Look for what is absent. Look for what you cannot see.
He peered around the edge of the dumpster, the cold metal touching his face. Down the alley, doorways were staggered, alcoves allowing easy hiding. Easy, except for the lights, often just a naked bulb, that shone above them. One of the doorways stood dark, the bulb gone, leaving the alcove in shadow.
There.
Val flipped the lid of the dumpster open. Black plastic bags, a kid’s tricycle, an old sewing machine … he pushed items aside until his fingers found wood. He pulled it out, found himself holding a broken leg of a table. Val hefted it, felt its weight, touched his fingers to the splintered end.
Good enough.
“Hey,” he said to the empty alley. It felt like all of the city was quiet around him, a hush that was as out of place in New York City as snow in Hawaii. “Come on out. You don’t really have a lot of time, do you?” He cocked his head sideways, looking at the lightening sky. “I’d say you’ve got maybe a half hour to get into whatever hole you crawled out of before you’re fresh out of options.” He tapped the table leg against his pants. “We’d like to talk.”
A soft chuckle, full of velvet, came to him from the shadowed doorway. “You want to kill me,” said the creature, “or you want to die.”
“Uh,” said Val, “no. We really just want to talk. You were the one who wanted to start killing.”
A shoulder came out of the gloom, leading the rest of the thing. Christ, it just looks like a man. Nothing more. Nondescript. Forgettable. Except for the way it walked, moving like his skin held a panther, not the sinews of a human.
This is no human.
“Is that,” said the creature, gesturing with a hand at the table leg, “for talking?”
“Hell no,” said Val. He held up the table leg. “It’s for beating the stupid out of you. I call it, I dunno, sort of a backup plan.”
“You think that piece of wood is going to slow me down?” Val could see the thing’s teeth as it smiled across the alley. Those teeth held promise.
Val spun the table leg in his hand. “No, I’m going to slow you down. This is more for dramatic effect.”
There was a shrug from the thing, then, “What questions?”
“What are you?” Val didn’t take his eyes off it. “Where do you come from?”
“We’re the darkness,” it said, “that lives in your soul. We come from your fear.”
Val frowned. “Fuck right off,” he said, “with that mumbo-jumbo. I’ve had enough of that shit. Five years ago? We had to deal with this ass clown Talin. He spoke like that. Got real boring, real fast.”
The creature blinked at him. “What?”
“Okay,” said Val, “let’s try a different tack. Why are you here?”
“To end the world,” it said.
“Figures,” said Val. “That problem seems a little bigger than you.”
“We are many.”
Val tsked. “You know that’s not true. You’re a few. If you were many, you’d have sucked this city dry. You can’t stop eating, can you?”
The thing stepped out of the doorway fully, it’s fingers curled into half fists, like it wanted something to rend. “You know what it’s like to be hungry.”
“Yeah,” said Val, “but I don’t know what it’s like to be so damn stupid.”
“You talk large for such a small … dog,” it said.
“Oh hell no,” said Val, with a laugh. “I’m only talking like this so she could get behind you.”
“What?” said the thing, a fraction of a second before Danny slammed her fist into its back. The force of the punch sent her fist right through it, her bloody hand coming out its chest. She ripped her hand back, a spray of blood spattering the ground accompanied by the sound of fat rain. Danny held up her prize, a piece of spine covered in clots of meat. Her eyes were a bright, bright yellow, her lips pulled back from her teeth in something that was half snarl, half raw joy. The end of the hunt. Val could feel it too as the thing dropped to the alley floor like a puppet with its strings cut.
It worked. The goddamn plan had worked. He almost whooped, the high of being alive making his nerves hum.
Val knew they didn’t have a lot of time. Not just because of the dawn, but because the wound was already healing. The thing on the ground was keening, the pain must have been incredible, but the bleeding was slowing. He leaned down over it. “You killed five people on your way here.”
“Yes.” It looked at him with red eyes. “They are fuel.”
