“It already looked like this?” I guessed.
“Yeah,” James said. “We couldn’t find anybody, other than a couple bodies, anyway, so we just kind of assumed that they all either turned or got eaten, maybe dragged off somewhere else and got killed.”
“I’m sorry,” Natalie said. “That must have been hard.”
“It’s all been hard,” James said with a shrug, “but that’s kind of the way it goes, I reckon. We’re mountain people, though, so it takes more than a couple of dead bodies to make us call it quits.”
“That certainly explains why everybody in Red House has stayed in their own homes and haven’t tried to run or anything,” I said.
“Yeah, I did tell everybody that they were welcome to come bunk with me, since I’ve got such a big place,” James said, “but people just wanted to stay where they were, just to stay where everything is familiar, you know?”
That might have to change, if we really wanted to fortify the town long enough to take care of the vamp problem downriver, but I figured that I would save that announcement for later.
Shortly after we passed through Hometown, James veered left onto a dirt road that quickly started to get steeper, as it wound its way up the side of the mountain. When the dirt road finally turned into just a narrow trail of leaves up ahead, James made a tight turn so that the Jeep pointed back down the mountain, and then he put the parking brake on to keep it securely in place until we got back.
“Do we need the map, or do you know the way from here?” I asked.
“I’m alright,” James said. “We just go southeast until we hit the first creek, cross over the little log bridge, and then keep going until we get to the bigger creek. That’ll lead us right down to Black Betsy.”
“Perfect,” I said.
“Oh, and one more thing,” James said. “I know we need to be quiet because of all the bloodsuckers and everything, but uh… we should also be quiet while we’re in the woods. There’s a lot of damn wildlife up here, and it ain’t all friendly.”
“Got it,” Natalie said.
“Nat was born for this,” I said with a grin. “But no guns unless it’s an emergency, since I definitely don’t want to advertise our location to the vamps downriver.”
“Right, this is for just in case,” James said as he patted his own 9mm at his hip. “It’ll be a bit of a rough hike, so let’s get going.”
As soon as we stepped out of the Jeep, everything was dead quiet. There were all the usual sounds of wildlife in the forest, from the chirp of birds to what sounded like screams of foxes or maybe wildcats, but other than the rustle of leaves in the wind, there were no other noises.
It had been a long time since I’d been outside the city like this, and I found the silence both unsettling but also strangely comforting. For one thing, it was fucking nice not to hear human screams like we had heard constantly back in Brooklyn Heights, and it was also nice not to hear the snarls of vamps as they hunted down their prey.
I knew that would change when we got closer to our target, but for the moment, I let myself enjoy the quiet.
As James started to lead us over the mountain and through the woods, he moved quickly over the rough terrain. There was no path through the trees, but that didn’t seem to slow him down at all, and I was glad that he was with us to help us navigate through the wilds of West Virginia.
The narrow log bridge was exactly where he had said it would be, so after we crossed the first creek, we just kept going. The ground started to incline again, but James picked out the easiest path for us, so by the time we reached the other side of the slope, we weren’t worn out.
Of course, it would have taken a hell of a lot more than just a trek through the woods to wear me out, especially with all the new blood in my system. Still, I figured that it was probably better to spend less energy now, just so we would be prepared for whatever the fuck waited for us up ahead.
When we reached the second creek, we turned and followed it toward Black Betsy, but we moved slower now so I could pause every few minutes and see if I smelled or heard anything that we needed to be worried about. But eventually, after we had been in the woods for an hour or two, we got to a small overhang off the side of the mountain that looked down onto the town.
Black Betsy looked like the identical twin of Red House.
“Is there any other part of the town that I should see?” I whispered.
“No, this is about it,” he replied.
Farmhouses and barns were scattered up and down the narrow road in front of us, the river was straight ahead of us right beside the railroad tracks, and there were only a few buildings that looked like actual businesses. There were a few small stores, a post office, and a couple churches, but when I looked to my left further down the road, I finally saw what I was looking for.
The building down the road looked like it might have once been a school, except for the fact that it had tarps over a few holes in the roof and that some of the windows were boarded up with plywood. But the state of the building itself wasn’t what interested me.
Instead, it was the fact that there were two minivans, a service van, and two big-ass Jeeps all parked out in front of the old schoolhouse, and in between all of the vehicles, there were a shit-ton of bloodsuckers.
“How many can you count?” Natalie hissed.
“At least… twenty,” I said, “but that’s just the ones who are standing around in the parking lot.”
“What are they doing in front of the old schoolhouse?” James whispered.
“I think that must be where they’re keeping their human prisoners,” I said as I looked again at the boarded-up windows.
In fact, there was no way in or out of the building that I could see, other than the front door, and there were two additional vamps who stood guard there.
“Okay, so it’s bad,” Natalie said, “but it’s manageable, right?”
“Twenty-something vamps doesn’t seem too crazy after what I saw you do to those bloodsuckers yesterday,” James said. “What do you think?”
