The plates of bacon, eggs and hash browns had just been put on the table, when the standard CNN morning news show was interrupted.
Blythe lifted her head from her plate, as she heard the words. “We interrupt this broadcast to bring breaking news to you…”
The image on the screen had clearly been taken by a camera in a helicopter, for it was a little bit shaky and from several thousand feet up. The helicopter was circling around a city. The dateline at the bottom of the screen said Nashville, Tennessee.
“At approximately nine p.m. last night, Nashville city authorities and emergency services began to broadcast distress messages. All of them claimed that the city was being overrun by Summanus.”
“Tennessee’s riddled with caves,” Patrick said softly. “Even the land under the city is a honeycomb.”
The CNN report continued. “Civilian militia from surrounding areas were dispatched by the state coordinating service. All military personnel in the state were also sent. Just after midnight last night, all communications from the city ceased. There has been silence from Nashville since one a.m. this morning. No one is responding to communications.”
Blythe stared at the images, realizing what was wrong with the city scene. It looked like a normal city, only nothing moved on the streets. The cars on the streets were still, some of them pulled up at odd angles, as if the occupants had had to stop in a hurry.
As the helicopter swung around the city in a slow arc, the camera showed block after block of silence and emptiness.
“Everyone’s just gone,” Jake said.
“One of the last communications received from the city,” the CNN reporter continued, “was that the Summanus were attacking in overwhelming numbers. These reports speak of Summanus numbering in the millions. This morning, when authorities entered the city, they found empty streets and empty buildings. Although authorities are continuing to search the city, fear is growing that there are no humans left at all.”
Eloise gasped and Dominic put his coffee cup down slowly, not quite reaching the table and having to adjust as it sloshed.
“All of them?” Simone said. “A whole city?”
“How many people lived in Nashville?” Jake asked. Blythe noted the past tense he was using.
“If you count the outlying suburbs,” Patrick said, “then about three million people.”
Blythe pushed her plate away. Her appetite had fled.
Dominic was looking at Patrick. “You’re from Nashville?”
Patrick shook his head. “Kentucky, originally. I spent time in Tennessee as a kid. I had cousins there.”
The helicopter had continued to move as they spoke and now, Blythe began to see people. They were not going about their daily business. These must be the outlying suburbs. Everyone who still remained was fleeing. There were long lines of people walking and even slower lines of cars. It was an exodus.
“Sweet Jesus,” Jake breathed.
“No one wants to be there after nightfall, now,” Dominic said.
The CNN reporter was droning on about estimated losses and what the authorities were doing to combat the menace. None of it was new. Most of it added up to humans having to fight for themselves, because the authorities had no real strategies.
“Turn the TV off,” Blythe said firmly. “There’s nothing we can do about this right here and now. Let’s eat breakfast and be civilized for a few moments more.”
Someone pressed the remote and the TV turned off with an electronic sigh. Blythe picked up her fork and tried to pretend to eat the rest of her breakfast, while her heart fluttered in a weak and sick way.
Simone was weeping steadily and silently, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand in between mouthfuls.
Jake did not attempt to open the laptop as he usually did.
Patrick and Dominic remained silent, too. There was no more give-and-take, no more zingers.
They may have turned off the sound, but the fact of Nashville was sitting right there on the table in between them, affecting them all. It was making them question the future.
How much longer could this go on?
Chapter Twenty-Six
The weeks wound on, filled with hunting, losses and heartbreak.
The President addressed the nation, sharing his grief over all those who had been slain and taken. He promised that every resource at the government’s disposal had been retooled in the effort to find an answer to this new menace in their lives.
Dominic, who listened to the address filtered through everyone else’s hearing, was the first to notice. “There’s no specifics,” he said. “I don’t think they know what they going to do at all.”
“They’re not going to spell out details of national security on television,” Blythe said.
“Why not?” Patrick said. He had a script open upon his knee, one of the many he was assessing that had been thrust at him by producers and directors eager to have him in their movie. “If they really have answers, the best thing they could do is tell everyone exactly what they are going to do. It’s not like the Summanus can listen and take notes.”
They had taken a rare night off from hunting in order to catch the President’s address. Patrick had the armchair and Dominic sat with Blythe upon the sofa. Jake and the girls were sprawled on the floor, propped up on cushions. All three of them had scripts open in front of them, for they were helping Patrick search for a suitable story.
“Maybe they’re not disclosing details, because they are used to keeping them close to their chest,” Blythe said.
Jake rolled over on his back and looked at her. “It’s not like any other government in the world is announcing a grand new plan.” He handed Patrick the script he had been reading and grimaced. “This one sucks. Too much girly stuff.”
Patrick pulled a script off the pile next to his elbow and handed it to Jake. “Try this one, then. Action thriller.”
All of them had agreed that Patrick’s first movie, now he was a vampire and now that the world was in peril, should absolutely be a heroic adventure, where the good guys won against overwhelming odds.
“Then you don’t have to act at all,” Jacob said, with a grin. “You can just be yourself.”
