Face screwed up in a frown, she was massaging her temples as her head twitched erratically.
Bishop went right to her, making her sit down on the bench. “Tell me what you see, Sarina.”
His voice was calm and soothing, like this wasn’t a new song and dance. Like he’d done this many, many times before.
She hissed, curling in on herself like her brain hurt. “Attack,” she whispered, the word sounding like it took far too much effort to say. “Bigger than the ABI building one. Attacking the Dubois nest.” She gasped for breath, the exertion almost too much for her. “Killing Magdalena and her second. Showing themselves to humans. Murdering them. Blood in the streets, running in rivers.” Sarina sucked in a huge breath before she whispered the thing everyone with a functioning brain stem wanted to avoid. “War.”
Bishop rubbed her back. “That’s good information. How much time do we have? Days, weeks?”
“Hours. Maybe less than that.” Sarina shook her head. “No time. No time.”
Fuck.
Everyone else was strapped to the gills, but me? I was in a T-shirt and jeans, and not at all prepared to storm the fucking castle.
I dove for my duffle. By her tone, I knew we were going to fall in the “less” column. I yanked off my Ramones T-shirt and strapped my vest on over my tank top. The T-shirt went right back on and my holster went over it. After seating both of my weapons, I dug through the bag and found three blessed rosaries. I dropped each one around my neck and stuffed them down my shirt. Then went the backup M&P inside the spine holster. My leather jacket went over the whole ensemble, and I prayed that the spells in the leather held up. After nine months of no use, I held little hope, but maybe protection spells like the ones infused in this jacket got stronger over time.
Yeah, even I knew I wasn’t that lucky.
Sarina was rocking on the bench as she hugged herself. Her small fingers dug into the skin of her arms, and I wedged a finger in between her palm and arm, pulling her hand away.
“Sarina, darling,” I called, kneeling at her feet. “Come on back now. You warned us. Now it’s time to go to work, okay? Can you pull yourself out?”
Sarina might be the most prolific psychic I’d ever dealt with, but she wasn’t the first. There were quite a few with the gift in the Knoxville coven, though their witch magic usually conflicted with their sight. Sarina had to be a full-blooded psychic to see as well as she did.
“Oracle, dammit. I’m an oracle.” Sarina’s gaze finally lost its thousand-yard stare and focused on me.
I chuckled. “There she is. What do you say? Wanna go save a master vampire before the government bombs us off the face of the map?”
I wasn’t stupid. I knew once the government figured out that they weren’t at the top of the food chain, the bombs would drop on us. Sure, it wouldn’t work. Sure, it would cause an all-out bloodbath. But they’d try it. I did not need any more ghosts on my hands.
No, thank you.
“We don’t have a lot of time,” she whispered.
Awesome. My gaze caught on J, and my stomach dropped. No way did I want him walking into a vampire nest on the brink of war.
“It’s time for you to go, J,” I insisted, snagging his sleeve. The images of what could happen to him flashed through my brain. It was bad enough I would be walking in there. If he followed me… I shuddered to think what could have happened if I’d failed at the lake. If I could prevent that, I would. “You aren’t coming with us.”
J stared down at my hand on his sleeve before meeting my eyes. “Are you going?”
He was my best friend and one-hundred-percent human. He didn’t have extra anything that gave him an edge. If he followed me into this shit, he was going to get himself killed.
“You know damn well I’m going. But I’m not human. You are. This isn’t like when we were kids, and you could do all the same shit I did. This is blood and death and beings who could rip you in half, drink you down, and laugh while they do it.”
“Are. You. Going?” he repeated.
“God fucking dammit, J,” I shouted, because I knew. He’d made up his mind, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it short of hog-tying him and locking him in my fucking trunk.
I searched the faces of everyone else, landing on Jimmy. “Care to help me out here?”
Jimmy just shrugged at me, which was fair. He didn’t have any more say than I did. I knew I should have set them up earlier.
“A man must make his own fate, lass,” Hildy murmured, earning a growl from me.
