Chameleon | ONC 2020

12: The Last One

The silence in the car was suffocating. Chameleon rode in the back behind Coran, who was in the driver's seat. Hers was a unique kind of claustrophobia; her ex's sorrow cloud had taken over the space, lowering over her, misting the windows. It seemed to be reaching for her.

The only other passenger was Dante, Coran's best friend and a stinking leech to boot. Every now and then he'd leer over the seat at her, and Coran didn't stop him. Eventually Chameleon closed her eyes and tried not to think about it, or about Lilac trussed up in the van driving behind them, or about the eldritch horror trailing several streets behind. The sorcerer had bound the lure to Lilac as the summoning required a living tether. Chameleon also tried not to think about the fact that she had no idea how to undo that tether if she had to.

They pulled into an alley and stopped, unexpectedly, as Coran didn't need to drive with the headlights on. Chameleon's fingers tightened around the paper in her pocket. Her heart was in her throat, as if to provide a target for the vampires she was meant to be distracting.

The last job she had had to provide a distraction for passed through her mind, the sheer terror of thinking the vampire would actually kill her. Only this time, she was expected to walk into a whole den of them without losing her head, and she'd preceded the job by upsetting her biggest source of protection.

Her instincts were screaming at her. If she'd been thinking straight, if she'd been thinking normally, she might have thought about that before entering the warehouse. She would have made sure to stay on Coran's good side until she didn't need him anymore.

She couldn't stop thinking about Lilac, and it had made her sloppy.

"Time to go," Coran said flatly, avoiding her gaze in the rear view mirror. "You got the plan down?"

"Yeah," she croaked, though at that moment it all dissolved to mush in her head. She'd been living on her toes for years, though. She could improvise if she had to.

She got out of the car. She edged past the van that had swung into the alley behind them, resisting the urge to wrench the door open and do something valiant but stupid. She couldn't outrun a ghoul or an angry werewolf. She made herself walk past, and stepped out into the street.

It was a residential road, filled with red-brick townhouses with wrought-iron fences and bronze knockers. Each probably cost a million apiece, and she shrank as if even the air cost money. The door she was after sat directly across from her, and it looked so ordinary it was hard to believe it was infested with vampires. They would know she was here already, and they had probably seen the vehicles arrive. They would be suspicious, so she would have to be even more careful. A flicker in one window made her jump as she climbed the steps to the front door, and it opened before her hand had even touched the wood.

She snatched it back, away from the vampire who stood there. He grinned, pale face almost luminous with reflected light from the streetlamps. She pulled the fake contract out of her pocket. She didn't need to act out fear and hopelessness.

"I'd like to see Ravick, please," she murmured, keeping her eyes on her feet and her shoulders hunched. She had pulled her hair down over her face because Coran hadn't brought her a wig – not that a wig would fool vampires. She'd slapped on some thick black eyeshadow and dark lipstick before she left, and hoped no one would realise she was the human with a link to Coran, at least until the rest of the plan could fall into place.

Without speaking, he held out his hand for the contract, but she clutched it to her chest.

"Ravick," she insisted.

He scowled but let her inside, and the interior of the building was a stark contrast to the outside. In all her jobs, she had never seen anything like it; Coran had kept her away from this kind of thing. She had been blind. She hadn't known just how little of the supernatural world she was privy to, and that was starting to look like a blessing.