by S T Branton
“I think…” He chanced a look at the demon, who stared impassively through his dark lenses. “No, you’re right. We should be able to do this.”
Brax still said nothing, his arms folded across his chest. He stood square and tall, unmoving. The charcoal-colored brands peeked out from beneath the edges of his clothes.
”Good,” I said. “We need this to happen, and we need it now. I can’t have a bunch of untrained civilians simply sitting wherever we put them. We might as well wrap them up with a bow and hand them over to the Forgotten.”
Dan grunted and stepped back. “All right. Desperate times call for desperate measures.” Then he said, “But I won’t sacrifice anyone’s well-being for any reason.”
“There will be no sacrifice,” I decreed. “Make this work. We’re depending on you.”
Solemnly, he agreed. He set his jaw and gestured for Brax to follow him. “Come on. I’ll show you what we’ve got in terms of weapons.”
I waited for the odd pair to walk off together in stony silence, unsure if that particular strategy would be the best idea in the long run. It was at least where I thought Brax would be most useful, and Dan’s expertise in that area couldn’t be denied. I hoped his humanity would counterbalance Brax’s ruthless nature. I trusted them to be professionals about it.
“That’s a powder keg waiting to blow,” Deacon observed helpfully.
I shot him a look. “Can it, Captain Obvious. I’m sending you and Jules on the supply run. Go in and help Veronica put the rations together. That’ll give you a good idea of what we need. Jules, you focus on the medical supplies for now, since Maya’s not here. With any luck, we’ll be moving as soon as she gets back, so only worry about the essentials this time. Once we get settled, we can do another run.”
Deacon gave me a mock salute. “Aye aye, Captain.” He laughed a little as I scowled at him.
“Get going, St. Clare,” I said. “It’s a good thing I’ve got Jules to keep an eye on you.”
He had barely turned his back to duck into the tent after Veronica when a bizarre wheezing sound struck my ears. “What the hell is that?” We both glanced over our shoulders, only to be shocked by a rotund vision in a shabby suit and a somewhat mangled hat. “Franki.”
“Hey, kid.” The mobster coughed hard, pounded on his chest, and spat a wad of something disgusting into the leaves near his feet. He bent at the waist, one giant hand on his knee. “Gimme a sec. I’m dyin’ here. Or I would be if I still could.”
“What’s wrong?” I closed the distance between us fast. “And where the fuck have you been? No one’s seen you since you dipped out on Maya back at Madison Square Garden.”
He finished hacking and drew a hand across his lips. “I didn’t ‘dip out’ on her, all right? I got lost in the shuffle. Sue me. I’m here now, ain’t I?” His brow furrowed and rheumy eyes darkened. “Anyway, look. We got a problem.”
“It’s never good news with you, is it?” I pinched the bridge of my nose, feeling another headache brewing. “What kind of problem?”
Frank’s expression didn’t change. “A dead one.”
Chapter Five
“What’s going on?” Veronica’s red head popped out of the tent, followed by the rest of her lithe, lanky form. “Who’s doing all that horrible coughing?”
I pointed to Frank, who raised his hand sheepishly.
“Secondhand smoke,” he croaked. “I’m not sick, lady. I swear it. I’m not sure I can get sick anymore.”
I clapped a hand on Frank’s beefy shoulder. “He’s good. He’s with us.”
The doubt still clouded Veronica’s eyes, but she didn’t challenge my assertion.
“Come on,” he told me insistently. “We ain’t got all day. You’re gonna want to see this, kiddo. Trust me.”
“Great,” I mumbled. “I hate it already.” I motioned to Deacon and Steph. They exchanged a look and stepped after us without a word.
A dead problem meant a dead body, which in turn told me that the gods were most likely out and about. Frank wouldn’t have been so jazzed-up otherwise. It bothered me that they’d killed right under my nose. They were getting bolder, and I needed to pay more attention.
The mobster led us to a spot on the outskirts of camp demarcated by a single small tent. We moved into the forest for a few dozen yards, and Frank stopped short. I saw the shoes before I saw anything else—brown loafers ill-suited for the outdoors. The body lay on its back, the arms flung out to the sides. The face was young and male and extremely, inhumanly pale.
