“Seriously.”
I chuckled, shaking my head, and Ysabel answered for me in her quiet way,
“I was born in 1181.” She didn’t pause in her research, or even look up from the piece of paper she was reading.
The men paled even further, and Glen leaned over, bracing his hands on his knees.
“Fuck, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“You wanted to know,” I commented dryly.
“Yea, but I wasn’t expecting that! I mean, you’re walking fossils… it’s… it’s bloody terrifying to be honest.”
Ysabel had finally looked up, cocking her head at Glen,
“We’re hardly fossils. But maybe you should try not to think about it too much… human minds often have problems with our life spans.”
“You don’t say,” Nathan drawled, his ruddy complexion still looking a bit weak, “I think we should probably just get on with this and… tackle the age thing later.”
“Or don’t,” I echoed Yzzy’s sentiment, “just don’t think about it.”
Glen finally straightened up,
“not thinking about it sounds like an excellent plan. Otherwise I’ll be too scared about you whipping out some medieval torture shit to ever say another bad word to you. And I don’t have the kind of self control necessary to not do that.”
I grinned savagely at him,
“You know, I hadn’t thought about that. I happen to be on quite good terms with an ancient Egyptian… I bet she could give me some amazing ideas.”
Glen just looked at me a bit wide eyed and turned back to his box of paperwork.
“Excellent idea,” muttered Michael, also turning back to his work, closely followed by Nathan.
“How about this?” Glen spoke again about 20 minutes later, holding up a small sheaf of paper. “This is purchase details, deeds and utility bills for a house.”
“They’ve bought a house?” Nathan looked as confused as the rest of us, “what the hell do they want with a house?”
“And why buy one? So far they’ve just squatted in vacant buildings.” I added.
“The humans?” Michael asked.
“Maaybe,” I felt my brow furrow as I thought it over. “It seems odd to actually buy somewhere though… it’s too… blatant.”
“They’ve been getting bolder for years. Maybe they’re moving into flat out arrogance.”
I rolled my eyes at Glen,
“Believe me, Archer has always been arrogant.”
“It’s worth a look though.”
“Aye,” I agreed, looking at the address. “It’s pretty remote; might be hard to sneak up on.”
“You and I can fly some reconnaissance and report back,” Ysabel suggested.
The three men looked up sharply,
“What if it’s a serious operation? You don’t want to get caught without back up.” Nathan said.
Ysabel smiled at him, “don’t worry, they won’t catch us. The bright side to the ferals arrogance is that they rely heavily on their psychic prowess; they don’t believe that anyone could ever hide from them, but Beth can. And she can hide me too.”
I felt Michael give me an appraising look and cleared my throat,
“Well no time like the present.” I jerked my head at Yzzy, “let’s go. You guys can finish up here right?” I winked at Glen’s scowl and strode quickly out of the door.
The reconnaissance turned out to be an easy enough thing, with no sign of movement of ferals anywhere around or in the house, which was well outside of the city; set at the end of a long, dirt track that wound from a narrow country road deep into a wood. We flew in loops, dipping in and out of the clouds, for an hour or so, before turning back to the base.
“What do you think?” I sent to Yzzy,
“I really don’t know… I mean,” I felt her thoughts spin, “there must be something in there. Otherwise why buy it? And why somewhere so hidden?”
“My thoughts exactly. I’d like to keep an eye on it for a while before taking the squad in, but I don’t want to tempt fate. If a higher gen notices us…” I trailed off.
“Mm. Let’s just get back and see what Michael and Nathan think. If we plan a careful, full-force assault we should be able to deal with anything unexpected.”
Surprisingly, Michael and Nathan were in accord with each other for once, and agreed with our initial idea. They listened carefully to our description of the area and hashed out a plan between them. The squad would trickle in through the wood over the course of a night, stationing themselves in and around an abandoned gamekeeper’s building about half a mile away, arriving in small, but heavily armed, groups to avoid attention and minimise casualties if there was an ambush. At dawn, the squad would advance on the house, surround it and enter en masse, hopefully maintaining the element of surprise. The only question left was when.
