Drawn

by David Alan Jones

  Rose stared in horrified fascination, her conscious thoughts momentarily subverted from the battle by sudden alarm bells going off in her head. No succubus moved like that without an inordinate number of votaries. Rose did, but only because the Pruett twins had transformed her into a comic book heroine. Lord did because he relied on the fear draw.

  “She’s one of them,” Rose breathed to the night. Melody was fear-drawn.

  Hands shaking, breath short in her chest, Rose raised her Kimber. “Melody!”

  Melody spun to face her, simultaneously stabbing back with her sword, catching an Order op in the gut. He dropped like a sack of wrenches. Melody smiled.

  “Why?” Rose asked in a voice only the drawn could hear.

  “Are you seriously asking me that in the middle of a war zone?”

  “Why, Melody?” Rose circled toward the few Dog Ears still attempting to lay down suppression fire against the Breathers’ line. She wanted to put herself between Melody and Matt, who still lay unconscious by the fountain.

  Melody moved with her, matching Rose step for step, sword raised. “It’s your fault I’m with them. You know that, right?”

  Rose stopped. “What?”

  “The night they took us—Mom, Dad, Troy—we tried to run, but you were drawing from us. We couldn’t move—we couldn’t fight.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “You didn’t care,” Melody hissed between clenched teeth. “They took us, and you never came. You never tried to find out what happened. Instead, you joined this scum.” Melody gestured at the Order ops with her bloodied sword.

  “I had no choice, Mel. I—”

  “I don’t care,” Melody said. “Save your excuses. What’s done is done.”

  “But you’re drawing from people through fear. Why?”

  Melody frowned, eyes narrowing to points of dark hatred. “So I can do this!”

  She leapt with such speed, the air boomed ahead of her. The sword flashed down, swinging in a supersonic arch.

  Though her heightened perceptions had warned Rose of the impending danger, she barely moved in time to evade the strike. Melody’s blade glanced off the Kimber, striking sparks.

  Melody rolled, righted herself, and spun to resume her attack, a manic growl parting her lips.

  Rose spared a glance for Lord, who had risen but seemed slow to get his bearings. The back of his head was dark with blood, and he appeared shaky.

  In the instant it took Rose to make this assessment, Melody had closed the distance between them. She screamed, striking out with the katana.

  Without conscious thought, Rose brought her Kimber up to meet the blade, catching it on the chamber side. Steel rang on steel as a jolt of impact-induced pain shot up Rose’s arm. Ignoring it, and the fear and horror trying to overwhelm her senses, she darted closer to Melody, stepping inside the blade’s reach. Pressing her free hand to Melody’s back, Rose drew her sister into an embrace, the .45 snugged against her solar plexus.

  The moment spooled out, time a lengthening tendril stretching into the past like hot taffy. Rose felt her finger tightening on the trigger, squeezing it toward the breaking point. This close on, even if the shot didn’t penetrate, it might well deal enough damage to knock Melody unconscious. Since she wouldn’t be able to heal, the damage could kill her. It would be like taking a hammer blow to the sternum for a regular person—as likely a death sentence as not.

  Rose hesitated. Lips brushing Melody’s ear, she whispered, “Stop. Please, Mel, stop this. Come home with me.”

  Melody tensed, her back gone rigid, spine straight. “I—”

  A wail split the night. It sent a prickling tingle of fear coursing from Rose’s hindbrain across her scalp. She gasped.

  Melody jerked in her arms, her body shaking. A little yelp escaped her lips.

  The gunfire, which had become nothing more than background noise to Rose, ceased. In the silence, the opposing sides crouched in their respective hiding spots, eyes darting, searching for the source of the phantom shriek.

  A door clicked open on one of the adobe buildings facing the square, and Mayor Glenda Rodriguez appeared. She looked shaken, her face pale, and yet she carried herself with dignity.

  “Where is Matt Snow?” she asked, her accent more pronounced than earlier—probably due to stress.

  “I’m here, Mayor.” Matt waved from the ground where he still lay.

