Sharkbait Down Under

Master Alessandro Molari’s POV

I shifted the audio from my phone to an earpiece as I walked out of my apartment. “Consuela, get out and move to where you can watch without being too close. Who’s in the car with her?”

“Just Nicholas and the two security guys who drove us down from Mermaid Beach. I thought something was off, so I followed them in a cab.”

“Did you see anything suspicious?”

“No, it was a gut feeling.”

She’d been right, which was more impressive for a youngling. Vespucci saw enough in her to change her and marry her, but he was an idiot. She had too much potential to kill off in an estate transaction. “Did you see anyone inside?”

“No. I’ll stay on the line and find a spot on another building,” she said.

Four of my Coven members joined me on the express elevator to the private parking level. I’d been one of the investors in this hotel/casino, and my apartment took up the whole 70th floor. It was the ideal spot for a Coven of vampires; thousands of tourists coming through every day, getting drunk and looking for a good time. It was a simple thing to go down to the gaming floor or bar, pick up a woman, bed her, and feed off her while leaving her none the wiser. There were thousands of cameras, but that didn’t matter. Anyone watching would see they all went willingly and returned with a smile.

“What do we know?” Rick looked at me as he checked that his suit jacket covered his pistol. My second-in-command, he’d been with me for over a century.

“Not much,” I said. “Consuela has eyes on the building, but not on the car. Someone had to compromise Vicki’s guards for them to deliver her like that.”

“Another vampire? Organized crime?” Becky was my newest member after Consuela. I’d turned her eight years ago; she’d been caught counting cards at the casino, something that shouldn’t be possible with six decks. She was a whiz with computers and finance, especially now that she didn’t need sleep. It didn’t hurt that Becky was a beautiful, redheaded nymphomaniac. She was carrying her high-powered laptop in her hand.

“Or more werewolves. Vicki has made enemies of some supernaturals, and everyone knows her family will pay five million to get her back.” The door opened to the private resident parking level, and we moved to the two big SUVs with tinted windows in our reserved spaces. Frank and Oksana loaded in the other vehicle. Rick was driving, with Becky in the back seat with me. She pulled up a city map, locating the business and the surrounding buildings. I unmuted my phone. “Consuela, are you in place?”

“I’m on the building to the west across the creek, hiding in the solar panels,” she said. “I’m downwind with a good view of the loading dock.”

“Good. Stay there; I’ll let you know when we are closer.” As we drove, Becky found the floor plans of the building by hacking into the city offices. She sent it to everyone’s phones, and I planned out the attack as we got closer.

“Alessandro? There’s been another gunshot,” Consuela reported.

“Can you see anything?”

“No. Do you want me to get closer?”

“We’re eight minutes out, Consuela. You stay put.” This wasn’t good, not at all. I used the other phone to call the second car. “Priorities are to rescue Vicki, then Nicholas. If my security guys are still alive, try not to kill them; we don’t need the heat we’ll get for gunning down two Australian Federal Police. Anyone else in the building is assumed hostile, so take them out quickly and cleanly. Any questions?”

“Understood, boss,” Oksana replied.

“Frank, park to the south and approach via the creek. Oksana is to take out the power to the building, and then you go in the back entrance. As soon as she cuts the power, Rick and I will go in the front. Everyone needs to call into Becky’s phone and use an earpiece. Becky will handle communications and monitor for police from our car. If Becky or I call ABORT, do what you have to and meet back at the Coven. Any questions?”

“Alessandro, the door is opening,” Consuela said over my phone. “A woman is coming out and going to her car.”

“Take a picture and send it to me,” I told her. I didn’t have to wait long for the back news to show up. Fuck. “We’ve got a problem, people. The Vampire Master of Los Angeles just walked out of the building.”

“She’s driving away, Master.”

“Get her license plate and stay out of sight, Consuela.” I turned back to briefing my crew. “We may have other Vampires in the building, so pay attention to your surroundings. Frank, drink the emergency blood at the next light.”

I opened up the power-cooled Esky that contained our supply. The blood captured in the raid on Vespucci’s estate was too valuable to waste; he’d already committed the crime, but we could use the proceeds. I’d returned home with one bag of blood from each of the other girls except Vicki, whose three units had been used to poison the vamps. It was too valuable to waste, but any vampires left inside could have fed from Vicki or Nicholas, and I couldn’t give them that edge. Becky transferred Makani’s blood into a travel cup and handed it up to Frank, while I sucked down Amy’s blood straight from the bag. “Fuck,” I said as I finished it off. “That’s some strong shit.”

“This stuff is aces,” Frank agreed as he drank it down. “I feel like I could take on the world.”

I picked up my phone. “We’re a minute out, two black SUVs. When we go in, you make your way to the closest SUV and get in, do you understand?”

“Yes, Master,” Consuela said.

We parked and walked towards the building, staying in the evening shadows. “We’ve found the main breaker to the building, so I can just turn it off,” Oksana said over the phone. “Frank is in place at the back door and ready.”

“Twenty seconds, then we go on your signal,” I told her. We reached the corner of the building and moved along the loading dock doors towards the entrance we’d picked.

