Caleb just looked at her.By his expression, I thought that somebody might have finally managed to get him off that soapbox.Then Kimmie shook her head.
“Relax, I’m just messing with you.”
“Thank God!”My usually unruffled partner looked seriously relieved.“I didn’t mean—”
“My traits actually come from my Dad’s side.”
Caleb stopped mid-sentence, as if he didn’t know what to do with that comment.Fair; neither did I.The kids had a somewhat warped sense of humor, if that’s what this was.
But if so, I was glad to see it.
Kimmie had probably been the most traumatized out of my whole class by her experiences at “school,” and had only started to come out of her shell recently, exchanging small jokes with the other kids but staying quiet most of the time.Like now, when she remained silent and poker-faced, letting him squirm for a few beats.Then she grinned.
“That’s for making us run up all those hills the other day!”
Despite his skin tone, Caleb managed to flush.“You’ll be running up more for that!”
Kimmie just grinned some more, and then Dimas cut in.
“Vamp… eyes?”His tone said that he must have heard that wrong.
If only.
“I helped to raid a Reaper’s shop a year ago,” I told him.“One whole wall was lined with jars of eyeballs, lungs, pieces of liver—”
“Liver?”That came from Aki.
“A liver graft from the right creature can make you immune to poisons,” I explained.“Like a piece of the right kind of skin can allow you to change appearance without the need for a glamourie, and it can’t be detected by the best spells we have.This bastard had even reaped a pair of fey wings, I guess for flight, although he didn’t survive long enough for us to ask.Not to mention enough pelts to open a fur shop—”
“Butvampires?”That was Dimas again.
The way he said it made me wonder if he’d met one, back in his crazy childhood, and how that had gone.He seemed to have a healthy respect for the breed.Of course, that was the smart attitude anyway.
“They take them off baby vamps,” I explained.“Or those who end up turned by accident and don’t have a family.The guy we raided had talked a down-on-his-luck master into making “donors” for him, who were reaped as soon as they were turned.”
The vamp master had been taken in the raid, too, having been visiting the hole-in-the-wall shop to change a bunch of unconscious young men we’d found in a back room, and had been thrown into a windowless cell at HQ for his trouble.We had, of course, immediately informed the Vampire Senate that we had him, in accordance with the longstanding treaty, and they’d seemed very interested in their master’s side hustle.They’d immediately sent a rep to pick him up, news of which had sent him into a panic so severe that he tried to kill himself three times, and when that failed, he begged me to either stake him or leave him a piece of wood so he could do it himself.
I’d briefly considered it; it would have been easy enough to leave a wooden chair in the room, and we’d all heard stories about the Senate’s idea of justice.But then I’d remembered all those jars.And the young men he’d forcibly turned, only for them to die almost immediately thereafter, just so he could pay off a few gambling debts.
Curiously enough, the Senate’s rep had only taken his head, carting it out in a big black duffel bag.It was a bit muffled as a result, but we’d still been able to hear him screaming.All the way across the lobby and out the front door.
I wasn’t sure how he’d done that sans lungs, but he’d managed.
Vamps.
“The buyer gets a vamp eye grafted in place of one of their own, allowing them to see in total darkness over dozens of miles,” I explained.“Or to pick up minutiae that normal vision never could—”
“That’s sick!”Aki burst out.
“It’s useful,” I argued.“A skill like that can let you see when you’re being hunted and allow you to evade capture.Like the ability to transform can lend you many times your usual strength and provide a quick exit from a bad time.People will pay a lot for an advantage like that, especially now.And when there’s that kind of money on the line, there’s always somebody willing to provide the service.”
“Why not just get a damned tat?”he demanded.“They have magical tattoos for all sorts of things.You even have one for sight!”
He gestured at the small owl on my temple that had been a gift from Dad when I joined the Corps.I didn’t technically need it anymore, after recent events, which had improved my senses considerably.But I’d kept it anyway as it felt familiar, like few things these days.
“It allows me to see better in low light, but not to the extent that a vamp can,” I explained.“There are also plenty of things that no one has ever figured out how to make a ward to mimic—”
“So theysteal them from people?”The incipient hysteria in his voice told me that, yeah, he had made the connection with him and his friends’ condition.I’d started to think he might be one of the smarter of my students, which wasn’t doing him any favors right now.
