by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor
Sargent patted his friend on the back. “But Ashe told me to watch out for flying darts this time.”
The Wiccan sent Camille a look that said “So much for your grand plans,” and drew a shape on her forehead.
“Ashe,” she asked, “is that a pentagram?”
“Yes, but don’t worry—it’s not inverted.” He touched each of the five points. “These represent the Spirit—which is on the top, not the bottom—water, fire, earth and air. This symbol has been used through the ages for protection. Only relatively recently has the upside-down version become a sign of evil.”
“No sweat,” Sarge added. “Sweet Boy Ashe wouldn’t hurt a fly unless it bit him first. Then, watch out.”
With an encouraging pat on Camille’s upper arm, the Wiccan left, wandering over to the other women, oil readied for more action.
One quick glance told Camille that the villagers were ready to go. Nervous as hell, too. Camille had hoped to avoid the wolves by striking the castle by daylight; after all, the vampires would be somewhere dark, where it was always night. A dungeon, maybe. Schedules probably didn’t matter with the strigoiaca. It’s not as if they were fictional vampires who slept in coffins by day.
However, in spite of her sunlight hopes, her team had spent hours training with the knives and guns, eating up the minutes.
As they stood waiting for Ashe to anoint the women, Camille suddenly felt Sarge’s gaze on her.
“Question, Howard,” he said. “Is there something more than scientific discoveries in that castle for you? Maybe it’s one of those captives you’re so protective of….”
A muscle twitched near her eye. Heart beating double time at the thought of Griff’s loving smile, she covered it by strapping on her headset and light gear.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” he said. “I’ve hit the jackpot. So who was this friend Flora Vladislav told me about? Were you and the captive—?”
“Just get ready, Sarge.”
“Ah. So you’re rescuing the princess in the tower?”
“I really don’t want to talk about this.” It hurt too much. It made her more nervous, realizing that Griff’s life was in her hands—if he was even still alive.
The wolf pack—maybe five, six of them?—keened together. They were on that path somewhere.
Camille stepped past Sarge, toward them. “My future might be up there.”
Her salvation.
Because if she didn’t save Griff, there’d be nothing left. Nothing to have faith in.
Besides, she was the one who had brought him to Juni. She would be the one to bring him back, too.
Camille touched her baby ring for luck. For reassurance.
When Sarge spoke again, his voice was low, touched with something she couldn’t identify.
“Whoever’s there, Howard, he ain’t the same anymore. It’s been a year, and those things have had their teeth in him. They’ve probably sucked out his soul, too.”
“Bull. They’ve taken blood, but that’s it.”
“You can’t imagine…” he began, then stopped.
His demeanor had changed. There was a split in his armored skin, a wound in the center of his eyes, a slump to his normally rough-and-ready stance.
His tortured gaze told her he was somewhere else, somewhere in the splatter of a crimson-soaked memory.
“The minute these things take their first bite, they lose their souls. They become true monsters, warped, living by rules that regular people can’t understand.” He gripped the handle of his machete. “To be a killer, you have to be a little in love with death. Know what I mean?”
No. She hated death. Hated the dark. Hated…that she did understand.
“Listen, Sarge.” Her voice quavered. “You think I’m going to abandon every code I’ve created during my life? You think I’m going to snap and enjoy chopping off heads and ripping out hearts as much as you do? Not going to happen, cowboy. Know why?”
“Enlighten me.”
Bottled rage boiled, struggling to find an outlet. “Believe it or not, I respect the strigoiaca. I hate it, but I do. The more I study them, the more I admire their ability to exist for hundreds of years. Their physical adaptations are astounding, Darwinian theory at its best—like great white sharks. Their bodies are pure machines, streamlined for survival.” Her head filled with phrases from all the books she’d read, all the fascinated repulsion she’d fed herself on.
“I respect their great desire to live,” she added, “because we humans feel the same way. You don’t go around annihilating this evolutionary wonder just because something pissed you off. There’s a world order and we’re not its royalty.”