“Three, two, one, GO!” Rick hit the door with his shoulder, knocking it off its hinges, and rushed inside. I was right behind him, letting my vampire nature out and scanning for enemy vampires. I took a deep breath as my eyes searched the dark space.

BANG. Frank was moving forward, the flashlight on his pistol illuminating a man without much of his brains left. As his flashlight went over the bodies, I saw movement in the one on the ground. It was a wounded Nicholas.

“Let her go, Vicki,” Frank said from the side.

“She’s out,” Vicki replied as she relaxed her hold. Sure enough, the woman was unconscious, and Frank quickly had her secured.

“Building is clear,” Rick called out a few seconds later.

“Turn the lights back on,” I ordered Oksana.

The overhead lights turned on, and I saw the extent of the bloodbath. “Are you all right,” I asked Vicki.

“Help my mate,” she said as she sat there, breathing heavily.

“Shit.” I shoved the dead body off of Nicholas and checked him out. He was unconscious, had a gunshot to the abdomen, and covered in blood. His ashen face and weak heartbeat told me he didn’t have long. “Rick, get our car and drive it over here. Oksana, bring yours around too.”

“We should grab our people and get the fuck out of here, boss,” Rick said as he headed for the door, wiping his blood-soaked shoes on the entry carpet before going outside.

“We can’t,” I said. “Two dead Federal Police aren’t going away, and we can’t explain them here.”

“Get Nicholas to a hospital,” Vicki said.

I shook my head, no. “Taking a man to a hospital with a gunshot wound raises too many questions, Vicki. Questions you can’t answer while you sit here covered in blood with two dead cops.”

She was shaking as she pulled a phone out of the woman’s pocket. “They made me shoot him, Alessandro. Master Caroline made him give me the gun, and they wouldn’t help Nicholas unless I shot him. Traci recorded me doing it.”

I took the phone from her. Frank had hog-tied the unconscious woman using copper wires, plus he taped her mouth closed. “You know these two?”

“I’ve got Timothy’s brains on my shirt; he was my fated mate and rejected me for Traci here.”

“We’ll find out what she knows later.” I looked back at Nicholas; I had to save her mate if I was to keep the Australian Council idea alive. “I can save your husband without a hospital, but I need your permission and your promise.”

“Anything you need is yours, Alessandro.”

“I plan to put my blood inside his wound to spur healing, Vicki. I’ve done this with humans but not werewolves, so I’m not sure if it will work or if there will be side effects. Whether it works or not, I need you to promise that you will not tell anyone about how I saved your mate.”

“I’ll take the secret to my grave, now SAVE HIM!”

I leaned over Nicholas, removing the bandage as I used a fang to slice open my fingers. He woke up and screamed as I pushed two fingers into the wound, finding the bullet and pulling it out as my blood mixed with his. I dropped the slug on his stomach, then squeezed out more blood onto the wound before I allowed my body to heal itself.

Nicholas was out of his mind with pain, and Vicki was too weak to crawl to him. “Did Caroline feed on you?”

“Yes,” she said. “I’m not feeling that good.”

“Rick, check out the Range Rover, see if it is clean and driveable.” While he checked it out, I picked Vicki off the ground and brought her over to stand next to her mate. I could see the healing progressing; the bleeding had stopped, and the torn skin was closing up.

Nicholas took a few deep breaths as his body went back to normal. “That stung a little,” he said as he sat up. “Are you all right, baby?”

I helped Nicholas to his feet. Both of them were covered in blood, looking like extras in a horror film. “Strip out of these clothes and leave them here, and we’ll dispose of them later. There should be a locker room through that door, so take a shower and shift. Do you have more clothes?”

“In the back of the Range Rover,” Nicholas said.

“Take them while we hose this place down,” I told them. Oksana and Rick arrived while they were cleaning up, and I detailed the plan. We rolled the dead bodies in tarps, taping them closed and stacking them in the back of Frank’s SUV. The prisoner we secured to a stanchion, ignoring her muffled cries and struggling. We’d find out everything from her later.

We used hoses to rinse the blood down the drain, and Becky did her magic in the office. She made sure the on and offsite security camera archives were deleted and disabled the fire protection system. “Someone will figure out that something happened here,” she said. “We clear out now, and one of us comes back just before sunrise with some Molotov cocktails and burns the place. They won’t suspect the real crime happened eight hours earlier.”

It was a decent plan, but we still had to figure out what to do about the two dead cops. Both had worked off the clock for me for years, and there was a paper trail showing they were on the job.

We had things somewhat clean before Nicholas and Vicki came back out, and Vicki was panicked. “Traci has a baby,” she said. “The sitter might know about where she is.” She walked over and ripped the tape off her mouth. “You’re a dead woman, Traci, and we both know that,” I told her. “If you answer questions honestly, I’ll make sure your son grows up safe.”

“PLEASE,” Traci begged her. “My baby, Todd, he’s at the hotel with one of Caroline’s vampires. She’s keeping him to make sure we keep up our end of the deal.”

“What is that,” I asked the crying female.

I didn’t like the answer.