Day: August 2, 2018

Things that Go Boom!

I pushed the door open and the smell of fertilizer and other foreign things hit me in the face so hard I took a step backwards like I’d been bowled over by the smell alone. This wasn’t good. I stepped inside and looked for anything out of the ordinary. I saw no new items. It all looked like a normal apartment until you looked on the kitchen table.

The table in the middle of the kitchen was littered with papers and circuit boards. There were chemical bottles and empty plastic bags. From the smell of it there was a lot of fertilizer in this small space recently. Nitrates go boom. Circuit boards, flammable chemicals. He was building a bomb or many if my guess was right.

“Armande, do you have anyone on call that knows anything about bombs?”

“What?” He asked stepping inside the room. I heard the vampire take a deep breathe, vampires didn’t have to breathe so that was a big deal. “Fertilizer? He was making bombs in my building?” The fury that coursed through the vampire as he swooped around the apartment looking for the missing dragon. Armande growled as he stopped next to me, “I will kill him myself.”

I shrugged. “I won’t get in your way but I need to talk to him first. I need to know what’s going on with the rest of the Last Phoenix.

He growled and it echoed through the apartment. “There is a map of New York City on the table here. I’m going to take it and samples of the things I can find. Maybe someone with better knowledge can tell me the power of them. And the map is marked up. Need to look at it better but someplace a little more comforting this smell is going to make me hurl.”

Armande laughed. “Are you always so crude?”

I grinned. “It made you laugh.”

He smiled. “I owe you, my friend.”

“I thought no one was friends with me.”

Armande chuckled. “I always want something from you, Nox. Don’t forget it. But I owe you.”

I nodded. “Understood. Armande. So much for leaving without my presence being noticed. I need you to post a watch. If the dragon who is staying here, or anyone for that matter, comes here I need you call me.”

Armande nodded. “Of course. I will put my most trusted eyes on the place. And I will alert Il Cane of the dragon’s transgressions before it blows back on us. The council will have to make arrangements, or whatever it is they do when vampires could be exposed.”

“I’ll make the Venatori aware of it as well so they can use their powers that be to aid.”

“You know they hate that?”

I nodded. “I know. All the more reason to do it.”

Armand chuckled as I rolled up the maps on from the table and put the samples I’d taken from the table and around it and stuck it in a plastic grocery bag that was lying on the floor. This guy was not very neat. Thankfully I wasn’t staying long enough that it would make me crazy.