by Rose O'Brien
Jackpot.
Alayna strode forward and grabbed him by the throat, lifting his shoulders a little off the ground.
“How. Many?” she ground out through clenched teeth, her face inches from his.
She planted a booted foot on his balls, just for good measure. The vamp was blonde and good looking. Clearly had money, but he was young, maybe sixty or so. Probably a natural born from one of the old families. Maybe even a scion.
“Ten hunters and maybe twenty handlers,” the vamp croaked out.
“What are you doing out here?” Alayna had her suspicions, but she wanted to hear it from his mouth.
“It was just supposed to be a little fun,” he said again, fear making his voice high and tight.
“You think killing sapiens is fun?” she asked, anger edging into her voice and making it more of a growl.
“They don’t always die,” he said defensively. “Most of us just chase them down and feed on them. They just taste so good when they’ve been running for awhile.”
She’d heard enough. She felt his neck snap in her hand. It would heal in a few hours, but he’d be unconscious until then. She flipped him over and zip tied his hands.
Alayna approached the handler.
“Was he telling the truth?”
“Fuck you,” he spat.
With a snap of her whip, the length wrapped around his neck. With a jerk, it tightened, and his head rolled away through the grass, his lifeless body crumpling to the ground.
“Next!” she barked.
One of the two remaining vampires leapt to his feet and ran for the wall of flames. One of Dumeril’s kukris caught him between the shoulder blades, but he barely slowed as the blade sunk deep. Before she could summon a spell, he was leaping through the flames, fire catching in a few places on his clothing as he continued to run.
With a screaming cry, a Lechuza that she was pretty sure was Rolando swooped out of the darkness and snatched the vamp up in his talons. The vamp’s scream mixed with the Lechuza’s screech as the talons tore the bloodsucker apart. The blood and flesh fell like rain against the grass.
“He was telling the truth! I swear it,” the remaining conscious vampire said, holding his wrists in front of him in surrender.
Alayna stayed quiet and walked slowly toward him.
“I’ll tell you anything you want to know, just please don’t hurt me!”
She narrowed her eyes at him but stayed silent. Dumeril moved to her side, his blade dripping blood in the firelight as the loomed over the vampire, faces set in masks of stoic rage.
“We paid fifty grand each through a website. You only got the link when you were invited by someone who had been on the hunts. He was telling the truth when he said the sapes don’t always die. We just have a little fun chasing them and then feeding. We leave them in the woods, and the handlers are supposed to pick them up. That’s all I know, I swear it!”
Alayna squatted next to him and looked him in the eye.
“Who’s in charge?”
“I never met him,” the vamp said. “The handlers met us in town and drove us out here. I did hear them talking about someone called Culebra, but that’s all I know.”
Tears were starting to leak from his eyes. Ugh.
With a sound of disgust, she pulled his hands behind his back and restrained him.
“Don’t fucking move from this spot or I will straight up decapitate you,” she told him.
She dropped the wall of fire just as she heard one of the Lechuzas screech above her. Turning, Alayna saw that six handlers and a hunter were advancing on her and Dumeril in a rough semicircle. They hadn’t been able to see the vamps beyond the flame wall.
Damn her for a fool.
Dumeril moved quickly to stand at her back.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this, Commander,” he said, flashing her what was meant to be a reassuring grin.
“We’ve been in tighter spots than this,” she answered, matching his smile.
Alayna tallied the score quickly in her head. Seven pissed off vamps. Lu was unaccounted for, probably securing the sapien hostages. The Lechuza was several seconds overhead, and it was just one bird. And, yup, the vamps were starting to charge. Great.
She and Dumeril couldn’t outrun them. These fuckers were fast. She might be able to weave a spell for flight, but it was difficult to control and it would take longer to factor in carrying Dumeril.
The vamps were on them, and there was no more time for thought or planning. She reacted on instinct. Her whip sailed through the air, expanding its width until it was as thick as her forearm, and knocked one of the vamps off his feet. Fire flew from her fingertips and hit two of the vamps square in the face, setting their clothes and hair alight. They dropped to the ground, trying to put the flames out.
