by Jess Haines
Hissing a breath between my teeth, I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and stomped forward, half-dragging Sara with me. The sound of mixed fear and pain she made was enough to jolt me out of my anger.
I stopped, setting my hands on her upper arms, both to keep her on her feet and from pulling away. It gave me a good view of the engorged, blackened veins pulsing under my skin, further drawing me out of my rage and reminding me that I needed to stay calm. Something was trying to break its way free of this flimsy cage of flesh. If I couldn’t stay focused, couldn’t keep my emotions under control, who knew what kind of monster I might turn into.
“Listen,” I said, noting that my voice was unnaturally deep—still wasn’t totally in control yet, had to focus. “Listen. I’m not going to let you suffer the consequences for my mistakes. We’re going to make that damned necromancer try to fix this. You hear me? I’m not leaving this goddamned town until I know for sure if he can make this right. And I’m not going to abandon Devon and Tiny and Analie’s family to deal with him by themselves when it’s over. Give me a chance. This can work. We just have to time it right.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
I turned a flat stare on Devon. He didn’t give an inch.
“What’s plan B? What if Clyde wins? What if the werewolves decide to attack before midnight, or don’t show at all?”
Fear as much as rage threatened to overwhelm my better sense. I wanted to do something physically violent to make the questions stop—which meant there was far more wrong with me than I had originally thought.
Closing my eyes and counting to ten didn’t do much to help, but I gave it a shot anyway. The others were looking at me expectantly when I opened my eyes again, as were a few of the nearby people who had remained in their cars.
The sense of something dark and hungry compelling me to lash out was new, but not entirely unfamiliar. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the desire for vampire blood that had coursed through me when I was bound by blood to Royce and Max. The unnatural hunger to absorb some part of them and keep myself in their power at one point had had me literally begging Royce to keep me bound to him. Anything to stop the pain.
Whatever this was, it bore the same flavor of compulsion. I wasn’t going to give in to the need to lash out or act irrationally. No matter what. I wasn’t a monster. Not in that sense, anyway. I was stronger than this. Had to be stronger than it. Whatever it was.
The words came slowly, thick, like there was cotton stuffing in my mouth.
“Maybe you’re right,” I said.
Devon arched a brow, and I pulled away from Sara to face him. He wore an expression of wary concern. Whatever signs of change I was exhibiting, he hadn’t quite caught on to them yet. Good.
“Maybe Clyde will win. If he does, you still want him taken out, right? So the werewolves can take care of that. Same thing with Fabian. No matter what, the vampires need to be destroyed. Gideon is dangerous, but without Fabian driving him to go after Clyde, or if both vampires are dead, he has no reason to stay here. This isn’t his city or his fight. If he chooses to stay, there’s no way the Goliath pack will tolerate it. Even if you can’t set them after him, isn’t there a local mage coven? You can set the local magi after him, too.”
Tiny spoke up, his deep voice threaded with apprehension. “We’ll never be able to get there before the fighting starts. Not without a car. Not in this mess.”
Good. They were starting to see things my way. “That’s fine. We don’t have to be there when the fight starts. We just have to get there before it’s over. If I can find Gideon after, I can get him to see to Sara, and we can take it from there.”
“Are you sure he’ll fix it?”
“No.” I bit my lower lip, glancing at Sara as a tingle of foreboding squeezed around my heart with cold fingers. “We can’t trust him—but he’s the closest thing we have to a shot at disabling whatever that sorcerer did to her.”
Privately, I vowed to myself that I would make the time to study the different branches of magework and learn enough to protect us both against something like this ever happening again once this mess was behind us.
“I don’t think this is going to work, Shia. If Arnold couldn’t fix it, what makes you think that Gideon can?”
I gave Sara’s arm a reassuring squeeze, though I was nowhere near as confident as I forced myself to sound. “Arnold doesn’t deal in the dark arts. This guy does. What he knows is closer to what David was doing than the magic Arnold uses. Gideon’s the best chance we’ve got.”
