Chapter 18

Halo was a hunter, so he knew how to find his prey, especially when they were running from him. Jonah was running. All the signs said he was. He had hastily packed and moved. He had said goodbye to all of his friends, broken up with his lover, and quit his job. Admittedly the quitting-his-job part was a given after trying to blow the place to kingdom come, but still…

Halo tracked him all the way to a posh little townhouse, appreciating the efforts he had taken to conceal his route from all but the most experienced and determined of hunters.

Halo was that hunter.

Now Halo sat watching the house from a dark corner across the street. It was cold, the coldness seeping into his very bones, but he didn’t care. He would stand there however long it took to see what he wanted to see.

Roth. He wanted Roth. And he knew, just knew, he was in that townhouse. It was just Roth’s style. Expensive and old. Like Roth himself. He had been hunting Roth enough to know that he liked to live the good life. He knew enough to know that before he had defected to sycophanthropy he had moved a tremendous amount of money out of his bank accounts, likely to an untouchable offshore account somewhere. Halo had been trying to figure out a way to attack his resources, perhaps flushing him out that way, but he had been captured before he could really pursue the possibility. Now that he was back on Roth’s trail he would revisit the strategy—that is, if he wasn’t in this house.

And even if he wasn’t in the house, Jonah was. And wherever Jonah was, Roth would eventually be. They would be together in person at some point. True, most details could be handled over the phone, but Halo was betting Roth was more hands-on than that. He liked getting his hands dirty. Even when he had been on the good side of the vampire world he had liked to go about doing things himself and, in small doses, taking on more menial tasks in order to ingratiate himself with those who worked beneath him, making them think he was a man of the people. That he wasn’t so high up that he would forget the little guy.

It was a tactic that had led Simone and Halo and others to think he might one day try to take the crown away from Simone. True, she was an elected queen and every ten years her term came up, but she had held the office for six consecutive terms, the people quite satisfied with how she was running their lives.

Halo was forced to wonder what Roth’s endgame was here. Did he imagine himself ruling the vampire world? No. That could never happen now that he was a sycophant. Surely he knew that.

Then…did he want to rule the sycophant underworld? It already had a leader, and Draz would not just sit back and let Roth steal it from him.

What then? What was it? Halo needed to understand that if he was going to understand his prey. And he would never catch Roth if he didn’t fully understand his motives. He tried to put himself in Roth’s shoes. He built the picture around himself.

“I’m handsome and proud of that handsomeness. I like to use it to get and then control women. I am rich and powerful. I love money and the things it can buy. When I am with a woman I hold little value over her.”

He stopped. He realized then that the picture he was building was close to Roth but more accurately belonged to Michael. It made him wonder if he would find Michael in this building as well. At that moment he didn’t know who he wanted more—Roth or Michael. Roth had injured him, had demeaned and victimized him, had made him helpless. But Halo could fight for himself. He could defend himself. He could break free and make it an equal playing field. Felice had been innocent in all of this and Michael had seen to it that she was stripped and brutalized. She would never have escaped without him. She would still be there now, food for whatever sycophant wanted her, if they had not escaped together.

That was untenable. It made Halo seethe with rage to think of it. He had used social media to find Michael, to see a picture of the bastard’s face. He had burned it into his memory.

If all three were indeed in that townhouse, Halo had to be cautious. He couldn’t just storm in and take them all on himself. There were bound to be others—other guards and sycophants who had flocked to Roth’s banner. It would do him no good to go in there raging with nothing but his strength and outrage to defend himself. He had to be clever about this.

So he watched and waited. He tracked all the activity going in and out of the townhouse. He counted. He was still watching when the townhouse door opened and a man, bundled up against the cold, stepped outside. He stood on the stoop putting his gloves on. Halo knew immediately he was human. Vampires could always tell the difference between vampires, humans, and sycophants just by looking. Their energy auras were easy to read.

That and the fact that e-vamps didn’t need to bundle up against the cold. They could use their inner energy to keep warm in any temperature. They wore coats so as not to stand out from others and to conserve that energy, but they didn’t bundle up like this guy. They needed to be able to move fluidly. To take on any attackers that might come at them. Sycophants and e-vamps both wanted to be battle ready in case they ran into one another.

