“I hate to be a doomsayer, but this sudden quiet worries me.”
“Why?”
“All day yesterday, it was perfectly calm. And now you tell me that last night was, too. I have trouble believing our enemy, whoever it is, has suddenly decided to stop and go home.”
“The attacks were disorganized, not well executed. Almost amateurish. And their shooters suffered far more casualties that we did. Even apart from the dead girl, we’re fairly confident they had at least one fatality, and probably more. Maybe they decided it wasn’t worth the cost.”
“Maybe. That doesn’t feel right, though. More likely, they wanted us to believe they were amateurs. My gut’s telling me there’s more coming, and my gut’s visited a lot of war zones with me.”
“What if they weren’t supposed to be here at all? What if they are part of something bigger, but they jumped the gun on the greater plan and got called back into line.”
“In that case, I want to know what the plan was, and probably still is. I don’t trust unlooked-for good luck.”
“You sound like my avi, Commander.”
“Your grandfather’s a smart man then, and I have good reasons for not trusting luck.” She stepped away from the front wall, ready to finish their walk, but suddenly remembered she hadn’t called Brian the previous night. Because she’d fallen asleep for fuck’s sake. “Listen,” she said to Danilo. “I hate to ask, but I need to make one phone call before I forget it . . . again. Can you wait five more minutes?”
“Sure. If I wait long enough, my husband will have the kids fed and the kitchen cleaned by the time I get there.”
Layla started to laugh as she pulled out her phone, but before her hand left her pocket, she was running for the gate as well-trained reflexes reacted to the sound of gunfire before her brain managed to process the sound. She grabbed Danilo’s arm when she would have run alongside her. “No,” she said and pointed in the other direction. “They might be hitting more than one quarter.”
Danila nodded and ran back the way they’d come, while Layla stretched out her legs and ran full tilt until the gate was in sight. She slowed then, just enough to assess the situation and take precautions. The wall wasn’t high enough to conceal her full height, so she stopped at the first battlement she came to and grabbed the MP5 submachine gun the day guard had waiting for her. Waiting only long enough to check the magazine and sling the extra ammo belt over her shoulder, she bent into a crouch and kept running until she reached a battlement much closer to the gate where another guard was firing short, controlled bursts through one of the openings in the stone enclosure. He glanced back when Layla ducked into the narrow space, putting his back against the firing shelter’s stone wall, while Layla did the same on the opposite side. The two of them took up most of the limited space, their feet nearly touching between them.
“Same strategy they used before,” the man said, breathing heavily. “But twice as many shooters. Radio reports two serious injuries on our side already. They’re double-teaming us when we step up to fire, so we have less time to aim properly and are scoring fewer hits.”
Layla nodded her understanding, then clicked the comm to Danilo. “New strategy. We’re going to work in teams. When they pop up to fire at our first shooter, our Number Two steps out of the enclosure and fires at them. First shooter gets better coverage, better results. Our second should be able to take out at least one before they can switch targets. The teams take turns randomly, and space their actions in seconds, so the enemy can’t identify a pattern.”
“Roger that. I’ll comm the other teams.”
“Roger out.” She met the guard’s gaze across the small space, wanting to be sure he’d been listening. “What’s your name?”
“Tony Tosell, ma’am. Who goes first?”
Tony was older than she’d first thought, which she was glad to see. Some of the day guards were too young to have had real world experience. Xavier’s territory had been too peaceful for too long. “You stay inside. I’ll step out to your left and start firing two seconds after you.”
He nodded, checked his weapon, and gave her a single, sharp nod.
She did the same, then crouching as low as she could, she slipped around the battlement and crept up to the wall. Hearing Tony’s weapon scrape on the stone in the instant before he began firing, she stood, aimed, and got off two controlled bursts before slamming her back against the battlement wall. As Tony’s weapon went live a second time, she shouted, “Moving,” and spun around the battlement to the opposite side. Popping up immediately to fire a second time, she dropped straight down to her knees to avoid return fire that came at her a lot faster—not because the enemy had ascertained the defenders’ new strategy, but because she was now on the gate side of the battlement.
Duckwalking back into the enclosure, she met Tony’s concerned gaze across the tight space.
“You’re bleeding, ma’am.”
Layla blinked and touched her cheek, suddenly aware of a sharp stinging sensation. “Damn stone wall. A shard must have been chipped off. And it’s Layla, not ma’am. Not when we’ve become so close.” She grinned when she said that, which had Tony grinning in return. “Ready?” she asked as she counted the seconds in her head. “Switch positions.” She indicated the right-hand gun slot on the enclosure, establishing the routine on this first round.
“I’m up,” he said and disappeared as she stepped up to the narrow window, aimed as she moved, and was firing while the barrel of her MP5 was still sliding forward. Two sharp bursts, duck. Two more bursts while Tony was still firing, and she dropped to a crouch, her back against the wall beneath the gun slot. Tony was in the narrow doorway an instant later, checked her position, and slipped inside the battlement.
