by Justin Sloan
They turned down a street that led them to the water, though the street itself was broken into large chunks here and there. A bridge glistened in the sunlight ahead.
"You have a better explanation?" She spat back, not hiding her irritation. "This is the world we live in.” She waved a hand at all of the collapsed and decomposing buildings and structures, like the old bones of a beached whale after nature ripped all of the meat off of them. “There are Weres and ... there are vampires. And then there are humans, who are weak and easily corruptible."
"Easily corruptible?" He challenged. "Tell that to the Bloodhounds. Weres like you that signed up to put their own kind down and hunt and bleed vampires."
She closed her eyes, trying not to lose her cool, and then opened them to stare daggers at Diego.
"I didn’t say we were perfect," she said. "But compare that to the way humans treat each other, and the fact that they basically brought on this hell hole of an apocalypse. I’d say we’re fucking miles ahead of them."
"Okay, so ignoring all that. Back to the topic—aliens? Some super strong vampire chick who was like some kind of goddess or protector of humanity?" Diego scoffed. "We have stories in Spain too, and I gotta say it’s usually only the kids that believe them."
"This’s different." At this point, a shadow moved behind them. Cammie glanced back, cautious.
Perhaps a bird?
"I honestly can’t understand what would make you believe all this," Diego said, shaking his head and looking at her like she was a child.
But her attention was elsewhere.
"Shhh." She held a hand up to his mouth, glancing around. She was certain she’d heard something now, so lowered her voice to a whisper. "I think we’re being followed."
Diego’s eyes narrowed, and he whispered, "Or you’re trying to change the subject."
With a pointed look from her, he nodded and followed her lead to move into the shadows of a van that was on its side.
The shadow moved again and then became clear—the shadow of a person’s head, but when they moved to see who it belonged to, it was gone.
A sound of movement from the opposite direction caught her attention. A clatter from nearby, the click of a magazine being fitted into a rifle, then the sound of a bullet being chambered. Cammie knew those sounds anywhere.
She motioned Diego to follow, and they slipped into the van through the broken back door, which hung off at an angle.
When she reached the middle, crouching behind an old seat, her fears were confirmed by a glance in the side-mirror—but it was worse than she’d expected. At least three men all in black, rifles at the ready, were lined up by a nearby building, about to move in for the attack.
And one was looking right at her.
CHAPTER FOUR
Abandoned Streets Outside Old Manhattan
Diego watched anxiously, waiting, because he knew that when someone went as still as Cammie did just now, it could only mean they were either terrified or being careful not to be seen by someone. When she slowly ducked down to remove her cowboy boots and tear off her clothes, he knew it meant action was coming.
Not the good kind of action that undressing could be interpreted to mean by some, but the kind that meant blood and death.
It was second nature for him. Without a second glance her way, he was nude and then on all fours as a puma. She darted past him as a wolf, and then he was moving too, darting into a nearby building, as gunfire sounded behind him.
"Shit, nothing!" a man’s voice said, followed by a clanging of the van’s door.
Diego turned to Cammie and tilted his head, and she narrowed her eyes, then nodded for him to follow. They circled around and were coming out from behind a pile of bricks just as the one at the van said, "That’s weird, just a pile of clothes."
"A pile of clothes?" the one with his back to them said. "Oh shit."
He turned as Cammie leapt, and Diego was right behind her, taking out the second man by tearing out his throat. These were corporation soldiers; he was sure of it. No one else would be out here scouting the area.
A shot sounded from the van, and Cammie dove through the man’s legs so that he spun, taking the brunt of his teammate’s fire.
Diego was about to charge, when a new round of fire sounded, but from a different direction—above. He pulled back and snarled, hoping Cammie got the message. They could’ve taken this small team out, but they’d misjudged their attackers, and there were clearly more of them than anticipated.
"You little bitch," the closest man said as he collapsed to his knees from the shots, then fell over, dead.
She used the moment to run, as bullets riddled the rubble behind her.
The two ran, ducking through a section of the building that would make it hard for the men to pursue them. Next, they circled back around to the edge of the block, where they found a stream with foliage that would give them some cover.
Kneeling there, Cammie changed back to her human form. Diego did the same, and instantly averted his gaze. Living among Weres at different times in his life meant he wasn’t shy about nudity in the slightest, but he still preferred to give a lady her privacy—as much as possible when both knelt nude in the mud.
"This is fucked," she said.
He could just make out the top of the bridge in the distance—their destination. "The bridge will be watched."
"No shit, smartass." She shifted slightly, enough to reposition and glance around the bush to ensure the soldiers weren’t approaching yet. The way her bare back curved, leading down to the dimples of her rear, gave Diego’s eyes no choice but to look, but she only smiled when she caught him. There was more to see when she leaned back and assessed him with an intrigued lick of her lips.
"Got a plan?" he asked, trying to stay focused on their immediate danger.
"Yeah, I distract them, while you—"
"Nu-uh, I’m not letting you put yourself in that kind of danger."
She raised an eyebrow. "I figured since you have Sandra back there waiting and she’d be broken hearted if you got hurt…."
He nodded back to the bridge. "The plan was?"
