Blood Trade

by Faith Hunter

  I do not like being surrounded by vamps, especially plague-ridden ones who wanted to shake my hand, kiss me on both cheeks like some Old World mafia family, and tell me all their symptoms. I didn’t know if they were trying to thank me or infect me. But I survived the glad-handing and, promising to bring the cure to the MOC’s Clan home before dawn, slid out the front door as fast as I could. Eli covered my rear.

  There was no security committee waiting on us this time, and though I didn’t race back to the SUV, I didn’t saunter either. Eli gunned the engine and had us two blocks over before my heart stopped stuttering and the rhythm evened out. “Crap,” I said as we curved up the hill and into the old downtown.

  Eli gave a twitch of his lips, which could have been indigestion, but I chose to interpret it as mirth. I called Alex. When he answered, I said, “What did you do with our contract? Without telling me. Are you insane?”

  “No way. I showed it to Eli. He agreed.”

  I narrowed my eyes at my driver, who was chuckling, and wondered if I could take over the driving and shove him out into the street. And then maybe run over him a few times. “Nobody screws with my contracts.”

  “We just added two tiny clauses,” Eli said. “One that lets us take the head of any vamp who attacks us unprovoked, and one that lets us take the head of any vamp not on the list who has gone over to the Naturaleza.”

  I thought about that for a while as the tires sang on the pavement. I wanted to find fault with the clauses but they were good ones, ones I should have included myself, and would have to add to my standard boilerplate. “Let’s say I decide not to kill you both for changing my contract. And you both agree to discuss stuff like this with me and let me handle it.”

  Eli scratched his chin and said, “We’re supposed to be partners of a sort. How about we buy in to Yellowrock Security. Alex and I have a little money from our parents’ estate.” He named a figure that made me blink. And then mouth it, trying to blend that six-figure number into my lifestyle. You coulda picked me up with a spatula. I had no idea what to say, so I said nothing. Taking my silence as a positive response, Eli went on. “If you agree, we could actually organize this company legally instead of flying by the seat of our pants, Jane style. Get tax stuff and insurance stuff handled, Liability insurance.”

  Which I had never thought to need, but if I was going to have partners and hire humans to work with me, I guess I needed it. All of it. Crap. I never intended to be a part of big business.

  So I thought about that a while too. About not being in charge, not making all the decisions, not having my way all the time. And about having backup all the time. And having the boys stick around.

  “I’m not saying yes.” But my mouth went on as if part of my brain had been thinking about this for a long time. “But if I was, I’d be thinking that I get sixty percent,” I said. “You two split forty. I handle all legal matters, with your input. Salaries to be decided, commensurate with company earnings, and expenses to be discussed at a later date. And you can stay with me as long as you like.”

  “Done,” Eli said, as if the division of the company that had recently been mine alone was exactly what he had been considering before he made his offer. A glow moved out from my torso, making me feel light and kinda weird. I realized I was happy. Content. For all intents and purposes, I had just sold forty percent of my company. And my life. And I was happy about it. A small smile started and I let it take over my mouth all by itself.

  We made it halfway back to Esmee’s before Eli said, “So. All of your meetings go like that? The one with Hieronymus, not the one with me.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “How much of that was bullsh . . . malarkey?”

  I laughed under my breath. “Not all of it.”

  “Good. Because that means it isn’t a hidden lie that has us being tailed.”

  “Crap.” I looked over my shoulder and saw three cars in the distance. “Which one?”

  “All of them.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Four Dead Vamps Under His Tree

  I started pulling and checking weapons, and wished I had been paranoid enough to bring the M4. I didn’t place the guns on the seat, but reholstered them. If Eli had to do any fancy driving, I didn’t want them slinging around the interior. “What do you have with you?” I asked.

  “A dozen flashbangs, which are essentially useless in open space. Six frags, and in the back enough nine mil and .380 ammo to kill off a small tribe of werewolves or vamps.”

  “Silver, then.”

  “Yeah. If we’re being followed by humans, that changes things. You want to call it in?”

