by Tanith Frost
This morning, just before we all piled into the van that would bring us to the Twillingate Islands, the vampire beside me introduced herself as Padma. Sleeping the day away while a human drove us up here didn’t leave much time for talking, but I’ve picked up a few things about each of my new co-workers. Padma’s a club enforcer—a bouncer on the surface, but one with skills that go beyond an intimidating presence and the strength to turf troublemakers. To rise through the ranks of a job like hers, a vampire needs to be able to manipulate human minds to erase memories so we can rid ourselves of stock who become problematic. Every team that hit the road this morning has a vampire like her.
Technically ours has two who could get the job done, but Daniel hasn’t made his gift public knowledge or been trained to use it that way.
I’m keeping my own gifts quiet, too. Not only is my affinity for non-void powers useless in this hunt, but it threatens to be a stumbling block. The atmosphere of these islands off the northern coast of Newfoundland is soaked in magic. I thought I’d acclimated quite a bit since last night, but its presence here was enough to wake me from my sleep when we arrived.
I think I can handle it as long as I don’t think about it too much and accidentally draw it to myself.
Boris is in the driver’s seat, hands at ten and two. He’s a big guy with a shaved head and a twitchy sort of energy about him that makes for an odd fit with his day job where he’s involved with clan finances. It’s vampires like him who keep us afloat, making investments, watching human stock markets, deciding which pies it would be best to get our metaphorical fingers into, and covering our tracks so nothing ever seems amiss if curious humans ever try to follow our paper trail. Boris works on the investment end—he told me he gets hunches that always pay off.
“Where are you, you fuckers?” he mutters. Boris is beyond eager to get out and bash some heads—his exact words. I guess having a quiet job leaves a vampire with a lot of unfulfilled hunting instincts, and he’s like a hound ready to run down a fox or two. He glances back at me. “You’re sure there were going to be some here?”
“That’s what the list said. Last I heard, things are still quiet almost everywhere. You’ll get your chance.”
I sound confident, but inside I’m cracking. Of the seven locations that were supposed to get zombies, only one had any turn up as of an hour ago. The team in Stephenville got off their plane late this afternoon and took down three of them, about a third of what they were scheduled to get. All we know so far is that the team had a harder fight than they expected, that breaking limbs will immobilize a zombie, and the only way to really stop them is to destroy their brains.
Looks like human imaginations got it close on that one.
I’m sure I’m not wrong about Lachlan’s plan, but it’s hard to feel truly confident when we have no idea what to expect next—when the zombies will appear or in what numbers, whether they’ll be accompanied by vampire handlers or just set loose, or how public their appearances will be.
All we can really hope for is that we’ll be able to keep the sightings quiet when they happen.
Goddamn Lachlan. We’re one step ahead of him, and we’re still stuck playing catch-up until he makes his next move.
The police radio crackles in Genevieve’s lap. “Twillingate, do you read?”
We all look at each other—even Boris unglues his eyes from the windshield for a moment. After a pause of a few seconds, the response comes. “Go ahead.”
“Caller requested an ambulance, said his wife saw an intruder in the backyard when she was outside. She came in upset, short of breath… No assault reported, but, uh… apparently she says she saw a man who looked like a monster.” The dispatcher sounds embarrassed to be repeating this detail. Boris pulls into a parking lot and waits. “He didn’t get many details from her. Wife is in bad shape. Ambulance en route, and I told him I’d have police make a patrol to see whether this intruder is still around.”
“Ten-four, we’ll head over. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty by the time we get back. What’s the address?”
Genevieve listens and consults the atlas on her lap. “I wish we had Trent here to navigate,” she mutters. “Right, Boris. Follow the shore, then we’re turning left again.”
Trent would be handy, given his gifts. So would Lucille, for that matter—she could have had an idea about where the zombies were hiding out and led us straight to them with Trent’s navigational guidance. They were a good team. But Lucille is gone, the victim of a human’s wooden stake, and Miranda insisted that Trent remain back in town to keep his eye on things for her.
