Defining Human (Only Human Book 4)

by Candace Blevins

  We saw gazelles not long after we entered the reserve, and a few curves later, ostriches. I hadn’t expected them to be so big. Later, we saw huge vultures tearing at the remains of an animal carcass — mostly bones with just the tendons and ligaments left. I hadn’t thought wolves were present in the Mara, but one darted out of the bushes, snagged a ligament, and ran before the vultures could react. The poor thing was much smaller than the vultures, it must’ve really been hungry.

  Jackal, Cora supplied for me as our guide answered the same question from someone else.

  We saw a field of wildebeests, many with birds riding around on them, and the buses stopped as we neared the trees. I gasped at the lions, lounging in the high grass without a care in the world. They were less than sixty yards from a field full of wildebeests.

  Unfortunately, the pride were all sleeping, so this didn’t give me the lion encounter I’d hoped for. Later Cora telepathed to let me know about a leopard in a tree, and I got to be the one to point it out to everyone in the bus. Usually, the gazelles spotted wildlife about the same time as Cora.

  We saw elephants, and we all ooohed an aaaawed over the babies. I got to see two cheetahs running through a field, and the entire bus went silent when the big cats stopped and turned to us, their mouths open. Smelling. The smells seemed to confuse them so they came near the road to investigate, but weren’t aggressive so no action needed to be taken. Or, perhaps the fact we were being ridden by lions convinced them to back off.

  Giraffes, gazelles, and wildebeests are as plentiful in the park as deer are in Cades Cove, at home. However, we still stopped to watch two juvenile giraffes in a scuffle, standing side-by-side and slamming the back of their neck into the front of the neck of the other. It looked like more than playing around to me, but Cora assured me they were play fighting, preparing for the day when they grew up and had to fight for real.

  All the vehicles parked, and we took a short walk to an overlook to see more hippopotami than I could possibly count. They almost reminded me of sea lions, lounging and lazily swimming around. One in particular made me nervous though — completely submerged except his eyes and ears, staring at me.

  There were crocodiles around as well, and I didn’t like them any more in natural form than I’d liked the shifters.

  The predatorial-shapeshifters kept the gazelles surrounded while we were out of the vehicles, and I once again noted the difference between deer and antelope. I’ve learned way more than I ever wanted to know about these differences. Deer have antlers, which they lose and grow back every year. Antelope have horns, which continue to grow throughout their lives. Gazelles are antelopes, as are the wildebeests — it’s a big family, and each species has their own survival mechanisms. Gazelles will allow lions to get closer than cheetahs, for instance, because they’re much better at outrunning the lions. Deer run anytime they see or scent a bear, wolf, or other predator — they’re much more skittish.

  We had two meals while in the park. The first was in an open field, on tables set with tablecloths and real dishes. The second was in a camp area, in a screened-in house surrounded by cloth bunkhouses with wood roofs. Bears have been known to tear into a tent back home, so sleeping in one smack dab in the center of a reserve full of lions didn’t seem like a good idea to me.

  While we were out of the bus, I saw a fantastic little blue and red lizard, which Hami told me was an Agama lizard. “It means unmarried. They are not monogamous. Much like lions, one male will have a little harem of around six females who belong to him.”

  Which meant if there were Agama shapeshifters and the males fell in love with a human, they were screwed, too.

  Later, we saw another pride of lions, complete with lion cubs I wanted to cuddle. The male lions weren’t around, but seeing the females moving with the babies gave me enough of what I’d wanted. Nathan’s lion is both wild and tame, because Nathan is restraining him. These lions were wild. I felt the difference.

  I knew the plan was for us to stay out after sunset, but I still worried about vampire activity as I watched the sky light up in splendid oranges and reds before everything went dark.

  Our guides pointed out a bat-eared fox, and later we watched the brutal battle between a leopard and a hyena. The leopard won, but it wasn’t a sure thing for a while. I had to look away as the large cat finally tore into the hyena to feast on his meal, but I noted most of the gazelles watched in fascination.

  We saw more lion activity, and even some genet cats, which apparently aren’t actually cats. They reminded me of something between a raccoon and a fox. Or a land otter.