  “If we call in the cops and the people behind us are drunken rednecks out for a little fun at the vamp hunter’s expense, we’ll look stupid. Looking stupid is dangerous in a town full of vamps. It makes us look like prey.” I repositioned all my spare magazines into my pockets and crawled over the seat back. There was a midsized tote bag full of boxes. Heavy boxes. Ammo. I stuck extra mags into my pockets and waistband, but I didn’t take any boxes of bullets. Chances were, if we needed to reload the magazines we had on us, we’d already be drained.

  “And if it’s Naturaleza vamps out for a little blood at the vamp hunter’s expense,” Eli said after a moment’s thought, “we’ll look dead.”

  “True. You want me to call it in?” I asked.

  “No. There’s an open field a mile ahead with a shed full of hay. If we can make that, we can make a stand from the woods or the shed. Decide later how serious our tail is.”

  “Works for me.” I said. I remembered the location he was talking about. The shed was at the back of the field, about a hundred yards off the road, near a stand of trees. A shed full of hay was moderately good at stopping bullets. So were trees. Options were nice to have.

  My foot hit something on the floorboard. I bent and lifted it into the faint light. “Did you know there’s a shotgun back here?”

  “Huh. I wondered where that thing had got to.”

  “Yeah. Mine runs and hides too. What’s it loaded with?”

  “Your rounds. More in the ammo bag.”

  My rounds meant the weapon was loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds. Vamp killers. Expensive vamp killers I hadn’t known I had paid for, but under the circumstances, I wasn’t about to protest.

  “Hang on,” he said. I gripped the leather handhold over the door as Eli whipped the wheel. The SUV crossed the shoulder of the road before leaving the paved surface, tilting down and back up. I felt the steel frame give, heard the suspension twang and the tires spit dirt and gravel. My head slammed against the SUV roof, grinding my hair-stick stakes into my skull. And then we were up and over and bouncing across the grassy field. I grabbed handholds and seat backs and glanced through the back window to see three trucks following, bouncing over the low ditch. Headlights passed through truck windows, and I counted three or four heads in each. That meant more than nine, though less than twelve, opponents, which were not good odds. If they were all Naturaleza vamps, we might be screwed.

  “Hang on!” Eli shouted again. The brakes slid and caught with an antiskid shudder. I slipped across the seat, tightening my grip on the overhead handhold at the last second, seeing the shed whip by. And then I was out the door, into the woods, Eli on my heels. He had left the engine running to cover the sound of our movement, the exhaust to hide our scent, and the SUV’s bright lights on to damage the pursuers’ eyes.

  Beast was close in my mind, her claws a steady pain on my brain, her strength and speed flooding me. I raced into the night, her vision brightening the dark, turning the black into silvers and grays and shimmering greens. Where the moonlight filtered between the leafless trees it lit up the ground like daylight. Eli was slower than I was but fell into place behind me, trusting me to see in the dark until he got his low-light vision eyewear over his head. He moved to my side when he could see.

  Behind us I heard engines and doors slamming and then silence as all the
vehicles were turned off, including ours. There were no voices, no sound of running feet, no flashlights. Vamps have excellent night vision; they didn’t need flashlights. Crap.

  The night was hushed, no bird sounds, no nearby car sounds. The air was still and cold, as if waiting for something to happen. Ahead I could smell standing water, stagnant with rotted vegetation, and a mixed bag of strong chemicals. Fertilizers. Herbicides. Bug spray. Over it all was the stench of drying cow manure. A stand of young live oaks, maybe fifty years old, stood in even lines, the only trees in sight that still had their leaves. We were in the back of a plantation home, in an area used as a nursery.

  I stopped at the second tree and grabbed Eli, pulling him close, my mouth at his ear. “Get up in the tree. I’ll take a tree a row over and down a few. Let them get between us, then shoot down on them. Pincer style.”

