Jenn tapped Bernard’s shoulder. “It’s too dark down there. They’ll be able to attack.”
“They’ve got eyes and ears everywhere,” Bernard whispered back. “Among the humans, I mean. If we go on the surface streets, we’ll get picked up.”
Monumentally uneasy, she debated leaving. She had only their word that they were fighting the vampires and the corrupt local human government. For all she knew, they were going to deliver her to Aurora.
Was this how Papa Che had felt? Constantly wondering who he could trust, knowing that at any turn he could be betrayed? Maybe that was why he had always been so good at reading people, their hearts, their intentions. If she had only had half his skill, she could have more easily read her father’s intentions before he betrayed her.
“It’s asking for it, going down there,” Jenn insisted.
Suzy sidled up beside her. She ducked her head and nodded. “We’re taking stupid chances. We know it,” she whispered. “We just . . . we’re getting tired. Everyone is looking for us. The vampires live in the houses, and so do the people who worship them. That leaves the sewers for the rats. And for us.”
“We have a safe house down there,” Bernard put in.
“Nothing is safe in the dark,” Jenn countered. “The only reason I would ever go down there is to save someone.”
“You’ll be saving us,” Suzy said under her breath as she hunched her shoulder beneath the tree. “There used to be more of us. The police came. . . .” Her voice trailed off, and she caught her lower lip. “We’ve never heard from Stan and Debbie again.”
“She’s telling you the truth, her,” Bernard said. “It’s all topsy-turvy here. New Orleans is a closed city. No one gets out. They’d warn people, tell ’em what’s really going on. Cell phones don’t work. Private citizens’ use of Internet is blocked. It’s like the Middle Ages.”
She blinked, and Bernard continued. “People who protest get taken away. They never come back. There were terrible shortages for a while, but the C.O.’s have started getting supplies in. New Orleanians have gotten the message: Toe the line, you’ll live and you’ll eat. Complain, and you disappear.”
She thought of her father. Gave a nod. “So they do it. Toe the line.”
Suzy nodded. “Oh, hells yeah, they do it. And they smile while they do it. Of course, a lot of ’em also drink a lot, take drugs. There’s a lot of post-traumatic stress disorder. And then there’s people who pretend it’s life as usual. That it’s no big deal.” She smiled sourly. “Denial is big here in the Big Easy.”
“Then there’s you,” Jenn said. She was getting worried about Lucky. Then his head popped back up and he made the “okay” sign.
“There’s us,” Bernard agreed. “And you’d be amazed how many people hate us. They say we’re going to get everyone killed. Say if we want to help, we should help the suckers—bring in more supplies, repair levees, things like that.”
It sounded very familiar. “That’s so messed up.” Jenn looked at the tunnel. It was a death trap.
“Look, we’ve got a place where you can rest, send out the call for your people. On the streets . . .” He made a face.
“But she’s a Hunter,” Matt reminded them. “She’ll be okay.”
“Please come with us.” Suzy took her hand. “It is dangerous down there. And scary.”
Suddenly Jenn saw the situation differently: Here was a human asking a hunter for help. Had she not stood with the team, on New Year’s Eve, and sworn to protect human life? Didn’t her word count for something? Wasn’t that what she had become a hunter for? Not just for her sister, but for all people?
“Please?” Suzy begged, her face small and very young.
In that moment Jenn realized she had no choice. She couldn’t turn these people down.
“All right,” she said, and Suzy gave her a quick hug.
They scurried to the manhole and climbed down into the tunnel, one at a time. It was colder beneath the ground, and it stank worse than the bayou. The echo of dripping water punctuated the rapid-fire rhythm of her heartbeat, and a couple of inches of foul-smelling liquid covered the floor of the tunnel.
“We live in an abandoned convent,” Suzy told her, as they made so many rights and lefts that Jenn lost track. “It’s supposed to be haunted.”
“It is,” Lucky blurted, then looked down at his hands.
