This story was inspired by an article, unfortunately no longer available, on vampire population
statistics in Sunnydale. There was one throw away line about it being easier to posit statistics
than to "radio collar the buggers". I thought–why not write a story about trying to radio
collar the buggers?
Tag, You're It
copyright 2002 /03
by Anne Fraser
Ice and snow made crunching noises under Jake's boots as he shrugged his hood up against
the wind. The much shorter man walking beside him made no noise, not even the contact
between his feet and the ice. It was always eerie walking anywhere with a vampire, and a
freezing cold night in Toronto made it doubly so.
"Remind me why we're doing this," Jake grumbled as the wind pushed his hood off his head
for the fiftieth time, and he pulled it back up for the fifty-first time.
"There's a piano bar that I wanted to go to up here," said Adrian, eyes scanning the nearly
deserted street. "I'm not entirely certain why you came along. It's a gay bar."
"It's a god-damn cold night," Jake said. "They serve Irish coffee in this bar, I presume. I like
piano music. I don't care if everyone thinks I'm gay there."
Adrian, seemingly impervious to the cold because he wore no hat or scarf, and only a thin
leather jacket and jeans, glanced at his huddled, shivering companion. "Trust me, Jake," he
said wearily, "nobody will think you're gay."
"Oh. Good."
"And where are you two going on a cold, bleak night like this?" a cheerful female voice
inquired.
Jake jumped, in spite of himself. But he hadn't heard her coming. Of course not. He whirled to
meet T'beth's highly amused glance. She was wearing a big fluffy fleece jacket over a thin
ribbed t-shirt and tight black leather pants. Jake could see this because the jacket was open
even though the windchill was hovering around zero. Kelvin.
"Hello, T'beth," Adrian kissed her on the cheek.
"Jeez, I wish you two would learn to wear bells or something," Jake said.
T'beth smiled. She had the deadliest smile of anyone Jake knew. "Trust me," she purred, "it
wouldn't help." She patted him on the shoulder. "How can you move in so many layers?" she
asked, continuing to pat him to see what was under the down jacket, sweater, long-sleeved
shirt and whatever other mysterious items of clothing lay between Jake and the cold. "What if
I'd been an attacker?"
"I'd be dead," Jake admitted, "but then I'd turn into a vampire, so it would be the attacker's
problem."
"Oh, yes, the oh-so-dangerous fledgling," T'beth laughed. "Now, where did you say you were
going?"
"We didn't," Adrian replied pointedly. "If you'll excuse us, Jake is freezing to death, and I hate
the colour blue."
She snagged him by the back of his jacket collar. "Not so fast, little brother. I want to have
some fun, too. Where are you going?"
"Fernando's," Adrian sighed. "Now can we go?"
"Of course." T'beth took hold of an arm from each man and towed them along in her wake.
"I've been wanting to try that place myself, I hear they make a wicked Bloody Mary."
T'beth could beat the crap out of Adrian, and he knew it, so he shut up and let her drag him
and Jake up the quiet street. Jake, happy to be moving, didn't resist either. It would be like
trying to resist a hurricane, anyway. T'beth was incredibly strong, even for a vampire. He'd
seen entire armies back down from her.
Several hundred feet above them, they were being watched through infra-red binoculars.
"Two vampires," said the observer to someone beside him. "One a prime female; the other a
rather small male."
"What's the third, the big one?" asked someone else.
"Hard to say, he's giving off strange readings. He's not completely human, but he's not a
vampire."
"Let me see those meters."
Something was passed over, and consulted. "Ah hah, a halfling."
"What? He's too bloody damn big to be a hobbit!"
"Not a hobbit, you jackass. He's half a vampire."
"Which half?"
"I mean he's a bloodling, a half-blood. He's slowly turning into a vampire; he must have gotten
some infected blood somehow. But he's still alive, so he's still technically human. We've got to
get some samples from him!"
"All right, can do. Should we tag all three of them?"
"I'm not sure the male is actually legal size; but we'd better take all three at once for safety
reasons. Get the guns."
Jake stopped and looked up, some instinct warning him while the two vampires were bickering
in a friendly way. He was hearing a helicopter, and it sounded awfully close.
"T'beth," he said, "did you bring your crossbow, by any chance?"
She patted the pockets of that fluffy fleece jacket, which Jake belatedly realized had a pattern
of dark red blood drops on it. "Gee, Jake," she said, "I must have left it in my other jacket. I
have a few other weapons, though. Why?"
"I think someone in a helicopter is following us."
Both vampires looked up. Neither of them scoffed at Jake. Having a human, or technically a
human, companion came in handy sometimes; especially when the human was paranoid and
had had some quasi military training. The helicopter was now in plain sight, hovering above
and slightly behind them.
"Run," Adrian suggested.
"Jake can't outrun a helicopter," T'beth replied.
"I'm sure as hell gonna try!" Jake yelled, spotting a glance of light off a gun barrel. "They're
going to shoot at us!"
He took off, his clumsy winter boots frantically trying to find a grip on the icy sidewalk. He
felt rather than heard or saw Adrian and T'beth overtake him. They each grabbed an arm in
passing, holding him up and helping him move more quickly on the treacherous footing.
From the helicopter, there was a "snick" and a sound like faintly escaping gas. Jake made a
noise, "Nunh" and staggered a bit. Adrian looked at him swiftly. There was a large dart
sticking out of the back of Jake's leg; someone with very good accuracy had aimed for a
portion of the body with the least amount of protective clothing.
"Uh oh," T'beth said, feeling Jake's weight shift as he began to lose consciousness.
"Uh oh?" came the fading voice of the sinking bloodling. "Oh SHIT."
There was another "snick" and Adrian felt a sharp sting on his right cheek. The lower one. His
hand went round, but T'beth slapped it away and pulled out another dart.
"Tranquillizers?" she asked, glaring up at the helicopter. "For vampires? They don't work,
assholes! Damn me for leaving my crossbow at home..." Then she stared, incredulous, as a
dart materialized right in her stomach, where the jacket gaped open to present a target.
Jake was already down, and Adrian was slowly collapsing. "Guess you're wrong," he gasped
at T'beth as his eyes closed.
She stared blurrily at the figures rappelling out of the helicopter, but lapsed into black
nothingness before she could ask them what they'd used to render vampires unconscious.
"Ah, distilled garlic mixed with holy water and a touch of sheep's blood," said the first of the
helicopter passengers to reach the three slumped figures. "Works every time."
"What did you use on the halfling?" asked another, prodding Jake's unresponsive body.
"Plain old tranks," came the reply. "Now work quickly."
"Good thing that miniaturization is so advanced," grunted one of the mysterious figures.
"They'd never stand for radio collars." He used a powerful gun to plant a tiny stud in Adrian's
earlobe. "But no vampire can resist a snazzy pierced ear. Holy cow, boss, this male's barely
legal size. I didn't know vampires came this small."
"Remember that one in Maine that got away?" came the answer. "He was even shorter than
this one." He was busy drawing blood samples from Jake. "This one might resist the radio
button."
"You can implant it under his skin, if he's still human," suggested someone else. "He'll never
know it's there. Wow, this female sure is muscular."
"She will prove an interesting study," nodded the mission leader. He used the gun to plant a
radio chip under Jake's skin on his forearm. "So will this one--wonder how long the process
takes, from bloodling to full vampire. He'll be worth a whole paper just on his own."
