by Faith Hunter
Cia drove off in her car, leaving her sister’s car in the drive. She mumbled something about needing to see Liz and Carmen in the hospital. Big Evan packed his family into the van with unseemly haste and drove off as if demons were nipping at his heels, leaving his rattletrap in the drive. None of us talked. We didn’t even make eye contact. I don’t think we could.
Fortunately I had a spare key hidden in the bike. I was halfway home when my tears started. Beast? The place inside me where she stayed was empty. And cold. And silent. I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea. It was only as I neared the Asheville city limits that I realized how badly I had messed up. Not only was Evangelina on the loose with a diamond capable of almost anything, there was a demon unaccounted for. And Lincoln Shaddock had disappeared. Had Evangelina called him to her? Crap. I had lost one of my primary subjects.
I went to the hotel for my cell phones, to strap on some weapons—including the M4—and to change out of Evangelina’s stupid impossible-to-ride-a-Harley skirt. I didn’t speak to anyone, and I didn’t stop to check on my vamp charge and his blood-servants. I was in and out as fast and unobtrusively as possible, a velvet jacket over one shoulder. Beast was gone.
Fang and I tooled around the city of Asheville, halfway looking for a red sports car, mostly hiding from other people. I was afraid to be alone with my thoughts, using Fang’s roar to block out the part of me that was screaming in fear. Beast was gone. My mind was my own for the first time in over a hundred years. And it was scaring the crap outta me. I rode, not thinking, searching for something to muffle the sound of my own fear, and to stop the afterimage flashing onto the back of my lids each time I blinked. An angel and a demon. In combat.
Had I seen an angel and a demon fighting? Or had it been a mass hallucination, something artificial shared by the mismatched group? Or maybe a spell crafted by Evangelina and lying in wait for the right moment. No. Too many variables in any scenario except the real one. I had seen an angel. A freaking, dang angel.
My angel, who came when my friends called him, to take away an evil who was never supposed to be on earth. Ever. My angel, shared with Angie Baby, who could see angels, but never said so, who thought everyone could see them. Hayyel. The angel stole my Beast.
Fear rode me, sucking on my soul like a tick burrowed into my skin.
Molly hadn’t talked to me after. Molly hadn’t talked to anyone. Her daughter had a personal relationship with an angel and her sister had one with a demon. Her life had totally changed. Again. At least this time it wasn’t my fault. Except for Evangelina getting her grubby witchy hands on the pink blood-diamond again. That was my fault, totally.
Stupid to hide it under the couch, with only a vamp as guard. Only a vamp. Pickersgill would have been enough to guard the witch. But not against his master. Stupid, freaking stupid. I fisted my hands on the handlebar and bent into the speed. Beast? She didn’t answer.
I stopped for gas at three a.m. and checked my cell. I had missed an e-mail from Reach. He had sent pictures of Shaddock’s escaped vamp. I remembered Thomas Stevenson from the scion lair. He stood five feet ten, brown hair and eyes, with a nose that had been broken and was flattened across the bridge—a deformity that hadn’t been fixed by his maker pre-turn. Corrective surgery was something many makers did for any less-than-perfect scions before they turned them. But Thomas’ broken, unenhanced nose was my good fortune—something that would make the otherwise ordinary man stand out in a police lineup.
I sent the photos from my expensive, traceable cell to my laptop back at the hotel, and accessed all the files Reach had sent me on Thomas Stevenson. Getting into them on the small screen wasn’t the easiest thing in the world, but it was handy. Miracles of modern tech.
The guy had money all over the place, from offshore accounts to banks down the street. He had accumulated a lot of real properties, both private and commercial. Several cars were in storage, homes in gaited communities. Rental property. Strip malls. Undeveloped property. His estate was scattered all over North Carolina and Tennessee. One thing stood out. The nasty vamp had a collector’s appreciation of houseboats. He had three houseboats in storage or in dock at different lakes within a couple hundred miles, the farthest on Douglas Lake in Tennessee. I might be willing to bet that, after spending the last few years sane and locked up with crazy-assed rogues, fed cooling pig blood running in a trough, he might like waking up at sunset on the water, maybe with a well-drained corpse or two on the floor beside him.
