We built a fire, light carefully hidden from view, and settled in for bed. We might as well have skipped hiding the fire. The plants might have hidden our Ferin scents, but it wouldn’t hide the smell of smoke in such a pristine environment. The wispy column went skyward before dispersing above the canopy, which would give us some degree of anonymity unless we could be triangulated by scent.
We set up a schedule for watch shifts. I took the first watch since I was still so keyed up, and all the women went directly to sleep. In the absence of their company, the rainforest took on a far different tone. It wasn’t sinister, just busy and unknown, the air crowded with an array of noises I couldn’t hope to identify except for the obvious.
Overhead, bats squeaked as they swooped and dove through the heavy air, picking insects off with surgical precision. I wanted to cheer their efforts. The bugs had been after us all day, annoying but harmless to all of us but Lila. She had to use insect repellent, but she was used to it by now.
Below the flying mice, the big cats prowled. I couldn’t quite tell where most of them were. My hearing was better than any human’s, but this wasn’t my territory. It was theirs, and they were cats. It wasn’t for a human to know exactly where a cat was at any time, unless it wanted them to. As long as the cats kept their distance, I didn’t need to know any more than I already did. Our state of mutual disregard was good enough for me.
The monkeys were still active, too. I’d figured they would be diurnal. I was wrong. They were awake day and night. They never stopped. They were less active at this time of day than I’d expected, but occasionally I still heard one monkey or another calling out in sounds that ranged from gossipy to anger.
I was getting used to the way things were done as a Ferin, but some things still chafed. Satellite imagery was a thing. I knew three different guys from my old life who could have found the image for us, and at least one who would have done it. I couldn’t call them up and ask, though, because I wasn’t supposed to be alive anymore, and my presence was unofficial. I was not only supposed to be dead, but an enemy of most technology. While I nursed my wounded pride, my watch passed without event, and it was time for me to catch the sleep my body craved.
And we weren’t supposed to be leaving any paper trail, except for when we did. I was still trying to puzzle through that one.
My shift ended, and I retreated to my tent. It was a small tent, exactly enough room for me and my sleeping bag. It zipped on either end, and that was the sum total of my tent’s luxury features. I shimmied out of my clothes and got into the sleeping bag, trusting the space-age fabric to keep me safe from any parasites, bugs, or other critters of the jungle.
The zipper on the other end of my tent slowly opened.
My heart froze. I readied a blast of water to knock the intruder down, but whoever it was whispered, “Jason?”
It was Tess. “Yeah, Tess?” If she was going to whisper, I was going to whisper too.
“You asleep?”
“Not yet.”
“Come outside with me.”
I looked up at the ceiling of my tent. “I’m not wearing any clothes, Tess.”
“So?”
I shrugged, which made my sleeping bag sound like a bag of cats running around. Wincing at all the noise, I crept out into the rainforest as quietly as I could.
Tess and I sneaked off to another part of the clearing, a little out of view of Zarya, who was on watch. I didn’t think she was exactly ignorant of where we were or my state of undress, but she left us alone to focus on security.
“What’s going on?”
Tess shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. You?”
I sighed. “I didn’t have a chance to try, but I have no reason to think it would have been any better.” I rubbed my temples. “Finding that dead cop is throwing me for a little bit of a loop.”
“I can see that. We deal with death and destruction all the time. Sometimes we’re the ones dishing it out. When we find it out of context like that, it’s hard. I’m more than happy to wade into any bar fight or fight vampires for fun, but that guy was tortured. It was awful. I can just imagine what happened. I think that’s why I pushed back on Lila so much. I didn’t want it to be true.”
“I’m sure she knows.” I took Tess’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. “It’s a horrible thing to see. I’m sure she’s seen it a few times. She seemed to know what she was looking for.”
We stood back and leaned against a tree, watching the creek go by. I could have sworn I saw a caiman swim past, but it could have been a piece of driftwood too.