“Oh, fuck,” Veronica whispered. “It’s Everett.”
“Do you know him?” I asked. The kid couldn’t have been more than twenty-one, his face sheathed in a combination of patchy stubble and acne scars. His eyes, pale and clouded, were wide open.
“Not well. I got to know him a little over the past…however long we’ve been traveling.” A sorrowful expression spread across her face. “Nice kid. Really nice kid.”
Steph stepped forward, knelt beside the corpse, and examined the upper body carefully. As she turned Everett’s head to the side, I caught a glimpse of deep purple bruising all around his neck and along the opposite side of his face. Someone had evidently beaten the snot out of him before he died.
“Puncture wounds,” she announced. “And not only two. Lots of them.” She pointed to the kid’s neck, throat, shoulders, and arm and studied his paper-white skin. “There’s no blood here. He’s been drained. Whoever did this to him didn’t have to. See this here?” She gestured to a certain distinctive pattern of bruising on either side of the throat. “It looks like he died from manual strangulation. They didn’t have to beat the shit out of him first if they intended to choke him anyway. But they did it because they wanted to. I think they liked it.”
Veronica made a disgusted sound. “This is sick.” Her eyes drifted to Frank, full of undisguised suspicion.
“Don’t look at me like that.” He hunkered down at a safe distance from her. “I may be a freak, but I ain’t a killer.”
“It’s true,” Deacon said. “At least this time. It doesn’t look like a typical vampire kill.”
“Never thought I’d hear the words ‘typical’ and ‘vampire’ in the same sentence,” I muttered. “But what’s with draining the blood? That’s some pretty vampy shit.”
Vampires are not the only Forgotten who drain their prey. Others require blood to sustain life, though I would say few are so gleefully malicious in their unsavory deeds.
Before she stood, Steph closed Everett’s eyes—a touching gesture for someone normally so cold. “Is there a family?” she asked Veronica. “If so, they should be notified right away before the rumor mill starts to churn. No worse way to find out about a death than through the grapevine.”
“I don’t know,” the other woman responded. She was transfixed by the youth’s ghastly white face. “I’ll find out. I can’t believe this happened.”
“Find out as much about him as you can,” Deacon instructed. “We can’t rule out anything yet. Yeah, it looks like something supernatural, but I’d still like to know if he feuded with anyone, if he had enemies, and if someone was pissed off enough to want him dead. It could be some jackass trying to use the current situation to their advantage so they can get away with murder.”
Veronica tugged grimly on her ponytail. “I really hope that’s not the case. I’d like to think all these people are trustworthy.”
“So would I.” Deacon motioned toward the body. “And yet, here we are.”
As Veronica darted back to the teepee in the clearing, I moved beside Deacon, taking my own closer look at the unfortunate young man. If it weren’t for the pallor of his skin, I might not have noticed that he’d been bitten at all. The dark marks on his neck concealing the puncture holes. His shirt and jacket were torn in places, suggesting that the wounds had been inflicted through them.
“What was he doing out here?” I wondered out loud.
“My guess? Taking a leak.” De
acon nodded toward the tent at the edge of the woods. “I’d bet that’s his tent over there, and he was out here to take one last piss before turning in.”
“It’s too bad Maya left,” Steph said. “She might’ve been able to draw some better conclusions. High marks in forensics and crime scene investigation won’t make up for actual medical training.”
“Well, she’s a vet. But you’re right. She’d be leagues ahead of any of us.” I was most disturbed by the distance of the corpse from the rest of the campsite—or rather, the lack thereof. “Why was this thing so close? That’s what I want to know.”
The Forgotten can be excellent at hiding in plain sight. We will need to be extra vigilant until we get to the bottom of this.
The hair stood up on the back of my neck. I didn’t like the sensation of being watched, or the feeling of the rug pulled out from under my feet. It had been a long time since I’d been caught off guard like this. I had gotten used to a certain predictability in the gods’ behavior. They’d show up somewhere, and I’d go there and Gladius Solis them to death. It had worked every time so far.
