“Maybe the farm was losing money, and the owners thought they could get more from an insurance settlement.” Kamila set her jaw. “I’ve seen it happen.”
Tess jogged up from the farmhouse. “Time to clear out. I called 9-1-1. The farmers are dead, with bullets to the back of their heads.”
We didn’t stick around to discuss what that meant. We took a circuitous route back to Kamila’s place, just in case we’d been seen, but we made it home after an hour of careful but steady travel.
We didn’t speak until we were safe in the confines of Kamila’s cottage with a bottle of bourbon and glasses between us, swirling the caramel liquid with expressions of curiosity and disgust.
Tess took a long pull straight from the bottle and passed it to Kamila, who lifted a brow, set her own glass down, and followed suit. “I know what you’re going to say, Jason. You think we should have stayed to talk to the police, maybe gotten involved with the investigation. That’s not part of our world anymore.”
“No, it isn’t,” I said, watching Kamila take a swig. I took the bottle when she passed it over to me and drank deeply. The fumes filled my nose, warm and welcome.
“I understand you want to help,” Tess said. “Because what happened was just plain evil, but—wait, what?”
I shrugged. “I totally get why we couldn’t stick around. We can’t get caught up in a police investigation. And how exactly are we supposed to explain putting out a fire when the entire barn was splashed with gas or whatever? Or rescuing the horses when the barn’s going to fall over with one good sneeze?” I took another swig and passed the bottle back to Tess. “No way. I hope they catch whoever did it, and I understand we probably hindered the investigation. The killer was almost certainly close by. But getting involved just creates too many problems. It was too risky.”
Kamila accepted the bottle from Tess and smiled. “I think he’s starting to get it, Tess.” She took a drink. “I’m downright proud. Do you accept you’re part of all this now?”
“Yes. Hell yes.” I rolled my shoulders and took the bottle from her. “I might not have been looking for this life, and I certainly didn’t want to land in the middle of a war, either. But it’s here, and I’m ready to be part of it. I’m not okay with just sitting around and wringing my hands. I choose to participate.”
Tess took the bottle when I passed it to her. She tilted her head to the side before taking a swig. “What changed your mind? Don’t get me wrong. I’m glad to see you coming around. I’m just—I mean, you’ve been resisting, which is normal, but it’s like a switch flipped. What was it?”
I thought about it. I couldn’t be sure what had changed my mind, but if I had to pick one specific trigger, it was tonight. “We got a win.”
“Um, Jason, I don’t know how to tell you this, but the vampires are still out there. They’re still gunning for you.” Kamila raised one eyebrow. “I’m not sure how that counts as a win.”
“We saved the horses.” I blushed because I felt silly and sentimental. “They were helpless, but some sick bastard tried to take them out, and we saved them. It makes me feel...I don’t know. It makes me feel like we can win. I feel ready to take out the things that did this to me, to you, to all of us. The things that forced us to hide in the shadows. I want to do anything I can to fight them and take them down.” I ran a hand through my hair. “It’s probably stupid, but the vindication feels real.”
Tess put a hand on my arm. “It’s not stupid, Jason. Whatever gets you ready to fight is important. And yeah.” She grinned. “It was a win. Maybe not against the fangs, but the horses would say it counts.”
I beamed. I could feel every bit of the fire I’d taken into myself yearning to get out. I had news for the next vamp that came in range of my fire. I was going to let the flames run free, and there was nothing the fangs could do about it.
23
I thought I’d been working hard before, but I clearly didn’t know effort. Kamila and Tess took me at my word about being ready, and they made it abundantly clear they didn’t do breaks, rest, or cutting me any slack. I slept every other night for the next two weeks, training constantly. I worked on my fire powers, and I sparred with Tess at full speed.
Kamila had me fighting while using my fire power. She protected Tess from my fire, which Tess didn’t seem to find as reassuring as I thought she would, but she wanted the flames to be as seamless a part of me as anything else.
