by Brant, Jason
“We sailed to the British Virgin Islands and stayed there until just recently.”
“Why come back?”
“Hurricanes.” Cass let her answer hang there, hoping she wouldn’t have to go into detail.
“Oh, I see. And how did you end up in the custody of that slime ball Higgins?”
Cass shrugged.
“The faster we get through this, the faster you can see your boy.” Valerie scooted back on the desk, her feet lifting from the floor. “I have all night.”
Cass growled through clenched teeth.
Then she explained the whole goddamn affair.
“Your journey started in Pennsylvania and then ended in Pennsylvania?” Valerie asked. “You’ve traveled a long way to be so close to where you started.”
“We aren’t done yet.”
“I doubt you’ll want to leave here, Cass. Not when you see all that we have to offer.”
“So far, I just see someone keeping me from my kid.”
Valerie stood and gestured to the door. “Let’s go see him then. All your friends, too. I’m sure you have much to discuss.”
Cass stood, watching the woman with caution. After the day she’d suffered through, she expected some kind of trick. “About time.”
“One more question, first.”
Cass opened her mouth to tell Valerie to kiss her ass when the woman cut her off.
“How is Emily Snow?”
“Who?” Cass’ anger twisted into confusion. “Who the hell is Emily Snow?”
Valerie studied her face for a moment. “You really don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?”
“No clue.”
“Good. That’s good. I can tell when I’m being lied to, and I believe you.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” Cass muttered.
“Let’s take you to your family.”
20
Lance could barely see anything as the guards dragged Adam out of the building. One held a torch, the flame casting dancing shadows in the stalls and across the floor. They’d come in fast, armed with guns, after telling them to back away from the door.
Greg and Lance hadn’t complied, jumping the first guy through the door. They’d tackled him, landing a few punches before Lance hopped up to go after the next guard.
They’d caught him in the temple with the butt of a rifle before he made it two steps.
His vision had gone black.
The room swam.
He collapsed to the floor, hearing Adam and Greg hollering as he struggled to clear his eyesight. Pain throbbed in his head and neck as he dragged himself to his knees. His legs refused to carry his weight as he tried to crawl toward the door.
Adam thrashed around in the grip of two men as they pulled him out. He tried to bite one of them as a third man clocked him in the back of the skull with a pistol. Adam’s head lolled, his chin resting on his chest.
“Let him go, you bastards,” Lance slurred.
They slammed the door shut in his face before locking it from the outside.
“Adam!” Greg pounded his fists against the door.
Lance hadn’t even seen what had happened to Greg, but judging from the blood running down from his hairline, he’d received the same treatment Lance had. He also appeared wobbly on his feet as he screamed for his friend.
With the door closed and the torch gone, the small building fell into darkness again. The torch outside gave them a small glimpse of the group as they headed around the side toward the massive bonfire. A few women squealed at the sight of Adam as the guards hauled him through the field.
Managing to get his feet under him, Lance staggered past the stalls to the back of the building. He jammed his face against the wall, peering through the space between the slats as he had the entire evening.
Magnus King stood before the cross, shirtless and seemingly drunk. He blathered on in a moronic sermon to his underlings, waving a massive beer stein around as he spoke. Booze of some kind sloshed this way and that.
When he spotted his men lugging Adam forward, he said, “It’s time for our offering, my children! The gods have called to us for a blessing and thus we shall honor our pact.”
The Vladdies in the dark field behind him shrieked as if in response. At least a dozen of them moved closer, maybe more by the sound of it.
“What are they going to do to him, bro?” Greg’s slur had improved a bit, but he still sounded as drunk as Magnus King looked. “Don’t tell me they’re going to feed him to the Vladdies!”
That was exactly what Lance expected to happen.
“Let you him go, you bastards,” he bellowed through the hole.
They ignored him.
Eifort’s head snapped around at the sound of his voice, staring back at their building. Until he’d hollered through the slats, she hadn’t turned away from the fire for the past twenty minutes or so. She’d remained stoic, focusing on the blaze and ignoring everything else they’d said.
Lance doubted she had any idea what had just happened in their building.
Her gaze shifted from Lance to the field where the men heaved Adam forward. When she spotted her friend approaching the cross, she jumped to her feet.
Joe, the gorilla who had smashed Lance in the forest, grabbed her shoulder and pressed her down to the log seat. When she fought against his grip, he took hold of her with both hands and forced her to stay put.
“Adam,” she called out. “Leave him alone, Magnus!”
“My dear, Megan.” King sloshed his drink around in a weird little dance. “The gods have selected us to prosper in their glory! Our strength and honor come from their grace, and their grace comes from our offering! Your friend will ascend to Valhalla with the gods and sit at their table. You weep for him, but he’ll soon be more than we could ever dream. He’ll join the ranks of the rulers of our world and smile upon you.”
Two of the bigger men lashed Adam’s hands to the horizontal part of the cross, then his feet to the base. He faced the field, away from Lance’s building, his sagging head barely visible from behind.
