Working Class Vegas Vamp is a free urban fantasy serial, usually publishing on Tuesdays. It is unedited and subject to change. If published later, it may differ significantly, and will probably include additional material. Typos and English errors are likely; feel free to leave a comment or write me at am {AT} amscottwrites.com (revised as a standard email address. Pesky bots!) Available for a limited time only!

Haven’t started yet? Chapter 1: https://www.amscottwrites.com/2024/10/29/working-class-vegas-vamp-chapter-1/

Chapter 20

I watched the military-style preparations surrounding me with despair. Karski was in his element, born to be a general and doing it well. The badgers just wanted to tear things apart. The rest of the shifters agreed, but wanted a plan. The gargoyles were present, but not engaging, other than to answer direct questions.

All I could see was a lot of people dying, including a lot of bystanders. There had to be a better way.

“You don’t look happy, Char.” Freddie’s voice came from behind me.

I spun and frowned at her. “Thanks for startling me. Like I don’t have enough trouble now.”

Freddie smirked. “You’ve got a ton of it here, for sure. This big elaborate war plan is doomed to fail, with a ton of collateral damage. Plus, Theoden’s got excellent air attack defenses on his tower, so we can’t parachute a small team in anymore.” She put her hand out flat, twisting and turning it in a descending spiral. “Even gargoyles can’t glide in. He’s got big caliber automatic weapons on the roof, and they’ll eventually chip the gargoyles to pieces. Those pieces will fall on the streets below.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” That’s why the Alpha was planning a suicidal frontal assault with shoulder-fired rockets.

She smirked. “Theoden and his buddies aren’t in his tower anymore. They’ve relocated to a secret underground vault in the mountains. It’s built into an old mine and the only way in will take a huge amount of shaped charges to blow through. Or maybe a nuke.” She smiled slowly. “Unless you know about the emergency escape tunnel. Then, it just takes a single shaped charge or the combination, plus some stealth and a little luck.”

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess. You know where the emergency escape is, and you want me to get the shaped charges.”

“You’re smart, Char.” She winked.

“Or Theoden paid you a lot of money to bring me in, and this is the easiest way to do that.”

She put a hand over her heart and glared. “Ouch. Why would you ever believe I’d work with that guy? I hate him.”

She did, that much was obvious. But exactly why was the mystery. “You might hate him, but you love money, and once you’re bought, you stay bought. You told me that yourself.” I scanned the room, and stared at Mattias, the Fantasique’s security manager. He’d always had my back, and I was fairly certain he wouldn’t let me down now. Plus, trying to extract Karski quietly from the middle of his shifters would never happen.

“It’s true. But I’d never willingly work with KT.” Her lip curled. “He’s scum.”

Karski hadn’t wanted to work with Theoden either, but he had, and for good reason. Even if I couldn’t forget his nose shoved against my rear end. Mattias glanced at me, then met my gaze and barely nodded. While I replied to Freddie, I looked at the ballroom ceiling, then returned to Karski at the war table. Mattias’s gaze followed mine, then he looked away. “Let’s talk upstairs. You can tell me what you’re thinking.” I left the ballroom and trotted up the stairs to one of the club meeting rooms. Freddie was on my heels. Even though I couldn’t hear them, I’d be willing to bet her sisters weren’t far behind. I hated not trusting friends, but that’s the only reason I’d survived so far. Of course, I was trusting a gargoyle who wasn’t even a friend, just an ex-coworker, and a wolf with his own agenda.

With his niece free, I trusted Karski more than the rest of them, though. At the top of the stairs, I walked down the hallway to a conference room and entered, striding to the far end of the table. Freddie probably thought she had me trapped. They didn’t know that I was fast enough to go through the window, or across the table, straight through them.

Freddie stood behind the chair to my right, and as I expected, the rest of the badger girls ran in, two of them firing tasers at me. I swept my arm down and across the wires before the barbs embedded in my body, ducking and pulling the wires under the end of the conference table. More projectiles sailed over my head, smacking into the wall behind me.

I picked up the chair in front of me and stood, swinging hard and bashing Freddie in the head. I caught her sister with backswing and threw the chair at the third. By the time I reached the far end of the table, Mattias blocked the door, the fourth badger’s throat in his hand.

