“Same as always, slow and easy, just the way I like it.” Dead silence greeted this announcement and Colin frowned, wondering if they’d been disconnected. “Garry? You there?”

“What? Oh, yeah, Colin. Sorry, I dozed off.”

“Fuck you,” Colin drawled.

“In your dreams, my man. So what’s up?”

“We’ve had some trouble up here and a name’s come up. One I’ve never heard before. I figure since you’re old as dirt—” He kept talking over Garry’s profane reaction. “—and know just about everyone around here, maybe you could help me out.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Vampire trouble.”

“Vamps? We never had any problems with—”

“It’s not the vamps causing the problem. Someone’s killed a couple of ‘em—”

“Fuck me. Who?”

“I’m not sure you knew them. Marco and Preston? Don’t think they had last names, not that I knew anyway.”

“Marco’s the guy with the horses, right? On the short side, dark hair? He was living there when I was just a kid. Man, he’s dead? How?”

“Someone broke in, blew off the door to his . . . bedroom, I guess you’d say. More like a vault. But they killed him. It was daytime, so no resistance. Happened maybe a week ago. I didn’t even know about it until some vampire big shot showed up to investigate. They killed Preston the same day and hit Jeremy and Mariane two days later. Couldn’t find Jeremy, so they savaged Mariane instead.”

“Jesus. I’ve got the next month free. You need me to come back and give you a hand?”

“I appreciate the offer, but the vamps brought in their own army to hunt down the killers. I’m not big on vigilantes, but in this case, I’m not inclined to protest too hard.”

“I see your point.” He breathed deeply. “So what’s the name you got?”

“Junior.”

“Junior? That’s it?”

“That what I got. Supposedly a nickname, but not one the person particularly liked to be called. I don’t know any juniors. You?”

“Junior,” Hugh repeated. “I’m thinking back to grade school, maybe? High school?”

“That is a long way back,” Colin said with mock seriousness.

“Damn you, Murphy. There’s only something like six years between us.”

“Yeah. Let’s see, when you were doing BUD/S, I was in eighth grade.”

“Fuck you. And I don’t remember any juniors off hand, but I’ll think on it. Anything else?”

“Nah. I’m going out to Babe’s later this afternoon, following another lead.”

“Rough place.”

“There’s a human P.I. in town, a woman who works for the vamps. Former cop. She’s not military, but she knows her stuff. She’ll be with me.”

Garry laughed. “Better than nothing.”

“I get the feeling she’s tougher than she looks.”

“I’ll let you get to it, then. And I’ll get back to you on that name, maybe drag out my old yearbooks or something.”

“Jesus, Chief, you’ve still got your high school yearbooks?”

“I keep flowers from freshman homecoming pressed in the pages, memories of my first lay.”

“Didn’t get any until then, huh? I’m sorry.”

The silence on Garry’s end was complete. His friend had hung up on him. Colin laughed briefly, already thinking about the trip out to Babe’s when the phone rang.

“Leighton,” he answered after checking caller ID. “I wasn’t sure you’d be up.”

“Up is a relative term. I’m vertical, if that’s what you mean, but awake will take a couple more cups of coffee. So what’s going on?”

“You check your e-mail yet?”

“I’m doing it now. I’m guessing you mean the one from Loren. Let’s see . . . Oh shit.”

“You didn’t know Raphael was going out there?”

“No. Robbie the fink told him about visiting Pulaski in all its gory detail.” She sighed audibly. “What can I say, Raphael’s a very protective guy.”

“I’m not complaining. He got more out of Hugh than we did. Like I said, I know the bar and I know Curtis. I’m going out there today. You wanna come with?”

“Sure, sounds fun.”

“And Robbie?”

Leighton made a dismissive sound. “Like they’d let me out of this place without him. We’ll come by your house. Give me an hour.”

“Bring all your guns, Leighton. You’ll need ‘em.”

* * * *

Colin was loading the magazine for his Benelli when he heard the truck coming down the drive to his house. He secured the shotgun in its combat sling, set the whole thing down and pulled open his front door. Leighton was standing next to one of the big Suburbans, talking on her cell phone, while Robbie walked around back and reached into the cargo compartment, emerging with a huge, black duffel bag. He slung it over his shoulder, strolled over to Colin’s Tahoe and dumped the bag on the ground.

