Chapter 106 Vampire.

Chapter 106: 106 Vampire.

"Busy not answering your phone and getting pampered by unreasonably attractive cosplay nerds?" He took a sip of his own coffee. "I left you my card about a week ago. Probably handed it to you last time I saw you in town, too. Figured you’d reach out at some point. You didn’t."

"I’m not very stretchy."

He blinked in confusion, took a sip of his coffee to mull over my words, then muttered, "Pardon?"

"Uh. Reaching. It was a reaching out joke. I should have just said I’m not great at reaching out or something. Sorry."

"You’re not great at a lot of things, I bet." He leaned against his cruiser and crossed one boot over the other. "I’ll be straight with you, Coleman. I’ve been sheriffing Wapa County for a while and I’ve been a cop for a lot longer. You know the deal around here as well as I do. Our nearest neighbor in common is a small town run by a teenaged vampire princess. None of that’s news, so I’m pretty open-minded about the supernatural."

I nodded because he was right.

Wapa County’s supernatural situation was about as secret as a gas station bathroom.

The rest of the world didn’t think about it much, but that didn’t mean they didn’t know about it.

But we were a twenty minute drive away from a city full of monsters and people living side-by-side more easily than cats and dogs.

It was a weird pocket of Minnesota.

"What WAS news," he continued, "is the purple light show on your property when it first started happening. And I’ve been paying close attention to it all this time, especially after that incident with the monster attack in my town."

I said nothing, which felt like the right move.

Miller went on like I knew he would.

He’d been tracking the portal activity for months, though he hadn’t fully puzzled it out until recently.

He saw the lights, got warned about local energy spikes, and so on.

"I’ve been content to let you mind your own business, at least sort of. I won’t lie, though, having you here feels nerve-racking, and I can tell you’re on the Countess’s radar too. The skeleton patrols into my town have been happening more often over the past few weeks," Miller said. "Beaumont’s people have been asking questions about your farm. I don’t know what she knows. More than me, I guess, and I know enough. Your property is ground zero for an escalating pattern the whole county can feel, and my working theory is you’re the cause of it, not the land itself."

"And you’re here to shut me down?" I asked, keeping my voice level.

Miller shook his head. "I’d never tell a man what to do with his own land. You’ve been true to your word and we haven’t had any problems in town since that first kerfuffle, so I’m here as a friend. I just want to tell you that you’ve got a choice to make, and the window to make it on your own terms is closing."

"That doesn’t sound, like, super friendly, though." I took a drink of the coffee he’d brought me. It was pretty good. Clementine had been on my ass about upgrading our coffee setup for weeks, and now a feisty old county sheriff was making me look bad on my own private domicile.

Miller laid out the rest of it for me in a plain, grocery-list tone that I found kind of hypnotic in an annoying way.

Eventually the federal government would figure things out, and they’d get involved.

I wouldn’t have much choice about how things played out after the fact, and who was to say what would happen to my girls.

If they found out about portals, too, their interest would be huge.

There was talk of other portals in the area being seized by the government in recent years, too.

One that apparently led to a world full of fantasy creatures like goblins and elves, but that was all rumor and conjecture as far as I knew.

The only reason I’d heard the rumors at all is because it was supposedly not far from Wapa Lake.

I could see where this was headed, and I was honestly intrigued.

The Sheriff was about to tell me that the Countess was my refuge.

"If you don’t get ahead of this," Miller said, sure enough, "someone with a badge and a budget that doesn’t exist on paper is going to show up, and that conversation won’t involve coffee."

"What are you suggesting?" I gripped the gate bars with one hand.

Miller straightened up from his lean against the cruiser. "Talk to Countess Beaumont. Drive right into Wapa Lake and I bet she’ll find you and bring you in for a chat. Her territory is the one place in the country where the feds have agreed to keep their hands off, and I bet that’d extend to you if you were in there. I don’t know the details—no one does. But I know enough to guess that much. If you’re inside her borders and under her umbrella, the alphabet agencies can pound sand." He drained the last of his coffee and crushed the cup. "I can set up a meeting if you want. We have ways to reach out in cases of emergency, and I think she’d forgive me for bending the rules a bit on this one."

I studied him through the gate. "Why do you care, Miller? You could just let the feds handle it and wash your hands."