“They’re people,” said Val. He tapped the table leg against the alley floor. “And you’re an experiment.”
Danny sniffed the air. “We need to hustle.” She wiped her bloody hand against her jeans, then pulled out her phone. She walked away, dialing.
“Experiment?” The thing looked at Danny’s receding back, then at Val. “You will all die.”
“Hah,” said Val. “You tried that before, didn’t you? Thought you’d knocked us all off. Thought—”
“We wiped the face of the Earth of your wretched kind,” it said. “You are nothing.”
“Still here,” said Val, pointing a thumb at his chest. “I’d say that’s more than nothing.” He looked up at Danny. “We good?”
“She’s coming,” said Danny, waving a hand at the creature. “Do the thing.”
“What thing?” said the creature beneath Val. The wound was almost closed, but its skin was sallow. It would need to feed, he could see it in the thing’s face. The way its nostrils flared as it scented him. Him. As if—
We are not for hunting. We are not prey.
“Right,” said Val, raising the table leg. He gripped it in both hands, then drove it through the creature’s chest. Through its heart. It screamed, veins along its neck, veins in its face bulging out. The scream felt loud enough to bring the very heavens down. Then … it died. Something just switched off inside it, the life force within gone. The body fell back to the alley floor, head bouncing once against the cold concrete. In death, the thing’s face was still, almost peaceful. Its teeth, those too-long teeth, receded back into its jaws. It could now be just about any other guy.
Any other dead guy.
A car pulled into the mouth of the alley, lights bright. Val held a hand up in front of his face, wincing. The driver’s door opened, Carlisle stepping out. She walked over to them, shoulders relaxing as she saw them both. “Christ,” she said. “I almost worried.” She held up a black plastic bag. “Let’s get this guy sealed in a blanket.”
They smoothed out the body bag on the floor of the alley, big CORONER letters in white on the outside. Val had never thought, not in a million years, that he’d be stuffing a corpse into a sack in a New York City alley at five in the morning. But here he was. Never say never, right?
They lifted the body into the bag, Carlisle sealing the zip with practiced ease. She stood, then arched her back. “Ready?”
Danny nodded, and she and Carlisle each grabbed a side of the bag. Val smiled to himself. He knew that Danny had strength enough to Popeye cans of spinach — hell, they both did — but sometimes it was about letting other people help where they could. Letting them be useful. He loved that about her, the way she did it naturally. He had to work at it a little harder.
Pack for Pack.
The body folded into the trunk, Carlisle slipped back behind the wheel. She wound down the window, the whine of the electric motor audible over the idling engine. “See you guys back at the ranch?”
“Sure,” said Danny. “We’ve got to … you know.”
“I know,” said Carlisle. “Be safe.”
“Always,” said Val. He watched the car reverse out of the alley, Carlisle driving off into the thickening traffic.
“Just one,” said Val. “That was just one.” He wiped his face, smearing sweat and grime across his forehead with the back of his arm. “Man.”
“I know, lover,” said Danny, her fingers touching his ever so lightly. Her eyes had lost their
yellow brightness, but her face still held something wild. “But we got one.”
Val looked up at the fingers of the dawn as the light stroked the sky. “We got one.” He gave an unsteady laugh. “We need to … go back and check.”
“Yes.” She nodded, then reaching up a hand to stroke his face. “So we’re safe.”
So that Pack is safe.
“I…” Val slowed his thoughts. “I’m still having trouble processing this.”
“Just say it,” she said.
“I hate saying it,” he said.
“Vampires,” she said. “They’re vampires. And now … now, we’ve found them. We’ve drawn them out. We’re hunting them.”
He nodded, looking at the pool of blood on the ground. The dawn’s light touched it at the side, and there was a flicker of flame as it charred. As the sun rose, even its weak early light was enough to erase the remains from the Earth. They turned around, together, to retrace their steps, leaving the flames of the burning blood behind them.
