Evans’ Humvee idled at the entrance to the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge, Miller’s Humvee, the bus and the three other Humvees strung out along the road behind him. Promise watched Miller, Evans, and Lu where they stood at the front of the trucks and conferred. This was where they’d lost their commander, Riker.
Riker’s Humvee was, presumably, still sitting at the other entrance to the Refuge, two dangerous miles away. An enormous, downed tree had created cover for a vampire who had attacked them from the dark tangle of dead leaves and branches. He’d died fighting to protect a survivor they’d picked up along the way: a little girl who’d just lost her father.
Promise rolled down her window, concerned by the look on the soldiers’ faces. They looked jumpy and nervous, and that alone was enough to give Promise the jitters. Then her eyes slid reluctantly past them to the crowded entrance of the Refuge. This was where she and Peter had ridden Ash and Snow hard and fast once they realized that the Humvees were being attacked by vampires. The woods, although bare of leaves, were dense with pines and something more…something that sat heavy in her stomach and tasted like malevolence in her throat as she tried to swallow her anxiety.
“I can go in first and use the Humvee to push Riker’s vehicle off the path. We’ll never get the bus past it if we don’t,” Evans said.
“You’ll have to put it in neutral to be able to push it. It was still in park when I jumped out,” Miller said, and a brief memory flashed into her mind. She’d been covered in blood. Riker’s and the little girl’s. It had been horrific. She shook the memory away to keep her thoughts locked on the current problem and tried to keep her former commander out of her mind. “That means leaving your vehicle. It’s dangerous. Those vampires were hiding in that downed tree.”
“Today is different, though,” Lu said. “That day was overcast and raining, and today it’s bright sun. It’s just a theory, of course, but I think that makes quite a big difference as to when they can actually come out during daylight hours. The denser the cloud cover, the more protected they are from the sun’s rays. It’s especially true of the ones less affected by certain aspects of the disease.”
Miller considered his words. Lu was right about most things, even just his hunches. Someone had to move Riker’s Humvee, and it couldn’t be her. She was the leader, and her job was to get the lab people–and the cure–to Mr. West in Wereburg. They couldn’t all ride in and take a chance of bottlenecking while Riker’s Humvee was pushed aside, either. Smart or not, Lu’s theory was just that, a theory. She couldn’t put everyone in jeopardy.
“Okay, Ev, you’ve got the detail. Tell Promise to bring the cure and get in my Humvee. Then get going.” Even as she tried to clamp down on it, an irrational wave of fear made her turn and look at the woods. They were ugly and menacing, and she had a very bad feeling about this plan. She turned back to Evans, on the verge of telling him that they’d think of something else, when she stopped the words in her throat. She couldn’t put the entire mission in jeopardy just because she felt like Gretel and needed to hold Hanzel’s hand through the forest. Hanzel would be okay on his own. He’d have to be.
Promise, who’d heard every word, was standing by the door of Evan’s Humvee, the case of vials in her arms. “Be careful,” she said, but the words felt completely inadequate. “Be really careful.” That was even worse.
He grinned. “Don’t sweat it, Promise. I’ll be back here in less than ten. No big deal,” he said. “Go hop in with Miller and Lu until I come back for you.”
At his words, a presentiment of doom chilled her. His grin disappeared. “I will be back,” he said, and his eyes had darkened as he put a hand to her face. “Trust me, okay? Trust me on this.”
She nodded and smiled, then turned abruptly away and stumbled to Miller’s Humvee. She climbed in the back and prepared to wait. Miller–who’d gone down the line of vehicles, telling them to keep the engines running–came back and climbed into the passenger side just in time to watch Ev disappear into the woods, his taillights glowing dully. Lu checked his watch and then clicked a button on the side of it.
“Ten?” Miller asked.
Lu nodded. “Yeah, I’ve got him down for ten.”
Miller glanced back at Promise, acknowledging her but not trying to reassure, and then turned to face forward. She crossed her arms over her chest. “Now we wait.”
Time ticked past slowly, and Promise dragged her eyes from the tunnel-like entrance and focused on the woods. The tree line pulled sharply away from the road, opening up more the further it got from the Refuge. The woods here were gray and black with bursts of an almost smoky green from the tall pines. It wasn’t a Disney forest by any means.
