Chapter Thirty-Six:
Leschi Park was located just slightly south and to the east of East Yesler Way, and again several blocks away from where the nightclub I originally met Angel in was located, and where I had discovered the blood poster. The park shared a boarder with Frink Park and actually ran almost all the way east to Lake Washington.
The local news carried several unusual reports of people being attacked and a few gone missing in the park area, and I figured with all the combined strange occurrences, that would be the best place to start searching for the Rogue pack. Where the regular red-eyed vamps were hunting humans, that would be the Rogues' hunting grounds as well.
The police had issued a warning to avoid the parks after dusk, and they even announced a step up in patrols. Half an hour of surveillance confirmed for me that the prowl cars only toured around the outer perimeter of the park and didn't enter them. The media had classified the few fatalities that were discovered as attacks from an unknown animal. Law Enforcement speculated a pack of wild dogs.
I knew better.
I couldn't fault the cops for not going into the park after dark. Especially after having to clean up the remains of victims. Vampire hunting grounds gave off an uncomfortable vibe once you've seen their handwork. Over the years, I've come to think of it as nature's way of warning humans away from potential danger; otherwise the entire race would be easy pickings for vamps. It was the unlucky ones that never get the chance to feel the creepy sensation whose first encounter with anything vampire is their last.
No, I couldn't much blame the cops for listening to that inner voice and steering clear of the parks at night.
It did however… make tonight's task much easier.
What Angel and I sorely needed at the moment to overcome our predicament was intelligence about our enemies, and I figured the most expedient way to get it was to find one of our new playmates and see if I could persuade them to enlighten me as to whom the other players were.
After parking the Ford close by to the park, it was easy to time my movements with the gaps in police coverage.
I ditched the heavy leather coat inside the SUV. I'd only needed it to cover my garb while there was a risk of humans seeing me. Armor in this day and age would stand out like a sore thumb, and I didn't want to have to explain myself to anyone obviously.
Now the coat would have been in the way, as I had to strap on more weapons and a quiver of arrows over my protective covering.
The wall surrounding Frink Park was only about twelve-foot high. I leaped easily to the top, pulling myself up with one hand to crouch on the wall's cap as I silently surveyed the area beyond.
My head and face was covered with a dark-gray veil-like scarf, the only part of the traditional Shinobi Shozoko I really ever used. Wrapped around into a mask, it left a slit for my eyes to peer through. The mask also broke up my outline, helped me blend into dark places. It could also be removed and hidden at a moment's notice; something black military face paint would not allow you to do.
I remained motionless on my perch for several minutes, scanning the area below me for signs of my quarry. When nothing was evident, I dropped quietly to the ground. I began a systematic search of the grounds, moving as quickly as was reasonable, but still remaining silent.
I had a lot of territory to cover. I was going in relatively cold as far as reliable information, and probably had several hours of searching ahead of me yet.
It was just after midnight when I finally crossed from Frink Park into the boundaries of Leschi Park. Leschi seemed to hold the majority of the attack incidents, and I considered this would be my best hunting ground. However, I had wanted to be thorough in my mission, so I had swept through Frink Park first on the off chance that vampires were stalking there tonight as well.
I hugged the shadows, naturally seeking them as I moved, shifting from one to the other as I silently traveled deeper into the park.
I was actually armed lightly considering my past practices, with my custom-built takedown bow and a quiver full of titanium shaft arrows as my main weapon. The back quiver was specially padded to keep the arrows inside it from rattling against each other. In fact, everything I carried or that was attached to me was designed with absolute silence in mind.
When you hunted vampires with superhuman senses, running silent was the rule that kept you alive longer.
A Banshee bush knife was slung over my right shoulder as well, taking the normal place of a ninjato sword I no longer had.
My new polycarbonate/Spectra mixed body armor was light and fit my body and limbs closely, almost like a second skin. It was also surprisingly soundless compared to the hardened leather and steel armor plate backed by old-fashioned chain mail I was restricted to using in my old vampire hunting days of fifty years past.
While I had been out of the extermination game, I had kept up with modern times and progress, always interested in new metals and materials that were being developed by human ingenuity.