  Relief flooded Rose. Though Matt looked weak, he was able to sit up.

  “I told you to go, si? Told you we be okay. No problemo with the policia Americana. But you no listen. You try to be heroes. Now you make me do the same for you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Matt grunted through obvious agony, having just awoken and not yet healed himself.

  Another wail reverberated through the village. Succubi on both sides screamed. A few put down their weapons to cover their ears. Rose could hear her faithful drones in the silence that followed.

  “You want to live, gringo?” The mayor, too, winced at the wailing but seemed less affected by it. “You get your people around the fountain and stay put. Don’t shoot unless you want to die.”

  When Matt hesitated, Mayor Rodriguez screamed, “Do it!”

  Gunfire erupted as if to punctuate the mayor’s words. Rose tensed, and the rest of the Dog Ears spun to face the road, but the bullets weren’t aimed at them. Muzzle flashes flared strobe-like in the dark. It looked as if the Breathers were attacking one another.

  “What the hell?” Rose whispered. She had released Melody, who stood beside her watching the firefight with equal awe.

  Matt rose to his feet, Rodriguez at Matt’s elbow, screaming something Rose couldn’t make out. When he came on the common channel, she could hear the little mayor yammering in the background.

  “This is Cure. All Ears rally at the fountain. Do not fire your weapons—safeties on if you’ve got them. Otherwise, blaze the earth. I want all muzzles down. Anyone fires a shot, they answer to me.”

  “Come with me, Melody.” Rose had meant it as a command, but it came out more a question.

  For the barest of an instant, Mel’s face softened. She started to say something but stopped. Her gaze flicked behind Rose.

  David Lord stood there. He held Rose’s knife in one bloodied hand.

  When Melody looked back, her eyes smoldered with hatred. “When the Indrawn Breath came, they didn’t even have to subdue Dad. The wranglers just picked us up and carried us out of the house like luggage. All because you sucked us dry.”

  “Mel, I was in danger. I had to draw from you.”

  Screams broke Rose’s concentration. These were not the banshee wails of a moment before, but the guttural calls of men and women dying in extreme pain.

  Moving with preternatural speed, Lord darted to Melody’s side. “We’re leaving.”

  “What’s going on?” Melody asked.

  “Slaughter.” With that, he took Melody’s hand and drew her away, the two of them running at top speed opposite the firefight.

  “Rose,” Matt said over the comm, “get over here.”

  Rose stared after her sister’s retreating form for a moment. She wanted to go after her but knew better. The Dog Ears needed her. She joined what remained of them at the village’s single fountain. Too many lay dead or dying on Guadalupe Victoria’s dusty streets.

  “Where’s Satterfield?” Matt asked as Rose took up position next to him.

  Rose shook her head, heart in her throat. “My sister—”

  “I’m here.” Satterfield pushed through the crowd to reach them, her weapons dangling from their tactical straps. Blood stained her tac vest below her throat, a deeper black in the darkness, but the wound looked healed.

  “Oh, thank God.” Rose hugged Satterfield without thinking. “I thought Melody killed you.”

  Her former squad leader stiffened, but then returned the embrace. “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know,” Rose said, drawing back. “Maybe Leslie got a
look. Have you seen her?”

  Satterfield shook her head as she searched the crowd. “I never saw her come down from the bell tower.”

  A bolt of panic coursed through Rose’s stomach. She keyed her throat mic for the shared channel. “Leslie, you read me?”

  No reply.

  Rose scanned the tower, drawing sight. No movement up there.

  “What’s wrong?” Matt asked.

  “I think Leslie’s still in the tower,” Rose said. “She might be hurt.”

  “You no want to go up there, hermana,” Rodriguez said.

  The sounds of gunfire and screaming had grown closer. Rose could see figures moving in starlight just outside the town. The Breathers were in retreat; only they weren’t heading away from the village, but toward it.

  “I’m going,” Rose said.

  “No.” Matt shook his head. “You need to stay with us.”

  “I cannot protect you up there,” Rodriguez said. “You stay near the fountain, you’ll be safe.”

