14. Hunted (T)
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Announcement
Content warning: gore

The room remained absolutely silent as Isabelle's announcement sank in.

She waited another minute or so before she resumed her speech.

"As far as we've determined, Carlos began his usual patrol last night near the Port Lands, before heading north. At some point he was intercepted and killed. His body was found just before dawn, by the west bank of the Don, under the Bloor Street viaduct."

Isabelle's eyes settled on Sam as she added, "That's your territory, Samantha."

Everyone turned to stare at Sam, as if she was somehow involved or bore some amount of blame. I felt myself wanting to shrink even further to escape their looks, but my Dame didn't seem the least bit phased.

Samantha shrugged, "The river's the line between my and Carlos's areas, we're always overlapping each other a little. And if he was following a lead, he wouldn't have just stopped at the river. He'd have kept following."

Reuben spoke up next, "Who found the body?"

Isabelle stated, "The remains were discovered by human constabulary. The scene was quickly secured and news made its way up the chain to someone in the know, who alerted the appropriate contact within the Family."

Sam asked, "How did Carlos die?"

The matriarch replied calmly, "He was beheaded."

She was about to say something else but Sam spoke up again, "How? How would a human get close enough to behead him? Carlos had over five decades experience, he wouldn't let his guard down and he wouldn't be beaten by some human."

Several of the other vampires glanced at Sam again. Some were giving her angry glares, some looked at her as if she was crazy for interrupting, and some looked thoughtful. Cynthia just glared at my Dame, but that was nothing new. She hated Sam from the start. Me too.

Isabelle gave Sam a cold look, then replied "Carlos was distracted by another injury, a non-fatal wound. From the damage to his body, it's likely he was shot with an arrow. Either from a bow or crossbow. The shaft penetrated his heart, but the projectile was already missing when the body was found. Whoever did it likely recovered the weapon after Carlos was dead."

There weren't any more questions or interruptions for the moment, so the matriarch continued her lecture.

"Three nights ago a human was killed by a vampire. Last night a vampire was killed by a human. We are concerned this may be the start of a war. The Covenant itself is under threat. I have assured my human counterparts that no-one in this Family would dare do such a thing, and they have sworn they are doing everything in their power to find Carlos' killer."

Isabelle paused a moment to glare at everyone, then stated "We've had peace in this city for over a century. We cannot allow the Covenant to fall. I will not let that be my legacy to the Family."

There were some nods and murmurs, but I stayed completely silent and still. I wasn't even breathing, I just listened and hoped everyone would ignore me.

Cynthia spoke up next, she fixed her glare on Sam and asked "Samantha where were you last night, when Carlos was being murdered on your territory?"

Sam was still calm and cool as she replied, "I was about five kilometres south-west of the viaduct, conducting a training exercise with Tara. As I'm sure you noted in the report I sent you and Isabelle this morning, my young apprentice did remarkably well."

Of course that got everyone's eyes on me again and I felt like I was going to shrink another few inches under all the attention. Thanks Sam, much appreciated.

Cynthia's glare got a little harder though, and it was obvious she hadn't read Sam's report or she'd have already known where we were and what we were up to.

Fortunately Sam took the attention off me as she asked our matriarch another question. "Ma'am, may we see Carlos's body?"

Isabelle frowned at her, "Why?"

"He was a friend and colleague," Samantha replied. "I can't speak for everyone else, but I'd like to pay my respects. He will be missed."

That sent another round of murmurs through the room, and several of the other peacekeepers nodded in agreement. And it struck me, we were here for a funeral after all. My earlier observation proved correct.

I got the impression Isabelle didn't actually like the idea, and maybe if Sam was the only one interested she might have denied the request. But now it felt like pretty much everyone wanted to pay their respects and not even our matriarch would deny a room full of peacekeepers the chance to honour their fallen comrade.

"Very well," she stated. "After we're finished here."

It turned out we were already all but finished. Cynthia ordered Jessica to take over Carlos's territory, apparently it was deemed more important than the area Jess was watching now. That would cause some issues since Jess both lived and patrolled in the west end, and Carlos's turf was east of the middle.

And Isabelle warned us all to stay alert and watch our backs and all that stuff we'd be doing anyways.

There were some more reminders about how important the Covenant was and how bad it would be to have our peace fall apart, then that was about it. As she and Cynthia headed for the door, Isabelle mentioned that Carlos's body was downstairs in the morgue.

Of course the mansion had its own morgue in the basement. I didn't know that before, but I wasn't surprised.

The others quickly decided we should go in small groups since there wasn't a lot of room down there. And since it was Sam's suggestion, she and I were in the first group. We were accompanied by Reuben, Jessica, and Marcus.

