The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  “On his ass! On his ass!” Ray said, letting go of me to point.

  “So is she,” Scarface hissed, as I flopped facefirst onto concrete. “And she was first.”

  “Only because you were holding him up! You were cheating!”

  “No, this would be cheating,” Scarface said, and smashed a bottle upside Ray’s head.

  And then things got a little confusing.

  Scarface lunged at Ray, who stumbled back, squeaking. But he tripped over me and slammed into the case of fey wine, crushing it beneath him. Thanks God for large favors, I thought fervently.

  And then I remembered why I was happy to see Louis-Cesare.

  “Love you!” I yelled encouragingly, which caused him to start suddenly. Then, for some reason, he scowled. And then the sprinkler system got turned on, although that might have been later, because when I looked around, I was by the bar.

  Someone was trying to pound the butt of a shotgun through my skull. So I yanked it out of his grasp and brought it down on his kneecaps. He screamed in pain and grabbed for the weapon, we struggled, and it went off, blowing a hole the size of a basketball through the fake wood paneling separating the club from the bar.

  We both stared at it for a second before he grabbed for me—at the same time that another vamp brought a club down, trying to crush my hand. I rolled out of the way and he hit his buddy’s instead, with a crunching sound that indicated a broken bone or three. The first vamp screamed again and reflexively kicked out, knocking his buddy back into a nest of bar stools. The stools scattered, the vamp fell backward, and my hand closed on one of my guns.

  I didn’t even try to aim, since I was the only one there who could be killed by a stray bullet. I just sprayed them everywhere. I don’t think too many connected, but it distracted my attackers long enough for me to reach the hole in the wall. One of Ray’s boys looked through at me, his bright black eyes wide.

  “Scotch?” I asked as a chair was slung across the room at my head. I ducked and the bartender handed me a bottle, just as the chair tosser lunged at me. I broke it over his head, staggering him. “A light?” My lighter was in my jeans, and no way was I coordinated enough to get it out.

  I was passed another matchbook embossed with the bar’s logo, and a second later, the vamp went up in flames. He could have stopped, dropped, and rolled them out, but most vamps aren’t that levelheaded about fire. This one proved to be no exception. He panicked and crashed into his buddy, and they fell to the floor, screaming Cantonese invective at each other.

  I looked around for the next threat, but all I saw was Louis-Cesare standing over a pile of vamps, none of which appeared to be in proper working order. It would have been cause for celebration, if it hadn’t been for the boots hitting the street outside. Deciding to get out before Cheung’s reinforcements ruined the odds again, I tossed a potion grenade at the front door and jumped out the side.

  Louis-Cesare was right behind me. We landed hard in front of the puddle of water that spanned most of the alley. It reflected the explosion in the club behind us, flames shooting upside down, livid and wavering, until a screaming mass of panicked vamps came pouring out of the door. They scattered in all directions, some splashing through the water and turning it into a rippling mass of flame.

  One of the last to emerge was Scarface, with the boss draped inelegantly over one shoulder. “You.” He pointed at me. I blinked at him. “Later.”

  I nodded and waved him off as Ray came scooting out the door, the seat of his pants smoking. “Now who owes who?” I demanded as he hightailed it down the alley. He paused at the corner to shoot me the bird, before disappearing in the opposite direction from Cheung’s vamps.

  “He’ll be okay,” I told Louis-Cesare. “He’ll run straight to the senate, and now that they know there’s a danger, they’ll have to—”

  Somebody started shaking me, which was not a good idea under the circumstances. “Don’ do that,” I said, grabbing hold of Louis-Cesare’s jacket.

  “You’re drunk,” he accused. But he did stop shaking me.

  I pondered that for a moment. It was undeniably true. And then I remembered that there were extenuating circumstances, some of which involved him. “Well, you were late.”

  “I was in Brooklyn!”