Layla counted three seconds in her head, and they started all over again. Shoot, wait, move. They continued that way for what seemed like hours, though she had more than enough combat experience to know it had been nowhere near that long. The Fortalesa teams kept up a steady, but random pattern of fire, moving and shooting all up and down the wall, taking turns inside the shelter and out. By the time the enemy’s fire began to slow, she and Tony were both soaked with sweat. Layla’s collar was wet with blood that colored the sweat dripping from her jaw, while Tony had a rough bandage around one arm that was more red than white where he’d been shot.
As always, Layla’s jaw ached like a son of bitch, because she’d never managed to break the habit of clenching her teeth when shit got heavy. She worked the jaw as she slammed in her fifth thirty-round magazine. She had one more mag after that, and had called for additional ammo from the runners stationed along the base of the wall for that purpose. But with the enemy’s rate of fire slowing, she hoped she wouldn’t need it.
“Is it me, or are those assholes covering their retreat?” she asked Tony, meaning the enemy fire had shifted from active targeting to undirected sprays which seemed intended to force the wall’s defenders to stay down.
Tony nodded his agreement, and she inched toward the doorway. “I’m taking a look. From the left,” she added wryly. The left was the side which provided better cover from enemy fire. She fired three more bursts, to test the enemy’s mood, but by the time her final round got off, the enemy’s fire had ceased completely.
“Damn it,” she swore and ran for the stairs. This might be her best chance to follow those assholes, to see where they went and discover how they managed to disappear so completely that not even vampires could track them.
Tony followed without being asked, and they both caught fresh mags as they ran, all but falling down the stairs. Somehow landing on her feet, she raced for the sally port, the small, heavily secured door twenty- five yards left of the gate. No one else was moving in the yard, except the Fortalesa’s small team of medics who were gradually being joined and assisted by exhausted fighters. A quick survey as sh
e ran told her the enemy’s new, much larger attack force had done serious damage.
Furious, she swung the MP5 over her shoulder to rest on her back, pressed her thumb against the biometric scanner, sighed a relieved breath when it worked, then used both hands to lift the heavy metal riot bar. Swinging her weapon back to the ready position, she glanced once at Tony, then cracked open the thick door. When a quick glance told her there was no one waiting to pounce, she opened the door farther and rushed out, heading straight for the tree cover. She paused only long enough to scan the immediate area, then continued. There was a trail of sorts this time. More shooters meant more feet stomping the detritus- covered ground, and more bodies crashing into branches and through undergrowth. They were quiet, she’d give them that. There were no cries or moans, no curses. She stopped suddenly, taking cover behind a trio of entwined tree trunks.
Tony appeared confused, but stopped next to her, crouching low.
Layla held one finger to her lips and just listened. The silence was so absolute that even the normal sounds of the forest were absent. No birds, no rustling rodents, not a breath of wind moving through the trees.
What the actual fuck?
She stepped out and continued following the trail which was still as plain as a blinking red sign. Until it just . . . stopped. She stared at the ground, saw the leaves and dirt flattened as if several pairs of feet had passed, and then the trail just disappeared, as if the fleeing people had been lifted into the air, or vanished into an invisible fairy mound.
“Impossible,” she muttered, and paced to the left and right of the truncated trail, looking for something to indicate where the retreating enemy had gone. People didn’t simply disappear mid-step. They had to have gone somewhere.
But though she and Tony both searched for more than an hour, not only along the line of the break, but traveling deeper into the trees, searching for renewed sign of a trail that had to be there, they found nothing. The two of them exchanged a look, as if each was doubting the sanity of the other.
Layla broke the gaze first, with a shake of her head. “We’re not imagining this. It happened.”
He frowned and said, “Magic, Layla.”
She smiled. “Magic? Really?”
It was his turn to smile, to give her a look that said she was being naïve. “We sleep surrounded by vampires, but you doubt the existence of magic?”
“Vampires are natural, just like you and me. Not exactly like us, because they’re . . . higher on the evolutionary chart, but they bleed, they die. That’s not magic.”
His smile widened. “Perhaps you should speak to Lord Xavier about this. You meet with him, yes? Just as the commander did?”
“Yes.”
“Ask him. If I’m wrong, no matter. But if I’m right, he needs to know.”
Layla thought about that as they walked back to the Fortalesa. She’d assumed—Xavier had let her assume—that he’d been waiting for new information, for his vampires to find the evil genius behind these attacks, and then he’d take action. But waiting wasn’t Xavier’s usual modus operandi, was it?
No, Xavier was a fucking vampire lord and far more powerful than anyone else she knew. And that asshole knew more than he was telling her. God damn him.
She walked faster, her boots thumping the ground, while Tony— not having been privy to her thought process—shot worried glances her way. When they broke out from under the trees, with the Fortalesa in sight, the sun immediately tried to burn a hole in the top of her head, and she remembered it was still morning. Which meant she’d have to wait hours to confront that lying bloodsucking asshole.
“Well, fuck.”
“Layla?” Tony asked cautiously.