"I distract them; you grab our stuff." She turned back into a crouch, clearly about to transform again. "Meet me at the bridge."
"But the whole idea that it’ll probably be watched?" he asked.
"We’ll just have to make sure we don’t look like ourselves." She smiled at him, and in a blink of an eye those perfect teeth were sharp, and her smooth skin was covered in hair—she was a wolf.
In a blur, she was gone, and someone was shouting nearby. The shouts cut off, replaced by the sound of someone gasping for breath and then gunshots.
This was jacked. He couldn’t just sit here; that was for damn sure. But he wasn’t so sure about running straight back to where they’d just escaped from either. Oh well, he was Valerie’s right-hand Were now, right? And Sandra would expect better from him.
No more hesitation.
Instantly he was a puma again, and he felt the moist bank of the stream ground give beneath his paws as he pushed off.
One of the soldiers lay dead in his path. He leaped over this one and made a line for the van, catching a soldier disappearing around the corner of a building. Had they taken the bait? He wasn’t surprised, now that he thought about it—regular humans could be pretty gullible after all. Well, except for Sandra.
He ran for the van, thinking about Sandra. While he’d never given her a reason to give him a guilty look before, he saw that look in her eyes in his mind now, and wondered at his wandering eyes moments ago.
Adrenaline rushed through his body as he came skidding around the back of the van and entered before another shot sounded. Pain … he thought he’d been hit at first, but then realized it was just a bend of metal he’d slammed into.
Lying low, he caught a glimpse of the soldier running his way. Big mistake. When the man was ten feet away, Diego darted out and had taken out the man’s calf before he’d realized what
was happening.
He jumped, and this was his favorite part—transforming mid-attack, and watching the terror in his opponent’s eyes. He grabbed the pistol with a maneuver he’d learned on the streets of Spain, and spun it around and pulled the trigger, sending skull fragments and brain matter across the street.
"What now?" he muttered, moving to holster the weapon, before remembering he was naked, standing in plain sight.
He laughed to himself, nervously, and then darted into the van to grab their clothes. When he picked up the cowboy boots, the smooth leather sent an image of Cammie’s bare backside through his mind.
Damnit, he was going to have to figure out how to burn that part of his brain out. He wasn’t willing to risk what he had with Sandra, and chalked the thought up to his being an easily distracted man.
But weak-minded didn’t mean weak-willed. Everyone looks, right? He breathed in, trying to convince himself it was okay. Dressed now, he darted off with Cammie’s clothes and boots wrapped in a bundle under one arm, pistol held at the ready with his free hand. He needed to first focus on surviving, and then on making it back to Sandra.
No distractions of any sort along the way.
Enforcer HQ
Valerie had waited for the others to leave before really exploring, and now she was glad she had. What she had here, she wasn’t sure she was ready to show the others. Royland had gone off with the other vampires to get his beauty sleep. Sandra had found a side room with a foldout couch, part of Valerie’s fancy office, and was getting some shut-eye. Mecha, the werewolf who reported directly to Cammie, had taken a team of Weres to obtain beds in order to deck out this building better as a secondary HQ for their operations. Ella and the two cops were taking care of their mission.
That left Valerie to rummage through what had been Commander Strake’s desk. First, she found his stash of money—coins of different metals. She had no idea what they were worth, but she pocketed them. She fumbled around a bit more, then knocked on the bottom shelf—sure enough, hollow. Instead of bothering with figuring it out, she punched through and was surprised to find only a small pistol, which she also pocketed, loving how petite it was, and a letter he’d apparently been in the midst of finalizing.
It said:
What little I could piece together points to a company or a group of individuals that went by the term TQB. I have yet to uncover what the acronym means. Further, they left earth for reasons that still remain unclear, or unbelievable, to me.
What is clear is that the great fall occurred three years after they left. This was the trigger for it all -- basically, they left, and the world imploded.
That was one hundred and fifty years ago.
I will not rest until we have the answers we seek.
Forever vigilant.
Commander Strake
Accompanying the note was a pad of paper with TQB written and various guesses at what it could mean. "The Quest Begins?" "Titan’s Quell Bastards?" and various other guesses. But after talking to Michael, Valerie knew exactly what it meant.
She rummaged about, found a pen, and then wrote next to TQB, "The Queen Bitch."
It wasn’t something she’d ever believed in, even with Cammie filling her head with these stories. And then Michael had said Bethany Anne would approve of her, which had taken all of this to new levels.
The way she understood it now, Bethany Anne came after Michael, and he meant to reconnect with her at some point. Some, including the clan that Diego’s parents had escaped long ago, believed her to be the devil incarnate. Others, like Cammie, believed the opposite.
And now it was all proving to be so much more than a myth. Michael had given Valerie the ability to walk in the sunlight, and had spoken of Bethany Anne in such a reverent tone. There was no doubt in Valerie’s mind about where Bethany Anne truly stood on the good versus evil debate.
That being the case, Valerie had no doubt most of the stories were true, to some degree or another, and that if this woman had been how she was being portrayed, going by The Queen Bitch wasn’t so far outside of the realms of possibility. And if her team truly loved her, it made sense that they might term themselves this.
