Rose sat back in her seat, the enormity of their loss hitting her for the first time. She hadn’t been privy to the number of Order recruits before the raid, but just counting the ones she had seen in training, that number had been in the hundreds. Now the Breathers had most of them.
“What about all the slinkers who didn’t join teams?” she asked. “How many of them are there?”
“Five or six hundred maybe, but most of them are monodraws, and weak ones at that. I’ll put out a call for them, but how many do you think will answer? They’re back to their slinker ways.”
“We can find them,” Rose said. “The microchips—”
“They don’t stay chipped,” Matt said. “It’s easy to remove those things.”
“They don’t stay chipped,” Rose repeated, disgusted by her short-lived excitement. Of course, they didn’t. These were people like her. “What are we going to do?”
“Clemente paid me a visit when you were interviewing Melody,” Matt said.
“What for?”
“He wasn’t a very old vampire,” Matt said. “Not compared to the ancient ones down in South America. He didn’t have much sway with them. He was despondent over not being able to help you.”
Rose wondered if she might feel some pity for the creature at hearing this.
Nope.
“So?” she said.
“So, he gave me a contact—an American one.”
“Another goddamned vampire?”
Matt nodded.
“Hell no. We tried that already. I don’t care if they’re our cousins, they’re monsters. We can find help someplace else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t Robin have any more contacts? Someone opposed to the Breathers?”
“Sure. But she didn’t have fifty someones. Rose, we need help. Lots of it. We can’t guarantee we’re going to keep the people we’ve got. I want to find the fear factory and take down the Breathers. But we don’t have the numbers for that. Not alone. We need help, or else we might as well disband the Order and hide.”
Admitting he was right set Rose’s teeth on edge. She thought of Leslie, who had died fighting the Indrawn Breath, of Melody whom she found frustratingly gruesome and pitiable by turns. Whatever lives the two of them might have otherwise had, those paths were gone now, consumed by the machinations of power-hungry men inside the Indrawn Breath.
“How are you supposed to contact this vampire?” Rose asked.
“Clemente gave me a phone number.”
24
The Envoy
Three days passed, during which eight of the Dog Ears fled. No one faulted them for it, least of all Rose.
The remaining team met up with a gaunt and haunted-looking Gunny Lipe at a Motel Eight in Arkansas a few miles west of Memphis. His crew had likewise dwindled from twenty down to just six people willing to continue the fight. Rose had looked for Moss among them, but he too had fled.
“Stayed with us the first two days.” Gunny Lipe, sitting in a chintzy motel chair, sounded surprisingly sympathetic when Rose asked after Moss. “I thought he might stick it out. He wanted revenge that first day. But once the anger passed, the poor kid deflated. He took off last night without a word. I wasn’t going to stop him.”
The gunny’s wife and daughter had gone missing. His son, away at college in Michigan, had called to say he was fine. Lipe ordered him to abandon school to hide with friends in Oregon.
“For all the good it will do,” Lipe had said when he told Rose about it. “The boy’s near as stubborn as you, Carver.”
Lipe had no delusions about his wife and daughter. He knew Lord would take great pleasure in secreting them away in the fear factory. The old gunny’s eyes burned with hatred whenever he spoke of the man. Given the situation, it was a foregone conclusion that he would favor enlisting whatever help they could get, even if it meant siding with vampires against their own.
Lacking a better plan, Rose resigned herself to the group’s consensus, but she insisted on being the one to make the call. To her surprise, Lipe and Matt agreed. She didn’t know what she would be able to discern over the phone. Perhaps the vampire’s voice would give her some clue as to its motivations. But that hope turned to ash the instant someone picked up on the other end.
“Hello?” said a spritely female voice with a thick southern drawl.
“Umm, hi. I’m calling to speak with Piper Ross. Is she available?”
“Sorry, Mama’s out getting her hair done. Who is this?”
Rose quirked an eyebrow. The girl on the other end sounded maybe seventeen. An innocent, happy seventeen. One completely unassociated with vampires.
“I think I may have dialed a wrong number,” Rose said.