Halo had to make a decision. Follow this human or wait and see if Roth was in the townhouse. The temptation was just too great. If this human was Michael, he wanted to get his hands on him. There would be time to go back and get Roth…and Jonah. Time for darkness to fall. Halo still hadn’t decided if he was going to call in reinforcements or if he was going to work his way through the house on his own. It would be taking a big risk to take on everyone by himself, but it wouldn’t be the first time he had fought unknown odds and come out the victor. He was leaning in the direction of calling in a team. He couldn’t afford to screw this up.

What he needed was information. And he knew exactly where he could get some.

He stalked the human prey, following him through the city streets, waiting for his opportunity. He watched the human window-shop, watched him eat pizza.

Halo had entered the restaurant and bought a soda so he looked like just another customer. He did it so he could sit in a chair that faced the human and he could get a good look at his face as he ate.

It was Michael. His luck seemed to have turned for the better, Halo thought. Which was good because it had really sucked lately. Unless he counted his time with Felice. As unlucky as their meeting had been, he was happy he had met her, happy she was in his life. His unease came when he thought of all she had suffered because of him. And because of Michael.

Oh man, was he going to kill this guy. But not too quickly. No, Michael’s death would serve more than one purpose.

Halo followed him into the bathroom, washing his hands while the other man stood at the urinal. He debated his next move. He needed to get Michael somewhere less public. He wanted to take his time with Michael. Wanted him to suffer slowly because of Felice. He deserved it. He was owed it. And he deserved to know it was Felice reaching out for justice against him. She was too gentle a soul to do so on her own, but he knew that somewhere inside of her she was happy to use Halo as a means for that justice.

Justice would not happen, however, if he couldn’t get this guy alone. But Halo was nothing if not patient. He would wait and bide his time, even though it meant Roth might get away temporarily. He had faith in his own abilities. He would track Roth to hell if necessary.

After about another half hour tracking Michael, his opportunity presented itself. Michael stepped inside the vestibule of another building, taking the opportunity to warm his hands and his body over the heat grate in the floor.

Halo had so far concealed his identity from Michael, wearing a hoodie and a pair of dark sunglasses, but now it was time to play. Time for Michael to learn about whom he had crossed.

He entered the vestibule behind Michael and double-checked the surroundings for potential witnesses. Then he stood face-to-face with Michael and with a wicked grin on his lips he said, “Hello, Michael.”

Michael was clearly surprised a stranger on the street recognized him. He automatically said, “Hello.”

Then came the part when he tried to recognize the man who had greeted him. Halo waited for it. Waited for the moment realization and then terror whipped through Michael’s expression.

“H-how d-did you kn-kn—”

“How did I know you were part of the team that kidnapped me?” He leaned in and whispered, “Your boss should have cleaned up after himself a little better. He should have erased her memory permanently instead of playing cat and mouse with her.” He kept his voice modulated, never once raising it above its usual low timbre. Halo watched as the urge to scream came over his mark and was amused when Michael squeaked instead as Halo’s hand suddenly gripped him around his neck.

“Let’s go somewhere private,” Halo said. “And keep in mind I have a knife stuck against your ribs in case you decide to call for help.”

Halo pricked him with the knife he’d drawn as he had gripped Michael around his neck. He felt Michael swallow all the way through to the back of his neck where he continued to hold him. He encouraged him deeper into the building and up the stairs. It was an apartment building. Halo brought him to the first apartment where he detected no energy signatures inside. He released Michael just long enough to grab the knob, turn it, and shove with all his significant strength. The door opened with a crack as the dead bolt was compromised. He encouraged Michael inside and closed the door behind them.

Halo didn’t waste time going too deep into the apartment. He found the nearest wall and shoved Michael against it.

“All right. Now that we have some privacy…take off your clothes.”

“Wha—what?”

“You heard me. I want you naked. Now.”

