by Greco, Karen
"No, Chuck," I said quickly. We didn't need any more bad blood between species right now. "Jackson was operating alone, under duress. Someone put some sort of curse on his daughter. He was trying to save her."
Chuck slipped out from under his wife and placed her head down gently. He stood and stalked over to me, straightening his back to get to his full five-feet-five inches. He stared down at me, which is admittedly not hard to do. But he encroached on my personal space and I didn't like that at all. "You mean to tell me he's not dead?"
"You wouldn't be trying to intimidate me, right Chuck?" I said as I cracked my knuckles and smiled, my fangs at full mast. "My fangs are bigger than yours, so step off."
Casper chuckled. I swatted at my ear. Chuck quickly stepped away. I didn't know if he was intimidated by my sharp teeth or if he just thought I was crazy.
"Sorry, I'm just..." he stammered.
"We had to find the source of the bad blood," I explained, rolling my head from side to side, easing the tension in my body so my fangs would retract.
"We don't want this to happen to another group of vampires," Frankie added. "Imagine the carnage if they gave it to a nest of non-Betas."
While we were dealing with Chuck, Max took over crowd control and was pushing the Beta-Vamps away from the barn. Docile by nature, they were as non-threatening to herd as sheep. If the blood had reached a group of full vampires, it would have been nearly impossible to mask it as a meth-induced rampage. Frankie was able to keep some control over himself, but that was mostly because of his years of Blood Ops training. A non-trained vampire would have gone on a killing spree before imploding. Just the thought of bringing down vampires like that was overwhelming.
Frankie, Chuck and I exited the barn, and I closed the doors. "They could be out cold until past dawn. Max can help get them into the tents."
Chuck nodded. "Yes, that would be a help, thank you. You sure they'll be okay?"
"Pretty sure," I said. "As long as they respond like Frankie, they'll come out of it just fine."
We headed towards the car so I could pick up the remaining jar of ash. I slowed my gait so Chuck could catch up, so we could talk out of earshot of the others. "Chuck, about what happened..."
He raised his hand to stop me. "No. I get what you had to do, and can't fault you for it. I hate to say greater good..."
I let out a small, bitter laugh. "I thought we had time. I really did. I wanted zero casualties, but then there was this kid. She was just a kid, Chuck."
"Don't apologize," Casper said, his sharp voice needling at me. I gave my head a quick shake to shut him up.
"And we don't have kids," he said. I detected a slight bitterness in his tone. "Not even kids in the turned sense."
Since Beta's couldn't bite, they couldn't turn anyone into a vampire.
"No real upside to being a Beta is there?" Casper said, tossing out his two cents. I gave my head another futile toss. Nothing was going to shut this kid up. He was still on some sort of spell-conjuring high.
That said, Casper was right about not apologizing. "It still sucks," I said. "And I wish it turned out different. But even so, I would make the same choices. I stand by what we did."
"I can respect that," Chuck said quietly. "I may not understand it, but I can respect it."
"Good, because I have a proposal for you that could benefit all of us."
Chuck raised his eyebrows. "I'm listening."
"So am I," Casper echoed. I flicked at my ear.
"The werewolf pack wants you out of here, like now. I bought you until sundown tomorrow." I silently added "I hope" at the end of that sentence. "I have a good parcel of land and a farmhouse not too far from here that needs looking after. It's not ideal, but you get a safe place to live, and I have a nest of vampires keeping vandals and trespassers out."
Chuck's face morphed from apprehension to exhilaration. "Well sure, I bet we could do that."
"There's not a whole lot of indoor space safe from sunlight," I said quickly. "And there's a river that runs under the house, and we think it's been blessed. So vampires can't cross it."
Chuck looked at me skeptically. "Really? I thought that was a myth."
I shrugged, stopping at the car. "The point is, you guys aren't getting the Four Seasons. But you are welcome to build an underground bunker to house your family."
