by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
Even though she hadn’t told him the ugliest parts, for the first time in her life, she smiled when she stretched awake in the mornings.
She couldn’t have predicted that, three months later, she’d take him with her to rural Romania where she would interview the peasants about their legends and contained fears.
Little did she know she’d be confronting her own monsters in this place where vampires were said to roam.
Little did she know that, even though she’d finally rediscovered light in England, she’d battle darkness in Transylvania.
Chapter 3
Present
The next evening, Sargent’s Jeep roared over the rough forest road as he followed three military-green Humvees through the Borgo Pass. The sun had darkened over the jagged edge of trees, the crest of hills, the occasional remains of an ancient, skeletal fortress.
The simple wooden crosses lining the fields.
“You might consider backing off,” said Ashe.
Sargent spared an unconcerned glance at his friend. Hemp clothing, scraggly platinum hair and Birkenstocks.
A disciple of good, Sarge thought.
He’d hired the Wiccan for his protective talents, his skill in keeping the vamps away with all those crystals, herbs and candles. Ironically, Ashe—or Todd Crandall, as he’d been known before taking his magickal name—had been the medic attached to Sarge’s Delta Force squadron.
Together, they’d gotten to know some vamps.
“Want me to back off?” Sarge relaxed his hand over the steering wheel. “Nah. That woman needs to know I’m right here, dogging her every step. Scientists. Know-it-alls. Just a matter of time before she finds out that vamps won’t sit still for experimental prodding and poking.”
“I meant for you to back off the Humvee, Sarge. You’re driving up their tailpipe.”
“Hey, just keeping an eye on the cargo.”
Their headlights bounced over the gleam of long, silver items in this last military vehicle. The second Humvee carried the same objects. Coffins. Or—as Beatrix Grasu had explained to him before the convoy left Vasile this morning—“life-sustaining units.” The women planned to house their specimens in the specially constructed caskets and deliver them to their lab, where Dr. Grasu, who’d been left behind, would house the beasts.
Crazies. Even the apple-cheeked village women in the lead Humvee who’d been recruited for the mission.
A flash of taillights forced Sarge to jam on the brakes, to focus on his surroundings by wiping thoughts of Camille Howard’s delusions from his mind.
“Why’re they stopping?” he asked. “I don’t feel anything around here.”
“Neither do I.” Ashe leaned forward in his seat as a Humvee door bolted open in the near distance.
Miss Bleeding Heart appeared to their left, bundled in a body-hugging jacket and a headset that contained a powerful light. She also wore a utility belt that carried some of the nasty items Dr. Grasu had told him about when they’d had a drink—or six—together last night.
A long wand, two pistols, rope and arm restraints.
Another belt dipped over the first, gunslinger style. This one was decorated by strange silver, oval objects that Dr. Grasu hadn’t gotten around to explaining since she’d passed out after that final whiskey shot.
As Miss B. H. wandered farther away, she lifted a hand to her ear. The other wrist was raised so she could look at that heavy-duty watch of hers. It was some sort of tracker, he knew.
Ashe spoke. “She’s in such pain.”
Sarge didn’t respond. Even though he didn’t have Ashe’s empathetic skills, he could’ve guessed as much. If there was one thing he knew, it was pain.
“She thinks,” the witch added, “the only way she’ll heal is if she finds those vampires.”
“And bring them out of the wilderness to hunt in a much broader field at the same time.” Sarge opened the Jeep’s door, alighted. “You remember the night those first vamps ripped the throats out of half our team before we knew what was happening? Then there was Barrow and the bayou and—”
“I remember.”
“Enough said.” Sarge raided his arsenal and loaded up, preparing his flamethrower, his lucky aspen-wood stake, a crossbow that shot holy-water-dipped arrows. “I’ve got to stop her before she rattles the food chain around these parts. Dr. Grasu, bless that ivory-tower brain of hers, didn’t understand my point of view, either, when we talked last night.”