“How do you know that?” Jenn asked him, but he hunched farther over, his body language screaming that he didn’t want to talk about it. She could see the bones of his spine through his T-shirt, as if he wasn’t getting enough to eat, or had a chronic illness. He wouldn’t be much good in a fight. And as for Suzy, a waitress, Sarah Connor she wasn’t. Were these the best fighters this group had?
Assessing their ability to defend themselves, she eyed Lucky’s rifle. She knew Bernard was carrying a pistol, but neither of those weapons would inflict much damage on a vampire—and nothing permanent. She made sure her grip on her stake was good and firm.
As calmly as she could, she pulled out her phone. Of course it wouldn’t work belowground, but she still hoped a delayed message would have come through by now.
“Like I said, there’s no decent cell-phone reception in New Orleans anymore,” Suzy murmured. “The mayor says it’s something to do with the cell towers, but we know better.” She frowned. “That’s not happening in Spain?”
Jenn frowned and shook her head. They had cell phone reception in Spain. As hunters they kept pretty low profiles. Father Juan kept them sheltered from the day-to-day concerns of the war—and, apparently, the world. It bothered her that she was out of touch. But then again, what did it really matter?
“We should cut the chatter,” Bernard warned them. “We’re moving deep into enemy territory.”
As if on cue Jenn’s flashlight shone on a bloody handprint on the wall. She swallowed down a frisson of fear and looked carefully around, gazing into the shadows. Even if vampires lived in the houses, they would still need the tunnels to move about during the day. Bernard turned off his flashlight, and the others did the same.
“Vampires can see pretty well in the dark,” she said.
There was silence. Then Bernard said gently, “But people can’t see at all.”
A reminder that they also had human enemies. “Right,” she said, and extinguished hers as well. In Spain it wasn’t that way. They were always hailed as the salvation of the citizens. She had never had to watch her back around humans before. Maybe if she had, this wouldn’t have happened.
She shook her head. Her dad and she had never been close. It had been Papa Che who taught her to ride a bicycle, Papa Che who had encouraged her to take risks, even though it infuriated her father.
Still, she had never truly understood how deep the schism was between her father and his father until the night of the fight. Papa Che and Gramma had come over for dinner, and during dessert the conversation had turned to the vampires. Papa Che had denounced them, and her father had grown irate, saying he wouldn’t have him speak that way in his house, didn’t want to hear talk of war. In the end he had ordered Papa Che to leave, and Gramma had gone with him.
No sooner had the door closed behind them then Jenn had spoken up. Two girls at her school had gone missing, and she was sure that they had been killed by vampires. There were so many evil things happening; how could her father turn a blind eye to them?
He had accused her of being tainted by Papa Che, said that she sounded like a revolutionary.
“One of us should,” she had accused. And something that had been buzzing in the back of her mind for weeks came to the front. She declared that she was going to go to Spain and study to become a Hunter.
Her father had totally lost it, screaming at her about what a daughter of his would and wouldn’t do. She had left, stopping by her room just long enough to grab her passport—which bore a lone Canada stamp—the money she had earned working at the movie theater over the summer, and a jacket.
Twenty-f
our hours later she had landed in Madrid. A week after that and she was officially enrolled at the academy in Salamanca, part of the new entering class of almost ninety teenagers from around the world. At sixteen she wasn’t the youngest by a long shot. There were others who were older, too. The cut-off age was twenty-one. Unless, of course, you were like Antonio and were nineteen going on ninety.
As Jenn and the small Resistance group sloshed through the water, they grew quieter, edgier. Soon they moved in utter silence. They walked for so long that Jenn began to suspect they were lost. She pulled out her phone and cupped the display while she checked the time. It was two fifty-five in the afternoon. The trucker had let her out at nine in the morning, and she was light-headed with hunger. There were some protein bars and a couple of water bottles stashed in her duffel bag.
She was just about to ask for the bag when the group stopped moving. She didn’t know if Bernard had given them a signal that she hadn’t caught, or if they’d reached their destination. Bernard flicked on his flashlight. Suzy moved closer to Jenn.