Chuck's face lit up. I don't know if it was the idea of an underground bunker that made him so happy or that I referred to his nest as a family. Outliving one’s natural family, vampires were often rootless and lonely, which was why Betas in particular lived in nests. It was safer in numbers, for sure, but it was also less isolating.
Maybe I just found the one good reason to be a Beta and not a fully functioning bloodsucker.
"We're a handy bunch. We could build a bunker."
"So does that mean you'll take me up on it?"
"You better believe we'll take it!" He was practically jumping up and down. "A home. A real home!"
"Better get moving then. Line up the healthy vampires infront of your tent. We'll fit as many in as we can and dose each group. Then you guys should start packing. But don't pack the tents. The vamps in the barn will be out cold until past dawn. We won't be able to move anyone until tomorrow."
"Yes, tomorrow. As soon as the sun sets, we'll be ready to move out." Chuck smiled wide. Without warning, he grabbed me and planted a giant, wet kiss on my forehead before running off to tell the others.
"You old softie," Casper razzed me.
I ignored the ghost's teasing and wiped at the wet spot from the sloppy kiss Chuck had left on my skin. His enthusiasm was so infectious that even I smiled in spite of myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
"This wasn't a bad idea, right?" I said as I gritted my teeth in a smile and waved at the El Camino as it propelled down the dark and quiet road. Darcy stood beside me, blowing kisses at Matty as he hung his head out the passenger side window, calling out to her.
Max insisted that we stick close to the Beta-Vamps, so he sent Alfonso and Eva back to Providence to get the wolfsbane and ginger we needed to make a potion that would help Jackson’s little girl. Since it was almost dawn and Matty needed to get back to the city, we squeezed him in between the two bickering witches and sent them on their way. We probably could have borrowed a blackout tent from Chuck, but we kind of forgot that Matty was with us. On the plus side, it got my pain-in-the-ass cousin out of our hair.
Darcy shivered. There was no oil in the tank to heat the house, and the stove ran on propane, which, of course, we didn't have. She and Matty had been holed up here for hours, and she was freezing. Darcy should have gone back to Providence with them. At least she would have been able to catch some sleep in a toasty apartment. But she thought she was our best defense against the werewolves, and I had to admit, there was genius in its simplicity. If they tried any shit, she'd just start wailing since only the dead were immune to the banshee scream. As long the werewolves were in human form, they would drop faster than a silver bullet could take them down. My protection from the wailing would hopefully be Casper. We figured maybe if he possessed my body, I would be okay, but I could also run like hell just in case. Max had earbuds and MP3 downloads on his phone, so he'd plug in and run like hell too. We were willing to take our chances. They looked like good odds.
The werewolves, on the other hand, would be dead. Of course, the kid would die too. But that was on her dad and the pack. If they didn't double cross us, everyone would walk away just fine.
So Darcy opted to stick around "1800s House" with us rather than go back to the comforts of the city. The least we could do was huddle in the heat of Max's car for a little bit, even though he was running low on gas.
"Maybe we should find a crappy motel or something," I suggested as I pulled out Max's keys and opened the driver side door. We had passed a few no-tell motel-type places on the drive up here. It would be worth a few bucks to get a little shuteye in a heated room, bedbugs be damned.
>
Darcy slipped in from the passenger side while I settled into the driver's seat and put the keys in the ignition. The SUV turned over and I turned the heat up full blast.
"Oh thank the gods," Darcy said as she turned the vents toward her. "I think we'd better lay low, no motels. This is some serious shifter territory."
I rubbed my hands together. "You think?"
The blue tint to her lips was starting to fade. "Can't you smell them?"
"Well, of course, I can smell them." I mean, I could smell them at the log cabin where the Betas were camped out, and at Jackson's place obviously. But it smelled pretty normal around the farmhouse. "But I don't smell them on my property. Do you?" Maybe my nose wasn't as reliable as I thought.
She grinned. "No worries. They are really good about property boundaries, but they've been pacing along the back property line. I only smelled them when I took a walk back there." She motioned past the farmhouse and the creepy-ass cemetery just beyond, which was another reason I opted to hang in the car for a bit. There were an extraordinary amount of ghosts trapped behind those cemetery walls, just itching to get out. Their endless moaning was wearing on me.
