The fact that she was supposedly a member of this so-called team was enough to make it dysfunctional. It was obvious that she had her own issues to contend with but as she sat in Penny’s den and looked around at the company she was in, Kara felt almost normal.
First, there was Paul Wickers. He was respected around town but it was no secret that he had taken pretty hard to the bottle after his wife had died. Rumor had it that he’d gone to church drunk one Sunday and walked up to the podium and started to make everyone question their beliefs. Kara knew for a fact that he had spent more than a few nights drunk off his ass in the last three years or so and his condition didn’t seem to be getting any better. As if to back this up he was sipping from a flask as they sat in Penny’s house, looking around at their group anxiously.
Sitting across from Paul was Ray Yancy. Ray was a thirty-seven-year-old bachelor who managed to run what had once been a successful lumber yard into the ground. As far as Kara knew, he was a law-abiding citizen, but he enjoyed traveling to Las Vegas a little too much. Small town rumors traveled with speed and were often correct, if not slightly exaggerated. And what Kara had heard was that he had lost all of his money in Vegas about a year ago. He may or may not also owe some less-than-reputable people a great deal of money. It was because of his money problems that his wife had taken their two sons out somewhere in Maine and never bothered calling or coming to visit.
Then there was Penny Carlisle. Kara knew very little about her other than her huge house and her divorce. The grapevine suggested that she worked from home doing freelance editing for self-published erotica authors. She was a pretty woman but she was hurting her looks more than helping them by attempting to look twenty-one rather than her actual age of forty-three.
As she did her quick evaluation, Kara noticed several similarities. And since she had drawn them together, she felt that it was her duty to point them out.
“So,” she said, “I’ve already explained why I think we need to meet on the phone. And while that’s odd enough, I think it’s worth pointing out another similarity between us other than the fact that we have all come extremely close to dying.”
“What’s that?” Penny asked.
“We’re all single. We have no families.”
“How’s that relevant?” Ray asked.
Kara clasped her hands together and took a deep breath. “I’m going to tell all of you something,” she said. “Something that is going to sound nuts. Your first instinct is going to not believe a single word of what I say. I know if the roles were reversed, I sure as hell wouldn’t. But I’d like for you to listen to me with an open mind.”
Paul took another pull from his flask. Seeing this, Kara wished she had something to drink. It would certainly make this go much easier.
She started her story with Lester Dobbs and his altercation with Saul Benton. From there she filled them in on how she had gotten involved in the Bentons’ drama with the Greely clan. She did not mention the fact that the Benton and Greely families were vampires until she could no longer get around it. She was surprised to see blank faces around the room as she offered this bit of information. Kara then told them about Sheriff Morel’s death and how she believed that he had been killed by this Rogue called Gestalt. Finally, she shared her thoughts about Gestalt’s plans, finishing up with her visit from Magdeline –which also made it necessary to explain who The Guard was. Kara did so, albeit very awkwardly.
The whole thing took twenty minutes to explain. When Kara was done, the den was absolutely silent. She saw only the slightest signs of doubt on her companions’ faces. In a weird way, that scared her the most.
“I told her that it has to be Red Creek,” Paul said. “It’s this town that draws in shit like that. I’ve lived here my whole life and have felt it ever since I was a young man.”
“I’ve wondered if there was something strange going on lately,” Ray said. “For the past few months, I’ve been having dreams about my near-death experience.” He looked around the room and then to the floor. “I told Kara about it on the phone. I was electrocuted when I was twenty-nine years old. I was working construction and we were putting up the wiring for a house. I still don’t even know what happened. I just got shocked and then blacked out. I was dead for a little over three minutes, I think.”
“I’ve had dreams, too,” Penny said. “Like Paul, I almost drowned. I was seventeen and skinny-dipping with my boyfriend. The current in the river got too strong and I hit my head on a rock. The doctors said I was dead for at least five minutes.”
“And do you also feel the same way about Red Creek?” Paul asked.
Penny shrugged. “I don’t know. I never noticed anything until after Marvin left me. When I was alone, I started to realize that there is a sort of darkness to this town that you can’t really see…you can only feel it.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly it,” Ray said.
“So,” Penny said, looking to Kara. “If we are a part of this group you call The Marked, what does that mean exactly?”
“According to Magdeline,” Kara said, “our bloodlines were chosen long ago. We have been watched and, to some degree, protected. We’re like the back-up…the just in case. And I think it might be why we are all single and with no one tying us down.”
“I find that insulting,” Penny stated.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to be flattering,” Kara said.
“So what,” Ray said. “Are we supposed to just wait for vampires to show up and kill them? Is that how this works?”
“As I understand it, yes.”
“Are there any here right now?” Paul asked.
“Only one that I know of, other than the Benton family. But I believe Saul and his sister are handling that right now.”
“The Bentons aren’t dangerous?” Ray asked.
“No. If I hadn’t seen them in action, I would have had no way of knowing that they were vampires. They’re very protective of their home and I have not once felt threatened by them while in their presence.”
