by Moira Rogers
“If that thing is what I think it is, don’t get caught in the blast.” Emmett swung out the door and onto the metal ladder climbing the side of the car.
A man in a battered cap and blood-streaked vest reached for Hunter. He slapped away a grasping hand and planted his boot in the man’s stomach, kicking hard enough to send the body stumbling back. The metal canister in his hand rattled, and Hunter got his back to the door before sliding the long pin free and tossing it toward the center of the car.
Five seconds. He had five seconds, and he used the first one to swing out of the car and slam the door shut. Through the foggy window he caught sight of his latest attacker picking up the grenade. Hunter caught the bottom rung of the ladder and swung himself up, scrambling toward the top.
His mental countdown hit two when he saw Tobias on the ground, planting one of Satira’s modified rounds in the throat of a vampire. “Tobias, get down,” he roared, a second before a storm broke through the train car beneath his feet.
The explosion rumbled like contained thunder, shaking the compartment until Hunter had to drop to his knees. Light spilled from the windows as they shattered, sunlight in the midst of night. Ghouls’ screams echoed across the plains as silver-laced shrapnel tore through their bodies. For one grisly moment the train depot was illuminated by a false dawn, and Hunter saw the three vampires who’d been creeping along the top of the train under the cover of darkness.
Emmett pulled both of his repeating revolvers as he rose. Tiny flares of light burst forth from the barrels to find their targets, and two of the vampires fell back and pitched over the side of the car. The third fired his own weapon, and Emmett dropped to the car with a pained grunt just as Hunter swung his autofiring rifle.
One shot dropped the vampire, a second turned him into a writhing mass of burning flesh. Hunter scrambled to Emmett’s side. “Where are you hit?”
Emmett waved him away. “I’ve had worse. We’ve got to flush out the rest of ’em before they get away.”
Hunter rose to his feet and squinted down at Tobias. “You in one piece down there?”
“Ow, fuck.” The hound spat on the ground and cursed again. “Barely. I’m bleeding.”
“The explosive device was an unfortunate necessity.” Nate appeared from the back of the car. “We needed an expedient way to neutralize the threat the ghouls posed.”
“Yeah? Tell that to my face, you fucker.”
Shattered glass from the train windows caught the faint light from the moon and the depot’s electric lights as Tobias shook himself, sending shards tumbling to the ground. The cuts would hurt, but the bloodhound would heal from superficial wounds. “We’ve got two more passenger cars. Nate, have you got more grenades?”
Nate hefted his bag. “Emmett and I can handle the ghouls.”
Tobias was already halfway up the ladder. “And we can hit the freight cars.” He helped Emmett to his feet, then glowered at Hunter. “They’ll be under heavy guard. I saw at least four bloodsuckers make their way back there.”
Hunter stepped past Emmett and hopped to the next car. “Nate, toss me one of the grenades, if you’ve got a spare.”
The man complied. “Be careful with it.”
“You be careful with yours,” Hunter ordered in return. “We know the sun doesn’t hurt you, but we haven’t tried silver-laced shrapnel. I’m bringing you back in one piece so Satira will let me keep all my parts. You hear me, old man?”
Tobias paused to reload, his spent shells clinking on the car as he emptied them. Then he nodded toward the end of the train. “This way.”
Ophelia huddled under a wooden table in the corner of the basement, the closest thing she could find to a weapon clutched in her hand. A dull hunting knife—sad armament when an entire laboratory of deadly weapons lay beyond the far door.
Of course, fucking around with them might blow her up instead of Sheriff McCutcheon, and that would do no one any good.
She swallowed a hysterical laugh as the door at the top of the basement stairs opened with a creak.
“You’re starting to irritate me,” came his low voice. His boots thumped on the top step. “I wasn’t going to hurt you, you know. Maybe scare you a little, but when the vampire lords arrive in Iron Creek, they’ll want quality women. The kind that won’t scream and faint and make a fuss.”
Healthy women, with plenty of blood for the taking. Ophelia bit her lip and pressed back against the wall.