The morgue was small, basically just one refrigerated room with an examination table, a work bench, and a lot of tools and implements out of some sort of horror movie. There was obviously a body on the table, with a white sheet overtop hiding the features.

Sam hesitated at the door with me and warned, "You don't have to see this if you don't want. It's not going to be pretty, and you didn't know him that well."

"I'm sticking with you," I replied softly. I didn't care how nasty this was, the only place in the entire mansion I felt safe was by Samantha's side.

She nodded, then she led me inside. Reuben followed right behind me, with Jessica and Marcus behind him. My Dame walked straight to the table and without a second thought she pulled the sheet away.

If I'd been able to, I would have thrown up on the spot.

Carlos was a strong, muscular guy who stood about five-foot-ten. He was sort of attractive, had thick brown hair, and usually wore a day's worth of stubble on his handsome face.

The gaunt desiccated corpse on the stainless steel table in front of me looked like it spent half a century in a shallow grave. The head wasn't attached, it was just sort of resting on the table near the shoulders. Most of the hair had fallen out and the bones were showing through in several places where the skin had peeled away.

I suppressed a groan and a gag, and clenched my jaw to try and keep myself from dry-heaving. I made sure not to breath, but I'd already got a nose-full of the stench of badly-decayed flesh.

It was something Sam mentioned early in my training, when I was still learning about 'life' as a vampire. Despite being technically dead, we didn't rot or decay as long as we were animate. Once we were actually and truly dead however, that caught up with us.

So Carlos being more than fifty-years-dead meant that less than a day after his unlife ended, his body looked like he'd been dead since the day he was turned. Basically you never had an open casket at a vampire funeral.

Samantha wasn't phased by the horrific sight before us, and she didn't appear to be paying her former colleague much respect either. She pulled the knife from her jacket pocket and snapped open the blade, then leaned over and carefully started probing a triangular-shaped wound in the chest-area.

"Sam," Reuben asked quietly, "What the fuck are you doing?"

She was leaning over the body now as she poked deeper into the hole with her knife. Without stopping Sam replied, "An arrow through the heart isn't enough to stop a guy like Carlos. It wouldn't even slow him down that much. Not enough for some human to get the drop on him. I want to know how this happened."

Jessica sighed, "Samantha this is gross. Why couldn't you just leave this for Victor? What makes you think he hasn't already done whatever the fuck you're doing?"

Sam tore the injury open a little wider and cut a piece out of it, much to the disgust of everyone watching. She straightened up and replied "Because either Victor missed this before in which case I don't trust him to catch it now, or if he did notice it then for some reason it was deemed not important enough to tell us."

She held out the brown decaying flesh in her hand and said "There's burn marks inside the wound, three lines burned through the wound channel. This was done with silver. That's how it brought Carlos down, and that's why the arrow was recovered afterwards."

My eyes were focused at a spot on the opposite wall, but the other vamps with us all took a closer look at the piece of flesh in Samantha's hand.

Reuben sighed, "Fuck I hate when you're right."

Sam finally stuffed the chunk back inside her dead friend, then wiped her hands and knife off on the sheet. She gave the skull a pat on the top of the head and said "Rest easy buddy. We'll miss you."

With that she headed for the door, with me following right on her heels. Marcus pulled the sheet back over the body, then he followed Jessica and Reuben out.

All three of them accompanied Sam and me up and out of the basement. The five of us ended up outside on the front drive together.

Reuben looked at Sam and said quietly, "That's legitimate Vampire Hunter shit. Silver wire running the length of an arrow shaft right?"

"That's my guess," my Dame nodded.

Jessica asked, "So what now? Should we be getting ourselves bulletproof vests or something?"

Marcus shook his head, "Triangular wound probably came from a three-bladed broad-head. That could be a crossbow or a regular bow. I don't think modern ballistic vests are meant to work on that sort of threat."

Sam nodded, "Best bet is don't get hit in the first place. Maybe folks should pair-up. No solo patrols."

Reuben agreed, "I'll make the suggestion. Cynthia won't even listen if it comes from you."

"Thanks," Sam smiled.

He and Marcus went back inside together while Jessica stayed out here with us. It was another ten or twelve minutes before Reuben emerged.

He announced quietly, "I made the suggestion. She said she'd consider it."

"Good enough," Sam replied.

The four of us climbed into the back of the Caddy. Eric started the car and pulled away to take us all back to our respective homes.

As we turned onto the street I glanced back at the mansion and let out a quiet sigh of relief. I still felt uncomfortable there, ever since I first woke up in a cage in the cellar. And I was glad to have more space between myself and both Cynthia and Isabelle.

Isabelle scared me, while Cynthia hated both me and Sam. I'd never forget what she said the first time we met. She reminded me of my living family.

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