Kara thought it best to leave out how she had been beyond attracted to Saul in a way that was borderline unhealthy.
“You understand,” Penny put in, “that this is an awful whole lot to accept, right?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well,” Ray said, “let’s look at the facts. While I think the fact that none of us have families might not really be linked to a supernatural connection between us, I do have to say that the near-death thing we all share is monumental.”
“Yeah,” Paul said. “I don’t even think it matters that she’s on the police force. For Kara to dig that up and make that connection seems huge to me.”
Penny nodded. “I agree with that. I wonder, though, about The Guard. Are we allowed to see them, if they do in fact exist?”
“I don’t know how that works,” Kara admitted. “I’m relatively new to all of this myself. I think the only reason Magdeline came to me is because I have been so involved with the Benton family recently. I’ve been…well, marked. Also, I’ve been working out a lot, lately. I’ve been taking boxing and karate lessons. I had no interest in it before—but now it has been like I was preparing for…I don’t know…for something.”
“Holy shit,” Penny said.
“What?”
Penny chuckled nervously and stood up. She started pacing. “Two weeks ago, I was raking up the back yard. I decided to pull up the old fence that ran along the back, separating the yard from the woods. I had a handyman come in and do it but when he was hauling it all into the back of his truck, I walked out and started digging through the wood. I pulled out about a dozen pickets—the stronger ones. I had no idea why I was doing it, but in that moment, it seemed very important. It’s not like I had any plans to build another fence or anything. I just wanted them for some weird impulsive reason.”
Again, the room fell into silence. Now, though, everyone looked spooked.
“Count me in,” Ray offered. “I’m willing to admit
that there’s something screwy going on here. But I am not at all ready to accept the existence of vampires.”
“Same here,” Paul agreed. He had pocketed his flask and his eyes looked clear.
Penny shrugged. “Me too, I suppose. There’s simply too much to ignore and there is certainly something going on in Red Creek. It’s very weird, but I’m sure of that without a doubt.”
“Yeah,” Ray said. “I can feel it, but I have no idea what it is.”
“Well,” Penny put in, “I don’t know about you guys, but I can sure as hell use a drink. And there’s a whole wine cellar downstairs that the asshole I was once married to left behind.”
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Kara said.
“Booze and strategies for fighting vampires,” Ray said. “This day took one hell of a crazy turn.”
Welcome to my world, Kara thought as they followed Penny through her house and towards the stairs and the wine cellar beyond.
3
Jill gave up on stealth and finally allowed panic to take over. At some point, the two Rogues had split up and Jill had lost track of both of them. She had always heard how difficult it was to track a Rogue and now she was experiencing it firsthand. She had never felt so lost and out-of-sorts before.
Eventually, the forests ended and she came out onto one of the back roads that wound around Red Creek. She closed her eyes and concentrated, trying to focus not on the Rogues themselves, but the scent of bloodlust. It came from most vampires in the same way that pheromones came from humans. Concentrating and letting the night wrap around her, she caught the briefest sense of that scent coming from the east—directly towards the center of town.
Jill sent out a quick mental message to Saul and then started towards town. She made it about a quarter of a mile, sprinting the entire time, when she was halted by a mental response from Saul. She stopped along the side of the road and felt herself wanting to weep.
Jason is dead. Gestalt manipulated him, and Nikki had to kill him. Gestalt escaped on a passing train with the woman he had by his side.
Thinking of what this meant, Jill’s sorrow morphed into anger. Gestalt was gone and he had left at least two of his minions behind. He, much like Leibald Greely, had a plan already in place and they had somehow not seen it. More than that, it seemed that they had fallen directly into his trap.
With fury on her face, Jill ran into town. The streets were dark, shrouded in shadows, yet she ran through them as if she knew them like the back of her hand. Jill was drenched in adrenaline and her senses were working on overdrive. She felt herself slipping into a hunter-like mode; Jill felt as if she was able to use all of her senses and everything around her—right down to the very air itself—to track her prey.
Jill heard the first scream within two minutes. It was a woman’s scream, high-pitched and full of pain. It wasn’t necessarily loud—it actually sounded as if it were muffled—but it was close by.
Got you, you fucker, Jill thought, running towards the sound of the scream.
It was closing in on midnight, so the streets of Red Creek were dead and motionless. This allowed Jill to hear a slight commotion a block or so ahead of her and to the left. She made her way down the darkened streets as quietly as she could, using the stealth she had been blessed with upon her Turning so long ago to its full advantage.
Jill spotted the Rogue a split second before it heard her coming. He had attacked a woman that had been out walking her dog. The dog, one of the little frou-frou ones that looked more like a rat than a canine, lay on the sidewalk, nothing more than a smear of blood and fur. The Rogue had the woman in his clutches and had already bit into her neck. It was feeding greedily when Jill spotted it.
She swirled the crowbar in her right hand like a baton and went rushing after him. The Rogue took one last suck and dropped the woman to the ground. He then sneered at Jill and ran toward her.