“You would have had a place after they finished interrogating you,” he continued, taking each step carefully, as if he expected a trap. “Your slut of a friend isn’t as refined as you are, but maybe she’ll understand the benefit of keeping her head. It’s your choice, Ophelia. Come out and be a lady, or fight me and be a lesson to the rest of the whores.”
At least one thing he’d said was reasonable. If she could stall him long enough—
Boots slammed against the floor in front of her, and Virgil bent down and grinned at her. “Boo.”
Ophelia barely managed to swallow her scream, and she eased the knife farther behind her back. “Y-you can’t blame a lady for trying.”
He thrust a hand under the table and sank his fingers into her hair in a brutal grip that brought tears to her eyes. “I reckon I can blame you for any damn thing that strikes my fancy,” he muttered, dragging her into the open. “Pity, because I liked you well enough, for all your airs.”
She didn’t know what was worse—that he’d given their interactions so much thought, or that he was speaking of her in the past tense already. “We never even talked, Virgil.”
“Sure we did.” He hauled her to her feet by her hair, then higher, up on to her toes. “Maybe you don’t recall, as I didn’t have enough money to be memorable.”
They’d exchanged pleasantries in the street, made polite small talk. Nothing of substance. It made her angry, that his imagined slights were somehow her fault, that having sex for money meant she belonged to everyone, whether she knew it or not.
The knife was heavy in her hand, the pitted blade grazing her skin where she had it tucked against her arm. “We can start over,” she offered quietly. “If you want.”
He hesitated, and something was off about the crazed look in his eyes. His pupils were black discs, swallowing the thin ring of brown, and his gaze kept flicking to the right, like he heard something—or someone—that she couldn’t. “I’m not supposed to take you for myself,” he muttered, staring just past her shoulder. “Yes, I know. The bloodhounds’ housekeeper could know all kinds of things.”
Ophelia shivered. A new ghoul was virtually indistinguishable from a normal human. It wasn’t until lack of nutrition or injury began to wear at the physical body that they started to look like exactly what they were—puppets being controlled from afar by their vampire masters.
Somewhere outside of Iron Creek, a vampire held Virgil McCutcheon in his thrall.
His fingers tightened roughly, dragging her head back to a painful angle. “Don’t look at me like that. I know what you’re thinking, and I ain’t no fucking ghoul.”
“Of course not.” Her voice broke, and she swallowed past the lump in her throat. “Because then you’d have to do what he says. But you can do whatever you want, right?”
“Yes.” His jaw clenched as his gaze flicked to the side again. “I’m not a ghoul. They’re brainless slaves. We’re more important. We’re partners.”
The shreds of hope Ophelia had been clinging to dissolved. “Partners in what?”
A slow smile curved his lips, wider and wider until he was staring down at her with a crazed grin. “It’s in the drugs. They make us stronger. Faster. Just got to keep taking them long enough, and I’ll be as strong as any fucking bloodhound.”
No, reasoning with him wouldn’t work. Ophelia turned the knife, clenched her fingers tight around the handle and thrust it up under his ribs.
He didn’t scream, that was the eeriest part. His hand clenched, tearing at her hair as he lifted his fre
e hand to his gut and stared at her in stunned silence. Then his fingers slipped away from her head, and Ophelia ran for the stairs. His roar of pain ripped through the room behind her, followed by boots scrabbling against the rough floor and muttered curses.
She made it halfway up the narrow staircase before his hand closed around her ankle. She shrieked and grabbed at the handrail as he yanked hard, dragging her feet out from under her. “Treacherous little bitch.”
She reacted instinctively, kicking out as hard as she could. The pointed end of her slipper heel caught him in the eye, and he released her and tumbled down the stairs with a scream.
She crawled up the remaining stairs, slammed the door behind her and headed for the kitchen—and the back door.
Dropping a grenade into a closed car and letting sunlight do its job would have been too easy.
Not that they didn’t try. Tobias tore the ceiling hatch off the car in an impressive show of bloodhound strength, and Hunter launched the weapon, but the blinding flash of light illuminated hunched figures protected by heavy cloaks and the willing bodies of their newly turned ghouls. The heavy press of death remained, the weight of a half-dozen vampires beneath his feet.
