BloodlustBundle

by Margaret Carter, Crystal Green, Erica Orloff, Patricia Rosemor

  Did an educated woman like her believe in these tales, too? Or did she think Ecaterina was a dimwit for another reason? A more modern, women’s-lib-type concern?

  The translator continued. “She thinks they’ll be very romantic. And…” Ms. Godea stopped, rattled off a question.

  Ecaterina merely batted her eyelashes in response.

  Ms. Godea huffed out a long-suffering sigh, then said, “There are stories of male vampires who visit women in the night and impregnate them.”

  “I’ve heard, but…Don’t tell me she wouldn’t mind….”

  In answer, Ms. Godea nodded.

  “Oh.” Vampire sex. “There’s your excuse after sleeping around. An accidental vampire bun in the oven.”

  Someone sitting behind Ecaterina spouted a viperish stream of words, causing the girl’s face to fall.

  Camille leaned to the side to get a better look at the interloper’s profile. A guy, college aged, garbed in a smart button-down and Levi’s, finished a glass of wine and turned around. He had bloodshot green eyes, mussy brown hair that reminded Camille of the students back at Texas A&M who constantly pulled all-nighters.

  “Excuse me,” he said, his English clipped and heavy. “I think she is full of crap.”

  Camille leaned on her elbows, willing to hear more, but a swarthy old woman sitting at a table next to them spoke first.

  As she chided him in a flurry of Romanian, the room quieted. Ms. Godea translated, even though Camille was catching a good deal of the content herself.

  “‘Petar Vladislav’—our innkeeper’s son, I believe—‘do not encourage the Westerner,’” Ms. Godea said.

  Oh, great. Camille’s presence was about to start a turf war. From across the room, she could see Griff tensing, easing to the edge of his chair. Camille sent him a reassuring glance.

  The old woman, who wore a black shawl over her gray head and frail body, crossed herself. As she moved, a silver crucifix sparkled under her timeworn coverings. Her skin was crinkled, like ancient parchment bearing lines and marks, spells written in the old hand.

  God, if Camille could only talk to her, there was no telling what she’d find out.

  As the old woman continued, so did Ms. Godea. “‘We should not allow strangers to ask questions. We should send her home with her charming tourist stories instead. See how even now she is destroying the peace we have worked so hard to cultivate?’”

  A curiosity and a menace. That’s what Camille was to these people.

  Petar refused to speak in Romanian, forcing Ms. Godea to work double time for the old woman’s benefit. “And how much peace will there be when your strigoiaca come?”

  “They will not,” the elder answered. “Not if we defend against them as we have for years. A fall from faith is all the invitation they need.”

  Camille scribbled furiously as voices overlapped, languages mingled.

  “We will see,” Petar said. “It is that time of year. The time they supposedly attack. I am willing to take a holiday from university to wait for them here.”

  The woman’s voice grew ragged, harsh. “Quiet, boy. Your arrogance and disrespect will cripple Juni, just like the other villages when they lost their way. When they let go of their morals to outside influences. When they forgot tradition and history.”

  By now, everyone in the room was perched on the edges of their seats.

  But the college student—young, know-it-all, cocky—leaned back in his chair. “Those other villages you speak of? The vampires you blame? Please. Vampirism is another word for sickness and death. And as for the men who disappeared from the villages? There are many reasons for a husband to leave his wife, yes?”

  The men in the room chuckled, but mirth was in short supply. There was a nervous strain connecting everyone together. Camille could feel it.

  Petar continued. “I have learned much at university. I have learned about tuberculosis. I have learned how our glorious local Communist police forces used vampirism to explain the disappearance of husbands and sons.”

  “Perhaps you also learned that the vampires have benefited from these excuses most of all. But you have not learned of how the strigoiaca can sense a so-called educated fool and spirit him away. Lack of fear does not make us stronger, Petar Vladislav, only weaker.”

  “Bah. Here is what I think of your vampires.” Petar stood, held open his hands and stared straight at the woman. “Hello, strigoiaca? Do you hear me?”