But that was just a guess. I’d be searching through the properties for decades to find the guy. Except for the last little text Reach sent, a text that proved he was worth every one of the thousands of dollars he was charging Leo. Thomas had accessed a credit card. The rogue-vamp had removed a car from storage, hit an ATM for cash, bought gas, then clothes, and each purchase had been in a linear direction, due west. The Naturaleza, human-draining, needs-a-good-staking vamp was heading into Tennessee.
My heart got lighter and my smile meaner. So, I’d hunt me some Naturaleza vamp butt and burn off the anger flaring deep inside, a char of hot rage I couldn’t name and didn’t want to look at too closely. And maybe the rage, and killing something, would chase away the fear that Beast wasn’t coming back. Ever.
A small voice whispered that my protective fighting leathers were in storage and I was short on silvered blades and stakes, but I didn’t care. I had guns and a mind to shoot something. I gassed up, removed the silver tipped stakes from my minuscule saddlebags, and sent Reach a text to keep an eye on Evangelina Everhart Stone’s finances for withdrawals or credit card usage. Satisfied, I turned Fang’s key. With the bike’s roar, I headed west on I-40, into Tennessee.
Long before dawn, I had spent a lot of cash as bribes. A fifty to a clerk at a storage facility Thomas Stevenson owned, to get the kid to call if he spotted anyone matching the vamp’s description. I had left another fifty with the night guard of a gaited community where Thomas had a small, elegant home. And two more fifties with others who might reasonably be in a position to notice if a hungry vamp came by. I also paid off the security guard at a marina on Lake Junaluska, and had just put three bullet holes into the hull of the fancy party boat/houseboat Thomas owned. I could have used the M4 strapped to my back, but the shotgun was far more noisy than the .380 semiautomatic handgun. Beast was still a no-show, and killing the fancy boat was intensely satisfying, I was watching it sink in five feet of water when my cell chirped. It was Reach.
“I’m not paying for this call,” I said.
“Consider it gratis. Part of belonging to the human race, doing my good deed of the day.” When I snorted, he laughed. “Right. I was checking police reports and got a notice of a man killed in what looks like a vampire draining not too far off of I-40.”
“Where specifically?”
“Just outside the national park campground on Cataloochee Creek.” He gave me the address of the campground and sent me a map of the place, not that I really needed it. There was only one way in to the valley, and unless they had paved it, that meant a narrow, winding, gravel road with steep drop offs and no guard rails, not the sort of place I wanted to ride a partially chopped bike in the middle of the night.
“Since you’re being so helpful,” I said, “why don’t you compare the files of properties the vamp owns to the roads around the creek and campground.”
“Help comes with a price,” Reach said instantly. Without waiting for me to respond, he went on, “Stevenson once owned stock in Blue Ridge Paper Products. His great-grandfather, grandfather, and father owned land in the Cataloochee Valley. And yes, he still has the old farm near the creek.”
Bingo, I thought, hearing keys click.
“Your pleasure is my profit. I’m checking on upgrades to the property’s security system, sending GPS, and Google pics of the address. Okay, yeah. The security system is pretty standard, but it’s gonna be a bitch getting in via the drive. He concentrated his external security there. Cameras and motion detec
tors.”
I looked over the pics as he talked. “How about security on the creek side?”
“Minimal. You swimming in?”
“Something like that. If we can prove that he’s—”
“You’re in luck. The system just went inactive and was reactivated. He’s gone to ground at pappy’s place. And while I’m being helpful, a call just went out to the local law that a man was seen shooting a pistol into a houseboat on Lake Junaluska.” The connection ended.
“Funny guy.” I closed the phone, pulled the silly velvet jacket on against the chill, and fired up Fang. I can’t kill vamps if I’m in jail for malicious mischief or felony vandalism. If there is such a charge. I wasn’t in a mood to find out.
When I was safely away from the houseboat I’d killed, I stopped Fang, and speed-dialed my pals, the paddlers. Neither answered, but I left a message for each. “I’m going after a vamp. I need transportation down Cataloochee Creek at dawn. If you can meet me at the river before sunrise, call. I’ll need to hit land here.” I gave the GPS of the destination—Thomas’ place.
