He told them to wait for him for half a day, and he would catch them. From there, they would all travel together toward Lake Pleasant and on into the West Canada Lakes Wilderness.
Alex estimated that the trip would be about 70 to 75 miles and that the horses could do about 30 miles a day if they walked, and the terrain was easy. He knew that the last 15 miles or so would not be easy terrain, so he figured at least three full days of travel to get to the cabin.
Most of the morning passed quietly. They had to watch closely for the fissures and other obstacles that could injure the horses. There were areas that the horses had to be led around because the debris or uneven ground made some spots impassable. They hadn’t come across any other people so far, but they had seen the bodies of a few motorists that had crashed into trees, ditches and each other, most likely during the earthquakes.
One car had driven into a crevasse. The front wheels had dropped into the opening and the car must have come to an abrupt halt because the driver had been thrown from her car through a gaping hole in her windshield and lay decaying in the roadway with a crushed skull. “Buckle up,” Ryan said in a mock announcer’s voice. “It’s the law.” No one laughed, and he stayed quiet after that.
At about mid-afternoon, they came across the remains of a campsite at the side of the road. There was a small tent next to a makeshift fire pit, but the wind, that was growing stronger again, had partially collapsed the nylon shelter and the zippered flap on the front was open and whipping in the breeze. Alex dismounted and went to investigate. He looked briefly in the tent, but it was obviously unoccupied, and there didn’t appear to be anything useful in it. He put his hand down close to the coals that were left in the fire pit and felt a slight warmth. Something must have still been smoldering down in the ash. He knew that those coals could have remained warm like that for more than a day.
Ryan joined him at the fire-pit and said, “We should put this out before the wind catches a spark and burns down the whole forest.”
“We can’t waste our fresh water. The horses will need it,” Alex replied, squinting at the trees, the wind making it difficult for him to see.
Ryan grunted at Alex in acknowledgement and proceeded to unbutton his fly and whip out a respectable length of fire hose from which he sent a stream of urine spattering on the coals that hissed and steamed in response. Alex rolled his eyes and started stalking toward the trees, shading his eyes with one hand. He was sure that there was something at the edge of the forest, but the wind was making his eyes water so badly that he could not tell what it was until he was almost on it.
Alex stilled and he heard Ryan approaching behind him.
“What the fuh--” Ryan voiced as he stepped up beside Alex.
They were looking at the bodies of two men, nailed to the trees at the edge of the forest. Each man was upside-down and fastened to a tree by a heavy spike driven through his overlapped bare feet. Alex thought that it looked like a crazy perversion of a crucifixion. Their throats were cut, obviously sometime before they were hung on the trees as there wasn’t much blood below the bodies.
Ryan sniffed the air and Alex knew that he had shifted enough to aid his senses. He was impressed with the speed at which Ryan had accomplished the shift. He did it almost instantly, and Alex made a mental note not to underestimate Ryan’s abilities. He watched Ryan approach the bodies, still scenting the air.
“They’re Weres,” Ryan said. His face looked as if it had turned to stone. “Wolf clan, but I don’t know their pack. I’ve never seen these guys around this area before.”
“Do you know all the wolves around here?” Alex inquired.
“I know enough.” Ryan still looked grim.
“So tell me something, Ryan. You have mysterious military connections, a cache of weapons nearby and you know the area Weres. So, how close to us have you actually been this last couple of years?” Alex turned his piercing gaze on Ryan.
“Close enough to make sure that Sara was not being abused by you,” Ryan growled. “For all the good that it did, now that you’ve turned her into a blood whore right in front of me.”
Alex grew very quiet, and Ryan was starting to think he had pushed too far.
“Sara is not a whore.” Alex’s voice was low and rumbling. “She is a good person, and we are all doing what we must do to help our friends.”
“Oh, Sara is your friend, now,” Ryan mocked. “I thought she was your maid.”
Alex’s eyes glowed red with his rising anger. Ryan’s were silver, and his canines were growing. The two men looked on the verge of tearing each other apart when Aurora was suddenly there between them.