“B-but—”

Halo stabbed Michael with the knife. Not deep enough for real damage, only about a half an inch. However, it was enough to hurt and to get his point across. Michael yelped from the pain, tried to push his way free, but Halo was a brick wall in his way. When he realized he could do nothing except obey, Michael began to take off his clothes with shaking hands.

When Michael was stark naked, Halo smiled an evil smile at him.

“Now. You’re going to learn how it feels to be naked and vulnerable. What it feels like to feel your life threatened. I’m going to make you feel the same terror you made Felice feel.”

“S-she deserved every minute of it!” Michael sputtered with a stupid sort of bravery.

“Why? Because she dared to leave you when you mistreated her?”

“She’s an arrogant bitch. She thinks she’s so much better than everyone else. She needed to be brought down a few pegs. I-I wasn’t going to hurt her, just teach her a lesson!”

“You call pumping her full of heroin and throwing her naked into a cell with a hungry vampire not hurting her?” Halo was appalled by the man’s warped sense of justice, but he didn’t let it show. He simply drew the ultra sharp knife along Michael’s chest, from nipple to nipple, opening a thin line of flesh until blood began to drip down his pasty white skin. Michael reacted violently to the pain, but a press of the knife into the flesh of his pectoral reminded him Halo had his life in his hands.

“Now…how many sycophants are following Roth? I detected eight energy signatures in the townhouse. Are they all guards? Or is Roth working in concert with other high-level phants? Like Draz perhaps?”

“He’s in charge. I never saw him sharing power with anyone else, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t working with anyone. I just never saw or heard anyone.”

Halo realized he didn’t believe a word that was coming out of his mouth. The only way around that was to put him into a state where he couldn’t lie. Halo forced Michael’s attention up, made him look into his eyes. He sank control into him using hypno with predictable ease.

“Are you sure you never saw or heard Roth dealing with anyone else?”

“Yes. I’m sure. He likes his power. We’re…we’re afraid of him.”

“How did you meet him?”

“Through a friend. A lesser vampire.”

“A lesser sycophant,” Halo corrected him through his teeth. “They are nothing like decent vampires and don’t deserve the name.”

“Y-yes, sir. Sorry, sir,” Michael apologized hastily.

“Yeah, you’re sorry, all right. So, tell me, how did you work Felice into this?”

“I put her name forward when he was thinking of who to throw in there with you. Mostly because I wasn’t able to find her on my own. I knew Roth would have the resources to find her. And he did. Rather quickly. He rewarded me for being loyal that way. Allowed me to follow her and learn her schedule. Oh, it was so satisfying, so thrilling to know she was going to get what was coming to her—and knowing I was the one who was going to make it happen.”

“You little fuck. I can’t wait to kill you,” Halo growled.

“Y-you can’t kill me! That’s murder!”

“Here’s the thing,” Halo said with a wicked smile. “When you started hanging out with sycophants and aligning yourself with them, you became subject to vampire law. And vampire law, when broken, has only one real punishment. I am well within the law to take your life.”

“You’re crazy! I didn’t know that!” Michael yelped.

“Ignorance of the law doesn’t excuse you from it. Besides, I don’t believe you when you say you didn’t know what you were risking. You knew what Roth was. You knew there’d be consequences if you were ever caught—either by humans or vampires.”

“I s-suppose I did. But I didn’t know that meant capital punishment!”

“You were willing to trade Felice’s life away. Why should you be treated with any different regard? No. You can stop arguing. When I’m through with you you’re going to feel the life slip out of your body while I watch.” Halo smiled. “But first, tell me…was Roth in the townhouse when you left?”

“No. But he’ll be there around six o’clock. He’s holding a meeting about what to do next with you. He’s obsessed with you. I wish I could tell you why. He wanted to turn you really bad. He was going to keep you there and feed you poison until you changed. With some vampires all it takes is once. And he figured with your unclean lifestyle and the gassing you would turn easy. He wasn’t counting on you escaping. I don’t know why you’re so upset about Felice. You never fed off her.”

