Chapter III

I tried shaking off this uneasiness, to ignore it, but no matter what I did, nothing seemed to work. The conversation between the two men replayed on loop in my head.

“Has the vampire from cell 1 showed up?”

“Nope, but the annoying thing is that I can’t reach his tracker”

“Do you think he took it off?”

“No, someone has to input a code to take the tracker off”

“Well, if we’re lucky, he’ll come back”

“If I know him well enough, it’s more likely that we find him dead then him coming back”

I was sitting in my cell, thinking about what I should do. I couldn’t look away, I knew him, he wasn’t a random vampire. Should I had offered to go look for him? They could decline, because they were scared that I would disappear too. Not because they would be worried, but because it wouldn’t look good to lose two vampires in a row. I had to go look for him, that’s why I did something that I only dreamed about.

As soon as the night came and everyone had left, I left my cell. Just like the fairy tales and horror stories would tell, the night became the day for the creatures, whose sight terrified humans. That meant that we woke up and took over the station.

I opened my cell and stepped foot into the dark hall. I wasn’t the only one. The vampire from cell 3 came slowly out of his prison. He was as tall as I was and thin. His white hair was glowing in this dark night. His yellow eyes met mine and he smiled.

“That’s the first time I see you outside” he said calmly. I nodded. He was right, I never liked being outside in the night, because the darkness made the loneliness grow. But this was about something serious, something important.

“How come?” he asked, walking towards me. He smelled like vanilla.

“Did you hear what happened to Derrick?” I asked him. He scratched his head pensively and said: “He didn’t come back, right?” I nodded. I needed more information from him, that’s why I asked him: “Do you think he ran away?”

He smirked and said: “Of course, who wouldn’t.”

“But he had a tracker. Running away would be pointless.” I was confused. He gave a short laugh and said very convincingly: “You can take the tracker off, no problem. That doesn’t stop him.” He then walked past me to the cafeteria. I followed.

It wasn’t a big cafeteria, it could probably fit around twenty people. There was a long glass display case with food, which the officers would eat daily. It had some long tables with many chairs. The windows were big and the moon illuminated the entire room.

The vampire sauntered through the cafeteria, directly to the display case. It had a lock. I kept going with my questions: “But you need a code to take off the tracker.”

he nodded as he elongated one of his nails to pick the lock.

“Humans need the code to take it off. One of us only needs a little courage to rip it off. It only burns a bit, but then it’s off.” He then proceeds to open the display and to collect all the food. He grabbed sandwiches, pizza pieces and donuts.

“But if the tracker gets taken off without the code, doesn’t an alarm go off?“ I asked.

He laughed loudly and walked with his bounty to the window. He also picked that lock. My curiosity rose.

“What are you doing?”

He opened the window and started to whistle. There were some bushes on the other side, probably to make the station look prettier. Those bushes started to rustle as some stray dogs approached with wagging tails. The vampire turned to me with a mischievous grin. “I’m doing a good deed.” He then leaned out of the window and started to distribute the food to the hungry dogs. I didn’t want to get in the middle of that and also stopped asking questions. What I did want to do was to go look for Derrick.

That feeling just didn’t leave me alone and, even though that vampire told me that the chances that Derrick had run off were high, I didn’t believe it. I needed to go or else I would have lost my mind.

“I’m going to look for him.” I told him. He just nodded and stepped aside. He pointed his hand outside and said: “Have fun.” He didn’t seem concerned at all. I jumped out of the window and pushed myself through eating and drooling dogs, until I was on the street. I turned one last time to the vampire that was leaning on the window still and waving at me.

Thanks to my sense of direction, I managed to get lost after three minutes. I tried going into that direction that he told me some days ago. But I didn’t know the area. I should have passed a school, but there was none here. Derrick explained to me exactly where he would go, but even with those directions, I went completely wrong.

I stopped in my tracks and found myself in an empty parking lot behind a supermarket. If nothing worked, I had to use my nose. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the smells that surrounded me. I firstly had to sort the smells out, which were in the way. Animals, plants, the smelly thrash, humans, there were here not too long ago. Then I had to look for his smell. I tried remembering how he smelled. When he talked to me, I smelled dry blood and a hint of cinnamon on him. A very special combination.

I then started to look for that smell.

