The Warrant

Detective Elias Vane stood beneath the shallow porch of number seventeen and listened to the man inside preparing to kill one of his colleagues.

Rain whispered against the slate roofs of Wilton Crescent and ran from the edge of the porch in a steady curtain. Across the narrow street, identical terraces disappeared into the wet darkness, their brickwork black beneath the streetlamps. Somewhere beyond them a car passed through standing water.

Elias heard all of it.

He also heard the metallic click from the first floor.

Not loud. Barely anything at all beneath the rain and the idling police car behind him.

Metal sliding against metal.

Then a second, softer sound.

Elias stared at the black-painted front door.

A magazine being seated.

“Armed,” he said.

Sergeant Patel, standing beside him beneath the porch, immediately straightened.

“What?”

“Upstairs. Front room, I think.”

Patel glanced at the house.

“You can hear that?”

Elias ignored the question.

There were three heartbeats inside.

One was quick and shallow, somewhere towards the rear of the ground floor. Frightened. Another was upstairs and moving rapidly from room to room.

The third was almost directly above them.

Slow.

Controlled.

Elias could smell the occupants too. Sweat. Tobacco. The faint sourness of alcohol.

And blood.

Not much.

Old enough that it had begun to dry.

His eyes settled on the narrow pane of frosted glass beside the door. Light glowed behind it, enough for him to see the shadow that passed briefly across the hallway.

“Three people,” he said. “One downstairs at the back. Two upstairs. One of them has a firearm.”

Patel turned to the officers waiting behind them.

“Armed suspect. Nobody enters until we know what we’re dealing with.”

“We don’t have time.”

She looked back at Elias.

“You just said he’s armed.”

“Yes.”

“So we wait for firearms.”

“No.”

There was another sound from above.

A window latch.

Elias looked up automatically.

The upper windows were invisible from beneath the porch, but he could hear the old timber frame shifting.

“He’s opening the front bedroom window.”

Patel stepped sideways, looking up.

“Can he get out?”

“Not easily.”

“Then he can stay there.”

Elias wished it were that simple.

He looked down at the paper in his hand.

The warrant was becoming damp where his fingers gripped it.

His name was on it. The address was correct. The magistrate’s signature sat at the bottom above the little printed paragraph authorising police officers to enter and search the premises.

Elias had read that paragraph repeatedly on the drive over.

It had seemed much more convincing beneath the fluorescent lights of the station.

Here, standing before the threshold, it suddenly looked like exactly what it was.

Paper.

Behind the door, a floorboard creaked.

Elias pictured the hallway from what he could sense of it. Someone was standing near the kitchen. Their heartbeat fluttered rapidly enough that he could almost feel it through the floor.

Terrified.

Upstairs, the armed man moved again.

Four steps.

Stop.

A faint scrape.

Furniture.

He was moving something.

Barricading the door?

Taking position?

Elias didn’t know.

That was the worst part.

His senses gave him fragments. More than any human officer standing beside him could possibly know, but never quite enough.

And every fragment told him they should already be inside.

Patel noticed him looking at the warrant.

“What?”

Elias didn’t answer.

She followed his gaze from the paper to the doorway.

Then understanding appeared on her face.

“Oh.”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious?”

“Unfortunately.”

Patel stared at him for a moment.

“We have a warrant.”

“I’m aware.”

“A court has authorised us to enter.”

“I’m aware of that too.”

“So come in.”

Elias looked at the threshold.

The doorstep was worn pale at its centre by decades of shoes. Rain had blown beneath the porch and darkened the outermost inch of stone.

Beyond it lay a narrow Victorian hallway. Patterned tiles. A radiator. Coats hanging from hooks along one wall. A child’s blue trainer lay on its side beneath them.

Home.

That mattered.

It didn’t matter to Patel. It didn’t matter to the law.

It mattered to whatever ancient rule had held Elias outside people’s homes for the last hundred and thirty-nine years.

He had never discovered why.

He doubted anybody knew.

The rule simply existed.

A vampire could not enter a private dwelling without invitation.

Not should not.

Could not.

Elias had tested it enough times to know there was no ambiguity there. The resistance was physical without being physical, an invisible certainty at the threshold. He could push against it until every muscle in his body strained and never move another inch.

But he had never tried it with a warrant.

Another click came from upstairs.

Elias’s attention snapped back to the house.