T'beth also received an unwanted earring. The crew from the copter measured, took samples,
wrote a few things down, then hurriedly grabbed the dangling rope to be hauled back up to
their vehicle. The victims were showing signs of recovering from the tranks.
The helicopter, data already being carefully recorded from the latest tagged subjects, whirled
away into the night. T'beth sat up and groaned, rubbing her stomach. She prodded Adrian.
"What the hell just happened?" she asked.
"We must have slipped on the ice," came the answer, although it sounded like Adrian didn't
believe it himself. Vampires don't slip on ice. But there seemed to be no other explanation.
The combination of garlic and holy water had erased their memories of the helicopter.
"Jake must have hit his head," said T'beth, trying to lift the big young man to his feet. "Should
we call 9-11?"
"We're the ones who it's usually called ABOUT," Adrian pointed out. "Jake?"
"I'm all right," came a groan. "What the hell hit me?"
"Ice apparently."
"Shit."
"Are you sure you're okay?" T'beth asked. "Maybe we should take you home."
"We have to wake him up every two hours or something, don't we?" Adrian asked.
"How the hell should I know? Let's take him to your house."
"Your place is closer."
"Dammit." But they got Jake into Adrian's car, somehow, and drove him to T'beth's place.
After more bickering and indecision about what to do for him, they ended up just putting him
to bed--such bed as T'beth had to offer, at any rate, which wasn't much more than a pallet on a
platform in a room without any windows--and keeping an eye on him until daylight made them
both seek a section of the platform.
Not one of the three of them noticed that both Adrian and T'beth now had pierced ears and
that Jake had several needle marks.
Ever since he had met Adrian, that fateful night now so many years ago at U of T, Jake had
gotten into the habit of waking up not knowing where the hell he was or what the hell had hit
him. It was a rare morning when he woke up in his own bed. Still, his body kicked into gear
before his brain did, and his legs tried to swing out of bed. There was nowhere to swing, he
was lying nearly flat on the floor. He grunted as his legs hit wood, and opened his eyes. He
appeared to be tucked into blankets, still mostly dressed, on a wooden floor. Groaning,
rubbing his head, he sat up. It was dark in here, wherever here was, but Jake was blessed--or
cursed--with excellent night vision. It came with the territory. He could see that he was in
what seemed to be a loft apartment, except that the sleeping platform was in a
room with no windows. This was somewhat foreign to the whole concept of lofts, but it did
give him a major clue as to his whereabouts.
Once again, he'd woken up in a nest of vampires. Okay, one vampire's nest, anyway. An
extremely dangerous, untamed female vampire with a peculiar sense of humour and the
reactions of a mongoose on speed. There was a weapons store in this loft, below the sleeping
platform, that would have made the Metro Toronto cops, the OPP, the RCMP, the Armed
Forces and CSIS all kick down the door. They'd never survive such an assault, of course.
Where was T'beth, come to think of it? And hadn't Adrian been with them last night, too?
What had happened last night, anyway? Jake had a vague memory of a helicopter, and after
that... nothing. He looked around the rest of the platform. Ah hah. Two lifeless bodies, lying in
dreamless, breathless "sleep" that looked an awful lot like death to the uninitiated. That would
be because they were dead. Technically. The slim one with the muscles was T'beth. The
short, pretty one was Adrian. Jake was dimly aware that, conventionally speaking, the man
should have the muscles and the woman should be the pretty one, but to actually say so out
loud to T'beth would be to court severe bruising. If he was lucky.
He didn't touch them. True, he could probably strip them down, dress them both in clown
clothes, cover them with flowers and fuzzy stickers, paint polka dots on their butts and stripes
on their faces, and never have them wake up, but he valued his life. He just checked to make
sure that they were both in one piece, and climbed down the ladder from the platform to the
ground floor.
Even though he knew better, he checked the fridge and the cupboards in T'beth's kitchen. A
kitchen, like a bathroom, tended to be a useless room in a vampire's residence unless the
vampire was either weird and collected food (Jake had once read a book where the vampire
did that), or else hung out a lot with humans. Adrian actually had food in his kitchen. T'beth
was a lot more territorial. There was nothing in her fridge but the bulb. It was burnt
out. The cupboards were equally empty. Jake sighed. Naturally, neither of the bloody damned
undead had given food a thought when they'd dragged him here last night after...
After? The memory failed to return. A helicopter. He remembered running. What the hell?
Terrorists? He couldn't imagine anyone else pursuing innocent (well, okay, but still...)
bystanders in a helicopter. It had been a damned dangerous thing to do in the streets of
Toronto, with their crowded buildings and overhead wires. Had there been guns involved? He
seemed to remember light glinting along a rifle barrel... he shook his head. Nothing but
darkness. He didn't seem to have been shot anywhere, though his right arm stung in a few
places.
He rolled up his sleeve to check to make sure he wasn't riddled with buckshot or anything like
that. He gaped in astonishment at the fading needle marks, as if someone had drawn blood or
given him injections. He hadn't been to a doctor since the changes had started taking place in
his body; the test results would have been too hard to explain. He healed from almost anything
overnight, anyway.
He couldn't get out of the loft. He had no way of locking the door after him if he left, and if he
went out and left the door unlocked, T'beth would kill him. There were booby traps and
alarms in this place that he didn't know how to disarm. And he couldn't pick up the phone and
call for pizza; giving out this address to a breather would mean instant death. Jake sighed and
resigned himself to starvation until his hostess awoke. He checked his watch. He'd slept, or
been unconscious, until nearly noon. It would be dark by five-thirty. He wouldn't starve to
death in five and a half hours.
The trouble was, there was nothing much for him to do. T'beth didn't read. Her bookshelves
were full of hunting trophies and similar grisly mementoes. She did have a television; few
modern vampires could stand being without one. When it's four in the morning in a city that
rolls up the sidewalks at six pm, there really isn't much else for you to do. Oh, cool, she had
digital...
He fell asleep again watching a football game he cared nothing about and didn't wake up until
a hand shook his shoulder.
"I'm awake!" he yelped, startled out of pleasant dreams of Melly, his girlfriend.
T'beth was looking down at him from behind the sofa. "Are you concussed?" she asked. She
stared into his eyes, and he tried not to squirm. "Can you follow my finger?" She wagged it
back and forth.
"Yes," Jake sighed. "I don't have a concussion, though my head sure hurts. Where's Adrian?"
"He went out to find you something to eat," T'beth replied, looking amused. "You've made
him all domestic. He wanted to wake you up every two hours last night."
"T'beth... what happened last night?"
It was the first time he had ever, including the time he'd found her naked and chained with
silver in a cage in Iran, seen her look uncertain. "I hate to admit it," she answered, "but I
haven't got a clue. I think you slipped on some ice and banged your head, but why Adrian and
I can't remember the details, I have no idea."
"Do you remember a helicopter?" Jake asked.
"A helicopter? No. Should I?"
"I... don't know." Jake shrugged. "For some reason, I remember running from one."
"You must have been dreaming. Nobody was chasing us with a helicopter, Jake. I'd remember
something like that."
"Yeah?" He showed her his arm, though the needle marks were now almost vanished.
"Someone drew blood from me last night, T'beth, and it wasn't you or Adrian." He didn't
flinch as she prodded his arm, studying the marks. As her head bent over him, he noted a flash
of gold that caught the light.
"T'beth," he said, "since when did you have your ears pierced?"