  He looked up and shook his head. I understood what he was thinking. He didn’t have time to climb that high before they were on us, but he’d forgotten about my skinwalker strength, now augmented by all my new muscle. I laced my fingers and made a cradle of my hands. He put a booted foot into them and I tossed him up into the tree, holding my place until he was situated, his face just a little stunned. Then I raced across and down, choosing a tree about thirty feet away on the diagonal. I bent into a crouch and leaped, grabbing the lowest branch and hoisting myself up. All the months of exercise paid off as I muscled myself halfway up the tree and straddled a branch. On the rising breeze, I smelled vamp and sickness and a beery stench. And human blood. A lot of blood. These were Naturaleza. And they were here.

  They poured into the wide space between trees. Three in front; two behind. Others farther back in the trees were closing fast. The three in front dropped forward, feet and hands to the ground, and raced into the clearing between the rows of trees, noses low, sniffing. The hair along my body rose in alarm. The vamps moved like a cross between reptiles and spiders, with a soupçon of wild hog. Their spines seemed to be jointed at the waist and nape, allowing them to bend in strange places, their legs folding oddly. They were fast.

  I tucked Eli’s shotgun into my armpit, knowing that the recoil would tear at my shoulder joint, but there was no other way to fire downward without the recoil knocking me to the ground. I aimed at the base of the tree, aware that Eli had done the same with his handgun. There were five vamps in the clearing now, all racing around, all acting peculiar, and for vamps that was saying a lot. These were acting not-vampy. More like something else, though I couldn’t say what, but the sight of them scampering through the moon shadows of the trees gave me a case of the willies. They were something not meant to be on this world. Something wrong.

  The hair on my arms tightened painfully. One of the vamps paused at the base of my tree, nose to the ground. I could hear the sniffing breaths as she took in my scent. She lifted her head straight up, at an impossible angle, as if her neck were made of rubber.

  I fired. Into her face. It disappeared. So did her head. The rest of her fell like a rock to the ground. The blast ripped the night sounds away. My armpit took the recoil; I’d have a bruise and stretched tendons. Thoughts for later.

  I shifted the weapon up against my shoulder and fired again, taking a vamp midback. He fell, his upper body writhing on the ground, his lower body unmoving, his mouth open.

  I slammed the shotgun into a fork of trunk and branch and pulled a nine mil. I wouldn’t have the luxury of the spread pattern now. I’d have to aim and hit—which meant waiting until they were still. A vamp paused in the center of the space between rows of trees. Moonlight danced across his unnatural body. I squeezed off three rounds just before he took a step. He went down with a load of silver to the thigh and lower belly.

  One leaped into the tree, landing beside me. I fired at point-blank range into his groin. He fell, and even with the concussive damage to my eardrums, I could hear his scream. I adjusted my aim in a modified two-handed grip and fired straight down, directly into a face. A female fell, her eyes fully vamped out, two-inch fangs white in the night. Something caught my eye. My last round hit a vamp in midair. He looked like he was flying. Right at me.

  And then I saw something that shouldn’t—couldn’t—be. The vamp I’d hit in the middle of the back with the silver fléchettes pushed himself to his feet. I’d severed his spine. I knew I had. And yet he had healed even with silver in his system.

  Not possible.

  I aimed carefully and triple-tapped him, two chest shots midcenter and one slightly to the left. He staggered. And then he turned and stumbled away, into the trees, back the way he had come. The female I’d shot followed him, holding her face. But walking. Full of silver that should have burned them with mind-shattering pain until it poisoned them true-dead. Dead vamps walking. A moment later, only the one I’d hit first, the one with the head shot, was left.

  I studied her from the tree. She was dead, true-dead, though somehow, she had regenerated slightly, fresh pinkish skin and smooth bones showing where only fragments and blood and mush should have been. I looked around the rows of trees. They were all gone. Why had they just left? If they can regenerate like that, even full of silver, they should have stuck around until we made a mistake, and then eaten us for dinner.

  Across the way, Eli slid out of the tree and landed loose-kneed on the ground, his weapon in a Weaver stance as he studied the area. At some point there had been four dead vamps under his tree and four or five beneath mine. Now we had one DB. No way should so many have survived. Something was hinky here. Very, very hinky. I’d be chatting up Clark very soon, and not just about business.