“Don’t do this,” Eifort cried. “He’s a good man who—”
King waved a hand in her direction. “Silence her. We don’t need her lamentations angering the gods.”
Joe clapped a meaty hand around Eifort’s mouth. She tried to bite him, but he held her jaw shut, giving her a slap on the temple for her efforts.
Two women and a man, all completely naked, joined hands and swayed back and forth, singing a bizarre song Lance didn’t recognize. He gaped at the entire scene, unable to comprehend the situation they found themselves in.
His eyes returned to Adam.
The cries of the infected drew closer.
Adam slowly came to, raising his head with what appeared to be a gargantuan effort. He craned his neck as he looked around, attempting to see what the commotion was behind him. Lance couldn’t hear if he’d said anything. The naked morons were too loud.
King pointed directly at Lance. “The gods have conquered our world, left what remains to the strong who have survived the culling. We are the chosen who will rule over the ashes from the great inferno that cleansed the unworthy. They grant us our lives, and we grace them with procreation.”
“Let him go!” Lance hammered the wall with his fists.
“The gods need us, however powerful they may be. Without us, they cannot propagate more of their kind. If they kill us all, they doom themselves. And so we live in symbiosis with our gods. They bestow upon us a life of mirth and glory, and we replenish their ranks with offerings of the weak and corrupt.”
Lance held the bastard’s smug gaze, wondering if he could even see him through the wall. Taking in the rest of his audience, King grinned. They sang and danced, fucked and drank.
Their reverie made Lance want to puke.
Unless he completely misunderstood what Sandals the Moronic had just said, those bastards had made some kind of a pact with a nearby nest of Vladdies. They s
acrificed strangers to the damned in exchange for a life of safety in the countryside.
Such an agreement felt impossible with a bunch of ravenous monsters. Anything competent enough to barter with humans showed an intelligence far beyond what Lance thought the Vladdies were capable of.
They’d grown smarter over the years, able to avoid traps and set up simple attacks. Their nests had grown more complex, resembling underground cities more than the simple tunnels they’d started with.
Or so he’d been told.
Lance hadn’t personally seen a nest in years.
A few of the neighboring islands had nests on them, but Lance had avoided them for some obvious reasons. They’d never felt a need to go anywhere near them.
Most of their recent knowledge of the creatures had come from radio communication Paul had with the mainland. Unfortunately, The Wildman’s equipment had died during one of the first hurricanes and they’d fallen into a communication blackout.
Hearing that a dipshit like King had somehow negotiated with a local nest made Lance fear the beasts even more. If it was true the Vladdies knew they couldn’t eat every human in sight or they would die out, then the vampires were much smarter than any of them had realized.
That was what the entire night boiled down to—King was sacrificing other humans.
All the other pomp and circumstance was just bullshit, window dressing for his moronic followers. He spoke in a flowery language and blathered on about gods and power, but he was little more than a slave who had realized his station in life. If he played by his master’s rules, his leash stayed long.
The nude cultists undulating around the fire followed a dumpy idiot who gladly sacrificed his own kind to save his ass. And they loved him for it.
Lance vowed to take them all down, no matter the cost.
King spun around, facing the cross. He raised his arms, bellowed, “Come and take what’s yours!”
“What’s happening?” Adam’s head rolled side to side as he struggled against a concussion. He yanked against the bindings at his wrists and ankles. “What are you doing to me?”
A shriek nearby silenced him.
He wilted against the cross, hanging from his wrists.
“No!” Lance pounded at the wall even harder. “You bastards!”
“Yes,” King cried. “Take our offering!”
“Hey,” someone whispered from the door behind Lance. “Over here!”
Greg spun away from the wall. Backed into Lance. “Stay away from us, you—”
“Shh!” The voice was young, male. “Shut up, dude. I’m trying to help you!”
Lance thought he recognized the voice, but couldn’t place it. He stepped toward the door. “Who are you?”
“It’s Brandon. You know, from The Light?”
“Who from the what?” Greg asked, his voice still too loud.
“Is this guy for real?” Brandon whispered. “He’s going to get us all killed!”
“Brandon!” Lance sprinted to the door. “You have to get us out of here right now! They’re going to kill our friend.”
“I see that.” Brandon grunted from the other side of the wood. “Sorry for the delay, but they have a big-ass lock on this door. I had to find something to break it off with. That and they had a stupid guard standing here until a few minutes ago.”
“Who is this guy, bro?” Greg asked Lance.
“He saved us last night in Baltimore. His people helped us find you.” Lance leaned against the wood, staying as quiet as possible. “Hurry, kid, or we’re all dead.”
Metal crunched on the other side of the door.
All three froze, waiting for a guard to come running.
The din of the damned behind them intensified as they closed in on the open field.
None of the cultists left the fire to check on the metallic noise.
More metal clanged as Brandon resumed working on the lock.
Hinges squealed as the door eased open.
Brandon stood in the shadows, silhouetted against the small amount of light behind him. “Let’s get out of here!”
“I have about a thousand questions to ask you.” Lance wanted to hug him. “But first, we have to get my friends away from those psychos.”
