by Ann Gimpel
“Stealing, eh?” She snorted. “You’ve traveled with the Rom so long, you think like one. We’d need at least two vehicles. Probably three to accommodate everyone, which means we’d have to split up. Nothing like three stolen cars caravanning across the country.”
Breath whistled through his clenched teeth. “Ye made your point. We’ll chance it with the truck. Ye just overflew the area. I bet ye have a suggestion about which border crossing station we should approach.”
She rolled her eyes. “I like to think I’m not quite that transparent.”
“Why go through a quarter hour of conversation? Why not just tell me what ye wished to do?”
“It’s always better if we come to agreement. No one likes being force-fed another’s ideas. Turns out we can remain on the road we left before this break. It’s as good as any other, and I didn’t sense vampires. Which isn’t to say some couldn’t show up between now and nightfall—”
She snapped her fingers, but before she could say anything, he spoke up. “No reason to wait for nightfall if we don’t need darkness to shroud ourselves. Vampires are strongest at night, so we’re better off rounding everyone up and going right now.”
“You read my thoughts. I’m off to work on the driver’s papers. See you on the other side.” Light flashed around the vulture shifter just before she vanished.
Stewart hustled back to the group and rattled off names. “Change of plans. Into the truck with you.”
Cadr jumped to his feet. Loose black trousers were tucked into a battered pair of leather boots, and a heavy navy-blue sweater was tossed over a lighter woolen top. Curly dark hair fell to his shoulders, and his blue eyes crinkled with concern at their corners. “Och aye, and I thought we were waiting for the dark to better hide ourselves.”
“’Twas my original plan as well, but Meara talked me out of it. I was going to leave the truck and chance it on foot, but she helped me realize how badly we’ll need transport big enough to hold all of us once we cross the border.”
Cadr cocked his head to one side. “Are the shifters still crossing as animals?”
“Aye, ’twill be just us Rom in the truck. Ready your magic. We’ll weave a ward to render ourselves invisible.” Stewart loped toward the truck, still calling names. By the time he got there, the rest of the Rom were loaded into its cavernous bed, and he joined them.
Meara lifted the canvas and stuck her head inside. “Drape the blankets over yourselves. Rather than invisible, try a spell that makes the lot of you appear dead.”
Michael shifted his swarthy, thickset body and nodded in her direction. “Brilliant. Most people are uncomfortable enough with death, they won’t wish to examine corpses too closely.”
She cracked a rare smile. “Not just corpses. Dutch citizens returning to their native soil for burial.” She dropped the canvas panel, and the truck’s beefy engine roared to life.
“Thank you.” Stewart directed his telepathic comment to the driver.
“Why thank me? It’s my truck. None of you could figure out how to drive it on short notice.”
“Because if it weren’t for us, ye could join the other shifters and cross in your bear form.”
Laughter rolled through Stewart’s head. When the shifter stopped chortling, he said, “Yeah, like a bear in the middle of winter isn’t something that would make folk sit up and take notice. We’re supposed to be asleep.”
Stewart almost thanked him again for interrupting his hibernation cycle, but didn’t. The less magic expended right now, the better.
“Will we be all right?” Aron asked, his gray eyes pinched with worry. At sixteen, he was the youngest of them. Ilona was his sister, but she’d very recently become a shifter because there were no other options to call her back from a borderworld inhabited by Romani spirits.
“Come here.” Stewart beckoned. “Ye can join me beneath my blanket.”
Aron scooted across the truck’s rough bed. “Thank you. I’m scared.”
“Rightfully, so, lad,” Michael said. “It’s not as if you haven’t had a rough go of it between the Nazi prison camp and vampires feeding off you.”
Aron straightened his thin shoulders and pushed long, dark hair out of his face. “Meara fixed the bad places in me. Vampires can’t find me anymore.”
Stewart heard a tremor in the lad’s voice. “Ye said the words,” he exhorted. “Now ye have to believe them.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stewart arranged a blanket, lay on it, and motioned for Aron to lie next to him before he draped another blanket over them. The truck pitched and rolled on the dirt road before getting back on asphalt. It wouldn’t be long now.