  “Sit!” the old woman snarled.

  Petar merely grinned. “Mighty strigoiaca, we in Juni invite you over for dinner. We are expecting you now, so do not disappoint.”

  Mumbling under her breath, the shawl-covered woman began rocking back and forth, squeezing her eyes shut. The room sat in silence, and when they slowly returned to their chatting and drinking, there was a noticeable change—mutters instead of laughter, whispers instead of shouts. Even Petar’s mother came over to slap him upside the head.

  Petar made a dismissive gesture toward all of them, then moved to Camille’s side. From the corner of her eye, she saw Griff rise from his own seat, making his way over to her.

  Her heart clenched, anticipating his arrival.

  As Petar formally introduced himself and Griff slid to a seat on her other side, the old woman raised her voice.

  “‘Unbelievers will pay,’” Ms. Godea translated.

  A chill nipped down Camille’s spine, followed by the jarring brush of something much more solid and real. She whipped around to see what it was.

  A huge black dog panted over to the woman, who claimed him with a loving touch to the ear. When the animal spun around, Camille blinked, hardly believing it.

  Someone had painted an extra set of white eyes on the animal’s forehead.

  Protection against vampires, she thought, remembering a local superstition.

  But Camille also felt another pair of eyes on her.

  Slowly, she looked up, meeting the gaze of the ancient lady. The ageless, deep-set eyes. The nightmarish accusations and fear she thought she’d left back in London.

  Unbelievers will pay.

  “Hey.” It was Griff, rubbing her back, chasing the shivers out of her skin. “You’ve definitely got them riled up, Sherlock.”

  She swallowed her doubts, regaining her confidence.

  “The better to glean information, my dear Griff.”

  She did her best to smile, but when he answered, she didn’t hear a thing. She could only focus on the old woman as she turned her back on Camille.

  Even though she couldn’t see her face anymore, Camille felt the warning. The danger.

  The eyes—as unblinking as the center of two dead flowers—that were always upon her.

  Chapter 7

  Present

  A tang of fear settled in the back of Camille’s throat as her driver cut the engine.

  Hopping out of the Humvee, she lifted her gaze to the jagged castle that sat on top of a hundred-foot rise. It was the location Ashe had “felt,” the home of the strigoiaca and their captives.

  They would soon see.

  Black-winged birds circled the ancient battlements against a graying sky, and a thick mist shrouded all the halting vehicles, lending a sense of doom. From here, the castle resembled a face sneering down on them—spiked hair culled from the bared branches of dead trees; empty, malicious eyes and a grimace where some of the stone had fallen away; the crooked nose shaped from a leaning keep.

  She could actually be near Griff. Near darkness.

  Just remember, she thought. These weren’t magical, fairy-dust creatures. Vampirism could be cured, just like many other ailments.

  Ashe came to stand next to her. She smelled the herbs wafting off his skin, the ground and dried pine needles that had mixed with something in the air that was more ominous.

  Death.

  “I feel that one vamp has been searching for Ecaterina,” he said, staring at the castle, too. “When she returns to the castle, they’ll be thinking of taking
a new tribe member.”

  Early this morning, after Camille and her team had woken up from a restless sleep and taken ritual baths in a nearby stream as instructed by Ashe, Camille had emphasized how the strigoiaca would not only go after the men, but would likely also want one of them.

  She’d even given the women the option of using Sarge’s extra military-issue knives. The Humvee drivers—three women who would stay with the vehicles and coffins during the hunt—had snapped up two of his semiautomatic Browning Hi-Power .40-caliber pistols loaded with custom-made silver bullets.

  Much to her chagrin, the rest of the Vasile women had accepted Sarge’s offerings and training, too.

  She’d seen him model hand communication signals. Had watched him teach the art of back slashes, thrusts, lethal cuts, while pantomiming the motions in her mind, but refusing to take part.

  Camille herself had then reiterated the earlier lessons she’d given the women about clearing a room and using their defense devices to the greatest effect. But the ladies seemed far more comfortable with their new toys.

