Page 30 of The Vampire and the Case of the Perilous Poltergeist

‘Don’t you forget it. I’ll meet you tomorrow in the parking lot.’

‘Counting the hours.’ I sighed. ‘Love you.’ I hung up before I could get even more sappy.

Eager to see Connor, I powered through my classes the next day even though nerves were nibbling the edges of my stomach. I was confident that Fluffy and I could do a good demonstration – after all, we’d done it in real life with the poor Savik brothers,and that had been truly scary shit. We’d done search and rescuebeyondthe barrier with a scary monster stalking us. This exercise would be a piece of cake in comparison.

I met Connor and shook off my nerves. Fluffy hopped out of the truck, his K-9 vest already in place and I greeted him with a full body cuddle and lots of pats. He licked my face enthusiastically, making me laugh.

‘Lucky guy,’ Connor muttered under his breath.

I turned. ‘I can greet you just as enthusiastically if you like?’

He laughed. ‘If you did, we’d miss the demonstration.’

My skin warmed. ‘Right. Well then.’ I cleared my throat and tried to sound businesslike. ‘You have the undershirt?’

He reached into the truck and handed it to me sealed in a plastic zip bag. ‘I wore it for twelve hours, as requested.’

‘Thanks!’ I covered Fluffy’s ears, told Connor where I needed him to go, and he obligingly set off.

I released Fluffy’s ears. ‘I didn’t want you to cheat and know where he was going,’ I explained. ‘We don’t need to cheat to excel. Hard work will get us there every time.’ Fluffy gave a firm bark, and we set off to show all of the recruits how it was done.

I felt more confident today when I was standing in front of my peers. Fluffy sat proudly next to me, eyes locked on mine, vibrating with tension. He was ready. So was I.

I turned to the recruits. ‘Search and rescue dogs can be any breed – it depends on their strength and mental fitness to concentrate for periods of time. There are dogs that are specifically trained for avalanche recovery, seeking dead bodies and for finding a lost hiker, amongst many other things. Fluffy has a wide range of skills, and finding people is one of them.’

Danny raised his hand and I nodded to indicate he could ask his question. ‘How do you know when he’s found someone?’

‘That’s a good question. We’ll demonstrate when we go outside, but part of having a trained dog is learning the dog’stells. I’m lucky because Fluffy is very demonstrative so he’s easy to read.’ Especially because he had human-level intelligence, but I didn’t add that part.

When nobody raised another question, I continued. ‘As we demonstrated yesterday, Fluffy has some skill with scent tracking, so I start with something saturated in the victim’s scent. He also knows to watch and to listen for cries for help. That would help in an avalanche scenario, for example, or if someone fell down a mine, but he’d still track them first by scent since most of what he does is locating lost people.’

The recruits were taking notes, even Thorsen and his minions. Maybe Fluffyhadimpressed them a bit yesterday.

‘I’ve set up a search and rescue situation. We’ll go outside for the demo. Follow me.’ I was pleased that this time that I managed to make it an order.

I’d asked Connor to hide in the woods behind the academy; he wasn’t familiar with Sitka, but I figured a lumberjack would know his way around trees – and Fluffy would find him anyway. Besides, this was only an hour-long demonstration so Connor wasn’t going to run at vamp speed and end up miles away. We needed to find him pronto and he knew it – not that he would make it too easy for us.

I had everyone gather at the obstacle course then pulled Connor’s undershirt from the bag. ‘Smell,’ I told Fluffy. He sniffed it obediently and whined as he looked up at me. I winked at him – I doubted he truly needed the scent because he’d find Connor anywhere. ‘Seek,’ I ordered.

Fluffy put his nose to the ground and started in half-circles from our position. Since I’d made Connor walk through this area, he picked up the trail after three passes. I walked quickly to keep him on a loose lead. I drew the class’s attention to his behaviour when he paused and looked back at me, then wefollowed as he trotted, nose down, through the trees behind the building.

The murmurs behind me sounded positive and I grinned to myself as I followed my dog. About a half mile out, Fluffy stopped, lifted a front foot and looked back at me. I waited until everyone was in earshot. ‘You can see that he is pointing. He thinks our target is near.’

‘Where’s the missing person, then?’ Thorsen yelled out obnoxiously.

‘He’s here, but first I’m going to free the dog to pinpoint precisely where.’ I removed Fluffy’s lead. ‘Hunt.’

Fluffy put his nose down, walked ten steps and scratched at the ground. I frowned. What had Connor done? I’d figured he’d go up a tree or hide in the brush, but he was obviously being a little tricksier than that.Vamp,I suddenly thought; he’d be more comfortable hiding in true dark.

‘Fluffy is indicating that the victim is underground,’ I reported, starting to worry that something was off.

I tried to trust my four-legged friend and push down my jangling nerves as I walked to where Fluffy was scratching at the ground. It sounded hollow. I looked down and saw some loose earth covering some rough boards. It was obvious that the place had been disturbed very recently. Connor had found an old mine to play in.

Since I had to hide my freakish strength, I waved Danny over and together we pulled the boards free. Then, since we were all playing human, we both helped pull Connor out of the ground. ‘You scared me,’ I murmured quietly.

For a moment the fear that something had happened to him had vibrated through me. I remembered all too well finding him bound and gagged; the memory of that was still riding me, making me almost breathless.

He read the emotion in my eyes. ‘Hey, it’s okay. I was perfectly safe. The mine is sealed and there was enough space between the sealed part and the boards for me to lie down and wait for you. I knew you’d find me. Anyway, I could have gotten out on my own, so no harm, no foul.’

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