by Faith Hunter
We parked down the hill and Eli went in alone just before dusk. Silent, using the skills Uncle Sam had taught him in the Rangers, he took out the watcher in the deer stand and carried the man a mile down the mountain to dump him at my feet outside the panel van. The guy was older than I had first assumed, maybe twenty-eight, with a ratty beard, and a body odor that proclaimed he had missed his weekly bath, but believed that cologne made up for good old soap and water. Holy moly, he stank. While he was still unconscious, I secured him with multiple zip strips and Eli and I hefted the human into the van, where he rolled at the feet of the insertion team. We jumped in, slammed the side door, and the van proceed uphill, toward Nell’s place.
One of the vamps wrinkled his nose and said, “Human men are idiots. Present company excepted, and no offense.” He toed the limp form. “This one stinks.”
Eli, not even winded from the exertion, said, “Offense accepted anyway, suckhead.”
The vamp narrowed his eyes at Eli and I turned to the vamp. “Back down. Your comment was insulting and your apology was both lacking in grace and sincerity. Try again. Now.” And I let a bit of Beast into my gaze, seeing the golden glow in the dark of the van.
The vamp ignored me and said, “You let a woman fight your battles for you?”
“Two things,” Eli said, his voice without inflection. “One: I’m not letting you goad me into ruining this mission. Two: the Enforcer is not just a woman, just a human, or just an anything,” Eli added, his masculinity not the least injured. “Once this is over, I’ll beat your ass. But for now, the Enforcer needs your cold undead body to rescue your head of security. Either you are in or you are out. And if you’re out, I’ll happily secure you with silver tape and leave you to burn while we complete this mission.”
The vamp seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he said, “Challenge accepted.”
“Knives,” Eli said. “Numbers limited to two, each no larger than a six-inch blade.”
“First blood,” I said, hoping to keep Eli uninjured, and the vamp alive. “And if the human is injured, he will be healed.”
“Done,” both males said.
“You’re both idiots,” Alex said, grumpy as only a nineteen–year-old, younger Younger could be. “And an apology still hasn’t been issued.”
“Noted,” the vamp said.
Alex started to continue the argument, but I held up a hand and he subsided. A working frenemy was the best I’d get and I sat back as the van took the narrow, twisting road up as night fell.
***
We halted the panel van in Nell’s drive and I went to her door. She opened it before I knocked, her eyes wide and skin pale. She was breathing fast, and with Beast so close to the surface, I could hear her heart beating too fast, and smell her reaction to . . . what? “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Something dead,” she whispered, staring at the truck repair van. “Something wrong.”
“Vampires,” I said. “They won’t hurt you. I promise.”
“Will they hurt the colonel?”
“Planning on it.”
Nell nodded, the movement jerky. “Good. But they still feel wrong.” She closed the door in my face.
To save Nell more discomfort, the vamps and the blood-servants exited the van and raced into the woods, their night vision allowing them to see the narrow opening in the trees where a trail had once woven. They scattered through and along the old farm road, ducking into hiding places. Eli followed, his low-light and infrared headgear allowing him to see as well as the vamps.
I stayed with the driver and Alex as the van rolled across the back of Nell’s three-acre lawn and into the trees, following the trail as far as the vehicle’s city-street-undercarriage could manage before making a twelve-point turn to face back down the mountain. I made sure the van had a working sat signal before slipping out and taking off after the insertion team. As I ran, I pulled on Beast, who flooded my system with adrenaline and shared her night vision, turning the world silver and gray with tints of green.
I caught up with and passed the two vamps who were staying on the road to make sure we all got out, placed to maintain coms with Alex. Both lifted a hand to acknowledge me. I left them in my dust.
Beast chuffed inside me. Hunt. Ready to hunt. Want to kill and eat.
Let’s try not to kill anyone, and the idea of eating humans and vamps is not appealing in the least.
Hunt deer. Soon.
