What Dawn Demands

by Clara Coulson

  Odette leaned back against her worn chair and sighed. “That sucks. But if that’s the way it’s got to be, then let’s get started.”

  Indira rolled her chair away from the table. “I’ll go grab our best scryers and brief them on the plan while the dhampir is finishing his sketches.”

  Odette followed her lead. “I’ll call in all the raid teams who aren’t strategically vital to the civilian locations we’re protecting, and get everyone up to speed, healed from whatever injuries they’ve sustained, and re-equipped with everything from our armory they can carry.”

  “I’ll do the same for the emergency defense teams,” Granger added.

  “And I’ll corral the strike teams,” Mallory said.

  Christie shot me a tired smile. “Can’t do too much in the combat department, but I’ll stay on top of the Network news and let you know the instant there’s any important change in the overall situation that might impact the plan.”

  “I can do much in the magic department,” said Tori. “I’ll supply the teams with as many useful potions as I can produce before they deploy.”

  “And I’ll do whatever you need me to do.” O’Shea punched me softly in the arm. “Are we light on personnel anywhere?”

  “You can help me organize and distribute the stuff in the armory,” Odette offered. “It’s going to be a madhouse in there as we’re prepping for the run, and the whole room was left a disaster zone when we rushed out to engage the vamps earlier.”

  I nodded to O’Shea. “Sounds like the perfect job for you.”

  “That it does.” He stood up slowly, minding his half-healed head wound. “I won’t let anyone leave this building ill equipped. You have my word on that. Don’t care if I have to build the damn equipment myself.”

  “All right.” I surveyed the room. “Everyone clear on what we need to do to save our city?”

  “Yes, sir!” all my Watchdogs shouted.

  They cleared the room in a loud yet somehow orderly stampede.

  With a chair now free, Drake moved from the floor to the table, drawing furiously even while he was in motion. He finished the first sketch in under three minutes and smacked it on the tabletop in front of me, then immediately began a second. I pressed a finger to the faded printer paper and dragged it closer, marveling over the hundreds of thin graphite strokes that together had created the face of a young white woman with a short curly bob and a heavily freckled face.

  In her human life, I imagined her large, round eyes had given her an innocent and curious look. But as a vampire, those eyes were hard and cruel, a transformation the sketch had captured with enough accuracy to make me pity the poor woman.

  Drake had severely undersold his skills; he made a damn good portrait artist.

  “That’s Pam,” Drake said unprompted, glancing at the image of the callous vampire. “She acts as Vianu’s assistant, and he delegates important tasks to her whenever he’s particularly busy. I expect she’ll be out in the city, periodically modifying the attack strategies of the younger fledglings to help them enact maximum chaos, while Vianu himself commands all the vamps hanging around the staging area.”

  Orlagh leaned over my shoulder to get a good look at the sketch. “How strong is she?”

  “About as strong as a six-month-old vampire can be, and smart to boot,” Drake replied as he finished shaping the strong jaw of an older, dark-skinned man. “Vianu usually prefers to be the smartest guy in the room and surround himself with dumb, loyal bruisers. But he hasn’t had the opportunity to mold his fledgling brood to that degree because he’s been so focused on expanding vampire influence throughout the city’s commercial backchannels. So for once, he actually has competent people running the show in his absence.”

  “Which ironically works out better for him,” Boyle muttered.

  “Sharp as a whip or dumb as a rock, we can take her.” Orlagh peeked at the unfinished second sketch. “We can take any of them. The real question is whether we can subdue one in a timely manner.”

  “After our scryers locate one of them, we can work out a tailored attack strategy,” I said, finally rising from my chair. “I know the layout of practically every neighborhood in this city. I’m confident I can come up with a quick and efficient strategy to grab and bag a single vampire target.”

  “Even while the city’s on fire?” Orlagh asked.