I ran back to Freddie and copied Mattias’s move, grasping her throat. Her pulse pounded under my thumb and forefinger, and I couldn’t help licking my lips. “Such a bad, bad badger. Did you think I’d trust you?” I forced her to meet my gaze. “Tell me everything about this attempt to take me. Start with the initial contact.” I mesmerized her without remorse; she’d brought this on herself.

But it wasn’t working. Her jaw clamped and her pulse and breathing rate rose. I pushed my will on hers, harder, surrounding her with the same spherical shield I’d used on Irene. Words poured out of my mouth. “The Unbound Queen frees you from all other binds. Speak truth, now!” I slammed the sphere shut, enclosing the two of us.

She gasped in pain, then her eyes popped wide. “KT. He got me. He got all of us.” Gasping the words, she panted in between phrases.

I loosened my grip and did a quick sweep of the room. Mattias and Karski restrained the other three even though they struggled in the iron grip of their captors. I’d have to unbind them, too. “How did it start?” I captured her gaze again.

“Normal contact on our portal for a snatch and grab from a human. She assured us it was an abduction for child support leverage, not a killing, so we agreed to meet. As soon as we got there, KT’s vamps surrounded us and he mesmerized all of us.” She shuddered. “It was horrible. I owe you for getting me free.”

“You do. In blood, Freddie. Because cutting people loose is hard.” I hungered, but it wasn’t raging—yet.

She shivered, but nodded. “I understand. Can you free my sisters, please?”

I nodded. “Same deal. They owe me blood.” The women struggled harder.

“Agreed.” Freddie swallowed hard and held out her wrist.

“Not yet. Sit. Stay.” I pushed past her and captured the gaze of the next badger, surrounding and freeing her, then the next, and the last. Each one was easier than the last, but by the time I finished, I was ravenous. Not looking away from the last badger, I spoke to Mattias. “Are you willing to run a timer for me? Two minutes.”

“Yes.” He pulled out a cell phone and tapped on it. “Go.”

I licked and drank from the badger. Her blood had a strange flavor, but it wasn’t unpleasant; it was similar to eating sharp cheese. Power swept through me. Not as good as the wolf, but better than a human. When the phone chimed, I pulled away and licked the wounds shut.

“That’s so weird,” the girl said. “It hurt, then it didn’t, and then it felt good. I really don’t like vampires.” She shuddered.

I laughed. “I don’t like them either. We’re all horrible.”

Freddie shook her head. “Not really. Taking someone’s free will is awful, but other than that, I don’t see much of a difference between you and me. You’re a specialized carnivore rather than an omnivorous predator. Plus, you’re not drinking people dead or mesmerizing for fun and sex. That’s the difference.”

“Let’s focus on the current situation.” Karski sat on the table in front of Freddie. “What do you know about Theodore? Where is he now? What’s his plan?”

“I told the truth before, just not all of it.” She shrugged one shoulder. “He and his buddies are in their super-secure hideout inside an old mine in the mountains. Going through the front door would take a couple of anti-tank rounds, and the back escape hatch is the same. The plan was to bring Char to the escape hatch, and then the vampires would surround us. They’d overwhelm her with numbers in the narrow space.”

An idea rumbled in the back of my mind, but it wasn’t quite ready for prime time. “Have you been there?”

She grimaced. “Only the outside. One of KT’s minions showed me the entrance to the back escape. You wind through a big stack of broken-off hoodoos and boulders, then the tunnel starts. The vault hatch is supposedly about fifty yards down the tunnel.”

“And what about the main vault door?”

She shrugged. “You can’t see it from the mine entrance. I don’t know how deep it is. The mine entrance is fenced off, and there are cameras everywhere.”

I turned to Karski. “Why didn’t we know they left? And can we find out who they took with them and who was left behind?”

Mattias broke in. “We knew they left. We watch that tower closely.”

Karski shot a glare at him. “That would have been useful information.” He grimaced. “There are limos in and out of Theodore’s tower constantly, and they all have dark windows. We do what we can, but that’s not much. Every time we hack the cameras, we’re in for five to ten minutes if we’re lucky, then they kick us out. He’s got excellent network security.”

“You know who normally lives in the tower, though, right? Can you get a list of those missing? I want to know if any of the vampires are still in the tower, and which humans are gone. Because I think there might be an easy solution to the entire problem.”

Karski frowned, then his lips turned up as he caught my meaning. “It might be a cat’s solution, but I think we can make it work.”