“Not if you were trying to reach Piper Ross. There’s only one of her in Denver, South Carolina. Are you a vampire?”
Rose rocked back in her cheap hotel room chair.
Matt lifted his eyebrows.
“Ah, no, I’m a succubus.”
“Oh! That’s awesome. Mama’s told us about you. What’s your name? Are you coming to see us? I’ve always wanted to meet a succubus. Mama says we’re pretty much the same thing. Of course, I’m probably not telling you anything you don’t—”
Rose had started to speak three times during the girl’s chatter, and finally settled on blurting, “My name’s Rose Carver and—”
“Oh. My. God! You mean like from the graphic novel, Rose Carver?”
“Uh.” Rose considered lying. She hadn’t expected a Drawn fan to answer the phone; she didn’t have time for this. But the girl’s genuine enthusiasm dashed that idea. “Yes. I’m that Rose Carver.”
Gunny Lipe and Matt gave her knowing smiles. Rose shrugged helplessly.
“My name’s Grace. It’s so cool to meet you! I mean, not meet you, ‘cause we’re just on the phone, but I’ve read every issue of Drawn! I’m even on the top tier Patreon, the one the Pruett twins call Drawn Cron—I had to look up what cron meant, it’s like some programming term for making things happen on a schedule, I—”
“We need Piper’s help!” Rose felt bad for interrupting, but Grace’s verbal onslaught showed no signs of slowing.
“Oh! You should have led with that. Buried the lead there. Well, I’m Piper’s youngest daughter. I can’t speak for her, but I think she’s going to say yes. You sound nice. And Mama’s always going on about how our kind have got to stick together, and I think that includes a succubus. What sort of help do you need?”
Rose had to laugh. This girl—could Grace be a vampire? If so, she certainly didn’t act like the sort Rose had met in Mexico—exuded hyperactivity. It was infectious.
Whatever discernment Rose had tried to garner wasn’t coming, not the drawn variety anyway. But her natural discernment told her Grace was genuine.
“I’d rather discuss that with Piper if that’s okay.”
“Sure, that’s fine. Should I have her call you back at this number?”
“That’d be great,” Rose said, smiling.
“Okay. I’ll call her right now. She’ll probably get back to you quick, I bet. It was nice talking to you, Rose. I think we’re going to be friends!”
Gravel crunched under the van’s tires. The sun had lately dropped below the horizon, leaving behind a bruised swirl of purple clouds and the barest twinkling of stars. The blue LCD clock on the dash read 8:35.
“How much farther, you think?” Rose asked. They had turned off South Carolina Highway 76 to follow a long, winding country road several miles into the falling darkness, only to leave even that small paved road behind for dirt.
Matt shrugged. “GPS doesn’t even show this road on the map.”
“Why can’t vampires live in nice, cozy suburbs like regular folks?” Watts asked from the backseat.
No one laughed.
Rose sat rigidly, one hand gripping the door handle. “If we don’t find something in the next minute or so, I say turn around,”
“You
think we’re being set up?” Matt asked.
Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. I feel—”
“—wigged out,” Satterfield supplied. She sat beside Watts on the center bench, watching the unkempt weeds and fallow fields slide by with avid, roaming eyes.
Rose gave her a nod. Though the two of them might never be friends, Rose appreciated her former squad leader’s loyalty. In the days since the fall of Camp Den, many of the Order’s most stalwart supporters had slipped away from their ranks. Not Satterfield. She was a fighter. She was loyal. She knew a good cause when she saw it.
The track curved right, meandering away from gray farmland and into a thicket of oaks and pines that closed over the van like greedy fingers.
“I don’t like this.” Rose wished they had brought Hanks along. But Matt had argued against that idea. She and Lipe were needed for protection back at the hotel with the rest of the Order. If Society somehow found the team, the only option would be to run. Lipe and Hanks represented their best chance at escape.
“I’m turning around.” Matt pulled the van to one side of the dirt track and had just begun a K-turn when headlights burst to life ahead of them. Rose let out a little yelp despite herself.
