Slaying Monsters for the Feeble - Annette Marie Page 0,46
instantly wanted one, even though I’d never be brave enough to wear something like that.
“No glasses yet?” she asked, sounding guilty.
“I put in an order but it takes a few days.” I blinked against the uncomfortable dryness in my eyes. “I’m wearing contacts.”
“Oh, good. I was worried you’d have to go around half blind until you got new glasses.” She dug into her jacket and pulled out a folded map. “Let’s get to it.”
She spread the map across the table. Vancouver’s downtown was unmistakable, and red and purple marker highlighted two dozen locations, most of them clustered around the downtown core, with a few outliers in Gastown, Chinatown, and Yaletown.
“Felix did his magic with the vamp’s phone,” Zora said, smiling at her pun. “The vampires called the same number three or four times a night for the past two weeks. Felix narrowed down an address—we think it’s this building right here.”
She poked at a blue circle only a few blocks from the big downtown library.
“Is it an office building?” I asked. “That seems like a strange place for vampires.”
“I thought so too, but it turns out the building has been closed for renovations for almost a year now.” She arched an eyebrow. “Prime vamp real estate.”
I nodded.
“These other marks are the locations of all the exterminations performed over the past six weeks by local guilds. Thirty-six vamps in total. In comparison, the total vampires exterminated in the six months prior to this was thirty-two.”
“That’s a big increase.”
“A huge increase. The red marks are nests of mature vampires. The purple marks are new vampires.”
I counted fourteen purple blotches. “Is that a lot?”
“I’ve exterminated more new vampires in the past month than I have in the last five years.” Her eyes clouded. “No one likes hunting new vamps. We usually don’t get the chance because they tend to fly under the radar. We don’t catch wind of them until …”
“Until what?” I asked, unnerved by the tightness in her expression.
“The amount of blood a vampire craves increases over time. A new vamp might bite a person once or twice a week, and doesn’t consume enough blood to do any real harm. Nested vampires, on the other hand, tend to leave unconscious victims lying around in alleys every night, so we can home in on their locations that way.”
She stared down at the map for a long moment. “New vamps often don’t understand what’s happening. They deny it, resist the urges … Even if they figure out they’re a vampire, they’ll fight the changes in their mind and body for as long as they can. But there’s no cure. There’s no way to stop the transformation. They’ll eventually need blood every night, and ultimately, they’ll degenerate into a crazed monster like the old vamp we took out.
“You can’t explain all that to a new vamp. You can’t convince them it’s better to die now, with their mind intact, than waste away and hurt a lot of innocent people in the process. No one wants to believe they’re doomed, especially not a desperate, confused person who doesn’t know what’s wrong with them.”
She gazed unseeingly at the map. “So you just kill them, as quickly and cleanly as possible.”
Silence settled over us, and my heart ached, not only for the innocent people who lost their lives to vampiric infection, but for the mythics like Zora who had to kill them to prevent its spread.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered.
“It’s a mercy. Sometimes, it can be hard to remember that, but it’s truly a mercy to give them a swift end.” She pulled herself upright in her chair. “So, yes, we’ve had more vampires in general, and more new vamps as well. The reason we’ve found all these new ones is they were involved with the nested vampires.”
My brow furrowed. “What do you mean?”
“Infection usually occurs from a feeding, but it seems now like these vampires are deliberately creating and almost … rearing new vamps.”
“They’re building up their numbers?” I realized.
“If they are, that’s a level of foresight and planning I’ve never seen from them.” She pointed at the markings. “The reason I wanted to meet was to see if you could spot any patterns connected to your Demonica investigation.”
I leaned over the map. After a moment, I found the Crow and Hammer’s location, then the Grand Grimoire about fifteen blocks southwest. Uncle Jack’s house was across the harbor in West Vancouver, and Claude’s townhouse was south of False Creek—outside the downtown peninsula entirely.