Marcus gave him a sour smile in return.
“The Blood Stone was broken in eastern Turkey. That is uncomfortably close to the Middle East.”
Marcus pressed his lips together, weighing his answer. “Humanity got its start there. So did the Others. The Stone had to go back there to be broken.” He shrugged.
Adam nodded. “It is ironic, is it not, that most humans think of vampires as being an ancient race, when in fact, vampires were not created until thousands of years after humans.”
“You have been studying,” Marcus murmured. “Vampires wouldn’t exist if humans didn’t. Of course they came along afterward.” He shifted on his feet. “I don’t know why you guys think you’re being singled out. The Others are going to spread out around the globe. We believe the Elah have already moved into Russia. And the Ĉiela have made it across the Pacific. The Times Square thing wasn’t a hoax.”
“Oh, I am not one of those that think everything Americans do is a conspiracy.” Adam moved closer and dropped his voice. “Stop being defensive for a moment, Marcus Anderson. You must listen, instead.”
Marcus’ heart squeezed. There was something about Adam’s voice, or maybe it was his expression, which was three steps beyond grave. “I’m listening,” he said truthfully.
“You speak of the Ĉiela and Elah. We know as much as you about them both. Yet no one speaks of the Summanus. No one has seen them.”
“They’re nocturnal.”
“And they must move across the land, rather than fly over it like a plane. That is the conclusion we have drawn, too.” Adam shook his head. “There are people missing in our lands, Marcus.”
Cold, invisible fingers walked slowly down his spine, making the small hairs rise up almost painfully. “People go missing all the time,” he said weakly.
“Not in these numbers.” Adam gave another smile. It was a stiff shadow of the genuine thing. “Jordan is in a position to have conversations with people who you would find it impossible to speak to. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq…these countries have all been losing people in vast numbers. So has Israel and so have we.”
Marcus swallowed.
“It began in the north,” Adam added, his voice low. “And it has been moving south ever since.”
Turkey was to the north of Iraq and Syria.
Marcus breathed in deeply. “Why aren’t you telling…shit, everyone, the whole world about this?”
Adam shook his head. “You have forgotten your history, Marcus. All these countries have lived in virtual isolation throughout history. They solve their own problems. They do not reach out to the west. It is an alien concept. It has not occurred to them to even announce that there is a problem.”
“So why are you making sure I know?” Marcus demanded, because everything about Adam’s posture and his tone said that there was another shoe to drop on this. Adam was getting to the reason why he had hunted Marcus down to talk to him in the first place.
Adam’s gaze was almost sorrowful. “I have contacts in Syria.”
“Of course you do,” Marcus said impatiently.
“Three days ago, the As-Sa’iqa started rounding up any Syrian suspected to be a vampire.”
The As-Sa’iqa was Syria’s special forces. Commandos and black ops. Marcus’ mouth was dry enough that it clicked when he tried to swallow. “There are barely any vampires in the middle east. It’s too hot, too dry.”
Adam spoke as if Marcus had not interrupted him. “They’re rounding them up, beheading them in the nearest public square and letting them bleed out. They call it—” and he said something in Arabic, too quickly for Marcus to follow.
“Something water,” Marcus whispered.
“Returning our life’s waters to the earth.”
“It’s a pogrom.” Marcus felt sick. “Vampires aren’t the reason their people are missing. Don’t they know that?”
“They hear what we hear,” Adam said, “and they believe even less than we do. It is Syria, Marcus. You speak of an invisible enemy all while your friends have shown themselves. That is an enemy the Syrians can see. There have been riots in the streets. People are scared. So the As-Sa’iqa are giving them something to vent their fear upon. When someone is beheaded, they dance upon their blood, stomping it into the ground. In this way, the people are controlled. Contained.”
Marcus tried to draw in a deep breath. His chest was too tight. “This is bad.”
“It is, indeed,” Adam said gravely. “Yet it might be worse.”
Marcus gave a hollow, scratchy laugh. “How?”
“If the Summanus can travel south, they can also travel north and east and west. Has anyone spoken to officials in Georgia or Azerbaijan? Greece lies to Turkey’s west. So does Bulgaria. Has anyone asked Turkey? Can anyone even raise Istanbul?”
Marcus wanted to say that Adam was being stupid and melodramatic, but he couldn’t.
He felt sick. Shaky.
“This is really happening,” he whispered. “They’re coming, just not the way we expected.”
“Given what you do know of the Summanus, did you really think they would rush in uniform phalanxes, in the open light of day for the world to see?” Adam grimaced. “They would not think of this as war. We are food. They are merely migrating to where the food grows the most plentiful.”
“And harvesting as they go,” Marcus finished. The urge to tell someone about this, to warn everyone, was overwhelming. He couldn’t stand still a moment longer. He might have said thank you or goodbye to Adam. He didn’t remember doing it.
By the time he reached the big doors onto the assembly floor itself, he was running.