“There’s not going to be any time for hesitation or resistance,” she told me as I cringed at the thought of burning Tess. “You’re going up against monsters who are stronger and faster than you, who have the power of Hell behind them. You need to use every advantage you have and to manufacture a few advantages you didn’t have.”
I guessed that made sense, although I couldn’t pretend to love it. I sucked it up, though, and made myself work the fire into my fighting until it was a seamless component, like a jab or a block. Kamila and Tess were right, after all. I was David against a whole army of Goliaths. I’d be a fool to ignore an advantage because I hesitated.
Two weeks passed, and then a third in a blur of sun and dark and bruises. I got stronger and faster. Both Tess and Kamila commented on it, and they didn’t tend to agree on much, so I knew it was real—if grudging. They had some kind of history, and I wasn’t yet trusted enough to know what that history might be. I might never be trusted to that extent, but the hard work made me consider that less important than actually learning how to fight and survive a vampire war.
I had to learn to live with it. I cared about both women, and as long as they could work together, it would have to be enough.
On a day like any other, Tess approached me privately in the practice field. I’d been working solo to try to moderate the intensity of flame, not something that required supervision. I stood up, figuring she wanted me to go do something, but she just sat down on the rock I’d just vacated.
“I’m worried about Mort,” she told me without preamble.
I licked my lips. I hadn’t exactly lost track of time, but I hadn’t been paying the best attention either. “Mort’s a strong, resourceful guy. I’m sure he’s fine. Maybe he found a girl in Idaho.” I didn’t share the other side of my theories about why Mort was probably fine. We’d never been able to figure out how the enemy had found Owl’s Head or how Mort managed to escape from a pack of vampires with a mortally wounded woman. Or how the vampires had known to set a vampire at the exit to the escape tunnel.
Tess barked a fake laugh. “You’re hilarious. You should so quit your day job and become a stand-up comic.” She glowered at me and rested her head in her hands. “I know you’re not his biggest fan, but he was trying to teach you and get you ready. Just because he didn’t sleep with you—”
“Hey, too far.” I shook my head.
“Sorry. I’m upset. He’s rude, and yeah, he’s dickish, but the guy’s earned it. He’s a man of his word. When he was human, that was a very big deal. If you didn’t have your word, you had nothing.” She looked down at the ground for a moment before looking up into my eyes. “If Mort says he’s going to be somewhere at a certain time, he’ll be there, and he said he’d be here by now. He knows where we are because he’s the one who told us where to go. Something must have happened to him, Jason. We need to find out what.”
I could feel my jaw clenching, and I forced myself to loosen it. I didn’t like Mort, and I sure as hell didn’t trust him, but that didn’t make him a criminal or a traitor. We needed to get to the bottom of what had happened to him if we wanted to know what he was—a hero or a traitor. If nothing else, Mort knew where Kamila’s place was. If Mort were a traitor, he’d probably already sent the vampires our way.
And if Mort was on the side of good but had been captured, he might have sent them our way anyway. Torture can make people say or do anything, and I wouldn’t hold it against him if they’d resorted to such tactics.
“Let’s call him,” I said after giving it some thought. “I
’m sure he’s fine and distracting himself with a girl, or a guy—whatever. It’s possible something came up, and he couldn’t get away, or they found another new Ferin like me, and he had to stay and train them.”
She rolled her eyes up to the blue sky and sighed. “Jason, there are no Ferin like you. I can promise you that. And he’d have brought the new guy with him if he found a newly-minted Ferin. But mostly, we can’t call him because there aren’t any phones.” She gestured to the pristine wilderness around us, devoid of power lines, phone lines, or anything else to remind us of the modern world.
I sighed. I’d let myself forget again. “Right. We’re off-grid.”
“We’re Ferin, Jason. We can’t risk going on-grid. If we go public and get noticed, it’s the end. Either the humans figure out what we are and try to take us out—ask Mort how well that worked out during the Inquisition—or the vampires come and find us. We’re vulnerable, Jason. We’re strong, and we’re amazing, but we’re also amazingly vulnerable. We can’t risk letting the humans know we even exist. Shadows are our safety.”
