by Justin Sloan
She nodded.
That didn’t make him feel all that much better, but at least he knew they had a couple of hours of that under their belts.
He wished the uniform he’d stolen had come with a hat, because the sun was getting damn annoying. The lack of trees anywhere in sight made this worse.
"If we are going to make better time, though…" She glanced around when they reached the bottom of the hill, then nodded at his clothes. "Strip."
"We’re not leaving our stuff behind." He turned away as she undid her shirt.
"It’s okay; I have an idea."
When she had finished undressing, she tied her belongings in into a bundle that she then slung over her shoulder so that it went under one arm. She winked at him and then transformed. The bundle stayed where it was, tight around her body so that when she ran, it wouldn’t come loose.
She gave him an anxious look, and he turned around to undress and do as she had. He fastened his clothes around his body, sticking the gun in the back so he wouldn’t lose that—it could certainly come in handy out here, and then turned to her, ready to transform.
The wolf was on her hind quarters, watching him.
"Oh, come on," he said, covering his crotch and then shaking his head with a "Tsk-tsk" sound before transforming.
She gave a wolf shrug and then took off running.
He watched her go for a moment, halfway considering just turning back. If anyone was acting like this around Sandra, he wanted to be back there right now so he could beat the shit out of any asshole who tried it.
And, frankly, he was getting sick of it with Cammie. At first, it’d been flattering, maybe even slightly tempting, but now he was starting to wonder what was wrong with her. Some people, or wolves, just couldn’t get the message.
At a quick bark from her, he leapt back onto the path and followed.
Now they were making progress, and with his fur, he didn’t have to worry so much about the sun.
They passed a few fields and old highways that had begun to crumble away at the sides. Several cars were stuck in a pileup at the end of one road, and when they passed what must have once been a residential neighborhood, Diego guessed because of the swing set and plastic slide that had managed to survive, he had to slow down to stop from getting emotional.
That’s when he heard a whimper.
He gave a little yip to grab Cammie's attention, and she came back, circling around him to see what was up.
It wasn’t like he knew for sure, but he’d heard something, and had to check. Sure enough, when he approached the slide, he saw a little boy hiding there.
The only cover was a half-wall, so he went behind it to transform and dress.
"Boy," he said, stepping forward. "Are you okay?"
The child stuck its head out, and although it looked like a boy, she said, "I’m not a boy."
Looking closer, Diego saw that indeed she could be a girl in her young teens. Her hair was chopped short, sticking out in places as if cut with a dull blade. Large blue eyes were accentuated by the dark grime on her cheeks.
"Do you need help," Diego asked, stepping still closer.
"Food?" the girl said.
"What’re you doing?" Cammie said, coming around the side of the wall, now clothed as well. "We should keep moving."
Diego glanced from her to the little girl, then nodded. She was probably right. He was about to turn to go, when he looked into those blue eyes again.
"We have to help her." He gestured at the nothingness around them. "She’s all alone out here."
"Diego…" Cammie stepped closer and lowered her voice in a very serious tone. "If she were all alone out here, she’d be dead."
The girl looked between the two of them and then her expression changed into a fierce, desperate expression. She lunged and something flashed in the sunlight—a knife! Diego only realized it when it was inches away, but he quickly sprung back.
No human reflexes would’ve survived that attack.
The girl snarled and then prepared to attack again, shouting, "Give me your food, anything you’ve got!"
"Not gonna happen," Cammie said, pulling out a pistol.
The girl took two steps back, looked like she was about to cry, and then ran to an old lamp post that was falling at a sixty-degree angle.
She scampered up it and let out a shrill call, then moments later was answered by similar calls, followed by the sound of people approaching in a large number. With his heightened Were senses, Diego even felt the earth rumbling beneath them.
"Little shit!" Cammie yelled, taking aim at the girl.
"No!" Diego pushed the gun aside.
"We could take them all!" Cammie persisted.
"Are their lives so worthless?" He asked.
She glared at him, cursed, and then put away the gun. Both tore off their clothes and quickly redid the slings, much to the girl’s astonishment, and then were back in animal form, running.
Only, the nomads weren’t only coming from one direction, as it became clear when three of them showed up right in their path.
"HOLY MOTHER OF FUC—" one started to say, but Cammie plowed right into him, knocking him over. Diego followed, darting between the legs of the second and leaping to knock over the third, before carrying on.
Suddenly the ground gave way beneath Diego, and he was falling, but he clung to the hole’s edge with his claws and pulled his way out of there. A glance back showed spikes sticking up out of the ground—old garden tools and whatnot, set up as a trap that could’ve ended him right there.
Part of him wanted to say screw these people and turn around and tear them all to shreds.
But Cammie’s wolf-expression seemed to say "I told you so," and he wasn’t having that, so he shook it off and continued after her. They ran into a sunken area where a few buildings had been put together with old plywood and sheet metal, some cars on their sides like city-walls, and that’s when the shrill shouts come from around them.
Somehow they had run right into the middle of the nomad’s makeshift camp! A BOOM sounded as a chain hit the ground nearby, and Diego dodged sideways just in time to see that it was part of a heavy-duty net. They were being hunted!
