A Sheep in Wolf’s Clothing

Stepping inside, she approached the modest L-shaped desk where a receptionist sat typing away at an ancient computer. She glanced up at Harper, who probably didn’t look like either a future patent-holder or a traditional hunter. Her usual style included a leather jacket, a tank top, one of many flannels wrapped around her hips, and Chuck Taylors. Her undercut ginger hair was pulled back into a sloppy ponytail.

The receptionist, whose nameplate identified her as Sharon Myers, pursed her lips, studying Harper. Eventually she just shrugged and launched into the standard excuse for the uninitiated who walked in blindly. “Sorry, I’m afraid we’re all booked up.”

It took some fishing around inside her ratty brown messenger bag before Harper was able to pull out her laminated ID card. “I’ve got an appointment with Mr. Stoker,” she said as she passed it off to her.

Sharon plucked the card from Harper’s hand and looked it over with a small nod. “Ah, looks like congratulations are in order, Ms. Zeale. Finally getting turned loose?”

Once the ID was returned to her, Harper popped it back into her bag. “Yup. Big day. Are our guests from last night’s raid still here?”

Sharon pressed a button somewhere behind the desk and another door at the other end of the small reception area buzzed, followed by the sound of a heavy metallic ka-chunk. “Stairwell at the end of the hall. That’ll take you down to the basement level. The lounge is the first door on the left. One of the vampires was pretty close to feral, so he’s sedated and under heavy guard. But the other two are fairly lucid. Good luck, Harper.” That last bit was refreshingly sincere.

“Thanks,” she said softly before heading for the door.

Harper found the stairwell and descended, occasionally taking the steps two at a time. Whether it was excitement or nerves—possibly both—she was feeling energized. She stepped through the double doors at the bottom of the stairs, which opened onto the basement hallway.

Farther down was another set of double doors with a brick shithouse of a man standing guard over them, most likely a guild Shield. He was wearing a black suit that strained against his form. She could only assume one of the rooms beyond held the sedated vamp. You couldn’t get much from an unconscious witness, so she focused on finding the other two.

A door to her right was labeled as a unisex bathroom, and the one on her left had a worn-out plastic plaque identifying it as the lounge Sharon had mentioned. Harper paused just long enough to give the Shield a quick nod before stepping inside the room on the left. She immediately thought that “lounge” was a generous description. The floor was gray linoleum, the walls a faded robin-egg blue. What few windows the place had were draped with heavy blackout curtains, so the only lighting came from the lightly buzzing fluorescents overhead. Only the occasional support pillar broke up the otherwise monotonous space.

There was a modest seating area with a couch, some padded wooden chairs, a mini fridge, and a television attached to the wall that was currently off. A girl who couldn’t have been more than eighteen was perched in one of the chairs, one leg tucked up under her, the other propped up with an arm around it, holding her phone as she idly scrolled. Her free hand held a medical blood bag, already half-drained, which she occasionally took a sip from like it was a juice pouch.

Draped across the couch was a man in his midforties who could have been mistaken for someone nursing a hangover. His head was propped up on a ratty throw pillow, left arm resting across his upper face. Newly turned vampires tended to go through a bout of sensory overload, so he was likely trying to block out the lighting, dim as it was. With his free hand, he reached out and fumblingly opened the mini fridge to pull out a fresh blood bag. The door had swung too wide, and he made a few feeble attempts at closing it again. The girl eventually took pity, freeing her propped leg just long enough to knock it closed before returning to her comforting posture.

Harper approached cautiously, fully aware that she was about to press her way into an extremely tenuous situation. Then again, that was a pretty accurate description of her entire job, so she knew she would have to get used to that. “Excuse me?”

The young girl looked over and gave her a weak smile. “They got you too, huh?”

It took a moment to process what she meant by that. “Got me? Oh! No, I uh…” She moved in closer, dragging one of the chairs with her to tighten the circle a bit, then settled into it with her legs crossed. She placed her messenger bag in her lap and fished out a spiral notebook and a pen. “I’ve been called in to deal with the vampire who hurt you.”

That got the guy’s attention, and he carefully pried his face free from the crook of his arm. “No shit?” He slowly sat up, opening the valve on the blood bag and taking a quick drink from it. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not going to turn down free vengeance. But what about us? Is this just it now?” He gestured with the blood bag.

“My friends are all wondering where the hell I went and I don’t know what to tell them,” the girl added with a hint of desperation.

Harper held her hands out to stop the wave of questions. “Let’s back up a second. My name’s Harper. I’m a Knife with the guild, kind of like an inspector or a detective.” She gestured to the two vampires, encouraging them to do their own quick introductions.

