Tourist Trap
Who: Noah, Rhiannon What: Embarking on a Paid Job When: After the “Swap” Plot Where: Goldfield, NV Warnings: Language, Violence
The sign on U.S. 95 read: Goldfield, Nevada. Population 268. The number was optimistic.
Once upon a time, it was a boomtown. In 1902, a prospector struck gold and the population soared to 20,000 in four years as people poured into the area, bringing with them dreams of wealth and prosperity. Unfortunately, the mines underperformed and by 1910, the population dwindled to 5,000, and then went into freefall. By 2021, the only operating businesses were a shop called Gloryhole Gifts and a cafe, and those existed at the pleasure of tourists who stopped to take pictures of the ghost town on the way to Tonopah. Its two most popular spots were the old high school and the Goldfield Hotel, buildings which had been built to last and rose high above the other mundane structures in varying states of desolation.
The hotel, designed in the Classical Revival style, was four stories of early 20th Century grandeur, constructed of gray granite and red brick with a beautiful white cornice at the top. Upon its opening, champagne flowed down the steps to the applause of invited guests. Each room of the U-shaped hotel had a window, phone, heat, and pile carpeting. There were private baths and mahogany accents, gilded columns and leather upholstery. The lobby shone with crystal chandeliers and boasted a working elevator. But by the end of World War II, its doors closed to the public. The property exchanged hands numerous times as investors hoped to restore it to its former glory, but there were construction setbacks, unseen costs, and, frankly, there wasn’t any reason to visit Goldfield anymore.
Unless you were a pyromanic and a hunter.
They were parked off-site near the cafe, so their presence could easily be chalked up to a couple of hungry motorists. Rhiannon felt the car rock lightly as she braced her foot on the bumper, checked her weapons, and re-tied her laces. The methodical nature of doing a systems check of her body before a confrontation was calming to her. “Hey. Did your buyer share any thoughts about how we need to deal with them? Are we asking nicely, or…” The brunette gave him a light smile and straightened. “Do we just break stuff?” It was cold without her jacket, but she preferred to have freedom of movement and not a lot of layers for someone to grab, so she’d kept her outfit to a pair of black pants with running shoes and a maroon tank top. Rhiannon’s braided hair was drawn tight.
They had come to Goldfield for a Victorian locket, the chain and pendant of which were made of 14k yellow gold. The obverse side of the pendant had a Latin cross made of seed pearls, and the reverse side was etched in a floral motif. The real value of the locket wasn’t the materials used to construct it, which were worth a few grand, but rather its previous owner and what was still inside the necklace, which gave it a significantly higher price tag… One Noah’s buyer didn’t want to pay.
Noah wasn’t sure how his money-making endeavors would change now that he had become much more discriminate regarding killing, but it turned out that Las Vegas truly was the land of opportunity when it came to criminal enterprise. He did a double-check of his own, having begun utilizing more weapons after experiencing not once, but twice his power being drained away. Always have a backup. The pyrokinetic took another long look at their surroundings, half expecting a tumbleweed to go rolling past. The term ghost town had been, up until then, largely theoretical in his head. It was strange actually visiting one. “The people I typically work for kind of operate under an unspoken agreement,” he explained to Rhiannon. “Whatever gets the job done and can’t be easily linked back to them. Otherwise, anything goes.”
He looked down the road to what he could see of the hotel. If this necklace was as valuable as it sounded, Noah could only assume whoever had been hired to guard it would be professionals. That could be both a good and bad thing, for obvious reasons. “I’ll try a more conservative approach first, I think,” he told Rhiannon with a dry smile. “No need to torch a landmark if I don’t have to.” And then he hooked a finger through one of her belt loops and pulled her in for a quick kiss. “You ready?”
“I was. Now I’m distracted.” She slipped her fingers behind his neck and gave Noah a second kiss, taking the time to enjoy the shape of his mouth. The necklace wasn’t going to grow legs and walk out of the abandoned hotel if she allowed herself an extra ten seconds. The brunette let herself look at him and smiled, her tone shifting into a teasing one. “Goddamn, you’re pretty. Did anyone ever tell you that?”
