I laughed, “Right.”
Then I pointed at his costu, “How in the world are you still clean?”
He shrugged, “Magic? The costu, sword, and mask all appear out of nowhere when I want them. They might as well be impossible to get dirty too.”
I couldn’t argue with that. Unsure if I could trust the universe to give us a break, I took a 360 degree look around myself. Nothing appeared to be moving around us or even in the air. If flying taught anything, it taught to think about the world in three dinsions.
As a precaution, that turned out to be a good idea, but not one that turned up anything in that mont. There wasn’t anything in the air.
Mateo’s hat disappeared as he walked over to his motorcycle and pulled on his helt. “We’re going to have to call in the action we’ve had so far. We’ve been in two fights already. With no backup to speak of, I think he’s going to want us out of the field.”
Torn between pointing out that we could have backup any ti we wanted it and knowing that Mateo already knew my thoughts on that, I opted to nod.
Taking in my response or lack of one, he smiled, “I’m including you in this call because he might have questions for both of us.”
I didn’t want to argue about this with Working Man either, but I nodded anyway.
Mateo said, “Connect V4 and I to Working Man,” and the helt did exactly as asked, giving a brief mont of satisfaction as sothing I worked on did what it was supposed to do.
“Working Man, here. What do you have?” The helt’s map placed him in Detroit Unity’s base downtown.
Mateo glanced over at and started talking, “We’ve been in two fights already, neither of them hard. An employee of the marketing firm in Farmington had been turned. We entered into the building with a mber of the local police force who hoped to save her. After our statents were taken and the police left, we were attacked by vampiric waterlons outside the house. We beat them.”
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
Working Man didn’t usually have his cara on and so we couldn’t see his face as Mateo spoke, but Working Man did pause before answering, “Did you say vampiric waterlon?”
Mateo and I shared a look as Mateo said, “Yes.”
“Damn. Every ti I think I’ve seen everything in this job, I get proved wrong. Alright. You’ve been attacked twice and there are two different kinds of vampires. You should probably get back to base because in about an hour, nobody will be able to help you out if you’re in a jam. But before you head back to base see if you can’t pick up another lead. Don’t follow it to the end, but see if there’s any sign that other vampires are out there. I haven’t fought them a lot, but sothing about this feels wrong. If there are two kinds of vampires out there, there might be more. Sothing bigger is happening and the two of you are better equipped to figure it out than I am. See what you can do.”
Giving a nod that he had to know Working Man couldn’t see, Mateo said, “Right now our best shot is to circle the area looking for hints of undeath.”
“That’s a good beginning. Try it and report back, but don’t be surprised if I don’t answer. We’re going in in the next thirty minutes.”
“We’ll do that,” Mateo turned his head toward the street, probably thinking about the route we might take.
Working Man said, “Good, but don’t take too long about it. It’s getting dark and soon they’ll have the advantage.”
Then the connection closed.
I looked over at Mateo, “I thought he’d order us back to the base imdiately.”
Mateo got on his bike and started it. “He basically did, but he knows that even magic trails get cold. Let’s go around the block and see what we can see.”
I slid onto my bike, started it, and followed Mateo out of the church parking lot when another thought ca to mind. “What do you think the chances are that soone saw us driving away from a pile of burned and splattered waterlons, but didn’t see the fight?”
“What you an,” Mateo said over his Harley’s engine, “is do you think we’re about to be frad for fruit vandalism?”
“More or less,” I turned on my bike’s sensors. They were the sa type as I’d used in my helt’s composite vision, but they had a longer range and better resolution.
“I wouldn’t worry about it. Sure, that would look bad, but we’ve got our own footage, right?”
“Sure,” I said, “but if soone gets the inaccurate version out first—”
Mateo interrupted , “Can you look up above the houses to our right? There’s sothing up there.”
I zood in on it. It was a human head held up in the air by its flapping ears. There was no body in sight. It had long canines, but aside from that, the lack of a body, and the ear flapping, it looked like a normal forty-sothing white guy.
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