It’s still hard to believe Miranda’s out hunting zombies. It makes sense, though, in a way. She’s a fierce warrior and not the sort of leader who hangs back when it comes to a fight. I like that about her. That, and how she shut down objections from those who would have preferred that she lock herself away underground until things were safer.
No one seems to know which team she is on or where she was going. Wherever she is, I hope she’s having at least as much luck as we are now. If the intruder is what we’re looking for—and any stranger horrifying enough to give a woman a heart attack certainly sounds promising—we might just have time to get things squared away before the police show up.
The ambulance has beat us to the scene, though. We park down the street, well away from the flashing lights, and take our weapons from the trunk before we circle around to the rear of the house. It backs onto the ocean and sits a short distance away from its neighbours.
The interior of the bungalow is lit up from end to end, and open curtains give us a view of what’s happening inside. One of the paramedics is speaking to a man, likely in his eighties, who places a hand over his eyes. His shoulders shake.
“Better for us if she dies,” Padma says. It’s the first time she’s spoken since we got into the car.
She’s right. Better for us, and probably better for the woman, too, if she passes into whatever awaits humans after death without us having to alter her memories. That doesn’t always end well for the people involved.
“She will,” Boris says.
I turn to him. “Is that one of your hunches?”
“No. But if she makes it as far as the hospital, I guarantee we’ll find a way to pull the plug.”
There was a time when that thought would have made me uncomfortable, even angry. How times change, and us with it.
We space ourselves out, stepping on the rocks that litter the ground around the edge of the little yard, scuffing our footprints so they won’t stand out when the police drop by. They’ll be looking for them, as are we—and I spot a single set, unevenly spaced, as if whoever left them was staggering drunkenly over the dead grass. I point, the others nod, and we follow.
Despite my efforts, the magic here is putting me on edge more than I should be. My muscles are tense, not relaxed and ready as I’ve been trained to keep them when I’m preparing for a fight. My mind is racing—not the worst thing if it keeps me alert to the softest noises, but it means the distant ambulance lights are driving me to distraction, making me want to run back and smash them to make the overwhelming visual stimulation stop.
This area is teeming with other energies, too. It’s not quite like Bloody Bight, but it’s close, and the magic is stronger here. I’ll have to tell Chester it might be worth looking for another rift if we both survive all of this.
I motion for the others to slow. I’m not the team leader—that’s Daniel’s job as his department’s representative, but he’s made me a deputy of sorts while we’re out here without him. The others obey though Boris is leaning forward, woodcutter’s axe gripped tight in one hand, straining at his invisible leash.
At first, I don’t know what makes me stop. Then I hear the soft swish of a body passing through the longer grass and weeds on a bluff overlooking the water, silhouetted against the star-dotted sky. Genevieve and I hurry forward to get ahead of the creature and cut off any chance of it running toward town, then th
e four of us form a loose half-circle and move closer, trapping it between us and the ocean.
A gust of wind carries the putrid scent of spoiling meat. The zombie turns and groans at us, then snarls. I still don’t know how they feel about humans, but they definitely hate vampires, and they don’t seem to fear anything. There are four of us, though, and only one of him. He backs a few paces toward the bluff, stumbling and catching himself once before he comes to a stop at the edge.
And then he screams, loud enough that it’s going to catch the attention of any humans who might be out on this cold night. Humans like the police… who will also certainly notice blood and brain matter if they come out this far.
I grit my teeth and run at it. Though I have a dagger in each hand, I’m not aiming to wound. Not yet, anyway. I duck low, under the reach of grasping hands with fingers curved into false claws, and hit the creature’s stomach with my shoulder, using my momentum to topple it over the edge. The zombie’s angry scream cuts off sharply when we hit the ground below. A few metres in either direction and we might have hit the sharp rocks that jut up from the ground and broken the zombie’s back, but we’ve managed to land on a little beach covered in flat pebbles and washed-up fish bones. The zombie seems dazed, but only for a moment. He’s on his feet as quickly as I am.