He reached up to run his fingers down the length of her braided hair, then cupped her chin briefly and pressed one last, fleeting kiss against the corner of her mouth. Noah flashed her a quick smile as he let his hand return to his side. “Yeah, you,” he told Rhiannon, his tone betraying the sense of awe he still felt when she told him things like that. “Not nearly as pretty as you, though,” the pyrokinetic added breezily, his hand sliding into his pocket to double check the presence of his favorite knife before pulling out a burner phone.
She backed away and tucked a car key deep into her pocket.
At this time of year, the air had a crisp quality that made everything louder, from the grit shifting under her shoes to the tick of the cooling car and the rattle of a piece of trash from the cafe. Her adrenaline amplified it. The hunter took a breath and looked at her hands, the bones of which were healthy and intact, the skin unbruised from weeks of night being able to hunt. The bone in her wrist was mending well, much quicker now that her ‘self’ had been restored.
She wondered how Noah felt in the final minutes before a planned confrontation; was he keyed up or did he experience a sense of calm? Her boyfriend’s face was often impassive, but that was a skill one could learn. It didn’t mean anything.
Noah had saved a couple of images from Google street view onto the device, marking out different points of entry for the hotel. There were multiple entrances, including a service door that could be accessed through a tall wooden enclosure that seemed to perpetually remain open. He held up the screen so she could see it, too. “Do you think we should both enter at different points and meet in the middle?” Noah asked her. “It might give us a good idea of how many people are holed up in there.” He didn’t see the need of being aggressive from the jump if stealth would work better, especially if the makeshift guards were human and easier to quietly neutralize.
Rhiannon leaned closer to view the lit screen. The side of the hotel facing 95 was too open to spectators, and the Meyers Street side was inaccessible because a single-story business had been constructed, then abandoned, adjacent to the hotel. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I’ll take Columbia if you want 5th Avenue.” The former had a boarded up door just off the lobby; Rhiannon thought she could detach the plank and enter that way, rather than having to break glass on one of the front windows. Meanwhile, Noah could go through the service entrance unobstructed.
“Whoever’s holding the necklace for the buyer is probably upstairs in one of the suites. I would be. The grand staircase is in the lobby, but there should be another set back here.” Her finger tapped the screenshot. Rhiannon had found an unexpected treasure trove of information about the Goldfield Hotel online: paranormal television shows. A quick viewing of YouTube clips had given her some idea of the conditions they could expect. “Oh, watch out for the Stabber. It’s a ghost. Very big knife.”
The pyrokinetic nodded and once they were done studying the images, put the phone back into his pocket. “I’ll take 5th Avenue,” he confirmed. He took a moment to get his bearings mentally; this was his first time ‘working’ since having lost his powers, and it wasn’t that he was nervous, but he was wondering what it would be like to go into it with an entirely different mindset as before. Now there was a little voice in the back of his head that made him second guess his actions. Before, if someone was in the way of a job, the solution was quick and simple: kill them. Noah was trying to avoid that, if it wasn’t strictly necessary. But he would if he had to. Rhiannon mentioning the ‘Stabber’ is what broke him out of his slight reverie. The corner of his mouth twitched slightly. “Very big knife. Got it.” He took a step in the direction of 5th Avenue. “Okay, meet you in the lobby. I love you.” It felt absurdly pointless to tell a hunter to be careful, so with that not being said, the pyrokinetic headed off in the opposite direction.
...Back of the Hotel…
The ground crunched quietly beneath the soles of Noah’s black Converse as he walked along the deserted street. He glanced down in time to notice a shattered glass beer bottle and sidestepped it while peering curiously into the makeshift backyards of the trailers, noticing no activity or anyone watching him. Silently, he lauded the people holed up with the necklace for picking a good place to do it. No one was likely to search for a missing relic in Goldfield, Nevada. Plus, the whole gold connection was apt. The pyrokinetic reached a length of metal fencing and scanned it for a way in. As luck would have it, there was a torn out section of the cyclone fencing, which meant he wouldn’t have to try scaling it. He ducked down and was quickly on the other side. Just as he suspected, it was only a simple metal latch that secured the wooden privacy gate up ahead. The lack of reinforced physical security measures told him that those inside would be formidable.
