Chapter 9 – Seconds

Chapter 9 – Seconds

At precisely seventeen-twenty-five, Company A, B and C were all lined up at the edge of the bush, each of us facing the depths of the shadows in the foliage. Half the sun still lounged over the horizon to our left, causing some of us to squint in its glare. I couldn’t smell nor hear Angelia or the other two company Commanders, but it didn’t mean that we weren’t being watched; none of us blinked, twitched, or even breathed (and this was genuinely literal).

Finally, at around seventeen-forty, Angelia and two other vampires appeared in front of us. The sun had mostly set by then, but the fifteen minutes the vampires had to spend directly under it had its effect; some of us were visibly starting to fidget and sway.

“What is the Patrol all about?” The tallest male vampire shouted at the crowd, stirring renewed efforts to mimic rigor mortis. There was a small silence, and we realized that he actually wanted an answer.

“To eradicate lower-Gens, Commander!” Brandon’s voice called out to my right, and in front. He was standing first in Company A’s line. For his answer, he was knocked into the grass by a lightning backhand.

“What is the Patrol all about?” This time, Angelia was the one who asked the question.

“To protect, Commander!” Zoe called out behind me, her voice holding a hint of smugness that came with already knowing the answer.

“That’s right,” the first vampire grunted, prodding Brandon to his feet with annoyance. I had a feeling that he was Brandon’s Commander, and had wanted his company to answer correctly first. “We serve to protect both our kind, and humans. And what do you suppose we need?” He glared at Brandon, who was only slightly shorter than him. No one else, not even Zoe, answered; the glory was meant for Brandon.

“Strength, Commander,” Brandon risked.

“And?”

“Intelligence.” I could sense it was an effort not to make that sound like a question. There was a long silence, during which his Commander didn’t break the glare.

“And teamwork, Commander,” I called out.

“Thank you, Dante, at least you have the second attribute,” Brandon’s Commander growled. “To prove that you can be on the Patrol, you have to prove that you have all these attributes, and more. You’ll do that tonight.”

“Your goal is to capture Amie,” Angelia took over, pointing at the third Commander who had been silently scanning over everyone. “That’s all you have to do. Hold onto Amie for three, no, two seconds. To start with, of course, you have to be able to find her.” Angelia turned her face to where Amie was standing, and the thirty trainees collectively gasped as they realized that Amie was no longer there. No one had felt her leave, and as hard as I tried, I couldn’t even sense that she was anywhere on the training grounds. “She’s within the confines of this bushland. You have until oh-two-hundred. Failures will have one strike against their name.”

“Three strikes,” the other Commander piped up, but we all knew what he was going to say next. “Three strikes, and it’s goodbye to Patrol this year.”

“Partner up. There’re a few seconds left until seventeen-fifty. That’s when this’ll start,” Angelia ordered. I looked around for Cara, but Zoe’s hand fell on my arm.

“You’ll do better with me,” she grinned. “I’ve done this before, and it’ll really help with a sense of smell like yours.”

“Ah, alright, but I’ll probably drag you down,” I replied, really hoping Cara would come get me. But out of the corner of my eye, I saw that she’d partnered up with the Woo-hoo guy from the party.

“Bullshit,” Zoe waved my remarks aside. Around us, vampires were already running into the completely dark bush. The sun had slid offstage, and our eyes shifted to nocturnal action. “Let’s go.” With her hand still on my arm, she sprang into Amie’s hiding grounds, her feet barely touching the ground. I flew beside her, getting my footing only after we’ve plunged deep into the foliage. Zoe stopped running suddenly, and leaned close to my ears. “You have to help me out here. I know the game, but my senses aren’t so sharp. Concentrate for me, tell me where they are.”

“Where what is?”

“Vampires. Amie. Anything.” Zoe’s bloodline, I was able to tell much clearly now, barely allowed her to apply for Patrol. I wasn’t sure if she came back after earning three strikes, or if she’d simply never completed the training to satisfaction, but she was experienced, and I had to use that to my advantage.

She wasn’t being modest when she said my senses were better than hers; as a Noble, I was simply better equipped to perform superhuman feats. I reached out with my hearing, smell, and even my sight. I could very clearly hear the movements of the bigger and heavier male vampires, and smell the scents of some of the female vampires, but I hardly bothered to speculate any of them would be Amie.

I grabbed Zoe’s arm, and leaped into the air. Landing as softly as I could onto a thick branch, and hoping Zoe could take the hint to do the same, we witnessed a pair of vampires arrive exactly where we stood seconds ago. They didn’t seem to even notice our hasty departure, and discussed with each other their next action.

Zoe was just about to lead me to move away from those two, when we heard another pair of vampires arrive. I looked down in time to see the new arrivals kick the first two vampires in the head without a word. Zoe and I held on tightly as they were thrown against our tree, their attackers speeding away without even looking back.

We slid back down, carefully examining the unconscious bodies. One’s head was cracked open, and translucent blood rolled out of the wounds, turning red as the blood oxygenated. The blood didn’t glow like human blood.

“Don’t,” Zoe stopped me from trying to move them. “We don’t have the time, and they’re healing already, see? Patrol is serious business – and any opportunity to take out competition is seized before it even knocks.”