“Open your minds to me,” Stewart instructed and wove a spell with all their various magics. Death was easier than invisibility. He even added the stench of decaying flesh to make it more realistic.
The truck rumbled to a stop, and he heard a guard demanding papers. Aron edged closer, and Stewart’s heart went out to the boy. In many ways, crossing on foot would have been easier. At least movement provided an outlet for the adrenaline that had to be pouring through everyone scattered across the truck’s bed.
Heavy footsteps moved around the truck, and Stewart tightened the web he’d woven around them all. Next to him, Aron flinched and started to shake.
“They can’t see me anymore, can they?” Even his telepathy was breathless.
“Ssht. Remain still.”
Meara’s intervention might have moved Aron beyond vampire gunsights, but the lad was still sensitive to their presence. That had to be what he meant by they. Stewart sent a thread of power outward. He’d been so focused on protecting everyone inside the truck, he hadn’t bothered to check who was headed their way. After Aron’s reaction, he wasn’t surprised to find vampires.
Goddammit!
The bastards were close enough, he could smell their rotting blood stench. He followed up the English curse with a string of Gaelic ones, but kept them locked in his head.
Vampires would enjoy dead cargo, but maybe not long dead. Stewart upped the ante on the rotten carcass smell until he wanted to gag.
Someone pulled back a corner of the canvas and dropped it in a hurry. “Whew! That’s terrible.”
“Are you certain?” a second voice demanded. “I’m hungry.”
“Not for those you aren’t,” the first voice responded.
The canvas was pulled back a second time, followed by the truck’s springs complaining as someone jumped into the bed. “Pick me up on the other side of the border,” the vampire who’d just entered their truck called cheerily to his companion. “Easier to find something back here than to grab any more humans. They’re touchy as scalded cats. Superstitious too.”
“Have it your way. I’m hungry, but not that desperate. Meet you in the Netherlands an hour or two past nightfall. Jump down when you’re done. I’ll find you,” echoed from next to the truck. Its engine whined, and the gears ground as they engaged. Tires thumped as they rolled through the gateway and into a country free from Nazi domination.
One problem at a time, Stewart told himself. Getting the crossing behind them was huge.
He’d just begun to reshape their shared magic to snare the vampire when Aron bolted upright and launched himself at the creature. His lips were drawn back from his teeth, but no sound emerged. Even terrified, he understood the necessity of not drawing undue attention to their truck.
The vampire’s eyes widened and it crooned, “Our Nosferatu goddess is smiling indeed. Look at that luscious morsel.” Red hair cascaded down broad shoulders, and eyes the shade of raw emeralds glimmered with hypnotic charm.
“I’m no one’s morsel,” Aaron snapped and wrapped his limbs around the vampire, grappling with it.
“Love it, just love it when there’s a bit of a challenge.” The vampire’s mouth opened to display its fangs.
Aron twisted away from the deadly incisors, but the vampire was fast.
Before it could sink its teeth in
to Aron, Stewart wrapped power around the vampire, coil after coil of shiny cord, but it didn’t slow the creature down.
“I’ve got this,” Cadr grunted and lurched past Stewart with a silver blade drawn and ready.
Sensing the deadly metal, the vampire twisted away from Aron, leering with extended fangs. “Now you’re making me angry. You don’t want to do that. I can make short work of the lot of you.”
“Really?” Michael pulled a silver blade of his own and shot forward. “Try it, vampire.”
Aron made another grab for the vampire, this time from behind. He clung to the creature, ripping its flesh with his nails while he grunted from the effort. He slowed the vampire down just enough for Cadr and Michael to attack from opposite sides.
Two silver blades. Two death blows.