There was the distinctive pop of gunfire. Alayna’s vision spun as a body slammed into her from the side, hands squeezed her throat, and bloody fangs filled her vision as the vamp lunged for a killing bite. She flipped her whip in her hand, hit a hidden button in the handle, and a silver blade sprang free.
She plunged the blade into the vamp’s neck, hot blood flowing over her hands and splattering her face. His eyes went wide and he reared back away from her, his grip loosening as he tried to staunch the flow of blood. She freed the blade and swung, taking his head off. A momentary surge of relief poured through her.
She wiped the blood from her eyes and stood in time to see Lu rush past in a furry blur, her enormous form barreling through the remaining vamps. One of them had an automatic rifle and tried to fire as Lu’s claws tore through the group, but the shots were all over the place, bullets zinging past Lu without so much as a scratch.
The enormous shifter picked up two of the vamps by an arm and began slamming them into each other, the ground and the remaining vampires. Screams and the sound of bones breaking filled the air. Lu’s fangs and claws made short work, and soon every vampire was restrained, unconscious or dead.
“Commander, we have a problem!” Dumeril’s voice reached her from several feet away. The flames she had called were dying embers now, smoldering in the grass and casting an orange light over everything.
Dumeril was crouched over the unconscious female hostage. Blood seeped from a chest wound. One of the stray bullets had found her. Damn it! She looked like she was sixteen, tops. The thought of losing her after they had come so close to saving her was more than Alayna could stomach.
“What can I do?”
“Keep the hostiles off my back. It’s going to take everything I’ve got to heal this.”
As he spoke, his hands covered the wound and a look of deep concentration creased his features.
As Alayna and Lu moved into position to cover the angles around Dumeril and the hostage, Ellie’s voice crackled over the radio.
“We’ve got a situation here, Commander.”
***
Alex’s heart was pounding and blood coated his hands.
“Fuck! This is bad!” Burdock said through gritted teeth, fear and pain vibrating at the edges of his words.
He was not wrong.
As Alex, Burdock, and Ellie had been moving to take out two handlers who’d been moving hostages, the dirt bags had turned and fired at them with an automatic rifle. The high-powered rounds had missed Alex and Ellie, but Burdock hadn’t been so lucky. He’d taken one in the upper arm, one in the thigh, and one just below his damn tac vest, just north of his groin.
Ellie had taken out the handlers, her daggers dropping their gurgling corpses to the ground, but the damage had been done.
Alex tried to control his racing pulse as he knelt over Burdock. His frantic heart rate was moving nowhere near as quickly as the thoughts spinning through his brain.
The arm injury looked bad, the flesh torn and oozing blood, but it didn’t appear to have hit the bracheal artery, so it could wait. The thigh injury on its own would have been panic inducing. That was a severed artery for sure, judging by the blood
flow. Luckily, it was far enough down that a tourniquet could slow the bleeding significantly.
Then there was the groin injury. The bullet hadn’t hit the family jewels, but there were a lot of important blood vessels that ran through pelvic area, and depending on the angle of the bullet, they were almost certainly looking at intestinal involvement. That could spell all sorts of doom, starting with massive of internal bleeding. And he couldn’t apply a tourniquet.
There were coagulating agents, hemostatic pressure bandages and ratcheting tourniquets in the pack on his back. He just needed to get to them. Just needed to move his hands. The hands that were coated in Burdock’s blood.
In the back of his brain was a voice that was calling out the necessary steps to stabilize Burdock and begin treating those wounds. Get the vest off. Cut his pants and shirt away. Get the coag agent on that abdominal wound, then a pressure bandage. Get Ellie to apply pressure to the gut. Move on to the thigh wound…
But his body was refusing to obey his brain. Instead, his blood soaked hands filled his vision. The sounds of his own hammering heart and the air sawing in and out of his lungs drowned out Burdock’s agonized groans. He was going to bleed out if they didn’t do something. So much blood. Another abdominal wound. Just like Kelly. Why was it always abdominal wounds?