It was silent in the Humvee, the only sound the rumble of the idling engine coming through the unadorned, metal floor. Miller and Lu sat motionless, eyes fixed ahead. Promise envied them their patience. Then she saw a slight twitch in the muscle at Lu’s jaw, and she wondered if it wasn’t patience at all, but actually an almost paralyzing tension.
“How much time has gone by?” Promise asked; her voice was unintentionally loud in the echoing space, and Lu jumped. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean–”
“Three minutes,” he said, cutting her off, and her stomach knotted.
Three minutes? she thought, incredulous, and her mouth dropped open. It felt like half an hour had gone by. He must have read it wrong. His watch could be wrong or…
Lu glanced back at her, his glasses flashing above the half-grin on his lips. “I’m not wrong,” he said and reached his arm awkwardly over his shoulder. “See?”
He had switched his watch to a timer function. It was counting down the ten minutes and stood at 00:07:35…00:07:34…00:07:33…
Promise pushed his arm back over the seat. “Okay, I believe you. But I don’t want to watch it…watch each second tick over…that would drive me crazy,” she said.
“Yeah, I know what you mean, but we’re used to it,” Lu said, a note of breezy disregard in his voice.
“That’s right,” Miller said and looked back at Promise. “Lu only checks it every five seconds or so. That’s how cool he is.”
“I do not!” Lu said, and Miller chuckled.
“Didn’t think I could see you sneaking peaks at it, did you?” Miller said. “I see all, Lu. Get used to it.”
Lu shook his head but then looked at his watch again. He sighed. “I can’t help it,” he said. “This tension is killing me. Evans is kind of an a-hole, but he’s…”
“He’s our a-hole,” Miller finished for him. Then she grabbed Lu’s wrist and checked the timer herself. “Six minutes to go,” she said.
From the back, Promise said, “What will we do if the ten minutes goes by and he’s–”
A blur at her side window and a familiar rumble closed her mouth with a snap. She couldn’t believe her eyes. Snow…it had to be her. Snow had just run past the Humvee. Promise faced forward, shock making her slow. Snow, with Peter on her back, was framed in the front window of the Humvee. He dismounted and turned, catching Promise’s eye. She felt as though the world stopped…if she could see Lu’s watch now, it would be frozen, the minutes suspended as Peter gazed at her. His eyes glowed, and now she had a better term for it…they glowed Halloween pumpkin orange.
Before she could react–before any of them could react–Peter had turned again and slapped Snow on the haunch, pushing her back past the Humvees. Then he ran into the dark tunnel of the Refuge and disappeared.
“Ho…lee…shit,” Lu said, frozen with his hands on the steering wheel, and even that seemed like it was in slow motion to Promise. She breathed in a long breath that seemed to take forever to fill her lungs, and gray clouds began to gather in the periphery of her vision. She realized on some level that she was freaking out…veeerrryyy sloooooooooowwwllly…
Then Miller looked back at her, yelling, and time snapped into place. “Promise, get out! Get on the bus!” Then she turned and spun out the Humvee door. “Stay he
re,” she yelled to the driver behind them. Before the bus driver could even acknowledge her, she was back in the Humvee, and she looked back at Promise with exasperation. “Promise…Get!…Out!”
Promise stared at her, unmoving. She raised her chin and pushed herself back into the seat. Miller shook her head once, sharply, and then turned to Lu and yelled, “GO!”
Lu gunned the big engine, and the Humvee churned forward, bellowing. They should have caught up to Peter on the trail, but there was no sign of him as they blasted through the dense forest.
“Is he going after Evans?” Miller shouted over the engine noise. “Promise, is he going to hurt Evans?”
“I don’t…” Promise started and then stopped. She had been going to say ‘I don’t think so’, but then his face flashed into her mind as he’d stood in front of Snow. She realized that although her initial reaction was a swell of happiness to see Peter again, a deeper voice turned her attention to his expression. It was intense, but beyond that, she had to admit, unreadable. Maybe if she’d known him better, longer…maybe if she were older, but she wasn’t. And she just didn’t know. “I don’t know,” she finished, her voice barely audible.
