Free Vampire in Crisis by Dale Mayer

Tessa caught sight of the two men in the beds. She frowned, surprised that she’d missed them. She tried to peer through the space before it closed, but she was at the wrong angle to see them clearly.
    “What’s wrong with them?” she asked. She hadn’t been able to see how badly hurt they were, but it wasn’t like the ancients to leave injured men alone – especially not given the number of times she’d been called in to help lately.
    “Nothing,” Serus said. “They are only pretending to be ill. They are going to watch for anyone coming up this elevator.”
    “Except no one will go up if we have it full of people coming down all the time.”
    “True,” Goran conceded. “But if we have someone watching what’s going on, then they might see a stranger arrive that we might have otherwise missed. It’s definitely a problem right now. We don’t want to have anyone infiltrate our organization through a doorway we didn’t know about.”
    “Too late,” Tessa said dryly. She didn’t think those two men would make a bit of difference.
    “We can hope not.” Serus stepped in front of her. “How are you?”
    Tessa smiled. “I’m okay. A little more tired than I’d like and still not sure of how to handle all this, but I’m working on it.”
    “Good. Keep working.”
    She nodded, her mind caught on his earlier words. She frowned and said, “Sorry, did you say those two men aren’t sick?”
    “No. We just wanted a couple of men to stand guard in case anyone from the other side used this elevator. Seemed like a good idea for them to appear sick. That’s all.”
    “Why, Tessa?” Cody asked quietly.
    She turned to look at Cody when David groaned. “They looked sick to you, didn’t they?”
    “Sorry, yeah, their systems had both gray and black,” she said.
    “What?” roared Serus. “We just grabbed the first two men we saw.”
    He glared at Goran as if this was entirely his fault.
    Goran groaned. “What if they’d just arrived and that’s why they were the closest?”
    Tessa snickered. Her father spun and glared at her. “If you knew, why didn’t you say so?”
    “I only caught sight of them as I entered the elevator. I didn’t know for sure,” she replied. “And I don’t honestly know how black. I’m finding out that black is different now.”
    “Harrumph.” He turned and glared at Goran again. Goran grinned back at him. “Too bad she took so long to join us. She could have told us what we were doing wrong.”
    Stiff, Serus turned his back on all of them.
    Holding back a giggle at the ancients’ antics, Tessa watched the elevator lights flash as the machine descended to the lowest floor.
    Cody slid an arm around her waist, tugging her backwards against his chest. She loved these moments. They didn’t happen often or last long enough. They were stolen bits of time. Special time. She grabbed his hand and laced her fingers with his. She squeezed gently, loving the instant response.
    Too soon the double doors opened. Goran and Serus immediately slid out of the elevator, each taking a different side and crouching low, ready for anything.
    Tessa assessed the weird energy, with nothing feeling right anymore since Deanna, and strode out. Ten feet ahead, she stopped and studied the vast empty area. It had a familiar look to it – but was that familiar to Deanna or to Tessa? She opened her vision wider when the colors slammed into her head; she cut that back by half. The place had a gray cast to it. Lots of energy having come and gone in years past, but much less recently. But there’d been some activity on the right.
    She pointed in the direction of the energy trails. “The energy disappears in that direction.” She did a slow circle to make sure she didn’t miss anything. Satisfied, she walked toward the energy trails. “A dozen or so slightly older energies, likely the ones Goran met up with and a half dozen that are fresher. Like an advanced party arriving.”
    “Well, the new