Of course, I was the only one who could hear them. Well, except for Casper. He clearly didn't like it much here either, retreating to the far recesses of my body as soon as we came within earshot of the gaggle of depressed ghosts.
Darcy caught me staring at the old bone orchard. "You think you have family in there?"
I looked down at my lap and picked invisible lint off my pants. "Who knows. Maybe. I don't know the history of this place."
Honestly, the whole farm gave me the creeps. In addition to the haunted cemetery, the burned out barn where my parents died loomed just beyond the dingy white farmhouse. The whole area reeked of death. I almost met my own death in the basement at the hands of psycho Marcello just a few short months before.
"Maybe having the Betas here will kind of liven up the place," Darcy said brightly. Damn banshee was almost a mind reader.
I dropped my head back against the headrest and closed my eyes. "They'll probably pack up their tents and run like hell."
"What makes you say that?"
"I don't know. Doesn't the place feel cursed to you?" I opened one eye and looked over at her, stealth-like. She caught me.
"Cursed? Okay, what's up?" She crossed her arms and stared at me. Hard.
"You know that expression will give you wrinkles." I opened my other eye, and pointed to her pursed lips.
"Shut up. Tell me what's going on."
I bit my lip. "I don't know. It's just creepy here. I'm not meant for the boonies."
"Nina, you can't get any more boondocks than Groom Lake. And we lived there for years."
Darcy had a point. Groom Lake, Nevada, better known as Area 51, was Blood Ops’ base of operations and their training facility. Groom Lake was technically the salt flats found on the 10-mile rectangular property that made up Area 51, and it was sometimes what we called "the place" in mixed company. Say Area 51 in public and you either discredit yourself completely or become irresistible to oddballs.
The government started the rumor of UFOs and aliens at Area 51. Creating a mythology of space creatures made it easier to hide the supernatural army the U.S. was building in the basement. It started as the ace up the sleeve to win the Cold War. The plan was to drop a shit ton of highly trained supernatural assassins into the USSR and let them tear the country up. But the Cold War ended, and the government found itself with a bunch of uber-deadly non-humans on the payroll. It was, of course, their own fault. They created some serious monsters to do the Cold War dirty work, and then, not knowing what to do with them when the conflict was over, simply unleashed these same deprived creatures into an unsuspecting world. Blood Ops was created to clean up their mess.
So as long as the world thought the government was hiding aliens and UFOs, we could hide in plain sight. Weird stuff coming out of Area 51? That's just the space aliens.
"I'm not meant for these boonies," I clarified. "Besides, I don't think it was all that remote off the base." Aliens created a huge tourist trade, and the kitschy little boomtowns to go right along with them.
"Are the ghosts getting to you?" She reached over and gave my arm a supportive squeeze.
"You can hear them to?"
"Nope." Darcy's smile was almost devious. "Lucky guess."
"You going to say 'gotcha'?"
"Girl, you've had one eye on that cemetery since you got here. And you aren't talking to yourself, which means Casper's in hiding. Seemed pretty obvious to me that the dead may be haunting. "
"Trying to haunt. They're stuck in there."
"How does that happen?"
I shrugged. "I guess they are trapped by a spell? I dunno. Darcy, in case you haven't noticed, I am not much of a witch."
When Darcy laughs really hard, she snorts. Suddenly it sounded like a wild boar was lose in Max's SUV.
"Why are you laughing?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
She wiped at her eyes, which were watering. "You aren't that bad."
I gave her the side eye.
"Honest! You aren’t!" she said, doing little to hide her guffawing.
"Darcy, anything remotely impressive happens when Casper has full possession of my body."
"Sure, but letting him take possession without completely taking over? That's talent."
"That's bullshit," I sighed.
There was an old legend that if a ghost fully possessed an individual, they risked getting stuck like that. Kind of like when a kid makes a funny face and a mom says it will stay that way? Same idea.