  “You went to see me?” I grinned happily. And then stopped, wondering if he’d had some other reason for making the trip. It wasn’t like we had a Thing. Not an official Thing, anyway. He didn’t have to visit, although I couldn’t think of any other reason he’d be in Brooklyn. Louis-Cesare was definitely more of an uptown kind of—

  “Why are you out of bed?” he demanded, looking like he wanted to start with the shaking again.

  “I just wanted a quiet drink,” I said defensively. That and I’d been going crazy with boredom.

  “It appears that you found one,” he said drily.

  “Well, I don’t know how quiet it was—” I broke off, because something in his expression was wrong. It took me a moment, but I finally sorted through exasperation, fondness, and relief to something that looked like hurt. And that didn’t make sense.

  “We won,” I said distinctly. “At least, I think so.…” I looked around. The alley was quiet again, except for the crackling fire and the distant sound of sirens.

  “Yes, we won,” he affirmed.

  I looked back up at him, fuzzily. “So why the long face?”

  He took a deep breath. “I was hoping that the first time you expressed affection for me, it would not be in a room full of strangers. And that you would not have just said it to a sniveling creature like that Raymond!”

  “I expressed affection for Ray?”

  “Yes!”

  “Man, I really must be drunk.” Louis-Cesare just looked at me. I blinked politely back, until I realized that he expected a response. “Uh. Sorry?”

  “Isn’t there anything else you wish to say to me?” he asked impatiently.

  I swallowed. “Yes. Yes there is.”

  Warm arms suddenly engulfed me, pulling me in, and one large hand tucked my head into his chest. “What is it?” he asked softly.

  “I’m about to yak all over your shirt.”

  Vampire reflexes got me to the side of the road instead, and then he crouched there, brushing my hair away from my sweaty cheeks as I made good on the first part of my threat. He sighed. “One day, you will say it to me again. You will be sober. And you will mean it.”

  I was actually terrified that I already meant it. A guy just might be a keeper if he hears your cry for help in his head. And comes into a den of thieves to get you out. And then holds your hair while you throw up for ten minutes.

  Then again, I was in no condition to judge. But that old saying kept rattling around in my head. “In vino veritas,” I whispered, faintly appalled.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” I looked up at him as he pulled me back to my feet. “Let’s go home.”

  HUNT

  Rachel Vincent

  The forest was singing, and its song was all mine. The others couldn’t hear it, with their human ears. They heard only the crackle-roar of the campfire and their own voices. Huddled in down jackets and sleeping bags, they thought they owned the world, by virtue of their ability to tame it, and that was an understandable mistake. But they’d never really seen the world. Not like I saw it.

  * * *

  Soon I’d have to go back to the campfire. To their idea of “roughing it” with battery-powered radios, canned food, and no-rinse bathing wipes, guaranteed to keep you fresh, even days into a showerless camping trip. Soon I’d have to put on my human skin and put away my feline instincts, so I could be Abby Wade, normal college sophomore. I could do that. I’d been hiding that part of my life for a year and a half, and my secret run was just a temporary reprieve from all things human.

  Still, the next few moments were mine.

  My paws snapped through twigs and sank into underbrush, pushing against the earth to propel me faster, h
igher. I was a streak of black against the night, darker than the forest, yet a part of it, as I hadn’t been in weeks. Small animals fled just ahead of my paws, scurrying through tangles of fallen leaves and branches. The scents of oak, birch, maple, and pine were familiar comforts, relaxing me even as they pushed me for more speed, greater distance. Thorns caught in my fur. Cold air burned in my nose and stroked the length of my body as I ran, like a caress from the universe itself.

  I was welcome in the woods. I belonged there, at least for the next few minutes.

  When I’d run fast and long enough to satisfy that initial need for exercise, I slowed to a gradual, soft stop, huffing from exertion. It was time to eat and replace the energy I’d burned during my Shift.

  My ears swiveled on my head, pinpointing the sounds I needed to hear. Werecats can’t track by scent, like a dog, so we hunt with our ears and our eyes. On my run, I’d smelled mice and a couple of weasels, both of which stay active in the winter, but I was holding out for a rabbit, or even a beaver. No use wasting a deer with only me there to feed on it.

