It was clear over on the other side of town. There was no method to the madness that I’d detected. A problem—hotspot—was reported and whatever available units were sent in that direction. If it was cleared before everybody reported in, then people were sent to the next.
“He’s a walking target at this point,” Doyle said grimly. He reached behind the seat, ignoring how Abraham’s eyes locked on him. “And he’s spaced out. Strong as he is, even in this shape, I’d rather not fight handicapped.”
When he pulled a bottle of water out of the bag, I ran my tongue across my teeth. “I know hydration is important—even for us. Not sure how much it’s going to help him though.”
Doyle ignored me and twisted the cap off, emptying the bottle in under thirty seconds. He shoved another hand into the bag.
When he pulled out a knife, I stiffened.
“Doyle—”
He ignored me, turning away from me and Abraham to shove the driver’s door open. Over the bulk of his frame, I couldn’t see much of anything. A few seconds later, the top of the plastic bottle came flying over his shoulder—clearly cut from the bottle itself. Then, I caught the scent of blood.
The air went cold, a vampire’s predatory instincts flaring to life.
Realization dawned right as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Slowly, I slid my eyes toward Abraham. His eyes had locked on the back of Doyle’s neck.
“Do us both a favor and don’t move,” Doyle said as he turned back to us. His eyes, his voice were calm. “If you go getting jumpy, Abraham, you’ll make me jumpy. And I don’t mind you all that much.”
A moment later, he turned, arm outstretched. In his hand, he held a makeshift cup And he offered it to Abraham. It was the bottom two-thirds of the plastic bottle and Doyle had filled it well over half.
It was more than a vampire Abraham’s age would take in a typical feeding. I knew enough about them to know that.
And it was coming from a shifter.
Abraham’s throat worked as he eyed the blood, then looked at Doyle. “This is unnecessary.”
“I disagree.” Doyle continued to hold out the offering. “And I can’t exactly put it back in my veins either.”
A ghost of a smile danced around Abraham’s lips at that.
“That is true. I suppose it would do me more good at this point than you.”
He took it and out of courtesy, both Doyle and I looked away. I looked at Doyle’s wrist. “Do I need to bandage that?”
“Nah. It’s mostly healed already.” He jerked his chin toward the bag. “There’s something in the front I can use to to clean up, though. A first-aid kit. Damon makes me carry it for you.”
“He knows me.” Studiously ignoring Abraham, I got into the pack and found the kit. Antiseptic wipes were inside and I pulled a couple out, tearing them open and turning them over.
As Doyle cleaned up, I kept my gaze locked on the windshield.
Nope. There wasn’t a vampire drinking blood a foot away. This didn’t remind me at all of my worst nightmares, everything I’d tried my best to forget.
“We need to get moving,” Doyle announced unnecessarily.
I suspected he was making noise just to fill the silence and not think about what he’d done.
“You’re in the driver’s seat, kid.” I took the wipes he’d dropped into the console and shoved them back into the bag.
“My thanks,” Abraham said from the back seat. His voice was…clearer. Focused. I also felt the uneasy power I associated with vampires fade away as he set his normal control into place.
Control was a funny thing—it’s kind of like how a body functions in the event of massive trauma. Automatically, the body will focus on sending blood and oxygen to the vital organs, even in non-humans, making sure those essential bits and pieces get what they need. The various things a non-human needs to control get the same attention—the non-essential things get shunted to the side. What did it matter if everybody in a vampire’s vicinity knew he was a fricking powerful vampire when his eyes were glowing and his fangs were out? If that happened, he was already close to losing one of the most vital controls vamps had—the urge not to give in and glut on the nearest blood vessel.
That right there was a big indicator that a vamp was somewhere close by.
“Let’s go,” I said, the studied calm in my voice so obvious to me, it was almost laughable. “The Assembly just sent me an update—another team is on site at the current hotspot so we have another.”
I pulled up the message on my phone and hissed out a breath. Behind me, I heard Abraham stir and Doyle shot me a look, but I didn’t say anything yet.
The maps, I told myself. I was going to check the maps.
But that didn’t make anything any better.
“We’re getting really close to shifter ground,” I said.
“I know.” Doyle’s tone was neutral, but a muscle pulsed in his cheek. “The Alpha called in anybody who’d prove to be an easy target. MacDonald with the wolves did the same. They won’t find anybody easy to take down out there.”
I wasn’t worried about the easy ones.
I was worried about people like the ones we’d passed at the first stop. The dead ones, and the ones who’d ended up trapped like Abraham had been, out working for their superiors and taking care of their people, holding off the hordes and picking the weaker vampires off one by one.
Even the strong ones could be taken down.
But I didn’t point that out.
Chapter Eighteen
Sometime just after noon, a tenuous calm settled over the city.
Banner and a hotshot mercenary group that stayed on retainer for the Assembly finally showed up. They made up for their late arrival by coming in with a plan.
Banner came in from the east and northern area, while the mercenary force came in from the south.
