Father Juan sighed. “You’re boarding now, my son.” He raised his hand and made the sign of the cross over Jamie, then over himself. “Let’s go.”
At that moment Holgar and Antonio walked up side by side, and Jamie boiled over. The two supernaturals of the group, and they were allowed to hang out together?
He glared first at the Curser, and then at the wolf. Once Holgar had been outed, rumors about his bestial nature flew. Scandinavian werewolves were said to possess more than a few drops of Viking berserker blood—but the Dane had won over most of the students with his so-called quick wit. Jamie found nothing quick about him except his damnable speed and ability to heal himself. And if ever the Dane slowed down in a place where no one else was about . . .
“Woof,” Holgar whispered, his blue eyes twinkling, as if he could read Jamie’s mind. Antonio just kept gazing at Jamie, very neutral, as if he had never met him in his life. Vampires were cunning liars.
We’re really doing this because of Antonio, Jamie realized. He’s the Church’s pet vampire, and he has the hots for our little Jenn. Father Juan wants to keep Antonio happy . . . so the rotter will stay on our side. He knows about us, could tell the opposition so many lovely things. He probably already has. Why we haven’t staked him is beyond me.
Jamie balled his fists, hating Antonio even more, if that was remotely possible. If Father Juan wanted negative energy, Jamie had buckets of it. Rivers.
And then some.
* * *
As Father Juan settled into his seat on the plane, he kept a close eye on his team. He knew that while they were sympathetic to Jenn’s plight, most didn’t understand why they were going to help.
He had prayed and worked magicks almost nonstop since Jenn’s departure from Spain. He had known something was going to happen, though he hadn’t known what it was until she had called on her way to the airport. The one thing the visions had told him was that when she called, they must respond.
Of all the hunter teams, he knew that his was the most fractious. Salamanca was the one academy that drew people from all over. His hunters had so little in common, sharing neither creed nor culture with each other. The fighting they did amongst themselves made them weak. It was only by embracing their differences that they would ever be strong enough to handle what was coming.
He was loath to leave the new first-year students, who had been at the academy less than two months. He wasn’t teaching any of the classes this time; his duties with the hunter team precluded it. It was probably just as well. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Besides, he had left the school in the capable hands of his faculty, which included the nine graduates of the team’s class who had not been selected.
There were two cohorts of students: those who would graduate in one year, and those who would finish in two—if they didn’t wash out, if they survived. Each new class was divided into nine teams of ten students, designated only by a number—1, 2, 3, up to 9. There were no fanciful or inspiring names for the teams or the dorms they shared. That was by design; becoming a hunter was hard, brutal work with an early death as its most likely reward. Training at Salamanca was not romantic or cute.
The 180 were taught by twelve priests, nine former military men, and three civilians with what the world saw as acute disabilities. Each instructor brought his or her own strengths to the table. The soldiers taught hand-to-hand combat, weapons, field medicine, and tactics. It was their job to harden the students’ bodies and make them lethal weapons. The priests taught world history, vampiric history, and critical-thinking skills, and otherwise prepared the students’ minds and souls for battle. It was one thing to take a life; it was quite another to be at peace with it and to be able to do it without hesitation.
Most of the students followed some variant of Christianity, but they also had some Jews and two Muslims. There was Eriko, their Buddhist, and some atheists and agnostics. The students were sometimes surprised to learn that vampires recoiled from symbols of any faith—crosses, images of Buddha, pentagrams. But as Salamanca belonged to the Church, all potential hunters carried crosses and holy water in their training kits.
By far, though, some of the most valuable training they received came from those who were neither priests nor warriors. Susanna Elmira, a matronly former kindergarten teacher, blind from birth, trained the students to fight what they could not see, to sense and respond to movements that were lightning fast. The final exam for her class pitted a blindfolded student against three sighted adversaries with wooden swords called bokkens.
