Missing Vampire: Reward Available (Hypernaturals 6)

Helicopters

I am behind a tree and wishing it is a lot bigger.

I see no easy cover. This is the best I can do.

A helicopter cruised slowly by in the sky, and it is executing a search pattern.

I don't know helicopters all that well, so I am not sure what type this one is exactly. I am fairly sure it is not a military model.

Jessica would probably know exactly what it is and also fly one because Jessica can pretty much fly anything. I have stick time in a couple of small planes, as she has been teaching me how to fly. Helicopters not included.

It's like the damn HPA read my mind about how stupid the vans are. Fuckers!

The hovering thing is glossy black, with a tinted dark canopy. It is longer than those bubble canopy news helicopter type, and it has a side door in the fuselage. At this distance, I cannot see any markings, although I assume it has the local aviation authority required numbers on it someplace. Not that knowing them will help me now. I have no way to look them up.

I waited Vampire motionless for the sky-wasp to finish its search grid and fly on. I hope its next search area is farther away.

The resources for all the vans and weaponry and night vision means the HPA are well funded. I can see no reason a single helicopter is beyond reach. I imagine that given the sparse roads and the mountains that it is the only way to search up here.

Given how much time has passed since the abduction in Turkey, their search grid is huge now. Amazing they are this far out. They REALLY want my ass.

Not that I am convinced the Vans are about searching anymore. I cannot see how they could be useful as deployed. The more I consider it the more I think the vans must have been to try and push me to the Siren Hall, and its trap.

They have to assume I am headed to France. They pulled me from the Paris bound terminal. The helicopter is on the path between Turkey and Paris. Still: a fuck-ton of resources are being pointed at getting me back. They are spending all this not even knowing what Vampires can do: Only knowing we exist. Also, they know twenty-five of their USA fellow bigot-brethern were erased without a trace from this existence. That might help explain the scale of the operation I am seeing.

If I assume they 'know' I am headed to Paris (I am NOT), then the number of vans this far out dropped to being only along shortest routes? Since I am not headed to Paris: Van's should drop off further as I diverge from the Paris path of travel, if that assumption is true.

Damn: I wish I had a nice, cozy, unknown to these people European ID to hide with. I need to fix that. I am a citizen of the Vampire world now.

How many HPA are there? The vans and the people in them might not be actual HPA but rental cops, hired for this one mission. Militia for hire is a thing around the world. A lot of them ex-military, as I understood it. I know the US used one outfit during the first Gulf War when I was a kid. They apparently fucked up a lot of stuff.

That helicopter is private, not military. It is not a gunship or a troop transport or anything I know about. The military would not paint it glossy black. That did not mean it is not a threat, and as it worked its way away from me, I felt a huge relief.

Taking all that together, my working assumption is that I am being hunted by a combination of HPA and Paramilitary, they have no real idea what I can do, but they have a pile of money. 

Two days later, I reached a river. I saw more helicopters (or the same one multiple times), but not ever as close to me as that first one. I watch the sky as warily as the road now. My cover plans always taking into account the possibility of needing to hide in a new dimension.

I took advantage of the river for another deep soak of myself and my clothes. I am getting ready to be in a civilization I can communicate in, and that means I need to be as presentable as is possible.

I can read all the signs because I know French. Helen made damn sure of that. The language I HAD to learn after Spanish. She insisted, and in the same way she was about my command of Vampire pheromones, she made me master the language. I speak and read modern, continental French like a native.

When I was human, I was mono-lingual, like most backward American's. Even living as near as I do to Mexico, I never picked up more than a smattering of Spanish. It helps that my Vampire brain rewiring came with a certain level of plasticity regarding language. Jessica taught me Spanish so I could go to Mexico to her clinic. Morgan and I drilled each other on that, because she wanted to learn it at that level too.

Once we mastered that, Morgan and I added French, because Helen wanted me to come here, but not before I could speak it like a native. Helen is a hard ass, and so she, Morgan, and I only spoke French for weeks. These days, I tend to polyglot it at home. English, French, or Spanish, whichever language seems to fit what I am trying to convey.

I am no longer illiterate on this road trip because I am in France!

I am going to add a few more languages to my inventory. I have been playing at German and Russian seems like a good choice. Maybe Arabic after that? Something to give me a clue as to what is being said around me. If I spend more time in India, then Hindi of course.

Another day of all-night Vampire-speed running, and I pulled up in Lyon.

I found a service station that is open late, explained to the young woman working there that I am a hiker and a bit lost. That I set out on a project to travel all over the country on foot. Lost my map in a strong wind. 

The woman at the cash register said she is impressed by my desire to see our country so close up.

She assumes I am French. Helen's language lessons and Morgan's partnership for the win. I am a bearded hippy kind of Frenchman.

As a Vampire, I am French as much as anything else these days. I can't really ever be from any one place for long. Forty years probably is the max.

The young woman showed me a map and gave me directions to get to Claremont Estates. I am one night run away. Not even that.

I settled into some trees away from the city and did not sleep as well as I might.

I am excited.

I am also worried that I can get this close, and suddenly screw this up by doing something stupid. Run out in front of a van or something.