Instead, there was only silence for a few seconds, even though in the moment, it felt like the quiet lasted for a solid fucking hour.
“Kitty-Cat?” a man’s voice finally shouted through the window. “Is that really you?”
“Thanks, Sam,” Catherine whispered, “but like I said, I’ve got this one.”
I released her so she could turn around and face the cabin with a wave.
“Yeah, it’s me!” the long-legged girl called. “I know it’s been a while since you’ve seen me, but… well, don’t you think I’ve got my mom’s hair?”
A man’s face appeared in the window, disappeared again, and then reappeared a handful of seconds later, only this time he stood up fully in the window so we could actually see him. The man looked about twenty years older than us, but even though his neatly trimmed beard was all salt and pepper, he had a broad chest and looked easily as in shape as a man ten years younger than him.
“Who you got there with you?” the man demanded.
“Oh, this is Sam!” Catherine said. “He’s a--”
“I’m a friend of Catherine’s, from the city,” I said. “I’m her roommate’s boyfriend, actually.”
James might have stopped shooting at us for the moment, but I wasn’t about to tell him that I was a vamp or that I was anything to his niece other than a good friend.
“That’s a mighty big truck just for the two of you,” James said.
“It’s not just the two of us,” Catherine sighed. “There’s seven of us total, and we all escaped from New York like… fuck, was that yesterday?”
“Okay, I’m coming out,” Catherine’s uncle said. “You two just stay put for a second, alright?”
“We’ll be here,” I said.
When her uncle’s face disappeared from the window, I glanced at Catherine.
“Your uncle’s a little paranoid,” I said.
“Well, it is the end of the world,” the auburn-haired girl said. “Plus, my dad always said that Uncle James was a little on the paranoid, conspiracy theory side of things, anyway.”
“Sounds like someone else I know,” I said with a smirk.
“Hey, I can’t help that a lot of conspiracy theories are fucking true,” Catherine said. “Ugh, that was one of y things my dad always said that he hated about me.”
“He said what?” I growled at the thought that anyone would ever say anything that fucked-up to Catherine, let alone her own dad.
“Yeah,” Catherine sighed, “like whenever I got on some kind of conspiracy theory kick, or you know, just started to think differently from my dad, he always said that I was acting just like Uncle James, and he couldn’t fucking stand it.”
“I think I like your Uncle James better already,” I said.
Someone tapped on the inside of Rhino’s windshield, so I turned around to shake my head at Natalie. She clearly wanted to get out of the truck, along with the rest of the girls, but I wanted to make damn sure that it was safe before I let the others join us.
I could keep my eye on just Catherine to make sure that she was protected, but it would be more difficult if the five other girls came out of the truck, too. And just because James had stopped shooting at us, that didn’t completely mean that he was friendly yet, so first, I wanted to see what he did next.
A few seconds later, James opened the side door and strode toward us with a shotgun that rested against his shoulder. Even though I was braced for a possible attack, the moment that James saw his niece right in front of him, the gray-bearded man grinned and opened his arms.
“Kitty-Cat Catherine,” he said. “It really fucking is you, isn’t it?”
Catherine laughed and went to hug him, but as soon as she released him, she turned back toward me.
“That’s what Uncle James used to call me to make me feel better when my dad called me Cat,” the auburn-haired girl said. “I don’t know why I hated when my dad called me that, but I did, so Uncle James made it part of something else.”
“You called it your Wild West name,” James said with a smile. “Shit, I haven’t thought about that in… well, I guess it’s been a while.”
“It has been over a decade since I’ve seen you,” Catherine pointed out. “Your beard’s all gray now.”
“Don’t tell your father,” her uncle said. “He always told me that I’d be the first to go gray, and I hate that he was right.”
“Only because my dad dyes his beard,” Catherine snorted.
“Of course, he does,” James laughed, and then he looked at me. “Sorry, I know that I’m being a rude-ass. I just haven’t seen Catherine in a long time, so to see her now, with everything that’s going on…”
“It’s a lot,” I said with a nod. “I’m Sam.”
James shook my hand, but he didn’t give any sign that he thought I was anything but a regular human.
“How the hell did you two get all the way out here from New York?” James swore. “Oh shit, you said there were more of you, right?”
“Yeah, do you think we could maybe take this inside?” Catherine asked. “I know the girls would like to meet you, since we’ve talked about getting out here for… I don’t know, fucking weeks, I guess.”
“Of course, we can,” James said. “I’ve got drinks and food, if you’re hungry, and the plumbing still works.”
“How about your electricity?” I raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, I’ve got a backup generator for that, so it’s fine,” her uncle replied, “but I only use it when I have to, so it’ll last longer.”
“Fantastic,” I said with a grin. “Are you the only one living here?”
“At the moment,” James said, “but my door’s open to everybody in town, just so long as… well, you know. Just so long as they ain’t a vamp.”
“Fair enough,” I said, and I was glad that I’d fed on Catherine just a few hours ago, so there was plenty of blood in my system to make me seem like just another human.