“I know what’ll get us both set to rights,” Tess said, a mischievous grin on her face. Then she dropped to her knees and took my cock into her mouth.
I was not prepared for that. We hadn’t talked about anything remotely sexual. We were just hanging around, watching the stream, and then—
—well, all my dreams came true under the canopy of a dripping rainforest. Typical stuff.
That said, she took me from zero to a hundred in less than a second. She was so talented, and her mouth was so impossibly warm that I couldn’t resist her. Not that I wanted to. I let my head loll back and gave myself wholly over to pleasure.
Tess sucked with enthusiasm, vigor, and skill. She knew every place I wanted to be teased, from tip to root and everywhere in between. It was like she had a map of all my most sensitive places, and tonight she hit them all in sequence with her lips and whirling tongue. Just when I was about to leave her mouth, her head went back down with a speed that was just fast enough to buckle my knees. Again. She used one of her hands to toy with my balls while she worked, and soon I had to muffle myself from calling down every god that had ever been prayed to. I could feel my orgasm building, and when I tried to pull away she hooked one arm around my ass and locked me to her, humming lightly to herself as she worked. I came hard down her throat, but she kept right on going until I was soft and spent. Then, with a delicacy I didn’t know she had, she licked me once more, leaving me drying in the jungle air. It was, in a word, spectacular.
Only then did she let me help her to her feet. I moved to finish her off, but she just laughed. “I got myself off while I was tasting you,” she told me. “Come on, let’s get to bed. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow, and I’ve got a full belly.”
“God, you’re fucking dirty,” I said.
“At least part of me.” She leered at me while wiping her lip with the tip of a finger.
Voices reached me over the water, masculine and indistinct. I froze, holding up a hand. “Did you hear that?” I asked Tess, barely speaking aloud at all.
She shook her head and leaned a little closer to the stream. She didn’t get close enough to risk attack by one of the caimans, but she wanted to get closer to the source of the sound.
“I don’t care what you think, Maurice. Orders are orders. And whether or not you believe in the Lifebringer, someone destroyed the Uruará favela the other day. Completely flattened the depot there. We spent over a century building that place, and it’s all gone. Do you want to tell me it was just some act of god?”
The voice was deep, masculine, and completely unknown to me. I didn’t know the other voice, Maurice, either, but it wasn’t quite as deep. “Fine. Something got the favela. I’m guessing someone was trying to cook with propane and failed. It happens all the time. When are people going to stop believing in superstitious bullshit and start living for real? Arnaud, we’re vampires. We’re not meant to be marching in lockstep and following orders because some asshole in a cape—an actual cape—waves his hand. We rule the night. We rule the fucking world! We don’t need to go sniveling around just because some religious whacko tells us to.”
Their voices were getting closer.
Arnaud scoffed. “Sometimes I wonder how you were chosen at all, Maurice. When the war is over and opposition has been exterminated, we can go back to being lone wolves or however you choose to see yourself. Don’t think your refusal to believe will earn
you brownie points with the Lifebringer. We need to find it, and we’re running out of time.”
“We’re immortal, Arnaud. We’ve got exactly as much time as we need or want. Get with it.”
The sound of flesh on flesh cracked through the air like lightning. “You’re lucky I’m not the snitching type. If the Lifebringer is not found and delivered, there will be no time for anyone at all.”
Plants rustled as Maurice got to his feet. “I won’t forget that.”
“Forget it. Don’t forget it. Just follow your orders and do your job.”
The plants rustled again as two vampires moved away. Neither I nor Tess moved as we waited for them to get out of earshot. Then we ran to camp as quickly and as silently as we could.
“It’s time to get up.” I shook tents as I re-entered our space. Tess darted into her tent to grab her things. “We’re not alone out here.”
Lila stuck her head out of her tent. Her face went ashen for a moment. “You’re very naked.”
Kamila laughed, hiding it behind her hand. “It happens a lot. Try not to let it get to you. Jason, go put some pants on, would you?”