...Front of the Hotel…
At some point, Rhiannon mused, Columbia Avenue must have been nice. Now the road was broken asphalt and hard-packed dirt, a dubious access point for any vehicle that required functional tires. Across the street, an out-of-service auto garage, the lot of which was edged with decorative wagon wheels, gave her a place to hunker down and search the facade for lookouts. She couldn’t spot anyone in the shadows of the first-floor portico or on the terrace above it. A few of the front-facing windows upstairs had fire escapes, but those were empty, too, the windows closed, the ladders in the raised position. Just to make sure she was alone, Rhiannon groped across the ground for a medium-sized rock and tossed it into the road. It bounced and vibrated to an uneasy stop in a pothole.
Nothing.
They were either clueless or giving off a strong ‘come and take it,’ vibe.
The hunter counted to ten, then darted across the street and mounted the short stack of steps on a secondary entrance. Rhiannon peered through the glass. The room was choked with old furniture. Anything high-end or in good condition had been stripped, and what remained was either built in or too damaged for resale. She wrapped her fingers around the large plank that had been nailed to the door frame. A firm tug pulled one side loose, then the other. Rhiannon quietly laid it on the sidewalk.
Was it too much to hope the door would be unlocked? Rhiannon turned the tarnished knob and gently pushed. It didn’t budge. ‘Shit.’ She shook her head. Breaking a door was no problem. Doing it stealthily? She took a breath, put her shoulder on the door, and exerted pressure until the deadbolt splintered the door frame and the door jerked inward. When there wasn’t a hail of bullets, she slipped into the narrow opening and closed the door behind her. Light from the street spilled through the tall windows, giving her just enough to work with.
Rhiannon checked the layer of dust on the floor. There weren’t any footprints, but now that she was in the hotel, breathing its stale air, she could sense something nonhuman in her surroundings, and the knowledge of it crawled along her skin like an insect, weightless but tickling and insistent. “Fucking ghost hunters,” she muttered. On careful feet, Rhiannon eased through the maze of heavy furniture and made her way towards the lobby. Her eyes ticked up to the gold-leaf ceiling as she listened for movement.
...Back of the Hotel…
Noah took out his knife, releasing the spring mechanism that allowed the blade to pop free. He wedged the sharp tip of it into the lock as deep as it would go. The amount of rust that had built up inside meant less work for him, as he jimmied the latch and exerted downward pressure on the hilt. There was a click, and he tested the doorknob. It was loose. He retracted the knife and tucked it up his sleeve. The metal service door was ajar, held open by a loose brick, which made him look around for anyone enjoying a quick smoke break or perhaps making rounds. When the pyrokinetic didn’t smell, hear, or see anything out of the ordinary, he slipped inside the hotel and nudged the brick away from the door in case anyone did try to come back from outside. Even if they had keys, a locked door still cost seconds. The pyrokinetic found himself in what must have once been the kitchen quarters. There was a torn out industrial stove, not connected to any gas lines. Its door hung open and the inner metal racks had all been removed. He moved quietly through the area, keeping an ear out for any signs of life. Or unlife.
Around the corner, Noah peered, his body going flush against the wall when he heard footsteps. His senses weren’t honed enough to determine if it was Rhiannon or someone else, but he kept a hold of the knife in his palm. A shadow on the wall came into view and it definitely wasn’t his girlfriend. Noah retreated back into the kitchen and looked around for something heavy. He was rewarded by a small pile of the same brick that was propped against the door. The pyrokinetic pocketed the knife and hefted one up, turning back toward the kitchen entrance and hovering beside it. “Jordan?” a voice called out. “You back yet?” He hoped this worked like it did in movies and television; he brought the flat of the brick sailing down and struck the side of the would-be guard’s head. It seemed to work. He silently counted to ten before stepping over the man’s crumpled form and through two swinging doors, looking for the way to the lobby.
...Front of the Hotel…
Rhiannon picked up the distinct sound of a body buckling and hitting the floor in another part of the building. She kept her breathing slow and measured as she walked past a load-bearing column, the bottom of which had been wrapped in black leather seating. A grand piano, damaged by time and the intrusion of animals, loomed on one side. The keys resembled yellowed bones extending from beneath a ripped cloth someone had thrown over it. The top of the piano bore a smeared handprint.
