Rose’s draw on courage snapped like a winter-dry twig. She sagged, and her knees nearly buckled. She only kept her feet because Piper caught her around the waist.
“Clench,” Piper hissed in Rose’s ear.
She did so, blocking the external fear and charm, but nothing could shield her from the horror bubbling up inside her. Witnessing Gunny Lipe’s execution acted as a catalyst to ignite her fear, her shame, her stultifying realization.
Until a moment ago, Rose had been a fear-drawn monster perfectly content to sacrifice herself and everyone she loved to achieve her goals. That included every friend she had made in the Order, the man she loved, and even her own family.
“Quiet!” Lord shouted, and the Order ops fell silent. He turned to Rose. “I want you to understand. I mean business tonight.” He pointed the 9mm at Hanks.
He’s priming us.
The thought shattered through Rose’s shock and horror. This had all been a ruse. All of it. Rose had walked into a trap, and she had led the Order in after her. The ones Lord hadn’t captured when he took Camp Den now huddled inside his fear factory being primed to serve as votaries.
Her gaze fell on Jim. The slim incubus’s draw on discernment must have been vaster than Rose could imagine. He had known this would happen all along. The bullet fragments in Matt’s knee hadn’t concealed his second tracking chip. Jim knew all about it and, therefore, so did Lord.
Myra Hanks, reading Rose’s face at a level Rose would never experience, nodded.
“I could kill you, Rose,” Lord said. “You and pretty Valerie and all your vampire bitch friends.”
Piper tensed but said nothing.
“But Jim tells me you’ll be more valuable to me alive. He says you’re key to a quick victory over the world’s Societies. You’ve already tasted the fear draw. Jim says, given time, you’ll make an unparalleled general for our side.”
“You knew I’d draw fear,” Rose whispered.
“Sorry, darling,” Jim said. “It was a foregone conclusion.”
“Come without a fight, and I promise what’s left of your people can go free,” Lord said. “At this point, we don’t need them.”
Rose shook her head. Her brain burned—a million thoughts of escape blowing through it like sizzling leaves. None would work.
“Told you she wouldn’t go for it.” Melody grinned at Rose, obviously relishing the thought of a fight.
“You’ll let them go?” Rose asked. “No fear factory. No torture.”
“None,” Lord said.
“Even Matt?”
“What are you doing?” Piper asked.
Lord’s grin broadened into a smile. “Even Matt.”
He motioned, and Strunk unceremoniously dumped Matt’s inert form on the floor with a jarring thump. Strunk drew a pistol from his shoulder harness and pointed it at Matt’s head.
Rose started to nod.
“No,” Piper said. “I’m not letting you give up. I can’t. If we lose here, the old guard vampires will kill my children. And if they can’t, these bastards will.”
“You were dead the moment you struck a deal with these traitors,” Lord said. “Run home and be thankful I’m too busy to exterminate you now.”
“We had a deal,” Piper said to Rose.
“I can’t let him put my people in the fear factory,” Rose said. “We’ve lost. I’ve lost.” She felt ashamed at hearing her own words, but she saw no other recourse. Wasn’t it enough that she should give herself up to the Indrawn Breath? Did she have to get everyone she loved killed in the bargain?
Piper bore her teeth—her real teeth—a second row of fangs that unsheathed from her gums like tiger claws in her mouth. “You haven’t lost. You’ve given up. What you need is a kick in the ass!”
Piper threw back her head and shrieked. The sound rent the air, shattering what glass remained in the building’s front entrance.
Rose clapped her hands over her ears, though that did little to assuage the stinging pain in her overtaxed eardrums. And nothing whatsoever to stop the lance of fear that followed.
Wonderful. Vampiric fear on top of everything else. How come vampires got to be immune to succubus fear while Rose had to endure both? Sometimes, life really sucked.
The vampires and wights inside the building joined their voices with Piper’s, emitting ear-piercing screeches of their own.
“What are you doing? You won’t stop them this way. You’re only delaying them.” Even using a draw of voice, Rose could hardly hear herself speak over the cacophony.
And yet, somehow, Piper heard her. Without interrupting her wail, she nodded toward the soldiers outside.
Rose turned that direction just as a wave of wights and vampires crashed into the soldiers lined up outside. She blanched in horror. It was like staring into a meat grinder.
Guns fired. Men and women shouted. Blood flew. Hundreds of wights boiled into view from either side. They slammed into the humans, all fangs and claws, biting and rending, moving from victim to victim, seemingly unfazed by bullets, knives, or fists.
Vampires, all female, flowed amongst the wights like lithe shadows dealing a more refined form of death than their beastly siblings. They, too, threshed the battalion like wheat, but with a kind of grace and poise that transformed murder into something more akin to art.
Meanwhile, Piper continued screaming even as she launched herself at Jim. She moved with blinding speed and fetched the lean incubus a glancing swipe with her nails despite his attempt to evade.
He spun half around, one hand rising to touch the four bloody scratches on his throat. He stared at his blood-slicked fingers, his mouth agape, eyes wide.