Patrick had tipped him upside down and shook him for his cheekiness, although even the girls agreed that a story about battling the odds would be better than any romance he could possibly cast himself in.
Blythe had not got involved in the script analysis project. Neither had Dominic. Although neither of them spoke of it, she knew that Dominic was as nervous about Patrick’s return to Hollywood as she was.
Patrick was very calm, almost cynical about it. “Who knows? By the time principal photography starts, there may not be a Hollywood left. And if Hollywood is still around, there may not be anyone left to watch what they make. But for now, the best thing we can do is act as though everything is normal. It’s the only way to stay sane.” He had grinned. “Take it from me. When the booze was really biting, acting as if everything was normal was the only way I got through the day.”
Except that normal wasn’t what it used to be, once upon a time.
* * * * *
On Jake’s sixteenth birthday, Jake asked Patrick to train him with the sword. Blythe thought she might have a meltdown right there in the kitchen. While Dominic held her tightly, Patrick considered Jake’s request.
“I’ll train you on one condition,” he said and Blythe bit back her moan.
Jake nodded.
“You don’t go out hunting Summanus until I say you’re ready.”
Jake grimaced. “In other words, I’ll never be ready.”
“You’re only sixteen,” Blythe began and Jake rolled his eyes.
“One day you’ll be ready,” Patrick said. “And you’re growing up in a world where you will have to hunt Summanus if you want to live any sort of life. So I will teach you and Dominic will teach you how to use a knife. Your mother will teach you the best ways of finding and defeating Summanus. W
e’ll train the girls, too,” he added.
“We will teach you everything we have to share with you, to make you the best hunters you can be. However, until you’re good, until we think you have the skills necessary to defend yourself and not end up dead on the first night out, you don’t hunt. Is that understood?”
Jake had agreed to the bargain. Both of the girls had also agreed, which had surprised Blythe more than Jake’s request. She had not realized how closely the girls have been watching her, until Simone said, “Why shouldn’t we fight? Mom does. And she’s good at it. We can be, too.”
As winter began in earnest so, too, did training for everyone in the house. School hours were adjusted downward, so that kids could go to and from school in daylight. That meant that they were home for longer, which gave everyone the opportunity to be together and during those hours they trained, too.
Patrick and Dominic were still technically guests in her house, but as they spent nearly every single night in her bed, the technicality was losing any meaning. Still, Blythe was reluctant to address the matter directly.
Patrick had begun filming only a few weeks ago and his contract kept his hours at a minimum, so that he could return home each night and hunt. The producers had groused and whined, while Patrick remained firm. If they wanted him in their movie, they would agree, or he walked.
They had agreed.
That he was home every night went a long way toward helping Blythe relax. However, her bed was not big enough and space in the house was stretched to near breaking. With the addition of training, it became almost impossible to find space for themselves. Even the kids grew stir crazy from the short daylight hours and being cooped up inside for so long.
Dominic was the one to raise the subject. “I’m sick of living out of a duffel bag,” he began. “School has been dismissed for the Christmas season. Now is the perfect time. Patrick has miles of room in his house. Jake and the girls could transfer to a school in Hollywood. They have more money to spare for security, anyway. Then we wouldn’t have to keep up this ninety minute commute all the time.”
Blythe looked at Patrick. He hadn’t reacted in any way and she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “Did that freak him out, Dominic?” she asked.
“Is it freaking you out?” Patrick said. “He’s basically suggesting we all move in together, your kids included.”
“She’s worried about the upheaval,” Dominic said. “And you’re worried about what everyone will think.”
“I don’t give a damn what anyone in Lalaland thinks,” Patrick said. “But I know that Blythe is worried about it.”
“Is that why you’ve never said anything until now?” she asked.
“I didn’t want to force the issue. Dominic’s right and so are you. This is an upheaval for the kids. And of course, they going to make natural assumptions, if we move in together.”
The silence seemed to tick like a bomb.
Blythe licked her lips. “That isn’t how you feel?” she said carefully.
Dominic gave a hiss of frustration. “You’re both tap dancing around it. Patrick, tell her how you really feel. You’re scaring her.”
Patrick looked at them both. He didn’t speak.
“And now he’s afraid,” Dominic said softly.
Patrick nodded. “What I want to say…I’ve said it so many times before. I feel as if I say anything now, it will jinx it. I sometimes think if I move too fast, or breathe too hard, this will blow up in my face.” Old hurts shadowed his eyes. “When you two are sleeping, I watch you. And the idea of losing you terrifies me.” His hands clenched into fists and he rested them on his knees. “What I feel…I’ve never felt this before. Give me time.”
“You don’t have to prove anything,” Blythe said swiftly. The last time he had asked for time it had been to prove that Hollywood would not destroy them. The jury was still out on that, but it was looking good. This, though, was different.
Patrick shook his head. “I mean, give me time to get used to it, to relax enough to know I’m not going to fuck it up.”
Blythe blinked rapidly, clearing her eyes of tears.