I figured that Thomas hadn’t picked his first night of freedom and daytime lair by a coin toss. Cataloochee Creek was home, an emotional attachment to the human world, as much as any place would be home to a vamp so far gone in bloodlust that he believed humans were nothing but dinner.
Before dawn, I turned off I-40 on to the road—loosely defined—and started down into the Cataloochee Valley. The roadbed was worse than I remembered, maybe because it was so dark, I was running on no sleep, two shape-changes, and hadn’t taken in enough calories to fuel the shifts. I had finished off most of the leftovers in Evangelina’s fridge, but after the spell in the basement, I hadn’t thought to eat, which was weird, for me. Now, I was hungry and worried; Beast was still nowhere in my mind. She didn’t appear, not even when I concentrated on the herd of elk in the park. She hadn’t thought anything snarky at me, or even milked my conscious mind with her claws since the bright light and disrupted spell in the hedge of thorns. Nothing. Nada. If she were still alive inside me, wouldn’t she make some kind of comment?
Cataloochee Creek’s boat access in the national campground provided easy access to the waterway. I parked and wandered through the dark, trying to imagine the land back when it was farmland, rich crops on the valley floor, or timberland, all the trees gone, the earth laid bare, back when it was family land, more isolated in some ways, less isolated in others. Beast had lived in these mountains back then, but she still wasn’t offering anything interesting, no insights, no memories, no thoughts, not even when I heard an owl hoot, lost and lonely in the distance.
I got back two affirmative texts from the paddlers. They were on their way. Dave asked if I had proper clothes. I was wearing more than undies, so I wrote back, “Yes,” but had a feeling I was missing something. Waiting for dawn, I took shelter under a covered communal picnic area. And it started to rain, tiny drops, stinging and sharp as ice picks. In seconds it was a deluge. Great. Just freaking great.
Trying to stay dry, I checked the security schematic of Stevenson’s house. Ran through some possible scenarios. Zipped up my jacket against the chill. I accessed the Naturaleza’s personal history to discover that the man held a black belt in karate, aikido, and kendo, which meant that if he had access to swords or long-blades, things could get dicey. Good thing I was planning to shoot him before I got close.
Mike arrived at the park first, cutting his engine and coasting the final distance to park. Quiet hours were advertised, which I had busted to heck and gone with Fang. When he spotted me in the dark, he pulled a two man raft from his truck and turned on an air compressor, inflating the raft in minutes. Mike was wearing a wetsuit with a dry-top over it and looked cozy. Even with my enhanced skinwalker metabolism, I was shivering. I figured that denim and velvet weren’t the “proper clothes” Dave had meant. And my wet-weather-riding gear was in storage in the same place as my fighting leathers. Dang it.
Dawn was still a glint in Mother Nature’s eye when Dave arrived, coasting down as Mike had done. At least they had good camping manners. He grinned and shook his head when he saw my bedraggled state, tossed me a poncho, which I pulled over my head. He hefted his hard boat and an armload of gear and carried it to the creek bank. He and Mike discussed the water flow—which was rising fast in the rain—the rapids and flat-water sections, and moments later, I was being instructed on raft safety. “And don’t poke a hole in the raft with the knives or the shotgun,” Mike said, tossing me a flotation vest. I figured the vest might come in handy if I went over while wearing so much steel. I had never weighed my gear, but swimming with it all would be hard. Or impossible.
“Or the pointy boots,” Dave added, with a sly smile. I looked down at my Luccheses.
“Damn, girl.” Mike boomed in his version of a murmur. “You go over and those boots’ll fill up and weigh you down till you drown. What’re you planning to do, paddle or ride a bull?”
“Both,” I said, thinking about the danger of going up against a vamp on his home turf.
Dave skirted up and slid into his small boat, secured himself into the craft and pushed off into the current, nimble as a duck. In contrast, I crawled into Mike’s raft like a landlubber, sitting on the bolster and inflated side wall as instructed, tucked my five-inch-toed boots into the crack as ordered, and took a beginner’s class in paddling as we drifted downstream in the dark.