  I reloaded and handed down the shotgun, changed out magazines, and chambered a round. One-handed, I gripped the limb I was squatting on and swung, dropping bent kneed to the ground.

  There wasn’t enough of the vamp’s head left to take it for a trophy, and a filthy turtleneck top covered her chest and arms. Her jeans were dirty too, like something a street person would wear, not a top-of-the-line predator. I lifted her hands, which still displayed the two-inch-long claws. They were jagged and torn, unlike the usual manicured talons vamps displayed. I pulled my phone and took several shots of her. I’d need proof to try to collect the bounty—try being the operative word. Without fangs in a head to display, no vamp MOC had to pay me anything. Still, I sent the pics to Big H’s Clan home, and to Bruiser, Leo’s right-hand blood meal, with a text about vamps who were resistant to silver. It seemed like something that the MOC of the entire Southeast USA should know.

  Eli jutted his chin back the way we had come, and this time I followed him. When we got to the SUV, it was sitting there in the small space between the hay shed and the tree line, four doors open, engine off, keys in the ignition. Eli had disabled the interior lights long ago, so the interior was dark. Eli crawled underneath—I guess to look for bombs—while I checked under the hood and sniffed for anything odd, but, really, neither of us expected to find anything. Our expectations satisfied, we climbed inside and closed the doors, and Eli handed me the shotgun. Tonight had given the old saying “riding shotgun,” new meaning. I lowered the windows and pointed the muzzle out at the night. Eli started the engine and drove us home. We didn’t say a word on the remainder of the trip. Not one.

  He swung the SUV into the guest-parking space and cut the engine. We sat there, listening to the engine cool down, hearing night birds hoot and sing. Watching through the windows of Esmee’s house as the Kid walked through the rooms, his head bent over an electronic tablet, hair hanging down in scraggly curls, his face illuminated by bluish light. “My brother has absolutely no sense of self-preservation or survival instinct,” Eli said. “He has no idea we’re out here. We could be silver-eating, flesh-regenerating, vampire zombies, and when we busted through the door to eat his brilliant brain, he’d look up and say, ‘Huh?’” When I didn’t respond, he said, “What were those things?”

  “I don’t know. They didn’t talk that I heard. You?” I asked. Eli shook his head. “They
didn’t make the popping sounds that vamps make when they move fast. They just flowed, like water.” Eli tilted his head in agreement. “And I never ever saw a vamp move like it was half spider, half lizard, half wild hog,” I said, knowing my math was totally wrong—but was also totally right. “And I think I saw one actually flying.”

  “Jumping. He jumped into the tree beside you and jumped between the branches right at you. Good shot, by the way.”

  “You’re sure the shotgun was loaded with vamp rounds?” I said, not doubting, but needing to be certain.

  “I stole them from you. So yes.”

  I made a humph sound. Broke open the shotgun and removed the fresh rounds. In the feeble light, I determined that they were indeed my rounds, hand-loaded with silver fléchettes by a gun nut pal in North Carolina. I dumped them into the bag with the others.

  We could have gone inside. We should have gone in. But we sat in the SUV, night air moving through, chilled and damp. I started to speak, but Eli beat me to it.

  “We need to find a way to kill silver-eating, flesh-regenerating vampire zombies.” His brow crinkled. “They weren’t zombies. Were they?”

  “No. They were vamps. But they were a different kind of vamp. I informed Bruiser. Maybe he’ll know something.”

  “Maybe.” He opened his door, and I followed Eli Younger into the bed-and-breakfast, to discover that our problems of the night were only just beginning.

  Jameson met us in the foyer, hands on his hips and a frown on his face. “Where is she?” he demanded.

  “Who?” we both said.

  “Esmee.” His eyes widened and he dropped his arms. “She didn’t meet you?” I could smell his alarm over the stink of gunfire that clung to us. At our puzzled expressions, he fished a key out of his shirt pocket and opened the door of an inlaid cabinet to reveal a gun safe. Four empty spaces showed where weapons had once hung. He scrubbed his face with one hand. “Beau is going to kill me.”