I moved off to get clothes. I’d let Tess take care of explanations. I didn’t want to flee our campsite with everything exposed to vampires. They sucked, but not in the good way like Tess.
I dressed as quickly as I could. We tore down camp even faster, especially for people with new equipment. Running in the dark through unfamiliar territory wasn’t our best move, but it was better than being found sleeping by the vampires.
Or letting them get to Patagonia ahead of us.
31
We took off running through the dense rainforest. We had a vague idea of which way we wanted to go, not that we could be sure we were on the right track in the dark. I couldn’t overstate just how dark it was that night. We had no light at all to guide us, not even the moon, though Kamila and I could use our fire ability to sense heat. It helped, but it wasn’t the same as seeing where we were going with detail. Tess, Zarya, and Lila weren’t even that lucky. They had no way to see anything. They had to trust us to be their eyes, which was a leap of faith given our speed and determination.
Stealth was not an option. It couldn’t be, moving blindly as we were. We were just hoping we didn’t hit any obstacles like quicksand or snakes. We tried to move quietly, but secrecy took a back seat to speed as we raced to get away from the vampires.
Naturally, they heard us. It couldn’t have gone any other way. We were running down a game trail when a dark figure landed in front of us. At first, I thought it might be a puma, but when it stood up, I could see it was far too big for that. It stood at least six foot five, with long chestnut hair and angular features.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t have to. He just hissed and grabbed for the point person, which was me. His icy fingers clamped down on my arm like a bear trap, and he jerked me toward him, fangs out.
Terror welled up inside me as I flashed back to Chilperic’s assault, but I refused to cower. I’d learned to channel my fear into action over the past few months. Instead, I opened my mouth and blew a stream of concentrated flame right into his face, like a living flamethrower. He sprang back, clawing at his eyes and screaming.
I followed up with a fireball. It felt almost too old fashioned, but it worked. The vampire disintegrated on the spot, leaving nothing but a bad smell. “And fuck you, good sir,” I said, stepping over his ashes.
We didn’t stick around to admire my handiwork. We trudged through his ashes like they were so much dirt. In a very real sense, I supposed they were. I didn’t think vampires had souls, so there was nothing left once their body was destroyed. Our collective feet did the work of scattering the ashes and ensuring no amount of blood could bring him back.
The night was dark as a coal seam. It could have been a perfect full moon, and we couldn’t have seen it. The rainforest canopy was like a roof at night. Sunlight seeped through during the day, just as we’d seen, but at night nothing got through. All of us could hear, though. We could hear the creek we’d been camped beside, and consciously or unconsciously, we kept it to our left as we made our escape. I heard footsteps splashing in the water behind us, and I didn’t need light to know whoever was coming wasn’t friendly.
People with good intentions didn’t go running through the rainforest in the middle of the night, including us.
I used my water powers to snag the intruder’s feet, making the water itself reach up and hold him in place. Zarya summoned her water blade. Kamila made enough light for all of us to see the vampire’s furious snarl turn to terror as Zarya struck his head from his shoulders. The body dissolved, and the stream carried his remains far away. It didn’t take more than two or three seconds. It was almost like we’d practiced it; the whole kill felt more like a dance.
We kept running, scared but dangerous.
I did keep my sense of the stream in mind, though. I knew it was rushing toward another one, more of a river this time. The rainforest was full of them, cut by channels at intervals that made the entire land an aquifer. I had to hope that would help us. If we could make it to a large enough body of water, we might be able to get some help from the local wildlife.
Caimans didn’t care about the war between Ferin and vampires. I wasn’t foolish enough to think they did. Neither did the pumas, jaguars, or snakes. A caiman would bite if threatened, though. I’d be happy to let a caiman take the head off a vampire for me. I wasn’t in it for the glory. As long as the vampire was dead, I didn’t care who killed it. We could hand out gold stars later.