"I don't have pierced ears," she said, but her fingers went to her earlobes all the same. The left
hand found nothing. The right hand found... "what the hell is this? I can't get it out."
"It looks good on you," Jake said, "but it'd be a good thing to know where it came from."
"What _did_ happen last night?" she mused. There was a gleam in her eyes that made Jake
very, very glad that he was not the person responsible for the mysterious whatever. She turned
towards the door, even though Jake had heard nothing. A moment later, Adrian came into the
room, carrying some paper bags that spoke directly to Jake's stomach.
"I hope Chinese is acceptable," he said, setting the bags down on the coffee table. He became
aware that two pairs of eyes were staring, not at moo goo guy pan or egg rolls, but at his right
ear. "What?"
"Very stylish," T'beth said dryly, "but you always told me that you wouldn't get it done. You
had a sufficiently nauseating sentimental reason why not, if I recall correctly."
"What are you talking about?"
"The earring, dude," Jake said, enjoying the moment even though what he wanted to do was
rip those bags open and devour the contents, Styrofoam and all.
"What ear..." questing fingers found it.
"Nobody noticed this last night?" Jake asked.
"We were concerned with getting you warm and lying down," T'beth said. "And since Adrian
wouldn't let me undress you, I didn't see the marks on your arm, either."
"Marks?" Adrian looked at Jake. "What happened to your arm?"
"Needle marks, Adrian," Jake answered. "I think someone drew blood or something. Can I eat
now?"
"Go ahead before it congeals."
"Thanks for the mental picture." Jake found the complimentary chopsticks and opened one of
the containers, shovelling noodles into his mouth and sighing with contentment. The two
vampires watched him with the air of anthropologists studying some quaint tribal custom they
didn't fully understand.
"Jake thinks that someone was chasing us from a helicopter," T'beth told Adrian as the
beautiful boy collapsed artfully on a chair next to the couch. "And that they had guns."
"Earring guns?" Adrian asked mockingly. "Come on, T'beth, that's farfetched, it's not like
we're wildlife being tracked or anything..."
She looked thoughtful. "These earrings could be transmitters," she said. "Circuitry is pretty
damn small these days."
"So someone chased us from a helicopter, shot us with... what? Tranquillizers? and tagged us
with radio transmitter earrings? And took Jake's blood?" Adrian didn't bother hiding the
mockery in his voice, and he got a clip upside the
ear for it. "Ow!"
"Have you got a better explanation?"
Adrian shrugged. "Why can't we remember? What could they have used to tranquilize us and
fuzz our memories?"
"Garlic and holy water and tainted blood of some kind," T'beth replied. "I've used it myself."
Jake burped and set down the empty container. "I don't have an earring," he said, "and I think
they probably just used an ordinary tranquillizer on me. They probably thought I was human...
though I'm not sure why they took blood. Why can't I remember the details?"
"Because you really did hit your head on the ice," T'beth told him. "You have a giant goose
egg behind your ear."
"Oh." He reached to touch it, and got his fingers slapped.
"We can't get these earrings out," Adrian said, grimacing as he tried. "And regeneration or no,
I'm not about to Van Gogh myself. So what do we do?"
"Hand me the fried rice," Jake said. "I'm still hungry."
In a secret underground laboratory (what other kind IS there?), several people wearing the
very latest in designer lab coats were gathered around a computer readout, while other people
in equally snazzy nerdwear were running assorted tests on the blood samples they'd drawn,
managing to look very scientific and official. The whole set-up looked like one of those overly
earnest nicotine patch ads where good-looking actors in lab coats try and convince you that
they're doctors and recommend the patch to their patients. (Have you ever noticed that the
doctors in those ads are always men, and that the pharmacists and nurses are always women?
Doesn't that bug the hell out of you? Its enough to make you want to take up smoking.)
Except that this wasn't an ad, it was a secret underground laboratory, and these earnest people
in white cotton coats with pocket protectors weren't actors. They were, in fact, spying on an
actor. An actor, a private investigator/bodyguard and an anthropology major who was now
employed as a computer nerd, as a matter of fact. The computer readout was transferring data
from the earrings and the under-the-skin implant that the mysterious men in the mysterious
black helicopter had inflicted upon the trio currently ensconced in T'beth's lightless loft.
A man who did not have a labcoat on wandered aimlessly, or seemingly aimlessly, around the
SUL (Secret Underground Laboratory, remember?), listening to snippets of conversation.
What he heard ran along these lines:
"What are the readings on the halfling?"
"Well, he's type A positive and isn't anaemic..."
"I'd like something a bit more concrete than that."
"Our mission is to study vampires and learn their behaviour patterns."
"So far, we've learned that they live in lofts and go out for take-out Chinese food."
"That's in very poor taste."
"No, I don't mean they kidnapped some Chinese person, I mean take-out Chinese food. Like,
you know, moo shoo pork and egg foo young."
"That's weird, what about all the garlic?"
"That must be food for the halfling."
"Unusual caring on the part of a vampire, feeding a human, even a half-human."
"We have some more data on that half-vampire."
"Tell me, quickly."
"By all the readings of his blood, he shouldn't be eating pork fried rice, he should be eating
rare steak and only be active at night. The vampire components of his blood are extremely
high."
"So why isn't he a vampire?"
"Well, he's not dead, for starters..."
"There are strange factors at work in his blood, keeping him from fully turning."
"What sort of strange factors?"
"I don't know, that's why they're strange."
The man without the lab coat couldn't take it anymore. "Why don't we just Buffy the lot of
them?" he demanded.
"I hadn't realized that Buffy had been verbicized."
"Besides, we aren't in the Buffy business. This is the Occult Research Council, not the Bureau
of Occult Obliteration." (You do the acronyms. I dare ya.)
"Bunch of geeks," muttered the man without the labcoat.
"A bunch of geeks who sign your paycheque, mister," pointed out the head lab coat.
The man without the lab coat rolled his eyes. This was going to be a long epic.
Back in the vampire's dark lair, the three unwitting subjects of the ORC study conferred.
"Are you finally finished eating?" Adrian asked sourly as Jake set down the last empty
container with a sigh.
"Hey, if T'beth would at least stock peanut butter and crackers..." Jake began, then looked at
T'beth's expression and decided not to go there. "Here, have a fortune cookie," he finished
lamely.
Adrian discarded the wrapper and took the fortune out of the cookie. "'You are secretly
admired'," he read. "How fascinating."
"Mine claims that I have a talent for making friends," said T'beth.
Both Adrian and Jake looked at her. She was tightening the mechanism on her biggest
crossbow. As far as the two men knew, T'beth didn't have any actual friends, including them.
She tolerated their presence.
"And yours, Jake?" Adrian asked.
Jake, under the pressure of two pairs of undead eyes, pried the tiny strip of paper from his
cookie. "'True love is just around the corner'," he said.
There was a pause. Jake could almost see T'beth forming the words "Which corner?", but she
restrained herself.
"Okay, enough mortal bullshit," she said instead. "What are we going to do about these
earrings?"
"I refuse to cut my own ear off," said Adrian. His eyes narrowed as T'beth made an
imperceptible movement. "And I'll kill anybody else who does it," he added.
"Jake," T'beth said, and he jumped.
"I'm not going to cut anybody's ear off," the bloodling squeaked.
"I'm not going to ask you to," T'beth snorted. "But you work with computers and those sorts
of things, do you not?"