Colin nodded to Robbie and leaned back inside to grab his keys. Beeping the locks open on his truck, he grabbed his gear and walked out onto the porch, closing the house door behind him. Robbie had already tossed the black duffel into the Tahoe. Colin eyed it curiously as he dropped his own gear next to it, but Robbie didn’t offer and Colin didn’t ask.

The two men leaned against the truck, watching Leighton on the phone. Colin didn’t know with whom she was talking, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t girl chat. She was listening carefully and responding with short, terse sentences he couldn’t hear.

Colin wondered again about the duality that was Leighton, with her model’s good looks and her concealed weapons. He wondered if she’d always been this way, or if Raphael had somehow molded her into what he needed.

“What do you think it’s like?” he asked Robbie thoughtfully.

“What’s that?”

He nodded in Leighton’s direction. “Having a vampire lover.”

Robbie’s dark eyes crinkled with amusement. “You’ve never . . . indulged with a vamp?”

Colin frowned and shook his head. “Hell, no.” Not intentionally, he added to himself. After all, he hadn’t known Sophia was a vampire back then.

Robbie laughed, teeth flashing. “Once they draw blood, the sex is terrific, man. But it’s more than sex if you’re actually mated to someone, like Cyn.” He gave Colin a challenging look. “Or like me,” he added.

Colin drew up in surprise. “You? Shit. I didn’t mean anything. I was just curious.”

“De nada,” Robbie said casually. “My wife Irina is Vampire. A tiny little thing who runs Raphael’s household with an iron fist.”

“She runs you pretty much the same way,” Cyn interjected, having joined them without either of them noticing.

Robbie grunted in agreement, looking like a very satisfied man. “You hear me complaining? So, what’d you find out?”

Colin quirked his eyebrows in question.

“That was an old contact of mine. A gun seller. Not altogether legal, but not a bad guy either. His business gives him a certain amount of access to his customer’s activities. Sometimes he has a problem with those activities and he’s willing to talk, including the white supremacist groups operating out of Idaho and parts west. He tells me there’s a whole lot of ordinance being trucked this way, along with the people to use it.”

“Damn. Let’s hope they haven’t arrived yet,” Colin muttered. “I hope you guys came prepared. What’s in the duffel?”

Robbie grinned and unzipped the black bag, pulling the two sides wide. He reached inside and pulled out an Uzi submachine gun, tossing it to Colin. He then dug farther in the bag and produced a Point Blank ballistic vest for Leighton, handing it to her with orders to “put it on.”

Colin inspected the matte black Uzi. He was familiar with the weapon, but preferred his Benelli. He handed it back to Robbie who was watching a grumbling Leighton don her vest. It was a concealable model, the same thing worn by most police departments in the country. It was also probably the only kind she’d be willing to wear. Anything heavier would weigh her down and restrict her movements.

“Where’s yours?” she asked Robbie, giving him a narrow look.

“In the bag. I’ll put it on if I need it.”

“Why can’t I—”

“Cuz I promised Raphael I’d take care of you. But mostly because you’ve got a piss poor sense of self-preservation.”

“I do not,” Leighton objected, but she was laughing when she said it.

Colin shook his head. He wasn’t even going to try to figure that one out. “Let’s roll,” he said out loud. “We’ve got a fair drive ahead of us.”

* * * *

“Colin here’s a virgin.” Robbie was leaning forward from his seat in the back, his substantial presence inserted between the two front bucket seats.

“I am not,” Colin protested immediately.

“Not like that,” Leighton clarified with a sideways grin. “Robbie’s talking vampire virgin. You’ve never been bit?”

“No,” he snapped.

“Really? I would have sworn there were sparks flying between you and that Sophia chick. Definite sexual tension,” she added, drawing out the word.

“That was a long time ago,” he responded stiffly. “And she never told me she was a vampire.”

Next to him, Leighton raised her eyebrows, but didn’t make any further comment about Sophia. “So what’s this place we’re going to?” she asked instead.

“Babe’s. It’s what we’d call a good ol’ boy bar back home. Sits just off the highway, the other side of the forest. It’s open five, sometimes six, days a week, but Friday and Saturday are the big nights, just like everywhere else. There’s at least one fight every weekend, and that’s just counting the ones where someone gets arrested or someone else ends up in the hospital. It’s a pain in the butt, but it’s been here a while, since back in the sixties. Strictly speaking, it’s not a part of Cooper’s Rest, but we’re the closest town to it.

*** Copyright: Novel12.Com