by Faith Hunter
I stopped at the second tree and grabbed Eli, pulling him close, my mouth at his ear. “Get up in the tree. I’ll take a tree a row over and down a few. Let them get between us, then shoot down on them. Pincer style.”
He looked up and shook his head. I understood what he was thinking. He didn’t have time to climb that high before they were on us, but he’d forgotten about my skinwalker strength, now augmented by all my new muscle. I laced my fingers and made a cradle of my hands. He put a booted foot into them and I tossed him up into the tree, holding my place until he was situated, his face just a little stunned. Then I raced across and down, choosing a tree about thirty feet away on the diagonal. I bent into a crouch and leaped, grabbing the lowest branch and hoisting myself up. All the months of exercise paid off as I muscled myself halfway up the tree and straddled a branch. On the rising breeze, I smelled vamp and sickness and a beery stench. And human blood. A lot of blood. These were Naturaleza. And they were here.
They poured into the wide space between trees. Three in front; two behind. Others farther back in the trees were closing fast. The three in front dropped forward, feet and hands to the ground, and raced into the clearing between the rows of trees, noses low, sniffing. The hair along my body rose in alarm. The vamps moved like a cross between reptiles and spiders, with a soupçon of wild hog. Their spines seemed to be jointed at the waist and nape, allowing them to bend in strange places, their legs folding oddly. They were fast.
I tucked Eli’s shotgun into my armpit, knowing that the recoil would tear at my shoulder joint, but there was no other way to fire downward without the recoil knocking me to the ground. I aimed at the base of the tree, aware that Eli had done the same with his handgun. There were five vamps in the clearing now, all racing around, all acting peculiar, and for vamps that was saying a lot. These were acting not-vampy. More like something else, though I couldn’t say what, but the sight of them scampering through the moon shadows of the trees gave me a case of the willies. They were something not meant to be on this world. Something wrong.
The hair on my arms tightened painfully. One of the vamps paused at the base of my tree, nose to the ground. I could hear the sniffing breaths as she took in my scent. She lifted her head straight up, at an impossible angle, as if her neck were made of rubber.
I fired. Into her face. It disappeared. So did her head. The rest of her fell like a rock to the ground. The blast ripped the night sounds away. My armpit took the recoil; I’d have a bruise and stretched tendons. Thoughts for later.
I shifted the weapon up against my shoulder and fired again, taking a vamp midback. He fell, his upper body writhing on the ground, his lower body unmoving, his mouth open.
I slammed the shotgun into a fork of trunk and branch and pulled a nine mil. I wouldn’t have the luxury of the spread pattern now. I’d have to aim and hit—which meant waiting until they were still. A vamp paused in the center of the space between rows of trees. Moonlight danced across his unnatural body. I squeezed off three rounds just before he took a step. He went down with a load of silver to the thigh and lower belly.
One leaped into the tree, landing beside me. I fired at point-blank range into his groin. He fell, and even with the concussive damage to my eardrums, I could hear his scream. I adjusted my aim in a modified two-handed grip and fired straight down, directly into a face. A female fell, her eyes fully vamped out, two-inch fangs white in the night. Something caught my eye. My last round hit a vamp in midair. He looked like he was flying. Right at me.
And then I saw something that shouldn’t—couldn’t—be. The vamp I’d hit in the middle of the back with the silver fléchettes pushed himself to his feet. I’d severed his spine. I knew I had. And yet he had healed even with silver in his system.
Not possible.
I aimed carefully and triple-tapped him, two chest shots midcenter and one slightly to the left. He staggered. And then he turned and stumbled away, into the trees, back the way he had come. The female I’d shot followed him, holding her face. But walking. Full of silver that should have burned them with mind-shattering pain until it poisoned them true-dead. Dead vamps walking. A moment later, only the one I’d hit first, the one with the head shot, was left.
I studied her from the tree. She was dead, true-dead, though somehow, she had regenerated slightly, fresh pinkish skin and smooth bones showing where only fragments and blood and mush should have been. I looked around the rows of trees. They were all gone. Why had they just left? If they can regenerate like that, even full of silver, they should have stuck around until we made a mistake, and then eaten us for dinner.
Across the way, Eli slid out of the tree and landed loose-kneed on the ground, his weapon in a Weaver stance as he studied the area. At some point there had been four dead vamps under his tree and four or five beneath mine. Now we had one DB. No way should so many have survived. Something was hinky here. Very, very hinky. I’d be chatting up Clark very soon, and not just about business.
I reloaded and handed down the shotgun, changed out magazines, and chambered a round. One-handed, I gripped the limb I was squatting on and swung, dropping bent kneed to the ground.