“You should’ve been resting, gathering your strength, just like our Ms. Howard. And me.”
“A good drink does wonders for the soul.” Sarge patted his machete. “If you have one.”
“Hold up, Sarge.”
Ashe took out a bottle of essential oils and meditated over the mixture. Sarge respectfully waited while his partner chanted, then anointed him with the contents.
“‘An ye harm none, do as thou wilt.’” The former medic nodded at Sarge. “Do what you want as long as you don’t hurt anyone, man. And one more thing.”
“What now?”
The Wiccan concentrated, shook his head. “You really need to be careful. I mean it. I’ve got a feeling, and it’s not necessarily about the vamps, Sarge. Watch out.”
“Hey, Ashe. Who you talking to here?”
Sarge grinned, hefted up his crossbow and started to follow Howard, knowing Ashe would now light a candle and meditate to see if he could connect with whatever Howard was tracking out here.
When Sarge caught up, she’d frozen at the foot of a steep hill, gaze fixed on her watch. Fallen petals from a hovering plum tree surrounded her, and Sargent stopped, pulse picking up speed just from looking at her.
Why? Who the hell knew. Maybe it was her spirit that kind of stirred him up. Whatever it was, Sarge didn’t have time for it.
As her tracker thudded softly, a wolf howled in the distance. A sliver of moonlight shifted. Muted pale moonlight coated her bladed cheekbones, the red of her braided hair.
Much to his dismay, Sarge’s blood thudded, making him a little light-headed. Dammit, he’d been trained to control his heartbeat, so what was the deal now?
“Could your heart beat a little louder, please?” she said. “They can’t hear it in Bangkok.”
And here he’d thought they’d been getting along so much better than yesterday. Granted they hadn’t seen each other since yesterday, but he thought he’d sensed some tolerance in the way she avoided him.
“That’s how your watch works?” he asked, ignoring her curtness. “Heartbeats?”
“Bea theorizes that their blood is a different viscosity than ours. It’s thinner, so their hearts don’t have to work as hard to pump. My sensor picks up the slower rhythmic vibrations within a certain proximity.” She glanced up, her headset beam piercing him with light. “We hope.”
Then her hand flew up to her ear again, redirecting the lamp’s glare. “What, Doc?”
Sargent paused just as she did, trying to feel the vamps himself.
I’ll be damned, he thought. There was something here. Faint, like a change in the hum of air around him. A niggling electricity that disturbed the hairs on his skin.
Maybe the range of her tracker was superior to his own usually dependable intuition. But his inner radar was pretty good about telling him which vamps could be spared and used to destroy others. It was helpful in predicting attacks, too.
Howard was talking to Beatrix again. “I think I have something, but—”
“You do,” Sarge said, unwilling to desert his instincts.
They both peered around at the ever darkening forest—the coves of pines, oaks, beeches. A hiding place in every patch of huddled foliage. Too bad they couldn’t have hunted by day. If he knew anything about vamps, it was that they were quicker at night—given that they had the ability to face the light at all.
After touching her earpiece three times, she spoke in Romanian. “Load up, ladies.”
Then she grabbed one of her small, unidentifiable pistols, che
cked it and put it up to her neck.
“What the hell?” He reached toward her.
Too late. She’d already fired it with a muted click.
“Adrenaline shot, Sarge. The women are taking them, too. The doc and I came up with a nondegradable formula—”
“The last thing I want to hear is lab babble. You just freakin’ shot yourself.”
She leaned back her head, blew out a breath, shimmied her body with the awakening energy, probably just to irk him. “Twenty minutes of enhanced strength. I’d ask if you want one, but a manly man like you would be offended. And stow your playthings. We’re not going to need flamethrowers or…good God, you’re a walking death machine.”
“I’m used to heavy equipment.” He walked away, then closed his eyes, concentrating.
The electronic thunk of her tracker intensified, meaning she was right behind him. Sarge could discern four more approaching now, as well.
The village women, minus the three who’d volunteered to drive the Humvees.