“Someone’s coming,” she hissed.
Aurora used her Vampire speed to get back to the road and at Sara’s side in an instant. She watched as four men on horseback approached from the direction that their group had been heading in. They were still some distance away, but Aurora’s sight was good enough, even in the dusty, windy conditions, for her to tell that they were armed with rifles.
Alex was at her side before she could remount her horse, but Ryan was nowhere to be seen. Alex mounted his horse and Aurora did the same. They wanted to be ready to ride if necessary. “I think we should just move on past them if we can. We don’t want any trouble, and something weird is going on around here.” He spoke calmly to them trying to keep Sara from being too scared. He knew that Aurora could take care of herself, but his instinct was to protect her, as well. He knew she wouldn’t appreciate being babied, so he kept his concern for her to himself.
“Where’s Ryan?” Sara was looking around for him.
“Don’t worry about him and don’t say a word,” Alex said as quietly as he could over the wind because the men were fast approaching. Alex was pretty sure they were human men. The wind was making it hard for him to scent them, but he saw no signs that they were anything other than they seemed.
As the men approached, they un-slung their rifles and held them casually across their laps, but with one hand wrapped around the grips and a finger resting near the trigger.
“Look here,” one of the men said, glancing back at his companions. “A couple of vamps and a blood whore out for a ride.”
There was no hiding the nature of the Vampires, not after a person got a look at their eyes. Unlike the Weres, Vampires could not pretend to be human and get away with it.
Alex bristled. Why did everyone think they needed to call little Sara a whore today? Alex was feeling protective, and Sara looked a little frightened. Unlike Aurora and Alex, Sara was much more vulnerable to the firearms the men were carrying. Alex decided that it wouldn’t be prudent to start anything without Ryan.
“We don’t want trouble,” he said. “I think maybe you should just go your way, and we will go ours”
The men formed up, side by side, in front of Alex, Aurora and Sara. “What’s your hurry, blood sucker?” The same man spoke up.
He was a big man, but had gone a little soft around the middle, and his long, greasy hair was receding. Aurora could tell even in the wind that he smelled heavily of cigarettes, the kind of ashtray smell a man gets from chain smoking all day long.
As if on cue, the man reached into his shirt pocket with his left hand- the right was still on his rifle-- and fished out a smoke. He stuck the unlit stick in the corner of his mouth and fished out a silver colored Zippo. He frowned, at a loss as to how he was going to light the butt with only one hand, in the gusty conditions. He made a frustrated grunting noise and dropped the lighter back in his pocket, but left the cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
He squinted at the three in front of him and noticed for the first time that, of the two riderless horses, only one was packed like a mule and the other just had an empty saddle. “Somebody else around here?” he asked, removing the smoke from his mouth and gesturing with it toward the empty saddle. He was holding the cigarette between his index and middle fingers as if it was lit.
I sure as hell hope so, Alex
was thinking, but his face gave away nothing, and he didn’t bother to answer. It was all Sara could do, not to look around for Ryan when Greasy Hair started asking questions.
The other men kept checking behind themselves, nervously, but turned back to the group when their self-appointed leader started talking again.
“Not gonna talk, is that it? Well wherever your missing friend is, he better show himself soon, or I might just decide to put a bullet in that pretty, lady blood sucker before he gets back.”
Aurora glared at Greasy Hair. She wanted to extend her fangs and rip the smirk off the guy’s face. She was used to getting a lot more respect from the humans she mingled with and this guy, with his crude attitude, was pushing her buttons.
He just laughed and brought his rifle up, one handed, to point casually at her. “Did you know,” he went on as if he was lecturing a classroom, “that silver bullets work pretty well on Werewolves and Vamps?”