No matter how modern the vampires tried to become, no matter how they strived to fit into
today's hectic technological society, computers and "those sorts of things" remained something
of a mystery to most of them. The older ones, anyway. Jake had once tried to explain DSL to
a bewildered Baron Redoak. He wasn't sure where T'beth was going with this conversational
gambit, but he felt sure he wasn't going to like it.
"Yeah," Jake said. "So?"
"Can you trace these earrings?" she asked.
"Not without much better equipment than I have access to, and several years of training," Jake
replied. "That's really sophisticated technology in those things. I have no way of tracing the
signals they're giving out."
"Are you sure?" T'beth asked, almost a purr.
Jake nodded, probably one of the bravest things he'd ever done. "I'd have to work for the FBI
to be able to do it, T'beth," he said. "I can't trace signals on a Dell or Mac, you have to have
really advanced equipment for something like that."
She stared at him, but didn't kill him, so the answer evidently satisfied her. Jake started to
breathe again.
"Could they be traced by magic?" Adrian asked.
"We aren't magicians," T'beth said dismissively.
"No, but we know people who are."
"Great idea!" Jake exclaimed enthusiastically, grateful to be let off the hook so easily. "I'll call
down to Maine and see who's available."
He actually reached the telephone before a hand grabbed his wrist, painfully. A pair of angry
teal eyes bored into his.
"Not the Brotherhood," said Adrian in "don't argue with me" tones.
Jake didn't argue. If Adrian didn't want the services of some of the most skilled magic users in
North America, that was his business.
"I thought you were okay with them now," he said, rubbing his wrist.
"I don't want them to know about this," Adrian hissed, fangs showing briefly. "I'm not going
to give Gideon Redoak a chance to laugh at me."
"He wouldn't..." Jake thought about it. Although there now existed a sort of truce, a pact of
understanding, between Gideon and Adrian; they still didn't like each other very much. It
might just be true that the Baron, who had a very sardonic sense of humour, would find
Adrian's current plight amusing. "We could just ask Ray Griffin; he wouldn't tell the others if
we asked him not to," Jake suggested.
"No," Adrian said. "He gives me the fantods."
Jake kept his mouth very firmly shut. Adrian gave _him_ the fantods half the time; whereas he
found Ray Griffin rather congenial, at least after a couple of beers.
"Who, then?" T'beth asked.
Silence reigned once more as all three of them tried to think of a non Brotherhoodian magic
user. All three of them came up with the same name at once.
"Gris!"
Griselda Gunzelheimer was a witch of many years' acquaintance. She had performed magic on
Jake previously,* binding the wilder aspects of his accidentally-ingested vampire blood and
thus slowing his transformation. She loved baseball and hockey, being an avid Blue Jays and
Maple Leafs fan. She claimed to be directly descended from the witch in Hansel and Gretel,
but offered visitors only herbal tea and store-bought cookies.
T'beth hadn't actually ever met the campus witch, but she'd heard of Gris from both Jake and
Adrian. "Will she be discreet?" worried the dangerous female.
"I would imagine so," Adrian replied. "She is completely insane, though."
"Why would you say that?" T'beth asked.
"She's still a Blue Jays fan, and look at the way they've been playing!"
Despite this evidence of insanity on the witch's part, it was decided that Jake would go and ask
her for help in the morning. She liked Jake.
"Okay," Jake said, "but I'm sleeping at my place tonight. I need a shower and a change of
clothes before I go calling on anybody."
"No argument _here_," T'beth replied, wrinkling her nose.
Adrian sighed dramatically. "Come on," he said, "I'll give you a ride home."
(And in the ORC SUL, there was much speculation about what it meant when the small male
vampire drove the blooding home; but the male vampire did not remain in the bloodling's
dwelling, causing a couple of the wilder speculations to die disappointed deaths).
Witches should live in gingerbread cottages, as in made of, not as in with fancy woodwork
trim. Barring that, they should have huts with chicken's feet, or some sort of similar living
arrangement.
Griselda Gunzelheimer lived in a bachelor apartment just off campus. Jake reflected on this as
he headed over to her place. None of the magic users and occult beings he'd met lived where
you'd expect. No oak trees. No crumbling mansions (okay, one mansion, but Oakwoods was
far from crumbling and no cobweb stood a chance against Evan in cleaning mode.) No secret
underground labs... unless Ray Griffin's basement workshop counted, and that couldn't be
considered a secret because everybody knew about it. Most of the homes of the supernatural
types would make really lousy movie sets.
Like this one. There was a rusting bike chained to the fence outside Gris' apartment building,
and the superintendent had put too much salt on the stairs so that it crunched under Jake's
boots. There were curtains in most of the windows, and air conditioners, many of them
covered over against winter drafts, in some. He buzzed Gris' intercom number and heard her
familiar voice saying "Come on up, Jake." He hadn't said a word. Shrugging, he climbed up
the two flights to her apartment.
She beckoned him inside. She hadn't changed a bit since he'd last seen her, except that a
hockey game was on her television instead of baseball.
"Tea?" she asked without preliminaries.
"Sure," Jake nodded. "Got any of those cookies?"
She grinned at him and passed him a bag of sugar cookies. "Store-bought," she promised.
"Now, tell me why you have a microchip under the skin of your right arm."
Jake dropped the cookies. "Wha....?"
"I didn't think you knew. There's a microchip embedded in your arm."
Jake sat down, staring at his arm. Since this was hidden under a sweater and a shirt, this
activity didn't help him much.
"Trust me," Gris said. "You won't be able to get it out, anymore than Adrian and T'beth can
get the ones out of their ears."
"How did you know..." Jake sighed and picked up the cookies. "You really do know
everything, don't you?"
"Not everything. But what concerns my friends, I generally know."
"Adrian and T'beth are your friends?"
"The heron and the otter are my friends," replied Gris without a twitch. "Vampires are not.
But you are my friend. Aren't you?"
When a witch who is currently pouring you tea and putting some slightly chipped sugar
cookies on a plate asks if she is your friend, you nod. Jake nodded. "Of course, Gris. But I
hope you're willing to help vampires as well as me."
"I'll do what I can, Jake. I can't even make the Blue Jays a decent baseball team, and that
really doesn't take much magic. Look at the Yankees."
Seriously distracted from his worries about the microchips, Jake stared at the hockey game on
tv. "The Yankees have magical help?" he asked.
"You think they won all those World Series on their own? Please!"
"Wow, I had no idea. So when the Jays won back-to-back series in the 90's..."
"Let's just say that I had to sleep for a week afterwards," said Gris smugly. "But I don't have
that kind of power anymore. And we're getting off topic. I can help you with those chips.
Given the right equipment and conditions, I should be able to trace them back to whoever put
them where they are. Speaking of which, how's your head?"
"Still a little sore," Jake sighed, not even bothering to ask how she knew, "but the goose bump
is gone. I heal quickly. I'm surprised that my arm hasn't rejected the chip."
"It's not in deeply enough to be seen as a foreign invasion," said Gris. "They're clever,
whoever they are, I'll give them that."
_____
In the SUL at ORC headquarters, the clever whoever they ares were murmuring with concern
over the fact that the bloodling was spending such a long time in someone's private apartment.
Attempts to track down the person in that apartment were ongoing. It could be nothing, just
the halfling spending time with a friend. It could be something very serious.
"Why couldn't you wire those things for sound?" asked the man without a lab coat as the
others huddled around the computer, frantically searching records of leases and tenant's
insurance policies.
"Because then they'd be five times the size they are," snorted one of the many lab coated ones.
