Page 6 of Lured

The moment I'd finished explaining the job I'd taken she folded her arms across her chest. I wasn't sure what was making her so stern, but she soon looked me over.

“This sounds like one of those jobs you get because no one else wants it no matter how well paid it is. It's all they'd give you, isn't it?” she asked.

I frowned, but I nodded. There was no point lying. It was exactly one of those jobs. And it would be hard to pull off even with my usual team. without them it would be almost impossible. Maybe even suicidal.

“I'll run it by the others, but I know they're likely to say no. We're not that desperate and we're not sure we want to associate with someone who-”

She was cut off by a shout from inside the house. A moment later she stood aside as Monika appeared, chewing gum and dressed in very little despite the weather.

“Anais, I don't know what you think you're doing or what job you think you're offering, but we won't do it. I've just had daddy on the phone and already news of your little stunt has got to him. We're not going to be tainted by someone who sympathizes with them. They're scum that prey on the weak. We're here to protect humanity. There's no room for someone like you.”

I didn't get to utter a single word before Monika practically dragged Laura back inside and then slammed the door. For a moment I didn't move or react. That had been my only chance to get the whole team on board and I'd blown it. Although it was more like I'd just never had the chance.

Walking away took everything I had, but there was nothing else for it. I wasn't going to beg and that meant I needed to find a way to make this happen on my own. As I walked back along the road, I noticed someone standing and reading a newspaper by a van further down the road.

It wasn't odd that they were reading a paper, nor that they were about. It was a nice enough evening. What seemed odd was that I could have sworn I'd seen the same jacket on a guy not far from the apartment I'd crashed at. Was I being followed? Or was I just paranoid and seeing things because I knew the guild was mad at me?

There was no way to know for sure, but I decided it was important for me to be careful from now on. I couldn't afford to make a single mistake. I was also going to need to work fast. The vampire my job was for wasn't going to be in Vegas much longer, and I needed to get close to him to find a weakness. I'm sure it was something I could do. The hard part would be not getting eaten along the way.

I also couldn’t blow through what little money I had left before I achieved my goal. I had just enough money in my account I could book a night at the hotel in question, something I'd get back on expenses thankfully. And I had just enough cash on me to buy two drinks at one of the bars. It was going to need to be saved for the right moment, however.

I needed to work out who this guy was and I needed to get close enough to him to kill him. And all as swiftly as possible and without getting killed myself. It wasn't going to be easy.

And on top of all that, I was low on supplies. No holy water, not that it always worked. And no garlic. Just the cross I always wore around my neck and the silver stake I carried with me everywhere. That and my training would have to be enough.

With that in mind I made my way across Vegas to the location the guild had given me. He was staying in one of the hotels on the strip and spent a lot of time in the bar and casino attached to it. Pretty typical behavior for someone in Vegas.

It was a long walk to get there, but I had little choice. The buses would be packed with drunk tourists and there was no way I could afford a cab. I was going to have to hurry though. It was already getting dark and I didn't want to waste the night.

Thankfully, I knew how to get where I needed to go and I was willing to walk that far. One of the advantages to being regularly struggling to pay for a cab was that I already knew the fastest and relatively safe routes to get anywhere.

Being poor in a place like Vegas wasn't easy. It was a tourist hot spot. And that meant everything was priced to hit the tourists pocket. I couldn't afford to live like a tourist every day.

Some of the other slayers could. Most of them had a sponsor, or a day job they could fit in. Some of them had a wealthy relative who was training them up, just like I once had. And if I hadn't completely screwed up my last mission, I had been inching closer to getting a sponsor or at least some better paid jobs finally.

I tried not to think about it. One mistake would hopefully be proved to just be that. A mistake and nothing more. With any luck it would soon be buried under other jobs and not recently enough anyone cared about it. My parents dying in the service had once counted for me, the guild taking pity on me and helping me find my way, but not anymore. Now it appeared to hinder me. I didn’t have their help to get ahead when I could have done with it the most.

The biggest problem was my lack of team, however. I was fast and I was gutsy, but I wasn't that strong. And vampires, well, they were extra strong. It put me at a disadvantage in certain situations. Most solo slayers were either all rounders, snipers, or had trained their whole lives to be as fast and as strong as humans could be.

I was none of that. Don't get me wrong, I had my strengths. My mind was sharp and I could read people well. But I didn't have very steady hands and that put sniper out of the question. I also hadn't been doing martial arts for very long. My parents hadn't been able to afford lessons when I was growing up. Not while also living this life. They’d done their best to teach me bits and pieces here and there, but it hadn’t been enough.

Until I'd got myself into the guild, based on my street smarts and the scrappy fighting style I'd learned the hard way, I'd not had the money for lessons myself. And even now I turned up and paid for lessons only as and when I had the money.

It wasn't ideal, but it was the best I could do. And with every mission I completed and every battle experience I'd had, my prospects had looked up. But now that was all over. I was worse than back at square one. My life had been knocked back to the lowest point ever. Somehow I had to climb back up.

To do that, I had to kill Ludis Amadori. Amadori wasn’t his official surname, it was the mafia don he was associated with. All vampires that weren’t taken out by the guild swiftly were associated with one of twelve vampire mafia dons and every member of the Amadori clan or coven adopted the name Amadori. There was also something about an amethyst, but the records in the guild were vague on what an amethyst had to do with the Amadori family.

Normally the guild didn’t take on anyone spoken for by the true blood families, and Laura wouldn’t have been happy had I told her that part, but I had no choice. And I had to hope that the family wouldn’t retaliate even if the guild suspected this was what had happened with my family.

I pushed the thought from my head. This was my path and I could either embrace it or run from it entirely. And I was no coward.

***

The hotel room before me was the cheapest they had. It was still reasonable. After all this was one of the better hotels in the area, but everyone in the know about vampires knew this was somewhere that welcomed them. Somewhere they often outnumbered humans.

I had gained a few raised eyebrows when I'd booked the room, handing over my card and barely hiding the sigh of relief when the payment had been approved.

I'd quickly changed, putting on the only outfit I had that was suitable for a hotel like this. Now I looked at myself in the mirror, my lower half hugged, by tight black leather pants, and the rest of me hugged by a black over bust corset. There was something about the outfit that was missing, however. There was too much skin showing around my neck and shoulders.

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