Sargent’s face had reddened by now, the scarlet anger creeping down his neck. But it avoided that white-hot scar, branching around it, making the network of raised, dead skin flash like a warning beacon.
“You feel this way, even after what you saw in Juni?”
Did she really? Or was she making a mad grab at staying sane? Of keeping order in her world?
“Your pristine faith ain’t gonna be so lily-white after some blood has been splashed over it,” Sarge added.
“I was never lily-white in the first place.” Damn him. What did he know about her?
His face fell, as if recalling something. “God, Howard. God, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”
That Howard Girl. When they had first met, he’d mentioned her reputation. He’d even confessed to feeling sorry for her parents’ murders. She felt as if he’d reached into her chest and yanked out a living, beating piece of her heart.
His eyes held a genuine apology. “I forget who you are without those news cameras on you. The Howard Girl.”
Not anymore, she thought. That person died a year ago in Juni.
They faced off, pulses of tension separating them. Drawing a thick black line between both of their worlds.
Ashe had been listening, standing quietly to the side. “Hate to interrupt, but we’re all ready now.”
Ready to travel up the short yet never ending castle road. Ready to see if Griff was there.
Please, God, have him be there.
“Let’s go,” she said, controlling the dormant anger. She touched her hand to her headset. “Bea? We’re on.”
“My darling girl,” Doc answered, filling Camille with the calm she’d been lacking. Aunt Bea was her lucky star, her anointed protector. With her watching over Camille, there was nothing to worry about.
At least, that’s what she tried to tell herself.
Switching on her head-mounted light, she marched toward the slender castle road.
Ready to capture some strigoiaca.
Ready—and, in fact, terrified—to see whether or not Griff had survived.
As twilight set, they’d left Ashe to put up another magick circle around him and the three drivers, including Irina and her broken arm. Two out of three women were armed with their own semiautomatics. All of them had dart guns and UV wands. They were prepared and trained to fend off wolves or anything even more dangerous.
Ashe intended to wage his own battle back at the Humvees, using binding spells to protect their enemies, as well as the team. Like Camille, he believed everything had souls and could make good choices. If he could help the wolves and vampires stay in the light, he would.
The Vasile villagers had been impressed with his talents, especially Lucia, a woman who’d initially been recruited as a driver but had taken the hapless Irina’s hunting spot.
Even now, as the six vampire hunters wound up the rising road, the blond, lanky Lucia wore a goofy grin. Her infatuated expression clashed with the rest of their game faces.
Excellent. This hormonal new girl would get them all in trouble if she was thinking of Ashe and not the hunt.
“That is not where your mind belongs,” Camille whispered to her in Romanian.
Lucia blushed from her high, rounded cheekbones to the collar of the long-sleeved black Lycra bodysuit with gloves that Camille had provided for the cr
ew and herself.
“Lucia,” Camille said, trying to inject some optimism into their mission. “You can dream about boys later, when we are out of the castle.”
Reveka’s guttural voice blasted into her ear. “It is useless, Miss Howard. Lucia, she lives to make boys into men. That is the way of it.”
The rest of the women—Delia, Ana and Lucia—laughed. Sarge, who was walking next to Camille at the point of their group, made a fed-up face and shook his head. He didn’t have a headset and, with the way he’d been walking around last night with his eyes closed, he really needed it. Camille hadn’t packed any extra communications devices, though she could’ve sent for some from the university. But, right now, he was out of luck.
She swept her gaze over him. He had a new weapon tonight—a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. Otherwise, the flamethrower, stake, crossbow, machete and bowie were all waiting patiently for use. He’d also donned a pair of leather vambraces on his forearms, giving him a modern, yet medieval, appearance.
As the crew climbed upward and rounded a corner, Camille tensed. The back of the rise dropped clear off a precipice, and the path was so narrow that only one person could go at a time. And, even then, they’d have to suck in their guts and scrape the cliff face with their backs.