Jorge Escobar, a young man who had been unable to use his lower body since a car accident when he was four, taught students to fight no matter how badly injured they were, and how to defend themselves even when they were on the ground. He taught them to hone their strengths to near superhuman levels. He himself could crush the bones in a grown man’s wrist using only two fingers.
José Trujillo, an old man with acute obsessive-compulsive disorder who had spent much of his life institutionalized, had found a home at the academy as well. He taught students how to have a heightened awareness of their environment, to see patterns, no matter how obscure, and to recognize when something or someone didn’t belong. Two years before, he had been the only instructor to realize on the first day of classes that Holgar was a werewolf. Fortunately, he had come to Father Juan, who already knew the truth, and had not just blurted out his discovery in a way that would cause panic. Holgar managed to do that, with his howling. While most students had learned immeasurably from the old man’s classes, Father Juan was convinced that those lessons had made Jamie even more paranoid than he was when he arrived at the academy.
The nine graduates were at a bit of a disadvantage, as they were seen as washouts. But they humbled themselves in order to continue serving the cause. Their dedication gave Father Juan hope for humanity.
These, then, were the brave men and women who sacrificed much to train hunters. They had done their jobs well. Even Antonio and Holgar had found themselves challenged and had learned to heighten their already acute senses.
They’re a good team, he reminded himself.
The last passenger boarded the plane, flight attendants barring the door behind him. The man made his way down the aisle and to his seat next to Father Juan. He sat down, and Father Juan could smell blood.
“Pull the shade, please,” the man asked.
Father Juan stiffened and glanced sideways just in time to see a glimpse of fangs. He slowly pulled down the shade, weighing his options. His team was scattered through the plane. There could be other vampires present, or sympathizers. Were they following the hunters? Or simply traveling on the plane for other reasons, other plans?
Up front the flight attendant called for attention as the plane pulled away from the gate. As she began to explain the safety features of the airplane, Father Juan prayed they wouldn’t have to use them.
* * *
Skye felt squished. She was in the middle seat in a row of three. The aging man sitting to her right, next to the window, was extremely overweight. The guy sitting to her left, on the aisle, looked like he could play professional American football. Holgar was in the row in front of her, on the aisle, and she wished she could have been seated next to him.
“Buenos días,” the football guy said to her.
“Hi,” she answered.
“You speak English?”
“Yes,” she said, keeping her eyes focused forward. It was going to be a long flight. She wondered if she could do a little magick, just a small spell to avert his interest. She glanced at the man on her right, who was watching, seemingly having nothing better to do.
She bit her lip. She was already spreading herself thin trying to keep the team from attracting attention. Five rows behind and to her left, Antonio also sat in an aisle seat, far enough away from the windows to avoid the sun. Eriko was on the opposite side of the plane toward the front, Father Juan sat toward the back. Jamie slouched in the very last row in the middle se
ction, muttering about leg room and blood clots. Skye didn’t like it. She felt exposed, vulnerable.
Ay, mi amor, do you miss me? a voice seemed to whisper inside her head. A chill shot down her spine, and she shivered. It always whispered when she was alone, vulnerable.
She saw Holgar’s head turn slightly, as though sensing something was wrong. She took a deep, calming breath, willing both of them to relax.
Mr. Football began to talk about himself, and she tried to tune most of it out. She tried to focus instead on dispelling her mounting feelings of dread. There was a weird energy that seemed to be crackling through the plane, like that which preceded an oncoming storm. The longer they were in the air, the more intense it grew.
We shouldn’t be here, she thought suddenly, the certainty of that overwhelming her. Mr. Football leaned in close, and she jumped.
“Oh, come on. One little kiss won’t hurt you,” he said.
Holgar stood and turned around. “Leave my girl alone,” he said, his voice a low, rumbling growl. Skye always thrilled to the sound of it.
The man snickered. “Oh, I’m sorry, is she your girl?”
Holgar growled again.