  “Especially while the city’s on fire. The limited visibility affects them as much as us, but I have the home-field advantage. All of Vianu’s oldest fledglings arrived in Kinsale as refugees shortly before they were turned during the zombie invasion. They might have learned how to navigate the city to a reasonable degree six months on, but there’s no way they know more about this city’s layout than I do. I can outthink them on terrain-based strategy anywhere in the city limits.”

  “Then I’ll defer to your expertise on matters of terrain.” Orlagh picked up the sketch of Pam, running her eyes over it again and again until the fine details stuck. She then passed it on to Boyle, who did the same before handing it off to the next sídhe in the line of dispassionate soldiers leaning against the wall.

  “Boyle and I will handle subduing the target,” Orlagh continued, “while the rest of my team will secure the general area and take down any vampires who attempt to thwart the abduction. Once we have the target in custody and shake off any pursuers, we’ll transport them to a building of your choice so you can perform the interrogation with Fragarach.”

  “How proficient are you with the blade’s magic?” Boyle said.

  “Moderately.” I picked up the sword and reattached it to my belt. “I worked with it for several weeks while Watchdog R&D was studying its properties in an attempt to reverse engineer some of the embedded spellwork. Operating the truth-seeking feature to full effect takes some practice. You have to accurately direct several spells simultaneously to achieve the desired impact on the target’s mind and body.”

  “How long does it take you, on average, to get the answer to a single question?” Orlagh said.

  “My best time is three minutes.” I wrapped my fingers around the hilt, sensing the dull pulse of ancient magic as the blade recognized a handler. “It’s been a few months since I last used the sword though, so I’d say five to seven minutes would be a safer estimate.”

  “We’ll factor that time requirement into our abduction strategy,” she started, “so when—”

  Indira swung back into the room. “Scryers are prepped and ready to start whenever you guys are. They’re in the dark room.”

  Everyone turned to Drake, who’d somehow banged out three more sketches in the time we hadn’t been paying attention to him. He raised a single finger and didn’t look up from the sketch he was currently fleshing out as he spoke, “Give me one more minute.”

  We gave him the minute. Then we set off.

  The dark room was exactly what the name implied: a room where the lights were kept off at all times and even the crack under the door was covered with a sheet of cardboard. The style of scrying favored by most human practitioners was best performed in total darkness, because it allowed them to block out the world around them so they could more clearly glean details from the ephemeral images that appeared in their scrying tins.

  Accordingly, us “outsiders”—the soldiers, Drake, Indira, and me—filed into the dark room while the nine scryers had their eyes covered with thick cloths. Only once the door was firmly shut behind us did anyone begin to speak.

  “How many different vampires are we searching for?” asked Larissa Montcalm, an older witch with a weathered face and gray, wispy hair. She was pushing eighty and confined full time to a wheelchair due to back injuries she’d suffered during the purge, but her mind was as spry as a teenager’s and her magic had only strengthened with age. She was by far the best scryer we had on staff, and she taught a class on scrying, tracking, and tracing that was rumored to be as tough on the soul as Odette’s combat course.

  “Five,” I answered as I walked o
ver and handed her Drake’s sketches. “Any of them should be able to provide the information we need.”

  “And you’re certain none of them are practitioners?” she asked.

  Drake replied, “A hundred percent.”

  One of the youngest scryers, an eighteen-year-old named Sandra, murmured, “I really don’t understand why we can’t just scry the vampire lord.”

  Larissa shot the girl a harsh glare. “Because we don’t want to have our minds ripped to shreds and end up vegetables for the rest of our lives.”

  Sandra’s lips slowly parted in horror. “That wouldn’t really happen, would it?”

  “It absolutely would if you tripped an anti-scrying ward interwoven with psychic recoil traps.” Larissa smacked the stack of sketches against her lap. “And I’d bet every second of life I have left on this Earth that an elder vampire as devious as this man who’s invaded our city girds himself with such wards every minute of every day. Vampire practitioners of his caliber are not fools, child, and if you naïvely disturb any one of his curses, you will end up in far worse shape than me.”