Blump, blump…went the devices.
She was walking past him, and he followed, eyes still shut, trusting himself.
“Where are you?” he heard her whisper. And he knew she wasn’t talking to him.
He could sense the anxiety in her question. The captives couldn’t last much longer. That’s what she had to be thinking. Time was short.
None to waste.
Sarge only hoped those captives didn’t realize they had choices, other means to stay alive. Hopefully, they were as dumb as snail shit and just as easy to terminate.
While being led to the north, Howard’s tracker grew louder.
“How do we know we’re not picking up on one of your precious victims?” he asked, keeping his voice low.
“I don’t know.” She was slightly ahead of him, breathless. The adrenaline was working. “That’s why I’m going to take the lead here, okay? You hang back and don’t go all cowboy on me.”
“This John Wayne just might save your Girl Scout bacon.” He aimed a little to the east, gut clenching. “You’ve got some moxie, coming out here with just a light-saber to fight evil.”
Blump, blump, blump, blump… Four trackers echoed just in back of them.
“My UV wand’s a little more sophisticated than that,” she said, speech quickening. “It emits enough radiation to kill cell membranes. And it doubles as a…well, I guess the peasants might liken it to a cross.”
“Not a bad analogy.”
He could almost see her shaking her head.
Blump, blump, blump, blump, blump, blump…
“Superstition. Weapons,” she said. “We’re hunting nature’s mutants, Mr. Sargent. Killing machines. One thing Dr. Grasu has taught me is that vampires as the world knows them are fiction. Garlic and holy water are jokes.”
“Tell that to the scar on my neck.”
“We all have our jewelry.” He could tell she’d turned around to address him. “Hey, open your eyes, you fool.”
In response, he kept tracking, turning west, wandering several yards farther.
His skin puckered into itself.
Blump blump blump blump blump blump blump blump…
He opened his eyes.
“Sargent!”
Bracing himself, he raised the loaded crossbow. There was a buzzing sound, then a high-pitched, ghoulish cry. Something rushed out of the dark and slammed into him with the force of a wrecking ball, barreling him into the ground, making him lose hold of his weapon.
No breath. Goddammit, no…
It was sniffing at his neck.
Instinctively, he lashed out with an arm, connecting with a skull, hair catching his wrist. A whoosh of air—copper soaked, blood laced—screamed past his ear.
Just as suddenly, the body jerked as a boot connected with its head. A spray of white light cut through the darkness, and Sarge hopped into a crouch. He secured his flamethrower, ready.
“I’ve got it,” Dictator Howard said, brandishing her UV wand. “Put that damned thing away.”
An angel with a sword of justice. That’s what she was—her posture steel straight, her triumphant face glowing in the brightness. A painting in the art books his zealot mom used to show him before she died.
Through a haze of controlled frenzy, he saw that the village women were surrounding them with their lights, also. In their eyes, he could see the fear, the retribution, the fury of saving their loved ones before the vampires came to them.
His neck wound tearing itself apart with a burning agony, Sarge turned his gaze on the creature.
It looked like a primal beast caught in the split-second flash of a camera’s bulb, memorialized in statue stiffness.
Howard had been right about the light having the same effect as a cross. The creature was scared out of its gourd. Fascinated and repulsed into a motionless pose of utter horror.
It was different from the others he’d seen in his career, with a once white nightgown shredded to rags, her plump arm stretched above her forehead, shielding herself from the inevitable. Under the shadow of that arm, her eyes glowed red, feral, adapted to night vision. Her dark-brown hair was matted, braided with twigs. Her skin was baby-pink, flushed with the blood of men, and her teeth…
Fangs. Bared at Camille Howard.
The vamp let out another grating, ear-shattering screech, and Howard calmly shoved the wand at her, grabbing the arm restraints on her belt with her other hand.
The monster’s mouth froze, lips twisted.
Transfixed by the light.