The petite dark-skinned female passenger beside Holgar gave a little cry. “Um, miss?” She reached up and jabbed the call button. “Hello?”
Football brushed an icy finger across Skye’s cheek. From the way Holgar’s eyes opened wide, she knew that he hadn’t detected the vampire either until that moment, had missed the scent in the confusion of so many odors. His eyes swept the rest of the plane, and she saw his lips curl back. Goddess, no! She could tell from his expression that there was more than one vampire on the plane.
Holgar’s eyes began to glow. He growled again, low in his throat, menacing.
“What’s the problem?” Jamie said as he strode up the aisle.
A flight attendant barred his way.
“Sir, the fasten-seat-belt sign is on,” she said nervously.
“Yeah, sorry,” Jamie said, easing the attendant into the row of seats and pushing his way past her.
“Sir!” she protested.
Jamie ignored her and kept going until he reached Skye’s row. He grabbed the vampire’s hand.
“You bleedin’ piece of shite!” Jamie bellowed.
“I’m getting the captain,” the flight attendant yelled.
“Do that! Get the co-captain, too! He was going to bite her!” Jamie shouted. Then back at the vampire, “You feckin’ sucker!”
At that, several more passengers rose from their seats. Skye counted five. Their eyes were glowing, their fangs extending.
She closed her eyes and tried to conjure a calming spell. Her heart was pounding; she was too scared to concentrate.
“Joining the party?” Jamie said, and she blinked her eyes open to find Antonio hovering beside Jamie, wearing his monstrous mask of bloodlust. He had revealed his vampiric identity to everyone on the plane.
They couldn’t start a fight, not with so many innocents in the way, not in a plane that could so easily come crashing down, killing them all.
“No, no,” Skye murmured, and closed her eyes again. Goddess, make me a channel of your peace. . . .
And she felt Father Juan’s essence joining in her chant, which for him was a prayer, the Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon . . .
Working together with the priest, who had once served the Goddess—the peculiar man who seemed so ageless, and yet so careworn and tired. But in this moment she sensed the golden halo of his soul, which had lived before, and the dreams of his heart, which had yet to live.
And together they poured balm on the anger, and the football vampire’s bloodlust.
When she came out of her trance the plane was landing, and everyone was back in their seats. As they deplaned, Father Juan came up to her and bobbed his head.
“I hope no one saw Antonio,” he murmured. “No one who should not have seen.”
“We can work some magicks about that, too,” she offered.
He smiled. “Or ask God to work some for us.”
Skye remembered the whispered words inside her mind. She hadn’t heard them for a long time and had begun to believe that the one who whispered them had lost track of her. Right then, right there, she got ready to tell him what she’d been hiding all this time. She had a stalker, and he was someone who was bad, mad, and dangerous to know. But Jamie bounded up with a duffel over his shoulder and said, “Let’s get out of here, before I tear that Curser apart.”
The moment was lost. Another time, Skye promised herself. Then she smiled briefly at Holgar, who was carrying her duffel. During the fracas he’d kept his cool.
“Well, that was fun,” he drawled.
Father Juan smiled faintly. “As they say, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”
“Bring it on.” Jamie jutted out his chin and grabbed Skye’s duffel from Holgar. Then he stomped toward the exit, stopped, and turned around.
“You coming?”
They left.
OUTSIDE BILOXI
JENN
“You look tired, honey,” Modean said to her at breakfast. The two women were alone at the table. “But good news. They’ve reopened the border. We’ll be on our way as soon as Oral wakes up.”
It took another hour, but at last they hit the road. As it turned out, the Bethunes knew how to bribe the border guard to ignore their sweet little gal Jackie, who didn’t have the proper papers to get into Louisiana. They stopped for lunch, making plans to drive Jenn straight to her maw-maw’s. So, with regret, Jenn slipped out the window of the restaurant bathroom and flew down the road.
Then it was just Jenn and her thumb, and a trucker who had picked her up. As they neared New Orleans, he became increasingly agitated.