Boris drops down, followed by the others, his eyes alight as he raises his axe. I’m expecting him to swing for the head as we’ve been instructed, but his first blow hits the zombie in the chest with a wet thunk, followed by a sickening squelch as he pulls it free from cracked ribs and ruined lungs. The zombie tries to scream again, but no sound comes out. It turns on Boris, who grins as he takes one of its arms almost clean off with one blow.
“Boris,” I say as loudly as I dare. “The head!”
“This is research,” he says without looking at me and sweeps the zombie’s legs out from under it, cracking bone with the back of the axe head. “The D.U.R. wants details, remember?”
“They also want bodies,” Padma says. She hoists the heavy mallet she’s carrying to her shoulder and stalks toward the writhing zombie. “And we want to get out of here.”
Boris seems about to argue when another zombie appears, scrambling over the rocks behind him. Before I can call out a warning, he launches himself at Boris and lands on his back, clinging to his shoulders, fingers clawing at his throat.
Padma finishes off the first zombie, caving its head in with one blow, as Genevieve and I race toward Boris. Genevieve is closer. “Drop!” she orders, and Boris collapses to the ground, both hands covering the back of his neck. Genevieve bends and gets one hand between Boris and the zombie. It releases surprisingly quickly—surprisingly, at least, until I see that she’s driven the long, thin knife she was carrying into its ribcage.
Genevieve cries out as though she’s in pain and turns away.
“I’m on it,” Padma calls, and brings her mallet down. The zombie is already rising, and the blow strikes its shoulder rather than its head. I dart in and pin it to the ground before it can roll away, and the next blow finishes it.
Almost. The zombie is still moving, limbs twitching as if it’s trying to get up but without any real purpose or aggression.
I turn on Boris, who’s already back on his feet. “Do you think this is some kind of sport?” I’m not trying to hide my anger. “We’re not hunting for pleasure, here.”
To his credit, he seems shaken. “Sure,” he says. “I thought—”
“Did you?” I wipe my hands on my jeans as I look over the mess near his feet. The rotten stench is unnerving, knowing as I do how recently this pile of meat was walking around. “Let’s get this cleaned up before someone finds it.”
“I’ll get the bags,” Padma says.
“No, let me.” I walk away before she can argue. I need a minute to calm myself, or I’ll say something I’ll regret. It was stupid of Boris to play with his prey, but it’s not as big a deal as I’m making it out to be. He’s learned his lesson, and we can obviously trust him to jump into the fray when we need him. Not the kind of team member I want to alienate.
We need garbage bags. Blankets. Tarps. Duct tape. All of it’s in the trunk. But first, I need to talk to Genevieve. She’s standing at the edge of the water on a flat rock, utterly still, while the others look over the bodies.
“Hey. You okay?”
“I saw,” she says.
“What—their thoughts?”
She shakes her head. “They don’t have thoughts. Nothing you could call human, barely what you could call consciousness.”
“So what—”
She looks to me, eyes wet and troubled. “They don’t think. But they experience. They feel. All I caught was a storm of rage, fear, and pain. They feel injury, and I think they feel…” Her jaw tightens. “Death isn’t the same for them as it is for us. Their bodies don’t heal. Everything is pain even before we strike. They’re decomposing, Aviva. They don’t understand what’s happening to them, but they feel it.”
My stomach turns. It’s good news for us, really. Unless Tempest is making more of these monsters, they’ll all eventually become immobile even if we don’t hunt them down.
But God, the thought of how that must feel—muscle fibres loosening, pulling away from bone. Senses dulling. And this on top of the injuries some of them sustained at death, burns so bad their skin blackened.