Well, screw that.
He charged the largest hut, where a man emerged—broad-shouldered and with a gut that showed his clan might be starving but he wasn’t. He held a knife high in the air and shouted something, to which his people cheered.
Diego dodged around the hut, transformed, and grabbed the man from behind, pulling the guy’s knife from his hands and holding it to his throat.
Good thing too, because that’s when he saw what they’d been cheering about—they had Cammie, still in wolf form, cornered up against a wall of stones. One of them was at the top of this pile, and had lifted an especially large stone above his head like he was going to throw it down and crush her skull.
Diego kicked the man away and hurled the knife—it lodged in the person’s belly, so that he dropped the stone and toppled over, right beside Cammie. She used the distraction and took out the man in her path in a bloody display of power, and then was up and over the stones, disappearing from sight.
"Get the man!" the Warlord was shouting, but his voice was distant, because in that split second Diego too had transformed and was running in the direction he guessed Cammie had gone.
Sure enough, he spotted her off in the distance with his keen eyesight. Damn, she was fast! He pushed himself to catch up, and soon they couldn’t even hear the shrill shouts from the nomad clan.
When they reached a river, Cammie, transformed and cleaned the blood from her chin and neck, shaking her head in fury.
"I had no choice, that son-of-a-whore-licker was in my way." She scrubbed furiously, even after the blood was gone.
Diego put a hand on her shoulder to calm her, and said, "Of course. They left us no other option."
She turned to him, hesitantly. "You see what I mean, though? About their type?"
"I…
" He wanted to say they couldn’t all be bad, that there had to be some good people out here among the otherwise hopeless nomad tribes, but the pleading in her eyes caused him to stop and simply nod.
She was still flustered, her bare chest rising and falling in quick breaths, but an intense vulnerability shone through her eyes. Diego felt he could see into her soul, and wanted so badly to know what had happened to her out here.
And then she moved in to kiss him.
He back-peddled, tripping and falling with a splash into the water. Spluttering, he stood and held his hands up to keep her back. She was reaching for him, but she stopped, then turned and kicked a small stump of a long-dead tree.
"What is it about her that keeps you so loyal?!" she shouted, arms outstretched in frustration.
He hollered back, "I thought you said you were over this? That you were just testing me?"
"Yeah, well…" And then she broke down, not crying, but sitting at the side of the river, knees tucked up to her chest, holding herself in a vulnerable way that totally didn’t fit her hard persona.
Diego shook his head in disbelief. It was one thing dealing with vulnerabilities and a secret part of a woman, quite another when that woman can go from blood-thirsty wolf one minute to beautiful, nude woman the next.
He didn’t know what to do, so he simply sat beside her, covering himself with his bundle of clothes.
After several minutes of this, with him glancing back the way they’d come from time to time, he asked, "We’re safe now, you suppose?"
She looked at him, shrugged, and said, "Out here, we’re never really safe." She stood and smiled, then offered a hand to help him up.
He took it and stood, and she laughed at the awkward way he was holding his clothes in front of himself.
"You’re a strange Were, you know that?" She looked through her bundle and found some beef jerky that the soldiers must have had on them. "Score!" She took a bite, and gave some to him. "Weres in America, we aren’t so strict as you. We’re open with our relationships, our nudity…"
He answered dryly, "I can tell," he said, trying not to look away from her eyes to peruse anything else.
"And killing," she said. "Before you and Valerie came along, it was more about taking out people who stood in our way. We cared about survival, our survival."
"Trust me; that’s on the top of shit I care about, too."
"But not at the expense of others?" she asked him.
He frowned. "How about we think of it like this—at a minimal expense to others, when possible."
She nodded. "I get that." For a moment she stared into his eyes, then looked around at the scenery, and finally settled on the murky river. "Don’t suppose you think I’m just crazy like this without reason?"
He grabbed a stick and played with the mud for a moment, "I’m guessing something happened in your past."
"Yeah, you could say that. I was one of them, for a bit. A lost Were among nomad tribes of normal people, and then… everything went to hell. A pack of Weres found us, sought me out because of my scent, and killed those that I’d grown to consider family."
"And you joined up with them?"
"Hell no. I waited until nightfall and took my revenge." She shuddered at the thought. "It wasn’t until a much more powerful Alpha and his group came along later, searching me out, that I ever joined up with my own kind. They offered protection, said I was one of them now… and then I did become one of them, moving into the city to hunt vampires."
"Until you escaped?" he asked.
"For now, let’s just say that pack wasn’t much better than the one that’d taken out the nomad group I belonged to."
"Wait a second," Diego said, thinking about the story. "The people you were with, before, they couldn’t have been all bad. You said they were like family."
"In those days, all of us were all bad, in one way or another." She pulled the bundle tight around her, shivering with a chill in the wind. "Like I said, I didn’t know many like you in those days."
With that she gave him a half-smile, transformed, and took off again. He shook his head, wondering how to process all of this, changed and followed.
Enforcer Headquarters
Valerie was glad to see Sandra when she walked into her office, and the younger woman threw her arms around her.
