Awakening the Fire

chapter Twenty-Eight

Five faces stared at Ari with a mixture of reactions: hostility, curiosity, indifference. The guards would be a tough crowd to win over.

Promptly at 5:00 a.m. Andreas had escorted her to the vampire compound. He’d already told the guards of her pending arrival, and she could imagine how the news went over. A stranger was coming to take charge.

When she had walked into the security office at Andreas’s side, the guards were seated around a table with a deck of cards and poker chips in the middle. A TV ran in the background. No one, except Ari, appeared to see anything wrong with this set up. Andreas made introductions to a silent audience, then left to get home before dawn.

Now Ari was on her own.

When the determined silence continued, she finally asked, “Interested in knowing why I’m here?” Not the most original beginning, but she had to start somewhere.

“Not particularly. Already figured it out. The vampires don’t trust us.” The speaker was Lilith, a werelion with short black hair, a pair of size D breasts, and deep angry lines creasing her face. She wore two semi-automatic handguns, one at the waist and the other in a shoulder holster.

“Any reason for them to lose trust in you?”

“No, not really.” Uncertainty flickered across Lilith’s face. “Well, maybe the attack on the prince. Which wasn’t our fault,” she muttered.

“Just let her tell us, Lil,” the werelion next to her said.

“Why else would she be here, Russell?” Lilith spat. “We aren’t so overworked we need another team member. And they put her in charge.” Lilith snorted in disgust.

“I only want to talk about this once, so pay attention,” Ari said, crossing the room and switching off the television. “Vamps don’t trust anyone. Except maybe other vamps. And never completely even then. Not you, not me. They’re suspicious and paranoid by nature. But if they thought you were a serious threat to the prince, do you really think you’d still be alive?”

She hoped a little plain talking would stop the bitching over their grievances and get them refocused on the job. Quickly.

“Frederick’s death is what brought me here. The vampires are facing an enemy that kills during daylight, and the next target could be the compound itself.” She let that sink in. “I’m here, on a temporary basis, because I’m the Guardian for this district and a practicing fire witch. I bring new skills to the group. Now you can get all bent out of shape if you want to, but somebody has to be in charge. For now, it’s me. If you have an issue with that, deal with it. I’ll be gone when this is over. In the meantime, our job is to make sure the bad guys don’t win. And to do that, we have to work together.”

Seconds ticked by, then Russell asked, “Do you play poker?” The cards made a soft slapping sound as he shuffled the deck.

Ari gave him a faint smile. “I know the difference between a straight and a flush.”

So her first day on the job started with poker. It broke the ice. Not that they became instant buddies, but the tension eased. Ari tried not to disgrace herself by stupid card play while sizing up her companions. They talked freely, except for the wolf, and by the time the game ended, Ari had a pretty good idea of the team’s individual strengths.

Russell was on the small side for a werelion but all muscle, even in human form. His movements were quick and smooth, very catlike. Not bad looking. Blondish-brown hair and somber, chestnut eyes. He was married to Lilith and her big guns. He admitted he knew some jujitsu, which drew laughter from his wife, who explained he held top status in four styles of martial arts.

The third werelion was Benny, a fair-haired, doe-eyed pretty boy with delicate features and a deadly stiletto. He was an outrageous flirt who Ari suspected didn’t discriminate between sexes or species. He had been friends with the werelion couple for twelve years.

Ari didn’t know what to make of Mike, a big, burly man, six foot three or a little more. Probably played college football. He was a werewolf, and his soft accent hinted of prior years in the Lone Star State. He didn’t have much to say, and after the second poker hand he wandered off into the other room and signed on the computer. Ari couldn’t ask about him while he was in hearing distance, so she filed a mental memo to ask Andreas.

The last guard intrigued her the most. She had never met a halfling demon before, but Maleban would never be mistaken for human. He was skeleton thin with a body always in motion. Brittle laugh, reddish complexion, spiky orange hair. Despite his exotic appearance, he was polite and painfully shy. Ari thought they’d get along. His bashful manner was oddly appealing. And he could breathe demon fire—a nice ace in the hole during a fight.

None of them struck her as candidates for the role of traitor. But she hadn’t expected anyone to stand out. If it had been that easy, the vampires wouldn’t need her.

When the poker game ended, Ari declined an invitation to join Benny and Russell in a game of gin rummy. She intended to check out the rest of the security area. In the adjoining room, she found Lilith refilling her coffee mug in a small kitchenette. At the other end of the room, Mike and Maleban huddled over an impressive array of computer equipment.