Yeah. Deal, I thought at her, spotting sprinting human-shaped forms just ahead.
***
The race through the woods revealed no barricades, no downed trees, and no booby traps. The colonel hadn’t expected attack from this direction, and the topo maps had shown why—a long vertical drop of nearly fifty feet into the compound. No human law enforcement agency would have been able to manage the descent with any kind of order or speed. And the little slip of a girl who looked like something you could break her in two with one hand tied behind your back was clearly no menace, not with a spy in the trees.
We ducked beneath the rock ledge that hid the old road from the eyes-in-the-sky and sprinted through the deeper dark, around the heart of the ancient mountain, and out the far side. The trees were smaller on this side of the mountain. The underbrush was thick and dense. The land smelled different from Nell’s property. Stressed and sleeping and unhappy. Weird thoughts for another time.
We crested the hill and the compound appeared below us. The hill fell away, a sheer drop seen on the topo maps, but not realized until now. Nearly fifty feet of vertical fall. There was no fence. No barrier. Just the drop. My heart stuttered and sped. The terrain must have seemed like the perfect protection to the church’s security crew.
The vamps didn’t even slow. They raced out and leaped. Down. The humans hardly slowed, slapping lines around tree trunks and leaping off for a fast rappel. At the back of the crew, I was undecided, but still moving fast. Beast slammed into me, the pain so sudden and intense that I tripped over my own feet and rolled off the ledge. The world tumbled around me.
Beast reached up and grabbed a root, swinging me out over the cliff. “Holy crap,” I grunted. The ground was way, way down there. I let her have us. Jumping down cliffs was a Puma concolor thing. The steeper and more impossible, the better. I was just glad my chicken and dumplings had digested. I didn’t want to lose that delicious meal when I landed, broke my legs, and threw up all over the place. But Beast wasn’t planning on any of that.
A tiny rock stuck out about twenty-five feet down. She pushed off with my free hand, accelerating the momentum of our swing, and let go of the root. I/we landed with the left toes of my boot on the rock and pushed off. The rock gave way, tumbling straight down to the vamp who had baited Eli. He caught the rock just as I/we landed in a crouch at his feet, perfectly balanced on my toes and fingertips.
I looked up and growled at the vamp. He took a quick step back, dropping the rock. I/we hacked in challenge. He stabilized his balance and nodded slightly at me, one of the regal nods that old vamps, especially old royalty who had been turned, used to acknowledge one another, or sometimes gave to someone they thought their equal. I had a feeling that someday this vamp and I might tussle and I’d hurt him. Just enough to let him know he shouldn’t have dissed the Enforcer of the MOC of New Orleans. Not even if he was a prince of vamps. Maybe he’d bleed a bit. But for now we had a vamp to rescue. And a bunch of kids too.
I gave him a regal nod back and pressed the button on my mic, a signal that would be relayed to Alex, who, unbeknownst to the vamps, would be calling the local LEOs (currently at a standoff on the blockaded road) in on an emergency raid, up through the secret entrance at the Philemon Family Farm. No way was I rescuing a suckhead and leaving women and children in the hands of cultists who would consider marrying off a twelve-year-old girl. And who had a “punishment house” for disobedient women and girls. No way.
> Electric lights lit the compound grounds. The buildings were all painted a blinding white that threw back the security lights and created darker shadows. Path borders were neatly marked with rounded river rocks. The smells of many people and many dogs were strong on the night air. I oriented myself and waited. Four of our vamps had orders to neutralize the dogs and guards on the grounds, and then take down the armed guards keeping out the LEOs. There would be no killed humans to give the LEOs reason to charge vamps with a crime; instead the orders were to deliver a heavy-handed thump on the head to make the humans and canines woozy and then more zip strips to keep both dogs and humans out of the way. A little duct tape to keep them quiet, if needed. But no DBs—dead bodies. None.
The vamps, like my Beast, could spot the dogs by smell alone. More important, we could smell the humans. And vamp blood. It hung thick on the air. The vampires vamped out and slid into the shadows.