Miller looked at her steadily from the front seat, her face hovering between anger and fear. “I hope not,” she said and turned to face forward. “For his sake…for all our sakes.”
Then they came around the last bend on the short, two mile road.
Peter was trying to pull Evans from the driver’s side door of the Humvee that sat smothered under the fallen tree–Riker’s Humvee. He had Evans’ legs and was heaving backward, the strain evident in the taut lines of his body and the fearsome grimace on his face.
Lu slammed the Humvee to a halt, and Miller rolled out the door before the vehicle stopped rocking. Lu was a split second behind her. Promise struggled with the latch, and then she, too, was outside the vehicle.
Miller and Lu had drawn their crossbows, and they sprinted the short distance past Evans’ Humvee to where the two men struggled. They had their eyes and weapons trained on Peter.
“Step away, Peter!” Miller shouted, the words snapping across the close space. “Drop him, and stand back! Stand back! Stand back!”
Peter’s eyes rolled to them, and he continued to pull back, his teeth showing as he growled and pulled.
Miller raised her crossbow.
“Wait!” Promise yelled, her voice panicked, near tears. “Look in the truck!”
Miller cut her eyes across the shattered windshield and then back to Peter, her finger tightening on the bow trigger.
Then she looked through the windshield again.
Evans was struggling with Riker…with what remained of Riker.
Riker was a blackened husk but somehow still moving. His skin had burned and burned again, bubbling and blistering, finally blackening over most of the exposed areas of his body. His eyelids were shriveled and useless, but still his eyes rolled, glowing with feverish light. His fingers–charred with bits of bone showing whitely through the gristle–scrabbled on Evans’ arms, and as Miller watched, one of Riker’s fingers broke off and fell past the dashboard out of sight.
He was pinned in the passenger side seat by a heavy limb that must have fallen right after they’d left him.
“Jesus Christ, he’s been changed!” Lu yelled, his voice full of rich horror. “Oh, Jesus, oh my Christ…he’s a vampire…oh Jesus…” He moaned with dread, his crossbow dropping.
Miller assessed the situation with lightning speed. Riker must have lived but been changed. Unable to exit the Humvee, he’d sat here over the last eight days or so, burning slowly with the little bit of sun that could penetrate the canopy of the fallen tree and the woods. And he was starving to death, too. It must have been pure torture.
When Evans had reached in to put the Humvee in neutral…
Miller turned and brought her crossbow to train on Riker’s torso. Tears rolled down her cheeks, but her face was calm, stoic. “Sorry, Commander,” she said in a whisper. Then she loosed one of the short, deadly arrows. It found a home in Riker’s chest, and his struggles ceased instantly.
Peter fell backward, still pulling, and dragged Evans from the Humvee. Evans landed on his stomach and face on the rutted road, and Peter tumbled onto his back and rolled onto his hands and knees.
Promise ran to him.
“Fuck!” Evans said and jumped up. He was shaking his head and running his hands over his arms as if to rid himself of the black, gritty dust Riker had left on him. His lip was bleeding. “Fuck fuck, fuck!”
“Were you bit!” Lu yelled, near hysterics, his voice breaking. “Were you bit! Were you bit!” His crossbow was back up and now trained on Evans. “Were you–”
“Lu! Stand down!” Miller yelled, and Lu dropped his bow at once and stepped back, panting.
His face was slack, shocky. He had lost his glasses. He looked at Miller, and his eyes were full of bemused, uncomprehending hurt, like a dog that had been run over but not killed. “The Commander was…he was a…he was…”
“He was FUCKED!” Evans yelled into Lu’s face, his own face livid with horrified anger; tears of rage stood at the corners of his reddened eyes.
Lu bent over and threw up.
Miller found Lu’s glasses on the road. She checked to make sure they weren’t broken and then brought them back to where he sat on the shoulder, drinking water. He looked up at her with an unsteady smile.
“Thanks, Boss. I appreciate it,” he said and pushed the glasses onto his face. He looked better right away. Less vulnerable, less shaky. Evans sat at his side.