"A microchip that gives location is one thing. A radio is quite another. We'd have had to give
them earrings the size of grapefruit, and even vampires would object to that."
The man who didn't have a lab coat shook his head and muttered something about Buffying
again. He got a withering look from the woman in charge, the one whose lab coat had a neat
little button it that read "Woman in charge".
"They're on to us," the man without a lab coat said. He rolled his eyes. He was getting very
tired of being referred to as "the man without a lab coat" and wished to hell that the narrator
of the damned story would come up with some damned names.
"Don't be such a pessimist," sniffed the woman in charge. "It's just an old college buddy, I'm
sure of it."
"We know all of the bloodling's old college buddies," objected the man without a lab coat,
who apparently was out of luck about a name (don't piss off the narrator, buddy!) "None of
them are currently in town."
"An old friend of the family, then," suggested one of the many anonymous people who were
fortunate enough to at least have lab coats. "Hey, that would be a catchy title for a vampire
novel!"
"Shut up," almost everyone else advised.
"Are they ever going to leave that apartment?" groused one of the other sartorially blessed
denizens of the SUL. "Then we might at least get a clue about why he's there."
"Send a team to survey the apartment!" said the MWALC.
"Already on the way," replied the woman in charge. "They'll blend in, no worries."
___
When Jake left Gris', with her reassurances that she was willing to help but needed privacy to
prepare and he could pick her up just after sunset, he noticed a perfectly innocuous ice cream
truck parked on the corner, bells sadly tinkling out a "come hither" tune. One or two passing
kids, barely visible beneath the bundles of clothes protecting them from the numbing January
wind chill, gave the truck dubious looks but nobody was buying. Not even hot fudge sundaes.
Jake wandered over, wondering if he'd just imagined that he'd heard the driver saying "He's
coming, act natural!" as he approached. Since the guy in the back of the truck was reading the
Toronto Sun but not page three, he decided that something was distinctly out of joint.
"Guys," he said, leaning in the open window of the truck and watching his breath condense on
the metal ice cream freezer, "I think you should be selling coffee and hot chocolate, not ice
cream."
"What's wrong with ice cream?" asked the guy who mysteriously was not ogling this week's
Sunshine Girl.
"It's January, and the wind chill is -28," Jake pointed out.
"So? We've got a right to sell ice cream if we want to. All our vendors' permits are in order,
and we passed the health inspection."
"That would be because it's too cold for germs to live," Jake said. He walked away, shaking
his head.
"You think he's on to us?" asked the driver.
The other guy hit him with the Toronto Sun. All of it, not just page three.
____
Jake had lost count of how many bars, clubs and similar places he'd been with Adrian. His
first really significant conversation with the vampire who'd so radically altered his life had been
in a mock English pub. Since then, there'd been a long series of places, from the ultra trendy
and expensive to dives where he'd been sure they'd get the crap beaten out of them. He'd
worn everything from his grungiest jeans and a flannel shirt to a tuxedo when out with Adrian.
It was something like having a steady date, except that there wasn't the prospect of good sex
after all the drinking.
He wasn't sure when Adrian had actually given up trying to seduce him, or looking at him in
that hurt, smouldering, bewildered way as if to say "I don't understand why you're not taking
what's offered"; he was just damned glad it _had_ stopped.
This time, they had two women with them. While this had on very rare occasions happened
before--and a double date with Adrian was truly an experience--never before had the two
women been T'beth and Gris. The two had sized each other up in about three seconds flat,
then exchanged cautious nods. Great. Female bonding.
Jake didn't bother to ask why they had all met in this particular bar; which was dark and smoky
(one could no longer smoke in Toronto restaurants, but if the establishment was called a bar
and didn't admit anyone under 19, then apparently the staff was allowed to contract ghastly
life-threatening diseases from second-hand smoke without interference from the law) but at
least not terrifying. T'beth was easily the scariest person in the place. They had met here
because it was neutral territory. Nobody lived here, or near here, so there was no territorial
bullshit. Nobody had to feel defensive or as if they had the home field advantage.
Besides, this place served beer and food, which Jake was grateful for.
At least Gris wasn't wearing her pointy hat, and T'beth wasn't carrying any pointy weapons.
Openly, at any rate.
"We'll skip all the polite chit chat," Adrian said, once everybody had been fed and/or supplied
the drink of their choice and the waiter was out of earshot. "Nobody gives a damn how
anybody else is feeling, or how their day went. Can you do anything about these earrings?"
Gris took a long gulp of her beer. "Do anything about them?" she asked. "Most likely not.
I'm a witch, not a gizmologist. I can't remove them, not by magic, not without seriously
hurting you."
T'beth cleared her throat. She didn't have to say "not an option". There was just something
about the way she was sitting that said it for her.
Gris gave the female vampire a little nod, woman to woman, and T'beth relaxed maybe a
quarter of an inch. Amazing. They understood each other.
"What about just rendering them inoperable?" Adrian asked.
"Again, that would take a technician, not a witch," Gris answered. "And don't you roll your
eyes at me, Adrian Talbot. If you keep asking me the wrong questions, you are going to
receive answers that you don't like."
Adrian sighed, dramatically. He started to say something, but T'beth snatched a french fry
from Jake's plate and stuffed it into the opening provided. While Adrian spluttered and tried
to elegantly spit out the taste of grease, salt and vinegar, T'beth leaned towards Gris.
"What exactly is the right question?" she asked.
"Can I find the people who put those earrings and Jake's microchip in place?" Gris suggested.
T'beth's eyes never wavered. "Can you?"
"How can you eat those things?" Adrian hissed at Jake, trying to swab his tongue with a
serviette.
"You should try poutine," Jake replied smugly, enjoying the unusual sight of Adrian turning a
shade fairly close to the colour of his eyes.
"I think so," Gris answered T'beth. "It's a bit tricky, blending technology and magic, but I
believe I can track those things to their origin."
A smile began to form on T'beth's lips. It wasn't a pleasant, cheery grin. It's the sort of smile
that you see on the face of someone who's got you centered in the rifle scope.
"Whoever is on the other end had better have made their will," she said.
___________
A dark green car sat outside the bar. It had been there almost as long as the foursome at the
table. ORC was learning. No more ice cream trucks in January.
"But it seemed like a good idea..."
"Weathertop to ORC patrol," crackled the car radio. "Come in."
"ORC patrol, Agent Gamgee reporting," answered one of the people in the car. For the sake
of this undercover work, they were not wearing lab coats. They felt naked.
"ORC patrol, is there any indication of what is going on in that pub?"asked the radio. Despite
the usual static, breaking up and occasional random tuning in of commercial radio stations, it
was easy to recognize the voice of the Woman In Charge.
"Yeah," Agent Gamgee answered wistfully, "there's drinking, and eating, and maybe even
carousing. They have in a live band..."
"At the Copa, Copacabana..." crackled the radio.
"...mn interference," snapped the WIC. "Never mind all that! What is happening with the
subjects?"
"Give me that radio," said another of the field agents. "Agent Brandybuck here, Weathertop.
So far, the subjects have remained seated at a table, talking. We feel it is unwise to put an
agent into the pub at this juncture."
"... agent man, secret agent man! He's giving you a number and takin' way..."
"...cking straight, it's unwise!" The WIC was sounding a bit annoyed. "ORC patrol, you are
not to make contact with the subjects, is this strictly understood?"