I heard thumps and a growl close by, mostly hidden by raucous music from a building on the far side of the compound. It sounded like a bluegrass bland, with banjos and guitars and drums. Playing a rollicking . . . hymn. “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” men’s voices rolling into the night along with the scent of sweat and testosterone. They were in the church, and they smelled and sounded as though they were celebrating. Maybe they were. They had the state of Tennessee’s finest stymied at the front gate.
Following our plan, Chessy and another human and the vampire prince tore off, chasing the smell of Heyda’s blood. A third human followed, covering them from the rear with a nasty-looking fully automatic weapon that bore a strong resemblance to an M4A1 carbine, a semiautomatic rifle that fired a 5.56-millimeter NATO round. U.S. military issue. It would chew up anything it hit. Instant hamburger. I so didn’t want it to be used. If a human died on this raid, Leo and Ming would do all they could to protect the vamps, but the humans could possibly be hung out to dry—which meant that I might spend a long time in jail.
Once the guards were taken care of, Eli took the humans and vamps with the most recent military, boots-on-the-ground experience, and divided them into two groups. Eli’s group vanished into the shadows of the ammo building while the other group stood guard. When exploding ammo was no longer a threat, Eli would make sure there was no footage of tonight’s raid for the cops to find. Eli was good.
The rest of us—those with little or no military experience—headed for the nursery. The door was locked from the inside, but the two vamps with me took the door down. It wasn’t quiet, but it wasn’t as loud as I might have expected either. Vamp reflexes were so fast that when they busted in the door, they caught it before it hit the wall behind. Between that and the loud music, no one heard us except an older woman who was reading the Bible by the light of a flashlight just inside the door. She looked up with her mouth in an O of surprise. The vamp nearest grabbed the human up by the scruff of the neck and set her down gently beside me. While I secured the human and shoved a sock into her mouth to keep her quiet, the vamp disabled an alarm button under the desk by the most simple and efficient method. She broke it with her fist. I liked her style.
Together, we checked on the children, hoping they were all safe and asleep and that there were no more adults who might give a warning. Unfortunately two of the children had been beaten recently. Their scents told us they were bruised and had cried themselves to sleep. The scents also told us who had done the beating—the nurse. Her knuckles still showed the damage. The vamp who had disabled the alarm made sure that she didn’t get a chance to wash her hands and maybe rinse away trace evidence. She knocked the nurse out with a swift and well-delivered left jab. “Nice,” I said.
“Yeah. Bet she’d be tasty.”
“I bet she would,” I said mildly.
The vamp studied her face, and I had to wonder if the human nurse would get a visit one night from a vampire vigilante. Satisfied that the kids were bruised, but okay, and that the older woman was the only guard, I left the nursery in the care of our humans and took my two vamps to raid the punishment house. The men were still singing, and anger had begun to heat my blood.
The punishment house was a small, nondescript building of white siding, post-and-beam construction, with thick walls. No windows. It looked like a nicely kept storage building. But I could smell the pain and fear inside it. So could the vamps. The female vamp who had busted the alarm had attached herself to me, and she took down this door the same way she had the nursery door—a swift kick—though this door took three kicks, and they weren’t quiet. When the door splintered open, we were met with the business end of a shotgun. Which my personal vamp took away in a move that was faster than I could follow in the shadows. It was a single, fluid move of kick, grab the barrel, whip up the gunstock to hit the guard in the jaw, and catch both guard and gun before they hit the floor. It was pretty. It was the last pretty thing I saw in the punishment house. There were four beds in a single room, a bathroom running along the back wall. No privacy curtains. Two women were shackled on the beds, and by the time I found light, they were crying and whimpering.