Bernard painted a flight of rotten wooden stairs with the beam of light. The banisters were cracked and peeling, and the staircase itself was littered with Styrofoam takeout food containers, rotted newspapers, and beer bottles. It didn’t appear to have been used in years. But as she watched, Suzy and Lucky grabbed the left corner of what appeared to be a long swath of camouflage netting beneath the layer of trash and folded it in half, revealing a much cleaner staircase. The trash had been deliberately attached to the netting. She was impressed by the clever trick, and filed it away as something the Salamancans might be able to imitate at a future date.
Her cheeks burned. It was so hard to think of a future. If something had happened to Heather, time in her world would stop, forever—to the moment that her father had betrayed them. Betrayed them both, when he thought he was saving his “good” daughter by sending his bad one to her death.
She began to shake. She couldn’t think about it now. She wouldn’t ever be able to think about it. As she averted her head and wiped her eyes, Bernard climbed the staircase and rapped on a wooden door in a special code—rap-rap-rap, pause, rap, pause, rap-rap. If these people were smart, they’d change it up at least once a day.
The door cracked open, and a low, quiet voice spoke in French. Bernard replied. Jenn, who had never been to New Orleans before, hadn’t realized how many New Orleanians used French as their first language. It was like being in a foreign country.
“Bon, come in,” said the speaker, as he held the door open.
On the other side a young man with dark hair beneath a black cap held out a cross, and another, a slightly older redhead, held a submachine gun against his shoulder, aimed squarely at her. She kept her hands in plain sight, understanding—and approving of—their caution.
“Jenn,” said Antonio, stepping from around the two men.
“Antonio!” she cried. “How’d you get here ahead of me?”
Oblivious of all else, she ran to him and threw her arms around him. He held her tightly and murmured in Spanish, so softly and rapidly she couldn’t understand what he was saying. She didn’t care. The words weren’t important. Eyes pressed tightly shut, she laid her cheek against his chest and felt his strong arms around her, as the walls she had built around herself ever since Aurora had taken Heather crumbled.
“How could he, how could he?” she blurted as she began to cry. “My father.” She wept harder, losing herself now that he had found her.
“Sí,” he whispered. “Sí, mi amor.”
She gave into her grief and her rage, not caring who saw. She cried until she had exhausted herself. Then she heard him hiss, like a sigh against her cheek, and his arm muscles flexed as his chest expanded. He eased her away and turned his head. From her vantage point she could see the glowing washes of red in his eyes. Affected by her presence as much as she had been by his, he was changing.
Deflecting attention from him, she embraced Father Juan as he walked toward her with Eriko and Holgar. He kissed her forehead, then made the sign of the cross over her and handed her a tissue.
“Thank God you’re safe,” he said as she wiped her eyes. “We caught a flight right away, and after we made contact with Marc we tried to reach you, but cell phones don’t work here.”
“This place is a death trap,” Jamie said, unknowingly echoing her exact thoughts. He leaned against the pitted wall, glowering at her as if that were her fault. He was white-knuckling a bottle of Rabid Bat beer.
“Any word?” she asked Father Juan, as Eriko gave her a hug and Holgar squeezed her forearm.
“Sí,” Father Juan said. “We have learned a few things about Aurora. She’s a very old vampire. We don’t know how old. We don’t know who her sire is, or why she came here. The vampires here were expecting her.”
“For Mardi Gras?” Jenn asked.
“Who knows?” Father Juan shrugged. “But we believe we have found a way to locate her.”
“Really?” Her voice rose along with her excitement. “Then let’s go.”
“Yeah, right,” Jamie said, stepping forward. “Let this Aurora have us all in one neat little gift-wrapped package. There’s a good idea.”
“It seems that this is a team of hunters,” the redheaded man said to Bernard. “It’s something they’re doing in Europe.”
“A team?” Bernard whistled under his breath and looked at Suzy, Matt, and Lucky, who were just coming through the door. Jenn assumed they’d stayed behind to replace the staircase camouflage.