As we began to run again, I reached out to try to feel Cara, hoping she didn’t also just become seized opportunity.

~~~~

Zoe and I had been fruitlessly running around for over three hours, and in that time we’d only ever came within a hundred meters of another vampire pair twice – both times, we’d ran the other way immediately – and neither of them seemed to be running with a particular aim either.

“Seriously? You can’t sense her at all?” Zoe asked again. We were starting to feel fatigued – her more so than me, as the earlier wait in the sun mustn’t have been easy on her.

“I’m sorry! I’ll try again,” I replied. Closing my eyes, I wished not for the first time that I’d paid more attention to Amie when she was still around, so I could get a better feel of what her presence was like. “Have you ever passed this challenge?” I asked Zoe, after another failure to feel anything.

“Sure.”

“More than once?” She gave me a look. “Okay, so in the times when you were successful, did she have a tendency to be a place? Like, she’s more likely to be up a tree or hiding under anything?” Zoe looked at me thoughtfully.

“Actually, yeah. Well, no, not a place exactly, but she would do something to throw a scent off, like hide underwater or steal the clothes of an unconscious pair and wear them, so she smelled like them.”

“Alright! Well, we know of at least one unconscious pair. I’m pretty sure I know where they are, so let’s go there and see if I can’t pick up any traces of her from there?”

“Sounds like a plan, partner,” Zoe smiled.

One of the vampires who we’d seen be bashed up earlier had regained consciousness, and had dragged his partner out of the bush. We saw the trail of oxygenated blood snaking through disrupted leaves and twigs on the ground.

“I can see some cotton scraps here,” Zoe said, bent low. “I think they’re from the shirts.”

“So?”

“So, it means that the one who was dragged was missing a jacket. Amie must have taken it.”

“For sure?” Zoe straightened up.

“Probably. It’s our only lead. Come on, can you tell she’s been here?” I concentrated once again, the reaching out of senses becoming a familiar move. This time, I definitely felt something that was different to the nothing I’d become used to receiving, and I was sure it wasn’t belonging to neither the attacked vampires, nor the attackers.

“Yep, she was definitely here,” I said. I smelled the cotton scraps on the ground closely, trying to get the scent of the unconscious vampire whose jacket Amie apparently borrowed. I jumped into the tree Zoe and I were in when we witnessed the horrible attack, and tried to locate the same smell.

“You got it?”

“I hope so,” Zoe followed my lead without another question. I supposed that she’d done this mission enough times to trust the vampire who was more able than her.

Grasping at that whiff that I’d only caught for a second, I hurtled at that direction as fast as I could.

Behind me, I heard a muffled grunt. Stopping, I turned to see a fist fly at my face. Barely ducking it, and with images of Angelia flashing at me, I barrelled into my attacker with all my strength. I felt the body under me, and raised my fists to punch any soft flesh I could.

I was flipped, and before I even hit the ground, I was caught and thrown onto a large boulder. As the body that I had only seconds ago been pinning pinned me, I heard a blessed voice call out, “Woah, stop!”

“Cara!” I gasped, relieved that the fists stopped at the name. I was released, and Cara’s familiar smell joined her arms in surrounding me. “No luck?”

“Not at all,” Cara replied. “Oh geez, I tackled your partner.”

“That’s fine, your partner flipped mine,” Zoe grunted. She had a cut on the side of her face from where Cara threw her onto the ground, but it was starting to heal.

“You were going in such a hurry, Cara and I were worried you’re going to succeed.” Woo-hoo guy spoke up. “Not that we knew it was you, exactly. If I did I wouldn’t have hit you like that.”

“Well, actually I’ve got a lead. Come with us! I need more noses on this.” Without waiting, I grabbed Zoe and Cara and started running. The whiff that I picked up was fading, and the interruption didn’t help.

Woo-hoo (or, as Cara cared to tell me, Ted) began to lead the way. I was about to suggest that he at least ask me what my lead was, but he suddenly veered to the side. We had to follow, which was lucky because we managed to catch a glimpse of Ted attempting to tackle Amie.

She was gone before he could even get a finger on her, but Zoe was ready. Without hesitating, she sprang into the trees. Cara kept running past Ted, and I made the sharpest U-turn I’d ever made.

I was the luckiest. Amie had just landed – so lightly not even the thinnest leaves shifted – near where Ted had suddenly changed path, and I willed every atom in my body to be next to her.

I missed just as spectacularly as Ted, but for a split second I had three fingertips on her. In that split second, I used as much force as I could in those three fingertips to aim Amie back towards where the others were. It had the smallest influence in her next move.

It was enough. Amie’s actions were thrown off-balance, and at the speed she was moving, she found herself stepping back towards where Ted was.

From above, Zoe dropped down. She was only able to grasp Amie’s right wrist. At her weakened state, Amie would be able to pull away without even trying.

Ted grabbed Amie’s left ankle as the Commander began to pull away. As I struggled to my feet, Cara threw herself at Amie’s head, locking her arms around the target.

My feet finally found enough traction on the ground to carry me as I grabbed her torso as hard as I could, my momentum throwing the five of us onto the ground. Without a single sound, we struggled there as Amie put up a frighteningly powerful fight.

Two long seconds finally passed, and Amie’s struggles ceased. Through Cara’s muffling arms, she said, “You can let go of me now, you’ve completed the mission.”

I was the last to let go, infinitely unwilling to give up such a hard earned target. Our super-speed struggling on the ground had resulted in such strong friction that one of the leaves was actually smouldering. Amie put it out with her boot, gave us a small nod, and in the next second disappeared.

“Success,” Zoe smiled, raising her open palm. I gave her a hearty high-five, then went to check her wound. It was mostly healed, but she looked very exhausted.

“Let’s get out of this forest. Be careful, though, other vampires might still want to knock the shit out of us,” Ted suggested. We each grabbed one of Zoe’s arms and carried most of her weight between the us. Cara walked ahead, keeping a lookout, and with the controlled urgency typical to a pressing need for urination, we made our way out.

“We make a good team, huh?” I said to Zoe.

“Oo-rah,” she replied. “I never doubted you for a second.”