"My aunt's best friend's cousin was a witch, and she told us of other witches — actual witches, not humans — getting possessed and needing an exorcism," Darcy insisted.
"But were they Spirit Witches?"
"Spirit Witches?"
"Sorry, I made that up. Witches that can communicate with the dead. I call them Spirit Witches. Some witches, like me, can communicate with the dead. Some are adept at casting spells, like Babe and Casper. Some are clairvoyants, like Eva. I have no idea what type of witch Al is, apart from a drunk one."
"I thought all witches could do any sort of witchy thing," Darcy said.
"To a point, I guess," I said. "But we're kind of like specialists, so if a non-Spirit Witch was possessed, I'd imagine there was a better chance of getting into trouble. Plus, my vampire half keeps rejecting the witch half."
Dr. O didn't really have me — any of us, really — taking witch-related courses. No one imagined the witch would come out, especially since I was vampire dominant. And I could feel my two preternatural powers waging war internally every day. I suspect that's why Casper was able to jump into my body so easily.
"Well, that would explain why you aren't as good as you think you should be, although I'm impressed with what you've pulled off so far."
"What we've pulled off," I corrected her. "I couldn't do it without Casper."
"Well, yeah, the kid's a great witch. Clearly." Darcy paused for a minute and then broke into another fit of snorts. "Imagine if Eva was the witch that possessed you."
"No. We really don't need to imagine that!"
Dawn was finally breaking, casting a reddish hue on the peeling white paint of the farmhouse.
Darcy craned her neck around, looking at the sun coming up over the tree line. "Do you think they are there by now?"
"Al was driving. They were probably there 20 minutes ago," I said as I yawned and closed my eyes again, slipping a bit lower in the driver's seat.
I must have dozed off because I jumped awake when Frankie knocked on the side window, which my head was leaning against.
"What?!" I yelped.
That jerked Darcy awake too.
"This is no time for napping!" Frankie yelled through the glass. He grinned and held up a brown paper bag. I squinted to see just beyond Frankie's shoulder. Eva was waving like a loon. Alfonso was leaning against the El
Camino, arms crossed and face in a scowl. The herbal supply had arrived.
I opened the car window. "What's with Al?
Frankie glanced behind him. "Eva pinched his flask and refilled it with aloe juice. She said he needed a detox."
Darcy let out a groggy giggle. "She's good for him."
"I don't think Al sees it that way just yet. You want to stay in here and sleep?"
Darcy nodded and closed her eyes. I raised the window and then got out of the car.
"You and Casper know how to do this, Nina?" Al asked, his voice gruff but tired.
"I guess," I said.
Alfonso stared at me and then said, "We'll stick around. Will that be a problem, Eva?"
"Oh not at all," Eva said. "I just wish I had some coffee."
I felt a small pang of disappointment. Coffee would’ve been so good right then.
"Tell you what, Eva. We passed a coffee shop right before the turn off to the farm. Why don't you go for a coffee run?"
Eva brightened, oblivious to Al's insult. "Oh sure! Who wants what?"
I ripped a bit of paper from the bag and Eva dug out a pen from her bag. I wrote out coffee orders for me, Darcy and Max, who was crashed out in the old farmhouse, but I figured he'd want something hot and caffeinated after a night in there. I threw a dozen donuts down on the list too.
"Who’s got cash?" I asked, digging into my pockets and coming up empty. I didn't anticipate sticking around so long.
"I got it," Max said as he lumbered across the front lawn, passing the broken stone walls of the well. His body was stiff. He moved like someone who just woken up from a few hours of sleeping in a really uncomfortable spot.
Beyond Max, the farmhouse stood dilapidated in the cool light of the early morning winter sun. It was the first time I saw it in daylight, and my heart sank at the sight of it. The house was more dingy grey than white. The front porch was rotting out, with floorboards completely missing in places. There were actual holes in the roof where squirrels burrowed their way in. The burned out barn just beyond was a safety hazard, the bright orange "condemned" sticker on the one remaining side wall evidence that the town thought so too.