Jill jabbed the crowbar out, but the Rogue blocked it and then delivered a punch that Jill also blocked, using her left arm. She then reared her head back and drove it into the Rogue’s nose. The head-butt made a sickening smack noise and the Rogue took a stumbling step backwards. Jill kept rushing forward and this time when she plunged the crowbar forward, the Rogue was too stunned to stop it. It penetrated his chest and came out of his back. He coughed, shuddered, and then fell still.
Jill pushed him off the crowbar and he fell to the street next to the woman that he had been feasting upon. Not wanting to give the poor woman any time to Turn, Jill knelt down next to her and raised the crowbar. The moment she shoved it down, the woman’s eyes opened. They were red along the pupils and filled with hate. But those new eyes only glimpsed Jill for a moment before the crowbar pierced her heart and clinked against the sidewalk beneath her back.
Jill withdrew the bloodied weapon and slowly got to her feet. She had no idea what to do with the bodies. They’d deteriorate within hours, but she thought that they might still be there when the sun came up.
Not my problem, she thought. I need to find that other Rogue.
She got to her feet to do exactly that. That’s when the first gunshots were fired in the distance.
Jill started running again, towards the gunfire.
Saul, she thought, projecting the thought as strongly as she could. I may need some help here.
The gunfire was coming from a large rifle, so it was easy to track. She ran as fast as she could, her immortal lungs accepting the task with ease, her legs pumping like pistons. She thought about stealing a car, as it would get her there faster, but it might also hinder her tracking abilities. So she continued to follow the sound of gunfire and eventually started to pick up on the scent of bloodlust.
It was heavier now, thick and potent – almost like a physical being. Jill followed it and the sporadic sound of gunfire to a small cleared yard tucked within the forests of Red Creek. And when she came to the edge of the yard, still within sight of the road, she froze.
It was not the man shooting from his upstairs window that discouraged her, even as he let out two thunderous booms into his yard. What concerned her were the six figures in his yard, ambling onto his porch and trying to get into the house.
The man fired again, hitting one of the people in the chest. The figure sprawled back and hit the ground but was pushing himself back onto his feet within seconds.
“Shit,” Jill muttered. She had no way of knowing if one of these figures was the remaining Rogue that she had been after, and it really didn’t matter. He had apparently worked quickly. It typically took upward of twelve hours for a Turn to take effect but she had heard that Rogues operated differently. If these vampires on this man’s porch were victims of the Rogue that had escaped her, they had been attacked and turned within fifteen minutes or so. That sort of speed was unheard of.
Jill surveyed the man’s yard and she spied the small pile of wood to the edge of the yard along the back. She dashed around the edge of the yard to the sound of more gunshots. She thought she also heard the creaking of a door as the Rogues started to break it down. From inside the house, a child screamed.
Jill looked around the pile of split wood and her eyes fell on the ax. She tossed the crowbar down and took the ax to replace it. She hefted its weight in her hand and headed to the front yard.
She took the first one totally by surprise, swirling around the corner of the house and cleaving the ax at its neck. Her aim was true, but the blade was rather dull. The swing broke the Rogue’s neck and sent it to the ground but the cut did not go all the way through. Jill planted her foot on the Rogue’s chest, raised the ax again, and brought it down. This time, the head was severed and the body went limp instantly.
The other five turned their attention to her, the nearly broken door forgotten. They came at her with fresh hate in their eyes and Jill could practically smell the newness coming off them. Two of them snarled at her, their sharp teeth glistening in the darkness.
Jill brought the ax back, prepared to swing at the first one th
at dared to come charging at her. She backed up a few steps, not wanting them to box her in. Even if they were as weak and new as they appeared to be, fighting off five of them with only her hands and a dull ax was not going to be easy.
Jill could still hear the child screaming from inside the house. Somewhere within its walls, she also heard a door closing softly. She watched as one of the Rogues got brave and took two strides towards her. She swung the ax out quickly, nearly catching it in the face. The Rogue snarled at her and then froze in mid-snarl.
In fact, all five of them stopped. Their faces scrunched up in disgust and three of them took tentative steps backwards. Jill was confused at first until she heard footfalls behind her. She quickly looked over her shoulder and saw the man that had been firing his gun from his upstairs window. He was holding his gun in one hand and a silver crucifix in the other. He was holding the crucifix up towards the Rogues as if it were a shield.
“You okay, ma’am?” he asked.
“Yes. Maybe you should get back inside.”
“I figured I could help.”
Jill said nothing. It was obvious that the Rogues were terrified of the crucifix, but that made no sense. The myths about crucifixes were right up there with garlic and sunlight. It was just a symbol and did not work.
Well, apparently that was not true when it came to these Rogues. A long while back, when all vampires had been purely evil, it had worked to some degree. It made her wonder just what sort of bloodline Gestalt had come from. What the hell kind of vampires were they dealing with here?
“Do you have any more of those?” Jill asked, indicating the crucifix.
“No. I had to dig this one out of my dresser. Um….these things…they’re vampires?”
“Yes.”
“And you just cut one’s head off?”
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