With the thought of Kelly, he didn’t even see his frozen, bloody hands anymore. He only saw blood soaked sand and all he could hear was screaming and gunfire.
The sting of a small palm striking his face brought him part of the way back around. Ellie’s face swam into view, her voice screeching at him.
“Do something or we’re going to lose him! Dumeril can’t get here. You’re all he’s got.”
Why couldn’t she understand that his body had disconnected from his brain?
This was exactly what had happened in the ambulance that night three years ago. The first bleeding gunshot victim and he’d been in a panic-induced stupor in the corner in the rig. This is why he wasn’t a medic anymore. This is why he’d never be a doctor. Blood. Screams. Drilling into his brain, making him freeze. Couldn’t take it.
His pack was ripped from his shoulders and Ellie screamed, “What do I do with this stuff? Tell me what to do!”
Alex opened his mouth and closed it, but the words wouldn’t come. It was like in nightmares when you tried to scream, but nothing came out. Ellie dug through the pack, came up with a pair of shears and started cutting Burdock’s clothes away. Smart little gnome.
Alex’s gaze drifted to Burdock’s face and was surprised to find his eyes open. Most people would be unconscious, but Burdock wasn’t most people.
The mage’s hand drifted up and pressed something into Alex’s palm. A photo. Of a girl. Pretty. Young.
“If I don’t make it,” Burdock rasped, “find her. Tell her what happened to me.”
Alex looked down at the photo and back at Burdock. He wanted to ask who she was but his tongue felt like lead in his mouth.
Even bleeding to death, Burdock saw the question in his eyes.
“Christi Clark. UT student. Sapien. No one knows about her. Keep her secret. You’re the only one I can trust. If the Council finds out that she knows what I am, they’ll kill her. And tell her I—” Burdock’s eyes drooped shut for a moment before springing open again. “Love her.”
Alex wanted to nod, but the swirling vortex of panic in his brain wouldn’t let him. Burdock’s features sagged again and he lost his battle with unconsciousness.
Suddenly, it made sense. Memories connected in his head. Burdock’s opposition to Alex being on the team. His open hostility during the nutcracker that had seemed a little over the top. Burdock had been trying to put himself firmly in the Sapiens Suck camp so no one would suspect he was dating one. Not just dating one, but he had revealed what he was to her. All of Burdock’s maneuvers had been to protect her. Alex tightened his hand around the photo.
Ellie was trying desperately to slow the flow of blood by pushing pressure bandages against Burdock’s wounds. No tourniquets. No coag agent. She was maybe sixty pounds soaking wet, and because of her size, she could barely reach both wounds at once, much less put any weight on them. She was still doing more than he was.
Out of nowhere, one of the Lechuzas swooped in, dropping Alayna a few feet away. She raced forward, her platinum hair streaking back from her face. God, she was beautiful.
“What have we got?” she asked, skidding to a stop beside them.
“Burdock took three bullets. Losing a lot of blood. And Alex has decided doing his impression of a human statue is more important than chipping in.”
There was venom in her voice, and he wanted to stumble away, run from here, far from here. He desperately wanted to squeeze his eyes shut and cover his ears. His hands shook violently and he couldn’t get enough air in his lungs, like a Blackhawk had landed on his chest. It felt like dying.
Alayna held her hands over the gut wound and said a long, complicated series of words he didn’t understand. When she finished, the blood flow stopped and she sagged, her breath leaving her in a rush.
“Whew, that took a lot of juice,” she mumbled.
Her eyes scanned the other wounds and landed back on Alex, locking his gaze to hers.
“Eyes on me, soldier.” Her voice was low, steady and commanding. “Dumeril is tied up healing a hostage. I don’t have enough juice or skill to heal all these wounds. If I don’t get your help, Burdock’s going to bleed to death.”
