Not bothering to hide my noises of exertion, I made my way across the small apartment and to the door. I fumbled to get it open, finding the handle was already growing hot. I knew that was a bad sign. Entering the hallway, panicked people ran past me to get to the door. I followed a half-clad man down the smoky passage and to the exit.
Sunlight poured through the door as a stark reminder of the guy on my back and what his species was. I held him with one arm as I struggled to pull my gun, just in case this was a trap.
As I emerged, I didn’t see any obvious threats. The overhang above the door kept the sun off us for the moment, but I could feel the heat behind me. Sirens were in the distance, but I had the bigger issue of the vampire now. He grew heavier by the moment and I needed to put him somewhere.
I looked up and down the street and my eyes fell on my car. I was parked at the curb not very far away.
Unfortunately, I had to holster my gun to get my keys. I staggered along the sidewalk and was more aware of the sun than I had ever been in my life. All I needed was to get my thumb on my key fob. I unlocked the doors twice, locked them, and set off the alarm as I jammed blindly at buttons before finally popping the trunk. I thought I heard sizzling behind me, but couldn’t be sure if I was imagining it as I threw him—not very gently, really—into my trunk. I slammed the door, cutting off all light and providing some safety as I turned back to the building.
Above all the noise, I heard someone calling for help. With my eyes already on the building, I saw someone carrying a child out. I guessed the little one couldn’t be more than two and the woman was wailing. “My father is still in there! He can’t walk very well and I couldn’t get them both!” She sobbed around the words.
Again, my brain wondered if this was a trap...but could I live with myself if it wasn’t?
“What apartment?” I demanded of her.
She had that panicked deer look for a moment, like she couldn’t get past the screaming of her child and the smell of the smoke to comprehend my words. I shook her and asked again before she stammered the number.
Still on the first floor.
I ran into the building.
The smoke was clogging the hall now and the heat hurt like hell. I crouched low and covered my mouth with my sleeve as I hurried forward, looking at door numbers.
1D. I hurried in and through the haze, I could see an elderly man with an obviously stiff leg trying to walk with his hands on the walls. I ducked under one of his arms. “Come on, sir,” I said. “I’m a cop.”
“Did Lisa get out?” He coughed before he finished the question.
“Yes,” I replied, walking forward as quickly as the scenario would allow. “She and the kid are outside.”
“Thank God.” He sounded like he was crying, and I couldn’t help feeling choked up. It was just the smoke, of course.
It was sensory overload and deprivation at once. I can’t really recount how I made it out, but we did. Falling to the cement, I kind of dropped the guy but hey, we were out of the burning building. I hacked up a lung, but managed to look up and see that my car was still there and with no signs of an open trunk.
If this had been a trick, it was the most detailed and yet least successful.
Leaving the woman, Lisa, to her father and child, I pushed myself weakly to my feet and hurried to my car. I opened the trunk long enough to assure myself that the origami vampire was still there. He was, so I slammed the top shut and then sagged back to just breathe. My eyes stung, so I didn’t bother looking at the source of the sirens drawing nearer.
A pair of agents came to take Collins—and my car with him—away to another, safer location. Meanwhile, I was down the street, sitting on the back of an open ambulance being offered oxygen that I swatted away, though I accepted the blanket because by now—with the adrenaline waning and fire further away—I was beginning to feel the late winter chill, even if it was abnormally warm for late February. I watched my boss walk up.
“Are you okay, Torres?” she asked, folding her arms across her chest and eyeing me up and down like she could see the state of my lungs with just her eyes.
“Yes, sir,” I replied simply. “Have they put the fire out?”
She nodded. “For the most part.” Pausing, she glanced back at the building beyond the line of fire trucks. “They can’t get in to investigate yet, but I’ll bet anything that it was arson.”
I sighed, and resisted the urge to cough. “I would agree.”
Her x-ray eyes returned to me. “Go home and get some rest,” she said, turning and starting to walk away. She paused and looked back over her shoulder. “Good work, Torres.”
“All I have to do to get a compliment is nearly burn to death,” I said to myself and started chuckling, which made me start coughing, and the medic gave me the oxygen mask again.
My “go home and rest” only lasted a few hours.
I got a call, which told me to wait for a car. The car came and took me to some nondescript building that I could barely make out in the dark. The agent who drove me, who I didn’t know very well and didn’t bother to try and fix that, walked me up to the door.
At the door, after some hoodoo I wasn’t witness to, it opened to reveal my boss. She led me inside while the other agent left.
“He’s asked to see you personally,” she told me by way of greeting. And there was only one “he” this could be, given the day and the setting.
Ben Collins looked almost exactly like his picture. With a human, that would of course be expected. Vampires, however, don’t change physically. I knew the image in his file had been after he was Turned, so seeing that he had a scar at his hairline—pronounced with a small stripe of missing hair going back a couple of inches—was a surprise.
He stood up from the couch as I walked in, smiling as he held his hand out. I took it and shook.
“I am told that I have you to thank for the continuation of my un-life,” he said with humor. “I never imagined I’d be so grateful for the trunk of a car.”
His humor surprised me, and I laughed. “Yes, well. We work with what we have. I’m just glad it worked.”
Collins inclined his head to me. “As am I, I assure you.”
“Mr. Collins has asked that you be shifted to head up his protective detail from now on,” my boss said. “That would put you on the night shift, starting tonight.”
“If you’re up to it, of course,” he interjected. “I know that you took in some of that smoke.”
Even if I hadn’t been up to it, I never would have told them that. First off, because I didn’t like admitting any kind of weakness in front of anyone. Secondly, this was a boon to my career, leading a detail and at the request of a star witness. I wasn’t stupid enough to turn that down. I nodded instead. “I’m fine,” I assured them.
“Good.” My boss patted me on the shoulder, and then left.
“Well,” Collins began a moment after we heard the door shut. “At least you will only have to put up with me for three nights, and then I testify.” He gestured to the couch and we sat. “I hope to be better company living than dead, so to speak.”
“I’m sure you’re fine.” I didn’t settle in too much. Although we were now in a “safe house,” I remained on edge. After what happened to the last place, who could blame me? I had never been on a protective detail like this before. What did one talk about?