“As soon as possible,” Ysabel said without hesitation. I agreed with a curt nod.
“Seconded. At the moment there is little, if any, movement. Of course we could be missing something, but if we’re right, this might be the best chance to find out what’s in there.”
Michael nodded in agreement as well,
“We just need to allow the men time to get enough sleep that they can move through the night and then be alert at dawn.”
I glanced out of the window,
“Muster them as soon as possible this evening, give them tonight and tomorrow to rest and prepare, and we’ll go in tomorrow night.” I tapped a pen against my bottom lip, thinking. “Ysabel and I will fly over once more tomorrow evening, just to make sure the situation hasn’t changed.”
“Fine.” Michael said, before turning to Nathan to finalise the details, and Ysabel and I slipped out and headed home.
“Hey Yz,” I muttered as we took off, “I still think seeing other people might be a good move for us.”
I shot a grin at her over my shoulder as she hissed furiously, then launched myself into the sky.
Chapter 27
Michael
I jerked awake with a start, feeling the remnants of my nightmare cling to the edges of my mind, releasing me to consciousness reluctantly. I wrapped my arms around myself and shivered, immediately uncomfortably cold. We had come with the first group of soldiers so had been here a few hours, waiting for the rest of the squad to trickle in as planned. Lots had been drawn to see who would claim the relative warmth of the gamekeeper’s hut, and the rest of us were left to make ourselves as comfortable as possible among the trees while Beth and Ysabel kept a careful guard. I had meant to stay awake, still not entirely happy about trusting the vampires with our safety, but the inactivity and boredom had clearly beaten me. I shifted again, chilly and annoyed at myself, and glanced towards Beth. She lounged back against a tree next to me, wearing just a long sleeved tee-shirt over a short, tight-fitting combat vest, nothing like the bulky Kevlar ones the soldiers wore, and a pair of loose, black trousers, not even vaguely affected by the chill air. I glared at her and she smirked, lighting a flavoured cigarette – she must have been bored too, even if she wasn’t freezing.
“Do you actually get anything out of those things? Drug wise, I mean” I nodded towards her cigarette and she chuckled,
“Nah, it tastes quite nice though, and gives me something to do.” She shrugged, “it’s not like it’s going to kill me” she grinned.
“Yea, very true. I suppose I get why you never entertained my attempts to make you stop now” I smiled at her.
As she lifted the cigarette to her mouth, her shirt sleeve fell back slightly, exposing a wide scar on the inside of her left wrist, I hadn’t noticed it before,
“How did you get that scar?” I asked curiously,
“Oh,” she looked down at it, as if only just remembering it was there, “I don’t remember exactly, I’ve got a lot of scars from when I was human.” She shrugged.
“Do you remember much of your human life?” she looked at me sideways, and I could tell that she was gauging whether or not to engage in my a
ttempt at small talk. Deciding for the affirmative, she replied with a slight scowl,
“Unfortunately, yes. It’s a little fuzzy in places, but I remember all of it. Or as much as I suppose anyone would remember of their first eighteen years. I don’t really like remembering if I can avoid it though.”
“Why not?” I was prying, I knew, but she seemed to be in a sharing mood so I had to take advantage of it. Laughing wryly, she studied the glowing end of her cigarette,
“I didn’t have the greatest of starts to life I guess. I’ve never really been human kind’s greatest fan, even when I was one.”
“Why?”
She shot me a look and didn’t answer, clearly tired of my questions already. The screams of dying men still echoed in my head and I shuddered, letting out a slow breath.
“What was your nightmare about?”
The question surprised me, and I looked up to see Beth watched me with a soft, curious expression on her face.
“The night my squad was wiped out. Before I was assigned to this unit.”