Alex looked at the gun pointing at his wife, and his anger was instant. What Greasy Hair just said was true, but it had always been an extremely well kept secret, and here was some red-neck asshole, that didn’t look like he passed the third grade, spouting out that particular Vampire secret like he read it in a how-to-kill a Vampire handbook. Silver could be terribly painful and incapacitating but didn’t truly kill the immortal Vampires.
A single silver bullet might not be enough to put down, Aurora, but it would hurt her badly. And there were four of these silver toting dirt bags to deal with. The others had raised their weapons when the leader did, and two of those were pointed at Alex and one at Sara.
The other telling thing that Greasy Hair had said was the bit about killing Weres. Most humans didn’t even believe that Weres existed. So if, this guy was talking about these things, casually, out in the open, then it was likely he was part of one of the terrorist groups that spouted Vampire hate and had recently begun to commit acts of violence against Vampires, or more frequently Vampire owned property. They talked openly about Weres as well, but few people believed in Weres and so they were doing little except hurting their own credibility. Alex hadn’t thought that any of these groups were active in the area, but these guys were armed with silver bullets, and that meant custom made. So, somebody around here had an issue with Vampires or Weres.
“That’s right, leach. We kill all the nasty monsters that come around here. Just go look at the woods over there. Got us a couple of Werewolves last night and didn’t even need to use the silver. We just slit their throats while they were sitting at their campfire.”
If that was true, Alex thought, these guys must be faster than they appeared, and he would have to time his move perfectly.
Greasy hair looked smugly at Alex as if daring him to try something. He shoved the cigarette back in his mouth and fished the lighter out again with his left hand. He seemed to have forgotten already that he had no way to light the damn thing with only one free hand and the wind blowing like crazy. But, like a true addict he just couldn’t wait. He saw that the other three had the group covered, so he tucked his rifle under his arm, looping his elbow underneath to keep it from falling. In this way, he freed his second hand and started flicking the wheel on the Zippo, sheltering it from the wind so that he could get his smoke lit.
Alex felt like this was his best chance to make a move before these terrorists took a shot at Aurora. When the flame finally caught on the Zippo, Alex moved like lightning, dropping off the horse and closing the gap on the thirty feet or so between them. Two of the three men were alert enough to react by jerking the triggers of the rifles. Alex had just enough time to hear a pffftt from both guns and register the fact that they hadn’t fired, when a gigantic black beast leapt up from the side of the men. They were lined up perfectly for the creature to leap from the back of one horse to the next as if skipping across stepping stones in a stream.
The creature was ripping and tearing as he went. His growl was fearsome and Alex glimpsed the look of shock and horror on the faces of the men just before all four fell from their saddles, one after another, with less than a second between. He reached Greasy Hair just as the giant wolf landed in a crouch on the far side of the four horses. Alex looked down at Greasy Hair lying on the ground with his throat ripped open and spurting hot blood onto the road. His eyes were wide, staring at Alex, and his mouth was working, but no sound came out. He died within seconds, but Alex wished it had taken longer. He snarled, baring his fangs at the corpse.
Alex looked back at the women and saw Sara, in shock, staring at the giant beast that came around to sniff at Greasy Hair’s dead body. He lifted his leg, like he was marking his territory and pissed on the dead man. Then the beast arched his back and began to roll upwards, unfolding himself into an erect position. The thick black fur disappeared into bronze skin until only a spiky mass of black hair remained on the head of a naked man. The man turned to face Sara and Aurora. Aurora was smiling broadly as if proud of him. Sara’s mouth was hanging open until she finally closed it with a snap.
“Ryan?” She couldn’t think of anything to say.
The young Were, unashamed of his nakedness, went to her and put a hand on her knee. He looked up into her shocked face and asked, “Will you forgive me?”
Seventeen
Ryan crouched over the weapons he had laid out in a row on the ground. He had relieved the dead men of four rifles, all basic hunting rifles, but with custom .270 caliber, silver tipped ammunition. He also found two hand guns and a sawed off shot gun that was rolled up in Greasy Hair’s bedroll. The two handguns were also loaded with silver ammunition. He was dressed again.