"... all by myself, don't wanna be..."
"Yes, Miss Thatcher," sighed Agent Brandybuck.
"Just get a damn crossbow and Buffy the damn lot of them," said a male voice over the radio.
"Fluffernutter {TOLD him not to piss off the narrator!}, how many times do I have to tell
you..." Thatcher's voice snapped into the radio, "Ignore that, Agents! Continue the
surveillance, report any further movement."
"I think the halfling just went to the john," volunteered Agent Sackville-Baggins.
"Not bowel movement!"
____________
"How much time do you need?" Adrian asked Gris.
"Not too much, perhaps one more night," Gris answered. "It would be easier if I could use
one of the chips, but since I can't get them without damaging you, I'll just have to work
around that."
"Is there anything you need?" T'beth demanded. "Money, secret herbs gathered on a
mountaintop in Tibet at midnight by blind virgins with one finger missing, a rare book of spells
once owned by an insane monk who whittled the figures of saints out of his own faeces?"
"Eww," Jake said. "Hello, I'm eating here."
"Your heart will thank her," Adrian snorted, wrinkling his nose at the remaining food on Jake's
plate.
"I have all the spell books and herbs I need, but thank you," Gris exchanged what looked
suspiciously like a wink with T'beth, "and I don't require money. Just thinking time."
"Can you turn him into a intelligent being while you're at it?" T'beth wondered, indicating
Adrian.
"Hey!"
Gris studied Adrian, then shook her head. "Sorry," she said, "you're forgetting the first rule of
witchcraft."
"Witchcraft has rules?" Jake asked.
"You are going to _pay_ for this, sister," Adrian growled.
"What rule would that be?" T'beth inquired.
Gris smiled. "First, do no ham."
After Gris had gone, the two vampires and the bloodling stayed at the table in the pub. The
remains of the food had been taken away, much to Adrian's relief, but all three of them had
drinks.
T'beth became aware that the two men were looking at her quizzically.
"What?" she asked.
"You seemed to get along with Gris," Adrian said.
"I'm sorry," T'beth said sweetly. "I didn't realize that wasn't permitted. Tell me the rules next
time before I play."
Adrian moved away from her, the same way you'd move away from a mysterious package that
was going "tick, tick, tick...". He didn't move fast enough. Her hand moved like a snake and
grabbed the shorter vampire around the throat.
"My fortune cookie said I make friends easily, remember?" she growled at both Adrian and
Jake. "Gris will probably be useful. We need to find out who did this to us, and why, and what
they mean by it. But if I leave this pub and there's an ice cream truck outside, I'm kicking butt
with or without the witch. Capiche?"
Adrian nodded, since his windpipe was currently being crushed. T'beth looked at Jake. He
nodded, too. T'beth released the actor, who massaged his throat.
"See?" T'beth smiled, sipping her Sambuca. "I make friends. Easily."
_____
In the green car, there'd been a fierce debate over whether or not to follow Gris. She'd now
been positively identified as the occupant of the apartment the bloodling had gone to, and she
was the one who'd been sitting in the pub with the subjects. She'd even stopped and looked
intently at the green car on her way out.
"It's not our mission," Agent Brandybuck had declared.
"But we are supposed to gather further information on her," said Agent Sackville-Baggins.
In the end, they'd checked in with Weathertop for instructions. Miss Thatcher had told them
not to follow the unknown female, but to stick with the subjects of the study.
It was getting cold in the car. Agent Took was sent out for coffee, but while she was getting
it, the subjects emerged from the pub. Unfortunately for the watchers, the three of them went
in three different directions.
They had to radio for instructions again.
"I should have been running this operation," a man's voice sneered at them over the radio.
"Fluffernutter!" said Thatcher.
"I hate that name," he complained.
"Follow the bloodling," came the orders from Weathertop. "We can always track the vampires
from the earrings, and the bloodling is the more interesting study."
They looked at each other and shrugged. Orders were orders. They started up the car and
followed Jake's white BMW through the convoluted streets of Toronto. Agent Took was
extremely put out when she arrived back with a box from Second Cup with two moccachinos,
a French roast, a latte and an Amaretto decaf to find that there was nobody there to give the
damn coffee TO.
____
Jake didn't notice that he was being followed. One green car looks pretty much like every
other green car, especially in January when all cars look grey with slush, salt and sand.
Besides, although paranoia was Jake's normal state of mind, he wasn't paranoid enough to
think he was being constantly followed. He was under the protection of a powerful vampire.
Oh, and Adrian was keeping an eye on him, too.
The occupants of the green car were starting to wonder what was so fascinating about this
bloodling. He hung out with vampires, sure, but when he wasn't doing that, he was predictable
and boring. He went home to his basement apartment and sank in front of the tv, just like any
regular human. About an hour later, he went to bed and apparently stayed there.
Weathertop gave them permission to come back to base. Agent Took met them there and
threw cold coffee at them.
_____
T'beth went back to her Spartan loft and did a weapons check. She was angry, but it was a
tight, controlled anger. She hated being used, or being played as a fool. Although the earrings
were clever, she strongly suspected that whoever was _behind_ the earrings wasn't quite as
clever as their technology and she resented not knowing who "they" were. If she'd been the
one to find that ice cream truck, the sprinkles would have been flying. She'd looked all around
the pub upon exiting and had spotted the green car, but it had seemed as innocent as all the
other cars parked outside.
Someone, she vowed, was going to be very, very sorry. They were going to take the damn
earring out first, and _then_ they would be sorry.
She had every faith in Gris, even upon only one meeting, to track down the perpetrators of
this outrage. Under the slightly frivolous exterior of the witch, there was pure steel. T'beth
knew it when she met it. Besides, Gris was a woman, and in T'beth's experience, it was the
females who got things done. Men just ran around and shouted a lot.
She pondered what to take the next night, when they'd turn the tables on whoever was
watching them. It was difficult not to know what kind of numbers and weaponry she was
facing. If these were scientists, as the earring suggested, then they might not be armed; but if
they were hunters...
Well, she was a hunter, too. A hunter with 500 years of experience. She selected knives,
strangling cords, and of course her crossbow and a large supply of quarrels.
T'beth made friends easily. She just didn't keep them for very long.
____
Adrian didn't have any weapons to check. He'd always relied on his fangs and his vampiric
strength. Okay, okay, so he'd used a wooden stake to kill Safelli, but that had been a special
circumstance.
He stood before a mirror in his house in the Annex. Long acquaintance enabled him to ignore
the nightmare reflection of a beast with glowing eyes and snarling fangs. He was studying the
effect of the earring, noting that it made him look rather dashing.
He'd had over 400 years of practice at being incredibly vain, and he was very good at it.
As he touched the earring, he seemed to remember the beat of a helicopter's wings and the
reflection of light along a rifle's barrel. His real eyes flashed red momentarily. No matter how
dashing it looked, the earring was an invasion, an outrage. He hadn't asked for it. Somebody
was using it to spy on him.
Somebody was going to pay.
It's even worse to piss of a vampire than it is to piss off the narrator.
_____
There are a lot of really silly ideas about witchcraft. The whole eye of newt thing luckily went
out a few centuries ago; but it's amazing how many people still believe it involves broomsticks,
mysterious ointments, chanting, pointy hats, and a certain laxness about the dress code.