They’d rallied every available warrior witch and called all of us to an area just shy of the Trenches.
The Trenches—made it sound like a fucking war zone, but up until last night—today—this spot had just been a rough spot of town where most people wouldn’t want to live.
It hadn’t ever been a place where the majority of those who did live there would ever get trapped and die.
But it was now.
All because the people who had lived here had been too stubborn, too afraid, too set in their ways to leave, and the decisions made, either by predator or by those in a position of power, had decided to move in on them.
Quite a few vampires had already started moving in the area. The people who lived the Trenches were often weaker and too many of them didn’t trust anybody, including their alphas. Neither Damon nor Dair would force them to come in, so some of them, at least, had stayed holed up, figuring this would pass over them.
They made perfect bait, especially since the vampires had already cued in on them after they’d been turned back from both Damon and Dair’s turf with a show of force that had eradicated more than half their numbers.
Damon had been half-sick when I’d first told him—I’d seen it in his eyes as I relayed the info in a hushed conversation between the two of us as I hid away and whispered into my phone. Then, slowly, the expression had melted away, replaced by an ice-cold fury. I’d also relayed, carefully, the words I’d been told to use in the event Alpha Lee contacted me.
He had indeed contacted me—he would, because I’d texted him and told him he needed to get his ass on the phone and call.
Wolves and cats had flowed into the streets en masse just as vampires appeared, tearing heads off, ripping out hearts. Once they were done, both Damon and Dair had called their people back.
I hadn’t seen a single shifter in hours, save for the dead.
Over a hundred on this street alone, and nearly a quarter of that number had been kids.
It would have been worse if the Alphas hadn’t shown up, but it could have been avoided, too.
In the rubble in front of me, I saw a small
, still hand protruding from under the remain of a fallen wall. I’d seen a shifter throw a vampire into that wall, but that wasn’t what had killed the family inside.
The vampires responsible lay in a bloodied tangle on the front yard.
“Kit.”
Feeling like I was trapped in a fog, I turned my head and met Abraham’s eyes.
He wore a pair of sunglasses to shield tired, sensitive eyes from the sun. As he knelt in front of me, I saw the faint tinge of red on his cheekbones. “Are you getting sunburnt?” I asked, not really caring much about the answer.
“Some.” He shrugged. “Normally my body would heal the damage before it formed, but I’m running low of energy.”
“You’ll have to feed again.” Looking away from him, I focused back on that small hand. The nails were painted a bright, sparkly pink. “How old do you think she was?”
He’d seen the hand. I could tell.
“Don’t do this to yourself.”
When I didn’t respond, he reached up and touched my shoulder, but the thought of taking comfort from anybody made me sick. Shrugging off his touch, I shoved upright and moved to the pile of rubble. I grabbed a rock, then another, and another. My aching back and legs screamed at me but I ignored the burn of my thighs, the twisting pull of muscles in my spine. None of that mattered. I didn’t know if anything else would matter again.
A pair of hands joined me.
I didn’t look up.
The pale hands were reddened on the top. The vampire with the sunburn joined me as we worked to free the body from the debris.
We didn’t speak.
We just worked.
⸸
We’d just lowered the lifeless body of the girl, maybe five, to the ground when a hot prickle energy rolled down my spine. I glanced up, looking for the source.
It took nearly a minute, but down the road, Damon appeared.
Some of his men followed and he stopped with them, gesturing toward the sidewalks.
I watched as the shifters followed whatever direction he’d given. They were too far away, but it wasn’t a stretch to figure out what he’d said.
They’d come to collect their dead.
Tears burned my eye but I blinked them back before looking down at the little girl. As he approached, I knelt at her side.
“Your alpha is here to take care of you, baby doll,” I murmured, brushing back yellow curls that had gone rusty with blood. Her neck was a bloody mess, chewed through from the back and I could see bone showing through. Misery twisted through me, but I shoved it back. “He would have been here sooner, saved you, if others had given him the chance.”
That he hadn’t been able to was going to eat at him.
One of the Banner boys appeared from between two buildings left mostly still standing. He started toward the road, not far from where I knelt by a dead child. His gaze, like so many of his kind, was ever watchful and it landed on me for a brief moment, then bounced away.
However, it returned a moment later just as I’d reached out and stroked a hand down the girl’s rust-stained curls.
A low growl came from just beyond me and I realized Damon had closed the distance between us without my notice. That was a rare thing, but the distraction in front of me was…understandable.
The growl, a low, ominous noise, came again.
The Banner agent clenched his jaw and straightened his shoulders.
“Damon,” I said, refusing to look back at the girl just yet. I didn’t want to be looking at the man in front of us. But I wasn’t going to let another fight break out on the threshold of her grave.
Taut moments passed, then I heard the deliberate tread of his footsteps behind me.
He said nothing.
But he wouldn’t.
“You should have your men gather up this baby and her family. She deserves…more than this. I told her you’d come care for her.”
My voice hitched.
It wasn’t intentional. But it was one thing to cut the pull between Damon and the Banner agent who’d unwittingly become the focus of his rage.
