Wanted: Undead or Alive

It's Got To Be A Drug Front

None of the walking dead came into the hotel that night, as far as I'm aware. Neither did any larger-than-life bounty hunters burst through the doors. Thirty minutes after I arrived, I checked in a drunk couple who decided to get a room rather than attempt the drive home from the bar across the street. I gave them a rock-bottom discount for being responsible humans. I assumed they were humans, though I did have a moment of clarity in which I realized such assumptions could literally be the death of me.

No one else came in so I settled down to balance the books for the day. For sure, I butchered the arithmetic, but there was a number in every square on the spreadsheet by midnight. I dropped the mess in the manager's "in" box and pulled the Nukekubi binder out of my bag.

Like other members of the genus vampira, Nukekubi are immune from human disease and all but impervious to accidental death. However, if the Nukekubi's traveling head is kept separate from the body, the body will be powerless to defend itself. If the body is destroyed, the head will perish as well.

There are differences between the species, though. To their advantage, most Nukekubi are able to move freely, regardless of exposure to ultraviolet light.

Speaking of light, the bulb above my head clicked on.

Silver doors. Water dripping from the ceiling and bullets dipped in holy water. A flash of bright light.

Security at The Recovery Agency wasn't about preventing weapons from entering undetected. It prevented non-humans from entering, uninvited. Though I'd roll the dice and guess that they knew about hidden weapons, too. I wouldn't want to be the one caught trying to sneak something in.

Reading on, I learned that a Nukekubi, given over to bloodlust, would experience unimaginable pain from the affliction. In such instances, they were permitted to feed on humans, but they had to choose from a specific list of victims. The victims tended to be of a particularly shady variety of human. In law enforcement, there were some higher-ups who understood this arrangement and protected it, believing that both humans and others benefitted.

So much for constitutional rights. There was no need to guess how people would react if they learned that a supernatural community was serving as judge, jury, and executioner. Not to mention if the execution was by consumption. Eesh.

I'd set aside time another day to ponder the morality of the arrangement. At the moment, I needed to find this thing before I got evicted for not paying my rent. It seemed like Mx. Landry had been on point. If I could find the body and stuff it in the warded Honda while the head was out hunting, then it would just be a matter of waiting for the head to return, putting it somewhere separate—say, the trunk—and getting both bits back to the parking garage. From there, I felt confident Nick and his minions could take over.

If they're his minions, what are you?

I told my inner voice to stuff it and snatched a blank yellow legal pad from a nearby drawer. Lists always helped me think.

First, I'd call the library and check the address listed on the form, but likely that wouldn't get me far. Knowing he was being hunted, any blood drinker worth his salt would lie low until the danger passed. He could be anywhere in the world, couldn't he?

Then again, the house was in a working-class neighborhood, and no one ever got rich working at the public library. I hadn't seen anything about magical powers of teleportation, and many of the borders in the world were closed because of the pandemic and the wars and the general havoc of the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Are the four horsemen of the apocalypse real?

Focus!

Basic logic told me he was still close by.