“Fine,” I growled, “but I swear if you get killed, I’m probably going right back to prison for bringing your stupid ass back to life. Or…” I trailed off, thinking about the death deity I had for a father. I shook my head. I couldn’t scold him for whatever shit he pulled bringing me back and beg for someone else’s life.
Of course, that didn’t mean I wouldn’t be changing my mind on that front if something went awry.
“Whenever you’re done having a hissy fit,” Bishop prompted, motioning for us all to gather close.
A shade-jumping adventure.
Super.
Daylight hit the alley different from the last time I’d seen it. It was still bright colors and superclean, but the air had a silence to it that was more than a little disconcerting. After making sure my stomach stayed inside my body, we followed the building around the corner to the cathedral steps, the deserted Knoxville street sending ice through my veins.
J and I yanked our sidearms free in tandem. Blame it on damn near a lifetime together, but we knew a hostile situation when we saw one. A deserted street, silent birds, not so much as an errant pedestrian… yeah. Bad shit was going to or had already gone down.
Sarina knocked on the cathedral door, the booming echo of her small fist hitting the wood making me struggle to swallow. Never—not once—had someone failed to be on these steps, had someone failed to answer, had someone not already been at the door to let me in.
“Open it,” I said, my voice pitched low.
I was staring at Hildy, wanting him to do his mojo, but he shook his head. “I can’t, lass. Only Dubois blood can open that door.”
Shit. Did I even have Ingrid’s number?
“God fucking dammit all to hell,” Bishop growled, shouldering through us. He hesitated before placing his hand on the intricately carved doorknob. Sighing heavily, he turned the knob as easy as you please.
Umm… excuse me? What in the unholy fuckery is this?
Sarina snorted before quickly sobering when Bishop shot her a look. “Not one word.”
I wanted to open my mouth anyway to ask, but it was not the time. I mean, it did sort of explain how Bishop could walk out of the Dubois nest without so much as a scratch after giving a major “fuck you” to Mags. Still…
Bishop’s magic flowed over his hands as he opened the door. Taking point, he went in first, then it was J and Sarina, Jimmy and Hildy, and then me. The Dubois nest was silent as the grave, but even though I couldn’t see anyone, I knew it wasn’t empty. The buzz of their souls was louder than a kicked beehive. I could practically feel their souls calling to me.
They were gearing up for something big, and if they were in the hiding portion of the festivities, it couldn’t be good.
“Mags, Ingrid, someone come talk to me,” I shouted, my voice echoing off the open space. “You have trouble coming and hiding isn’t going to do the trick.”
It seemed they were already aware, but what the hell else was I supposed to say?
A tiny blonde vampire raced for me, stopping only after she’d shouldered through my compatriots. “About time you got here. We got word un-nesteds were headed this way. You got better intel, I’m all ears.”
It was very tough to forget that Ingrid was essentially a general and had commanded more armies than I knew what to do with.
Sarina stepped up. “Their goal is to take out your queen and her second. The number is almost double that of the ABI attack, s
o around a hundred or so. We don’t have much time. They will find a way to breach.”
“Yeah, that’s better than my intel. We still got the word out to some of our thralls in the KPD. They cleared the area.” Ingrid rubbed at her face as if she’d been worked to the bone. “We fortified the wards, called in favors. Shiloh is on her way, but I don’t know if it will be enough.”
I tried to think about the level of damage a hundred un-nested vampires could do. Blood in the streets wasn’t even the half of it. But breaching this place…
“Hildy made it seem like anyone at that door would sit out there until Judgment Day if they weren’t of Dubois blood.” Did I look at Bishop when I said this? No, I did not. “Is there another entry point, or do you have an internal problem?”
Ingrid huffed. “Door number two.”
22
An internal problem in the Dubois nest wasn’t exactly a new thing. More than once Mags had been forced to remove members who refused to follow the rules. Some—unhappy with their position—had decided to leave on their own. Magdalena wasn’t prone to beheadings or fits of pique and was of the opinion that executions made more enemies than it eliminated.