"Every time you go out there, I worry you’re not coming back," Sandra said. "Even if you are a badass vampi—"
She stopped at the sight of Akio and a female vampire at his side. The two had been waiting patiently on the ground floor, and Sandra had not been introduced yet.
"Vampire," Valerie finished Sandra's sentence with a nod toward the newcomers. "As are these two. Sandra, allow me to introduce Akio, and Yuko I presume?"
Yuko bowed slightly.
Sandra’s eyes went wide—her training with the Duke had certainly included those names. When she turned to Valerie with terror-filled eyes, Valerie knew the introduction wasn’t exactly complete.
"I should add, they’re not here to exact revenge or impede us in any way," Valerie added.
"Yes, in fact we must be going soon," Akio said. "Duty demands we find Michael, and the longer we wait, the lower those chances are."
"I understand." Valerie glanced around, wondering where the cop had gone that drove the pod with Akio and Duran here.
"They kindly let me in, and I had the pod bay doors opened so Yuko could land and join us," Akio explained. "Thank you, and him, for your hospitality."
"Ah, yes, of course."
Yuko sniffed the air, and then nodded towards Sandra, while addressing Valerie. "So many non-vampires here?"
"I’m keeping the UnknownWorld as secret as I can." Valerie took a step to stand beside Sandra, in case there was any question of their friendship. "We’re going to need allies in this war."
"Yes, that makes sense." Yuko turned from the view, hands behind her back. "We believe what you’ve told us about Michael, and believe it would be helpful if you succeed. Before we continue our search for him, what would you ask of us?"
"Excuse me?" Sandra said, stepping forward timidly. "You came simply looking for him… What for?"
"He’s needed." Akio stared at her, bluntly.
"Right…" Sandra turned to Valerie. "If they could stay and help track down the CEOs, maybe I wouldn’t worry as much. I mean, they are the stuff of myth, after all."
"We do not have time to hunt. My charge from my Queen is to have a place for Michael to return to, and let her know he exists, again." Akio told them. "But, Valerie, I hear you’ve already sent for representatives of the city? Perhaps we can stay long enough to ensure that goes smoothly."
"How did you…?" Valerie shook her head, but figured they must’ve overheard her give the order. It was back in the building, after all, and vampires did have extraordinary hearing.
They were to roundup the leaders of the various sects of Old Manhattan, as she’d learned existed during some side conversations that followed her speech to the crowd. She figured if she could get each of them on her side, at least then she’d be able to keep the city in check from the inside. It was just the outside that remained.
"I’ll have them here within the hour," she said. "My people have been ordered to ensure it’s so."
"Knowing what I know of gang leaders," Akio said with a frown, "they won’t like that."
"Gangs?" She shook her head. "I wouldn’t call them that. Maybe district leaders or—"
"As you say," Yuko replied. "But Akio's point remains, you risk angering them, do you not?"
"It’s that or put my foot up each of their asses. I think they’ll prefer this option," she replied.
Sandra laughed at that, though the other two vampires’ faces remained stoic. Not an easy crowd, these two.
"Would anyone, um, care for refreshments?" Sandra asked. The vampires turned to her, curiosity in their eyes, and Valerie noticed Akio’s eyes wander to the bandages on Sandra’s wrists.
Valerie couldn’t allow
this.
"Sandra, that won’t be necessary."
"Oh, no!" Sandra blushed, holding her wrists behind her. "I mean… some of the cops volunteered to have blood drawn, the ones we can trust. They felt they owed you their lives, and want to ensure you have a supply when needed. Don’t worry, no one gave enough even to make them feel the slightest bit off, just enough each."
Valerie cocked her head, and Sandra must’ve taken that as a sign of approval, because she went to the door and whispered something to a cop standing outside. He followed her in, a small briefcase at his side.
The cop reached Valerie’s desk and, shaking as he purposefully avoided looking at the three vampires, put the briefcase on the desk and opened it.
Inside, it was lined with the small vials of blood like Valerie had found earlier with vampire blood, only these as she confirmed with a sniff, were filled with human blood.
"Sandra, this wasn’t necessary, but thank you." Valerie picked up a vial and twisted it in her fingers, the meaning behind the effort touching her heart before she put it back and turned to Akio and Yuko.
"You actually knew Michael?" she asked. "I mean, before… and Bethany Anne?"
Yuko nodded.
Sandra took a deep breath, and Valerie knew what she must be thinking. So the legend was real. Until now, she’d felt as if all talk of Bethany Anne was just that, talk. As if she was more of an ideal, not actual flesh and blood that could rain down terror on the world… or justice.
"I am one of her Own," Akio said. "A Queen’s Bitch."
"A Queen’s what?" Sandra asked, furrowing her brow. "Was that a thing?"
He almost smiled at that—a weird sight on Akio, him smiling. "It is the highest honor."
"You said ‘is’" Valerie pointed out.
Akio nodded. "She will return, and I am and forever will be hers."
Valerie perked up at this. "You actually believe this? That she will come back?" Part of her filled with terror at the idea—the part that had a different, more horrifying idea of what the Queen was capable of. The rest of her bubbled up with excitement, and she didn’t try to hide it. "What’s the plan? Why is she gone? I—I mean…"