Were vampires immune to succubus discernment too? Or was Piper just that fast?
Rose dismissed the thought. There was no time. In the havoc caused by the vampires, Myra Hanks had dropped to the floor, depriving Lord of his main hostage. Distracted, he hadn’t noticed.
Rose shouldered her pilfered AR-556 and squeezed the trigger.
Melody kicked Lord an instant before Rose fired, pushing them apart, saving his worthless life. She rolled and came up firing her own automatic.
Satterfield dove into Rose, bowling her over, and cried out as bullets strafed her back.
Heart racing, Rose pulled Satterfield into a quick roll. She expected to feel hot blood pouring from her friend’s wounds, but her Kevlar vest had done its job.
They scrambled to their feet. By unconscious agreement, Rose launched herself at Lord even as Satterfield squeezed off a half dozen rounds at Melody.
From the corner of one eye, Rose saw Piper attempting to get her hands on Jim, who successfully evaded her. Rose wondered if the discerning incubus could feel the half dozen vampires and wights scrambling his direction to aid their mother, or Myra Hanks now poised to kick at his knees.
Perhaps not, or perhaps they presented too many variables for the monodraw to overcome. Either way, Piper had her teeth in his throat inside five seconds.
At some point during her tumble with Satterfield, Rose had dropped her rifle. No matter. She had her votaries. She drew from them a vast ocean of strength, speed, and stamina.
Lord, who had likewise gained his feet, tried to raise his Ruger, but he wasn’t fast enough. His eyes widened in shock when Rose knocked it away then chopped him across the throat with the knife edge of one hand.
She followed him as he staggered back, choking, and smashed his temple with an elbow.
He moved fast, trying to duck away, but his fear-drawn speed couldn’t match Rose’s legion of fans. She kicked him in the ribs and socked his jaw with a vicious uppercut.
Lord spun, pulling a knife from his jacket, intent on ramming it between Rose’s ribs.
She saw it coming.
With a sound like a rifle shot, Rose crushed Lord’s kneecap. He screamed, his momentum throwing him off balance. Rose twisted the knife from his hand, performed a spin, and sank the blade into his throat.
Lord’s voice cut
off in a strangled, gurgling gasp.
“NO!” Melody screamed.
Satterfield had her pinned on the floor, Melody’s arms twisted painfully behind her back. Melody screamed again, incoherent this time, and wrenched her arms downward. Bones and joints snapped inside her arms and she grunted at the pain, but the move paid off. She spun at an impossible angle, her shoulder dislocated from her body, and kicked a surprised Satterfield in the face.
Melody kipped to her feet and raced toward Lord, her left side a deformed ruin. She seemed not to notice but dropped to her knees beside him, her expression devastated.
Lord was dead.
Melody lifted her gaze to Rose, and for just an instant, Rose saw her sister inside. Melody’s draw on fear must have broken at the sight of her lover’s demise.
“Mel.” Rose lifted a hesitant hand toward her sister.
But as fast as it had come, the moment died. Melody’s face grew still, the lines of shock and anguish drained away, replaced by cold, calculating malice. A rending, popping sound came from within Melody as she jerked her misshapen shoulder back into place, her wounds healing. She stood.
“I’m going to kill you.”
“Melody,” Rose said again, drawing charm without much hope. “Listen to me. I can help you overcome the fear draw. You can be yourself again. Come with me.”
Without warning, Melody drew Lord’s knife from his throat in a spray of blood and flung herself at Rose, the air cracking before it.
Myra Hanks, still bound and gagged, kicked Melody’s shins, catching her at an angle. Melody lost her balance but managed to turn her trip into a roll that brought her up next to a bloody-faced Piper Ross. The vampire queen of South Carolina caught Melody’s wrist and relieved her of the knife. Melody cuffed Piper with a left hook to the jaw. It sounded like someone hitting a steak with a baseball bat.
Piper reeled back, but smiled, displaying her two rows of pearly white teeth tinged with blood. A crowd of her children, wights and vampires alike, hissed behind her, their feral eyes marking Melody for death.
Rose saw the instant Melody realized she could not win. Though her sister’s fear-drawn calm was absolute, a flicker of irritation crossed her face. No doubt, clear discernment told her she could not win this fight alone. Her lips drew down, twisted into a sneer. She met Rose’s eyes for the barest of a second before bolting away from the vampires, just avoiding their outstretched claws. Her way clear, she dashed for the exit with the speed of a bullet.
Satterfield and Piper started after her, but Rose stopped them.
“Don’t bother. You’ll never catch her.”
Rose bent over Matt. Despite the sound of gunfire and raucous battle, he still lay inert on the glass-strewn floor, his face pallid, his eyes swollen and dark. Rose pressed two fingers to the side of his neck.
“Oh, thank God,” she breathed when she felt a steady pulse.
“Will he be okay?” Satterfield knelt near them, removing Myra’s handcuffs and gag.
“I don’t know. He won’t wake up.”
Sporadic gunfire and the sounds of men and women screaming caught Rose’s attention. She wanted to stay with Matt, but the battle outside the hospital still raged. Flashes of muzzle fire periodically cut through the night, followed by the crack of high-velocity rounds.