With my eyes closed, I started to follow a scent that seemed like Derrick’s. I walked slowly, because my entire body was concentrating on my nose, which weakened my other senses. I saw multiple strings of different colors in front of my eyes. Each string represented a different scent. Some were bright, almost shining, which meant that the scent was very strong. Others were matt, almost invisible, which meant that the scent was barely perceptible.

I was following a very pale string but the more I walked, the more it solidified, until I saw Derrick’s silhouette. I followed with a decisive step the Derrick in front of my eyes, as a new scent started to mix with it. Burned.

I tried ignoring my pumping heart, and sped up. My nose concentrated on the “burned” and silhouette disappeared from before my eyes. I opened them and looked around. I couldn’t see him anywhere, but I had this crawling feeling that he could perfectly see me.

“I already smelled you, show yourself.”

I heard light laughter as he appeared from the shadow of the night. I could finally look into his face. His dark hair was hanging like a veil over his white eyes that stood out thanks to his slightly darker skin. Such eyes were rare in vampires, which meant that he was of high status, a fullblood.

There were three types of vampires: Fullbloods. Their parents were both vampires, which made them more powerful, then others. They also had special powers. That power was called “Nux”, which meant core. It was the core of their existence. If you knew the nux of a fullblood, then you knew their entire family tree and you would be able to wipe them out.

Then there were the halfbloods. As the name already revealed, one parent was human. I was one. Most of us are halfbloods. We didn’t have a nux, but our senses are stronger than others. That’s why I often led with my nose, because it was like my third eye. Halfbloods divide in two categories. The ones with yellow eyes were the ones with extremely strong senses and red eyed, the ones with stronger characteristics. Like, for example, very fast or strong and so on.

Last but not least, the mixed ones. The mixed were lowest on the ranks and were transformed vampires. They were called mixed because their human blood mixed with that of a vampire. They didn’t have powers or strong senses. They were just humans that liked drinking blood. That’s why they were not liked in the vampire community, also because they knew how to integrate better with the humans.

The fullblood in front of me was silently observing me. He had his hands stuffed in the pockets of his long coat and didn’t move an inch. He had a threatening aura, but I couldn’t assess if I was in danger or not.

“You were that one that was spying on me the other day, right?” he asked unexpectedly. “By the corpse. What were you looking for?” This time he took a step closer to me, but I didn’t flinch away.

“I could ask you the same thing. What did you do with the corpse? Where did you bring him?” I asked him.

“I’m not going to tell you anything. You are one of the hound dogs of the police.” He pointed at my neck and said: “Your collar is shining so prettily.” Since he clearly didn’t seem to want to answer my questions, I decided to ignore him. I had to look for Derrick.

I closed my eyes again and concentrated on Derrick’s silhouette, on his scent. I started moving in that direction, but my nose kept twitching because the scent of burned kept following me. I ignored it and kept following Derrick’s silhouette. He suddenly stopped. I watched him put his hand on his nape, to then throw something small into the bushes.

I followed the cinnamon scent and pushed myself past short branches, until I found that, what I was expecting the least. I was holding Derrick’s tracker in my hand.

I wordlessly stared at the broken piece of metal in my hand. The fullblood came closer, curious, and said: “What is that?” My answer came out reflexively, because my mind was wandering.

“Tracker.”

Why was he in this part of town? This wasn’t the area he had to patrol. Why did he rip off his tracker? Where did he go?

“Why did he have a tracker?” the fullblood asked, confused. “They have to know where we go when we are out patrolling.” Something wasn’t making sense to me. If he wanted to run off, why didn’t he do it by night, as I did? Wasn’t it riskier ripping off the tracker, only to end up being looked for?

I pocketed the tracker, closed my eyes and tried to see where he went off after, but the fullblood started talking: “Can I ask you why you are looking for him?” It sounded like a genuine question, that’s why I answered: “Because I have a bad feeling. I usually tried to stay out of everything, but this time it was difficult getting rid of these thoughts.”

He nodded slowly and seemed to think about something. Before he talked again, I asked him a question.

“Why did you follow me?”

“Because your scent was on the corpse. I had to see if you had anything to do with it.”

That sounded reasonable.

The silhouette in front of me kept walking, as if he knew exactly where to go. I followed, the smell of burned was right behind me. Then something weird happened. Derrick’s silhouette started talking to someone, but I couldn’t smell them. That person didn’t have a scent.