by Alix Adale
The BMW roared to life, headlights blazing on. Dreck stuck his head out the window and waved the others off. The red convertible vanished down the highway. He settled back into the Jeep. “Partners. Yeah. Good. I like the sound of that.”
“We going to sit here?”
“Yup. Until the first biker appears.” He turned the Jeep around, facing eastbound. The BMW had vanished off to the west.
What a night. How could anyone even go about writing this up for an Order report? Then again, she was on sabbatical and didn’t need to write up any more reports. At this rate, she might not even be part of the Order anymore. What would Father de la Sierra say about letting two vampire fledglings drive off with her last friend in the world without so much as a peep? Add in this shaky-kinda partnership with Dreck and it was looking bad—real bad. But it was the right thing to do. No arguing that.
They didn’t have to wait long for the lycans. Headlights knifed through the dark down the highway toward them, a brace of motorcycles filling both lanes.
Dreck turned on the high beams and gunned the Jeep right through the center of the pack. Motorcycles that didn’t dodge out of the way got bumped, their riders flying off embankments. Innocent humans could die that way, but lycans could heal. They deserved any bumps and bruises.
Fast but controlled driving brought them onto an open stretch of highway, but the headlights behind grew numerous. The pursuit closed fast. No Jeep could outrun a motorcycle on the open road. Glass tinkled as a spider-web crack appeared in the rear window.
Shit. Bullets. She ducked down behind the seat. “They’re shooting at us!”
“Yeah, get down!”
“What happened to the ‘No Guns’ rule?”
“Give lycans rules and they’ll break ‘em.” Dreck took the Jeep off the highway and onto the shoulder, searching for an access road. Soon they were bouncing along some unlit, gravel road to nowhere in a wild Montana countryside.
The pursuit found it hard going on the rough roads, but a few SUVs joined the chase. Dreck kept driving deeper into the wilderness. Within half an hour, they’d lost any sign of headlights behind them. They’d also wandered off the road and were blundering across rugged countryside in the dark. “Where the hell are we, George?”
“Don’t know.”
They bounced over a dry creek bed until a sickening metallic thunk sounded right under the car.
“What the fuck was that?”
Dreck killed the ignition. “Sounds like the axle broke. Let’s get out and walk.”
“Walk? Walk where?” But she followed him outside, drawing her katana.
Wide-open backcountry surrounded them, draped in shadows. A profound silence dominated. Black trees stood up against gray hills, illuminated by a full moon.
Of course it was a full moon. When else would lycans have a gathering? She shook her head. “Now what?”
Dreck scavenged a few supplies out of the Jeep. “Let’s walk as far as we can, look for a farmhouse, a highway. Thumb a ride, steal a car. The lycans might take hounds and trackers after us. Or they might get bored and go back to the festival. Who knows?”
Hours of hiking convinced them they must have ended up in a wilderness refuge. The only sign of civilization was a few airplanes far overhead. But even that single example of modern technology reassured them. This wasn’t Firewater Dam. They had escaped the Demi-World.
“There,” Dreck said, pointing at angular shape up ahead. “A cabin. Let’s hole up for the night.”
He didn’t look winded but she was, exhausted despite her superb conditioning. Stubbing her feet against rocks and tree roots in the dark didn’t help. “Great.”
They knocked on the door but no surprise, no lights on—no electrical wires anywhere—and nobody home. Dreck kicked the door in and they entered.
A musty reek greeted them, a combination of dust, mildew, rotting furniture and mouse droppings. They found some candles and matches and explored. It didn’t look bad. A small sitting room stood at one end of the cabin, an abandoned kitchenette in the center, and what once might have been a bedroom, although only a stained mattress without sheets furnished that side now.
“Brilliant.” Her voice sounded beaten-down, not ironic like she meant it. “Nothing but the best.”
Dreck blew out the candles and took a seat on the crumbling couch. “Yeah, well. Best I can do.”