Stewart’s power crackled around them, rich with the scents of a restless ocean and the cool northlands. Finally, he had enough strength to immobilize the godless creature. What hadn’t been sufficient before, worked now. The vampire’s life force ebbed as black, stinking ichor spewed from it, staining the truck’s floorboards. Vreis yanked blankets away before the thing’s blood could stain them.
Stewart hissed out a breath. A dead vampire held its own set of problems, but it had sealed its fate when it jumped into their vehicle. What would happen when its companion couldn’t find it, tracked it by smell, and discovered it was dead?
A shudder tracked down Stewart’s spine. Not much rattled him, but he hated vampires. Living forever was one thing. Living forever as a blood-sucking abomination, something else entirely.
The other vampire could identify their vehicle, which stuck out like a sore thumb. Not so much in Germany where the war was in full bloom, but he doubted there were many transport trucks in the Netherlands.
Guess we’re about to find out.
Cadr pulled out his blade. “Dead.” He drew his lips back in a satisfied snarl.
Michael retrieved his blade as well. “None of those insidious beetles are crawling out of it, so this can’t be one of the truly old ones. What do you want to do with him?” He looked at Stewart and directed a stream of magic to eradicate black blood pooling around the thing. It might not have been ancient, but its flesh withered quickly. Mottled bones emerged as the vampire revealed its true age in death.
Rather than answering, Stewart used telepathy to talk with the driver. “Turn the truck so we’re headed south. Lose it in the first forest road you can find.”
“Got it.” The driver’s voice was tense. “That bastard is dead, right?”
“Aye, quite dead,” Stewart replied.
“Well?” Michael prodded and rocked back on his heels.
“We’ll do our best to conceal what’s left of his carcass in the forest and magic it up so it takes time for his buddy to find him.”
“Maybe we should wait for the other one. Kill him too.” Vreis raised a dark brow.
“If it were only the one, I might agree,” Stewart said. “But these bastards travel in packs. Our priority is to get out of the Netherlands, not engage another nest in a full out war.”
He added magic to Michael’s to obliterate what he could of the stinking, oozing remains. They’d need something close to divine intervention to get all of them across this country without vampires tracking them, but returning to Germany wasn’t an option.
Chapter 2
Yara de Vos slunk deeper into the cave where she worked her magic. Power had been bombarding her for the past hour. Some she recognized, but not all. It was the not all that made her nervous. Shifters were close. So were vampires and Romani, but powerful enchantments were afoot. Supernatural energy she’d never run across before.
Beyond picking up magic, she’d sensed emotion. That particular skill made her a decent fortuneteller, not because she had seer ability, but because she read people easily.
She inhaled, blew out the breath, and did it again to manage her growing anxiety. Worry wouldn’t do her any good. Neither would giving in to helplessness—or anger at her situation.
She avoided doing anything that identified her as a gypsy. So far, her spells and tricks had kept her alive and out of prison. The Dutch government wasn’t kindly disposed toward those like her. The Woonwagenwet or Caravan Act of 1918 had labeled caravan dwellers as antisocial parasites who refused to work. By the time 1930 rolled around, gypsies had been branded as undesirables. That was ten years ago. She’d been fifteen at the time, and her caravan had disbanded.
It was either that or be rounded up and subjected to brainwashing designed to “civilize” her and her kinfolk, whatever that meant. Her mother was long since dead, and her father a chronic drunk. She’d remained with one sister for a couple of years after her caravan broke up, but a sweet-talking Irishman had convinced Ilse to run off to Ireland. She’d sent letters, not often, but her sister stopped writing back six months ago. Yara was worried about her, but there wasn’t much she could do from the wrong side of the North Sea.
She shook her head. She’d been on her own for a long time, stealing what she needed since no one would hire her. She closed her teeth over her lower lip. That last part wasn’t entirely true. She could have found work in the brothels that peppered Amsterdam, but the specter of men pawing at her every night twisted her stomach into an ugly knot of tension.
She’d never been hungry enough or cold enough to regret her decision.