Safety catch.

His jaw tightened.

“He’s readying the weapon.”

Patel’s radio was already in her hand.

“Control, suspect believed armed inside the property. Firearms unit required at—”

“He’s moving.”

She stopped.

Elias listened.

The slow heartbeat had accelerated.

Footsteps crossed the room.

Towards the landing.

Towards the stairs.

The frightened heartbeat downstairs suddenly became frantic.

“He’s coming down.”

Patel stepped away from the doorway and drew her Taser.

The officers behind her moved instinctively, spreading away from the entrance.

Elias remained where he was.

He could hear almost everything.

That was what made it unbearable.

He could hear the armed man’s breathing.

He could hear the tiny movements of his fingers against whatever he was carrying.

He could hear the person downstairs retreating across the kitchen.

He could hear their sock catch slightly against the floor.

They were backing away.

From him.

Elias could cross the hallway in less than a second.

He could be at the stairs before the man reached the bottom.

He could stop this.

Except for twelve inches of doorway.

“Elias.”

Patel was looking at him.

He realised his fingers had crushed the edge of the warrant.

“The warrant gives us lawful authority,” she said.

“Lawful isn’t necessarily the same thing as invited.”

“You’re a police officer.”

“Magic has never shown much interest in my employment status.”

“Does it have to be the homeowner?”

“I don’t know.”

“Any resident?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does it have to be voluntary?”

“I don’t know.”

She stared at him.

“You’ve been a vampire for over a century.”

“And strangely enough, nobody provided a handbook.”

A stair creaked.

Elias’s humour vanished.

First step.

The armed man was descending.

The frightened person downstairs whispered something.

Elias couldn’t quite make out the words.

Then he could.

“Please.”

His eyes fixed on the doorway.

That changed nothing.

Or perhaps it changed everything.

Was that an invitation?

No.

An appeal wasn’t permission to enter.

Probably.

Christ.

“Could I invite you?” Patel asked.

“You don’t live here.”

“What if I enter first?”

“No.”

“What if we arrest the occupant?”

“No idea.”

“What if—”

“Sergeant.”

She stopped.

“He’s halfway down the stairs.”

Silence settled beneath the porch.

At least, silence as far as the humans were concerned.

To Elias the house was deafening.

Heartbeats.

Breathing.

Wood flexing beneath weight.

Rain tapping against glass.

A finger shifting against metal.

The warrant trembled slightly in his hand.

The law said he could enter.

The occupant did not have the right to refuse them entry. That right had been overridden by the court.

Therefore no permission was required.

But perhaps that wasn’t the same as permission being granted.

Perhaps ancient magic recognised ownership rather than law.

Perhaps it recognised occupancy.

Perhaps it recognised intent.

Perhaps the moment Elias tried to cross that line, the old invisible barrier would stop him dead while a man with a gun reached the kitchen.

Or perhaps the warrant was enough.

There was only one way to find out.

Elias stepped forward.

His shoe reached the threshold.

Every instinct accumulated across more than a century told him to stop.

This was someone’s home.

He had not been invited.

He pushed his foot forward.

Nothing stopped it.

The sole of his shoe landed on the patterned tile.

Elias froze.

For one absurd moment, despite everything happening around him, he simply stared down at his own foot.

He moved the other one.

Across.

Nothing.

No resistance.

No invisible wall.

He was standing inside.

His gaze dropped slowly to the crumpled warrant.

Apparently the supernatural forces governing vampiric invitation recognised judicial authority.

“Good to know,” he murmured.

“What?”

Elias’s head snapped upwards.

The heartbeat on the stairs stopped.

So did the footsteps.

The man had heard them.

Then came the unmistakable sound of a weapon being raised.

Elias was already moving.

“Gun!”

Patel followed him through the doorway.

Behind them, another officer shouted a warning.

Elias barely heard it.

The hallway stretched ahead in perfect clarity despite the dim light. He saw the minute movement of a shadow across the upper landing. Smelled fresh sweat. Heard the man’s heart hammering now that whatever calm he’d possessed had disappeared.

Elias reached the foot of the stairs.

A voice shouted from above.

“You can’t come in here without my permission!”

Elias looked up.

For the first time that evening, he smiled.

In one hand he held his warrant.

With the other, he reached for his cuffs.

“Apparently,” he said, starting up the stairs, “I can.”