“Best we can do,” she said, joining him on the couch.
He took a moment in answering. “I’m ready.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s put all our cards on the table. Share info.”
This again. Nothing made sense anymore. Vampires weren’t all terrible people. Something worse could take them over. What had she done with her life? Had the last ten years been for nothing? “Where should I begin?”
“How’d you become a vampire slayer?”
“My life story.” The exhaustion took over, combined with the frustration, the fear, the confusion. It burst out as a string of random clichés picked up from TV shows and old novels lying around Saint Marius. “You want it? Here it is.
“The same car crash that made me an orphan gave me amnesia until I was eighteen. I suffered an arranged marriage of convenience, but my bastard ex-husband hired a mafia hitman to kill me. I’m hiding from him instead of going to the cops because I’m too stupid to live. Fortunately, you’re the mafia hitman with a heart of gold who found me in this cabin of convenience. We’ll get trapped here by a snowstorm and come to admit our passions for each other. Then my ex-husband will show up and we’ll shoot him in self-defense. I know it’s happily ever after because you cook me eggs in the morning. Sound about right?”
Dreck laughed. A cigar came out, accompanied by the flash of a lighter. “Cool story, but I’m no heart of gold—and you’re no fool. You’re the smartest, toughest woman I’ve met in a long time, Jordan Rivers.”
Deflated, she sank deeper into the couch. But his words were good, they were strong. When was the last time a man had ever appreciated her like that? Dad didn’t count and neither did Brother Harlan, Father de la Sierra, or any of the other priests and monks. She’d dated a few male slayers, but that always ended badly due to the religion thing. That was about it. Her life story was a series of bloodbaths and fiascos. Dating didn’t fit between all the praying and the slaying.
But if he wanted to hear her life story, he better strap in. Her chin rested on her knees, going back to where it all began, looking for the right words. “It started a couple weeks after my tenth birthday. We were living in a small town just outside Oklahoma City. Then came tornado season …”
For the next hour, she told him damned near everything. Dad took them out to a small town in Oklahoma after landing a job as the IT director of a small Christian college. Saying goodbye to Santa Barbara and all her friends—that was traumatic shit for a ten-year-old. But she’d rebounded fast and made new friends. They weren’t the only black family in the neighborhood, but in Caddo County, Native Americans were more numerous. The place still held good memories: birthday parties and school plays, things that made her smile.
That all ended when the twister arrived. In halting words, she described the bizarre, almost supernatural, flooding that came in the tornado’s aftermath. In halting tones, she even described the SUV floating away as the creatures rose out of the earth, something she almost never talked about. “Afterward, I hid in that abandoned house. The next day, a National Guard helicopter found me.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the rustle of his cigar. “How’d you go from ten-year-old orphan to vampire hunter?”
“Seventeen people drowned that day, one of the worst disasters in state history. Anyway, I went into foster care, which sucked. Five years later, the county held a public meeting to mark the event. Survivors sharing stories and so on.”
“Uh huh.”
“So naïve kid that I am, when it’s my time to ask a question, I give this long, rambling anecdote about vampires,
asking if anyone else saw the creatures.”
He grunted. “Didn’t go over well, did it?”
“No, it did not. Everyone figured me for a traumatized kid. About what you’d expect. Until a month later, Brother Harlan sought me out.”
“Your mentor.”
“You got it. Somehow, video of my stupid public question found its way to the Order. Later, I found out they use a video clipping service. It focuses on the keyword ‘vampires.’ Ninety-nine point nine percent of the results are pop culture, but every so often up pops someone with a genuine encounter.”
“Like you.”
“Like me. Let’s see. Harlan is—was—this older dude. Always complaining about his toothaches and bragging about his collection of old sitcoms. Cheers, Frazier, shit like that. Something about those old shows took his mind off our grim line of work. He became like—not my dad, because my dad is my dad, man, my dad was the greatest man that ever lived.” Her eyes lowered, her chest heaving. “But Harlan, he was a mentor. And a good man.