Chapter Seven
Los Angeles, Two Weeks Later
Blythe lifted her left hand into position with her right, resting the wrist against the keyboard padding, so her fingers could reach the keys. There was just enough feeling left in the fingers that she could type. Slowly.
She resettled the ice pack against the bandage on her forearm, then used the mouse to pull up a new blog post window and pecked out a title line.
How to Defend Yourself Against a Summani
The cursor blinked in the text box, waiting patiently, while she stared at the screen. She could hear the twins moving around upstairs. From their footsteps, she could tell they were in Jake’s room, probably hovering over his sleeping form. She understood why. They were as worried as she was.
Thinking of Jake made it all come rushing back. Delayed fear squeezed Blythe’s throat and caught at her chest with a vice-grip. For a moment the images on the screen swam, as her vision faded and the memories came rushing back. It was as if she was there all over again.
Why had she stayed back to work longer? Ever since she had taken the job at the Four Seasons, that had been an agreement between her and her supervisor. As a single mother she needed to be back home at a reasonable hour each night. With the fuss over the Others, it seemed like every day was filled with frantic media events where one or another of the Los Angeles vampires chose their hotel to hold the press conference, or the interviews.
In a way she didn’t blame them. She wasn’t sure she would want media knowing where she lived, either.
So everyone was stretched to the max and it had seemed only fair to agree to stay back for a couple of hours to cover the influx around the dinner hour. She had texted all three kids to let them know she wouldn’t be home for dinner and to leave instructions about making sure dinner was served and that everyone ate.
Since she had put her family on a personal war footing, all three of them had been very good about making sure they returned home before sunset. Except that it had been weeks since the vampires had come out and apart from the one sighting in Times Square, life was going on as usual. Everyone had started to relax, including herself.
It had been getting close to seven p.m. and she had been starting to think about going home, when she got the text from Jake.
Simone stayed for dinner at Carly’s place. Going over to walk her home. We
’ll be straight back.
Jake was conscientious enough to reassure her that they would be walking straight back with no detours. Then Blythe looked out the windows and noticed it was pitch black outside.
She didn’t panic then. That would come later. In fact, she felt the same sense of carelessness that had probably let Jake figure it was a good idea for either of them to be out after dark. They had all let down their guard.
Blythe consciously noticed that sunset had come and gone. As soon as there was a break she checked with Johnson, who thanked her for her work and let her go home. Thankfully, she hurried back to her locker and picked up her gear, then down to the subbasement to her car.
She wheeled out of the hotel parking lot faster than normal. She still hadn’t been feeling any great distress, yet something made her hurry, anyway.
The L.A. traffic that usually clogged the highways around dinner time had subsided considerably by the time she hit the freeway. She was able to make really good time getting home and turned into the driveway only forty minutes later.
Her instincts had been driving her, even though she hadn’t realized it then. She dashed into the house, dropped her bag and called out. “Jake!”
Silence.
“Simone! Eloise!” This time she spoke louder, a hint of worry increasing her volume.
Overhead, she heard the sound of feet hitting the floor, then footsteps.
Relief touched her. And that was the first time she realized that the tension had been building inside her since before she had left the hotel. She waited as patiently as she could, until Eloise walked into the kitchen, looking puzzled.
“Jake and Simone are not back yet?”
Eloise frowned. “Jake went to Carly’s place ages ago. They’re not back yet?”
Blythe sighed. She picked up a keys again. “Stay in the house!”
“Where are you going?”
Blythe wondered if Eloise had been sleeping. She seemed to be having trouble putting things together. “Make sure your cell phone is on,” Blythe told her. “And stay in the house,” she repeated firmly.
Blythe ran for the car and cruised along the streets to Carly Mathur’s house. In the dark it was difficult to check every single person she passed, although she slowed down enough to look at pairs, as her stomach crawled. She had no idea why she was so panicked, but she obeyed her instincts as they had served her well in the past.
The problem was, there was so many shortcuts and alleys between her house and Carly Mathur’s house. Jake and Simone were walking and would use all of them.
Blythe reached the Mathur’s house without spotting either of them. She parked in front of the bungalow and ran across the lawn—screw the footpath—and hammered on the front door. The door opened almost immediately and Pete Mathur scratched at his tank top as he stared at her and tried to put together who she was.
Blythe didn’t have time to fuck around. By now her instincts were screaming at her. She gave Jack a stiff smile. “I’m Blythe Murray, Peter. My daughter Simone and my son Jake were here. Are they still?”
Peter put it together and straightened up, as if he had been caught slacking off. “Geez no. Marcy insisted they stay for dinner, before they went home. That Jake of yours is growing into a tall guy, isn’t he?”
Blythe gripped the frame of the storm door, her chest tightening. “How long ago did they leave, Peter?”
His brows came together, as it finally registered on him. “About…I don’t know…. Maybe fifteen minutes?”
Blythe nodded. “Then they’re still out there,” she concluded.
Peter shifted on his feet. “Is something wrong? Is there something I can do?”