If there was an entrance to Daron’s chambers somewhere, it was well hidden. Another thing she’d ask Andreas.

Despite calls to update Ryan, Claris, and the president of the Magic Council on her current activities, by noon Ari was thoroughly bored. Protection detail wasn’t exciting unless something went wrong, but this amount of inactivity was bound to lead to dulled perceptions, slow reaction times. She finally brought it up over lunch.

“How do you do this every day?” she asked when the plate of sandwiches Mike had made was almost empty. He’d had kitchen duty for today. As far as Ari could tell, duties like that took up most of the guards’ time.

“Depends on what you mean?” Benny gave her a wink, which she ignored.

“It’s so damned boring.”

In the sudden silence, Benny laughed. “Yeah, it’s a cushy job without much action. But usually we’re not here every day. Not all of us. Until the attack on Daron, we came in two at a time.”

“But what are your duties? Besides fixing coffee and lunch and waiting for the bad guys to attack you?” She looked at five blank faces.

“That’s about it,” Russell admitted, his manner a little cooler than before, a little defensive. He shoved his chair back and rested one foot on his knee. “A daily report. We keep a log of visitors.” He looked at the others and shrugged.

“Did you know the vampires have had four recent breaches of security? Not all here, but each one involved the inner court members.” She ticked them off on her fingers. “The assassination attempt, an attack on Carmella, Frederick’s death, and a bribery attempt to get a map of this compound.” Their eyes were focused on her now. Mike’s heavy brows shot up when she mentioned the map. “The vampire leaders have become targets, and the enemy’s growing bolder. How do we stop him? What’s the next attack look like?” Ari’s gaze lingered on each face, pressing for an answer.

Benny chugged his soda. “Is that a serious question? The vamps figure that stuff out then tell us what to do. We don’t plan strategy.”

“Why not?” Ari gave him a sharp look. “Aren’t you the prince’s security experts? His personal secret service?”

“Never thought of it like that,” Benny mumbled.

“Well, that’s a kicker,” Lilith said, getting to her feet to dump her paper and plastic into the trash. “But, damn, I think she’s right.” She sat down again. “If we aren’t anticipating the next threat, what kind of security are we?”

“I never liked all this sitting around,” Mike growled. “We’ve kinda been rent-a-cops, but it’s not what we trained for. If we’re gonna keep the prince alive, we gotta be smarter than waiting for something to happen.” It was a long speech for Mike.

“But the vamps protect the prince,” Maleban argued. “We warn off nosey strangers. No one expects us to stop a serious assault.”

“Well, things have changed,” Ari said. “Frederick’s killer wasn’t another vamp. It was someone who struck during the day, when the vampires can’t protect themselves. It’s up to us to fill that hole. Are you telling me you can’t or won’t do that?”

Lilith put an end to the chorus of angry protests by asking the obvious question. “What do you expect us to do?”

“Be ready for everything.”

It didn’t take long to go over the current set up or for Ari to realize the vampires had depended on their reputations to protect them. The only security was the complexity of the tunnels and a simple screening process.

“We have a lot to do,” she said. “For starters, a warning system and additional weaponry. What else? Mike, how would you go about killing the prince?”

The werewolf blinked his eyes. Finally he said in that soft Texas drawl, “I’d blow up the building and torch what was left.”

A snort of laughter. Even Ari was surprised. This guy didn’t mess around, but he had a valid point. A bomb or sudden fire would be a real threat. The warehouse would go up like a tinder box.

“So who does the building checks, inside and out?”

Russell’s mouth dropped open. “Shit, Ari. No one.”

“Then that’s our priority. Starting now, we patrol the exterior. We’ll secure the interior with a room-by-room check. Every box, every bag, check all the original doors into the warehouse and make sure they’re secured. Check everything. I want to know this building hasn’t already been compromised.”

They dispersed, and within an hour they’d swept the building for unfortified entrances or dangerous objects, including explosives. Several items were removed, including two battered gas cans, and two doors required additional bracing. Nothing looked deliberate or suspicious and the building was cleared, except for the locked storage next to the security office. Ari was tempted to break down the door but decided it would be prudent to wait for Andreas and the key.

Russell volunteered for the perimeter checks. He slipped out for a circuit of the building every hour the rest of the day. They kept planning, tossing around possible scenarios and solutions, so caught up in their work that Andreas’s arrival surprised everyone. In fact, they’d just been discussing how the vampires might react to the changes when he strolled in the door. Ari figured they all looked guilty as hell.