And not just beneath them. Hunter straightened from his crouch as the first vampire rushed the train from the shadows of the depot. Others followed, swarming the ladder. “They’re coming up from the outside too,” he shouted to Tobias, lifting his rifle.
“You handle those,” Tobias growled, tearing at his vest. “I’m going in.” He only managed to divest himself of his shirt before he began to change, cloth ripping as his body began to mold itself into a more monstrous form.
For one heartbeat, the sight of it froze Hunter in place. He couldn’t have changed on command—wouldn’t know how and wouldn’t want to, but Tobias tore free of his human flesh with a terrifying speed, as if the pain of the transformation only fed into his power. As the beast he stood hunched over, half man, half wolf, a bulky body covered in thick fur and sporting razor sharp teeth and claws.
That frozen moment shattered as Tobias dropped into the car and Hunter turned seconds before the vampire slammed into him. Fangs flashed in the moonlight, and Hunter scrabbled for a smaller gun, tearing it free of the holster as his opponent bit at his arm, teeth pricking through the heavy fabric of his coat.
No room for finesse. Hunter jammed the revolver next to the vampire’s temple and averted his face as he pulled the trigger. Light and bits of vampire exploded around him, and the body slumped at his feet.
Screams and snarls rose from inside the car. Thunder rumbled again, along with a bright flash farther back along the train. Emmett and Nate, no doubt, cleaning out the ghouls at his back.
They’d have to manage any stray vampires too. Clutching his weapon in one hand, Hunter hopped over the remains of his enemy and dropped through the roof of the car.
A head rolled toward him and bumped against his boots. Blank blue eyes stared up at him from a woman’s snarling face, delicate fangs still slick with blood. Hunter kicked it out of the way and got his back against a wall just in time to see a vampire in an absurdly formal suit rush at Tobias.
The only other woman in the car lunged at him, and Hunter dropped the rifle as he slid out of her path. The revolver was dangerous enough in the confined space, and no guarantee Tobias’s fight wouldn’t bring him into the path of a stray bullet. Instead Hunter groped for the knife alongside his leg, a wickedly sharp blade edged in silver.
The vampire grabbed his face, her eyes alight with fury. “I’ll kill you, you bastard,” she hissed. Her fingernails dug into his skin as she twisted his head to one side. Curly red hair cascaded over her pale face, and for a moment she looked like someone else—like one of Thaddeus Lowe’s vampires.
Panic crashed into him, freezing him in place. If she got a taste of him, she’d know his blood was different. Untainted by the Guild, who’d tampered with their members’ blood until vampires couldn’t drink deeply from a bloodhound and hope to survive. She’d know his sheer power, why Lowe had kept him in a cage, why they’d fed from him day after day, drowning him in pain and pleasure that was so much worse—
So don’t let her drink from you, you blithering idiot, drawled the quiet voice inside him, droll Matthew Underwood at his most caustic. Instinct overcame panic, and he smashed his arm up, snapping her jaw shut. The silver blade slipped through her body like her flesh wanted to part to escape the pain, and her nails pierced his skin.
Another vampire tore at his sleeve with an inhuman shriek. “Hound,” he rasped, his pale face luminous in the dark. “You’re a hound. He knows you.”
Hunter drove his heel into the vampire’s knee, shattering bone and spilling the creature to the floor. “Who knows me?”
The vampire laughed. “The sheriff. Virgil has his hand around your lady’s throat right now. Should he kill her quickly or make it last?”
Ice flooded his veins, so cold his blood must be frozen. His fingers tightened on the hilt of his knife as he tried to convince himself it was a trick. A desperate gamble. “You want me to believe you made the sheriff your ghoul, and you’ve got that strong a hold on him all the way across town?”
“Pretty little thing,” the creature crooned. “No calico for her. Blue silk and diamonds—too rich for him, but that’s the last thing he wants to hear.”