It was Dominic who responded first. He took Patrick’s face in his hands and kissed him, then rested his forehead against his. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Then Dominic looked up at Blythe. He gave her a small smile. “Blythe wants the largest closet you have and the right side of the bed.” He had plucked the thought straight out of her mind. She couldn’t dispute it. She was already thinking about details surrounding the move. Somewhere in the last few minutes, she had already accepted that this would happen.
* * * * *
Between Christmas and New Year, they all moved into Patrick’s house. Patrick’s master bedroom was big enough for all three of them and there were rooms for Jake and the girls, too.
Jake’s reaction to the suggestion that they all move into Patrick’s house had been simple. He had rolled his eyes. “Finally!”
Simone and Eloise spent Christmas going through schools in the area and picking out which one they wanted to attend.
As her children had already met everyone living in the house—Nial, Winter and Sebastian—Blythe was able to relax a little more. Her children had accepted Nial, Sebastian and Winter’s untraditional marriage more easily than her relationship with Patrick and Dominic. And while the girls sighed after Nial, Jake spent more time with Patrick and Dominic, training with the sword and absorbing everything they shared with him.
Blythe moved the center of her hunting operations along with her suitcases. She left behind a group of well-trained, well-equipped hunters, who elected from among them a new leader. No one was surprised when the new leader turned out to be Peter’s widow. Marcy had become a superior hunter. Blythe suspected that a lot of her drive came from Peter’s death and her need to make up for that.
As Bel Air and the higher Hollywood hills were thick with Summanus, Blythe made her first priority to contact the local hunters and form squads. She set up defense perimeters that could alert anyone of encroaching Summanus. Then they concentrated on clearing out the fringe suburbs, hunting down every last Summanus they could find. They sterilized nests and plugged access to the dark, deep places they liked.
Her ambition was to clear out the domestic areas, before pushing out into the hills, in an offensive attack to drive them out.
She formally gave up her day job and dedicated herself to defeating the Summanus, so her children could have a life.
Patrick and Dominic, Nial and Sebastian and sometimes Winter, along with Garrett and Roman, were all a part of her team. Nial, Garrett and Roman all led their own squads. She was surprised to find that even though they were leaders, everyone still looked to her for direction.
In many ways it was just like Afghanistan. Only, Afghanistan seemed like a distant, dusty memory now. The PTSD no longer flared. Winter systematically addressed and calmed her symptoms and because her life had changed so much, Blythe no longer had the psychological triggers winding her up every time she went into combat.
The skills she had learned in Afghanistan as a soldier and a leader gave her all the structure she needed to form the hunters into cohesive, coordinated units. The work was absorbing. There was no question that the ultimate goal was worth any price.
The nights were filled with hunting, while the few hours of daylight she could spare without falling into chronic sleep deprivation were devoted to her kids, Dominic and Patrick. In the midst of all the carnage and loss, she was happy.
Just after Valentine’s Day, the twins came home bursting with news.
“There are new kids at school,” Simone said.
Blythe studied her twinkling eyes, trying to figure out what it was she was not saying.
“They’re Elah!” Eloise burst out. “Three of them!”
“You didn’t tell us that the Elah had kids, mom.”
“I didn’t know for sure,” Blythe said. “I deal with the Summanus all night long. They reall
y let the Elah into school? They’re sitting in classrooms, learning?”
Eloise nodded enthusiastically. “There’s one of them in my biology class!”
Blythe reported the news to Nial.
Nial was quieter than ever. He was a talented and natural leader and inspired his squad to fight with determination. When he was not hunting, though, he did not talk much. The ire of the Unspoken Ones, the disapproval of humans and the constant losses were taking a toll.
Blythe wondered if anyone else had seen that he was struggling. However, Nial was very good at dissembling.
Nial had considered a news about the Elah in their schools, then nodded. “They are determined to find a place on Earth for themselves. Why would they not want to learn everything they can about us? If they put their children through a human education, then the next generation of Elah will grow up understanding humans far better than Dai Chi’s generation.”
“The Ĉiela could do that too,” she said. “That is, if they have young.”
Nial seemed sad. “There will be no more children for the Ĉiela,” he said gently. “They’re dying. Soon there will be none left.”
Patrick had been more pragmatic about the Elah in their schools. “Where are they getting the money from? Non-residents have to pay fees and they are as non-resident as you can get.”
“I hear that some Elah have applied for jobs and gotten them, too.” Dominic rolled his eyes. “So now all the unregistered immigrants not only have to fight each other for the few jobs going, but the Elah, too. Who thought we would ever have to worry about that?”
“Marcus was saying that in Europe, the Elah are hiring themselves out as conservation consultants. They know more about preserving the environment than anyone.” Blythe had spent a lot of time talking to Marcus about hunting tactics and strategies. He was becoming the de facto head of hunting in England, when he wasn’t in Russia dealing with the Elah and Dai Chi.
Patrick raised his brows. “They figured out capitalism really fast, didn’t they?”
* * * * *
Roman spent a lot of his days working for a security group, teaching their people fighting strategies and the vampire culture, so they could work alongside vampires more effectively.
Blood Revealed Page 28