*

Three days later, I had answers, but I wasn’t happy about most of them. Theo, all his vampires, and all his humans had literally gone underground. If the humans were all willing, I’d have buried them alive in their litter box and let them prey on each other. But there were too many innocents involved. Theoden wasn’t stupid. He knew I wouldn’t cause that much collateral damage.

The gargoyles reported he sent vampires in and out of his tower every night. Usually, they transported boxes and bags to the mine, and envelopes out–a mail run. Karski’s people uncovered a copy of a commercial delivery contract for food, liquor, and other comfort items three times a week for the next month. Vampires weren’t fans of roughing it.

During the day, Karski’s foxes and coyotes had searched a five-mile diameter around the mine and found two more escape tunnels. They’d also mapped the Starlink antennas, cameras, tripwires and other sensors and evaded multiple drones running surveillance patterns. Three of them got hit with tranquilizer darts. Since they worked in groups, they rescued the fallen before the vamp’s security could snatch them.

One of Karski’s wolves ran a major construction company and after winning a poker game against a competitor, got a look at the mine blueprints. The facility had multiple air intakes with excellent filtration that automatically shut down if foreign substances were detected, like tear gas. If I was willing to kill everyone, we could get enough poison inside, but I was trying to save the innocents.

Karski pounded his fist on the table. “There’s got to be a way to get the humans out.”

“I don’t think there is.” Mattias shook his head. “Theoden’s not stupid.”

We’d been over this before. Maybe it was time to look at where we could go, rather than where we couldn’t. “Let’s go with our first plan and break into Theoden’s tower. I bet we’ll find some interesting things, even with the vampires gone.”

“I’m sure he’s set traps.” Karski grimaced. “I would.”

I nodded. “I know, but I still think we should look, especially at the temple. I’m sure they took the book of prophecy, but we might find some clues.”

“You may find more than that, Char.” Mattias’s thick brows almost met, an unusual display of emotion for the normally stoic gargoyle. “We’re talking about an ancient religion with centuries of worship. That can create a deity. If there is a temple, it might be dangerous.”

I wasn’t the true-believer type. Becoming a mindless priestess or an empty vessel for a minor god would be even worse.

Karski tilted his head, his amber eyes glowing brighter. “That might have been Theoden’s plan all along. Leave, draw us into the tower, take us out with traps, and sucker Char into the temple where whatever they’ve hatched can take over.”

Freddie inspected her fingernails. “KT’s been stalking Char for a long time. He’s tried courting, he’s tried manipulation, he’s tried forcing a business relationship, and he’s tried abduction. I don’t think it’s just the thrill of the hunt. He wants her to join him willingly, but he’s lost patience.”

Mattias nodded. “I think you’re partially correct, Freddie. Theoden lives for the chase, but he’s adapted to modern times by pursuing his business goals, and done very well. I think he applied that same method to Char. His sudden escalation says two things to me. One, whatever he wants Char for, it will work better if she does it willingly, under his leadership. Two, he’s being pushed by outside pressures. He’s not one to give up easily. He enjoys challenges, and Char has provided decades of entertainment. But I’ve watched the ballroom video, and that’s an unhappy man who’s no longer one hundred percent certain he can win.”

“He’s lucky he kept his life.” Karski finished with a growl.

Mattias shook his head. “You’re lucky too. If you hadn’t shot right away with the correct placement, you might be under his control. Next time, don’t let him touch you, especially not skin to skin. That strengthens his abilities. Wear long sleeves, a hat, and gloves.”

“I appreciate that information very much.” Karski nodded. “You’re partially right. My humanity almost fell, but my wolf was still free. I was about to shift when he ran. If we invade any of Theoden’s abodes, the pack will be in wolf form, which limits our usefulness with modern weaponry.”

But Karski could change partway, so maybe he could use a weapon. I wouldn’t ask with all these non-pack members around.

“That’s why we went in badger form,” Freddie said. “Took forever to force the change, but it was the only way we could be sure.”

I doubted she was absolutely certain even in badger form. Although, if any animal could withstand an ancient vamp, it would be a badger.

Freddie continued, “Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do something soon. All this sitting around talking is getting us nowhere fast.”

“Failure to plan is planning to fail.” Karski frowned at her.

“It also makes us sitting ducks for an attack.” Freddie motioned at the second-floor conference room, the blinds drawn and ultrasonic vibrators—to prevent long-distance listening devices—mounted on the glass. “I know you’ve got people out watching, but every minute we spend here increases the chance of them coming after us.”

