When Councilman Roe swore blind that he’d get me the assistance I needed to track down the killer, I’d envisioned help from the Council’s census department to help me find and contact the smaller enclaves who might be missing an omega and not know about it for some reason. For instance, if a previously trusted visiting tradesperson committed to a bond with each of them and took the omegas away with him one by one, their families might not know they were dead.
They could be imagining their offspring happily traveling the region, selling their wares, oblivious until much more time passed and the tradesperson failed to bring them back through. Though that scenario didn’t explain poor Jeddah Roe. His fathers insisted that Jeddah had not been seeing anyone, and was, in fact, both aromantic and asexual. Had Jeddah been murdered because he’d rebuffed the killer’s advances? Were his nudity and gender coincidences, even?
What Councilman Roe delivered was a whole bunch of what I saw as being trouble. Omegas were being killed and what does he go and do? Convinced the rest of the Council that since there is a killer he needs hunting down (well duh) and that since his son’s body was found first thing in the morning, that the killing was all being done at night, naturally. This somehow made them vote to contact the Ilyirzi, who seized on the idea that hunting meant we needed a Hunter, and hey, an omega one would give more insight. I just hoped the Hunter didn’t end up as prey himself.
“So why are we waiting here?” Richard asked me.
I hadn’t told him we were getting an omega vampire Hunter.
All I’d said was the Council was sending us some help, all the while praying they’d come to their senses and call me to say they’d changed their minds and the census department was going to help me.
He rubbed his arms. “It’s getting cold.”
He wasn’t lying. The days were still warm enough but come dusk, there was getting to be a definite bite to the air.
“I reckon it’ll be an early winter.”
Richard peered down the road. “They comin’ from Vintnerville?”
I shook my head. “Night rail,” I replied, tilting my head to indicate the railway depot off to our left.
He blinked. “That’s for trade goods going to and from the Ilyirzi.” He took in the firm set of my mouth, his eyebrows shooting up. “No way! Are you telling me they’re sending a vampire?”
“Who else would be coming this late at night?” I bit out.
“Seriously? Oh, wow! I’ve always wanted to meet one!”
He sounded like a kid let loose with some money at the bakery on pastry day. “Well, you’ll get to meet one real soon.”
“You don’t sound happy.”
I sighed. “It’s not that I don’t think we could use a hand. I just don’t think we need another investigator, let alone one that’s actually a gods be damned Hunter. We need people to supply us with information that will allow us to do our work. And an Ilyirzi? Really? What’s he going to do that we can’t?”
Richard shrugged. I wasn’t done ranting yet, though. “And give me a break – he might be a Hunter and they’re supposed to be legendary or something at what they do, but he’s not one of us! Folks aren’t going to open up to him! And he’s an omega, which makes him a potential target!”
“An omega? Really? Oh, man, now I really can’t wait. They’re supposed to all be ridiculously handsome but the omegas? Mmmmmm,” Richard sighed dreamily.
“Stop planning your happily ever after, fanboy, and keep your head in the game,” I snapped.
“Someone’s a grumpy pants,” Richard teased. I was saved from answering him by the vibrations along the air and ground, warning us of the impending arrival of the train. Winnie growled, stomping his feet, while Kilroy lowered his head and swayed from side to side, his tail sweeping the air behind him. Unused to being around the train, it made them uneasy.
To be honest, it made me feel off-kilter, too. They didn’t seem natural, the way they glided over the ground a few feet in the air, no visible connection between the cars, all of them moving in perfect unison soundlessly. It was kind of creepy, actually, in my opinion.
The last car was a passenger carriage, its windows swathed in heavy drapery to keep out any errant light should the Ilyirzi within be traveling while it was yet daylight. This, along with everything else, helped fuel the common perception of them being real-life vampires. There was even supposition among many of the populace that once, long ago, they had spaceships and came to Earth and that’s where our stories all came from. Whenever I heard this, I asked if they could tell me which planet elves, fairies, and unicorns also came from.
“Do you think he has his bats in there?”
Bats. Yup, turns out there was a bit of convergent evolution there. They looked like bats from our home planet, but genetically, they were an entirely different species. They were more like flying bloodhounds for the Hunters, so to speak, too. Yep, another tick against the old ‘looks like a vampire’ list.
“Dunno. Guess we’ll find out,” I said, as the door to the carriage began to open.