  We’d just rounded a corner to see a bunch of wildebeests huddled together when I smelled smoke. The gazelles went into a panic, and I was swept along in the mad dash for the emergency doors. Within five minutes, our bus was fully engulfed, and I worried the grass would catch fire.

  Hami was at my side the instant trouble started, his shield strengthening mine.

  Cora’s voice came in my head. I smell vampires. Celrau. Seconds later, Cora was at my other side, and I debated whether we should join auras or not.

  You think they got us out of the bus so they could attack? I asked Cora.

  Probably. It’s a new moon. The sky was supposed to be beautiful tonight, full of stars without a moon. Tactically, this puts them at an advantage. I have good night vision, but theirs is better. Hami’s is as good or possibly better than theirs.

  Right, and mine sucks.

  “We are at the tail end of the wet season, just beginning the dry,” said Hami. “I hope the grasses have enough moisture to keep from catching fire. A brush fire will be most terrible.”

  “Celrau,” I told him.

  He inhaled deeply, let it out. “Perhaps.”

  “Not perhaps,” said Cora. She tilted her head to show the direction, and Hami turned to look.

  “Yes. In the trees, watching. Could they have put a device on the buses, so they could start a fire when they wished?”

  “Most likely. Ryan will figure it out and have someone look over the other bus,” said Cora.

  On my last training session with the fifty-cal, I was decently accurate up to seventy yards. The extra shapes in the tree Cora had me looking at were slightly farther away. I listened to Tyson and Ryan in my earpiece, and they thought there were eleven vampires.

  It turns out, I didn’t have to worry about making a shot at a hundred yards, because the Celrau came flying at us. I hadn’t known they could fly.

  My fifty-caliber pistol had an extra grip mounted on the Picatinny rails under the barrel. It meant I could handle the kick easier, and helped me stabilize the gun for a more accurate shot — once I got used to it.

  I picked off two in midair — I doubted I killed them, but I knocked them out of the air and slowed them, at least. I didn’t want to display my light weapons in front of seventy gazelles and thirty security personnel, but I wasn’t sure I was going to have much choice. I’d been so worried about the lions, crocodiles, and Griffin, I’d forgotten to worry about Aquila and his people.

  The Celrau we didn’t shoot out of the sky landed in trees closer to us, but still forty yards away.

  “Daytime crew,” Ryan said through our earpieces, “turn around. Nighttime crew, stay focused. Everyone, use your peripheral vision and keep the gazelles to the inside.”

  “Why are the Celrau here?” asked the leader of a herd out of South Africa. “They aren’t allowed to change shapeshifters.”

  “They’ve been changing people in other realms,” I told him. “They took me to the Hell Realm to change me, and I escaped. Concilio laws don’t follow them to other realms.”

  I was operating under the understanding I wouldn’t be able to tell them if I wasn’t supposed to. Honestly, if they didn’t know, it probably wasn’t my place to tell them, but considering they were in danger, I figured they deserved the truth.

  “Slayer,” said a vampire behind us. “Give us the human and we’ll spare the gazelles.”
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br />   “Fuck you!” said a gazelle off to my left. “We aren’t giving you anyone!”

  “He doesn’t speak with authority,” Ryan said from atop the remaining bus, “but he’s right. We hand over no one.”

  I didn’t turn around, though I wanted to. I kept my focus where Ryan had said, and trusted others would watch my back. Ryan ran a tight ship, and his regular employees were as well trained as Aaron’s people.

  Is Aquila here? I asked Cora.

  I don’t smell him specifically, but I’m not sure I would. There are a lot. At least twenty-five.

  I touched my earpiece. “Ryan? Cora and I can join you up there easily. I’m more lethal with my natural weapons than the fifty-cal, but you tell me what you want to happen.”

  “Just a minute. Everyone hold, for now.” Fifteen seconds later, he said, “Kirsten, bring Cora and Hami up here. Everyone else, find a target but don’t move or physically aim.”

  I grabbed their arms and levitated us up and over the gazelles to the remaining bus.