I give Genevieve’s shoulder a quick squeeze. “All the more reason to finish this as quickly and efficiently as we can. That’s two down here. As far as I know, that leaves eleven more for us to find and put out of their misery before we move on.”
Genevieve wipes at her eyes with one thumb. “This is foolish. I shouldn’t have peeked. I don’t care, you know.”
“Of course not.” I look out over the water, giving her a moment to compose herself and cover the shame of what some might see as empathy for these creatures. “I imagine it’s just the shock of being in its head, right? It’ll wear off.”
She gives me a grateful smile and straightens her shoulders. “Of course that’s it. I just… you know, I don’t care for pain, however it comes to me. But I’m ready to keep hunting. For our sake, that is. Not theirs. We’ll be safer when they’re gone.”
I don’t know whether she’s trying to fool me or herself. It doesn’t matter. Whatever she needs to tell herself to get her through this is fine by me. We all have our secrets. Hers include falling in love with a human who was killed as punishment for Genevieve’s weakness.
She hides it well under her disdain for those below herself, but I suspect Genevieve didn’t learn her lesson as well as she wants everyone to think she did. Maybe somewhere, deep down, she still values humans as more than prey.
Someday, I’ll ask her whether that was a factor in her disagreements with Miranda or her decision to withdraw from vampire society. But not tonight.
I climb the bluff, pulling myself up by handfuls of dead grass, and pull my phone from my pocket as I loop around and head for the car. The paramedics are leaving the house now with a frail body on a stretcher, oxygen mask strapped to her face. They’re moving quickly, still trying to save her, but they don’t leave her husband looking hopeful as he stands on the porch and watches them go.
This one’s not our fault. I don’t feel guilty or even sad. Humans die, many of them far sooner than this one. I would know. At least she got to live a long life. Maybe she’ll even get to see her husband again when his time comes.
I could feel bitter about that—or rather, about the fact that I no longer have such hope. But I’ve seen where that leads. Lachlan is hell-bent on destroying the light that rejected us when we became vampires, and it led to the accidental creation of these dangerous, pitiable zombies. And I know from experience that such bitterness makes it a hell of a lot easier for a vampire to cause the pain we find so delectable and exciting when we taste it in humans. It makes it easy to hate them. We have so much that they don’t, but they have the one thing we can’t have, and the jea
lousy could drive me mad if I let it.
But it won’t change a damned thing. The light won’t embrace us no matter what we do, and we can’t hurt it as it hurts us. The hatred I felt in Tempest under the influence of pure void—the antithesis of light—felt good at the time. But as I watch the old man standing in his slippers with his bare hands gripping the porch railing, shoulders shaking with his sobs, it’s not what I want to choose.
I know I’m a monster, a creature of darkness, craving blood and pain. But hate doesn’t have to be my drug, and I don’t have to let bitterness become a prison.
“God bless you, old man,” I say softly, not caring whether it’s a slight against the void to invoke my old beliefs. Even if I can’t have something for myself, I can wish it for someone else.
I enter Daniel’s number in my phone.
“Two down,” I tell him when he answers and give a quick recap.
I’m almost back to the car when I hear Boris shout in the distance. Less than a second later, another cry comes from farther up the shoreline, human and terrified.
“We might need backup,” I tell Daniel. “Sounds like there are more. I’m leaving the others to deal with whatever’s down on that beach. Something else is going on down the road to the east.”
I hang up before he can tell me not to go alone and race toward the source of the noise as fast as my legs will carry me.
9
“Help! Oh, God, help!”
I hope this guy shuts up before someone besides me hears him. He’s far enough away from where the police will be searching for the first zombie that I’m not worried about them picking up his cries, but there could be others around, leaving Christmas parties or whatever else might bring them out on a night as cold as this.
The snow is coming down a little harder now, blowing in swirls of soft, heavy flakes that make it hard to see what lies ahead. I hit the edge of an embankment and jump down, heading toward the water again.