“I know who this girl is,” Howard said. “Her name is Ecaterina. She was a Juni villager. I interviewed her about the vampire legends, and she said she’d heard about a tribe of males who live in the Carpathians, and maybe they’d visit instead, one day.”
Sarge knew about that vamp tribe, all right. But did Howard realize that it was made up of the few males who’d escaped the strigoiaca over the years?
Easier if she didn’t know.
He stood, hand on the machete. Clearly, this vamp was all animal, lacking in human intelligence. Worthless, really.
“Let’s put her out of our misery. It’s easier to handle one than a whole crowd of them.”
“Don’t.” Howard leveled a lethal glare his way, her headset light blinding him. “When the strigoiaca attacked Juni, they lost one of their numbers. It was like they all heard the vampire’s death scream because, seconds later, they got Ecaterina. Turned her into one of them. She hasn’t been a vampire for that long. Maybe she can still talk.” She turned to the monster. “Ecaterina?”
Sarge wasn’t surprised when all they got was a blank, red stare. A hiss, like a cornered viper. She coiled her body into a protective ball, cowering.
Howard sighed, walked around to the creature’s back side. Sarge did, too.
“Look.” She pointed to the monster’s spine, where clear, gel-like wings fluttered fruitlessly. “Fins, kind of like the ones seahorses have. That’s how they get their speed. Bea thinks adrenaline powers the motion. They don’t fly, per se, but they can zip around like lightning. Ecaterina’s are smaller than the ones on Bea’s corpse, probably because our girl here isn’t done mutating.”
“Interesting. Now let’s kill it.”
“I wonder if she’s out hunting for food or something. Sustenance for the males?” She knitted her brows, checked her watch. “I don’t see any other vampires around, but we must be close.”
His machete scraped as he pulled it out of the sheath. “Nosferatu 101 is over now, Howard. Let’s get this done and move on.”
But he never had the chance to follow through.
Her UV wand blinked out.
Sizzle, snap. Darkness, except for the team’s innocuous headset beams.
The vamp flinched, scanned the other lights.
“Reveka?” barked Howard, summoning a villager.
The woman, or maybe it was a bear wearing a parka, stepped forward, sternly pointing her own wand at the vamp.
&
nbsp; “I need you to keep her here while I bind her.”
Mocking them, Reveka’s wand lost power, too.
Sarge rolled his eyes. “Real life ain’t exactly a laboratory. Is it?”
“Damned batteries,” Howard muttered. In Romanian, she shouted, “Dart pistols!”
Two more lights fizzled out until there was only one.
One.
The vamp hissed, the odds greatly decreased.
Most of the women, including Howard, had by now abandoned their wands, trading them for the sedative pistols.
Finally, thought Sarge, gripping his machete. Some righteous destruction.
The slender dandelion of a villager who held the last UV trembled as Howard beckoned her closer. “Hold steady, Delia,” she said in the woman’s language.
In the meantime, Howard grabbed her own dart pistol, aimed for the vamp’s neck.
Then the last UV zapped off.
Immediately, the whir of vampire fins filled the silence. In the chaos of streaking headset beams, all Sarge could see were trees slashed by strokes of light. All he could hear were Romanian curses.
He knew he’d be the first target. He just had to listen. To focus.
Za-room.
The vamp flew past him, and he raised the machete.
Come on, he thought, moving within five feet of the action. Let’s spar a little.
A yelp of rage split the night, and the headset lights bobbed, gathered on Howard and the vamp.
She had the beast against a tree, forearm pressed against her windpipe. It’d been the vamp’s cry—that wailing, nails-down-a-blackboard shriek. Howard flicked the dart pistol against her neck, but then the tables turned.
Time happened in something like slow motion. The vamp opened her mouth and, with the slimy grace of an eel slicing through water, her long tongue whipped out, heading for him again. The end was pointed, dagger-like.
As Sarge dived backward, out of range, Howard shoved the heel of her palm upward, blocking the attack, losing her balance in the process.
That tongue had almost gotten him. Would it have speared through his neck? Sucked the blood out of him?