There wasn’t enough of the vamp’s head left to take it for a trophy, and a filthy turtleneck top covered her chest and arms. Her jeans were dirty too, like something a street person would wear, not a top-of-the-line predator. I lifted her hands, which still displayed the two-inch-long claws. They were jagged and torn, unlike the usual manicured talons vamps displayed. I pulled my phone and took several shots of her. I’d need proof to try to collect the bounty—try being the operative word. Without fangs in a head to display, no vamp MOC had to pay me anything. Still, I sent the pics to Big H’s Clan home, and to Bruiser, Leo’s right-hand blood meal, with a text about vamps who were resistant to silver. It seemed like something that the MOC of the entire Southeast USA should know.
Eli jutted his chin back the way we had come, and this time I followed him. When we got to the SUV, it was sitting there in the small space between the hay shed and the tree line, four doors open, engine off, keys in the ignition. Eli had disabled the interior lights long ago, so the interior was dark. Eli crawled underneath—I guess to look for bombs—while I checked under the hood and sniffed for anything odd, but, really, neither of us expected to find anything. Our expectations satisfied, we climbed inside and closed the doors, and Eli handed me the shotgun. Tonight had given the old saying “riding shotgun,” new meaning. I lowered the windows and pointed the muzzle out at the night. Eli started the engine and drove us home. We didn’t say a word on the remainder of the trip. Not one.
He swung the SUV into the guest-parking space and cut the engine. We sat there, listening to the engine cool down, hearing night birds hoot and sing. Watching through the windows of Esmee’s house as the Kid walked through the rooms, his head bent over an electronic tablet, hair hanging down in scraggly curls, his face illuminated by bluish light. “My brother has absolutely no sense of self-preservation or survival instinct,” Eli said. “He has no idea we’re out here. We could be silver-eating, flesh-regenerating, vampire zombies, and when we busted through the door to eat his brilliant brain, he’d look up and say, ‘Huh?’” When I didn’t respond, he said, “What were those things?”
“I don’t know. They didn’t talk that I heard. You?” I asked. Eli shook his head. “They didn’t make the popping sounds that vamps make when they move fast. They just flowed, like water.” Eli tilted his head in agreement. “And I never ever saw a vamp move like it was half spider, half lizard, half wild hog,” I said, knowing my math was totally wrong—but was also totally right. “And I think I saw one actually flying.”
“Jumping. He jumped into the tree beside you and jumped between the branches right at you. Good shot, by the way.”
“You’re sure the shotgun was loaded with vamp rounds?” I said, not doubting, but needing to be certain.
“I stole them from you. So yes.”
I made a humph sound. Br
oke open the shotgun and removed the fresh rounds. In the feeble light, I determined that they were indeed my rounds, hand-loaded with silver fléchettes by a gun nut pal in North Carolina. I dumped them into the bag with the others.
We could have gone inside. We should have gone in. But we sat in the SUV, night air moving through, chilled and damp. I started to speak, but Eli beat me to it.
“We need to find a way to kill silver-eating, flesh-regenerating vampire zombies.” His brow crinkled. “They weren’t zombies. Were they?”
“No. They were vamps. But they were a different kind of vamp. I informed Bruiser. Maybe he’ll know something.”
“Maybe.” He opened his door, and I followed Eli Younger into the bed-and-breakfast, to discover that our problems of the night were only just beginning.
Jameson met us in the foyer, hands on his hips and a frown on his face. “Where is she?” he demanded.
“Who?” we both said.
“Esmee.” His eyes widened and he dropped his arms. “She didn’t meet you?” I could smell his alarm over the stink of gunfire that clung to us. At our puzzled expressions, he fished a key out of his shirt pocket and opened the door of an inlaid cabinet to reveal a gun safe. Four empty spaces showed where weapons had once hung. He scrubbed his face with one hand. “Beau is going to kill me.”
“She took guns?” I said. And then I understood, putting together all of Esmee’s earlier comments about killing things. “She’s gone to hunt vamps.”
“Most likely with two of her less-than-civilized, less-than-refined, uneducated neighbors. She left just after you did, claiming that you had asked her to introduce you to the mayor as part of your research and that you were sending a car for her. But I would bet a month’s pay that Buddy and Bubba picked her up, and I doubt that those two even know that we have a mayor.”
“Buddy and Bubba?” Eli said with a half-lifted brow. Everything the man did was low energy, the barest minimum of motion and muscle needed to accomplish the deed or indicate the emotion.
“Twins. They share a defective brain between them, and they have been taking Esmee for target practice on the back forty.” He stood, and it was the first time I had ever seen Jameson without his apron. He was awfully buff for a hash slinger. Middle-aged, but in good shape.