  Violence versus peaceful resolution. Why did it seem that Sarge’s way was the most convincing to them?

  “He’s not such a bad guy,” Ashe said, smiling.

  Camille took a step away from the Wiccan. As if that would keep him out of her head or feelings or…whatever.

  “Listen,” Ashe said. “I’m going to tell you something no one really knows about my business partner because you’re a sympathetic soul. I feel you’ll help him in the long run.”

  “Actually, I don’t care to know much about the guy.”

  “Oh, I think he likes you. He hasn’t shot you yet.”

  Uncomfortable, she laughed, but Ashe didn’t.

  “Well,” she said, “then go ahead and tell me. Might as well go with the cosmic flow, as you people say.”

  Ashe placed a hand on her shoulder. “What you see on the outside of Sarge isn’t the whole story. Sure, he seems a little merciless, coldhearted—”

  “A little?”

  “Okay, a lot. There’s a reason he’s riding you so hard about betraying him last night.”

  She wouldn’t have appreciated being used as bait, either, but there’d been real hatred in Sarge’s reaction. Real hurt. Real shame, on her part.

  Ashe went on. “You’ve probably noticed that scar.”

  “I’ve been too polite to mention it.”

  “It’s from another woman. Hana, our first vampire.”

  Ah, Camille thought. The rumors. Sarge’s initial kill. Her eyes widened in interest as she turned to face Ashe, wanting to receive the full story in spite of herself.

  “I’m not at liberty to disclose details, but—” Ashe shrugged “—it happened in a Third World hot spot. We were on a classified mission, going after hijacked nuclear weapons a warlord had gotten his hands on. We were to take him and his lieutenants into custody and secure those weapons on the quiet. Hana was his youngest daughter, a lowly member of the family, and we thought she’d turned informant against her father.”

  Because of Flora, Camille already knew about Sarge’s Special Forces status. It was his “vampire hunter” selling point, not that it explained his obsession with the undead. “Hana lied to you?”

  “Right. She was a real seductress, and she got to Sarge. He was smitten, but Sarge never acted on his feelings for her. He was too devoted to the mission. Par for the course, though. Ladies generally think Sarge is too intense for romance anyway.”

  For some reason, these personal details were making Camille blush. She tried to play off the telling heat by cracking a joke.

  “Maybe he should start by not grabbing his dates’ throats like he did at our first meeting,” she said.

  “That’s foreplay for him.” Ashe’s grin was fleeting. “Hana lured us into a trap. Instead of leading us to a meeting where her father and his advisers would be, we walked into a nest of waiting vampires. They took almost everyone down—a whole team of highly trained operatives.”

  “Except for you and Sarge.”

  “I was lucky because, when I was called on to save lives, Sarge covered me. That’s when Hana finally got to him. She tore out half his neck with those fangs, and Sarge had to take her out. It was the first military kill he ever took personally. To make things worse, we found out that our intelligence was bad. Hana had died two years ago. She’d been a vamp for that long, and we had no idea.”

  It was starting to make a little sense. Sarge’s bad attitude, his distrust.

  “After the massacre,” Ashe said, “he quit the Special Forces, started polluting his body with smoking and drinking, didn’t care about much of anything except revenge. He’d never been a guy to believe in ghoulies, but this attack convinced him. He almost became religious about ridding the world of vamps, since Hana had shown him how evil they could be, without a care for life. The guy’s always had zealots’ blood in him—his mom was a real Sunday schooler and his dad…Let’s just say his instrument of belief was a leather belt with studs on it.”

  Camille drew back, horrified. “That’s awful.”

  “It’s a motivating force. His parents have crossed over to a better place now, but Sarge keeps hunting. In fact, if he ever stops, it’ll be because he’s caught Nicolae, a father figure if I’ve ever heard of one.”

  Nicolae. She’d read the name a thousand times in her studies. A Romanian master vampire who roamed the world, killing, spreading his own blood religion. So this was why Sarge knew the local language.