After trying to explain things to Sara and having her reject his attempts to hold her, he understood that it was going to be a while before she was going to speak to him. He left her in the arms of Aurora and went to retrieve his discarded clothing. When he returned, Sara was crying quietly on Aurora’s shoulder, and Aurora was whispering soft things, he couldn’t hear, into her hair.
Sara had been furious with him, sliding from her horse and pounding her small fists against his hard, bare chest.
“How could you?!! You bastard!!! All the time you let me think you were dead, and you were just protecting your little secret! You could have told me!” she sobbed out that last part.
He tried to take her in his arms and comfort her as he was always prone to do with little Sara, but she shoved him away, giving him a look of pure pain that broke his heart. Suddenly, Aurora was there guiding Sara to the side of the road near the campsite, holding her and speaking low in a reassuring voice.
He felt a small surge of anger at Aurora just then as he stalked away to find his pants. After all, she was the one that wanted him to come clean with Sara in the first place. She had assured him that Sara would not think him a monster. Now, Sara wouldn’t even look at him. He knew that it wasn’t really Aurora’s fault, but he was frustrated and the worst of it was that Sara was seeking comfort in Aurora’s arms. Aurora was a Vampire, every bit as much or more of a monster than he would ever be! he thought as he yanked on his jeans.
Now, as he crouched in front of the guns, twirling a silver rifle shell between his thumb and forefinger, he looked over at Aurora just a little resentfully. Aurora raised her head as if she had felt him staring, and she returned his steady gaze across the distance with an unreadable expression. Just then, Alex, who had been unsaddling the horses belonging to the four men, approached and squatted near to Ryan, picking up one of the handguns and turning it in his hand.
Alex had been uncomfortable with the emotional scene that played out between the young brother and sister when Ryan revealed his nature. He wasn’t even sure he liked his wife’s involvement in the tense aftermath, but Aurora was her own very headstrong person and he didn’t interfere. Instead, Alex got busy dealing with the situation at hand.
While Ryan was brooding and getting dressed, Alex dragged the bodies of the four men to the woods were the Weres still hung on the trees. He tossed the bodies well i
nto the woods where they would not be visible at all from the road. After a moment, he also took down the bodies of the two Weres and tossed them into the trees, as well. He didn’t feel there was enough time to bury them, they had lost close to half an hour already in stopping at the campsite.
When he returned to the road, Ryan was back, and he asked him to help check the horses and packs for any supplies. Ryan collected all the weapons together and moved them to the grass. The casual, experienced way that he methodically checked and unloaded all of them, made Alex a little nervous. They were loaded with silver and Ryan was not the biggest Vampire fan. He tried to put the thought aside as he knew that they were going to have to offer each other, at least, a measure of trust if they were going to continue to stick together as a group. Besides, he thought, the guns hadn’t fired when Greasy Hair’s cohorts had tried to shoot him.
Alex put the handgun back on the ground and picked up a bullet. “Why do you think the guns didn’t go off before?” he asked Ryan, who was still turning the rifle shell in his fingers and thinking.
“I’m not sure, but I have been getting an idea that none of the powder in any ammunition is worth a crap anymore. I don’t know what the crazy scientific reason is because the powder looks fine, but has no energy. It won’t ignite. Before I found you at your place, I checked one of my caches to retrieve a rifle. I tried to use it to take a rabbit for supper the night before I found you, and it didn’t fire either. I had to strip down and catch the damn thing myself.”
Alex just rolled his eyes at Ryan’s last remark. Does this guy ever take anything seriously?
Ryan didn’t look as if he was joking around though, and he said, “When I was walking to the estate, I heard a couple of people talking about the same kind of thing. I was hiding so I couldn’t question them about it at the time. So, I’m thinking it’s not a coincidence, but that no one’s powder is any good, maybe not explosives either if they won’t ignite. I’m not sure about that, though, maybe plastics would still work…”
Cherishing Destiny (A Dangerous Destiny) Page 9