Something jumped from a tree and landed in my path. This time, it didn’t get up from its crouched position, and it didn’t smell like a vampire either. It exuded heat; glorious, living heat. I managed to leap over the puma only because I was Ferin. If I were a normal human, I’d have been out of luck.
The big cat yowled and lunged at me when I landed. I took the blow, using my arm to keep its powerful jaws away from me. The last thing I needed was to get injured fighting something outside our mission, but I wasn’t going to let it hurt me either. I didn’t want to kill such a magnificent creature, not out here in its home territory. I was the interloper here.
I wrestled it to the ground and held it there. Zarya came to my rescue, blasting the cat in the face with a stream of water from her hand. It made me think of the squirt gun my grandmother used to use to keep her cats off the kitchen counter. It was a little more effective than Granny’s plastic pistol, and the water jet proved that very few cats—no matter what size—will tolerate being soaked. The cat hissed and ran off into the night. Good kitty.
As we began to move again, one of the vamps barreled into Tess, catching her by complete surprise. That never happened, but the dark was so complete, she couldn’t have picked up on him with any visual cues. He hadn’t made any sound during the fight, so he was able to take her completely unaware and knock her to the ground, fighting savagely to lock onto her shapely neck.
Tess might be petite, but she was no damsel in distress. She kicked out like a mule, freeing herself to turn the tables. The vampire made a brilliant decision and ran, only to be chased by Tess, who was already deploying her silver-tipped knives.
The second vampire grabbed Kamila from behind. She closed her eyes. For a second, she looked like she was about to scream, but Kamila wasn’t the kind of person to close her eyes and scream the fear away. The vampire behind her burst into flames right then and there, before he could do more than muss up her long red hair. She kicked at his form as it was collapsing, then turned back to us, ready for more.
Lila was our weak link, and the next vamp struck at her with unerring aim. In the dark, she couldn’t see to throw those knives of hers, and she didn’t have any powers to help her with the difficulty of fighting blind. She did have me, though. I made the vampire menacing her explode just as his icy hand caught her shoulder. She shot me a quick grin of thanks, and we were off to the races again.
We ca
me to a clearing. Well, it wasn’t so much a clearing as an illegal agricultural operation out in the forest. I’d known they existed, but I hadn’t encountered any of them myself. This one didn’t look like some big corporate outfit flouting the rules. I didn’t see any big, heavy machinery. The only equipment I saw that looked at all shady were the lights they had so people could work.
Light made it easier for us to run.
Of course, there were guards, who were less than thrilled to see our fleeing shapes. I wondered if it was a cocaine processing camp, but that concern faded when the guards saw the vampires chasing us.
We took advantage of the confusion and accelerated away, wondering why the guards weren’t helping the vampires by shooting at us. Maybe the level of cooperation was less than we thought, because not one weapon fired while we pelted past and into the jungle, vampires following in hot pursuit.
When we got to the edge of the field, we found ourselves faced with a problem. The people who had clear-cut the farm diverted the stream underground. They’d also left a large crevasse, probably to make it harder for the authorities to inspect the farm should they find it. The only way to get off the farm was a rope bridge. I’d only seen them in the movies, and the construction of it looked dodgy at best. I stepped onto the bridge without thinking as the ropes bean to sway. Beneath me, water flowed in a dim ribbon.
I gripped both of the hemp rails and exhaled, moving forward without a further thought.
I put one foot in front of the other as quickly as I dared. One good part about the darkness was that I couldn’t look down. I was pretty sure that was the only reason I made it across, especially once the others got onto the bridge and it got even shakier. I waited for the last of my friends to get off the bridge before setting fire to it with a crackling whoomp that lit up the area like a fall bonfire.
One vampire had gotten onto the bridge, and he caught fire with it, snarling in defiance until I gave the fire a little nudge. By the time the bridge collapsed, his own ashes mingled in with those of the bridge, and they all fell into the ravine below. I expected nothing less than more vampires on the other side, because thus far, they were more common than cockroaches.
Forever Young - Book 3 Page 17