  She jammed her elbow into the back cushion of her chair. “So you will do this the safe way, exactly as I instruct, or you will leave this circle in shame. Understand?”

  Sandra hung her head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Then let us begin.” Larissa handed each of the sketches out to a different pair of scryers. Each scryer pressed their assigned sketch to their forehead for a few seconds, using a complex memorization spell to scan every last detail into their brains.

  Once everyone had the face of their target firmly centered, the scryers placed their hands on the sides of their tins—which were actually just cheap cookie sheets that had been scavenged from an old Walmart—and stared into the shallow film of water lining the bottoms. So as to not disturb their neighbors, the scryers invoked their spells mentally, and one by one, the scrying tins began to faintly glow.

  Larissa quietly wheeled herself around the circle of scryers as they worked, occasionally correcting someone’s posture or the position of their hands to improve their spell’s efficacy. She was so skilled a witch herself that she could tap into someone else’s scrying spell and piggyback on their virtual journey around the city to double-check their results and ensure they didn’t miss any important findings—all without disturbing the deep state of concentration necessary to sustain the spell.

  As she completed the first revolution around the circle, she held up her hand toward me, three fingers raised. She was estimating three minutes, tops, until one of the scryers got a hit.

  All of us non-scryers hung back near the wall, the tension in the air around us thickening by the second. We weren’t—

  “I’ve got her!” Sandra suddenly shouted, startling the rest of the circle.

  Larissa opened her mouth to chastise the girl, but Sandra kept talking.

  “The vampire with the freckles and the bob cut,” she said, “is on the first floor of the old Barlow Bank building on the corner of Lexington and Rogers.”

  Larissa moved closer to Sandra. “What’s she doing?”

  “Um, her words are kind of muffled”—Sandra worried her lip—“but it sounds like she’s telling the other three vampires in the room to go set Park High School on fire…in order to distract the dullahan who just entered the neighborhood…so that the rest of the vampires in the area can disperse before the horsemen spot them.”

  Larissa took a moment to dip into Sandra’s spell for confirmation of the details, then looked to me. “Seems like this target is liable to flee the bank before you arrive on scene. We may be able to track her in real time, but it depends on how fast she moves. Vampires are so quick that tracking spells often lose them.” She wrung her hands in her lap. “Alternatively, we could wait to get a hit on a different target.”

  Orlagh stepped away from the wall and rolled her shoulders back. “No, we’ll take this one. And we will arrive in time to catch her.” She gave Larissa a respectful nod. “Thank you for your assistance.”

  “You’re very welcome,” Larissa replied. “And I do hope you make the best of it, as I would really love to see these vampires burn as much as they’ve burned our city.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Eight people set off from the steps of the library—me, a dhampir, and six sídhe—determined to do a very dangerous thing: capture a vampire alive.

  Orlagh propelled us across town in a spherical whirlwind, the expanse of the crumbling city of Kinsale rocketing past beneath our feet. Screams punctuated the groans of the innumerable fires, as mundane humans caught unaware fought battles with monsters they could not win. Magic flared here and there, lighting up the dark morning in vivid colors, witches and wizards and half-fae working side by side to defend their homes and neighbors. Blankets of smoke smothered dozens of neighborhoods, and though the spread was much more contained than the smoke from the zombie invasion, I knew the haze was hiding bodies along with broken dreams.

  Innocent people had lost their lives and were still losing them, to smoke inhalation and searing heat and sharp fangs. New homes built in the ashes of their ancestors were burning down all over again. And when the smoke cleared—assuming it did, assuming we’d have the chance to quash the flames, assuming we weren’t all forced to flee into the stretches to evade the unstoppable carnage of the Hunt—the same survivors who’d shambled, bloody and broken, out of the wreckage of the purge, the war, the collapse, and all that had come after, would once again be forced to walk over the ashes of their world.