Her hands rose up, cradled his face and her eyes bored into his.
“I know you’re in a bad place right now, and I’ll never forgive myself for putting you there, but right this minute I need you to take a deep breath, open your mouth and tell me what to do to save him.”
Something in those indigo eyes caused a circuit to snap back in place in his brain. Signals started flowing to his body again. Not to all parts and not in the right order, but his mouth started moving, his finger pointed to his bag.
“Tourniquet.”
Deep breath, air moving in his lungs, oxygen to his brain.
Alayna jerked one of the tourniquets out of the bag. He touched his finger to the right spot on Burdock’s thigh. She moved with blinding speed, clicking it into place.
“Tight as you can.”
As she cranked the mechanism, Burdock groaned and shifted. Pain receptors still firing. That was a good sign.
“Now what?”
“Coag agent. Red pouch. Tear it open, pour it in the wound.”
She obeyed. Next came the pressure bandages. With every word he said, he gained more control over his body. His pulse slowed. His breathing became more even and he wasn’t in danger of passing out anymore.
But when he reached for a tourniquet to start to work on the arm wound, his hands were shaking too badly to pick it up. Luckily, Alayna was already moving, her fingers moving with surety through the steps of treatment. She would occasionally glance at him in silent communication to check that she was doing it right.
Alex wasn’t sure if it was minutes or days that passed when running footsteps thundered out of the darkness toward them. Then, Dumeril was kneeling beside Burdock, a look of deep concentration on his dark face as he pressed his hands to the wounds. Lu stood off to the side with an unconscious hostage in her arms.
Alex gained enough control over his body to move back away from the team gathered around Burdock. He didn’t stop until he was several feet away, kneeling in the grass as shame tore him apart from the inside.
***
An hour later, Alayna stood with Ellie and Alex in the outbuilding they had discovered. Several of the Lechuzas in their human forms were outside acting as guards, automatic rifles taken from dead handlers in their hands. The effect was not at all ruined by the fact that they were naked.
Burdock, along with Lu and Dumeril, was back at HQ, having taken one of the vans the vamps used to transport the hostages. While Dumeril had said the big mage was out of the woods, she was still worried.
The cleanup crew would be here soon to collect the hostages, wipe their memories, and deal with the bodies of all the vamps they’d killed.
She tried her best to put thoughts of Alex out of her head. While they were out of danger, this op was far from over. But she was worried about him and kicking herself for putting him in the position she had.
She’d sent him with Burdock and Ellie, two of her deadliest fighters, and on the assignment she’d thought was less dangerous. She’d been worried that Alex would distract her at some critical moment. And she’d inadvertently put him in the middle of his worst nightmare.
But she was going to have to deal with the fallout later.
Before her, four of the surviving hunters and two of the handlers were arranged. All were restrained in vamp-proof cuffs. One of the handlers, who had been badly burned by her fire attack, was conscious. The others were out cold.
She stepped toward the handler, her face an icy mask, and grabbed the front of his burned T-shirt and lifted him up so she could look him in the eye. He didn’t have any eyelids left, so it was little easier.
“Where’s your boss?” she asked.
“He’ll kill me,” the vamp croaked out.
“I’ll kill you first if you don’t tell me!” she shouted. “Where is Culebra?”
“Culebra’s been out of the picture for weeks. No one knows where he is. We just get texts telling us where and when to move the sapes and when to pick up the hunters.”
Damn it. That wasn’t good news.
“I’m pretty sure Culebra’s not the boss,” the vamp said quietly. “He handled shipping and the warehouses, maybe recruited a few hunters, but he was never the boss.”
The vamp took a gurgling breath, and Alayna nodded for him to continue.
“He liked the hunt. Got a real kick out of it. Killed more than a few of the sapes. I heard he lost it and killed some girl at a club a few weeks ago. All of a sudden he stops showing up for the hunts and everyone stops hearing from him.”
Her ears perked up. Behind her, Alex stiffened. He’d been silent and shut off since that debacle with Burdock.