The hunter looked up.
A woman crouched on the ceiling. Long curls of hair hung around her face like vines. She bared her teeth. Rhiannon cursed. “Vampire!” she called out, hoping Noah would pick it up and realize they weren’t dealing with a human crew. The hunter flung the piano bench under the spot where the vampire had let go and got out of the way when the furniture exploded in a pile of flattened seat cushion and cracked legs. She put her foot on the bench frame and broke a piece loose.
The vampire was up quickly. The women circled one another, taking each other’s measure, and started to fight.
...Back of the Hotel…
’Vampire!’ Noah halted in his tracks, that word processing at the same time as he sensed something stirring behind him. The man he thought he had knocked out with the brick wasn’t unconscious at all, only stunned, and now he was climbing back onto his feet. Well, at least he knew where the lobby was now. He threw a glance over his shoulder, trying to see if he could catch a glimpse of Rhiannon from his vantage point, but no dice. The pyrokinetic looked at the pissed off vampire before him, trying to quickly weigh his options. His gaze alighted upon a small fire extinguisher attached to the wall just as loud banging began issuing from the direction of the service entrance. That must have been Jordan. At least, from the knocking, he could surmise that Jordan didn’t have a key after all. He pulled the extinguisher from the brackets that held it in place as the vampire advanced on him. Noah stood between him and the entrance to the lobby, and he had no intention of letting him get any further than that.
The fire started at the vampire’s feet, and he froze when he must have felt the heat bite through his clothing. He looked up at Noah and swiped out to try to grab the red metal canister out of his hands, but the pyrokinetic held it aloft, taking a step backward to avoid his reach. Smoke drifted outward from the conflagration, and the vampire let out a howl of pain as he collapsed to his knees. The knocking had also stopped, which meant that Jordan was now likely looking for another way into the hotel. There was the concern that he would follow Rhiannon’s way in. He watched, impatient, as the vampire finally stopped moving and making noise. Noah counted to thirty as the fire continued to smolder. Nothing. He pulled the pin and squeezed the nozzle, hoping that it wasn’t uselessly expired. Luckily, it wasn’t, and there was a steady flow of chemicals as the blaze was contained. Noah nudged the vampire with his foot, hard. Still no movement. With that done, he went to join Rhiannon.
...Front of the Hotel…
Rhiannon’s stake protruded from the tufted, leather upholstery of a bench. Between the square end and the broken-off bit, the blonde vampire was speared like a club sandwich.
The piano clanged discordantly as a second vampire collided with the keyboard and rolled off. After Jordan came crashing through a window, the two of them had traded a few blows. Now Rhiannon’s fingers flexed near her face, her fists loose and preparing for what would come. A long strand of blonde hair dangled between her ring and middle fingers, and the heel of her hand bled from a bite. She arched backwards to block a kick with her forearm. Inwardly, she winced at the pain that ran into her wrist. A second kick powered past it and struck her in the left ear. A firecracker of pain and a high-pitched whine knocked her off her game long enough for Jordan to snatch the cover off the piano and toss it at the hunter.
Rhiannon couldn’t get out of the way in time. As the shroud landed on her, she charged at the last place she remembered seeing the vampire’s shape and plowed the figure into a column. She punched as hard as she could at what felt like his stomach.
Noah entered the lobby just in time to see the large piece of cloth land oppressively on Rhiannon, and the attacking vampire bending at the middle and wincing in pain as the blind punch landed rather impressively slightly below his solar plexus. He didn’t want to aim any fire in that direction; he wasn’t entirely sure what a piano cover was made of, but he figured any piece of cloth that had been sitting for possibly years in a dry abandoned hotel in the middle of the desert qualified as flammable. He glanced down at the fire extinguisher still in his hands. Maybe blunt force trauma would get repetitive after a while, but it seemed to be working in buying some time. Coming up behind the distracted vampire, he swung, and the flat side of the red cylinder collided with the side of Jordan’s head. At least, Noah assumed this was the Jordan that he had locked out of the kitchen.