They stopped, assessed the road. It widened again after about one hundred feet.
Camille touched her headset three times. “Bea?”
“Right here.”
“Could you have those choppers on standby in case we need to airlift the specimens down from the castle?”
“Yes. Done.”
They’d had two Hueys waiting at Vasile, just in case the Humvees weren’t sufficient transportation. For a second, she wondered if they should wait for the choppers to take this crew up to the castle, too, but that would be another waste of precious minutes because, by the time the Hueys arrived to pick them up, they could’ve already arrived at the castle.
Surely they could deal with a little bad road.
“How did carriages ever get through here?” Camille asked, using Romanian to include the women.
“This place is ancient.” Sarge moved to the edge and peered into the chasm, fearless. “Fourteenth century, maybe? I imagine the road crumbled after the place was deserted.”
Delia, who seemed so much like a china doll dressed in commando clothing, spoke up. “The legends keep the people away from Castle Bethlen.”
“The ghosts,” Ana added. Under her headset, she still wore her red scarf. She was a married woman who said she’d die before she’d see her husband taken, and that had impressed—and saddened—Camille. She’d felt all too much in common with her.
Lucia chimed in, too. “No one but strigoiaca would dare live here.”
“If they are here,” Reveka said.
“They are.” Sarge turned his back to the fog rising out of the gorge. “Ashe isn’t wrong. Too often.”
He directed a pointed glare at Camille, then motioned her ahead on the path. Nodding, she stepped onto the three-foot-wide ledge.
Without looking down, she crept along, feeling the shift of rock under her boot. Good God.
Behind her, someone slipped. Sarge’s arm whipped out to catch Reveka before she plunged over the precipice.
After she recovered, they all held their breath, inching along, the light waning as their headlamps cut through a patch of mist. Wind whispered in their ears.
Griff, said her own personal ghosts.
I’m coming, she thought. Coming for you.
With renewed purpose, she felt her way along the rock. Soon, the path widened considerably, allowing them to gather together and help each other to safety. Good. All accounted for.
Something stirred behind her, rattling the leaves of a bush.
Camille spun around, finding nothing. She checked her wrist tracker. Silent.
Turning back around, she saw Sarge scanning the area, still weighed down with his weapons, his shotgun primed.
Quiet steps, shuffling over rock. A snuff. A growl.
No one moved. All eyes were trained on something behind her. Slowly, she started to take out her dart gun. Started to turn around.
Eyes. Six pairs of preternaturally shining orbs glowing from the skulls of wolves.
A huge gray one slunk forward. The alpha female. It flashed teeth. Fangs.
Inching her hand toward her belt, Camille grabbed her guns—both dart and adrenaline. “Aunt Bea? We’re about to go Red Riding Hood.”
Behind her, she heard Sarge cock his shotgun.
In front of her, the alpha wolf licked its lips.
Chapter 8
Juni, approximately nine months ago
The night before the strigoiaca came
“Professor Bragg?” Camille asked, addressing her squawking, good-for-nothing cell phone.
Just seconds ago, ensconced in her spare, fire-warmed upstairs room at the Juni inn, she’d been talking to her adviser about her dissertation. Now she’d lost the connection.
“Great,” she said to Griff, who was lounging on her bed with his cellular modem computer on his lap. “Crummy provider. Are you still online?”
“Not anymore.” He shrugged, shut down and closed the laptop. “I wasn’t working on anything important anyway. I thought the rainstorm might complicate reception.”
Nodding toward the window, he indicated the gray skies and restless tree branches stirring behind the embroidered curtains.
Camille’s heart squeezed at his tousled, bed-head hair. Ruffled, boyish, carefree. Could he be any more lovable?
“So much for work,” she said, turning off her phone and tossing it onto a chair with faded blue upholstery.