  Something scuttled through the underbrush several yards to the southeast. Too fast and light to be a raccoon. Probably a mouse or a rat. Too much effort for too little meat.

  I slowed my breathing and listened harder. From the north came a soft, rapid, swooshy heartbeat, but no movement. Whatever it was, it knew I was close and hungry. I turned my head and sniffed toward the north—I could pinpoint it with my ears, but would have to ID it with my nose. A rabbit. Perfect. Its fur wouldn’t be white yet—not in mid-October—but my cat’s eyes would still spot it. As soon as I flushed it out of hiding.

  I pounced. The rabbit sprung from the underbrush and landed three feet away. I got a glimpse of brown and white fur, and then it was off again, racing through the woods and jumping over low shrubs and fallen logs.

  I ran after it at half speed, reluctant to end the chase too soon—who knew when I’d have another chance to hunt? But seconds later, a scream shattered the cold, quiet night with a sharp echo of pain and terror.

  A sudden spike of fear glued me to the forest floor. I knew that scream—that voice. Robyn. My roommate, and for the next three nights, my tent-mate.

  No!

  I turned and raced through the woods toward the campsite, my lungs burning, my heart trying to beat its way through my sternum. I had no plan, no thought beyond simply getting there, and only the vaguest understanding that if I burst into the camp in cat form, I’d scare her far worse than whatever had made her scream.

  But I’d gone only a few yards when a second scream split the night again, followed by two deeper, masculine shouts of fear and pain. What the hell was going on?

  I pushed myself harder, my brain racing now. Bear? There was no growling or roaring, and I hadn’t smelled anything even slightly ursine. Besides, black bears typically shy away from humans. As do bruins, though to my knowledge, no one had ever spotted a bear Shifter in the heart of the Appalachian Territory.

  So what the hell was happening?

  I flew through the forest, retracing my own path with no thought for the living buffet scurrying all around me this time. The screaming continued, terror from Robyn and Dani, sheer agony from their boyfriends. I’d seen a friend murdered once, and I recognized sounds I’d hoped never to hear again—my friends were being slaughtered.

  My clothes hung on branches ahead, but I raced past them. The screaming was louder now, but there were fewer voices—Mitch had gone silent. I was too late for Dani’s boyfriend, and before I’d gone another few yards, Olsen’s screaming ended in a horrible, inarticulate gurgle.

  My lungs burned and my legs ached—werecats are sprinters, not long-distance runners—but I pushed forward, demanding more from my body than I’d ever had reason to expect from it. This couldn’t be real!

  Robyn’s screams intensified with her boyfriend’s silence, then suddenly stopped, and for a moment, my heart refused to beat. Not Robyn . I couldn’t lose my roommate of more than a year. The girl who left her toothpaste open on the bathroom counter and made me hot chocolate in the middle of the night, when nightmares woke me up.

  Then in the sudden quiet, the forest produced a new voice, and my next steps were fueled by simultaneous terror and relief.

  “… mouth shut, bitch, or I’ll slice you wide open. Her too.”

  Robyn and Dani were alive—so far, anyway. But who the hell was with them?

  A few steps later, I cringed as the scent of blood rolled over the forest, overwhelming my senses and shredding my heart. The sheer volume was horrifying, and the thought of how much Mitch and Olsen must have lost made me sick to my stomach.

  I slowed as I approached the campsite, logic and caution finally catching up to the terror that had propelled my dash through the woods. I couldn’t help the guys, and I’d be no good to the girls if I burst into the clearing and got shot by some psycho backwoods hunter. So I snuck the last thirty feet or so, silent and virtually invisible in the dark, as only a werecat can be.

  The campfire flickered through a tangle of branches. I blinked, edging forward slowly, hidden by a thick, fat bush. I saw Olsen first, and had to swallow the traumatized whine trying to leak from my throat. He lay on his back in the clearing, his shadow twitching on the ground with every lick of the orange flames. His blue eyes were open; his mouth was slack. His coat was unzipped, his shirt completely drenched in blood, which now soaked into the ground beneath him. He’d been gutted.