And damn whatever fates were responsible for making that the sorry truth.
Chapter 26
It was long past nightfall before we were able to make it across town to Santa Monica.
Tiny had taken the wheel. Not that there was anywhere for us to go for a while—not with the mess in front of us.
Gideon had planned his diversionary tactics well. There were just enough zombies still stumbling around to keep the cops and local news stations frantic with activity, drawing everything from the National Guard to the CDC. Not only did the mess keep us locked in place for hours, unable to chase after him, but it also meant that any rapid response teams that might have come after him at Clyde’s place would be delayed and unable to stop whatever plans Fabian and Gideon had in mind for the master of Los Angeles.
We had to get the hell out of this trap, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. Cars were stopped bumper-to-bumper in both directions.
The anthill of activity centered on the worst of the jam was disrupted when a few people figured out they were about to be detained by the government for “testing;” they then drove over curbs and bumped other cars out of their way to escape.
It wasn’t a bad idea. We took off with some of the initial rush, maneuvering around the abandoned cars, before any barricades could be set up to keep us from hightailing it. We’d lost a couple of precious hours, but it had given us the time to work together to come up with a stronger plan than just “show up and melt faces.” Once we got off the freeway and away from the cemetery, there was little traffic on the surface streets.
Devon had been on his cell phone nonstop. Making arrangements with other White Hats to bring weapons and meet us not far from Clyde’s place. We were going to need to try for stealth sneaking into the gated community, which meant we needed a back way in. A half dozen or more cars and trucks carrying vigilante hunters bristling with weapons wasn’t going to fly with the security guards.
Neither were the zombies, I was sure, but Gideon had the advantages of an insider who might clear a path for him and a lack of moral compunctions preventing him from messing with the minds of people who might try to stop him on the way in.
Plus, none of us were magi, so we didn’t have that power. Damn it.
We would have to hope that we arrived either shortly before or after Gideon and Fabian attacked. My assumption, based upon what little experience I had in Other-to-Other wars, was that Gideon would be responsible for handling the remainder of Clyde’s bodyguards, while Fabian would be the one to attack Clyde. Most likely, Gideon would stop somewhere to pick up a few extra zombies on the way and attack shortly after sunset.
There was a slim chance we were wrong. He might be waiting for sunrise, when Clyde would be at his most vulnerable, but I had to hope that Fabian was too cocky and impatient to wait that long. They wouldn’t want to give up the advantage of the mess Gideon had created on the freeway.
If I was wrong, we were all screwed.
Either way, both vampires had to die tonight. The thought of Fabian being killed didn’t give me so much as a twinge. On the other hand, as much as I didn’t like Clyde, I was sorry he was caught in the middle of this. He was a prick, but that wasn’t enough to merit his death.
Still, I wasn’t sorry enough to stop it.
Even if I had a last minute attack of conscience—ha!—it was far too late to stop the gears that had been set in motion. Everything was about to come to a head.
Some of the other White Hats were held up on the freeway, and a few others were caught up in other activities Devon didn’t choose to explain. By the time we arrived at the rendezvous point on a service road that ran around the perimeter of the community, the sun had set about half an hour ago, and there were maybe thirty White Hats in a variety of tactical gear waiting for us, hovering in the shadows just outside the cones of illumination from nearby street lamps.
It surprised me to see so many hunters out here. The New York chapter boasted maybe half this number. Probably even fewer now that Jack was out of the picture.
Some of them gave deferential nods to Devon as he walked down the line, exchanging a word here and there.
The guy from the White Hat bar we’d visited on our first night out on the town—Jesus—was passing out weapons to some of the other hunters. Tonight he was wearing a vest, combat boots, and cargo pants—no shirt, no jacket—and carrying a long, heavy duffel. He put what had to be an illegal assault rifle into my hands. It was so unexpected and heavy that I almost dropped the stupid thing before I got a good grip on it.