Jordan staggered to one knee. He might not be dead, but the collision with Noah’s metal vessel may have dented the bones of the vampire’s skull, or at least shaken his brain. Rhiannon balled up the sheet and flung it. “If he moves, hit him again,” she suggested. The hunter looked around and spotted a staircase banister with broken spindles. At some point in its history, a person had gotten impatient while moving a heavy piece of furniture and destroyed the original woodwork on their way downstairs. She kicked a spindle and wiggled it free. Returning to Noah’s side, she handed him the weapon and got on the floor behind the vampire. The hunter tugged the vampire’s arms behind his back and held him.
“I wonder what would happen if you lit the sharp end on fire,” she asked her boyfriend. “Have you ever tried it?”
He kept the fire extinguisher slightly aloft as the vampire, obviously dazed, tried to gain purchase on the floor in an effort to bring himself back to his feet and failed. Noah would be lying if he said he didn’t feel some satisfaction in hitting Jordan over the head, especially after his own vampiric encounter in an alley. Sometimes the universe did even out. He tilted his head thoughtfully as he set down the red canister and replaced it with the makeshift stake. “Can’t say that I have,” he told Rhiannon. “Let’s try it.” The pyrokinetic watched as Jordan seemed to come to enough to process the conversation he was having with the hunter, and began struggling to get out of the way, but the effort was futile. The wooden tip of the stake was already ablaze, and without hesitation, Noah drove it through the vampire’s chest with all of the force that he could muster.
Jordan went rigid and sightless as the staking took effect, the fire mostly dying out when the wood plunged through his chest, though a burn mark could be seen through the torn material of the vampire’s shirt. Noah reached a hand out to Rhiannon just as a loud creak could be heard above their heads. “I think they know we’re in the building now,” he remarked.
Rhiannon backed up and laid the vampire down in front of her running shoes. Getting into an upright position, she glanced between the prone figure with an oversized matchstick in his chest and her boyfriend. “Wow. I was going for ‘grill him on threat of a flaming stake,’ but this works, too.” She smiled at Noah, shook out and assessed her wrist and bitten hand for damage. He was right; even if the ears upstairs hadn’t heard the commotion, sooner or later the scents of burnt flesh and hunter’s blood would waft upstairs and make a stomach rumble. Rhiannon gave Noah’s outstretched hand a squeeze. “Don’t get me wrong, I get it. Sometimes you just need to impale someone.”
Oops. “Well,” Noah replied, his eyes drifting up toward the ceiling, “we’ll probably have another opportunity up there.” His attention was caught by a flash of red on Rhiannon’s hand, his fingers automatically going to her wrist in concern. “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice lowered in case any super-powered ears were listening. The pyrokinetic was more experienced in causing injuries than assessing them, and while he was relatively comforted by the fact that his girlfriend was upright and cognizant, the sight of the bite mark made him want to revive the vampire for a do-over.
She let him look. “Yeah. I was pushing against her face,” Rhiannon said, speaking of the other vampire. “Things got toothy.”
The floor under their shoes was made of small, hexagonal tiles. She thought about asking Noah to light the bodies on fire to keep anyone from pulling the stakes out and reviving them, but cars driving by might see an orange glow through the lobby windows and call 9-1-1, so they’d have to deal with it later. “C’mon.”
Of the pair of them, her body was better prepared to take a direct hit, so Rhiannon led the way up the staircase. She stayed close to the quieter edge of the steps. A long time ago, the wood was carpeted in a thin, rust-red material but it was worn away. As she made the first turn on a landing that led to an interior corridor, it grew significantly harder to see. Rhiannon’s pupils dilated. She’d kill for a flashlight, but any light they used to guide them would also give up their position and numbers.
She took out a knife and continued to climb.
Noah trailed after her, trying to minimize the noise by way of altering the distribution of weight over his feet. As the darkness grew, the only thing he could really make out was the shape of Rhiannon in front of him and the knife in her hand. His hand brushed over a wall on the landing to orient himself and went through a cluster of cobwebs. He wiped his hand over his jeans as he strained his ears for any noise ahead, but was quiet as far as he could tell. Whoever had been moving around while they were downstairs had most likely gotten the memo and might be lying in wait. Then he paused, an idea occurring to him. It could potentially damage part of the hotel, but it could also work, which seemed to make it worth trying.