  Mitch lay in the same position, a quarter of the way around the campfire, his face forever frozen in a grimace of agony. His stomach and chest had been sliced up the middle, but unlike Olsen’s, Mitch’s coat and shirt had been spread open, showcasing the full extent of the damage. So the girls would know the same thing could happen to them.

  Nausea rolled over me for the first time ever in cat form. I’d seen a lot of slaughtered deer—I’d even brought down a couple myself. But these weren’t deer. They were friends.

  My vision blurred until I couldn’t keep the bodies in focus, yet when I glanced away, my focus returned, as if my brain didn’t want to interpret the images of carnage my eyes were sending.

  I blinked and forced the image back into focus, determined not to punk out. If I couldn’t even look at the corpses, how could I hope to save Robyn and Dani?

  Maybe I couldn’t. I wasn’t a cop. I wasn’t even an enforcer. My summer training sessions with Faythe had included neither rescue missions nor hostage negotiation. But I had to try. I was all they had.

  My roommate and her best friend knelt on the ground on the other side of the fire, and watching them through the flames sent chills through me. Like I was already seeing them die. They cried and huddled together, alternately staring at their butchered boyfriends and cringing up at their captors.

  Three men stood between them and the campfire with their backs to me, each dressed in hunter’s camouflage. Two of them held hunting knives, still dripping blood onto the packed dirt. They were human, based on the scent, but every bit as monstrous as the cruelest Shifters I’d ever met. And one of them smelled vaguely familiar, though I couldn’t quite place his scent.

  I backed carefully away from the bush concealing me and began to circle the clearing slowly and silently. I needed to be within pouncing distance before I made my move.

  “Where is she?” the man in the middle demanded, and my heart actually skipped a beat. Did he mean me? Had they been watching us? Or had they simply seen five hiking packs and deduced an absence? Had they gone through my stuff to determine my gender?

  “Where’s who?” Robyn said through chattering teeth, loyal to a fault. She would keep me out of this, even if it cost her last breath. But I couldn’t let that happen. They were scared and defenseless against men with knives, and I remembered being scared and defenseless. I remembered way too well.…

  The man in the middle backhanded her, and Robyn fell over sideways, unable to right herself with her hands taped together in her lap. It took all
of my self-control to hold in the growl itching at the back of my throat as I rounded the halfway point of the clearing. Drawing attention to myself before I was ready to fight would only get us all killed. That was one of the first things Faythe had taught me.

  The tallest of the men hauled Robyn upright by one arm as I continued to circle silently, aching inside while she cried. “We know Abby was with you,” he said, and I froze in midstep. I recognized that voice. A few more feet, and my eyes confirmed what my ears already knew. Steve … something. He’d transferred into my psych class a week into the semester and had sat in the desk behind me ever since, trying to make conversation while I only nodded.

  What the hell was going on? Had he followed us?

  “Where’d she go?” the second man demanded, and I noticed as I edged along that the contents of both tents had been dumped in a pile about three feet from the campfire, including my sleeping bag and purse. Was this a robbery, or were they looking for me? Neither possibility made sense—college students don’t carry much cash, and I barely knew Steve and had never even met his accomplices.

  The third man stepped forward, silently threatening Robyn and Dani with the knife when no one answered. My blood boiled, even as fear spiked my veins with adrenaline demanding to be used.

  Robyn cringed, tears pouring down her cheeks. But Dani answered, staring at the blade now inches from her throat. “She went for a hike!”

  “In the dark?” Steve crossed bulky arms over a bulkier chest, the tip of his knife tapping against the waist of his thick camo pants.

  Dani shrugged, and I saw a spark of the stubborn defiance that made her fun to debate—and might soon get her killed. “She likes nature.”

  “And she took a flashlight,” Robyn added, shaking violently, either from the cold or from shock. “Please, you can have anything you want. My purse is over there.” She nodded toward the pile of supplies. “Just take it and let us go.”