The grizzled sixtysomething man pushed back his New Orleans Saints ball cap and looked down at her like a sad angel. He was wearing a denim jacket over a faded dark blue T-shirt, and ragged jeans and work boots. Touching the crucifix hanging from the mirror, the trucker grimaced and gave his head a shake.
“You shouldn’t be doing this, cher,” he said in a twangy accent. “New Orleans don’t belong to us anymore. It’s theirs. I grew up there, and I am gone. Trucking company offered me triple to go into town; I said I am gone. That place is pure evil. Folks that are left are owned lock and stock by them. They don’t take kindly to strangers. They’d sooner slit your throat than ask you what your name is.”
Jenn was shocked. Things back in Spain were so different; she traveled with the group on missions but lived behind the walls of the university. They’d heard nothing about how bad it must be in New Orleans, if what the trucker was saying was true.
“Why don’t they just leave?” she asked.
“Half of ’em can’t. Bloodsuckers won’t let ’em. The other half won’t. Lots of vampire groupies moved here when they took over the city. They can hypnotize you, did you know that? Make you walk off a cliff if they want to.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Jenn said, even though she already knew what he was telling her.
He pulled over to the side of the road. “This is as far as I go.”
She climbed out of the refrigerated cab with her duffel over her shoulder. Outside, the early-afternoon sky was drizzling warm rainwater. Her boots sank into the boggy earth, and she grimaced, pulling her right foot out of the muck and looking for higher, drier ground. The bayou air was a wet slap against her chilled face.
“That’s the quickest way in, right?” she asked him. That was what he’d told her.
“Oui. They watch the highway, but the bayou will hide you.” He raised a hand off the big steering wheel and pointed to the trees. “But I don’t know, cher. It don’t look good to me, now that we’re here. It’s dark enough in there for them to be out. For all we know, un Maudit—a Cursed One—is sharpening his fangs right now, just waiting for someone like you to walk on in. You ever seen a person
after those suckers got hold of them?”
“Yes,” she said softly. “That’s why I’m here.”
His face softened with pity, the crosshatches of leathery lines growing more shallow as he pursed his lips; after a beat, unshed tears glistened in his eyes. “So you’re here for revenge? There ain’t nothing you can do, cher. Ain’t nothing anybody can do. Government’s sold us down the river, just like they did when Hurricane Katrina hit. Letting the vampires chew on us so they’ll leave the big shots alone.”
He sounds like Jamie, she thought. Or . . . Dad . . .
A wave of nausea hit her. Biting her lower lip, she forced back tears. If she stared crying, she would never stop. She couldn’t think about her father, not now. Maybe not ever.
“I can do something. And I will.”
“I tried too,” he said. Then he gathered up the neck of his T-shirt and yanked it down, exposing his collarbone. A thick, jagged, purple scar ran from one side of his neck to the other. “Nearly got me killed.”
She sucked in her breath at the clear evidence of a vampire attack. Some said a vampire’s bite was the most painful experience imaginable. Others that it was a taste of heaven.
“My brother, he come up behind that vampire and staked him. The Maudit turned to dust, right on my chest.” He pulled his shirt back up and patted his chest. “You should have seen all the blood.”
“I’m glad you were saved,” she said sincerely.
He tapped his finger against the large black crucifix dangling from the mirror, making it swing. “Jesus Christ saves. I was rescued.”
“I’m glad for that, too.” She moved to shut the door.
“Don’t go to the city,” he begged her, but she slammed shut the door and took a step back as she waved at him. He pointed to the crucifix again, and she nodded, unsure exactly what he was trying to say, but she would accept any and all good wishes and blessings.
His air brakes squealed as he left. Once he’d rolled back onto the highway proper, she reached into the top of the duffel for a stake and hefted it in her hand. It was the sharpest one she had. In the hands of Eriko or any of the others, it was a formidable weapon. In her hands . . .
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