LITMIR.BIZ

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café.

      “That,” Max said with a note of wistfulness in his voice, “is the headquarters of the Voluntary Vampire Extinction Movement.”

      I rolled my eyes. “I’m not quite sure I follow. Is it the two floors of what appear to be apartments upstairs, or the place with the dinner menu posted on the window?”

      “You’ll see.” He slung my bag across his shoulder and grabbed my hand.

      The café was hip with black walls and blue neon recessed lighting. The clientele dined off square plates with barely any food on them—fitting, since they were all thin as rails.

      The maître d’, a handsome, haughty young man all in black, looked up from his reservation book. When he saw Max, he grinned. “Ah, Senor Harrison. And this is?”

      “Dr. Carrie Ames. She’s got a reservation.” Max winked at the man, though it was barely perceptible.

      The maître d’ seemed to catch the meaning behind the expression, and he smiled pleasantly. “Follow me, please.”

      We wound our way among the tables toward a steel door with a black velvet rope in front of it. A small, black label bearing the letters V.I.P. proclaimed its purpose. Diners looked up with interest as we passed, probably trying to figure out how we, in our slept-in clothes, could possibly be VIP’s.

      The door was an elevator. The black button blended in with the wall. The maître d’ pushed it and the panel slid open, allowing us inside.

      Once the door closed, the young man turned to us. “First time visiting the Movement, Doctor?”

      “First time visiting Spain, as a matter of fact.” I tried to keep my tone light. I wasn’t sure if I should give away my non-Movement status or not.

      “You’ll love it here.” The man’s English was slightly accented, but very good. “After six hundred years, I’m still not sick of it.”

      Our conversation was cut short by a rude electronic voice. It droned on in several different languages before it reached English. “Voice recognition confirmation required.”

      The maître d’ held a finger to his lips to warn me to silence before stating, “Miguel.”

      “Voice sample confirmed,” the voice informed us after a litany of foreign tongues. “Please enter security clearance code” was the next instruction I could understand.

      “Miguel is the front line here at the Movement,” Max explained as the vampire flipped open a hidden panel and punched a sequence of numbers on the keypad. “Nobody gets in without his okay. Still, there’s plenty of backup.”

      “The waiter thing is a, how do the spy movies put it, a cover,” Miguel said with a wry grin.

      “What kind of backup?” I peered over Miguel’s arm as the keypad retracted and the panel slid back into place. “What happens if you get it wrong?”

      “A debilitating electronic impulse would momentarily paralyze us and the elevator would be sent to a secure floor. Assassins would be waiting to detain and interrogate us until our credentials cleared,” Max said with a shrug. “It’s not so bad.”

      “You would know,” Miguel said with a laugh, clapping him on the back. “Max is not allowed to take the elevator by himself anymore.”

      Max was about to snipe back at him when the doors opened on a reception area so bright I had to shield my eyes. The walls, furniture and ceiling were stark white, the overhead fluorescents blinding. Only the floor, covered in low-pile, slate-gray carpet, and a very frightening girl at the front desk, stood out.

      “Anne will take care of you from here,” Miguel said as we exited the elevator. “Buenos noches.”

      “Buenos noches,” Max repeated, though the pleasantry wasn’t directed at Miguel.

      “Hi, Max,” the girl behind the desk said with a smile. Her expression was a startling contrast to the bleakness of her appearance. Her black hair, pale skin and zombie-couture black clothing reminded me of the bored teenagers who worked at the goth shop in the mall back home.

      Max leaned casually on the tall counter. “Miss me, baby doll?”

      “Oh, yeah. You know I did,” the girl quipped with a roll of her eyes.

      “This is Dr. Carrie Ames. She should be on the amnesty list.”

      “Amnesty list?” I asked, looking over the counter with interest.

      “The ‘do not kill’ list,” the girl clarified, holding out her hand. “I’m Anne.”

      I shook it, thinking it best to be polite in case I’d been omitted from the list. After a tense second or two of looking, she found my name. “Okay, you’re cleared to meet with General Breton in an hour. Uh, and he is in a mood today.”

      “General?” I snorted. “So, are you guys more like the Salvation Army or the actual army?”

      Max cleared his throat with a warning look. “General Breton demands the respect afforded him as an officer of the British Army.”

      “Oh, so he’s, like, a real general.” I swallowed. “Great.”

      Anne patted my arm reassuringly. “Only for, like, a couple years, and only in the War of 1812.”

      “Carrie is…new,” Max said apologetically. “Remember, some of us are not quite as old as you.”

      Looking at the girl, I had a hard time believing she wasn’t a sixteen-year-old human, but I’m a firm believer in never asking a woman her age.

      “Sorry,” Anne said sheepishly. Then, brightening, she asked, “Do you want the tour while you wait?”

      “Sure,” I answered for both Max and me. I wasn’t about to stroll the halls of the Movement without him there to protect me in case some bored assassin got a hankering to kill.

      Anne motioned for us to follow her as she walked to a set of double doors and slid a badge through a card reader. There was a buzz, then the lock popped loudly. She opened the door and ushered us inside.

      The inner sanctum of the Movement was decorated similarly to the lobby, but doors with badge readers lined the hallway. Sentries were posted at regular intervals, clad in the same black uniform I’d seen the assassins wear the night they stormed Cyrus’s mansion.

      “All the rooms with blue labels like these are safe ones in the event of a security breach.” She pulled one door open to reveal an office. A woman in a long, flowing caftan and a high turban looked up blandly from a pile of paperwork. “Something I can help you with?”

      “Just pointing out the safe rooms to our visitors,” Anne said cheerfully before she closed the door again.

      “So, what are safe rooms?” I had to admit, the security around Movement headquarters wasn’t as impressive as I’d imagined it to be.

      “Safe rooms are exactly where you want to be when you hear the security breach countdown announcement,” Max interjected. “If someone manages to get in, Anne can pull the alarm. You’ve got thirty seconds to get into a safe room—they’re all unlocked—before the UV lights come on.”

      “Frying any vampire roaming the halls,” she finished for him. “Pretty cool, huh?”

      “Pretty cool,” I agreed, sounding for all the world like a mom trying to imitate her teen daughter’s speech. “But what if it’s not a vampire? What if a human gets in?”

      “We have a contingency plan for that,” Anne replied smugly. “A furry contingency plan.”

      “Werewolves.” Max made a disgusted noise. “They’re not affected by UV lights. They do a manual sweep of the halls and kill anything still out there.”

      The idea that at any time someone could

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