“I feel like there’s something that we’re missing,” I said and then just continued to scan the area. “That vamp yesterday said that this fiefdom of Thad or whoever--”
“Thaddeus,” Natalie said.
“Right, she said that they had over fifty bloodsuckers,” I said, “and I don’t think that she would have just made that up to scare us.”
“Maybe they’re just not all at the school,” James said.
“I’m sure, but I’d still like to figure out where exactly they are,” I said. “I’d like the most accurate headcount that I can get before we can make any real plans.”
We moved a little further south along the bluff that overlooked the town so I could get a slightly better angle at the schoolhouse, but I still couldn’t see as much as I wanted to. I wanted to know how many humans they had inside, plus how many other vamps there were that I just couldn’t see at the moment.
Basically, I needed to get closer.
“Okay,” I said and then took a deep breath, “I’m going in.”
“The fuck you are!” Natalie hissed. “What do you mean?”
“I won’t let them see me,” I explained, “and since I’m not human, they shouldn’t really be able to smell me, either.”
“How are you gonna get to the other side of the road?” James asked.
“I’ll wait for the right moment,” I said, “and then I’ll be very, very fast.”
The railroad ran along right behind the schoolhouse, so I figured that I could either hop in one of the railcars and try to get a better look from there, or I could break into the house beside the school and look down from one of its windows. Either way, if I was going to know my enemies well enough to defeat them, then I really needed to get a better close-up.
“Please be careful, Sam,” Natalie said. “We’ll be right here to back you up, but… it’s just really far, so I don’t know how much good we’ll be able to do from up here
.”
“I’ll be okay,” I said. “Just don’t move, and don’t make any noises until I get back.”
James nodded and pretended to zip his lips shut, Natalie gave me a quick kiss, and then I started to make my way down the bluff as carefully as I could.
This was a crazy idea, but it was also a little crazy that we had chosen to stay in Red House when we knew that all these vamps were just to the south of it. I had my slugger, my shotgun, and my pistol, plus I had the fact that the overhead sun would be directly in the vamps’ eyes if they tried to look in my direction.
When I reached the ditch by the narrow road, I looked back down at the schoolhouse, waited until all the vamps had their eyes turned in another direction, and then sprinted across the road faster than I had ever moved before. I didn’t even think it took me a full second to get to the other side, but then I just kept going until I hurdled over the railroad tracks and landed in the ditch on the other side.
I held my breath when I got there, but there was no sign that anyone had heard or seen me, so I picked myself up and started to move along behind the abandoned train on the tracks. It hid my movements from the houses on the other side of the tracks, so I made quick progress until I had almost reached the schoolhouse.
I pulled myself up into one of the empty railcars, but it didn’t have a good enough view of the school, so I hopped into the next one and then peered out through a narrow slat in the side of the car. It gave me a good angle of the side and back of the school, but it also allowed me to see the parking lot at the front, along with almost all of the vamps and vehicles there.
And most importantly, it let me see the back entrance of the school. There were guards posted at the back door, too, but as I watched, the door opened to let five vamps come outside, and every one of them had fresh blood smeared on their mouths like they had just fed.
“How’s the new crop?” one of the guards laughed.
“Fucking delicious,” one of the vamps with a bloodstained mouth replied. “I just wish we’d been able to try some of what Red House had to offer.”
“Don’t mention those fucking bastards,” another bloodsucker said. “Even though I sure as hell would like to know how they killed all our people.”
“We don’t know for sure that they’re dead,” someone else said.
“Uh, why the fuck else wouldn’t they come back?” the other bloodsucker replied. “Something obviously happened to them, and it obviously wasn’t good.”
“It’s alright,” one of the guards sighed. “Red House will get what’s coming to them soon enough, and in the meantime, it’s not like we don’t have plenty of food to go around.”
“Very true,” one of the bloodstained vamps said. “We’ve got about two humans per vamp now, don’t we?”
“Well, we would if Thaddeus didn’t save two dozen just for himself,” one of the guards snorted. “Shit, don’t tell him I said that.”
“What, you don’t think our fearless leader would appreciate a comment like that?” another bloodsucker laughed.
“Hey, I didn’t mean it,” the guard replied. “He just always saves the best ones for himself, that’s all, but he’s our leader, so he’s allowed to do whatever he wants, and that still leaves plenty for us.”
“It might not be two bloodbags per vamp, but it’s just about one and a… shit, math’s hard, man,” another bloodsucker chuckled. “What, like one and a half?”
“You’re asking the wrong person,” the guard said with a shrug. “All I know is that we’ve got like a hundred people in there, minus the ones that are just for Thaddeus, so if you want to figure the math out from there, be my guest.”
I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to run back to Natalie and James, but I wanted to stay as long as possible to see if they gave me any more clues. Things were definitely worse than I had initially thought, but I still wanted to have as many facts as I could before I rejoined the others.