That was right. There was no way for them to know he had fed off Felice. And he was also right about Halo’s less than stellar lifestyle. With the drinking and rough living, he wasn’t exactly the most pristine example of a clean vampire. But Roth hadn’t counted on his determination—and his devotion to vampire lawfulness when it came down to brass tacks. Roth had seen him as an easy mark to turn when in fact the opposite was true. He was the hardest mark in town. He had been lucky that the committee had recognized that and were giving him a second chance. Halo wasn’t going to waste it. He was going to change. No more playing fast and loose with an unclean lifestyle. No more tempting fate by flirting with sycophanthropy. No more loose women with questionable morals and damaged self-esteem. He was better than all of that. He had gotten lost for a while but he was better than that.

Felice made him feel better than that. She gave him focus, settled him. He gave a damn about her more than he ever had about anyone else. It was shocking to find himself wanting to be a better man because of her. That gave her an incredible amount of power in his life. He should be disturbed by that understanding—he had been disturbed by it but that had been because of how natural it had felt. It was because it had come so easy. And it had come even though he had done very little to deserve it. To deserve her.

He continued to grill Michael for the next half hour. Where did Roth live? Who protected him? What were his plans? Where could Halo find him and at what times of the day? What were his plans?

Roth had been one of those vampires who thought humans were beneath him. They were cattle. Food. So it surprised Halo that Michael, a human, was so informed about Roth. It made Halo suspicious. He would believe the information when he saw it with his own eyes. Until then he was going to take it with a grain of salt.

Apparently Roth was living in a separate location from that of his closest minions. Roth’s plans were to reacquire his potential assets, Halo and Felice, the minute they dropped their guards again. Felice, he was using to amuse himself more than he was doing it for Michael any longer—probably because he had seen firsthand how physically attracted to her Halo was. Halo supposed Roth thought he would feel even more responsibility for a girl he was attracted to and who he had been through so much with already.

Halo didn’t understand why Roth had such a hard-on for him. Other than the fact that he was the best hunter in the game and had direct access to the queen, it was clear he would be detected if he changed allegiances now. Everyone was aware. They were on guard.

No. Despite what Roth was saying, this was somehow personal. He was after Halo because of something—some imagined slight—and he was using an innocent girl to manipulate him.

That meant Felice was in danger. Suddenly Halo desperately wanted to go to her. To make sure she was safe. But he had to trust that Danton could keep her safe and that she was protected in a building with heightened security.

“Explain the bombing to me,” he asked Michael.

“It was a lure. Roth’s expecting you,” Michael told him.

“But he let you run around. Unprotected.”

“I don’t know. I don’t understand everything that he does!”

“That’s unfortunate for you. This whole association with Roth is unfortunate for you.” Halo flicked his knife along the day-old whiskers on Michael’s cheek. “Are you ready to pay for your part in this?”

“Please…I…I don’t want to die!”

“You should have thought about that before seeking revenge on an innocent woman.”

“She isn’t innocent! You don’t know her like I do! She’s manipulative and untrustworthy. She…she uses men. Uses them to get what she wants or needs. She used you to get out of that prison. She seduced you into helping her. I saw. I saw it all. What kind of woman lets herself feel arousal when she’s trapped in a room with no way out? Who lets their guard down like that in a situation like that? No. She used you and you’re too dense to see it. She’s still using you…to get to me.”

Halo tried not to let doubt creep into his mind, but it slipped in just the same. Looking at it through Michael’s eyes changed the tenor of everything he had shared with Felice. It threatened how he felt about her. Had she used him? Had he misread her entirely?

No, no, and no. He had an instinct for users. Hell, he was a user. And he allowed women to use him every day of the week practically. Felice had wanted nothing from him. She had given herself freely and expected nothing in return. If anyone was using anyone, it was Halo using Felice. He was using her for comfort and for pleasure. He was keeping her close because he liked the way she made him feel even though he had no plans of reciprocating with any sense of permanence.

Or maybe he was. He had come to enjoy being with her—and he had begun to balk at the idea of leaving her. How had she come to mean so much to him so quickly? He hadn’t even realized he was capable of such feelings.