She sure as hell shot herself in the foot with that bit of mercy. Not that I wouldn’t have done the same.
“Jimmy, you got any warding mojo in your bag of tricks?” What the elf could and could not do was a solid unknown to me. The fact that he lived in town, had a human job, and loved electronics more than some people loved their children, made him the least elf-like Fae I’d ever seen. Not that I’d seen many.
The tall man shuffled his feet and met my gaze. “Not warding, exactly. I can make the majority of them lose the building, though. Like they’d look at it and their eyes would just slide off. It won’t keep them out, but it’ll slow them down.”
I shot my eyes to Ingrid. “That work for you?”
She chuckled like I’d just said something funny. “Any help at all is welcome. If it keeps my queen alive, I’m all for it. The last thing I need is to take the mantle. I swear that woman deals with more headaches in a day than I do all year.” Her gaze flicked from me to Bishop. “She’s glad you came. I know you don’t like us, but she cares about you.”
That was a hell of a one-eighty from the last time they’d spoken, and I had to wonder what the fuck was going on with Bishop and the Dubois nest.
But Bishop didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he followed Jimmy and the pair of them reinforced the wards. Not that his non-answer was of any consequence. As old as Magdalena was, she could have been the first vamp turned in her line. Meaning, even as young as she was when she was turned, she could still have living relatives. That would actually make a hell of a lot of sense.
“Is there an exit strategy?” J asked, his eyes still wide as saucers as he stared at the tiny enforcer. “A fallback plan if the breach is too advanced?”
I was waiting for Ingrid to start cussing like a sailor just so I could watch J get all scandalized. I swear that would make my whole year. Plus, I doubted he’d ever met a vampire before, add in the fact that Ingrid was less than half his size made it all the better. I hadn’t exactly elaborated on the details of the arcane world.
Ingrid nodded as she held in her grin by the skin of her teeth. The last thing J needed to see was a set of fangs. “The crypts and cemetery. It leads to a secluded spot with very little human presence. But if the fight spills much past there, we’re going to have a problem. KPD has only cleared three blocks. It would take pulling strings we don’t have for more.”
Sarina yanked a slim phone from her back pocket. “Let me see if I can yank those strings, shall I?”
“Weapons? Warriors?” I was trying to think of anything I could do to help them, and other than absorbing a shit-ton of souls and blowing everything up, I was at a loss for what I could offer. My gaze fell on Hildy. “You got any tips?”
Hildy twirled his cane in his hand before bowing at the tiny general. “Hildenbrand O’Shea, lass. May I offer some advice on your crow’s nest and sentry points?”
Ingrid stood stock-still for about five seconds before her eyes flashed red. “You’re Hildy?” she breathed. “Hildy is Hildenbrand O’Shea?” she accused, spearing me with a glare so fierce, if she weren’t my friend, I’d be positive she was about to murder me.
“Did I forget to mention that?”
Ingrid growled under her breath as she let Hildy lead her away to discuss where to put her snipers, which left J and I in the middle of an almost-deserted cathedral waiting for an attack. I didn’t know exactly how I was supposed to help. I sort of figured that if push came to shove, I could reap whatever souls were left in the graveyard and vaporize people, but I worried that it would be sort of like trying to fill a shot glass with a tsunami.
Plus, I’d never done the whole reaping thing around the undead. All in all, it sounded dicey as fuck.
I pulled J by the sleeve, deeper into the decommissioned church, wanting him to meet Mags before everything went to shit. But I didn’t find her. I did, however, find a ton of mid-level vamps ushering the younger ones out of the nest through a series of tunnels that ran through the basement. It made sense to me, but J, I could tell, had questions.
“Our ex-fil is above ground to prevent the tunnels from being discovered. I’ll bet anything that they’ll blow the entrance to the tunnels as soon as the attack comes.”
J smiled. “Sneaky. I like it.”