Her face twisted with sympathy,
“You never actually told me what happened with that...”
She trailed off, a question in her voice. I shrugged, scowling.
“There were higher gens there. We were unprepared, thinking they wouldn’t be active in the day. Those of us who survived only did so because we retreated, and were lucky enough that they didn’t bother to follow.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t do it… do vampires dream?”
She smiled slightly, just a slight tilt of one corner of her mouth, “Of course. Most sentient beings do.”
“Do they have nightmares?”
She stilled, and answered quietly.
“Yes.”
I took a shot in the dark; “What are yours about?”
She didn’t look at me, staring off into the trees.
“Fire. And screaming. And the smell of burning flesh.”
“When did it happen?”
“When I was human… I have good reasons for not liking to remember those times.”
She smiled slightly at me again as what she said sunk in.
“After all these years, it still haunts you?”
“Things like that never leave you. Ever. But I think that people like you and I, we’re not meant to rest easy at night. We’re meant to endure through the pain so that the people we love don’t have to.”
I frowned at her,
“you and I?”
“Sure. We’re pretty similar really; we’d both give everything to protect our people. Our friends, our family. The ones we love. Tell me that if it came to it, you wouldn’t tear your soul to shreds in a heartbeat, if it meant that Glen would be unscathed...?”
“Hm,” I mused, “who was it who died? In the fire?”
A vicious, guttural hiss escaped her clenched teeth, a sound that made my skin creep and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“She was called Melissa. She loved me, and she died because of it. And there was nothing I could do.”
“Who killed her?”
“Does it matter? In the end she was dead, and it was my fault. As surely as if I’d thrown the torch myself.”
We lapsed into silence again, both staring out at the woods, lost in our own thoughts until the sky began to lighten on the horizon. Beth stirred, stepping away from the tree.
“Ysabel’s coming.”
She warned me, so I wasn’t shocked when Ysabel appeared between us silently. She looked at both of us with an odd, measuring expression on her face,
“It’s almost dawn, so the men are about to start getting geared up, and we - ” she poked Beth in the ribs, “- need to feed. I don’t want to be watching your ass as well as my own because you aren’t at full strength.”
Beth curved her body away from Ysabel’s poking finger with a grin, her mercurial mood shifting easily back to cheerful. I just grimaced at the feeding remark and tried to pretend I hadn’t heard, still not ready to know where exactly they found their… sustenance. Climbing to my feet stiffly, I stretched my arms above my head and then shook them vigorously by my sides, bouncing on the balls of my feet as I tried to get some feeling back into my freezing fingers and toes. I turned to wave Beth and Ysabel off, but they had already gone.
Chapter 28
Beth
Ysabel and I winged away into the gradually lightening sky, spiralling around each other, brushing wings. We danced in the air and my heart soared higher, easing in Ysabel’s presence after the conversation with Michael had tied it all in knots. I folded my wings and dived, rocketing towards the ground with my eyes closed, letting my other senses guide me, and Yzzy… I felt her tug on my mind and snapped out my wings, skimming along the ground and dodging between trees before shooting upwards again, laughing aloud. We settled then and flew at a leisurely pace ahead of the sun, circling down into the city.
Yzzy’s whisper slipped through my mental shields,
“Why did you tell Michael about Melissa?”
“I don’t know,” I mused, realising that I really didn’t, “I just feel like I’ve so thoroughly deceived him, maybe I owe him some truth.”
“Deceiving him was for his own good...”
“yes, I know. But that didn’t stop him feeling betrayed by it. And it’s been a long time since I’ve counted any human as a friend. I’m not sure I’m willing to let it go just yet.”
Yzzy didn’t reply to that, but I felt her soft, mental caress across our bond.
We landed in a particularly rough area. Sheathing our wings and linking hands, we strolled down the road quietly, heading nowhere in particular. Before too long, we sensed a small gang of four men following us. A quick dip into their minds told us that they didn’t exactly have good intentions; rape, theft, stabbing. Blah blah blah. I loved this city.