Griselda Gunzelheimer was most definitely not skyclad. (This is New Age Speak for "naked as
a jay bird".) It was, as has been frequently mentioned, an exceptionally cold January in
Toronto and walking around naked was an invitation to pneumonia and complaints from the
neighbours. Yes, she had the pointy hat--complete with Blue Jays and Maple Leafs logo
patches on it--but that was because sometimes you had to tell the world that you were a witch.
The only mysterious ointments she used were in her medicine cabinet and tended to be the
type that came in tubes and made people lean away from her on the subway. Her broom was
for sweeping, and she preferred a Swiffer anyway.
Through ancient and mysterious powers that had only been attained by passing through
unspeakable rituals... oh, wait, sorry, I'm talking about Gris, not about Ray Griffin...
She'd sat down with a cup of tea and some cookies and had used her mysterious powers to
track down the ORC agents to their lair. No, never mind how exactly she did it. Some things
have to remain shroudy occult mysteries.
Okay, she'd been smart enough to put a tracer spell on the green car. Agent Brandybuck hadn't
been able to entirely duck beneath the level of the windows when Gris had come out of the
pub, and she'd been sufficiently curious about anyone trying to scrunch down out of sight that
she'd cast magic at the car on spec. She'd made certain that she could track Agent
Brandybuck--the only person she'd actually seen in the car--as well as the vehicle.
You can't blame T'beth for not noticing anything odd. By the time she had exited from the
pub, everyone was out of sight in the car, even though this had involved something resembling
a bad game of Twister. There'd been too many people around for her to pick up bloodscent
from the car.
So now all Gris had to do was wait for the vampires to wake up so that she could take them to
the people who'd tagged them. She expected to get an argument about this from T'beth. T'beth
wouldn't want an amateur along. She wouldn't want a _witness_. But Gris was dying to know
who the hell had been stupid enough to put tracers on vampires, and she was damn well going
along for the ride.
It was going to be a lot of fun to see the looks on the faces of the idiots when T'beth kicked
down their door...
____
I'm sure that by now you've spotted the problem.
____
"The vampires and the bloodling are on the move." Agent Halfelven looked up from the
computer monitor. Three little blips, all very close together, were travelling slowly across a
grid that represented the Toronto streets. The reason that they were travelling slowly was that
the grid DID represent the Toronto streets.
"They seem to be travelling together," noted the WIC. "Who do we have on surveillance?"
"Agents Boffer and Proudfoot," replied Agent Brandybuck sulkily. All those who'd been in the
green car last night had been, for lack of a better word, grounded.
"Weathertop to ORC patrol," Thatcher reached for the two-way radio, "have you the subjects
in sight?"
"ORC patrol to Weathertop," came the crackling reply, with the usual commercial broadband
interference. "'Why do things have to be so complicated?' Drat it... Roger, Weathertop, they
are proceeding eastwards in the bloodling's vehicle. The unknown female non-vampire is with
them."
"What's _she_ doing in the car with them?" asked Agent Took.
"Perhaps they're going out on a double date again?" suggested Agent Sackville-Baggins.
"They seemed to have a pretty good time last night."
"Perhaps we can use your head for a pinata," suggested the MWALC, who was as usual
lurking around, wishing that he had a better agent name than Fluffernutter. They'd run out of
hobbits, and he had pissed off the narrator so that he hadn't gotten a good name. Even Agent
Radagast would have been better than Fluffernutter. Of course, he was still better off than
Thatcher, which was kind of an obvious name for the Woman In Charge.
"Still proceeding eastbound," came the voice from the radio. "They seem to be ... 'There she
goes, there she goes again, dancing through my brain...' why the hell can't we get a better
radio system?"
"Stick to the surveillance, ORC patrol," said the WIC severely.
"Roger, Weathertop. 'Hey, hey, somewhere. You threw your fear in the sea of no cares...'.
They are turning north now, onto Bay Street."
"Took, get us some coffee," said the WIC unthinkingly.
Only the MWALC noticed Agent Took's expression. There was enough mutiny there for all
three Bounty movies.
____
In the Beemer, there was mostly silence. It was a crowded silence, though, a silence that was
composed of T'beth tightening straps and levers and various gadgets, of Adrian impatiently
drumming his fingers on the elbow rest because he wasn't driving, of Jake frantically wishing
(for approximately the 10 to the 24th power time) that he'd never attended a certain folklore
lecture, of Gris concentrating on her spell.
Nobody had turned on the radio. The last thing anybody wanted was to hear Nickelback
singing "Hero" or something equally fraught with meaning.
There actually hadn't been an argument about Gris coming along. T'beth had nodded, once,
and that had been it. Gris had been a bit surprised, but when she'd asked Jake, privately, he'd
just shrugged.
"She likes you," he said, as if that explained everything. Maybe it did.
T'beth hadn't felt it necessary to give her reasons, because men's egos deflated so easily. She'd
wanted Gris along because she'd probably need intelligent back-up from somebody who
wouldn't argue with her.
And Gris would likely be able to grab Jake and run before things got too messy and the
vampires could no longer tell friend from foe. You didn't want to hang around with vampires
in a blood rage.
She glanced at Adrian. A lot of breathers didn't take him seriously, even when they found out
he was a vampire, because he was so pretty and so small. They didn't know what an absolute
little shit Adrian could be. The veneer of civilization he wore was just another stage costume.
Jake would probably be the big problem here. Jake _worried_ about things. He argued. But he
was a good fighter, deadly when he needed to be. The trouble was convincing him of the need.
Ah, he was rubbing the place on his arm where the chip had been planted. Convincing might
not be that difficult.
Gris spoke briefly, giving directions. "Left at the next lights."
It was an illegal turn. Jake made it anyway.
____
All eyes in the SUL were now on the computer screen.
"Holy crap, they're coming HERE!"
"Go to alert level chartreuse!"
"I think we're out of duct tape."
"Just DO it!"
____
"Turn right here," Gris said.
Jake nodded, then his jaw dropped as he realized where they were. "This is U of T!" he
exclaimed.
Indeed, the mix of Gothic and modern buildings, somewhat lacking in dreaming spires but
more than making up for it with a staggering population of ghosts, that surrounded the car
could be nothing but the downtown campus of the University of Toronto. Adrian averted his
eyes as they drove past Hart House, but the fire-ravenged sections had either been demolished
or repaired by now. Following Gris' terse directions, Jake brought the car to a stop in front of
one of the old engineering buildings.
"Are you sure?" he asked dubiously, looking up at the ivy-covered walls (or, rather, walls that
would be covered with ivy if the temperature outdoors wasn't one that killed anything green).
Gris just looked at him. They got out of the car, T'beth clanking gently, and pondered their
next move.
"They're going to know we're here," T'beth said.
"How?" Adrian asked unthinkingly.
The flat of her hand caught him on the ear. The one with the earring.
"Oh," he said. Then, "Ow. You could have just said."
Gris ignored the vampires. She tugged on Jake's arm, and said, "Let's try this side door here."
It was locked, of course, but T'beth was not a professional private investigator for nothing.
Jake just crossed his fingers in hope that the campus police were not anywhere near this
building. A few deft twists with some extremely illegal tools, and they were inside.
________________
"They're in the building," said Agent Brandybuck.
The WIC looked around. All anybody intruding would see was a room full of computers and
young people in lab coats--perfectly ordinary sights in a university building. She scowled at the
MWALC, who did not look like a university student or employee. He scowled back at her.
"PLEASE can I Buffy them?" he asked.
"No. Maintain alert level chartreuse."
______
"Downstairs."
