Penny's Choice (Book 1 of Penny's Choice Series)

Chapter 4 (The Clean Up)

On Penny's way to the town, Charles received a call that another body, the body of a beloved librarian, was found in the microfilm section. With two equally spaced holes found on several of her main arteries, the attack clearly looked vampiric. The town newspapers went on a frenzy about vampires in town. Penny and Charles's job had just moved up in priority. Their mission shifted from kill two or three vampires to kill the vampires and cover it up.

Charles and Penny had been staking out the UGA library for a week. They knew that there were only three vampires, which was very odd. Normally covens had at least a dozen members. Many larger, well established covens could have as many as a hundred. But for some reason, this coven had only three. Charles had mused that perhaps an older vampire had turned a student but been unable to return. And the new vampire thought that perhaps some of his friends would enjoy the immortality too.

The vampires spent their days in the drop ceilings of the main library. The poor librarian who had been sucked dry was trying to remove some dirt from a ceiling tile when she stumbled upon their daytime hiding place. While vampires did not require sleep like humans, they still relished their cat naps.

Charles crept close to Penny. It was nearing dusk, which was when the vampires would strike out to find their targets. The library was a great location for the vampires because it was a five-minute walk from the downtown of the bar capital of the South East. It was easy to pick up slap drunk co-eds.

"Hey, Charles," Penny said. "Why don't we find more bodies or hear about more disappearances?" That question had bothered her a lot. If vampires were such ferocious killers like she had witnessed and if there were so many of them, then why wouldn't there be a lot more cover-ups on the Brotherhood's hands?

"Most vampires don't kill when they eat," Charles replied. He suddenly put his hand up like he had heard something moving in the darkness. Penny drew her new wooden stake-like daggers from her boots. She was about to pounce when Charles shoved her against a bookshelf.

"Thomas, what are you doing here?" Charles hissed in the dark.

"Helping out," Thomas replied. Penny could hear his trademark giggle from behind the bookshelf.

"God, Thomas, I thought you were a vampire," Penny interjected. "I could have killed you." Her heart was pounding. She didn't know how the mysterious man had managed to get the drop on them.

"Not to be mean, but you're not that good yet," Thomas said. He giggled and stuck his head around the corner. "They stay in the back." He was still shrouded in layers and mostly covered by darkness.

"Thomas, you shouldn't be here," Charles said again.

"Libraries are my specialty. Do you think I am just going to let a bunch of killer vampires ruin the library for everyone?"

"Hey, why do think they sent me? I'm ready!" Penny was hurt that Thomas didn't think she was ready to take on vampires yet.

"These guys, sure, but not..." Thomas was cut off mid-sentence by Charles.

"More organized vampires...Thomas is right," Charles said.

"Fine, what's the plan?" Penny said. She put her hands on her hips and curled her lips into a snarl. She stuck her tongue out at Thomas even though she knew it was probably too dark for him to see it.

"What are you? Two?" Thomas said as he caught her tongue in between his fingers. "Shouldn't you be putting that down Charles's throat anyway?" He chuckled and let go of Penny's tongue.

"Ow, how did you even see me doing that?" Penny asked. She rolled her tongue around in her mouth.

"Thomas has always had the best eyesight in the dark. It's part of what makes him so adept at fighting vampires," Charles said, offering an explanation for Thomas's odd behavior.