“Demi,” said the young girl. “Uh, shit, I don’t know. I’m a high school senior?” Demi shrugged her shoulders uselessly. Harper just offered her a nod and a smile. She didn’t need their life stories or anything.

The guy sighed, pausing to take another drink. “Ben. Cubicle wage-slave.”

“Okay! Ben, Demi,” she repeated. “First things first. If I can take down this guy, you should revert.” She bit back the urge to say, “go back to normal.” Yes, they would be cured of their conditions. But there was rarely any semblance of normal after experiences like this. That was why the guild included services like counseling. “To do that, I need your help. A description of the vampire, his favorite haunts, that kind of thing.”

The carrot of a cure was enough to get both of them eager to offer what they could.

Demi sat up a little taller, planting both feet on the floor. “Oh! Hang on…” She started tapping and scrolling on her phone again. “I was at this house party, so I don’t know if that super helps. But! I did snap a selfie with him. Want me to text it to you?”

Bashfully, Harper retrieved her own phone and held it up. It was an ancient flip phone, a relic from a bygone era, refurbished but ultimately too archaic for the task. “You can email it to me, anyway. Here…” She quickly jotted down her contact information on a scrap of paper and passed it off to her.

Demi opted instead to just trade the paper for her phone so Harper could get a good look at the picture and jot down some quick notes. Angular features with a chin that could puncture steel, black hair gelled into a dramatic sweep, dark and heavy eye makeup, tasteful five o’clock shadow. The dude must have used his centuries of living to craft the perfect douchebag look.

After returning the phone to its rightful owner, she looked over at Ben. “I know this is all still pretty fresh. Getting turned can be disorienting. But anything you can add will help.”

He reached up and rubbed his hand back and forth over his shaved head. “Disorienting? I would say more head-fuck-y. A lot of it is a blur. Hell, I still can’t remember what he looks like. But I was definitely out drinking.”

“Bar?”

His brow furrowed in concentration. “Club. I wanted to dance. An awkward, aging queer looking for a distraction. There’s this twink grinding up on me. He said so many nice things. Can’t remember what, just the feeling. Looked into his eyes and everything felt all claustrophobic and warm—no, hot. I needed space and I needed him. We went to the bathroom.” He wrenched his eyes shut tight. Desperately, he brought the blood bag to his mouth and took a long pull, and slowly his posture eased. “I remember…after he opened his own vein and made me drink, I thought it was all a bit ironic.”

Harper wanted to make space for him to sort through all the scattered thoughts, but it seemed like Ben was onto something so she pressed a bit. “What was ironic?”

“Blood…” he said. “Red…The club. The lights? No. The name. The name was red.”

Shit, I’m losing him. This is too soon. He should be resting.

But we need this. There’s a million clubs in Chicago. Even if only a handful of them have red signs, it could take days to figure out which one he went to. Days we don’t have. Push him anyway. Someone else can pick up the pieces.

Okay, pump the brakes, asshole. That’s not how we do things.

Not my monkey, not my circus. We need to find the bloodsucker before this gets worse.

“Bloodsucker”? Are you serious? Fuck that, we’re better than this.

Harper took a deep breath to calm herself down and silence the argument raging in her mind. The exhausting angel-devil double act could go back-and-forth endlessly if she let it. Each voice raised important points, but sooner or later she had to make a decision. This was her first official job, she was supposed to be a professional, and they were making it really difficult.

“Crimson!”

Harper nearly jumped as Demi cried out beside her. “Jesus, what?”

She looked between them, smiling broadly. “The club! It’s called Crimson. When he was sweet-talking me at the party, he said if I wanted to find him again, I should go to Crimson. He was so smooth about it too. ‘Oh, baby girl, you’d fit right in. It has the hottest people in town.’” She did her best to imitate what he sounded like, forcing her voice into this low, husky register.

Ben’s face eased again as she filled in the gap for him. “Blood, Crimson, ironic. God, thank you.”

Harper hastily scribbled that onto the page as well. She had the face, she had his favorite hunting ground. Now all she had to do was everything else. Easy as that. As an afterthought, she wrote down her contact information one more time before passing a second scrap of paper over to Ben. She was starting to think she should get some business cards made.

“Thank you both. If I do my job right, you should be feeling like your old selves again soon. Just be sure to take it easy. Reverting isn’t any more enjoyable than the first part.” She threw everything back into her messenger back and clambered off the chair. Harper hesitated for just a moment. She wanted to say something at least a little more comforting, a little less clinical. Her mom was great at that stuff, so she did her best to channel the woman. “It’s going to be okay. I know this has kind of thrown your worlds upside down. Don’t hesitate to reach out if you need anything.”

It was hardly a rallying cry, but it got them both to smile. That had to be enough.