The riot armor had been a curiosity buy at first, and a keep busy project more than anything. I have never intended to start hunting vampires again, but I tweaked the armor using some other newer materials with the eye of improving it for just such a use… just as a venture to kill time. After all, when you only sleep about three hours a day, you have more extra time to kill than the normal person.
I guess still in the back of my mind somewhere, I had always been hedging my bets and preparing for a worst-case scenario. I couldn't help it actually; training and experience have pounded the necessity into my makeup until it became no different than breathing to me.
And given the fact that my life had been turned upside down in only a single night, since the moment Angel literally fell into my arms, I was lucky that I indulged myself in such 'keep busy' hobbies.
The new armor had never been tested in battle before of course, so tonight just might be its baptism through fire if things went a bit sour.
I had several other little nasty toys concealed about me, but the bow and Banshee were going to be my main lines of attack and defense… and not very much use against the one lucky Rogue I needed to capture alive for my chat.
But those are the breaks in vampire warfare. You work and make due with the cards you were dealt… or you didn't play.
For the next hour of my hunt, I found nothing out of the ordinary in the second park either, except for a few lovers looking for a private place to be alone, mostly young humans foolishly braving the park despite the recent rash of attacks. Some mortals were thickheaded enough to believe they were invincible, and would hazard anything… especially the young.
It made me shake my head in wonder, they didn't realize just how short and fragile their lives really were. Oddly, I was a little envious of that sort of innocence.
I slipped by the various couples unseen, and never heard. Occasionally I'd make a complete slow circle of one or another pair looking for signs of a pending vampire attacks, and trying to ignore the knowledge that I was using them as sacrificial lambs. I kept reminding myself that I had not placed them there in the park, but it didn't make the task any easier to stomach.
After all these years, I still remembered feeling the same way as a human, tempted to throw caution to the wind for the sake of your heart's desire… before my illness that is.
Life had a way of stealing that illusion of invincibility from you, and dulling those wild cares of youth over time… one way or another. Some of us just learned that lesson early… and some of us learned it in the cruelest of ways.
Human nature, which as bluntly cold-blooded as it sounds, was what I had been counting on tonight.
The sad truth of the stalk is you have to have some kind of bait when you pursue dangerous game, and the humans would have been out here tonight risking themselves anyway, regardless of my own plans for the evening.
The news that a few people had died or gone missing in the area was common knowledge, if they were rash enough to tempt fate and to be here after dark, then so be it.
Or at least… that's what I kept telling myself.
The recent attacks in this particular park also puzzled me on another matter, as I previously noted.
While Seattle's other parks had their normal share of muggers and strong-arm robbers at night, Leschi had always seemed to have less of them than any other. In fact, in most cases, crime seemed to be almost nonexistent in this particular park for some strange reason… until recently.
Rumor had it that a few of the older locals insist the park was haunted, but to the best of my knowledge no one has ever reported seeing an apparition of any sort here.
The lack of crime, and the oblivious state of the humans utilizing the area as a result of such an absence, is what I figured recently drew the vamps, and then the Rogues to hunt here.
They both in turn, brought me here tonight.
Sort of a sick and twisted circle of life, don't you think?
I was actually otherwise feeling pretty elated about being out tonight, it had been a long time since I've stretched my senses and instincts out on a hunt. As hard as the black urge for vengeance use to drive me back then, I'd forgotten what a basic animal rush it also used to be for me. I also tried to ignore that it was probably the vampire half of my nature that liked and thrived on that part so much.
I continued to move slowly and cautiously, probing every shadow around me, testing every scent that drifted by, and examined the smallest of sounds that came my way.
I perhaps completed nearly half a circuit of the parkland before the signs I was looking for alerted me to the presence of something that would draw my prey.
About two hundred yards ahead of me, a human female voice uttered a sharp alarmed cry, followed almost immediately by a deep grunt that could only have come from a human male.
I next heard something heavy hit the ground just as split second later. The human female's cried abruptly cut off almost immediately after I heard the first body fall.
Just ahead of me, one or more red-eye vampires were attacking a human couple. Any Rogue within a mile and a half radius of the scene would recognize the struggle for what it was, just as I had, and they would come running to make their own kills.