“I know. I know.” I’d heard it all before at least a hundred times, and I hadn’t even been Ferin that long. “What’s your suggestion, then? We’re safe here in Virginia while we get ready for the war. Being more mobile and heading up to Idaho might help out in some ways—we won’t be sitting ducks for one thing—but we also won’t have as much training time, and we’ll risk standing out more when we stop.”
She licked her lips, her eyes going far away for a second. “What if we get a burner phone? If we head into Charlottesville, we can get one of those. We should be able to reach out to Mort that way with minimal risk.”
I inhaled through my nose, thinking. If we got the burner phone, that would solve half of the problem, but it was the easy half. Mort didn’t have a phone, either. He was in Idaho, and if he were with a group of Ferin, they wouldn’t have a phone at their place. “We could call around to hospitals and see if he was brought in, I guess. Checking for John Does that fit his description.”
She nodded with relief. “It’s a good plan—no, wait. It’s an average plan. We might as well call the morgue while we’re at it. We can go to Charlottesville tomorrow, and maybe even head out to Idaho. What do you think?”
I swallowed. I didn’t want to leave Kamila. I liked her, and I didn’t feel like I’d learned everything she had to teach yet. Still, this wasn’t a time to put personal preferences first. Kamila had made her feelings about the war perfectly clear, and I had to respect them. “Okay. We’ll talk to Kamila, and then we prep for the road, just in case.”
Tess nodded and headed back to the house. I went back to my studies, but concentration had become a challenge. Every time I tried to think about what I wanted to do with my flame, a new intrusive thought popped into my head.
I conjured a fireball and held it in my hands, just to admire it and feel its comfort. Mort was among the missing, and whatever Tess had to say about it, I still didn’t know how I felt. She and Margaret had trusted Mort implicitly. I still wasn’t sure where I stood. I needed a second opinion. I needed Kamila.
I didn’t know where Kamila was. She knew this land, and I was an outsider. She and I had one thing in common, though, and that was fire. I focused on the flame inside me for a good few minutes, and then I expanded my mind and sought out something else like it. Fire, I reasoned, would seek fire.
I hadn’t tried this before. I hadn’t even spoken about it with Kamila, but it made sense, given what we’d spoken about. Fire was passion, and I’d definitely shared some passion with her. If I could feel other fires and other flames, why couldn’t I find the flame inside of her? It wasn’t an easy task, and I got a headache pretty quickly, but I felt a little tug maybe ten minutes later. I’d found what I was looking for.
I followed the tug until I got to the source. Kamila and Daisy were playing down near a pond in a different part of the property. I waited politely, watching Kamila and her dog enjoy a rare moment of privacy until she acknowledged me.
“Heya,” she said with an exaggerated drawl. “What’s going on?”
I grinned as Daisy ran up to me to get her ears scratched. “We were supposed to hear from Mort a week ago. Maybe more. But we haven’t.”
She frowned. “Mort should know better than to show up here. But if Mort says he’s going to do something, he does it, and that’s not a joke. If he’s not here, something’s happened to him.” She glared in the direction of the road. “Of course, if he darkens my door, something else is going to happen to him.”
I paused in my attentions to Daisy, which sparked a flurry of licking. “That’s emphatic. Did you two used to date or what?”
She pursed her lips. “He stole something from me, maybe a hundred and fifty years ago. And now that your little nest up in Owl’s Head is gone, he can’t exactly make up for it and give it back now, can he?” She sighed and slumped. “But I suppose you’re going to want to go chasing after the fool.”
“Tess seems to think it’s important.” I smirked and crouched down, to pet Daisy again. “And maybe it is. I don’t know. I’m still not sure how I feel about Mort. But after what happened, I’m not so keen on letting any Ferin just disappear without being told that’s what they want.” I looked up at her. “You could come with us, you know?”