The vamp looked at them and cursed under her breath. Still moving fast, she broke the wrist cuffs with her bare hands and gathered the women up in the sheets and blankets from the beds. Drawing on her vamp strength, she pulled them close to her on the edge of one bed, murmuring endearments as she gave off a vamp compulsion, the energies cold and icy on my skin. I almost told her to stop, until I realized she was exuding calm, a gentle relaxing vibe that encouraged the women to accept help. I had never seen vamp compulsion powers being used for something good, not like this, and my respect for the vamp went up another notch. She needed a nickname, something better than “the female vamp with a great left fist.”
I stood to the side, weapon ready, watching the darkness outside and the vamp inside, until the women prisoners were sleepy and content, their heads lolling on the vamp’s shoulders. Gently, she laid them down and stood, looking up at me, her hands patting the women into deeper sleep. Softly she said, “I recognize them. This is why Heyda let herself be taken. These are her grandchildren, Berta and Wilhelmina. Berta is in her twenties. Willie is in her forties. They’ve been . . . abused.”
I knew what she meant. I had known by the smells from the moment the door had slammed open and all the scents hit my nose. They had been beaten by several people while secured to the beds and unable to defend themselves. They had then been taught a different kind of lesson by a man. I didn’t realize the extent of my own anger—mine and Beast’s—until I spoke to the two vamps under my command. My voice was a deeper register than my normal human voice. “I smell the stink of sexual predators who hide behind religion. What say we find the man in charge?”
“His blood will be yummy,” the woman said. And she vamped out. Fast.
“Not to kill,” I amended, to the vamp I nicknamed Yummy. “But let’s scare the bejesus outta him.”
“He won’t have any Jesus in him,” Yummy said around her fangs, “but scared blood is the best kind.”
For once I didn’t disagree.
We found the colonel’s house and entered, to the accompaniment of a new hymn from the church, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and I had to wonder if the colonel was singing with the men, bragging to God that his people had defeated the government types at the gates. But he wasn’t singing. He was in bed with three naked girls, one who looked about twenty and two others who looked much, much younger.
The colonel rose to his knees on the mattress and shouted, “Guards! Guards!” I switched on a lamp to see the shriveled, wasted man, his skin hanging in long folds on his lanky, pasty body. His tanned hands were fisted in the hair of a child. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t even seem to be afraid. She was staring out the window into the night, vacant-eyed, empty-souled.
His was the scent on the women in the punishment house. His scent was on the child he held. The anger that was simmering in my blood began to boil.
I felt Beast’s claws press against the tips of my fingers. Kill one who hurt kits, she thought.
“Your guards, they’re not gonna help you,” Yummy said between her fangs.
“Vampire! I call upon the Holy Ghost to smite thee, demon of hell!” he roared, shaking the child by her hair. Her body juddered and quivered. But she didn’t make a sound.
“Me and the Big Guy up There are close personal pals,” Yummy said. “He’s too busy at the moment to answer. You’re all mine, baby.”
I reached across Yummy, stopping her forward movement, and took the colonel’s wrist in mine. The girl couldn’t see what I was doing. What I was going to do. Silently, watching his face, I broke his index finger. The colonel cursed and let the girl go. I dropped the colonel’s maimed hand and covered the girl with the blankets. Sometime in the last few moments, the other women had disappeared out the front door into the night.
Yummy laughed, her eyes on me, and said, “Yeah. Just like that.” To the colonel, she said, “The Holy Ghost wants to have a word of prayer with you, old man.” Faster than I could see, she gripped the man around the throat and yanked him to her.
Yummy’s power raced over me like a burst of static electricity, lifting the hairs on the back of my arms. “This one is mine,” she said, her words measured and low. It was a challenge I wasn’t going to argue. I gave her a slow, steady nod. Yummy took the old man out the front door, carrying him by the throat.
It was against the law for vamps to kill humans. My morals and the law were at odds, but . . . I looked at the silent girl, huddling on the sheets, still staring into the dark. I didn’t feel the least bit bad about the colonel. He had been alive when I last saw him. As far as the law was concerned, that was enough to protect me.