He didn’t bother to see if I was okay. He kept moving at a good clip, pulling a sawed-off shotgun out of the bag and thrusting it at Tiny, and following up by tossing Sara an Uzi. Thank God she didn’t drop the damned thing, or accidentally flick the safety off in the process. She looked at the weapon in her hands like she’d never seen a gun before, though we’d both spent time at the range together.
After the initial surprise wore off, we both gave the guy death glares, but he didn’t appear to notice, continuing down the line to toss weapons at the few White Hats who didn’t have their own. No one else seemed ruffled by his actions.
Someone had disabled the alarm and security camera by a recessed gate in the thick stucco wall surrounding the property, and the door was being held open for the White Hats to slip through. Most of them were wearing dark colors: grays, browns, greens, and slashes of black, blending into the deep shadows of the towering bushes and trees that had been grown close to the wall for an extra layer of privacy from prying eyes.
As the White Hats filed inside, I examined the rifle that the walking arms dealer had put in my hands.
Damn. The guy meant business. It was an AK-47, matte black, and a magazine was already attached. I wasn’t used to anything bigger than a handgun, and it took me a moment to figure out how to check if a bullet was chambered.
Once I figured out the bolt action and barrel extension, I could see that, yes indeed, this gun was ready to go. If I weren’t already in so much trouble, I would have been having a minor panic attack at holding a gun that wasn’t registered to me and that I wasn’t technically trained to use. Dim recollections of the information the sentient hunter’s belt had given me about the use of various guns would be enough for me to get by, but if the gun jammed or anything else went wrong, I was screwed.
I couldn’t be sure if the magazine was full, but hopefully whatever was in there would be many times more bullets than I would need to use tonight.
When I looked up, Sara was still examining her gun. She was running the thumb of her free hand over the safety, frowning down at the weapon. The knot between her eyebrows didn’t ease away when she tilted her head up to look at me. She must not have been pleased at this turn of events either.
Hefting my rifle up so the barrel was to the sky, resting against my shoulder, I sidled closer to her and nodded at her gun. “Bet that thing will cut right through a zombie.”
“Maybe,” she said, lifting it one-handed to give it a more critical eye. “I hear they have a tendency to jam, though. Hope the White Hats aren’t planning on putting me in the front lines. I’m not sure I’m going to be much of a shot with this thing.”
“I’m sure we’re going to be the last line of defense. If Devon or anyone else thinks we’re front lines material, we’re all screwed.”
That prompted a hollow laugh out of Sara. We shared weak grins and followed the trickle of remaining hunters through the door and into the private domain of the obscenely rich and most likely famous.
The homes in the community had bigger lots than most of the others I’d seen so far in my time in California, even counting Sara’s sister’s place in Malibu. Many were large, imposing structures, but none of them matched Clyde’s for casual intimidation. A few had lights burning, cars in the drives, and the sounds of the occasional radio or TV drifting through windows, but I didn’t see any people moving around except for White Hats skulking through the bushes like the bad guys in a cheesy action flick.
The enormity of what we were doing didn’t sink in until I saw the moving vans. A half dozen of the big haulers, the kind you used to move an entire household, were lined up on the street in front of a house around the corner from Clyde’s mansion.
Maybe it was the way the wind was blowing, but the stink of them didn’t hit me until we skirted around the side of a house down the hill from Clyde’s. Gideon must have been hauling zombies from all over the county in those things, maybe raising them by the dozens from other cemeteries and using Forest Lawn in Hollywood Hills as a distraction or cover of some sort. One of the trucks was the telltale U-Haul with the Golden Gate Bridge decal on the side the lady we’d interviewed at the Laundromat had told us about.
There was nothing in the trucks now; the cabs and cargo doors stood open, the loading ramps still down. Small gobbets of unidentified people-bits, a few bugs, and that unmistakable stench were all that remained.
It was a wonder none of the neighbors had noticed or complained. This was not the kind of neighborhood where you could haul in zombies by the truckload and have them go unnoticed. Someone, somewhere, had to have noticed the smell. Even a couple blocks away, even though I was covered in long-dried dead people juice, the concentrated stink of decomposing bodies left to rot in a hot truck all day (or maybe days) was making my eyes water.