But if Thaddeus already knew that the more humans he hoarded for himself meant he would get more powerful than every other vamp, then we were really in trouble. It sounded like he had about twenty-five humans just for himself, so he must already be strong as hell. Not to mention the fact that based on what these vamps had just said, there were about fifty of them, plus seventy-five human prisoners and then an additional twenty-five-ish that were just for Thaddeus.
Before the vamps at the back door of the schoolhouse could say anything else, I saw an unmarked van pull up into the front parking lot and screech to a halt. It had come from the south end of town, so it wasn’t from the direction of Red House, but I still felt a knot form inside my stomach as the doors of the van flung open.
“Shit, I think we’re about to have to run some new numbers,” one of the vamps at the back of the school said with a bloodstained grin. “It sounds like the crew from Poca is finally back!”
They all whooped like a bunch of frat boys and hurried toward the front of the schoolhouse, except for the two guards, who stayed in place at the back door. As the vamps from the back joined the crowd of others in front of the school, six new bloodsuckers jumped out of the van.
“We’ve got fresh meat, boys!” one of the vamps called out.
As soon as the bloodsuckers hit the ground, they wrestled five humans out of the unmarked van and pushed them toward the front of the schoolhouse.
Chapter 13
This was bad.
As far as I could tell, there were around fifty bloodsuckers, plus their leader Thaddeus, and that was way more than any of us could take on at the moment. As I watched them shove the new human prisoners toward the front of the schoolhouse until they disappeared from view, I felt bad for the humans, but I knew there was nothing that I could do about it.
At least not yet.
The fanged fuckers might not kill them right away, so I just hoped they might all be able to survive until we could figure out a plan. The thought of so many captive humans inside the schoolhouse made my skin crawl, but as much as I wanted to help them, now was not the time.
In fact, it would be a small miracle if I managed to sneak back out of the railcar, across the road, and back up into the trees before any of these assholes spotted me. I could do it, but I needed to be even faster than I was earlier.
After all, it would have been one thing if they had seen me or tried to chase me when I was on my way to the abandoned train. I could have led them on a little chase and run all around town, but eventually, I probably could have lost them in the woods… theoretically, anyway. But if they saw me run back up the bluff into the woods, then I would lead them right to Natalie and James, and since they didn’t have my speed, the vamps would catch up to them in a heartbeat.
I was just glad that Natalie was so patient. She was probably about to lose her mind with worry because I’d been gone for so long, but since there had been no signs of commotion other than the unmarked van that had just arrived, she would assume that everything was okay, and so she would just wait until she saw me or until I gave her some kind of signal.
As for myself, I just slowly breathed in and out to try to steady myself as I watched the vamps around the schoolhouse through the narrow opening in the side of the railcar. The two guards were still posted at the back door, but none of the other bloodsuckers moved to rejoin them.
Instead, they almost all went into the schoolhouse right behind the prisoners, and I imagined that they all wanted a sample of the new blood. Of course, that also meant that the big boss vamp himself might show up soon, and if Thaddeus was as powerful as he sounded, then I really fucking needed to get out of here.
I already knew how the blood of my women made me feel, just like I knew that other people’s blood would make me feel differently or would even give me different abilities. With my girls’ blood, I could stay focused and calm, feel powerful, and I was even able to see a good mile away, so there was no telling what Thaddeus would be able to do with the blood of all these human prisoners.
I was de
finitely going to have to feed from more of the townspeople in Red House if we were going to take down the vamps in Black Betsy.
But none of that would be worth shit if I didn’t slip out of town before all these bloodsuckers noticed me, so when no one else seemed like they were headed toward the back of the schoolhouse, I moved quietly back across the railcar and hopped to the ground.
My boots barely crunched against the gravel, but I still held myself completely still for a few seconds, just to make sure that no one moved toward me from the back of the schoolhouse. When everything stayed quiet, I picked up a small rock and pitched it over the top of the railcar. It sailed through the air at just the right angle, so when it came back to the earth, it landed along the side of the schoolhouse.
“Did you hear something, man?” one of the vamp guards asked.
I didn’t wait to hear the other guard’s reply. Instead, I raced along the back side of the train to get away from the schoolhouse and the dozens of vamps inside. I let each of my strides be even longer than the one before, so I damn near flew over the top of the gravel until I reached the end of the train.
I paused here just long enough to poke my head around the corner, but when it seemed safe enough to cross the road again, I sprinted forward, dashed across the road, and then propelled myself up the steep bluff with a single powerful jump. As soon as I rolled into the underbrush at the top of the bluff, I twisted back around and looked out over the road, but there was no sign that I had been spotted or followed.
“Sam!” Natalie hissed from about half a dozen yards away from me.
I held up my hand for her to wait, and after another half a minute went by in silence, I crawled toward my girlfriend and James as quickly as I could through the thick undergrowth at the edge of the woods.
“You moved so fast that we barely even saw you,” Natalie whispered. “Did you see that van that pulled up a few minutes ago?”
Vampire Lord | Book 5 | Vampire Lord 5: Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth Page 19