“Anyhow, he sought me out and we went over my story in fine detail. He believed me. He was the first person in the world who ever believed me.” It was crazy telling all this stuff to Dreck, but at the same time, it felt right. Nobody else understood this shit except Harlan and their cell, and they were dead. Kit got it too, but Kit had changed so much. So much. “He invites me to join the Order of Silence. I’m like ‘hell yeah,’ so they work some Opus Dei shit and I’m out of foster care and in a Catholic orphanage out at Saint Marius.”
“Saint whatsit?”
“You never heard of Saint Marius?”
“Nope.”
“Good. Cuz it’s… Dreck, if I tell you, are you going to tell your Queen and wipe the place out?”
“Not me. You mentioned Opus Dei. Your Order is part of that?”
“Yeah, but they have lodges, chapters, and other orders all over the world. It’s loose-knit groups, secretive because vampires are always hitting back. Our group hunted up and down California and the southwest, nowhere else unless we did backup for another order on the east coast or something. We also went into Oklahoma, hunting Malmardane. We ran him down and burned out his nest inside an old burial mound and missile silo complex down in Caddo County.”
She continued, covering her career in broad strokes. It ranged from her first kill at that music festival to hunting for Malmardane. What a long hard campaign that had been, to wipe out that fiend’s nest. A few quiet years followed. Then one night, out of the blue, unknown vampires slew Brother Harlan and his acolytes while she was on a retreat. The funeral came a few months later, with Malmardane showing up at the cemetery in that new body. From there, a phone call to Ingrid, a ride out into the National Antelope Refuge. “The rest, you know.”
At the end, he took her hand with unexpected tenderness and kissed it.
So surprising, yet not unwelcome. Heat rose in her cheeks. “What’s that for?”
“You didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“About the Blooded. We feed like demons, we hide from the sun like demons, some of us even act like demons, but we were born human.”
Okay, there was that. Was it wrong to slay vampires? Maybe they weren’t all knights in Satan’s vanguard. Who was she kidding? Of course they weren’t. The scales had fallen from her eyes. Her fingers squeezed his back. “Thanks. I know that. And I can’t go back to that life now.”
“Good.”
“Good? That’s all you got?”
“Good.” The faintest chuckle accompanied his voice in the dark.
“Why’s that good? You don’t have to kill me now?”
“And you don’t have to slay me.” His arm went around her shoulder. “I never could have have killed you. Maybe that first morning, when I lost control for a couple minutes. That was it.” He took a drag on the cigar. “Truth is, you’re good people Jordan. I like having you around.”
It was happening again, like the day she’d crept up on the hideaway, spied on him taking a shower. Except so much had changed. So many wild revelations since that first night. Her fingers fondled the new necklace, his gift. Her body trembled and her voice whispered. “You know what they’d do to me if they caught me with a vampire?”
“Kick you out?”
“Throw in an excommunication or two.”
His mouth chewed the cigar. “If Queen Ursula caught me with a slayer, she might feed my balls to my decapitated head.”
“Maybe I don’t have it so bad.”
“It’s rough all around.”
Her hand touched his chest because it could not keep away. “Are we doing this again?”
“Don’t you want to?”
“More than anything, Dreck. More than you can know.”
The cigar went into the ashtray as he reached for her. “Yeah.”
“Just yeah?”
“Yeah. I want to do it again too. And again. And once more for good measure.”
And they did, and it was good to do it then and there, down in the dark. What they did hurt so good it knocked all the pain away, for an hour at least. Afterward, the fears and sorrows came swarming back, thick as thieves again, but they hurt less in his arms.
Chapter 14: On the Road
Dreck
Jordan lay in his embrace, warm and firm but glazed over with an unexpected softness, a tender side she worked hard to conceal. The first rays of the sun poked through the slats of the abandoned cabin. Her heat felt good, felt right. His own undead flesh remained icy most of the time, but in moments of passion, the blood heated up, warming his body. He’d run hot last night with her stoking the flames.
