extreme as it got.