“So glad you approve,” a low voice said, and I turned to find Magdalena outfitted to the gills in weapons and armor. Unlike her general, she was in head-to-toe tactical gear. Black combat boots, black tac pants, likely bulletproof vest, and a platinum cuff around her neck. The cuff reached from just under her jawline past her collarbone and down her chest, and she had a pair of matching ones on her wrists. Across her back was a quiver full of arrows—likely spell-tipped—and a bow. At her left hip was a pair of katanas, stacked one on top of the other, and at her right was what looked like a Glock.
“Your general going to get outfitted like you anytime soon?” I asked, admiring her hardware.
Mags shrugged. “She says that she has gone into battle naked with nothing but her fangs and talons, and she likes it that way. Says no one can steal a weapon off you if you don’t have one to steal. I swear, that child will be the death of me.”
Only Magdalena would call a two-thousand-year-old vampire a child.
“Mags, please meet Jeremiah Cooper, my partner.”
“Ah, the infamous J.” Mags gave him a wide smile that showed him every single one of her needlelike fangs. “Dipping more than a toe in this world, aren’t you? I take it you declined to sit this one out?” She tutted at him like he was a naughty boy. “Careful, pet. You need all your body parts if you’re to be turned, you know.”
With that little bit of censure, she glided off to handle whatever it was she needed to handle.
J had gone white as a sheet, and I had to swallow a laugh—totally inappropriate given the situation, I know—but it was funny.
J pivoted on his heel and stared at me with the widest of eyes. “Turned?”
I couldn’t help it, I snickered. “Into a vampire or a ghoul. She’s telling you to make sure you keep all your body parts attached in the event of your death.”
“How in the fuck am I supposed to do that?”
“Beats me. The one time I did it, I couldn’t say I was too concerned about any of my parts being intact.”
J growled at me with enough ferocity that a couple of the older vamps paused to stare. I waved them off, doubting J would choose to kill me now. If he hadn’t before, I doubted that one quip was going to do it.
“When this is over, you and I are going to have a full conversation about what the fuck has been going on for the last nine months.” When I opened my mouth to volley back, he shushed me. “No. I’m not taking any shit off you this time. We’re having it. And I’ll be sure to go over what the fuck you were thinking in that goddamn rav
ine while I’m at it, too. Until then, as your best friend, I formally request that you refrain from doing stupid shit until the rest of forever. How’d that be?”
He was asking this now? On the precipice of fucking battle with an un-nested army? By very definition this whole gig was one huge dumb move that was likely going to get my ass killed.
“How about you ask me to stop doing stupid shit tomorrow? Deal?”
J grumbled, rolling his eyes at me. Then he dragged me into a hug so tight, I was lucky my ribs were healed, or he would have smashed them to smithereens.
“Don’t get dead,” he whispered in my ear.
“You either. Because I will totally make Mags bring you back as a vamp, and if that doesn’t work, I’ll make Bishop bring you back as a ghoul.” I didn’t add that if that didn’t work, I was in good with a death deity, so he was staying if I had anything to say about it.
Pushing off of him, I checked my weapons, making sure I was covered.
“You have enough ammo?” I asked, wondering where Bishop ran off to with my duffle. There was never, ever going to be enough ammo when it came to dealing with vamps.
Said death mage was jogging our way, but he didn’t have Jimmy with him. He slid my duffle across the floor, and it stopped at the toes of my Chucks. I dove for the remainder of my weapons as he began giving J a briefing. “Vamps are tricky targets. They move faster than you can see, so you want to hit one when they are still or busy. You need to take the head or the heart. Body shots do fuck all. Personally, I’d prefer you to be in a sniper position, but truth be told, those are the easiest to pick off because they’re secluded, and vamps can hear where the shots come from.”
He paused, and I looked up to find Bishop staring down at me.
“Please tell me you have spelled rounds. I don’t have the time to make any.”
I wanted to be plucky and cool, but I just didn’t have it in me. “Not enough. Not with a hundred or so vamps coming in here.”
Truth be told, there would never be enough.
The reality of the situation hit me like a ton of bricks. We shouldn’t be here. We should be following the young ones through the tunnels and getting the hell out of here.
Dead and Gone (Grave Talker Book 2) Page 14