“I might have an idea about how to find it,” he whispered, putting a hand on her arm in a gesture for her to stop. Since the night of the confrontation with Jonas and the dragon incident on 95, the pyrokinetic had been experimenting a bit with his power. Before, proximity and line of sight had presented limits to what he could do, but he had been pushing those boundaries, though with spotty success. Noah could only hope that it would come to fruition now. “Wait.”
Thanks to the lack of light, he didn’t need to close his eyes to concentrate. Noah focused on the photos of the hotel’s interior he had seen, as well as video clips to conjure an image of one of the suites on the second floor. He pictured the darkness being pierced by a flickering orange light, the accumulation of heat that rose from the worn carpeting and drifted toward the ceiling accompanied by steadily growing plumes of smoke. If the people guarding this level were also vampires, they would smell that smoke before he did.
And as if on cue, the pyrokinetic was rewarded by the sound of two sets of footsteps suddenly clamoring down the corridor. If his plan worked, they would be heading to where the necklace was being kept, their priority being to protect it.
Frozen since he’d taken her arm, Rhiannon turned to search Noah’s face in the shadows. “Did you just torch a room?” The hunter thought she remembered him saying that if a fire spread beyond him to the environment, it was no longer under his control. If so, he’d thrown a major curveball. She tried not to think of how long it would take a volunteer fire department in Goldfield, Nevada to rustle up a crew. “Fuck, Noah!”
Operating under that assumption, Rhiannon shrugged off his arm and took the rest of the stairs two at a time. At the far end of the hotel hallway, a window gave her some light. She could see that two tall, wooden doors stood open: one from which a silhouette came and another to where it went. The air reeked of smoke.
Noah watched Rhiannon set off up the stairs before following behind. While his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark, he moved quickly but carefully, guiding himself mostly by feel. He tried not to focus on the doubt that threatened to settle in, instead moving to find the room that he had set on fire, hoping that the blaze was still small and containable. He made his way down the corridor, looking under door jambs and testing knobs for their warmth, when he noticed the slow accumulation of smoke at the end of the hall, illuminated by the scant light from the window. The pyrokinetic gave up his search and strode down the rest of the length of the hallway. The last room on the right’s door was slightly ajar, and Noah paused when he heard movement inside. He reached slowly, quietly into his pocket and removed his own knife before nudging the door open just enough to slip inside the suite.
He was greeted by the sight of someone – presumably yet another vampire, though he couldn’t be sure – quelling the fire with a thick comforter while muttering a steady stream of profanity. His back was to Noah, but it didn’t take long for him to sense that he was no longer alone. Pausing in his efforts, he turned around and met the pyrokinetic’s eye. They stood like that for about two and half seconds before he lunged at Noah. Knife still in hand, he kicked the door shut behind him with his foot and managed to duck, the attacker’s fist wedging itself firmly in the drywall that had been directly behind the pyrokinetic’s head. Vampire was looking pretty likely, he thought, as he half-crawled across the floor in an effort to get back on his feet. It was even harder to see in there than it was on the stairwell, owing to curtains drawn tightly over the room’s windows and the good amount of smoke that had accumulated. Before he could fully do so, however, he felt a hand grasp the back of his shirt. He lashed out blindly with his knife, rewarded by a hiss of pain and the hand retracting as he felt the blade strike flesh.
The suite door slammed shut just as Rhiannon reached it. She tried the handle. It turned, but the vampire’s body weight held it in place. The hunter’s feet slipped on the thin carpet as she tried to overpower it, applying her force as close to the knob as possible. Bit by bit, it opened. She fumbled at her waist for a tiny canister of aerosolized holy water and clawed it loose. With any luck, this guy used to be a Christian. The move put her hand at risk. Rhiannon said a ‘please God,’ and jammed the canister through the gap. She sprayed the mist at the vampire. She was rewarded with a yelp and a break in the counter-force being exerted on the door. The hunter burst into the room.
She immediately tripped over a cardboard box. A hard-back book, an antique doll, a vial of perfume, a wine bottle, a plate camera, and loose pieces of fine jewelry flew everywhere. Rhiannon caught herself and looked at the vampire, who was huddled in a corner with burns on his cheek and neck. “Really? A cardboard box.” They looked away at the same time, to the pile of priceless junk on the floor. She spotted a locket. They both lunged.