Peter and Promise were a short distance away. Promise was folded into Peter’s arms, pressed to his chest, her head under his chin. She was only marginally aware of the soldiers. Her mind hummed along peacefully as she listened to Peter’s heart beating steadily beneath his shirt.
Evans considered them for a long moment and then pulled his eyes away. He punched Lu on the arm. “Quit being a big baby, Lu,” Evans said. “You’re making me sick to my stomach.”
Lu smiled at him. “Your lip is still bleeding, you idiot.”
“I’m glad everyone is back to normal,” Miller said with a mixture of disgust and genuine relief. “Dumbasses.”
Peter and Promise stepped apart, but he kept his arm around her.
“Hey, Peter,” Miller said, and he turned to her. “You’ve got some explaining to do,” she said with a half smile. Then she sobered. “But whatever the circumstances, I’m glad to have you back.” She turned her gaze to Evans and raised her eyebrows. “Some of us should be really glad.”
Evans’ face soured, but he stood and sneered at Miller before turning to Peter. “I’m glad…” he stopped and glanced back at Miller before continuing, “…really glad you’re back.” He put his hand out, and Peter shook it. “Not just for me, though,” Evans continued and glanced at Promise. Though still full of his trademark anger, his face softened. “I’m glad you’re back for her sake.” He reached out and gave Promise’s black ponytail a quick yank, and she smiled at him. “I think she’s missed you a little bit.” His eyes went back to Peter. “So what’s the story? Where–”
“Hold up,” Miller broke in and extended a hand to Lu to help him stand. “First things first, let’s get that Humvee off the road and get out of here. This is a bad place to be,” her eyes went back to Riker’s Humvee under the canopy of the fallen tree. His body had slid almost out of view, and she was glad of that small mercy.
Promise, who’d only known Riker a short time but had liked him instantly, understood how Miller felt. It had been a bad way to go, and it seemed to have poisoned this place with bad feeling.
Evans and Lu got Riker’s Humvee off the road, while Miller took the other Humvee to get the rest of their small convoy. Peter and Promise rode back with her.
“He’s really okay?” Promise said for third time. It was less a question by now than an incantation, a way to try and make it feel and be real. She was in th
e front seat, but had turned to where he sat in the back. Her arm was over the seat so she could hold his hand.
“He really is,” Peter said and squeezed her cold fingers. His voice was even and quiet. Promise got the impression that he was holding himself steady. Or in check. “We were right behind you, just about caught up, when I heard…when I heard Evans screaming.”
Miller glanced at him in the rearview mirror. She had a lot of questions, but they could wait until tonight.
They cleared the woods, and Promise turned to face forward. There was a small crowd near the bus, their faces happy as children’s in a petting zoo. A soldier stood among them, holding the horses by their reins.
Promise’s heart stopped beating as her eyes found Ash.
He was beautiful. His black coat shone with sweat, and his mane and tail flowed like silken oil in the bright sun. Even the long scar across his chest was beautiful to her.
He was here. And he was hers again.
She jumped from the slowing Humvee, and Miller yelled, “Hey!” but Promise ignored her. She ran to her horse.
“Ash!” she called. “Ash, I missed you!” Ash’s head came up, and he snorted. His head swung in her direction, and he whinnied, piercing the air. He pawed the ground, and the people crowded around stepped back in alarm.
Promise laughed even as tears began to roll down her cheeks, and she called again, “I missed you, too! I missed you so much!”
Ash ran to meet his mistress.
She couldn’t take her eyes from the sight of Peter rubbing a soft cloth down Ash’s legs. Snow stood next to Ash, her head drooping and eyes closing. One of her big back feet was cocked comfortably on the tip of its hoof. She was the reverse of Ash in more ways than color. While Ash was slender-legged, she was thick and powerful; where Ash was spirited, she was steady; as dark as he was, she was as light; and they had bonded deeply and completely when Peter had brought her to Wereburg.
Promise couldn’t make herself believe that she had them all back. It was like a miracle. Her eyes strayed to Peter, and her smile disappeared. He was different. Quiet and reserved. She had noticed it a little when they’d been reunited in the Refuge, but she was sure of it now.
Blood Run – The Complete Trilogy – First Promise, Two Riders, Last Chance Page 31