“How?” Brandon stepped back. He held a pair of bolt cutters in one hand. “Dude, we can’t take all of those freaks on. Some have guns. We need to get the hell—”
“We aren’t going anywhere without them.” Lance crept outside and slid to the end of the building, peering around it.
The cultists around the fire all faced away from them, watching the field beyond the cross. A mumbled chant escaped them, barely audible over the Vladdies’ howls.
“The demons are right there,” Brandon hissed. “There’s nothing we can do for them!”
“Demons?” Greg asked.
Ignoring him, Lance turned to Brandon. If he was going to free Adam and Eifort, he would need the kid’s help. “Why did you follow us?”
“I need to know what happened to my friend who went missing.”
“So you’re risking your life to save a friend.”
Understanding dawned on Brandon’s face. “But the demons and the guns—”
“That’s a mother and a soon-to-be father out there. We all get out of here or none of us do.” Lance eyed the cultists again. “Besides, I have a plan.”
21
Brandon wiped sweat from his brow as he watched Lance sneak around the side of the building and work his way into the field. He moved at the edge of the light, barely visible in the glow of the towering bonfire.
To Brandon’s left stood a man whose name he didn’t even know. The guy seemed all right, but he also said bro every second and a half. It was super annoying.
The man crouched behind the corner of the big farmhouse, watching Lance. They’d quickly searched through the farmhouse for weapons and had found a few knives, which all three brandished. Lance carried a flashlight, too. They hadn’t stumbled across any guns, which would have made their rescue attempt a whole lot easier.
Demons wailed beyond the cross, moving closer by the second, their cries so near they hurt Brandon’s ears. Every instinct he had implored him to run far and fast, refusing to look back until he reached a body of water or a light source. Even if they had machine guns, they’d stand no chance against a horde of the damned.
On top of that, Lance’s plan consisted of stabbing a guard, grabbing his gun, and fending off the other nut jobs while Lance untied his friend. Oh, and they had to free the pretty lady by the fire, too.
All while demons bore down on them.
No problem at all.
“I’m going to shit my pants, bro,” the guy whispered beside him. “No way we’re gonna pull this off.”
“Please don’t do that.”
“Don’t do what?”
“Crap yourself.”
The man glanced at him. “You’re a funny kid. I’m Greg.”
“Brandon. Nice to meet you. Bro.”
“Lance is almost at Adam. You ready to do this?”
“Not really.” Brandon swallowed, his throat dry and uncooperative. “I’ve never… killed anyone before.”
Brandon hadn’t fired a gun before his mandatory firearms training at The Light. He’d grown up in the city where guns were essentially banned. Just holding one for the first time had made him nervous. Since then, he’d carried one while scavenging, but hadn’t shot it at anyone.
He’d punched people a couple of times.
Tossed a few rocks at the bandits.
But he definitely hadn’t shot at anyone, let alone stabbed them.
Getting close enough to someone to stick a blade in their back felt impossible. There were too many of the sex hippies by the fire for them to get that close undetected. Sweat slicked the handle of the knife as he gripped it hard enough for his knuckles to blanche.
“I’ll do it.” Greg put a hand on his shoulder. “You just get that gun out of his hand or we’r
e all toast.”
“I’ll try.” Brandon knelt, tensing his muscles.
As soon as Lance ran toward the guy tied to the cross, they were to sprint straight for the guards and the pretty lady. The guards would hopefully key in on Lance, giving Brandon and Greg time to sneak up behind them.
All they had to do was wait.
That was when the demon stepped out of the darkness beyond the cross.
It stalked toward the crucified man on all fours.
Bursting from the shadows, Lance charged it.
22
Lance had coiled his legs under him, ready to go for Adam, when he spotted the Vladdie at the edge of the darkness. It paused there for a second, sniffing at the air, and then howled.
Razor-sharp fangs glinted from the fire as it approached Adam.
Heavily muscled shoulders flared as it prowled across the field on all fours. Its thick forearms flexed each time its fists hit the earth.
“Oh, shit.” Lance paused, trying to think of what to do.
Against a Vladdie with only a knife, he wouldn’t last more than a few seconds. They were too fast, too strong, for any normal man to take on. But if he didn’t stop it, the beast would be on Adam in just a few more steps.
The naked idiots around the fire hooted and hollered at the sight of the Vladdie.
Magnus King bleated on about power and other nonsensical crap.
The verbal diarrhea never stopped flowing from him.
Lance took a deep breath as he gripped a flashlight and a butcher’s knife in his hands. His initial plan was to cut Adam down, then flee into the woods as Brandon and Greg distracted the guards.
But they couldn’t outrun a Vladdie that close.
He’d have to free Adam and retreat closer to the fire.
With any luck, the Vladdie wouldn’t approach such a bright light.
Unfortunately, luck and Lance hadn’t seen eye to eye in a long time.
The Vladdie stalked closer to Adam, howling and hissing, drool dripping from its fangs. More shrieks came from behind it. There could be dozens, maybe hundreds out there circling the camp.