Suddenly, someone unseen had struck close to home, and apparently without warning. No one even really knew what happened to Everett yet. I didn’t want to imagine what awful damage this news would inflict upon morale.
“We have to keep this on the down-low,” Deacon said, eerily in sync with my thoughts. “It’ll be impossible to keep it from getting out entirely, but if anyone asks, it was an accident, right? No details. People will lose their shit if they think they’re hunted.”
“Jeezum Crow.” Frank mopped his forehead with his sleeve. His eyes almost popped out of his head. I noticed that when he was stressed, a map of veins stood out beneath his clammy skin. It was a little gross.
“Relax,” I said. “We have nothing to do with this, so we have nothing to hide. Our job is to find this murdering sack of shit and wipe him off the face of the planet. You dig?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed hard, nodding his head so vigorously I thought it’d pop off. “I got it.”
“All right. We’re cool.” I patted his hefty shoulder. “Promise me one thing, Frank. Whatever you do, don’t go vamp. No matter what happens or what anyone says. Don’t go vamp.”
“You don’t have to tell me twice.” He shoved his hands in his pockets.
It appears the game has changed, Marcus commented. This is an interesting move by the enemy. Be sure to keep your guard up at all times, Victoria. The Forgotten have eyes in the strangest places. They may be watching.
Another shiver ran up the back of my neck. “Let’s go,” I said. “Frank, keep your head down.” We left Everett’s body where it lay in the woods and walked in silence back to the heart of camp. Veronica flitted among the camp’s residents, prodding as vaguely as she could for information. All anyone knew was that the kid had been missing since the night before, that he had walked out of his tent and not come back.
No one had seen or heard a single thing, yet Everett lay dead just inside the tree line, his body riddled with wounds.
After Veronica had gathered as much intel as she could, Deacon and I headed back to that lonely little tent to retrieve the body. We wrapped him in his sleeping bag, picked him up between us, and carried him deeper into the trees. Then, we took turns. One of us stood watch while the other dug the boy’s grave. Deacon was the one who buried him.
When he was done, he stuck the shovel down into the earth and said, “Damn.”
“It’ll be better from here, right?” Every single one of my senses was on overdrive, listening for any sound and looking for any flash of a shape, a shadow, or a color from the corner of my eye. Nothing could be trusted now that a boy had been plucked from among us. “It has to get better.”
He put an arm around my shoulders. “I hope so, Vic,” he said. “But something tells me we haven’t hit rock bottom yet.”
Chapter Six
I lay sandwiched between two blankets, staring up at the clear, dark-blue night sky. Every time I moved, the leaves under my back made a sound like a crackling fire, but it didn’t matter—I couldn’t sleep anyway. My breath puffed out like smoke with every exhale. The tip of my nose was numb from the cold. A tent would’ve provided at least a little insulation, except that whenever I looked at one, I thought of Everett’s standing open and empty.
“Dammit,” I muttered, peeled back the top blanket, and sat up. “I have got to get a grip.” I sat there for a few minutes and hugged myself to coax the warmth back into my core. After a few minutes. I shoved the cover off my feet and got up.
My joints creaked in the silence. A shiver ran through my body. We were nowhere near the official onset of winter, but it sure as hell felt like snow was just around the corner.
“I hope Maya gets back soon.” The thought of her wandering the forests and fields alone in these temperatures was kind of depressing until I remembered that she had a fur coat. I chuckled. “She’s probably doing better than any of us right now.”
The air was cold even in my lungs, filling the space in my chest. I stepped away from my improvised bed and toward the edge of the camp clearing. Maybe a good old-fashioned patrol would tire me out and help me get my head on straight. I felt a little antsy, even a little haunted. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a little midnight jaunt. Patting my hip to make sure the Gladius Solis rested safely in its sheath, I let my feet carry me into the trees. As long as I had my sword, I was good to go toe to toe with anything that might come out of the deepest shadows.