The vampire, moving faster than Noah had time to fully comprehend, had grabbed the wrist holding the knife and twisted. Through the force and the pain that ensued, his fingers spasmed open and released the weapon. He was pushed onto his back, wedged between the carpeted floor and the vampire’s body weight. It might have been a trick of the pyrokinetic’s imagination, but he swore he saw a glint of sharp fang come unwelcomingly close. Noah looked down at the hand that was being immobilized in the other man’s vise-like grip. His signature blue flame bloomed upward from his palm and lapped at the vampire’s fingers. He yelped and let go of the pyrokinetic, who used the opportunity to roll away and scramble to his feet. He looked around wildly for anything that he could use as a stake.
The locket dug into Rhiannon’s palm. Bits of carpet fiber came with it as she scrounged it up and dragged it to her. The vampire had it by the chain. The payout was probably better with the artifact intact, but they could live with the consequences if he broke a link. One of them stretched and popped loose and the hunter had the necklace. She crawled backwards on all fours as the vampire got onto his haunches.
Retreating was a worse position. She hit the side of the bed which, at this point, was reduced to a wood frame. It creaked and skewed sideways. She scrambled to kick him or get out of his path, but he was faster than anticipated. The vampire knocked her down. He put his knees into her diaphragm and rode the waves of her anger while she bucked and tried to toss him off. One at a time, he worked on her fingers. The necklace chain glinted.
A scuttling, thumping sound caught her attention. Out of the corner of her eye, Rhiannon saw a black rat emerge from a hole in the wall, followed by a second and a third. They climbed up the vampire’s pant leg and clung to the shoulders of his shirt when he used his ability to call them. “Noa–!” It was hard to get any volume with a kneecap in her gut. Rhiannon bent her leg. There were weapons on her ankle. If the vampire clocked that before she grabbed one, he might do it first. Staking from this angle was too hard, so she took out her family knife, mustered up some energy, and stuck it in him repeatedly. The rats screeched.
Noah was at a loss. Anything wooden in the room, as far as he could tell, would take force that he didn’t possess in order to make anything approaching a stake. He barely had time for these thoughts to process before the vampire was on the attack again. As the pyrokinetic willed his hands to spark flame, one corner of the wooden bed frame caught his eye. It was rounded into a knob at the top, decidedly unsharp, but if Noah could break it off somehow…This train of thought was quite literally knocked off course when the vampire collided with him. This time, the fire burned through the other man’s clothing as the pyrokinetic held on and didn’t let go, even as an angry blow was aimed at his head.
He turned away from the vampire’s fist but it still glanced against his temple. In retaliation, Noah managed to get his hands around the vampire’s throat and upped the intensity of the heat that flowed out of them. In turn, he was trying to get close enough to bite the pyrokinetic, even as the flesh around his neck began to burn and blister. After what seemed like an eternity of effort, the vampire finally rolled away from Noah, clawing at his singed flesh. Freed, Noah stumbled back onto his feet and wrapped his still-warm hands around the bedpost and pushed the entirety of his weight against it. He was rewarded with a large splintering crack, the now sharp-ended piece of wood in his hands. The pyrokinetic turned and drove the makeshift stake through the distracted vampire’s back, rendering him thankfully inert.
Noah grabbed his knife from off the floor and wrenched open the door, glancing down the hallway before emerging. He thought he heard Rhiannon call out, and his heart raced as he dashed down the hall. He entered the room that he had seen the vampires run to earlier and was greeted with a scene of utter chaos. The only thing he could fully focus on, however, was the sight of yet another vampire on top of Rhiannon. He crossed the room toward the pair of them, knife held aloft, and when he was within striking range, he sank the blade into the side of the vampire’s neck while trying to pull him off of his girlfriend with the pyrokinetic’s other arm.
Being stabbed in the torso hurt. Feeling a knife cut your neck was cause for panic. The vampire flailed and fell off Rhiannon, swinging wildly at Noah. Directionless rodents scurried around the hunter’s pant legs and Noah’s shoes. Rhiannon stuck the handle of her knife in her teeth, took out her stake, and slammed it into the vampire’s chest. She wiggled it for good measure.