Due to yesterday’s enlightening confrontation between the old woman and Petar Vladislav, she’d wanted to get Bragg’s opinion about the legend of the male vampire tribe. Wanted to know if she should focus her questions on them or if she should continue with the old angle. She trusted her adviser implicitly; he had a vested interest in her success since he was a family friend. That’s why she’d chosen Texas A&M over Yale—her alma mater—or any other graduate school. Because of Bragg’s unheralded expertise and the personal attention he offered.
Like Camille, Griff got rid of his workload, too, placing it on the nightstand next to a wreath of wild roses and a clunky light with tassels hanging from the cover. He motioned to her.
Come here.
She did, lazily crawling to his side. With a hint of kittenish delight, she swept her bare foot over his jeans-clad calf, resting her toes between his legs.
He bundled her into his arms, tugging at a handful of her pink long johns. “I think we’ve both labored enough.”
Since chatting with Ecaterina yesterday, Camille had interviewed six more Juni villagers, but the feisty old woman had quietly left after the afternoon’s showdown. Bummer, because there was no telling what Camille could’ve learned from her.
Griff leaned over to douse the light. The fire snapped in its grate, casting lopsided shadows over the wood walls and sepia-tinged paintings of saints.
“So,” Camille said, running an index finger down the front of his shirt, “you getting bored yet?”
He laughed in answer, then said, “How could I possibly tire of watching you in action? You’re a veritable poem in motion, with the way you collect pieces of this cultural puzzle. And I enjoy seeing Ms. Godea warming up to you.”
“Sure. A trip to the center of the sun couldn’t thaw our translator.” Camille drew her finger downward, over his rib cage, his stomach. Under his shirt.
When she brushed the soft down leading into Griff’s jeans, he buried his face into her hair, groaned.
She paused before asking her next question, almost afraid of the answer. “You’re not ready to go back home?”
Her finger sketched back and forth on his belly, and he gripped her long johns. His breathing quickened, tickling her ear with sensuous warmth.
“Do you want me to leave?” he labored to a
sk.
All her emotional baggage, all her short-term fumblings for love, had taught her that men deserted when they’d gotten what they wanted. Oddly enough, Griff was still around, even after finding out that she wasn’t exactly the most normal girlfriend he could’ve hoped for. Half of her needed to give him an easy way out, just in case he was secretly searching for one. The other half cried for him to stay.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want you to leave. It’s just…this research could go on for a long time. Depending on what I find, I might even decide to stay in Juni, collecting anecdotal evidence of this male tribe.”
“Hey.” When he looked into her eyes, she could see the fire there. The hunger, raw and passionate. “When will you stop running?”
“I’m not.”
“Then we’ll call it hiding, Camille. You’re still hiding from life—this time using vampire folklore as a temporary shelter. Are you ever going to go home?”
“Home.” She leaned into the hand he was using to play with her hair, kissed his palm. “Home’s a pretty abstract word.”
He didn’t say anything, no doubt knowing that her past made nesting kind of tough.
“The closest thing I have to home is—” she peeked at him from under her eyelashes “—well, you.”
As the words hung in the firewood-tinged air, something pooled in the depths of his brown eyes. A tidal shift, covering desire with deep emotion.
Had she really said what she’d said? Jeez, talk about putting your heart up for grabs. She waited, wondering what he’d do.
After a tense second that seemed more like a year, Griff closed his eyes, rested his forehead against hers.
Oh. The bad-news pose. The grandiose but in the you’re-a-great-girl-but scenario.
“Griff.” She pulled away slightly, grasping his hands in hers. “I shouldn’t have opened my big mouth. Sometimes it’s good to have patience. Maybe not blurting out every feeling as it registers would be more prudent, you know? I’m just not used to a guy who’d wait two weeks to sleep with me and—”
“I would have waited longer, if that’s what it took to win your heart.”
Her trail of excuses came to an abrupt end. “You…you would have?”