Including whatever had killed Everett. Especially whatever had killed him.
But the woods along the Delaware Water Gap were all but deserted. The only sounds came from my own footsteps shuffling through the groundcover and the constantly rushing river beyond the forest. Thin slants of moonlight pierced down through the patchy canopy. It was peaceful out there and beautiful, if a little eerie. The taut spring in the back of my mind began to unwind.
I looped around the far perimeter and started the trek back toward the vague silhouette of the central teepee. Someone stood out in front of it, and as I drew closer, my heart jumped into my throat. I had the sword hilt in hand, ready to come alive, by the time I realized it was Brax, clad in his trademark coat and glasses, standing guard.
He nodded my way when I came within earshot. “Hey.” Noting the sword, a smile hovered over his lips. “Did I scare you?”
“Not any more than usual,” I shot back. Lame but still better than saying yes. “Do you ever sleep or what?”
The demon chuckled grimly. “I did a lot of sleeping in Asphodel,” he said. “Best thing to do if you can find a safe enough place. Nothing kills time faster than unconsciousness. I guess I used it all up.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works, but I’ll take your word for it.” I kicked a clear space in the dry leaves with my foot. “Mind if I hang out for a while? Sandman stood me up tonight.”
Brax shrugged. “Be my guest.” He said nothing while I sat, but I could almost feel him take notice as I slipped the medallion chain over my head and slid it into a pocket of my coat. The metal was freezing on my skin, and I suspected Marcus would only have snarky things to say about this chance meeting anyway. He might be annoyed once I put him back on, but whatever. He was cute when he pouted.
“You know he doesn’t have any clue about what really happened last time? Brax moved a little closer so he could lower his voice. “He wasn’t there. He has no right to dispense facts.”
“Marcus isn’t a liar, Brax,” I said. Now I was very glad I’d taken the chain off. No doubt, the centurion would be chewing my ear off about my companion’s flagrant disrespect otherwise.
“I didn’t say he was lying. Only that he knows a lot less than he thinks he does about this stuff.” The demon peered into the distance, his facial expression hidden behind the impenetrable façade of his shades. “I suppose I should say he only really saw one side—what he considers to be the good side. I always found it
amazing how guys like him could work themselves into such a righteous fury. There was nothing righteous about it.” His face darkened. “Those guys were cowards, in the end. They thought they understood and that they were unquestionably in the right. History would bear out the justice of their actions. But the truth of it is, every fucking one of them was a coward or traitor. And we died in droves because of the choices they made.”
I locked my arms around my knees and tried not to seem overly interested for fear it would stop him from talking. I’d never heard him so voluble, and certainly not about his past. Learning anything about what Brax knew was usually like pulling teeth.
“I won’t judge you if you tell me more,” I said. “I promise.”
“Yes, you will.” He sighed. “It’s in your nature, but I’ll tell you anyway. Maybe you’ll learn something. Long story short, most of the humans who were here in the old days refused to join us when we mounted our rebellion against the gods. The Marked began as slaves, you see, specifically crafted to serve the gods’ every whim. We were made to be compliant, controllable. We were, for a time.
“But the injustice was too much to sweep under the rug forever. We were treated worse than dirt by most of those entitled jackasses, and as far as I’m concerned, the vast majority turned a blind eye. It was abundantly clear that our lives weren’t worth half as much as the dirt beneath our feet. Resentment festered in the hearts of my people and concentrated on those who caused us so much suffering and those who overlooked it. When the idea of rebellion first made its way through our ranks, we had some hope that the humans might help us out. The gods were a shared enemy between us, after all.
“We were wrong. Many humans, as I’ve said, removed themselves entirely, too weak or too frightened to stand against their oppressors. The ones who chose to fight threw their lots in with the gods instead. They assumed that since we were nothing but a slave race, a pet project, our inherent weakness gave us no chance. But they forgot that the gods wanted nothing if it wasn’t the best. We were strong, and we were many.” He trailed off. “That’s what we thought, anyway. In the end, the gods were mightier. They called it proof of their mastery over us as they threw us from their realm.”