When he was out cold, Rhiannon took out the knife so she could speak. “Thanks.”
She held up the necklace.
It was only after Rhiannon staked the vampire did Noah realize how exhausted he was. He barely registered the rats as they scattered. “You’re welcome,” he answered wearily, though an expression of relief crossed his features as she held up the necklace. He leaned down to wipe the bloodied knife against the incapicitated vampire’s pant leg. “Are you okay?” he asked, eyeing her up and down for any outward signs of injury.
Rhianon nodded yes. She took a second to catch her breath, fingers traveling testingly over her midsection where a pair of knees had been a moment before. “I’m okay.” After setting her knife aside, she turned Noah’s face this way and that. There was enough light to see… something happening on the side of his face, up high by the eyebrow. What was with important people getting bashed in the skull?
“Why did I think we’d naturally be good at this?” she wondered aloud. Looking back, it was obvious they weren’t, from that same-target incident at Dante’s to tripping all over the ground at the Wheel. Now she’d accused him of torching the hotel and he wasn’t even wearing a stake into a fight. Rhiannon started to laugh but it hurt. “Next time, better plan.”
“It turns out this kind of thing is a lot easier when you have carte blanche to just…torch everything,” Noah muttered dryly, his fingers going up to touch the spot near his temple that only began to throb when he remembered it. There was also the distinct possibility that backup had been summoned as soon as their presence in the hotel was noticed, though he really hoped that wasn’t the case. “And I’m usually dealing with humans who are a lot easier to scare.” He felt maybe he was over-explaining himself. His gaze dropped to the necklace in her hand. At least there was that small victory.
“And I’m used to avoiding fire,” she said. “And the annoying possibility of police involvement.” They’d figure it out. Hunters didn’t automatically work together smoothly, either. Knowing the place was rat-infested had her feeling differently about sitting on the floor, so Rhiannon got up. She brushed the pad of her thumb over the pearls in the shape of a cross and carefully opened the locket.
The left side of the locket held a photo, the right a braid of brown hair. Whomever the hair belonged to — or whomever she once loved — must have been incredibly powerful for the black market on a sample of their hair to fetch that much cash. Both magic and organized religion could be an unsavory business. “Here.” She handed it to Noah and began putting the other oddities back in their busted box. For all she knew, something else among that odd collection of items might have mystical value.
“And now you can’t get away from it,” Noah countered, letting the necklace pool in the palm of his hand. He glanced back up at Rhiannon. “Fire, I mean, not the police involvement.” Well, besides Detective Cartwright. He placed the locket in the inner pocket of his jacket. In the dim light, he watched the hunter putting away the various trinkets. The pyrokinetic thought about the handful of staked vampires littering the hotel, and the broken remnants of furniture – and a burnt spot of carpeting – that they were leaving behind. “Do you think that guy from Vegas Suds would come out this way?” Noah asked as the toe of his shoe nudged against the supine vampire.
He took out his phone and composed a text message informing his client that the necklace had been secured. “Either way, we should probably head out.”
Rhiannon chewed her lip and scrolled her phone contacts. “One thing you’ll notice about hunters. We have our version of a ‘Vegas Suds’ in just about every area code. Don’t worry about it.” She sent a text and tucked her phone away. “It’s handled.” Or it would be once she transferred some cash into an online account.
He was right. It was time to get out of there before anyone noticed the break-in, or back-up or a buyer arrived. The brunette picked up her knife and the box of items, careful to hold the broken end together. Before heading out, she went onto her tip toes and kissed her boyfriend’s cheek. “I love your fire.”
“Convenient.” Noah watched her while she was using her phone, thinking about how he would have to work on adapting his methods to both work with hers and also a completely new moral code. It was one thing when it involved vampires, especially the kind who had no qualms about ripping out throats. But that would have to be puzzled out some other time. He tilted his head toward her mouth when she kissed his cheek, and he couldn’t repress the smile that flickered over his features at Rhiannon’s pronouncement. “I love yours, too.” Noah was referring to the figurative.
The pyrokinetic double checked that the locket was still on his person before following her out of the room with one last glance over his shoulder at the tableau they were leaving behind.