Geez, did she look that deranged? “Come on,” she said on a sigh. “We can’t do any more with this, and there are wounded to tend to.”
AFTER LAYLA HAD made sure the last of her injured fighters had been taken care of, and had her own minor wound treated, she walked every inch of the Fortalesa’s wall, both on top and at ground level, including the far back wall, where the forest was so dense as to be impassable. She was tired. More tired than she should have been. She’d fought harder and longer battles with her team. And sure, they collapsed at the end of it, but while they were in the grinder, they ran on pure adrenaline, pushing each other to keep going.
And that was the difference. She missed her team. She knew what each of them was capable of, knew whom she could count on for what, with no questions, no doubts. Tony had been great, but she didn’t know him.
“Well, fuck,” she muttered and climbed the stairs to her parents’ apartment to do what she should have done the previous night. She called Brian.
“Ma’am?” he answered.
“Don’t start that,” she said wearily.
“You sound tired, Layla.”
She sighed. “It’s been a hell of a day.”
“More fighting?” He sounded surprised. She supposed he had good reason to be, since the last time they’d spoken, everything had quieted down.
“More and worse. They doubled their number. We fought them off, with no fatalities, although we sustained a few nasty wounds. But they’re disappearing into thin air once they retreat. I tracked them myself this time, and their trail simply vanished.”
“People don’t disappear.”
“No, they don’t. And I have a strong suspicion that Xavier either knows or has a damn good idea of what’s going on.”
“What’s he told you?”
“Nothing. But that’s going to change. It’s time for some answers.”
“Uh. Vampire lord. Maybe you shouldn’t piss him off.”
“Fuck that. I grew up with vamps, remember? The worst he can do is fire me.”
“Say the word, Layla, and we’re there.”
“I’m saying it, Brian. My dad’s got a good group, but I need more experience and my team’s specific talents. I don’t want to short-staff the Wilkerson estate, though.”
“No problem. I’ll call in a team of boy scouts yearning for their combat badge.”
She laughed. “Okay, then. You, River and Kerry.”
“Excellent, we’ll be there tomorrow . . . early morning, possibly before dawn. That okay with your vampire?”
“He’s not my vampire.”
“Okaaay. See you then.” And he hung up.
A check of the time told Layla she still had the better part of two hours before her nightly meeting with Xavier. And this meeting was going to be more than a briefing. She wondered if the others would be invited and hoped for the first time since she’d arrived that she’d be alone with Xavier. The other vampires, especially Joaquim and Chuy, were bound to be super protective and slavishly loyal to Xavier. They wouldn’t have been elevated to the position of his highest advisers if they weren’t.
She gave a mental shrug as she stripped off her sweat-stained and dirty clothes. It would be better if the others weren’t there, but their presence wouldn’t stop her. She’d either get answers or she’d walk. She couldn’t lead, couldn’t make good decisions if she didn’t have all the information. Especially not when it was deliberately being kept from her, and she didn’t know why.
Tossing her dirty clothes aside, she stepped under the shower while it was still cold. She felt as though she’d been sweating for days, rather than a few hours. The water warmed quickly enough that it still felt good, and even better once she’d washed her hair, then soaped and rinsed her body twice over.
She toweled dry with brisk movements, pulled on fresh clothes, and her same boots. Clothes were important, but the right boots could make all the difference in the world when you were fighting for your life.
Feeling reasonably human again, she grabbed a ripe pear and headed back downstairs to the Fortalesa’s small hospital. Most days it
had four beds and served as a first-aid and emergency room for everyone who lived there. Today, they’d crammed four cots in with the beds and set up triage in a tent outside. Layla stopped in the tent first, where three cots had been set up and used for those who could be treated and sent home to rest. Now, the cots had been turned into beds and held two fighters who were still receiving IV fluids of one sort or another, and a third who was still groggy from the painkillers Nowak had given him after treatment for a wounded shoulder. She stopped at each of the three bunks to exchange a word with the men. They were in surprisingly high spirits and feeling good about having successfully fought off the larger enemy force. She matched their cheer for a while, since it would do no good to diminish their victory with her concerns, and then walked into the hospital itself.
She waited just inside the door until Doctor Nowak noticed her, then tipped her head toward the only private space left, which was a short hall in the back where two unisex bathrooms were located. Neither room was occupied, so she grabbed a couple bottles of water, then leaned against the back wall and waited. When Nowak joined her, she held up one of the bottles. The doctor took it with a tired but grateful smile, then propped her back against the same wall.
“You get any rest yet?” Layla asked.
Nowak drained the bottle, then took the second one Layla offered. “Thirty minutes on a cot in the office next door. So far, I’ve been rotating my staff every two hours. But if none of our patients crash in the next hour, I’ll probably let everyone except two of my medics go home and sleep for six hours, keeping the ones who stay on the two hour rest shifts. If that works out after six hours, I’ll increase their sleep shifts to four. At that point, I’ll bring in two of the ones I sent home, and let the original two take their own turn at home.”
Xavier: Vampires in Europe (Vampires in America Book 14) Page 11