Some of the other White Hats were muttering about it, one of them retching in the bushes nearby. On a hunch, I tugged Sara’s arm to get her to stop, and I edged closer to one of the windows of the house we were using for cover. Peering inside, I spotted what I was looking for. When Sara tapped my shoulder, I answered her puzzled look by pointing to the prone body on the kitchen floor, only the designer jeans-clad legs and part of the torso visible from our angle.
Gideon must have done something to put the people in the neighborhood—or the ones closest to Clyde’s home, anyway—to sleep while he did his dirty work. Since he had so casually sent Sara and me into unconsciousness outside of Thrane’s hideout, it didn’t surprise me. Though I was glad none of the White Hats had shown up early enough to be caught in the spell, I wasn’t too concerned about the neighbors. He hadn’t added them into his army of undead. They’d be fine, if a bit groggy, once the spell wore off.
The question was, where was Gideon now? And Fabian, for that matter.
“Madre de Dios. . . . That monster will pay.” Jesus’s voice startled me, though he spoke in a low growl. He must have crept behind Sara and me when we were looking in the window.
“They’re sleeping,” Sara explained, “not dead. They’ll be fine.”
“You know what did this?”
We both nodded. “A mage. A bad one who doesn’t follow the rules.”
Frown lines appeared between his eyes, but he didn’t say anything. We followed him as he moved from shadow to shadow, bringing us ever closer to Clyde’s property.
It was so quiet—no dogs were barking, no early evening birds rustling in the trees, no bugs chirping, no nothing—that I couldn’t help but worry. There was no sign of security, no vampires wandering around watching for intruders, and no sign of movement in the windows of Clyde’s house. The other shoe was overdue to drop.
We kept going, though, moving with more stealth than I would have thought a bunch of dudes carrying tons of weapons and acting like Navy SEAL rejects would have been capable of managing. Nobody made any effort to stop us or investigate, which didn
’t make me feel any better, no matter how good these guys were at this. Vampires had senses far superior to those of humans, so even if Gideon didn’t have some magical radar that would tell him Sara was here, someone from Clyde’s household should have detected us by now.
This had to be a trap of some kind, but I didn’t know where Devon was, and it was too late to tell him we needed to back out and rethink this plan.
Then the first gunshot rang out, and it was too late to do more than regret ever coming to this godforsaken town.
Chapter 27
Gunfire sounded from all sides. Jesus plowed ahead, so Sara and I continued to follow him. The zombies came from around the trees and bushes in Clyde’s front yard, having hidden until we got close enough for them to do the dead man’s version of a rush on the nearest White Hats. More approached from behind us, too, somehow having snuck around to cut us off from our escape route.
Cursing under my breath, I flicked the safety off the rifle, hefting it to my shoulder, and took aim at one of the zombies moving our way. It was farther back than the ones Sara and Jesus were concentrating on, with little between us other than a couple of low, ornamental bushes.
The thing was withered and shrunken, yellowed teeth bared in rictus as it shuffled in our direction, grasping hands held out before it. Blowing out a breath, I focused down the sights, aiming carefully for one of the raisin-like eyeballs.
At first, I didn’t think I had hit the thing. It took another step forward. And another. Then toppled forward, the back of its head laid open like some grisly flower. Man, this gun packed a punch. I’d have to see about getting one from Jack for my very own anti-zombie kit when I got home.
Wait. Jack wasn’t leading the White Hats anymore. Maybe Royce could hook me up. Either way, I loved this rifle.
Taking careful aim, I popped off another few rounds. More zombies fell under my bullets, and now that the initial surprise was wearing off, the White Hats were doing a good job laying a suppressive fire, rapidly regaining the ground they had lost. A couple of times, I heard curses and shouts of pain, but I didn’t see anyone getting dragged down by cold, dead hands.