  “Now, there’s a scary vamp,” Ashe said. “He selects minions and trains them to seduce people into his cult. They practice sacrifice in his name. This creature is a megalomaniac, but luckily he’s gone underground for the moment. Yet that’s what worries us the most. No one knows what he’s up to.”

  “Are you saying Nicolae has designs on world domination?” she asked, half-kidding.

  “He’s smart enough to.” Ashe raised a pale eyebrow. “Nicolae is Sarge’s obsession. They came face-to-face once, and the vamp gave him a big paternal whooping.”

  “That’s why this hunting is so personal for him. Hana.”

  And Nicolae. An object of revenge for the childhood beatings?

  “He’s not all bad, Ms. Howard,” Ashe said. “If the time comes for mercy, he’ll show some. He’s spared lives to get to Nicolae, worked deals, but…I digress.”

  Camille hadn’t seen any mercy so far, but the Wiccan showed such conviction that she wondered if it was true.

  Would Sarge show these vampires—possible cures for the virus—mercy?

  While the Wiccan smiled and ambled away a few steps to bow his head and chant over an oil vial he’d extracted from his robes, Camille didn’t move.

  Did Sarge’s past change how she felt about him?

  Well, at least it provided some insight. Maybe she could grow to understand him, even if she didn’t like him.

  When she looked up again, the castle loomed in her sight. Damn, she’d put it to the back of her head. Maybe that’s why Ashe had told her Sarge’s story. To get her mind off the imminent danger. To relax her.

  Then the first wolf howl sounded from the windy dirt road leading up the rise and to the castle. A road too narrow for the Humvees to travel.

  She shivered, the goat carcasses that littered the rocky entrance taunting her. It was as if the animals had been delivered to the vampires and summarily flung out a castle window after their life force had been used up.

  Is that what the captives ate before the strigoiaca, in turn, dined on them? Is that why Ecaterina had been hunting? To keep their victims healthy enough to produce blood?

  “I can’t wait till we get those wolves to shut up,” Sarge said, stepping in front of her, blocking out the threat of the castle.

  Instead of giving him her usual oh-would-you-just-scram stare, Camille looked at him in a new light. Underneath his skin, this man was a warrior fighting demons. She didn’t know all the names of them, but she knew them all
the same.

  Maybe they really were more alike than she’d first cared to admit.

  As two wolves cried in harmony, Sarge cleaned the dirt from under his nails with the tip of his bowie.

  And that’s when she went back to the old way of looking at him.

  “I’ll bet they’re shape-shifters,” he said. “I’ve sparred with plenty. Hard as hell to kill. Strong.”

  More delusions from the world of Sarge? “The strigoiaca don’t turn into wolves or bats. They’re still somewhat human beneath it all.”

  “Still—” Sarge scratched his head with the knife blade “—if we’re in the right place, those could be our evil ladies in disguise. I hope so. Come on down, and let’s get this crap done right here, I say. I don’t need to tour another decrepit castle.”

  Camille busied herself by opening the Humvee door, donning her equipment: her UV wand, adrenaline gun, knockout dart gun, restraints and mouth sealers, plus a rope and a medical pouch. Comparatively, all Sarge’s weapons made her feel a little naked. A little naive.

  But she knew what she was doing. She’d studied these creatures and knew what it took.

  Ashe approached Sarge, anointing the hunter’s forehead with oil. When the Wiccan was done, Sarge gestured toward Camille, sending Ashe to her with his concoction.

  His protective concern covered her in another one of those blushes. She hated when that happened.

  Tucking an errant strand of hair away from her forehead, she accepted Ashe’s magickal treatment. Couldn’t hurt to go through it, even if all this “magick” was a feel-good placebo.

  “I’ll tell you,” Sarge said, “this oil really helped last time, when I got a dart in the throat.”

  Patient as always, Ashe grinned as he dipped a finger in the oil and prepared to anoint her. “Think about it. Camille turned out to be your protector.”

  “I told you, Sarge,” she added, “it wasn’t meant to be lethal.”

  “You just kept me alive to use as bait again.”

  Camille tried not to act surprised. Had he found out that she and Bea had been discussing that exact option?