  “Cora, tell her the layout, make sure she understands. Use telepathy.”

  Ryan spoke so low I barely heard him, and I was only inches away.

  Aquila is at four o’clock. He has some… I don’t know. Not demons, but they smell like Hell. Sulphur. Brimstone. Whatever. He has at least a dozen of them with him.

  Small and green with orange?

  Yes.

  Fuck. They make fire. They can throw it.

  “The small demon-things can throw fire,” Cora told Ryan.

  The other bus had long since burned itself out, and I’d seen our people going over the other vehicles to be sure no incendiary devices were on them. They found one on each vehicle, and had tossed them towards the vampires and far from us. Also, downwind, so if they were set off and caught the grass on fire, it would travel away from us.

  The green and orange beasties had been on the other side of the bus from us, and were upwind. Not good.

  I wasn’t sure what we were waiting for. I wanted to start shooting the Celrau, but this was Ryan’s op. He was in charge. No one was moving, and something wasn’t right.

  “Something’s coming,” I told Ryan. “I can feel it pressing on my shields, but from the inside. Maybe someone else drank from me while I was out?”

  “Cora, get her inside the bus. We have six Strigorii flying in. Still a few miles out. Hami, you’re prepared?”

  “I am, Sir.”

  I hadn’t heard Hami call Ryan Sir before, and I had a feeling it meant something. An order he needed to follow that he didn’t want to, perhaps?

  A thought went through my head that I wanted to stay on the bus to avoid them knocking me out, and I realized it wasn’t my thought.

  “Ryan,” I said without bothering to whisper, “you can kill the green and orange beasties with silver buckshot. Location isn’t important. Hami, it’s time. No guilt. Do it. Now.”

  I felt the injection at my neck, relaxed into Cora’s arms, and grunted when Cora landed on the ground, holding me like a toddler.

  “We need to make sure they don’t fly off with her,” Cora explained as she boarded the bus with me, and I don’t remember anything else.

  Chapter 17

  I awakened to darkness, with music playing in my headphones.

  “You’re safe,” Cora’s voice came through the soothing music. “We just need to be sure you’re in control.”

  I put feelers out and felt no one. Panic sent fire through my veins. “Where am I? Where are you?” I put my hand in front of my eyes and didn’t see it. I felt my face and wasn’t blindfolded. “I’ve lost my sight!”

  “No, it’s just dark in there. Ryan put you in some kind of metaphysical faraday cage. We aren’t far, but you won’t be able to feel us, or do anything else. Tell me how you feel?”

  “What happened? Are the gazelles okay? How long was I out? Did the vampires do any damage? I don’t like not feeling you.”

  “I don’t like it either, but hearing your voice is a relief. You told Hami to knock you out, which meant you thought you were in danger of being taken over.”

  “No, but they were trying to put thoughts into my head. I knew they weren’t my thoughts, and I don’t know how many people drank from me while I was out, or how many different vampires they made me ingest.” Just saying the sentence made me want to gag.

  “We were supposed to be fighting the Celrau when the Strigorii showed up, so they’d catch us by surprise. However, because Ryan waited, we were able to engage them all at once. The demon critters weren’t hard to send back to Hell, thanks for the info on the silver. Aquila and most of the Celrau went through a portal back to Hell. We killed all but two of the Strigorii, and they unfortunately escaped. We have another hour until the sun rises — it’s probably safest to keep you where you are until we’re sure the vampires are out for the day.”

  I sighed. “Okay, but go ahead and order cheese eggs, fried potatoes, and a double order of Belgian Waffles. I’m starving.” I pulled my knees up. “I need to use the restroom, too. How long until the sun goes down?”

  The next hour was probably the longest of my life, and my bladder hurt by the time they let me out. I didn’t complain, though. I didn’t want to be responsible for hurting my friends.

  I heard the story of the fight. The strongest vampires are often fast enough to dodge bullets, but Ryan had armed his regular employees with silver .220 swifts, one of the fastest bullets known to man. It isn’t big, but a hit to the heart with silver will take out even the strongest vampire — it might not kill the oldest and most powerful, but it would shrivel them to nothing until they could feed and heal.

