"Who turned him?"
"Rutherford."
"All right, tell me where it is, and I'll bring Danai and Daemon with me. It helps to have an ancient vampire with us to fight an ancient, if we need him to."
Zachary gave him the name of the condo complex and then the hunters took off for the place and hoped this battle would help to end some of the conflict in the city. When they finally arrived there, they parked, and headed inside. Zachary halfway expected Alex to disappear before they located the floor and unit where Crichton was staying. When they spoke to the manager, whom they had to wake and was not happy about it in the least, he told them the unit where the man was staying. The manager said, "I wouldn't have even known about it, but the man wanted me to know the couple was going on a cruise and he was condo sitting for them. I thought that was nice."
Nice. Right. Condo sitting and hunter killing and turning humans into vampires. Nice side hobbies.
They headed up the stairs to the second-floor unit and when they reached the door, Alex knocked. "Sir, it's Alex. I went to the..."
A man yanked open the door and his face drained of all color. His eyes were huge as Adonis thrust his sword into the man's heart. The ancient fell to floor, disintegrating in a pile of ash.
"Hell, I...uh, I...I thought you might talk to him first," Alex said as the hunters rushed through the condo, looking for new vampires or any other ancients on the premises.
“A sword stops a vampire from killing us, much better than words,” Zachary said.
"That was Crichton, I take it," Pasha said.
Alex studied the ashes and clothes on the floor. "Uh, yeah. They sure look different from when they're so mean and vicious—the rogue ones I mean. Then just becoming a pile of ash. Not scary at all."
"No one else here," Adonis said. "Now where's Rutherford?"
"I honestly don't know. But I heard another ancient, Whitefoot, more levelheaded than Crichton, is at another apartment complex. He might have moved. If I were them, I'd be doing a lot of moving."
"They get set in their ways," Pasha said. "The ancients don't like the idea that they are being pushed around."
"Right. They're all superior," Alex said, then kicked at Crichton's ashes. "Really superior now."
"Will you come with us?" Pasha asked.
"Yeah, I've been wanting this to happen, but I was afraid to try and approach any of you for fear you'd kill me on the spot, sure I was like the others."
"I wanted to let one go. I think he was like you, not having wanted to be turned, but he didn't want to live like this either," Pasha said.
"I know the feeling, but I'd rather live and try to get on with my life. Some of the abilities I have now are cool, but I'll have to get a night job or work from home. I'm a computer programmer, so maybe I can do that."
"I'm sorry they did this to you," Pasha said.
"I'm sorry they killed your family."
She nodded. Then they all took off in their car, but first to see the police and the vampires they were holding for the moment in cells. Though they could literally vanish and leave the station anytime they wanted to.
"Are the men still here?" Adonis asked.
"Yeah, unless they've done a disappearing act." The officer took the hunters downstairs to the cells and they found the men were still there.
Adonis asked them telepathically, "Can you hear anything from Crichton any longer?"
Pasha knew he was trying to verify that the ancient vampire that Adonis had killed had actually been Crichton.
"No," the one man said out loud, not quite figuring out the telepathic communication yet.
"He's gone silent. He's been telling us what we're to expect and what we're supposed to do as soon as the time is right and then he just went silent. We're so tired, we all wanted to just sleep," another vampire said.
"It feels strange not having him in our head," another said. "I'm glad he's no longer there, at least for the moment. I thought he'd be up all night. We're unable to stay awake tonight, just because we were up all day as humans. It will be an adjustment, I'm sure."
"It will be, but you'll get used to it soon enough," Adonis said.
"So why has he stopped talking to us? As an ancient vampire, he says he is up all night and sleeps during the day."
"He's dead. He can't control you now," Pasha said. At least it seemed they'd verified he was dead now.
The vampires glanced at Alex.
"I'm one of you. A different ancient vampire changed me and unfortunately, he's still alive. The hunters want to help me take him down," Alex said.
"You can't, can you?" one of the vampires asked. "Crichton told us even if we wanted to, we were bound to him, as if he were our master, and we couldn't harm a hair on his head."
The vampires smiled. "I'm glad you eliminated him," another one said.
"Alex helped us to find the condo where he was staying."
"Oh, we couldn't tell you. I mean, we could now, but before, he did something to us to make us forget where he was living, I guess so we couldn't tell the police."
Pasha thought that was interesting. She'd never had anything to do with vampires except to kill the rogues. She'd never known about all the small nuances of how they could influence a vampire or not. Some she knew about because of Adonis and how, as much as he wanted to kill Piaras, he couldn't. The same with Danai. But Pasha didn't know about the business with how anything they told them to forget could come back to them once the ancient was dead.
"Can we leave here now?" one of the vampires asked. "If we don't have to work for Crichton, we shouldn't be a threat. We don't intend to kill any hunters. We never wanted to be vampires. It's sure going to screw up our love life."
"You're free to go, just watch your backs," Alex said. "The others that Rutherford turned, like me, believe Crichton intended to use you to eliminate Rutherford and the vampires he turned. Not to mention you were supposed to kill the hunters too."
"What are we supposed to do then? I feel like we're in the middle of a war that we don't want to fight."
"Choose a side. I have, even though I still owe allegiance to Rutherford," Alex said.
"How can you?"
"He's weak, injured badly. I've been fighting what he's telling me to do. I don't believe he knows what I've been up to," Alex said.
"We'll fight on the hunters' side if we have to fight," one of the men said, the others agreeing. "I mean, if we're stuck in the middle of the conflict, I don't want to die for no good reason."
"Same with me," another of the men said. "It's bad enough that we are what we are now and carry the stigma with us. We're going to alienate our friends and families, lose our jobs, who knows what else. At least we can help fight the ones who were the reason any of this happened in the first place."
"Yeah, I agree. What do we do now?"
"I'm not sure you're ready to fight this bunch. The newly turned vampires have been fighting the hunters—" Adonis said.