  “I can’t leave her.” Rose drew speed, spun, and ran for the tower. Matt cursed but made no move to stop her. He knew Rose too well to bother.

  A wrought iron spiral staircase lined the bell tower’s interior. Rose surged up it three steps at a time, letting her votaries supercharge her senses.

  She smelled blood.

  A heavy wooden door, locked and probably barred from the inside, topped the stairs— standard operating procedure for an Order sniper. Rose kicked it in with one solid blow from her combat boot. It struck the wall so hard the oak wood split down the center.

  Rose dashed inside, heart thumping, dread filling her world.

  Leslie’s body lay in a heap under the tower’s single bell. The wooden planks beneath her, otherwise gray with age, ran black with blood. Her head rested several feet away in the dust.

  Shaking, crying, mind reeling with a storm of denial, anger, and guilt, Rose stumbled to the balcony’s edge and emptied her stomach on the cobbles below.

  Impossible. Leslie knew her job. She had locked the door. How had someone come up here to do this? They would have needed to climb the outside of the tower, but surely someone in the Dog Ears would have seen that.

  “Not,” Rose whispered to the stars, her head swimming in a whirlpool of horrified realization, “if someone distracted them.”

  Melody and Lord hadn’t come into the village without a purpose. Their target had been the sniper raining destruction on their forces. Lord’s attack had been the distraction.

  Rose turned to face the body, stomach roiling. “And Melody was the culprit.”

  “What do you see?” Matt asked over the comm.

  “She’s dead.” Rose stood where she could see him in the crowd below her. He turned to the bell tower.

  “I’m so sorry.” Matt sounded grim. “We’ll see to her, I promise. But right now, you need to get back down here. We need you.”

  Before Rose could respond, a squad of twenty Breathers backed into the village square from the road. They worked well as a team, laying down suppression fire without spraying it in confusion or fear, but Rose noted a hint of anxiety in the way they moved.

  “Ears, this is Cure,” Matt said on the common channel, “keep the fountain between you and the Breathers. Do not mix ranks.”

  The Order ops did as they were told, backing away from the retreating Breather force.

  For their part, the Breathers paid no attention to the Order. They were too focused on whatever was coming down the darkened street.

  Rose squinted into the distance, drawing every ounce of sight her eyes could handle. Her heart gave a kick.

  A dozen thin, lithe forms surged into the alleyway between the grocery store and the cantina. They looked human. Most were nude save for one or two who wore ragged pants, the legs torn, the cuffs frayed. The emaciated wraiths drove forward in orderly ranks, their pale skin glowing in the moonlight. Unlike succubi, who danced between bullets, these creatures soaked up the oncoming barrage, their chests and arms pock-marked with entry wounds that did not bleed but closed even as Rose watched.

  A babble of curses and exclamations broke out over the channel. Several of the Dog Ears raised their weapons, screaming about vampires.

  “Halt!” Matt said. “If you want to survive the next two minutes, you will stand down. Everyone. Those are not vampires. They’re wights. They do not think. They kill. Get in their way and you will die.”

  As if Matt’s words had been their cue, the wights suddenly broke ranks, dashing forward like a pack of runners sprinting for the finish line. They plowed into the Breathers’ ranks, limbs flailing, eyes gleaming, teeth gnashing.

  Rose cringed as she watched a wight sink its teeth into the neck of a fleeing Breather. The man’s screams morphed into a fluid-marred burbling as he struggled to flee, but the monster held on, bearing its victim to the ground.

  It was over in seconds. The Breathers beat a retreat, most zipping into the dark on draw-enhanced legs. Those who did not escape lay in haphazard rows all about the fountain.

  Their job done, the wights fell still, so much so they seemed to become statues—grisly scarecrows meant not to frighten away magpies but people.

  A figure strode into the village, his cowboy boots clicking with the precision of a metronome. Tall and pale, though not as pale as the wights, a shock of wavy black hair covered his head.

  Mayor Rodriguez, weaving her way between the now inert wights, approached the newcomer.

  They stopped in front of one another, and he bent to kiss both her cheeks in rapid succession.