Figures moved in the twin beams. Even with drawn sight, Rose had a hard time numbering them. Twenty? More maybe. They milled about, never standing still.
“Wights,” Matt said.
“Do we run?” Satterfield asked, leaning forward for a better view.
“No point,” Rose said. “You saw what these things did in Mexico. They’re too fast, and there’s too many of them.”
A man-shaped shadow detached itself from the wights. Rose could see nothing of his face with the headlights behind him. He made a beckoning motion. “It’s okay, y’all. We won’t hurt ya. Come out and say hi.”
Rose looked at Matt.
He shrugged. “Let’s see what he has to say.”
Shielding her eyes, Rose drew speed and strength, dexterity and discernment, hearing and sight as she climbed from the van. A cloud of vampire stink assaulted her nose, cloying with its odd sweetness and undertone of fetid animal odor.
The vampire who had spoken glanced over one shoulder. “Stevie, shut the lights off, we’re blinding ‘em.”
One of the wights, a gaunt man dressed in a faded Guns N Roses t-shirt and jeans with no shoes, stuck his head inside an old U-Haul truck, fumbled for a second, and switched the lights off.
“Sorry ‘bout that.” The vampire looked maybe twenty in the darkness. Tall and lean, his pale skin contrasted sharply with the shock of unruly black hair on his head. “Name’s Triston Presley, but everybody just calls me Press.” He stuck out his hand to Watts, who had put himself between the vampires and the succubi.
The wights went still. All at once their shuffling ceased, and twenty-two pairs of red eyes zeroed in on Press’s raised hand.
Watts, who had been about to shake, froze, hand half raised.
“Will y’all stop that?” Press said, looking back at the wights. “I’m fine.” To Watts, he said, “Don’t mind them, they think there’s gonna be trouble, but there ain’t, is there?”
Watts threw a glance at Matt, who shook his head, then took Press’s hand. “Nope. No trouble at all.”
Press smiled with such pure, little boy earnest that Rose nearly forgot the young man before her was a vampire. For all she knew, he was a thousand years old. But looking at his wide-eyed enthusiasm, his seemingly genuine need to gain Watts’s approval, softened her resolve.
The vampire pumped Watts’s hand vigorously, then did the same with Matt and Rose. “So glad to meet y’all. Really,” he said. When he reached Satterfield, he paused and sucked in a breath before proffering his hand. “Really,” he said again, “it’s a pleasure. You must be Ms. Carver?”
“No. My name’s Valerie.”
“Oh, well, it’s still a pleasure,” Press said again, raising Satterfield’s hand as if he meant to kiss it.
One of the wights, a tall female, her silver hair spilling down her back like a mane, grunted a word that might have been Press’s name or merely a belch. Either way, Press stopped, gave a little shake, and released Satterfield’s hand. “Shoot, y’all ain’t here to see me,” he said.
Was he blushing? Even in the weak starlight, she thought she saw a telltale flush creeping up his pallid neck.
Press backed away a few steps. He suddenly didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, so he jammed them into his pockets. Still backpedaling, he said, “Climb back in your van and follow us. I’ll take y’all up to the house.”
“Hold up,” Matt said. “Where exactly are you taking us? Where’s Piper Ross?”
“Mama’s up at the house. That’s where I’m taking you. No need to be suspicious. I ain’t lying, I promise.”
Press said this with such earnestness Rose nearly laughed. She knew vampires shared the ability to charm with their succubus cousins. They might even be better at it overall. But she felt no mind-bending delusions coming off the slim vamp—just nervousness.
Matt made no move toward the van. “This feels like a trap.”
Press nodded. “I can see how you might think that. Mama said as much. She said if you needed some convincing that I should tell you that she’s the vampire queen of South Carolina. If she wanted you dead, you would have been the minute you crossed the state line. But she ain’t got no hard feelings toward you. In fact, she wants to help you if she can. So, she’s betting y’all are gonna come up and speak to her, and she guarantees nobody will get hurt when you do. She said that’ll probably get you guys moving.”
Matt stood silent for a long minute. He shared a look with Rose and the others. Then he turned back to Press, quirked his half grin, and said, “Mama’s right.”