Vampires, here, in New York City. Still, nothing much surprised him these days.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED SEVEN
“What we’ve got here,” said Rex to the room at large, “is a basic failure of marketing.” He held up his Pop-Tart as evidence. He hadn’t looked away from the Pop-Tart when Val entered. “See?”
Val gave the room a quick look-over: Rex on the couch, Jessie across from him, limbs sprawled out every which way, head back, eyes closed. A nervous Sam Barnes had looked up as Val had kicked the door open, his face holding that half hopeful, half I’m done expression you see in cancer wards. A big TV perched at the edge of their ring of furniture, looking down like a judge. It looked like it was playing some CNN feed, but the volume was off. Adalia was away from them, huddled in a booth against the wall, twin snakes of white coming from the headphones under her green hair to the tablet she was using. The space felt like a diner that had bred with an Internet cafe, one where the designer had thought industrial chic.
“I see,” said Val. “Hold that thought.” He closed the door again, walking back outside to Carlisle’s car. “Looks fine.”
“Define ‘fine,’” said Carlisle, stubbing a toe in the dirt.
“Rex is complaining,” said Val.
“We’re good to go,” Carlisle said. She dug an elbow into Danny’s ribs. “Try to at least look like you’re working hard this time.” She walked with Danny to the rear of the car, gave a quick scan of the street, then popped the trunk. They started to manhandle the body bag out.
Val turned back to the warehouse they were calling home. More than calling, it had been their base for a year or more. John had called it a lair, then a den after Carlisle had threatened to punch him in the face. Den was fine. Den meant home.
Pack.
Val closed the trunk after them, locked the car, then jog-stepped past them to hold the warehouse door open. The door was old, the surface pitted with rust, a few spots of lichen here and there, but under the surface it was strong. Carlisle and Danny shuffled through after him, and he let the door swing closed.
Smoke was seeping through the zip of the body bag, the dead vampire inside starting to fall apart. The depravations of time could only be kept at bay while they were — alive? half-alive? — and this one was all the way dead. Carlisle and Danny moved out through a door towards the rear of the big open space, back to where the garage was.
Garage. Well, it was something, that’s for sure. A collection of … resources. They’d been stockpiling for a while. Val remembering the conversation with a smile.
“The way you win a war is deodorant,” said Jessie.
“I’m not sure I follow,” said Rex. “I thought it was guns.”
“Guns by themselves aren’t that useful,” said Jessie. “I mean, yes, you need them. But you need soldiers to hold them.”
“With you up to that point.” Rex had held up a hand, ticking things off on his fingers. “Guns, bullets, soldiers.” He held up three fingers, then pointed to where his little finger remained curled. “Don’t see where deodorant comes in.”
“Well, it’s more like what gives you deodorant,” she’d said. “Supply lines. Resources. Run out of fuel, can’t drive the car, right? When you’re out of deodorant, you’ve got a basic failure in supply. We’re fighting a war, and we need to make sure we’re well-resourced.”
They had deodorant, and many other things besides. A few vehicles, weapons, a little money. Sam might be able to help with that last one.
“Hey,” said a voice, pulling Val back to the here and now. Speak of the devil — Sam. “Uh.”
“Hey, Sam,” said Val, face splitting into a grin. “How you doing?” He crossed to the other man, grabbing his hand in a shake.
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Uh.”
“Right,” said Val. “I figured it would be something like that. You got any specific questions, or do you want to just see where this conversation goes?”
“Uh,” said Sam again, looking at his hands before clearing his throat. “You know, when I was a kid, we had stories. All kinds of stuff, knights, dragons, and yeah, vampires, and werewolves. When Elsie … When Miss Morgan had pulled that crazy Russian out of the ice, I thought it was just another one of her reclamation projects. But … but it’s real. Werewolves. Vampires.”
“Dragons are real.” Danny’s voice carried across the space, causing Sam to turn to face her. She’d come back in, Carlisle slipping into the room behind her. The door to the garage closed with a clunk. Danny looked at Val. “Knights, too.”
“Uh,” said Sam, then gave his head a small shake. “What?”