He growled for a moment. “I know that. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t meet yesterday. I’d planned on making a final decision today, regardless.”

I’d spent yesterday going over the intelligence Karski had gathered on Theoden and his vampires. His lieutenants weren’t simple bully boys after all. Looking back, I suspected they’d tried to force a reaction from me. It didn’t excuse their behavior, because the issue could have been resolved if they’d simply listened to what I had to say. But they were too set in their ways, too certain that a baby vampire couldn’t control her emotions and reactions the way I had. They’d attempted to make me snap, but I’d learned to control my reactions in a much harsher environment than KT’s luxury tower. I’d also learned that running kept me alive, so I had. KT had probably forced Pamela to contact and shelter me, to keep me from slaughtering every human in my vicinity. When that didn’t happen, he was finally forced to admit that I could survive on my own. He’d modified his approach. That still left me wondering why he’d forced the issue now. “You know, Theo’s organization didn’t listen to me. Maybe I need to talk to him.”

“No.” Karski slashed his hand through the air in front of his body. “Way too dangerous. Besides, he’s made it clear. He wants complete surrender or nothing.”

Freddie backhanded his shoulder. “They have these things called phones, genius. She doesn’t have to get close to him. My sister can even route the call to mask the location.”

I pushed the corner of Karski’s phone, making it spin on the table in front of him. “He knows we’re here. Just call.”

“I don’t think this will work.” But he tapped, and the call rang through.

After five rings, a voice finally answered. “What do you want, Karski?” It was Theoden’s voice, unusually impatient.

“Nothing, Theoden. But Flammen wants to talk to you. I recommend you listen and discuss, but that’s your decision.” Karski’s tone was flat, but I could hear the exasperation. Theoden probably could, too.

“Charlene,” he practically purred. “I’m listening.”

My lip curled, but I controlled my immediate revulsion. “What exactly do you want with me, Theoden? We can fight, but it’s a waste of people, time, and money. If you keep forcing me to submit, we will fight. I don’t belong to anyone, especially you. So what is the problem you’re trying to use me to solve?”

“I’m not talking about this over the phone.” He snapped the words.

“Then I guess we’ll fight, because I’m not wasting lives trying to meet with you in person. You can’t be trusted. You’ve proven that.”

“How dare you doubt my word!”

I snorted. “You broke your word by attacking Karski.”

“He broke first. He threatened my people.”

I couldn’t hold back a sigh. “You had his human niece, doorknob. And your people were armed. Of course he threatened them. Let’s return to the subject, which is talking about whatever issue you’ve got. You said there was a threat coming, a threat to all of us. What is that threat, and why is it my problem?”

“I will not share my secrets with animals. Charlene Flammen, come here to me, now.”

I could hear the command in his voice even over my team’s protests, but it rolled over me without effect. “No. I won’t. That doesn’t work on me, Theo. Not even in person. And you’re not going to seduce me, either. Stop trying. It’s annoying.” He might be physically attractive, but his personality negated that entirely.

“I will talk to you and you alone about this, Charlene. Meet me at Arrolime in an hour. I will drop a pin and text it to Karski. My people and yours will remain at the bottom of the hill while we meet at the top. No listening devices, no sniper rifles.”

Karski shook his head. “How do we know it’s not already trapped?”

“Make a counter-offer.” Theoden spoke without emotion.

“Send your pin.”

A text popped on Karski’s phone and he displayed it on the large screen in the conference room. The location was at the top of a hill, one of several near Highway 91. Karski zoomed out, then into a facility nearby. He muted the phone’s microphone. “I’ll tell him the open area behind the fireworks company where they test and build displays.” He didn’t wait for agreement, but tapped the middle of the open area, then sent that pin to Theoden.

“Standby.” I counted to thirty-three, then Theoden spoke. “Agreed. One hour. Our people remain outside the field. Charlene and I meet in the middle.”

I held up my hand when Karski opened his mouth. “Agreed.” I tapped the phone, ending the call. “You can yell at me, or get ready.”

“Born ready, Char.” Freddie winked, then faced Karski. “Snipers on the warehouse?”

Karski nodded. “Of course.” He stood and crossed to the map display.

I’d leave him to plan, because I had more important work to do.

***To be continued***

Working Class Vegas Vamp Copyright © 2024 by AM Scott. All Rights Reserved.

Cover by Achlys Book Cover Designs