That would definitely be an issue that I needed to address sooner rather than later, but since I had only just met the man, I figured that being dishonest was the best policy for now. Further explanations would just have to wait until a little bit later.
I knocked on Rhino’s front bumper, and when Natalie’s head poked up, I gestured for her to come out and join us. She hopped out the side door of the armored truck, but since James didn’t seem like a threat, she only had her pistol on her hip, and so did the other girls when they all piled out of the back and hurried over to meet us.
After I introduced James to all the girls, the gray-bearded man started to lead us toward the side door into his big cabin. Catherine followed right behind him, Natalie and Erika followed behind her, and then Brianna and Lily came after them, but Neko waited beside me.
“Sam,” the petite Japanese girl started, “do you think--”
“Um, hold on,” Lily said before Neko could finish her thought. “Catherine, how did you know it was him? You looked out the window, and suddenly you were like ‘oh, yeah, it’s definitely my uncle,’ but before that, you weren’t sure, and--”
“I saw the gnome,” Catherine said as she pointed toward a flower bed beside the cabin.
There weren’t any actual flowers in it, but there was a knee-high gnome painted to look like he was dressed in all furs, complete with a Davy Crockett-style coonskin hat on top.
“It’s the mascot of West Virginia University,” James explained. “It’s a mountaineer.”
“I picked it out for him the last time he came for Christmas,” Catherine said, “even though I just about came to blows with my dad over it.”
“And that’s exactly why I put it right where everybody could see it,” her uncle said with a smile. “You always were my favorite niece.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” Catherine said. “But enough reunion talk. Let’s get inside and talk about vamps!”
“Where do we even start?” James sighed, but then he led the way into the cabin.
The side
door led directly onto a stairway, so it gave me a second to look up and around before I followed the girls up the stairs. It also gave Neko a chance to pull me to the side and finish what she had wanted to say earlier.
“Are we really sure we can trust him?” the pink-haired Japanese girl whispered.
“Well, he’s definitely human, if that’s what you want to know,” I said. “I could smell his blood and hear it just pulsing inside his arteries.”
“That’s something,” Neko said with a nod, “but are we sure that he’s not gonna…”
“Gonna what?” I hissed as we climbed up the stairs.
“Offer us up like some kind of sacrifice to local vamps in the area so they stay away from him?” the petite Japanese girl guessed.
“I think you’ve watched too many movies,” I said, even though the thought had crossed my mind briefly, too. “But just in case, we’re armed, and I’ve got you as my backup, don’t I?”
“You do,” Neko said. “I’d like to see him try something on us.”
“I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I’d much prefer if he didn’t,” I snickered. “The rest of the girls could use a little bit of R and R.”
“I know.” Neko shrugged. “I can’t help that I’m skeptical.”
“That’s one of the things that I like about you the most,” I said, and then we stepped off the stairs into the main living room of the cabin.
It might have just looked like a regular hunting cabin from outside, but inside, this place was gorgeous. There weren’t any of the usual bucks’ heads on the wall as trophies, but instead, there was a chandelier in the middle of the room that had been made from antlers. A huge fireplace made of sanded gray stone stood on one wall, and on either side of it, there were long bookshelves carved from the same gray stone.
The kitchen behind the living room looked big enough for half a dozen people to comfortably cook in it at the same time, and there was a hallway on the other side of the kitchen that looked like it stretched on with a number of closed doors off of it. Three of the walls and the rafters along the ceiling in the living room all looked like they had been hand-carved from fallen trees, but the far wall was just a row of tall windows that looked out onto the valley and river below.
“Don’t worry,” James said as he gestured for us to all sit down on the leather couches. “The glass is bulletproof, in case the vamps decide to start using guns.”
“Damn, you really are as paranoid as Dad says,” Catherine said with a grin. “I assume you had that glass installed before we even knew that bloodsuckers were actually a real thing?”
“Yeah,” James said. “I wouldn’t say that this was a doomsday cabin or anything, at least not exactly, but I just kinda like to be prepared for shit, so… well, I guess it came in handy, didn’t it?”
“So, do you open fire on anybody who turns up in your driveway?” Neko asked as she perched on the arm of one of the leather couches.
“Neko!” Brianna hissed. “That’s super rude!”
“No, that’s a valid question,” James said. “It’s just that there’s been some, uh, incidents lately, and when I saw an armored truck in my driveway, I thought… but we can get to all that later. Let’s talk about your girls. And you, Sam. How the hell did you get out of New York? And how bad was it there? And where are you headed?”
I glanced at Neko as I sat down on the couch beside her, but I didn’t say anything. James might have a perfectly good reason why he dodged the Japanese girl’s question, and so far, he hadn’t given me any reason not to trust him.
Other than the initial fire of bullets, anyway.
As Catherine began to tell her uncle everything that happened, minus all the parts about how I was a vampire, the other girls seemed to quickly pick up on the fact that I didn’t want James to know that I was a vampire, at least not yet. So while they talked about New York, I nodded at Natalie on the couch opposite from me, just to tell her to keep an eye on things, and I excused myself to the bathroom.