25
The Jailed Queen
The house turned out to be an antebellum mansion situated atop a low hill surrounded by forest. Perfectly groomed hedgerows bracketed a meandering path up from the home’s gravel drive to its enormous wraparound porch. The wights, who hadn’t bothered to ride with Press in his U-Haul, opting instead to run alongside it on the road or else through the darkling wood, gathered close as the vampire led Rose and her companions to the house.
Discernment told Rose little about the situation. She got nothing from the wights, with their roving red eyes and slack faces. They were just too alien. Press’s posture, his facial expressions, even the way he walked screamed genuine but nervous. He kept looking over his shoulder, his gaze drawn to Satterfield, only to jerk back as if slapped every time.
“This is home,” he said as they mounted the whitewashed wooden steps, which appeared newly refurbished. He entered without knocking. The wights remained outside, crowding the yard.
The house’s front entrance opened onto a large vestibule, its walls hung with headshots of lovely smiling women. Press led them into a sitting room outfitted with a four-cushion leather couch, several matching recliners, and a ninety-inch flat screen affixed to one wall, blaring The Voice.
Four women sat on the couch with a fifth ensconced on one of the recliners. When Press and the others entered, the woman on the recliner stood, smiling. She glanced back at the ladies on the couch. “Grace, sugar, pause it. We got guests.”
The speaker was petite. She stood probably 5’5”, her figure slim though feminine. She smiled and said, “You’re Rose, right?”
Rose nodded. Was this vivacious little woman in her low-cut pink top and tight jeans the self-proclaimed Vampire Queen of South Carolina? Impossible.
“Pleasure to meet you. I’m Piper.” She held out her hand, and Rose shook it. “And I know you, too,” Piper said, turning. “Matt Snow. Those Pruitt twins got you down perfect. You’re just as handsome as your picture.”
Matt smiled as he shook the vampire’s dainty hand. “Nice to meet you, Ms. Ross.”
“So that means the supermodel here is Valerie Satterfield, and the hunk is Tanner Watts.” Piper shook each of t
heir hands in turn then asked, “Y’all hungry?”
Rose stared at Piper for a moment, nonplussed. “Yes?” she finally ventured.
“Good. Follow me.” To the ladies on the couch, she said, “C’mon girls, we’ll finish the show later.”
Piper threw open a set of intricately carved double doors with a flourish, to reveal a brightly lit dining room. At its center stood a table long enough to seat at least a dozen. Silver serving dishes heaped with green beans, black-eyed peas, and heavily buttered ears of corn stood ready to eat. These lesser dishes, along with two full-sized cakes and an assortment of pies, ringed a whole pig cooked to perfection.
It must have been her nerves or the vamp stink that had masked the sweet scents now wafting over Rose. Her mouth watered at the sudden influx, and her traitorous stomach growled audibly.
Piper laughed. “I’ll tell the cook your tummy approves.”
Rose blushed but didn’t hesitate to sit when Matt pulled out her chair. He took the one next to her with Watts and Satterfield seated across from them.
Piper and the youngest of the women, a cute blonde with golden hair to her waist and sparkling blue eyes, filled large platters with a sampling of every dish for Rose and the others.
“I’m Grace. We spoke on the phone,” said the blond girl when she handed Rose her platter. “It’s awesome to meet you. I have all your comics from the Kickstarter. Maybe later you’ll sign a couple of them?”
Rose nodded, accepting the food. “Sure.”
Grace beamed. “Awesome!”
“Gracie, sit down,” Piper said with an indulgent smile for the girl. “You can badger our guests later. Sorry about that, Rose. She ain’t been fit to live with since the day you called. Can’t talk about anything but Drawn, and Rose Carver, and getting to meet a real live succubus.”
“It’s okay,” Rose said. Was she the only one finding all this domestic tranquility strange? One look at Matt told her the answer was no. He sat rigidly, staring at the cadre of beautiful women seated around them. They smiled and chatted like, well, like real people. Satterfield and Watts looked as bewildered as Rose felt.
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