Kamila smiled and shook her head. “I appreciate the gesture, sweetheart, but I’ve seen enough wars to know I don’t want to be part of any more of them. I understand why you do, or more to the point, I understand why you don’t have a choice. War’s coming for you, so you might as well be ready for it. But as for me? I’m not you. I don’t have to fight. I’ve stayed alive this long by keeping my head down and staying under the radar, and that’s what I aim to do. You’re always welcome to come back any time you want. You can even bring the good little soldier with you if you have to.” She chuckled. “I can see she probably wouldn’t let you come alone anyway.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t know what would be appropriate here. Should I kiss her? Shake her hand? It felt like a leave-taking, but we weren’t leaving until tomorrow. “I hate to think about you here vulnerable by yourself. I always learned there was safety in numbers.” I forced a smile onto my face. “But you’ve been doing this longer than Tess and I put together, so you’re certainly entitled to make your own choices about it. I’m not going to argue with you. We’ll be back, though.”
“I know you will.” Kamila bent down and kissed my forehead. “Tess told me the same thing.”
24
In my old life, I tended to be a heavy sleeper. I slept deeply in the first days of my new life too, not unlike a newborn infant. Being born again was hard work, and the body recreating itself took a lot of energy. Now that I’d gotten into the groove of things, though, I found the slightest noise could startle me awake.
When I heard something land on the roof at about three in the morning, I had no illusions about what it was. I wasn’t a small child anymore, and I knew reindeer didn’t fly.
I shook Kamila awake, holding my finger over my lips. She nodded and stayed silent. I did the same for Tess and led her back to Kamila’s room.
Daisy sat up on the end of the bed, but she didn’t make a sound. Instead, Kamila whispered a command. Daisy grumpily walked over to a closet, and Kamila closed the door and shoved a wardrobe in front of it, the furniture legs whispering over the rug. I caught the telltale gleam of silver on the wardrobe’s side and the doors. Daisy would be well protected. As for us, we were in a different situation.
Tess grabbed her silver-tipped spike. Kamila had her shotgun. I had neither of these things. I just had fire—and lots of it. I’d have to make it count.
Glass shattered in the bedroom, but I heard it downstairs as well. Two vampires climbed in through the bedroom windows, coming down from the roof with silken practice. They flowed into the house like veiled nightmares, moving with a certainty that made me recoil.
I almost jumped out of my skin when K
amila fired her shotgun in a thunderous roar. The shot took the vampire on the left square in the chest, a gout of gore flying out of him like a bomb had gone off in his ribcage. He screamed in a pitch that made Daisy howl in the closet. Then the vampire collapsed into a heap of dust without another sound. Good vamp.
Tess charged the other one. She raised her spike and slashed out like she would in a knife fight. The other vampire was a woman, but she was a foot taller than Tess and as broad as a linebacker. She hissed and batted Tess away into the broken glass, and I saw an opportunity. I unleashed a stream of flame at her like a flamethrower, letting her have it directly in the face. The fire splashed across her snarling features like a river of light, and my fury knew no bounds.
These bastards had the unmitigated gall to show up at Kamila’s house and attack her, and the reality of their assumptions made me sizzle with rage. They thought they had the right. She’d done nothing to anyone. She simply hid out and stayed peaceful, and they attacked her for it. The flames grew hotter, and the vampire’s shrieks hurt my ears as her face melted like a candle, the flesh dropping off in fatty lumps as the beast clawed at my flame.
I didn’t stop. I knew I couldn’t show mercy or pity. They would never show any to my new friends or me. Incineration was an awful way to go, but so was Margaret’s death, as well as what the fangs had planned for us. I doubled down, using my rage to fuel the flames until the attacker collapsed into black ash.
Tess picked herself up off the ground. She scattered the ashes with her boot and looked at us. I nodded, and Kamila jerked her head toward the stairs. Together, we headed downstairs to meet our other guests.
The vampires were waiting. There were five of them, and my stomach clenched at the numbers. We’d handled two of them. Five would be harder, and they weren’t mindless animals. They waited in the room at the bottom of the stairs for us instead of coming at us single file, so we could slaughter them easily.
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