Really, I just wanted a chance to look around the back hallway of the cabin, while James was distracted by his niece.
But even though I poked my head into every closed room that I passed, I didn’t find anything unusual or out of the ordinary, and there certainly wasn’t anything that made me suspicious of James in any way. There was a security room with a few screens that showed different angles from cameras placed outside the cabin, another room had a bunch of guns inside, the bedrooms looked totally normal, and the only unusual thing about the bathrooms were that they were so goddamn clean.
Maybe we could actually stay here for a night or two before we continued to head out west.
Before I had been gone for a suspiciously long time, I headed back to the living room, but I paused for just a minute in the hallway so I could hear what they were talking about first.
“I am sorry about the phone thing,” James said. “I thought about keeping my phone on a little longer, since I figured they’d all go out sooner or later, but I decided it wasn’t worth the risk.”
“So you turned your phone off early?” I asked as I then strode back into the room and returned to my seat beside Neko. “Before the actual signal went out?”
“Yeah, I know it was kinda paranoid,” the gray-bearded man replied, “but I didn’t want the vamps to be able to track me down, especially not when everything first started, and we barely knew what was going on.”
“Well, it would have definitely made things easier if we’d been able to call you,” Catherine said, “but I understand your paranoia, so it’s okay.”
“Still, I would have kept it on if I’d known that my niece wanted to call me,” James said. “I just thought your dad would be the only one to call.”
“He did try,” the auburn-haired girl said.
“I’m surprised,” James said and then rolled his eyes. “I kinda thought he would want the vamps to kill me right off the bat.”
“Oh, come on, he doesn’t hate you that much,” Catherine laughed.
“Maybe not,” the gray-bearded man said with a shrug. “Still, I notice that he didn’t come to New York to try to get you himself.”
“And leave the safety of his ranch?” Catherine asked. “Not a chance.”
“How long has it been since you two have seen each other?” Neko asked.
“You came out to Colorado for Christmas a long time ago,” Catherine said. “That’s the last time I remember, and that’s been…”
“Twelve years?” James guessed. “Thirteen? Something like that.”
“Damn,” Natalie said. “That’s a long time.”
“I hate that this is what brought us back together, but it sure is good to see you again, Kitty-Cat,” Catherine’s uncle said.
“Psh, I’m just glad that Sam was able to get us out of the city,” the auburn-haired girl replied. “We wouldn’t have made it without him.”
“Were you in the military or something?” James asked.
“No, not quite,” I said. “I guess I’ve just been really lucky. We all have, and I don’t think any of us would have made it out of the city without each other.”
“Well, it’s good to have you here,” James said. “Stay as long as you want to, since I’m sure you’re all fucking tired as hell.”
“You’re not wrong about that,” Lily said.
“Are you the only human left around here?” I asked.
“What?” James scratched his beard. “Oh, no! Not at all. Most of the town’s still human.”
“And by town, you mean Red House, right?” Natalie asked.
“And by most, you mean…” Erika trailed off.
“Red House, yeah,” James said, “and anybody who turned into a vamp got, uh… eliminated pretty early on.”
“You mean you killed them?” Brianna whispered.
“We didn’t have much of a choice,” the gray-bearded man replied, as his face took on a grim expression.
“So did most of the town just not get the vaccine,
or what?” Catherine asked. “How did you all manage to avoid that?”
“The vaccine?” James repeated. “What do you mean?”
Catherine quickly explained our theory about how the airborne AIDS vaccine caused people to turn into bloodsuckers, but James didn’t even blink. He just nodded right along and then whistled when she finished.
“Yep, that all makes sense,” her uncle said. “I know some people might think that sounds crazy, but I never did trust when the government pushed for something so hard. I heard they never even completed trials for that vaccine, and the trials that they did finish weren’t ever published.”
“Then how did it get approved in the first place?” Brianna demanded.
“Oh, somebody kissed somebody else’s ass up in Washington, just like always,” James said. “At least, that’s what I figure.”
“So I guess you didn’t get the vaccine?” Catherine asked. “And neither did most of the people in Red House?”
“Yeah, but we also didn’t really have the option,” James said with a shrug. “Rural West Virginia ain’t like the rest of the country, you know.”
“How so?” Natalie asked.
“It’s just that our access to shit’s still pretty limited out here,” the gray-bearded man said, “so Red House hadn’t even gotten a delivery of the vaccine yet.”
“How is that possible?” Brianna asked.
“It takes everything a little longer to get out here,” Catherine’s uncle said, “and it hasn’t really been that long since the vaccine first came out.”
“Yeah, we’re on like apocalypse time,” Lily said, “so it feels like it’s been months since everything first started to happen.”
“And really, it’s just been weeks,” Erika said. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“So if Red House didn’t even have vaccines yet, then how did anybody in the town turn?” I asked.
“Some of them went to bigger cities to get it, so they didn’t have to wait for it to come out here,” James said.
“And then when they came back, they were all… vampy?” Catherine asked.
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 12