We turned down an alley and heard the men speed up and spread themselves out, trying to block our exit. Ysabel suddenly veered off towards the side of the alley, pulling me after her so she ended up with her back against the wall. She leaned in towards me, grinning viciously and kissing me as she half shifted, only her wings remaining hidden. The men saw, wolf whistling, and I heard them come up behind me, jeering and laughing. I closed my eyes and let their heartbeats wash over me, the pulse of the blood in their veins pounding a heady tempo through my body, making my own blood sing to their rhythm. A heavy hand descended onto my shoulder and squeezed, as its owner pressed himself up behind me, trying to get his other hand around my waist. I turned, too quickly for him to be able to register the movement and grasped the hand that was now on my lower back, wrenching it round and upwards in a wide circle. He yelled as his shoulder joint was pulled in the wrong direction, forced down onto one knee. I cocked my head and tutted at him,
“Didn’t your mother ever teach you that it’s rude to touch a lady without permission?”
He spat at me then, the scent of disease was on his breath and I instantly lost my temper. Placing one foot in the centre of his chest, I yanked hard on his arm, pulling it with a sharp twisting motion that removed it from his body completely. He screamed, bloodcurdlingly, and convulsed on the floor, curling around himself. I stepped over him, leaving him to bleed out into the drain that he landed next to and regarded the other men, deciding which one I wanted to kill first. They stared for a moment, then turned and ran back down the alley, straight into the embrace of Ysabel, who had flipped herself up and over them, landing in their path with her wings outstretched. As the men ran into them, she flexed their powerful muscles, bundling the men together then shoving them out backwards towards me. I grabbed one by his lank hair as he spun past me and ripped into his neck, my eyes rolling back in my head as his blood crowded down my throat. If there was anything going for not hunting often anymore, it was that I definitely appreciated the power surge more when I did; it was like a rush of pure, concentrated adrenaline. Only a few heartbeats had passed… letting the husk that rema
ined of my prey drop to the floor, I reached out and snagged the last man as he made to run back past me. As I did, Ysabel came up behind him. This one, we shared.
We circled above the building where the troops had holed up for a little while, swooping and rolling in the air together, enjoyed the flush of energy that the feed had given us. Eventually, we tired of our games and folded our wings, landing in front of the guards on duty and making them jump. Laughing at them, we stalked past and into the building to locate the captains. We found them in the busted-up room that was once the kitchen, running through the plan one last time. The house we were aiming for was located about a mile away across the forest. Michael and Nathan looked up as we came in, rolling up their maps and checking their guns one last time.
“God be with you,” Nathan said as he slid past us, heading out of the room. Ysabel scowled after him.
“Are you ready, then?” Michael asked, wisely ignoring the look on Yzzy’s face.
“Sure.” I replied, “and may God be with you.” I added with a smirk at Ysabel. She growled and shook out her wings.
“God can take a hike, I’ll look after myself.”
She stalked out, and Michael and I trailed after her.
Once outside, we were immediately swept into the hive of activity of men checking weapons and heading to their rendezvous points. The building had a front and back door, and a set of French doors leading onto a patio, so the main force was split into three. Ysabel and I were going to enter through upstairs windows to clear the first floor before heading down to meet with the others.
Once organised, Ysabel and I took to the air, circling slowly over the troops as they moved into position around the house and waited for the signal to move in. It came without preamble and as one, we crashed into the house. I tipped into a sharp dive, tucking my wings in tight as I smashed through a bedroom window. I flared my wings open as I swept in to bring me to a sharp halt and yanked my swords out of their sheaths. The room was empty, so I stalked inwards, mentally sweeping the house as I went. I faltered and paused as a curious, ominous feeling swept over me. There was a high pitched yelp, cut off quickly as Ysabel dispatched a feral in a room down the hallway, then she was out and walking quickly towards me.
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