The CERBERUS Series: An Urban Fantasy Detective Box Set by Massey M.D. & Landsborough D. William

Author:Massey, M.D. & Landsborough, D. William
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Modern Digital Publishing
Published: 2023-10-16T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Time already wasn’t on our side, and the sun seemed to move faster than normal. Sophia and I came up with a plan that had the potential to go the way we wanted, but it came with a hell of a lot of risk.

It was more than we could hope for.

While the sun was still up, I drove across Austin, making my way back towards the ramshackle house where my new ally had run me through with a sword. Sophia lent me one of her vehicles, considering mine had been left upside down and battered. I’d have to let Strickland know to send some guys to get it from whatever scrap yard it ended up in. He didn’t seem like the type to let CERBERUS agents’ fingerprints get left on something like a trashed car.

Instead of the outdated Chevy, Sophia set me off in a Mercedes EQS. Not only did the vamps seem to like riding around in style, but they were watching their carbon footprint, too. Not that their food source was particularly great for the planet.

The fact that I was still alive, combined with the torn blood bags I’d seen beside my bed, told me Sophia and her kind weren’t necessarily ones for a free-range diet. Probably for the best if you wanted to lie low, but I wondered if they missed that certain je-ne-sais-quoi of a homeless guy or a drunk who stumbled down the wrong alley.

You’d think that nothing could really rock your world quite like learning all the things that go bump in the night are real. But there was something even more disconcerting about learning how seamlessly some monsters had integrated into society.

“Cafés, luxury cars, mid-town apartments.” I shook my head. “Monsters are living better than me.”

It wasn’t lost on me that the bed I woke up in just hours before was more comfortable than anything I’d slept in over the last decade. A series of military bunks, a cardboard sheet masquerading as my mattress back in New Orleans, or even the ground when out on missions all served their purpose, but they couldn’t hold a candle to the hug of the memory foam that had cradled me while I recovered.

And it’s not like we had memory foam mattresses back at Stanley, either.

As I coasted through downtown Austin, I looked at the pockets of people wandering the sidewalks. People going to and from work, meeting one another for a morning coffee, hanging out with friends and family…

How many of them were monsters?

Of the fifty people I could see milling outside the capitol building, were there apex predators we didn’t know about? Supernatural entities that were once worshipped as gods?

“Fuck me.” I squeezed the bridge of my nose to release a headache I felt forming.

I tried to shove the existential crisis down into the depths of my mind. It could pop up again the next time I tried one of Perez’s mindfulness sessions.

For the rest of the drive, I imagined each and every person I drove past was just that: a person, and a potential victim.

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