Suzy reached on her tiptoes to kiss the redheaded man, whose name was Andrew. He smiled at her and pressed his fingertip against one of her pompom ponytails. Jenn thought they might be brother and sister, and she felt a terrible tug on her heart.
Suzy looked at Jenn and said, “You said you were the Hunter.”
“Flying under false colors?” Jamie muttered as he raised his eyes toward the ceiling, drinking his beer.
“No,” Jenn snapped at him.
“She is a hunter,” Father Juan elaborated. “Eriko is their leader. But they are all hunters.”
The man who had opened the door looked at Jenn with heavily-lidded, slightly drooping eyes, as if he had seen too many sad things in this world.
“I am Marc Dupree,” he told her, “the head of this anti-vampire group. In another war people like us were called—”
“The Resistance,” Antonio murmured, gazing with faraway eyes. “In World War Two.” He lowered his head. “I had family who died fighting for the Resistance.”
“True heroes, then,” Marc said, inclining his head in deference. “It’s an honor to have you stay with us. All of you hunters,” he added, as if for Jamie’s sake. “We know why you’ve come—that the vampire queen named Aurora has taken your little sister.” He nodded once at Jenn. “We’ll help you all we can. We can’t allow another vampire like her into our city.”
“We’ll get her,” Eriko said simply, as if in her mind there was no doubt of success.
“Merci, Marc,” Father Juan said. “Now, if you please, Jenn has had a terrible shock. Her own father betrayed her to the Cursed Ones, and she was nearly killed. You’ve met the rest of our team; we can go into the other room and strategize while Jenn rests.”
“No,” Jenn protested. “I don’t need to rest.”
As Father Juan opened his mouth to reply, Jamie huffed and finished off his beer.
“Father,” he said, “if it was one of us who’d been taken—Holgar, say—would you tell her to rest? She’s part of this team, and if she wants my help, she’d better damn well pull her own weight.”
“She is,” Antonio gritted, moving toward the Irishman so quickly that Jenn didn’t see him do it. Neither did Jamie, who jerked backward, running into Holgar.
“Woof,” Holgar drawled, grinning faintly.
Jamie clenched his jaw and doubled his fists, and Jenn’s heart skipped a beat. Jenn wondered if the strangers had been told that Antonio was a va
mpire. As if he could read her mind, Antonio gave his head a quick shake and looked at her with his normal, dark eyes.
“Please, enough,” Father Juan said, glancing at their hosts and throwing Antonio a warning look. Tempers were short. The tension in the room was thick, and everyone was on edge. “We have a plan, and it’s already in play.”
Jenn exhaled slowly as Marc Dupree looked long and hard at Antonio. Then she realized that one of them was missing.
“Where’s Skye?” she asked.
“She’s the plan,” Father Juan replied.
SAMHAIN (HALLOWEEN NIGHT) OUTSIDE LONDON TWO YEARS AGO, THE HELL FIRE CAVES
SKYE
“Put on the mask, borachín,” Estefan said to Skye as he held out the black-velvet half mask decorated with purple and black laces and feathers. A silver pentagram shimmering with amethysts gleamed in the center of the mask’s forehead. Estefan had told her the pentagram had once belonged to Lord Dashwood himself, the aristocratic sorcerer who had created the secret ritual caves on his estate in 1740.
“Don’t call me that,” Skye snapped. His Spanish nickname for her was “little drunk one,” in honor of the night they had met, four months before, on Midsummer’s Eve, at her sister Melody’s handfasting ceremony just outside Stonehenge.
The Yorks were powerful witches, highly respected, and Melody York’s joining with the Highfall witch family was the event of the season. Everyone needed a good time—London was overrun by the Cursed Ones, and witches everywhere were going into hiding, as they had in other eras of oppression, the worst having been the Burning Times in the sixteenth century. Many had decreed that Melody’s handfasting would be the last time they attended a public witch function.
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