They went down. T'beth was openly carrying a loaded crossbow, and had handed one to Jake.
Adrian had refused, although his hand occasionally strayed inside his jacket. Jake had seen
Adrian use a gun. He was frighteningly good at it. Gris remained weaponless, or at least sans
mundane weapons.
Jake's footsteps echoed in the hall. The other three walked silently; if it hadn't been for the
occasional clank from T'beth, Jake would have felt very alone.
Who the hell were these people? Who would be stupid enough to tag vampires and not expect
hot revenge? Who would be stupid enough to run surveillance from an ice cream truck in
January?
He remembered the helicopter now. It wasn't a happy memory.
___________
"Maybe we should all leave?" suggested Agent Sackville-Baggins, licking his lips.
"No."
"They're going to kill us!"
"No."
___________
The hunting party stopped before a set of double doors in the basement of the Haltain
Building. Jake tested them. They were, surprisingly, unlocked. Crossbow locked and loaded,
he threw the left one open. T'beth knocked him to the floor before he could blink and stepped
over his body, her own crossbow covering the revealed room.
A pink water balloon caught her full in the face. Spluttering, dripping, she wiped her eyes as
another one whacked into her stomach. Adrian, rushing in behind her, got one exactly at groin
level. Dripping pink missiles filled the air, peppering the invaders. All four of them were soon
soaked while bits of pink latex and a layer of water made the footing underneath treacherous.
"Alert level lime!" screamed the WIC.
Hitherto hidden jets in the wall released a lime-green gas that solidified as it came out, creating
a barrier between the landing just beyond the doorway and the stairs leading down into the
SUL. It seemed to have the consistency of Jell-O (tm). Jake tried to stand up and discovered
that it was precisely like trying to stand up in a tub of well, lime Jell-O (tm). T'beth fired the
crossbow, and the bolt stuck quivering the wall. Gris tried firing a melt-spell at it, and the wall
went "glop" and some pineapple bits dribbled out. Adrian slowly pushed through, lip curling in
disgust as lime coloured goop smeared his clothes and hair.
T'beth and Gris managed, by great effort and really bad slo-mo special effects, to pull Jake up
to his feet. Both he and Gris were fighting to be able to breathe. T'beth was completely unable
to reload her crossbow or pull out another weapon. They followed the dripping path that
Adrian had plowed through the wall.
"Alert level ecru!" the WIC screamed as the vampires, the witch and the bloodling slowly
emerged from the lime-green trap.
Hundreds of elastic bands twanged and snapped as they were fired at the intruders. T'beth
grabbed one and stared at it incredulously. Her left eye twitched. Adrian and Jake both lunged
at her to keep her from going totally ballistic, but she shook them off. She continued to shake,
and by now her mouth was twitching, too.
"Alert level ..." the WIC's voice trailed off mid-scream, because suddenly she had a short,
dark-haired, very pretty male vampire clamping his hand over her mouth.
The ORC agents huddled together, scared that their WIC was going to get seriously damaged.
Three of them forced the MWALC down into a chair, begging him not to make a scene.
Adrian looked at T'beth, waiting for her to nod and give him the okay to twist this wretched
woman's neck. She didn't nod. She was too busy trying not to laugh.
"Water balloons?" Jake was staring at the defences of ORC. "Lime Jell-O(tm)? RUBBER
BANDS?" He started to laugh, too.
"What is this place, anyway?" Gris demanded.
The MWALC stood up. T'beth stopped laughing, and her eyes swivelled to him. They stared
at each other. Little bluebirds started to go "tweet" and the theme to 'A Summer Place' swelled
on the soundtrack.
Adrian sighed and released the WIC. "Talk," he suggested.
"This is the Occult Research Council," she said, wiping Jell-O (tm) off her lips. "We mean you
no harm, we simply wish to study vampires."
"Why?" Adrian asked. It really should have been T'beth asking the hard questions, but she and
Agent Fluffernutter were still gazing at each other like it had been a twenty-day fast and they'd
just seen a pizza delivery truck.
"Maybe you didn't hear the name?" Thatcher retorted. "It's what we do. We research the
occult."
"Yes, but to what ends?" Adrian was a little put-out that there were no bluebirds tweeting for
him and the WIC. She looked like his aunt. He hadn't actually known any of his aunts,
assuming he'd even had any, but if he had had any, the WIC would have looked like one.
"Research is an end to itself."
"I don't want to be a subject in your survey," Adrian snarled. "You could have asked."
"We'll take the earrings and the chip out," sighed the WIC.
"And destroy all the information you've gathered on us so far?" Jake asked.
"Yes, all right."
"If I ever see your helicopter in Toronto skies again," Gris said cheerfully, "I'm going to play
Quidditch with it."
"I thought you didn't actually ride a broomstick," Jake said.
"Whatever gave you that idea?"
Agents Brandybuck and Sackville-Baggins came forward with tools to remove the chips. Jake
had to strip off his jacket, sweater and shirt; all of the female ORC agents whistled at the sight
of this very buff young man naked to the waist.
T'beth finally blinked. "What's your name?" she asked.
"Fluffernutter," sighed the MWALC.
"Oo. What did you do, piss off the narrator?"
"Um, yeah. Listen, I think that all vampires should be Buffied, you know."
She threw an arm around his waist and patted him on the back. Well, in that general vicinity.
"There's more than one way to Buffy a vampire," she purred.
"There is?"
"Think about it, Fluffernutter," T'beth smiled. "Buffy and Angel, Buffy and Spike..." she
whispered something in his ear. Something that sort of sounded like his field name. Sort of.
The MWALC smiled, too. T'beth never even noticed it when Brandybuck and Sackville-
Baggins removed her earring.
"Is it going to leave a scar?" Adrian asked when his had been taken out.
"How vain are you?" the WIC sniffed.
Jake had put his clothes back on, much to the disappointment of the females of ORC. T'beth
and the MWALC were ... well, occupied. Gris was chatting with some of the ORC agents,
asking what various pieces of equipment did. Adrian was ready to go home, since it all seemed
to be over and he hadn't gotten anything out of the whole deal.
The doors burst open and Agents Boffer and Proudfoot came racing in, ready (somewhat
belatedly) to rescue their coworkers. They slipped on the water and bits of balloon and went
skidding into the remnants of the wall of lime Jell-O (tm). As they bumped painfully down the
stairs, the entire room burst into laughter.
"I think we should go now," said Gris. She bravely went over and tapped T'beth on the
shoulder.
"Oh, I'll make my own arrangements for getting home," said the vampire, taking the
MWALC's hand. Then she recollected herself enough to look around at the demoralized ORC
agents. "But if any of you ever try a stunt like this again, it's going to be alert level crimson.
Get my drift?"
They all nodded. Even the MWALC.
"Don't worry, we'll leave you all well alone in the future," the WIC sniffed. "Start cleaning up
this mess, you lot. And Took..."
Agent Took stopped drooling over Jake and turned to look at the WIC. "Yes?" she asked, a
hitherto unnoticed edge of steel in her voice.
The WIC looked as if her favourite lap dog had just turned into a pit bull.
"Can I get you some coffee?" she asked.
______________
The End.
Many thanks again to Lisa, for the loan of Gris; and to Mary, for the field names of the ORC
agents. Thanks due also to Lori/Hemo for the idea behind "alert level lime".
I hope that you all enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)
Bet I never, ever get credit for inventing "gizmologist", either. Sigh. :)
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