Except, it was no longer a battle. It was a slaughter. Though the soldiers put up a game effort, focusing their fire against single targets at the command of their sergeants, their adversaries were too fast and too resilient to succumb to such tactics. A handful of Piper’s wights lay broken and bloodied on the hospital lawn, having sustained too much damage even for their impressive healing abilities, but far more soldiers littered the ground. This was a battle of attrition, one the soldiers could not win.
“Stop them,” Rose said. “It’s over.”
Piper, who stood watching her children in frank astonishment, made no move to comply.
“They’ve never fed like this,” she said. “I’ve never unleashed them. Not even my daughters.”
Rose stood to face the petite vampire. “Stop them! Those soldiers aren’t part of this. You’re murdering them!”
Piper focused on Rose, though turning her attention from the carnage seemed to require real effort on her part. The screams and gunfire continued for the space of ten seconds while the two stared at one another. At last, Piper nodded.
She stepped around Rose to stand in the hospital’s ruined entrance. And though she said nothing, the vampires and wights ceased their attack. Those who were feeding, and there were many, released their victims to assemble before their mother.
“If you want to live, stand down!” shouted Rose to the soldiers, a handful of whom had gathered the nerve to pursue the vamps.
The order echoed across the lawn and was repeated again and again by those still alive. The soldiers threw down their rifles and huddled in groups, their wary eyes never leaving the vampires and wights gathered before them.
“What now?” Piper asked.
“You need to leave.”
The voice caught Rose by surprise. She spun, her heart leaping in her chest, to find Matt leaning heavily on Tanner Watts, unsteady on his feet, but alert.
Rose kissed him, wiping tears from her cheeks. “When you didn’t wake up, I thought…”
“I’m okay,” Matt said, though they both knew he lied. His hands shook, and sweat beaded his forehead. He was fighting the last vestiges of whatever drugs Lord had dosed him with. Even with his powerful draw on healing, he would be some time overcoming that. “I need you to gather everyone who can walk and get out of here. Post security is charmed to ignore everything happening here, but that won’t last. Sooner or later, this place will be swarming with Army MPs.”
“Isn’t that what we want?” Rose took his free hand and held it tight. “The more people who see the fear factory and what the government was up to here, the better, right?”
Matt nodded. “Up to a point, yes.” He leaned close to Rose, his lips brushing her ear. “We need our people to think this is a major victory, but we don’t know that yet. My father’s still in charge of Society. He’s powerful enough to sweep this under the rug. I don’t want you here if that happens. We need some of our number to survive.”
Rose jerked back from him, her eyes wide. What was he saying? They had won. It was over. Wasn’t it? “But—”
“Please don’t argue about this,” Matt said. “The Order needs you.”
“We can’t stay either,” Piper said. “Dawn is coming. We’ll help you escape.”
A siren echoed far off in the distance, growing closer. Rose continued to stare at Matt, her mind awash in conflicting feelings.
“It’s the right thing,” Matt said. “You know it is.”
“My family is in here somewhere,” Rose whispered.
“I’ll see to them.”
“I was supposed to do that.” Rose couldn’t fight the quaver in her voice.
“Yes, you were. But it won’t matter if Society captures you. Take the ones who can run and go. I’ll do my best to make so much noise, my father won’t be able to cover this up. If that works, I’ll see you in a day or two, and I’ll bring your folks with me.”
“And if it doesn’t?”
“If it doesn’t, you go on fighting. You and Piper bring Society to its knees. Break it before it can break the world.”
Rose stared around at the succubi, most of whom only now rising to their feet. They turned forlorn and worried expressions on Matt and her, and though no one voiced a question, Rose could feel their expectancy. They wondered what they should do next.
She wanted to run like hell and tell them to do the same. But that sort of thinking had gotten her—gotten them all—into this predicament in the first place. They needed leadership, and they were looking at Rose to find it.
Could she abandon them after they had fought so hard to rescue her from the fear factory? No. She had led them here; she would lead them out.
&
nbsp; Rose firmed her jaw and nodded, gratified to see many of them do likewise. Heart heavy, she gave Matt one last swift kiss. “You’ve got two days, Snow. After that, I’m coming to find you.”
He smiled and squeezed her hand. “I’ll be there.”
Rose crunched across the glass and out the front doors, Piper at her side. Her people followed close behind, intermingled with Piper’s many daughters. As one, they loped off into the darkness.
Rose didn’t look back.
About the Author
David Alan Jones is a veteran of the United States Air Force where he served as an Arabic linguist. A 2016 Writers of the Future silver honorable mention recipient, David’s work spans the science fiction, military sci-fi, fantasy, and urban fantasy genres. He is a martial artist, a husband, and a father of three.
An eclectic reader, David counts Anne Tyler, Stephen King, Lois McMaster Bujold, Robert J. Sawyer, J.K. Rowling, and many others among his favorite, and most influential, authors.
You can find out more about David's writing, including his current projects, at his website: davidalanjones.net.
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