Valerie laughed, but then hid the memo and the paper. Her eyes roamed the open room, wondering what else might be stored here. More memos revealing what had happened? It was pretty clear here, but now that they’d taken over Enforcer HQ, they’d have to find a way of continuing to research what had happened one-hundred and fifty years ago.
Strake had answers, which gave Valerie an additional reason to go after him—not that she needed it.
This was too big to hold to herself. She had to find Sandra and see what she thought.
Walking down the hall to the elevator, she was reminded how glamorous this was. Glamorous, and unnecessary. She’d been used to a bit of excess growing up as the vampire princess of Old Paris, but even then it had been her creator who had the lavish lifestyle, while she spent most of her days training.
She entered the elevator and pressed number one, her mind moving back to her creator… her father, as she’d previously referred to him. She wondered how he would handle his little visit from Michael. And on that note, how long would it take Michael to reach him? She found herself wondering whether the legendary vampire would take a simple air ship across like anyone else, or if he had his own way of traveling. Her best bet? He probably had some special way of moving around that she couldn’t even begin to fathom.
Voices carried into the elevator as it descended, clear as it came to a stop.
"For all we know, she ran and hid while we did all the fighting!" someone was yelling.
"Say it again and see what it means to be fed upon," Royland’s deep voice carried through.
"And maybe I drag you into the sunlight, and see what happens then?" the other voice replied.
Her elevator dinged, and the doors opened. She stepped out, casually, and took in the scene—a room full of cops, Weres, and vampires. The vampires and Weres looked exhausted, bags under their glaring eyes. Some of them still bled from last night’s fight to take over this building.
"Aren’t you all supposed to be sleeping and recovering?" Valerie asked.
"Had a bit of a problem," Wallace admitted, nodding to the Were who was standing opposite Royland. "Now that Cammie’s not around to keep them in check, the dogs are getting rowdy."
"Dogs?" the Were said, and spun to attack Wallace.
Valerie was there in an instant, slamming the Were against the far wall. He was a large guy, at least an inch or two above six feet and wide to boot, but she held him with one hand, and he was clearly in pain from the grip on his throat.
Her eyes took on a red glow and her fangs protruded. "Nobody touches my people, got that?" She squeezed, letting her claws pierce his skin, just enough to show him she meant business. "You have two seconds to answer."
Choking to answer in spite of her grip on him, he said, " Understood."
She dropped him to the floor, still glaring. "You want to see what I’m capable of, find this Commander Strake douchebag, and any army he has to throw at me. Unless you’d like to find out first-hand?"
The Were backed up, one hand held out while the other massaged his throat. "No, no! Sorry… my—my apologies."
Allowing her eyes and fangs to return to normal, she turned back to the room. "I’m glad we’re all here, or at least the half that isn’t back at the hideout. Let there be no mistake; Wallace is in charge when I’m not around. He might not be a vampire or a Were, but that means he can better understand and deal with the people out there." A few side glances at him showed disapproval, but no one spoke up to argue. "Consider that he has the power of me. Consider that, if you were to harm him in any way, I will tear your limbs from your bodies and jam them down your throats, then watch as you choke to death on your own blood and vomit."
She felt a bit queasy just saying it, and then laughed.
"Valerie?" Wallace asked. "You okay?"
"I just had the image in my mind of what I was saying. Damn, that’s gross." She held up her hands as if backing off. "What I say sticks, but I’m not here to threaten any of you, even this piece of work right here." She glanced at the Were on the floor. "Everyone here’s going to work together to see this through. To defend ourselves from the corporations, and any other outside, or inside, threat. Is that clear?"
A couple of the Weres and vampires said yes, and then the Were on the floor followed suit.
"Your name?" she asked, reaching out a hand to help him up.
"Victor, Ma’am." He accepted the hand and stood. "Thank you, you know. For not killing me."
She assessed him, considering his stupidity at questioning her, he wasn’t the brightest. But it at least showed guts.
"I’ll have your squad covering the gates," she said.
"My…?"
"Squad." She turned to the rest of the room. "I need good men and women to take leadership positions. You’ll get a squad, made up of Weres, vampires, and cops, and scour the city to look for any sign of Strake or the CEOs you can find. We’ll make sure they aren’t hiding somewhere within the city, and if they aren’t, find out where they’ve gone." She gestured to Wallace, and then Royland. "These two will pick squad members for the groups, and appoint leaders, with my approval. Victor will assist, and then as I said, take several of you to the outer limits and secure the perimeter. Any questions?"
One of the vampires stepped forward. "Is it true you can walk in sunlight now?"
"Yes," she said to a roomful of gasps. "But I meant, any questions related to the mission?"
"If we find them?" Victor said.
"Kill if you must, but if possible I’d love to question them first. Something’s come to light, and I believe they have certain information that could help illuminate the topic further."
Royland cleared his throat. "Is this to begin immediately?"
"For those of you who have rested enough, yes. Everyone who needs healing, I expect you to sleep before heading out, and some will stay here. I won’t send out anyone that isn’t ready, nor leave this place undefended."