  “Hola, Mama,” he said. “Who are all the gringos?”

  18

  My Enemy’s Enemy

  The night had grown cool in the thirty minutes since the vampire arrived. Rose and Matt huddled together, their fingers entwined; the remaining Dog Ears, a paltry sixteen of the thirty who had volunteered for this mission, surrounded them in a protective circle near the village fountain.

  Rose couldn’t seem to stop her hands from shaking. Matt squeezed, offering silent reassurance, but nothing could console her. Melody had killed Leslie. The thought kept swirling about Rose’s head, immune to her attempts at banishing it. The utter shock came again and again in waves as if she were discovering the crime afresh moment by moment.

  Rose clamped her jaw shut and shook her head. Matt had the right of it. She had to focus on the here and now. The Dog Ears, the Order in general, needed her. With an effort, she dragged her thoughts away from the gruesome scene in the bell tower and back to the present.

  The vampire had divested them of their weapons, which lay in a heap in front of the butcher’s shop. The townsfolk, having abandoned their hiding places to crowd the street, watched in silence, their eyes roaming again and again to the pile of firearms.

  Mayor Rodriguez, standing toe-to-toe with the vampire, spewed a torrent of Spanish in his face. Her hands danced as she spoke, gesturing often at Matt and the team.

  Draw Sergeant Torres stood near Matt, translating the diminutive mayor’s words in a low whisper. “…and I’m telling you, Clemente will want to speak with them. If you kill these Americans, he will rip out your liver. They may be stupid gringos, but they helped us when we needed it.”

  The vampire, whom the Mayor called Rubio, seemed unperturbed by the woman’s harangue. Like the wights, he stood unnaturally still, eyes half-lidded, watching her without a flicker of expression.

  Gradually, the mayor stopped yelling. A long moment passed during which Rubio remained as he was. Then he drew a slow breath, and replied, “Okay, Mama.”

  Rodriguez nodded. “Good. Should I tell them?”

  When Rubio made no reply, not even the barest of nods, the plump woman turned to Matt and his gathered team, a broad, disingenuous smile on her lips.

  “Good news,” she said in English. “You go to the hacienda; you meet Clemente. Okay?”

  Rose didn’t need a draw on perception to see the woman’s fear and nervousness. Rod
riguez’s accent had grown thicker, her expressions and gestures self-conscious and overacted. She kept rubbing her hands on her skirt as if brushing away something unclean. And the looks she gave Rubio—a troubled mix of anxious foreboding and what Rose took for defeated resignation—only added to Rose’s sense of unease.

  “Who is Clemente?” Matt kept a calm demeanor, but Rose could feel his trepidation radiating through his hands.

  “My husband.”

  “Couldn’t we just go?” Matt asked. “We accomplished our mission here, but we’ve taken heavy losses. I’d like to collect our dead and honor them.”

  Rubio turned his head Matt’s direction, his eyes two limpid pools of black. They did not reflect the moonlight. “No.”

  “We don’t want any trouble with the coven kingdoms,” Matt said slowly, evenly. “We came here—”

  The twelve wights, who hadn’t moved since routing the Breathers, stirred. Their collective gazes fell upon Matt. The skin between Rose’s shoulder blades prickled with gooseflesh, and her pulse raced.

  “Doesn’t matter why you came, gringo.” Though his expression remained flat, his voice monotone, Rubio exuded a palpable menace. “You’re on my father’s lands. You answer to him.”

  Matt started to speak, seemed to think better of it, and nodded.

  “What about our dead?” Rose whispered. Her throat threatened to close on the lump forming there. “Leslie’s in the tower. I won’t leave her here. She deserves a proper burial. Her family needs to know what happened to her.”

  “We take care of her,” Mayor Rodriguez said. “There is a morgue in Sabinas. I call them first thing. Promise.”

  “Thank you,” Matt said.

  “No. We can’t let strangers take her to some godforsaken little city in Mexico.” Rose’s cheeks burned with sudden anger as she turned to meet Matt’s eyes.