"Yeah, five of them. Well, more have come and gone, but five were actually living here."
"Where?"
"I haven't seen them coming and going all the time. Then again, I guess they can"—the man clicked his fingers—"vanish at will and reappear the same way. So they might not be coming in the front entrance past my office anymore. That's the trouble with vampires."
"Did you hear about two vampires being killed by a hunter outside the complex a few nights ago?" Adonis asked.
The man’s mouth curved up, then he lost the smile. "Uh, yeah, it was in the news. The vampires never commented on the news. Their hosts, whoever they are, never did either. So we all assumed, when we heard about it, that they were rogues."
"Did you hear about the massacre of the hunters in their beach homes?" Adonis asked.
"Uh, yeah. We knew the vampires were rogues then. There's never been any trouble like that here before. Crichton has been here in the past, but for the most part, he and Dennison live in another city a few miles from here, and we were afraid they planned to “recruit” some vampires, but from what the news said, some other vampire brought in a whole lot of vamps to kill the hunters. They would have killed the kids too, but two of the families managed to get away, so the kids were spared. Even though the humans were up in arms about it, we don’t have the power to fight the vampires, so we talk about it to our friends, family, and coworkers, but we don’t go public about it. Good way to end up being one of their minions. Crying shame about the rest of the hunters who died. They were all hard-working citizens. Never caused any trouble. Kept the vampires from out-of-town from causing trouble when they visited."
"Can you tell us which apartment the vampires are in?" Adonis asked.
The man wrote it on a slip of paper and folded it, then handed it to Adonis. "Don't tell anyone I told you so. And here are the keys."
"We won't." Adonis was about to lead them out of the manager’s office, but Pasha wanted to see the security video.
They watched the days leading up to when Carissa had killed the vampires, to the days after that.
The manager pointed out the ones who were vampires and the ones who had been killed.
“Thanks,” Adonis said, watched him for a few minutes, then the manager nodded to his secret communication. Then Adonis led the hunters to the elevator, and they rode it up to the fourth floor. "They have two separate apartments. One on this floor, one on the fifth."
"Should we split forces and hit them both at the same time?" Michael asked.
"They might have a big group there, so no, we need to stick together."
Pasha was glad Adonis said so. Even though she didn't want this group of vampires—if there was one in the apartment—to warn the others, should they surprise them and begin to fight. But it could be a disaster if there were two big groups of vampires, and the hunters were way outnumbered if they split up to tackle both. Not that the vampires in this apartment couldn't call on the others to come aid them. They very well could. But at least the hunters would have the advantage of surprise in the beginning.
When they reached the door, Adonis and the others took a deep breath, readying themselves for a fight. All the hunters had their swords out when Adonis unlocked the door with a click. If the vampires were there, they probably would be sleeping soundly. Since it was a nice sunny day in the city, and the apartments had nice big windows, Pasha had every intention of opening the drapes and letting the sun shine in.
They opened the door and immediately were met by a couple of hosts who looked shocked to see them. Adonis showed them his fangs. Zachary and Danai followed suit, the three of them letting the hosts know they were part of the vampire contingent. The hosts nodded and let them in. Adonis looked at both men who nodded and left the apartment.
If hosts were there, vampires probably were too. They found a man sleeping on the sofa. Danai and Rachael stayed with him, watching him while the others checked out the two bedrooms. A man and woman were in a bed together, and another man was sleeping in a bed in another room. Zachary had his sword poised to take care of one of the vampires when Pasha motioned to the window and indicated with hand motions, she wanted to open the drapes first. He nodded. She went to the window and slowly pulled aside the floor to ceiling drapes, letting the sun spill into the bedroom where the couple were. The sun touched their skin and they cried out, trying to scramble away from the sunlight—unsuccessfully—before they turned into ash. Zachary and Pasha hurried into the other bedroom, but Michael or Adonis had taken care of the single man.
"He hissed at me when I woke him," Adonis said, proof the guy had been a vampire, not a human.
When they returned to the living room, Rachael motioned to the ashes and clothes left on the sofa. "Ancient."
They didn't hesitate to leave and headed for the door and the other apartment before the vampires learned hunters were on their way, hoping none of these had telepathically warned them already.
They took the stairs this time, and when Adonis unlocked the door on the next floor, a man backed away from it. Adonis showed his teeth, the others repeating what they'd done earlier, to prove they were vampires, part of the rest of them. Adonis spoke telepathically to him and the man said, "Five, no other hosts."
"Good. Leave. Don't remember us or that we were here," Adonis said.
Some might think that fighting vampires like this when they were sleeping wasn't fair, but fairness had nothing to do with it. If it did, killing hunters just for the sake of taking over their territory wasn't fair either. Or that hunters could only have the numbers they did by procreation. Being able to turn hundreds of people into vampires wasn't fair. Not to the newly turned or to the hunters.
Too bad they couldn't hire humans to serve as hunters, but the vampires and hunters were stronger than humans and could see in the dark, so the humans were at a disadvantage and Pasha thought that wouldn't be fair to humans either.
The hunters in this group did the same as before, this apartment having three bedrooms, and once the host left the apartment, the hunters went to find the vampires. Two of the three rooms were empty.
Adonis frowned.
"He said there were five vampires," Pasha said, frowning, but she quickly opened the drapes in each of the bedrooms. Only in two did the sunlight stretch across the room. In the other, it didn't because of the time of day and the way it faced.
Danai peeked under the bed and nodded.
Adonis and Michael lifted the bed, exposing the vampire sleeping there to the sun’s rays while Danai leaped at the vampire and stabbed him in the heart before he could vanish. Adonis hurried into the other sun-brightened room to join Zachary and Pasha and when she looked under the bed, she said, "One."
Adonis and Zachary lifted the bed, exposing the vampire to the sunlight, killing it right away.
Danai and Rachael were in the other room where the sunlight didn’t reach the bed. Two male vampires were sleeping in it together. Pasha loved that vampires were usually sound sleepers in the middle of the day.
Suddenly, both men threw aside the covers, ready to kill whoever had disturbed their sleep, fangs exposed, but then they looked puzzled, frowning. Pasha suspected Adonis or Zachary, maybe even Danai was talking to them telepathically. Even though Pasha didn’t want to be a vampire for anything, she sure wished she could hear what was being said. And she thought it was cool that they could protect the hunters by convincing hosts that they hadn’t seen the hunters in action or otherwise.