Blythe shook her head. The last thing she needed was civilians getting under her feet. “It could be nothing,” she said truthfully. “I just know I’m feeling uneasy.”
“Perhaps I should come with you,” Peter said slowly, as if he was beginning to understand that he had some responsibility in whatever might have happened.
So she shook her head again and gave him a smile. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” she assured him. “I’m just being a paranoid mother. I’ll go find them with the car and take them home and I’ll give you a call when I get back home, too.”
Peter looked relieved. “Yeah, kids these days.”
Blythe tried to give him another reassuring smile. She was already moving away from the door. She turned and ran for the car, slid into the driver’s seat and gripped the steering wheel hard.
Before putting the car in gear and taking off, she mentally tracked the probable route the kids would have taken. She didn’t know it as well as they did, because she always drove. Although, they had been living in this neighborhood for twelve years now and she had gotten to know more about the shortcuts than any of her kids realized.
There were alleys and side roads that would let her check almost every section of the route. There was just one chokepoint that she wouldn’t be able to reach with the car, not even to get a distant glance at it. First, she would check the other sections.
Blythe drove faster than was safe for that quiet neighborhood. In ten minutes, she was able to establish that Jake and Simone were not in any of the alleys or foot paths that cut through the back areas of the neighborhoods. That just left the chokepoint.
Her heart was starting to hammer now. She wheeled the car around, the tires squealing a bit on the tarmac, and made her way to the side street where the fenced in sidewalk emerged. The land developers, in their wisdom, had had gas pipes laid neatly between houses and all the houses fed onto that big main pipe. Nothing had been built over the top of it and the city had laid down a concrete path. The residents on either side had put up their fences and now the three hundred yard path meandered between the fences across the length of one city block.
In Blythe’s mind, it was a chokepoint, because once someone was in the tunnel, there was no way to get out other than going through. It was tactically a bad news route. Her kids wouldn’t think of it that way, though. They would only think of it as a way to save five minutes and the effort of having to walk around the block rather than through it.
Her instincts were screaming at her now. So she didn’t drive right up to the mouth of the alley. Instead, she stopped the car about twenty feet away. She killed the engine and eased herself out, shutting the door quietly.
Grouping the big bunch of keys in her fist, she moved over to the mouth of the alley and pressed herself up against the palings. She drew a deep breath, then carefully looked around the corner.
At first she didn’t see it.
Jake and Simone were standing together, clinging to each other, their eyes wide.
Her relief at seeing them both alive was so intense, that at first she didn’t notice anything else.
Then the thing moved.
It was between her and the kids and must have been hunched down, considering its next move. Jake and Simone were frozen with fear, so it had time to consider.
Blythe’s arrival had stirred it. She had been quiet, but clearly not quiet enough. In the back of her mind, she made a mental note that the creature had phenomenal hearing.
It rose, straightening up so that the things it was standing on grew longer. There was a joint in the middle of what would have been legs, that she might have called knees, except that they pointed backward like a dog’s hind legs.
She got the impression of sinewy strength, as the thing turned its head to look at her. Deliberately, she stepped out into the middle of the footpath, cutting off the exit.
The head was bony, with very little spare flesh. Very high cheek bones extended into bony projections that emerged from what might have been its temples. Blythe only processed that in the back of her mind, where her strategic center sat. She was more conscious of the thing’s eyes, which were red and glowing, like something out of a horror novel.
There was a snout and far too many teeth, that were long and yellowy and gnashed together. The bottom jaw descended,
then snapped closed.
Her heart leapt. “Get away from my kids, you fucker.”
She had its full attention now. It turned on its springy hind legs to face her.
“Jake. Simone. Run out the other way and around the block. I’ll meet you on the street.”
Neither of them moved.
“Go!” She shouted, her throat hurting at the intensity she used. “Now!”
Simone stirred. She took a step back, then tugged on Jake’s arm, drawing him with her.
Jake seemed to shake himself. Blythe had seen that sort of paralyzing shock in civilians caught between crossfire, or who had survived the falling of a bomb that had landed far too close.
“Jake, move your ass or I’ll kick it for you!” She had to get him moving.
The thing between them gave another little spin-hop and turned back to face Jake and Simone. It had sensed that its prey was escaping.
Blythe didn’t panic. The old instincts were in full command now. “Run!” She screamed and at the same time, she sprinted toward the thing. She had no weapons except the keys in her hand and she clenched them hard, forming a fist and letting the points of the keys emerge between her knuckles.
Simone gave an hysterical sob and ran for the street, terror driving her. Jake turned to follow her, finally, finally moving.
The thing didn’t like it. It made a sound that even now three hours later, Blythe could still hear in her mind. It was a two-toned screeching, the lower tone like the heavy noise that emerged from a sub-woofer at full volume, the higher note an almost inaudible shriek.
At the sound, Jake turned back to face it. He knew as well as Blythe did that the creature was about to launch itself in attack. It was instinct to turn to face your attacker. He would’ve been better to keep running, although he didn’t know that. He was only fifteen. And he had never been through a war like she had.
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