One

Kaela Vane stood at the edge of a cliff staring down at Angel City below. Soon, the sun would go down and everything would change. She had declined several offers for dinner for this? She wondered what was wrong with her. But she knew it had to be done. As much as she desired a normal life, it could not be helped.

The sun was a giant orb of fire lighting up the sky with a majestic shade of purple. The pager on her side started to beep and she cursed. She yanked the tiny black box from her belt and stared at the words flashing across it.

Its time.

Two simple words, but she knew what it meant.

Kaela was a sleek woman, hardly looked like a threat. But looks could be deceiving. If she chose to, she could crush a car with her bare hands without even breaking a sweat. She stuffed the pager in her pocket and turned her back to the sunset with deadly elegance. She needed to dress for work.

She was in the vicinity of her home within seconds, moving unnoticed among the shadows. She could make herself virtually invisible when she chose to, bending the light around her. When she was in a shadow, she was invisible without effort. In a shadow, she could go anywhere and everywhere with the blink of an eye. They called it vampiric luxury, she called it survival.

Slipping inside her home, she tossed her clothes on the floor. In the dim light her body was a very feminine silhouette, standing a mere five-foot-one. She had very few curves, but she had them where it mattered. Her body was all muscle, but it was not bulky in any way.

She opened her livingroom closet and stepped inside. On the other side of the wall was her armory. There was no way in except the shadows. She strapped a sheath to her ankle and slid her silver dagger inside. On each of her wrists she strapped sheaths for her .45 handguns. The guns were old, but she swore her life by them. They were equipped with specially crafted bullets that could take a vampire’s head off and guarantee it wouldn’t grow back. In her shoulder sheath was a black rapier, forged with a magical alloy so it could cut through anything as though it were butter.

With her weapons in place, Kaela slipped into something more suited to her night lifestyle. She wore black denim shorts with a black sports bra that she could slip under the rapier. To cover her weapons, she wore knee high leather boots and a leather trench that cut off at her hips. She drew her auburn hair back into a ponytail.

Kaela glanced at herself in the mirror she had at the far end of the room to make sure nothing was showing. She swept a coat of ruby lipstick across her pale lips and threw a pair of sunglasses over her ice blue eyes. No one would notice the sunglasses she wore in the middle of the night, they would be more interested in the fact she was alone. Kaela bet her life on it. And the last thing she needed was her eyes to give her away in the shadows. They had a tendency to glow when she got pissed off.

She left the room the same way she came in, tossing her pager on the coffee table. The last thing she needed was it to go off and blow her cover. She may be able to hide herself in broad daylight, but the second attention is drawn to her the illusion disappeared.

The sun was long gone when Kaela stepped outside. She took in the night air and closed her eyes. This was what she lived for. Soft, dewy nights and the thrill of the hunt. Tonight, she was just profiling her prey. He was an Ancient. It was rare she had the opportunity to take down an ex-member of the Council. She looked forward to it. But she carried her weapons just in case. She walked on the cautious side.

Minutes later, Kaela stood on the corner near a nightclub that her Ancient tended to spend his time. The man had money and he used it to pay for prostitutes that never saw the light of day again. He had killed far too many humans, criminals or no, to go unnoticed. She did not know his name, only his mark. On his left wrist a tattoo of a snake coiled around the vein. It was the mark given to those who were no longer welcome in the Council. It meant that he was added to Kaela’s list.

Disgust erupted in her as she watched him solicit yet another young woman. “One wrong move and I’ll take you down,” she hissed. Tomorrow night she would dress more like the other woman that stood on the streets. She would be his next victim. Only he would be the one dying.

She paid careful attention to the woman he chose. There were several around, but he seemed most attracted to this one. She was about five-foot-five, slender but not pencil thin, and wore an aura of total confidence. She had been doing this awhile. That confidence would be hard to duplicate.

The young woman’s hair was pulled up in a messy bun and it was hard to tell just how long it was. It was auburn like her own. Kaela was beginning to like her odds of being chosen tomorrow. But where was she going to hide her weapons? It was going to be difficult when she wasn’t going to be able to cover anything up. Her ankle sheath was about all she was going to manage. That worried her.

She carefully studied her prey as he finally faced her direction. He had a scar over his left eyebrow, a wound leftover from his human days. He was definitely not a pureblooded vampire. His eyes were deep black holes, so deep she could not even tell their true color. A slender grin flashed across his lips as he wrapped an arm around the young woman. He wore a silver ring on his left ring finger. The rest of his figure hid beneath a full length trench coat and a hat.

Kaela had been shielding her presence for the past hour and her energy was nearly depleted. She was only five hundred years old, a mere child compared to the vampires she killed for a living. Some nights she wondered how she did it, other times she knew: it was survival of the fittest. Kill or be killed. Kaela was not one to give up easily.

She felt eyes on her, much like the Ancient had no doubt felt on him. She whirled around, but no one was there. She couldn’t shake the feeling as the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her entire body was prickling as her senses came alive. She sent out a probing energy within a two block radius of her position, but found nothing.

“Who are you fooling, Kaela? They’re hiding just like you were,” she cursed to herself for allowing herself to be caught or seen. She closed her eyes and felt the world around her change. When her eyes reopened she was home. The prickly feeling finally subsided and she took a deep breath as she collapsed against the wall.