  And once they were shriveled to nothing, regular bullets pulverized their hearts and brainstems.

  “Ryan’s a sight to see against vampires,” said Cora. “Fast and lethal, and he dances with a damned sword. Zorro has nothing on him.”

  When it was finally time to take me out of the cage, Ryan came alone. I blinked in the dim light, and was thankful he’d thought to turn the regular lights off after I’d been in total darkness. He handed me a sheet of paper, and I had to focus hard to read.

  No one needs to know how to incapacitate you. I had you in an actual faraday cage made of silver and copper, and charged with an electrical current. Inside of this, and grounded so you weren’t electrocuted, you were in another cage made of tin. Not aluminum. Tin foil hats actually worked when the foil was tin, but no longer have much of an affect now that only aluminum is available. Anyone who locks you in such a contraption will be safe from you.

  I nodded, and he set fire to the paper and dumped it in a toilet. “I’ll step outside so you can relieve yourself, but I’ll need to put some things away before we move upstairs.”

  “Where are we?” I asked when I opened the door to invite him back in after I’d used the toilet.

  “A slayer safehouse. This equipment isn’t widely known, and we’d like to keep it that way.”

  “Still in Africa?”

  “Yes. Not far from Nairobi, and about a thirty-minute drive to the airport. It’ll be dismantled and sold within days, since I had to use it.”

  “I feel as if I should apologize.”

  He shook his head. “I knew the risks when I hired you, and though the gazelles were scared while the action was happening, not a single one of them received so much as a scratch. This gives a boost to my reputation, so it’s okay despite the monetary hit.”

  He unplugged the outer box, folded the inner box so it was flat, and then did the same with the outer one. He motioned for me to step outside the room, and with a flip of a button, carpet rolled over the whole thing. “Help me move some furniture?”

  The sofas and tables on the edge of the room came to the center, and no one knew what the sofa sat on. Ingenious.

  “We’re in a home, not a hotel, so we can provide waffles and fried potatoes, as both are available from the frozen selection. There are no fresh foods, so you’ll have to do without y
our eggs and cheese.”

  “I’m good with potatoes and waffles. You arranged for another bus for the other gazelles? They all made it to their hotel okay?”

  “They did. Everyone is safe.”

  Cora hugged me as soon as I entered the room. “You’re okay? It’s you?”

  “I’m good, and yes, it’s all me, best I can tell.”

  Her embrace felt good, welcoming. Like going home. We walked arm-in-arm to the kitchen, and I reluctantly broke physical contact with her to pour juice and help set the table. The carnivores were getting steaks, and it looked like we were all getting fried potatoes.

  “Anything interesting to tell me about the vampires who made an appearance last night? Dracula, maybe?”

  “Vlad is barely six hundred years old and not powerful compared to the old ones,” said Ryan. “Though, you do happen to know his maker.”

  I looked at Cora, who shrugged. I’d been joking about Dracula, but now I was curious.

  “Vlad was a bad guy even when he was human. I can’t imagine Abbott turning him, but…” I shook my head. “Has to be Gavin.”

  “Got it in one,” Ryan said with a chuckle. “Though, Vlad’s of course using a different name. Sometimes the hardest part of my job is keeping up with the monsters as they move around and change identities.”

  “Does the Concilio hire you to kill Celrau when they’ve broken the rules?”

  “The Concilio has their own team of assassins and collectors, but they occasionally outsource, and I seem to be at the top of their list when they do.”

  Again, I was tempted to ask how much he’d charge to take Aquila out, but if the bad guys would just replace him with another Celrau, there was no need. Better the devil you know than the devil you don’t. Maybe.

  “Which Strigorii vampires came after me last night?”

  “Griffin’s people. They’re apparently pissed. His second was the leader, with full powers of a Master Vampire, but that’s to be expected with Griffin out of it. We won’t know if he can regenerate his head or not for at least four or five days, possibly as long as a decade. He’s more powerful than Abbott, even though he doesn’t have as many powerhouses oathed to him. They’ll be the ones bringing him back, so it’s hard to say how long it’ll take.”