He tossed his crushed cup through the open car window without looking and leaned back against the cruiser. "I’ve been at this job long enough to know that the weird shit is going to happen whether I like it or not. My job is to make sure it happens in a way that doesn’t get people killed. Right now, you’re out here alone with a nightly monster problem that’s getting worse, and sooner or later something’s going to come through that portal, spill past your fence line, and become my problem. More importantly, you seem like a good enough young man. I’d rather help you fix it now than clean up the mess later."

That was reasonable.

I wanted him to be corrupt or stupid or threatening so I could dismiss him and go back to my pancakes, but he was just a county sheriff doing his job well, and that was harder to argue with.

Of course I always knew he was a decent guy. That much wasn’t news.

"I’ll think about it," I said.

Miller nodded like he’d expected that.

He got back in his cruiser and started the engine.

Before he pulled away, he rolled down the window.

"Take your time, Coleman. But not too much." He tapped the steering wheel once. "Next time I might not be in a mood to bring coffee."

He drove off without rushing.

The man clearly had a surplus of patience, and I had to be grateful for that.

I walked back to the house with Miller’s coffee in my hand, and my brain running about six different simulations of how badly the next few weeks could go.

My stomach growled because I’d left my pancakes unfinished for a man with a badge and good taste in beans.

The girls were waiting at the front door for me.

Seeing the cuties’ worried faces, I felt a little more like a dad coming home to worried daughters than lovers for a split second.

Elsa was in the doorway with her arms crossed and her tiara slightly crooked from where she’d been pressing her face against the window to watch.

"Who dared disturb our morning with such barbaric noise?" She stamped one tiny bare foot. It didn’t look that intimidating.

Ayra was behind her, still growling a little, with one hand on her hammer.

She’d been ready to charge out and fight a county sheriff to the death on my behalf.

Good girl. Terrible judgment, but good girl.

Clementine leaned against the doorframe with her arms crossed and one hoof tapping against the threshold.

She had the least amount of foreknowledge about the situation with Miller, so her face was pretty blank.

Juniper was further back in the hallway, coiled low and quiet, watching my face carefully.

I told them what was said. All of it.

I filled them in on Miller’s offer, the possible federal interest, and the recommendation to meet with the vampire Countess Anya Beaumont.

I didn’t sugarcoat it, and I didn’t wax poetic or get longwinded.

"This might work well for us. A patron with territorial sovereignty and established government immunity is precisely the kind of ally we need."

Clementine was nodding before Juniper finished the sentence. "We need allies, we need cover, and we need someone who can keep the feds off our ass." She ticked the points off on her fingers. "This checks all three boxes. Don’t overthink it, fuckface. Plus, my mom is in Wapa Lake, so that works great for me."

Elsa’s reaction was more complicated.

Her jaw clenched and her hands balled into fists at her sides.

Through the bond, I felt the conflict raging inside her.

She was a princess who’d lost her kingdom to a political failure, so the idea of placing herself under another ruler’s authority probably made her want to claw her own skin off.

But Elsa was also the same woman who’d crossed dimensions to find an ally, and she recognized the strategic value of a powerful patron even if her pride wanted to throw the whole concept into a volcano.

"I will not kneel to some Earthrealm baroness," she said, lifting her chin so high I could see up her nostrils—remarkably clear and uncongested. "But I am capable of strategic alliances. A temporary partnership of equals would be acceptable, provided my rank is respected and my champion remains mine."

"She’s a Countess, not a baroness," I said.

Elsa waved a dismissive hand. "Irrelevant. I outrank her in either case."

Ayra’s tail had started wagging again, the territorial growl forgotten. "I shall follow you anywhere, Master! I have concerns about pack hierarchy in unfamiliar territory, and I wish to know if there will be sparring opportunities!"

"I don’t know much about her setup yet, Ayra."

Elsa looked at Ayra, then at me, then back at Ayra. "I am surrounded by lunatics," she announced. "I will go along with this alliance, but I wish to state for the official record that I am doing so under protest and that I am still better than everyone except my Champion."

"Noted," I said.

I looked at all of them.

My girls. My party.

All staring at me and waiting for me to catch up to where they already were.

I finished Miller’s coffee and quickly tossed it in the trash.

It really was better than mine, and Clementine was going to be insufferable about it if she got so much as a whiff, so I had to act fast.

"Let’s see what happens, then," I said. "I always wanted to meet a vampire."