Tomorrow, she would have to be more careful. The only one she would drop her shields to would be her own prey. She would not become the hunted. Kaela was the Executioner, not some petty fledgling. She stumbled down the hall into her kitchen where she pulled out a bottle of her finest. She filled a wine glass with the crimson nectar and gulped it down in one swig. She poured another glass and leaned against the counter.

This time, she savored her glass. Staring at the thick liquid she began craving something fresher, more satisfying. But she refused to give in to her desires. She had never once killed a human. Only once had she even let her fangs sink into human flesh. She had her pride to maintain, if nothing else.

Just when she thought the night would settle down, her pager started screaming at her. She threw it against the wall. “Fuck off,” she screamed and sucked down the last drop from her glass before sweeping down and picking the annoying black box off the floor. It had yet to stop screaming at her. It was giving her a headache. She froze at the words flashing across the screen.

I’m watching you.

Kaela threw the beeper across the room again and backed away from it. She drew the handgun out of her right sheath and shot the beeper to silence it forever. A little extreme to get rid of a tiny black box, but she was pissed and scared. It was a volatile combination.

The Council will have to give her another one, but she didn’t care. She didn’t like that someone had gotten their hands on the number to begin with. Shadow was going to get a piece of her mind. Shadow was the man behind her arsenal. He was constantly developing new ways to blow a vamp’s head off. She wondered if he had something against his own kind, because each time he came up with something new, it tended to be more painful than the last.

He was also her backup when she thought she needed it. He literally became her shadow, always there but never seen. After she was through ranting at him, she would ask for his help. She wanted to know who’s eyes were on her tonight. Then she would hunt them down, find out why, and kill them. In that order.

Kaela drew in a shaky breath and let it out to steady herself. She stepped inside her secret room and dropped her wrist sheaths to the floor. She carefully removed her rapier and set it gently on the table in the middle of the room. She stared at the mirror and shook her head. A single crimson tear had escaped her eye and she didn’t remember it falling.

Removing her boots, she pulled the silver dagger out of her ankle sheath but didn’t set it down. It was going to find a new home on her headboard. Hesitating before she left the room, she swiped up one of the handguns she had dropped. Checking the clip, she replaced the bullet that blew her beeper to bits and stepped out of the room and into her bedroom.

Her bedroom looked like any normal woman’s room. A queen sized bed took over the north wall, covered in soft linen and a big fluffy blanket. Both the blanket and the bedspread were a rich crimson. Pillows were piled high covering the oak headboard. The carpet almost matched her linen, only a few shades deeper. One giant window on the east wall filtered in a gentle light from the street lamp two houses down, but the morning sun made it warm and welcoming. Her walls were a milky white that made the room seem larger than it was.

She pulled her pillows down to reveal the sheath for her dagger that was strapped to the headboard. She slid it in place and made sure to strap it in tight enough it wouldn’t accidently fall on her during her three hours of endless nightmares. She shoved the gun under her largest pillow, clicking the safety on before withdrawing her hand. Satisfied she turned away from the bed to pull her silk robe off the foot of it.

The south wall had a door leading to her private bathroom. She stepped inside the tiled room and lit the candles near the door. She turned the water fully hot so it would get warm and lit the rest of the candles. The soft glow gave her bathroom an exotic feeling with the marble tile and bathtub. She slipped out of her work clothes and adjusted the water to a decent temperature before plugging the drain.

Minutes later she was soaking in the lavender scented water. She closed her eyes and drifted off into total relaxation. She would need to sleep soon. As a vampire, she only needed a few hours of sleep to stay alert, though she set aside one day each month to go into a sleep only the walking dead could pull off. As the edges of sleep threatened her senses the phone started to ring. Swearing, she sat up. The answering machine could get it.

“Kaela, its Shadow,” Shadow’s deep, silky smooth voice echoed through her room. “We’ve been trying to reach you for twenty minutes, but the pager doesn’t seem to be working. Did you break–”

She was out of the water and to the phone in an instant, not caring that she was dripping water all over the floor or giving the empty street a full view of her body. She cut Shadow off mid sentence, “I shot it, actually.”

A hint of disbelief entered his voice, “You…shot it?”

“Yep.” A soft grin crossed Kaela’s lips. “With a vamp pellet no less.”

“You wasted a vamp pellet on…your beeper? Why in Lucifer’s name did you shoot it?”

“I’ll tell you tomorrow, Shadow. I need to sleep. I have a day job, you know. I need to see you anyway.”

Silence for a few minutes. Then, “When can I expect you?”

“Sundown. Be prepared to leave the office, you’re coming with me tomorrow.” Kaela hung up the phone without saying anything more. She had already been on it too long. Shadow was used to her hanging up on him when she was withholding vital information. Phone lines weren’t safe, especially the Executioner’s.

Kaela returned to the bathroom to dry herself off and pull her silk robe tight around her. She hesitated before turning her bed down. She unplugged the phone as an afterthought and slipped between her crimson sheets. Three hours until she needed to be up and ready for her day. Her anger and fear slipped away as the nightmares threatened the edge of her consciousness. She closed her eyes and reluctantly welcomed the nightmares along with her much needed sleep.