Hunter’s knife clattered against the floor before he realized he’d dropped it. He spun and wrapped both hands around the handle for the heavy door that opened the side of the cargo car. Muscle and rage pried it open—not far. Enough to slip through into the uncertain moonlight.
Blue silk and diamonds.
Nate called his name. Behind him, Tobias’s roar shredded the night.
Blue silk. He’d gathered that fabric in his fist. Smoothed it over her body as he gave her one final kiss and promised himself he’d be back soon, back to peel it away and make love to her in a rush of victory.
If the safe room were really safe, the vampire wouldn’t know about the blue silk. But he did, and now Hunter had only one goal. One purpose.
“Hunter!”
He ignored Nate’s worried shout. Ignored Tobias and Emmett and the remaining vampires and the drugs. Ignored the bits of Matthew Underwood that screamed for thought and caution and logic. He ignored the fact that the closest horse wasn’t even his. He swung up into the saddle and took off toward the manor, the need to protect Ophelia a throbbing pain that grayed out the world around him with every surge.
The rest of them could burn. So could Iron Creek, and everyone in it, and the whole goddamn border, for all he cared.
She was what mattered. She needed to be safe.
Panic drove him from the saddle before he could pull his horse to a complete stop in the courtyard. He hit the ground hard and rolled, pain splintering from his shoulder to his hip. He ignored it and came to his feet, boots slipping over gravel as he scrambled for the front steps.
Panic bled into rage, and he tore the front door open—tore it straight off its hinges and let it fall aside. But it was sheer stupidity that sent him charging into the house, rough voice already rising on Ophelia’s name when he caught the dart of movement to his left.
Something solid and heavy crashed into his temple, and he hit the floor with darkness closing around him and his inner, mocking voice chasing him into the blackness. Blithering idiot.
He wasn’t coming after her.
Ophelia peered down from her perch in the woodshed loft, head cocked to listen, but she heard nothing.
She couldn’t stay in the shed, not when McCutcheon might have moved on to hurting others. So she climbed down out of the loft and crept out into the night—but not before grabbing the wickedest looking weapon she could find, a hand-held sickle Levi had used to mow prairie grass and harvest crops from the manor’s garden.
The curved blade glinted in the moonlight as she crossed the yard, its honed surface comforting and sharp. As she mounted the first step on the back
porch, a crash rose in the night, followed by Hunter calling her name.
Silence.
Shit, shit, shit. She hurried through the back door, sickle at the ready, and caught sight of both Hunter and McCutcheon at the other end of the hall.
The sheriff grabbed a fistful of Hunter’s coat, but jerked back when Hunter stirred with a rough groan. Blood dripped to the floor at McCutcheon’s feet, the wound she’d given him undoubtedly the reason for his clumsy movements as he groped for the revolver holstered at his hip.
Hunter’s eyes fluttered open, and his entire body stiffened as he caught sight of her. His mouth formed one word, a command. A plea. Run.
Like hell. Like hell would she run away and leave him to whatever McCutcheon had planned.
She kicked off her heeled slippers and started running down the hall. The sheriff was preoccupied with his holster, and his distraction afforded her the chance to cover the considerable length of the hallway.
Unfortunately, it also gave him time to free his gun.
Hunter made it halfway to his feet before the shot sounded in the foyer, drowned out by his roar of pain. He slapped his hand to his shoulder and snarled, hands twisting into claws.
The change, the one thing McCutcheon surely wouldn’t survive—and the man knew it. He lifted his revolver again, this time to aim at Hunter’s head.
No. Ophelia screamed and swung the sickle down in a hard arc, burying the blade in the sheriff’s shoulder.
This time, the pain drove a shriek from his curled lips. McCutcheon twisted awkwardly, ripping the blade from his skin even as the handle twisted free of her hand. He lunged forward—
—and stopped as Hunter’s clawlike hands slapped down on either side of his face. One brutal twist, and McCutcheon’s neck cracked.
Hunter tossed the man’s limp body aside like it weighed nothing, like it meant nothing. Ophelia stared at him and drew in a sharp breath that escaped on a wordless sob.