Damon’s energy, hot with anger and roiling with worry, wrapped around me as he crouched in front of me. He stared at me, eyes searching my face. I had no idea what it was he saw, but after a moment, he looked up and jerked his chin at somebody.
The men and women he brought with him flowed toward us, around us.
I stayed where I was, holding that tiny, delicate hand.
“You got here fast earlier…I was watching for you,” I said, my voice reedy.
“Not fast enough.”
The small hand in mine was cold. But I made myself think of the cries I’d heard earlier. Cries coming from the throats of scared children—alive children.
“She didn’t make it. Others did.” Swallowing, I looked back at him. “That has to matter.”
Minutes ticked by but finally, one of his people came.
I recognized her face, although I couldn’t recall her name. She was one of his healers and she knelt between, eyes low as she went about the grisly task of covering the body of the small girl with a blanket. But when she would have picked her up, Damon stopped her.
“I’ll do it,” he said gruffly. His face had gone pale and tight. “Kit promised I’d take care of her.”
If I could have ripped my own soul out in that moment, I would have.
Instead, I waited until he was gone, then I got up and moved to the next point where people had gathered. My senses were weaker than most shifters, but stronger than many other Banner agents. While they were using scanners and tech to locate bodies, I just tipped my head back and breathed.
The coppery, thick scent lay on the back of my tongue and I waited until my head was full of it before following the scent path. I didn’t know how a shifter could stand to be here now, with the air heavy with blood and other things. But they were here—some of the shifters, like the Banner agent who’d just joined me, had been here for hours.
We knelt at the pile of rock and began to work in silence.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice low.
I flicked her a look, then shrugged.
I didn’t want to talk.
Apparently, she did.
“We didn’t like the way this went down either.”
I grabbed a rock, using far less care and one of my already ragged nails bent back. Hissing out, I yanked my hand back and glared at the offending body part.
“We tried to tell the powers that be what was going to happen, but you know how bureaucrats are—”
“Let’s don’t,” I said, cutting her off. I grabbed another rock and heaved it, sending it flying into the pile with more force than needed. It crashed into the pile hard and eyes came flying our way, then skittered off into safer directions.
I ignored everything, including the Banner shifter—as much as possible. “You had a job to do. Yeah, got that. You’re just following orders. Got that, too. There are some famous lines about good men following bad orders in history, right?” Jerking a shoulder in a shrug, I thought that over, then shrugged. If there weren’t, there should be. Bad things happened when good people followed bad orders. How many wars and massacres had happened because of such things? “You did what you did and it’s done.”
Wrenching another rock free, I threw it. When I looked down, I found myself staring at the face of a vampire.
A young one, too. Not just in appearance, but he had that…soft feel. He’d barely been turned. A few years at best.
Young enough to still feel human. Young enough to still remember being human.
Across the ground a low noise drifted to me and I followed it. It was a cry, quiet and muffled and I could see the source. Another person digging a victim from the rubble. A teenager, this time. Pre-spike. Now the girl would never know what it was like.
Judging by the way the woman was acting, it was her mother who was crying.
The wails and sobs of No, no, no! rose in my ears and I looked away.
/>
“These people…they didn’t even have a chance.”
I needed a break. Rising, I took a step back. It wasn’t a surprise when men from Damon’s detail moved forward to take my place.
The Banner shifter took a step forward. “This isn’t what we signed on for, you know.”
“It’s not what he signed on for, either.”
⸸
Thirty minutes later, Damon still hadn’t caught up with me.
There was a wall of bodies between us though, so I wasn’t surprised he kept getting sidetracked.
He left a group of cats at each site—I could hear or see them, depending on how close they were, right up until I turned the road that led off the main drag of road in the Trenches. This one, a rutted and pot-holed mess, would eventually smooth out and take us to the Den, if we followed it long enough.
It seemed weird—safety lay miles ahead, if people had chosen to take that route.
But too many hadn’t.
“Here, girl,” a rough, gravelly voice said.
I glanced up as Brahm settled in across from me and took the feet of the vampire I’d gone to lift.
I’d never be able to identify her—her head was missing. But somebody had scrawled ALTN on her forearm. Allerton.
“Kit.”
Damon’s voice came from behind me as I eased her feet up to my hips and steadied her weight. Brahm already had her upper body secured.
He paused, a brow arched.
“In a second, Damon,” I said as we moved her. The stack of bodies that belonged to Allerton was growing, but Abraham had already arranged for removal—some had been cleared recently.
This one would likely be gone within the hour.
Others…not so likely.
House Whittier had been called—not by me. But I’d been told that they didn’t care what was done with the bodies of those who’d been caught up in the fray.
The fray. They called this massacre a fray?
What a bunch of shit.
We eased her body down but when I would have turned to start the process all over again, Brahm clapped a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You take a few minutes, Kit. Talk to your man over there. These folks…they ain’t going anywhere.”
Haunted Blade (Colbana Files Book 6) Page 16