“I’ll scout,” Dave said over the roar of rain. Both men looked tense, as if this little trip was dangerous or difficult. And maybe it was in the dark. In the flood. And sudden wind.
This gig wasn’t looking so promising now, and I almost said to beach the boats and hike back. But my cell vibrated in my pocket with a text from Reach. I read, trying to protect the delicate electronics. “Couple missing from karaoke bar. Car in lot. LEOs found blood. Waiting for security footage.” LEOs were law enforcement officers. The bar was just off the highway that Thomas Stevenson would have taken to get to his homeplace.
We took the first rapid, the boat tilted, and I slid my body into the raft bottom. “That’s nothing, girl. We got big water ahead.” I nodded to show I’d heard, but before I could speak, the heavens opened up, proving that the previous hard rain was nothing. Rain pounded down, on the raft, the men, raising a mist on the creek, overriding the sound of rapids. The M4 and blades made sitting impossible, and I half kneeled, hanging on to the ropes at the sidewalls. I held on for dear life as the water whipped and whirled and dunked the raft, and I got more soaked than if I’d actually swam to the site, and I tried to breathe without getting rain and river into my lungs. Twice I called out to Beast, but still she didn’t answer.
As indicated by the GPS data, the address of Thomas’ family farm was hard river right, up a hill, about a hundred yards from the creek, invisible in the storm. “There’s nothing there,” Mike called over the white-noise of drumming rain on land and on river. But I could smell vamp and human blood.
“It’s there,” I shouted back. “Let me out.” With a gesture that sent the raft whirling and swirling to scrape on shore, the river guide beached the small craft. The smell of blood was carried on the chilled breeze, diluted by the pounding downpour. I crawled out of the small raft, my boots full of water, my jeans wet, my body filled with a fine tremor from adrenaline and the cold. I pulled off the poncho and tossed it into the boat bottom.
“Get to the other side of the river. Wait for me where you can see this bank. If I’m not back in hour, get out of here. It means I’m dead. If anyone else comes to shore, or if anyone comes back to shore with me, peel out and get downstream fast.” I handed him my cell. “Even if I call out for help. Even if I’m bleeding. Don’t come back here unless I’m alone and moving under my own power. If I don’t come back, hit SEND to call Leo Pellissier’s right-hand man, George Dumas. Tell him what happened. He’ll handle it. Got it?”
Mike boomed out, “Paddlers don’t leave people behind.”
> “If I’m not alone, it’ll mean I failed and he rolled me. If the vamp is still alive, rolls me, or kills me, it becomes Leo’s problem to take him out.” I wasn’t trusting Lincoln Shaddock for anything, even if I knew where to find him. Leo would have to figure it out.
Dave nodded and made a little skirling motion with his paddle, maneuvering his tiny boat back into the current, nimble as a duck. Mike sealed my cell into his waterproof dry-box and rotated his raft back into the current. I waited until both men had their boats secured on the far shore before melting into the trees, walking hunched over, making myself deer-sized, trusting in the ten-year-old security system to mistake me for the local fauna. Beast was still silent, but I have my own memories of the stop-and-go motion of deer, the slow stroll punctuated by quick dashes, to stop suddenly, unmoving.
Dawn, delayed by the heavy clouds, gave me just enough light to see my way, the trees and underbrush providing cover even as they dumped rain down my collar, my clothes hanging wet and heavy, the silver and titanium necklace icy on my skin. As I moved, I went over what I knew and what I could infer about the vamp I was here to take out, weighing my strengths against his, trying to stay mentally and physically loose and ready. Trying not to think about the empty place in my soul. Beast? She didn’t answer.
According to Reach, the perimeter of the house itself had decent security: cameras, motion detectors, and laser lights queued into a wailing alarm. But old motion detectors might be fooled, especially with the movement of rain and wind. Branches were swaying, rain was falling so hard it obscured my footsteps, even to my own keen ears, and filled my faint tracks with water.
Vamps aren’t dead to the world by sunlight. They had a hard time staying awake once the sun came up, especially the young ones, like a kid trying to stay up past bedtime and being pulled under by the lure of dreams, but unless injured they seldom fell over in an undead snooze.