  I am so goddamn tired, I thought as the whirlwind bubble arced down toward Lexington Street, of soulless monsters stripping hope from people who already have too little.

  We landed on the rooftop of a three-story office building. I broke from the group and skirted along the north side of the roof until I spotted a few familiar landmarks that marked the way to the intersection with Rogers Road three blocks down. I waved the sídhe over and pointed out the most direct path to Barlow Bank, along with four alternate routes they could use to approach the bank’s blind spots and block off all of Pam’s possible exits.

  Orlagh assigned four of her soldiers to the various routes, and said to me, “Anything else we should know?”

  I rubbed my hands together as I recalled all my memories of the bank. It had been the better part of a decade since I’d stepped foot inside the building. But my last visit had been part of an investigation into the murder of a security guard during a heist gone wrong, so I’d been paying a great deal of attention to the building’s layout. “There’s roof access from the service stairwell,” I said, “so if you choke the ground floor and basement exits, our friend Pam may try to bail up the stairs and take a running jump to a neighboring rooftop.”

  Orlagh glanced to Boyle, who said, “I will ensure she does not make it off the roof.”

  “Good.” She made eye contact with each of her soldiers in turn, gaining their collective attention. “In ninety seconds, I will make a noisy charge at the front door of the bank, scattering the vamps inside toward their preferred exits. As soon as you hear my attack, prepare yourself for any number of vamps to come running toward your position, and stop them in their tracks. You may kill any vampire that is not ‘Pam,’ and you may injure Pam in any way that does not cause her to lose consciousness or inhibit her ability to speak. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they all replied.

  “Then take your positions.”

  Four of the soldiers loped off the building without hesitation, disappearing into the haze of smoke clinging to the street below. Boyle hung back a moment longer and passed a silent message to Orlagh with a fleeting smile and a mock salute. Before he finally took a running leap off the edge of the roof, sailing over the street and landing on the opposing rooftop with all the grace of a cat, silent and agile despite his large build. As he padded across the awkwardly slanting roof, the smoke enveloped him as well. His form gradually dissolved into an indistinct silhouette,
until we lost sight of him entirely.

  Orlagh strode to the ledge from which the other soldiers had jumped, but didn’t descend immediately. She tapped her finger against her thigh to keep her countdown on track while she asked me, “You said you’d be setting up on the second floor, correct?”

  “Yes.” I motioned to the stairwell door to my right. “This was a multi-business office space back in the day, and the second floor hosted almost a dozen small companies. If anyone tries to come rescue Pam during our interrogation, the complex layout of the second floor will slow their search, and make it much harder for them to maneuver away from any powerful attacks if they do stumble upon us.”

  “Sounds sensible.” She placed one foot on the edge of the roof. “Where do you want us to meet you with the package?”

  “We’ll find a good room for the interrogation while you’re busy grabbing the ‘package,’ and then wait for you near the elevators on the south side.”

  “Noted.” She tipped herself forward and began to fall. “You should expect us to return in three minutes—or less.”

  Orlagh dropped three stories straight down. I didn’t hear her land.

  I jogged over to the stairwell door, Drake on my heels, and kicked it open, shattering the rusty lock and doorknob. The stairwell was pitch black, but neither Drake nor I had issues seeing in the dark. So we hustled down to the second floor landing, peeked out the dusty windows of the double doors to make sure we had no company, and exited into a claustrophobic maze of office spaces partitioned by thin sheets of drywall.

  An ideal candidate for the interrogation room caught my eye before we’d walked ten feet, and I made a beeline for the old dentist’s office with the cracked glass entry doors. Past the reception desk were several rooms that contained sturdy dental chairs and had no windows.

  “This is perfect,” I whispered to Drake, who’d stopped just behind me.

  He raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to interrogate somebody in a dentist’s office? That sounds like a bad horror movie.”