“Pretty much everything you know of this world, the constants you hold true, are a lie,” said Rex. He held up the Pop-Tart, now half-eaten. “Like this.”
Jessie didn’t open her eyes. “What’s wrong with your breakfast?”
“Well that’s it, isn’t it, right there,” said Rex. “It’s not a breakfast. It’s not even really food. And yet, somehow, I can’t stop eating this one.”
“What’s the flavor?” Jessie had started swinging a leg back and forth over the side of her chair.
“So,” said Rex, “you know? I think it’s root beer.”
“Your problem,” said Jessie, “isn’t that everything’s a lie.” Her eyes still closed, she raised a finger. “It’s that you make bad choices.”
“Hey,” said Rex, “that’s—”
“A good segue,” said Val, looking to Sam. “I’ll bet this isn’t how you figured your day was going to go.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said Sam. “She,” and here, he nodded in Adalia’s direction, “said that you’d get my boy back. My Charlie. They’ve taken my company, Mr. Everard. Biomne. They took my son to make that happen.”
“Yeah, they’ll do that,” said Val, rubbing his jaw. “For what it’s worth, they pretty much do it to everything. Like a virus.”
“Like a pestilence,” said Adalia. She didn’t look up, just kept typing. “I didn’t say we’d get Charlie back. I said we’d save Charlie. His soul. I told him we’d make it right. I told him we’d tell him everything.” She finally looked up, eyes holding Val’s for a second. “Maybe you should tell him everything.”
“Sure,” said Val. “Sam, here’s where it’s at. The world used to be full of a bunch of cool stuff. Magic, and pixies, and fairy dust.” He tapped the side of his head. “I remember.”
“You … remember?” Sam’s face had that I-think-you’ve-been-hit-in-the-head-once-too-often look. “You grow up in a really weird part of the world?”
“Oh,” said Val. “I haven’t got to the best part. It’s better if I show you.” He closed his eyes for a second, reaching back. Far back, to a different self, a life that had gone before. He found—
The quiet of the crowd, the hush itself was a platform, a stage of a kind they had made that sat under the tired wood he stood on. They’d drawn his cart in here just as the rains were falling, asking for a scrap of shelter in exc
hange for a show. The mandolin sat on a chair at his side, strings waiting for the touch of his fingers. A story, that’s what he’d give them. A story of a man who was attacked, the Night striding strong into his camp—
“You figure yourself a strong man, a man who leads a company,” said Val. “You figure wrong. Don’t really understand how it works in your head, now that’s between you and God. What I do know is that you’re a strong man because you want to stand here, right here, right now, for your boy. For your son. It’s your family that makes you strong. Why,” and here, he started to walk around Sam, his voice carrying, the pitch lowering, “it’s that strength that makes you stand here while the piss wants to run down your legs, makes your legs weak, makes you want to run and cry and a hundred other things. Am I not wrong?”
“I—” Sam swallowed. “No. Yes.”
“You, Sam,” said Val, stepping close, a hand on his shoulder, “carry the faith of a father. It holds you up, makes you strong, gives you purpose. Fuck your company. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” said Sam.
“Fuck them,” said Val, leaning close. “Fuck those motherfuckers.”
“Yeah,” said Sam. “Fuck them!”
Val stumbled back, that past self stepping out of his head. The orator gone, he reached for another, one much closer. “Vy nesete sud'bu vsekh lyudey, Sam.”
Sam blinked, took a step back. “I…”
Val shrugged. “I know, right?” He looked across at Danny. “How’d I do?”
“Gave me shivers,” said Danny. She was near, silent steps bringing her close. “Sam, do you understand? We carry the memories of everyone taken into the Night before us. A long line stretching back through time. We carry their abilities. We can do what they do.”
“So,” said Sam, “you can remember?”
“That’s what I said,” said Val. “I get it, it’s a lot to take in. But I need to tell you everything.”
The Night's Champion Collection: A supernatural werewolf thriller trilogy Page 79