At least for now, she had her cave and an abandoned shepherd’s hovel, no doubt deserted because one of the walls had fallen in. Between the two and an occasional foray into nearby towns, she managed. Summers were easier since she could filch produce from tilled fields, but she’d grown skilled at taking more than she needed and drying both fruit and vegetables to hold her through the cold months.
Somehow, she’d made a life for herself, and she’d done it by being cautious and shrouding herself in don’t look here spells. They were easier than full-on invisibility and had much the same effect.
The magic she’d sensed earlier returned with a vengeance. Closing her eyes to hone her attention, she sensed a vampire on the hunt. What was it with their resurgence, anyway? She’d never met even one of the wicked creatures until a few months back, and now the German-Netherlands border was crawling with them.
Yara concentrated. Fear and anger met her probing mind. Whoever the vampire had targeted was fighting back. She clenched one hand into a fist. Good. The bastards almost had her once, but that was before she understood their facility with mind-control.
She’d escaped by a fluke. Another vampire showed up, just as uncommonly beautiful as the first one. She’d been certain she was seconds away from being turned, but the duo pulled so much power it made her dizzy and vanished, leaving her with her mouth hanging open. Not for long, though. She’d snapped up what had to be a gift from whichever goddess watched over incompetents and fools and retreated to her shepherd’s hut, winding strong wards around it and herself. After that, she’d been far more careful. The vampire’s eerie beauty had drawn her. No more. Vipers were beautiful too—and just as deadly.
At least they kill cleanly. That vampire would have recreated me, and I’d have had centuries to kick myself for being stupid.
Eyes open again, she pushed her magic outward, but couldn’t determine what was happening. Against her better judgment, she edged toward the cave’s entrance. She wanted to know what was going on, and the grotto’s earthen walls dampened everything. It was why it was such a good hiding place.
The unfamiliar magic surged. Her vision wavered, turning inward, and the spirit world flickered. It was almost as deadly a place as running into a vampire, but far easier to escape from. She shook her head hard and commanded the spirits of the dead to stay put. Stuck between worlds—dead, but not—they were a restless bunch.
Pulling her patched woolen cloak tighter around herself, she stepped into a fading day. Trees and shrubs grew thickly around the cave’s entrance, and she sprinkled magic to hide its doorway from animals or peo
ple. Her stomach growled, protesting she hadn’t eaten for hours, and she tugged a strip of dried apple from a pocket, stuffing it into her mouth.
The zing of expended power was much stronger here. Curiosity sparred with reticence to get too close to the vampire’s unmistakable emanations. Maybe she could help, but she sensed at least half a dozen Romani, one shifter, and the thing she couldn’t identify.
Vampire energy throbbed, flaring hotly.
Damn it!
Was the creature killing the gypsies? Worse, were they gypsies she’d known before they’d gone their separate ways? She’d run into some of her old caravan mates, had even traveled with an aunt and uncle for a time after Ilse left—until they’d all become too nervous about being caught.
Easier to escape notice as a woman alone—or a couple. No one wore the flamboyant clothing or jewelry that had identified them as Romani, and their wagons were long gone. Traded for a variety of nondescript vehicles. Most of her kin had dark hair and dark skin, though, which was hard to hide in a country where most were blonde and blue-eyed. She was an anomaly with her flame-colored tresses and light eyes. It was why she could have found work as a prostitute.
Yara balled her hands into fists. She should at least try to help. Power pulsed and streamed from a spot that wasn’t static. It moved away from her, following a western trajectory.
A car. They’re in a car.
Her steps faltered. No way could she catch up with a moving vehicle. Grateful for an excuse to not face off against a vampire, she sent her magic outward. Maybe she could discern what was happening. If anyone was jettisoned from the car, then she’d risk revealing herself to help them. She latched onto the vampire’s nasty, oozing energy. Out of all the magic crashing around her, that was the one that could be her undoing.
Yes. And the one I must keep track of.
Since her near-brush with disaster, she’d always put distance between herself and vampires fast. It was hard to force herself to remain still, watchful and waiting.
The vampire doesn’t know I’m here.