He didn’t want to soul search while he had Michael there tainting his perspective of his time with Felice. It enraged him, this petty man passing judgment on such a delicate soul. His warped perspective threatened Felice’s existence. She would never be safe as long as Michael and Roth walked the earth. As long as they were fixated on her. As long as they associated her with Halo.

Killing a human wasn’t as neat as killing a sycophant—human bodies didn’t dissipate upon their death. Michael’s body would leave a trail that, had it been anyone else, could lead back to the vampires. But Halo had worn gloves. He had been aware of all the cameras that could have revealed him following Michael. Vampire DNA simply didn’t exist once it left the vampire’s body. Like a dead vampire, it dissipated into the air.

Halo hated to leave a mess. He liked things to be neat and tidy. It was why he never hunted humans. He left that to authoritarians. But in this case he wanted the satisfaction of knowing Michael would never be able to hurt Felice again. Michael must have seen the determination and resolution in his eyes because he began to breathe hard and fast.

“She’s using you to do her dirty work for her. Can’t you see that?”

“Go ahead. Keep talking. It helps,” Halo said with a grin. “You know, I should do this slowly. Take my time. But who knows when these people are going to come home, right?”

“Please…” Michael whimpered.

“Besides, if I don’t treat an animal like you humanely, I might have the ASPCA on my back. And those people can be dogged.” He grinned again. “Get it? ASPCA…dogged? Anyway—”

Fast as lightning, Halo grabbed Michael’s head. Michael tensed, as expected, and Halo used the sudden tension against him. He snapped his neck with enormous torsion, nearly ripping his head from his body—or so it might seem. After Michael sank to the floor, Halo listened as his breaths grew shorter. Disconnected as it was, his brain could no longer get messages through to the autonomic functions of his body. His heart stopped and his breathing did as well after only a few short moments. But it was long enough for Michael to look into Halo’s eyes as the vampire said, “You have been judged. You have been found wanting. Hell can have you now. Just as you deserve.”

Michael faded away shortly after that. Halo turned his back on him and left him right where he lay. He wasn’t about to carry a body through the streets. He’d unfortunately have to leave Michael there for the owners of the house to find. Let the human authorities try to figure out how a naked man managed to get his neck broken in a stranger’s apartment. Michael was their problem now. He should have been their problem long ago. Had the justice system worked in the least, Michael would not have been roaming the streets. He would not have been a threat to Felice in the first place.

Now he needed to find Roth. Knowing where he would be and at what time helped. He debated going in alone but realized it was far too important a task to take chances on Roth escaping. Halo might never have so golden an opportunity again.

He took out the burner cell he’d bought and called the only other vampire he’d trust to get the job done.

“Hello?”

“Danton? I need a favor.”

“Name it,” Danton said. The swift loyalty in the reaction gave Halo a sense of family he hadn’t felt very often. He realized then that his lone-wolf persona had cost him a few things. A steady friendship being one of them. Yet in spite of his detachment from other vampires, Danton was instantly ready to help him at his request. It humbled Halo a little. More than a little.

“I need you to help me get Roth. I know when and where he’ll be tonight, but I can’t breach the place alone and guarantee I can get Roth. I need you to keep everyone else busy while I go directly for Roth.”

“Sounds like a party. I’m game. But what about Felice?”

Indeed. Who would watch over Felice while they were taking care of Roth? There was only one other vampire Halo could trust.

“Call Rafe for me. Have him sit with her. Tell him it’s only for a little while.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll do it. I trust him. He won’t let anything happen to her.”

“I know.”

Halo gave Danton the address of the townhouse and the name of a restaurant nearby where they could meet up. Time was short. Six o’clock wasn’t that far away. Danton promised to be there immediately.

Halo went to the restaurant that afforded a view of the townhouse, albeit from a bit of a distance. Still, he was close enough to see the energy signatures of those within. He was also close enough to see that other sycophants were arriving at the townhouse. It would make things more difficult.

Difficult, not impossible. Halo had confidence in Danton’s remarkable skills. A vampire did not become head of all the authoritarians just on political merit. Danton was a beast of a fighter. Halo respected that.

Halo sat back and waited for Danton to arrive, his gaze never once wavering from his target.