The first rays of the ancient enemy stirred him to alertness, a century-old instinct he hadn’t lost because of the nanorian. He caressed her cheek. “Jordan. Time to wake up.”
She stirred, brown eyes opening and looking into his. “Mmm. We’re still alive.”
“Alive to face another day.” His finger traced the line of her cheek. “No regrets?”
“No.” She blinked, sat up. “But now what?”
Fair question. He’d given it some thought since the fight in Moog’s tent. “Let’s go to Port Selkie, meet my clan. Then contact Ursula, see what she knows about this Malmardane creature.”
Jordan slipped out of his grasp, reaching for her clothes. “Sorry my info wasn’t helpful.”
“More useful than Moog. Don’t worry, we can still figure this thing out.”
“Then what?”
What did she think, there was some plan? “I don’t know. But I’m willing to try, one day at a time.”
“Starting today.” Teeth flashed as she smiled. “Port Selkie, where’s that?”
“Little town on the Cali-Oregon border.”
“Your Queen Ursula, she’s there?”
“She’s up in Portland. But I don’t want to go straight to her. She’s … temperamental. I’ll talk to her as a Braden, with my clan’s backing. The Bradens are her strongest supporters, her most trusted allies.”
“Why?”
“We’re the only clan not trying to steal her throne. That counts as exceptional loyalty in the Underworld.”
She offered a hand up. “What about your clan? They want an ex-slayer around?”
“Let’s keep that secret. Besides, Kit should be there.”
“I keep trying to call her, but there’s no service. Can you try?”
“I didn’t bring a phone on this trip, didn’t want Ursula tracking me. As for Kit—Ingrid—I bet she lost hers in the fight. Don’t worry.”
Jordan nodded but her features fell. “Shit. I lost my duffel bag. It had a picture of my family in it. What happens to stuff that gets left in the Demi-World?”
“I have no idea.”
“It’s all I had left of them.”
“I’m sorry.” And he was. Damn, he should have told her to pack up before they went to the circus. Now she’d lost her mementos and it was his fault. He pulled her against his
shoulder.
She trembled and he held her. What else could he do? After a moment, she said, “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
They shuffled into the rest of their clothes and staggered out into the morning. A faint trail led down the far side of the hill, unnoticed last night. In the distance, the trees gave way to farmland, hinting at a dirt road, even the tin roof of a barn. It looked promising.
“What is this thing?” she asked, handing the black credit card back inside the car rental kiosk. The card lacked names or logos, featuring only a chip and golden alphanumerics.
“The golden ticket.” He tucked the card back into his wallet, shaking his head at his own reply. Evasion would be a hard habit to break. “Sorry. It’s something we use in Dagon, direct access to our secure accounts. A Blooded doesn’t have to worry about money, as long as we behave.”
“Running off to a circus is behaving?”
“Armando—the head of the Bradens—he’s not going to cut me off. We’ve been brothers for two hundred years.”
“Nice work if you can get it.” But she smiled and all was right with the world.
Earlier, they had hiked down to the barn, found a rural road, and not long after, her cell phone found service. The Uber app on her phone worked. Even more surprising, a goatee-sporting farm kid picked them up in a tow-truck twenty minutes later. He drove them into downtown Bozeman.
“Where to?” the kid asked as they rolled down the main drag.
“Airport,” he said out of habit.
“With this?” asked Jordan, tapping her sheathed sword. It lay across her lap, arousing Uber dude’s unspoken curiosity. “This is not carry-on luggage.”
“Shit. Can you ship it?”
“Dreck. This is my sword. It’s all I got left.”
“Yeah, you’re right. We’ll drive. Uber dude, can you take us to a car rental place?”
“You got it, chief.”