“You double as security for Esmee,” I stated.
“Yes. Her sons, Beau and Gordon, hired us. My wife is a licensed practical nurse. We take care of Esmee. She said you sent a car for her, or I’d have driven her into town.”
“Does she have a cell phone? We can trace it. Maybe use it to track her.”
“Already did,” the Kid said from the next room. “Sending coordinates to your cells, with an overlay of nearby streets. Her position is constantly changing, and right now she’s off road.”
“The twins have off-road vehicles. Those small four-wheel-drive things,” Jameson said.
“ATVs,” Eli supplied.
“We’ll bring her back,” I said, racing up the stairs. “I have to change.” I needed armor and my M4. It was a far better weapon in a firefight than Eli’s shotgun or my semiautomatics.
Eli was tight on my heels, our feet loud on the old wooden stairs. “I have something that might make a difference with the silver-resistant vampires,” he said at my shoulder.
“Rocket launcher?” I asked, remembering the head of the only vamp I had killed tonight.
“Something like that.”
Sighing, I entered my room to discover that someone had unpacked my things. My few clothes and armor were hanging in the closet, and my toiletries were on the bath cabinet. I wasn’t used to life with servants.
• • •
I changed into vamp-hunting clothes: combat boots, and motorcycle-style armored leather pants and jacket over fleece to keep me warm. I double-checked the placement of the removable, padded-armor pieces and made sure my weapons were in snug and the M4 was loaded with seven silver vamp-killing rounds. Way better than Eli’s two-load. I slid the weapon in and out of its harness several times. I didn’t want it hanging up when it was needed; that kind of thing was the difference between life and death. I added another handgun to the three I already carried and slid a small derringer into a boot. Lastly, I rearranged the hair-stick stakes in my bun and grimaced at the pain. I had banged my head on the roof of the SUV and stabbed myself. Dumb. I could smell my own blood, which I hadn’t noticed until now. I didn’t have time to shift into Beast and heal, and there was no way to bind the scratches. I was going to be a calling card to every vamp in town, but there was no help for it. I didn’t bother to check myself out in the mirror. I wasn’t going to a fashion show.
Four minutes after I entered my room, I was back at the front door. Eli was waiting and his hands were empty, but he had a huge grin on his face, or as much of a grin as he ever had, meaning that the flesh around his eyes was faintly crinkled. “Where’s your toy?” I asked.
He lifted the corner of his jacket. In a small holster at his side was a tiny folding weapon. “A Magpul FMG-9.”
“Specifics,” I requested, holding out a hand. Almost reverently, Eli removed the small gun and passed it to me. “A buddy got it for me. It’s a 2008 prototype for a new generation of folding submachine gun.”
It was made from a lightweight polymer material, not metal, making it very light and easy to carry. It was well balanced for a sub gun, and small enough to fit in the back pocket of most dress pants. Only a passionate gun lover would think it was pretty, but I could see the purpose and function. It was a gun made to kill people. Like the folding machine guns carried by Big H’s security goons, it was perfect for concealed carry and could be disguised in a small bag or package. I removed the magazine and looked my question at Eli.
“It was developed for the Secret Service for personal-protection details,” Eli said, “but it’s not in mass production yet. It uses the semiautomatic firing mechanism from a nine-mil Glock 17 pistol, but mine is modified to use a Glock 18 machine-pistol mechanism. It is practically jam free, and—”
“Meaning it’s a nine-mil, fully automatic weapon,” I said. “And totally illegal.”
He handed me a headset with a mic. “Let’s go.”
From the breakfast room the Kid said, “They’re on the move. Keep your com units on and I’ll update you. Right now it looks like they’re heading back into town. Ten bucks says it isn’t to meet you at the mayor’s.” He looked up from his laptop screen at his brother and took us both in as we rushed by. “I guess it’s too much to ask you to take me.”
Eli reached out and ruffled his brother’s hair. “You guess right, kid. Later.”
“I’m not a kid,” he muttered, sounding disgusted.
CHAPTER 6
And Me Holding Only Ash
“I’ve lost them. She turned off her phone,” the Kid said, his voice crisp and clear over the headset. We were on Broadway Street, coming up on Cock of the Walk, and Eli slowed.
“Show me her last coordinates,” I said. When they popped up on my cell, I said, “They went Under the Hill. Send us maps of the place.”
Esmee had disappeared on the lowest street, a narrow lane unimaginatively called Water Street. It was bounded on the west by the Mississippi River and on the east by the towering bluff on which Natchez sat. Warehouses, wharves, and main shops on Water Street stood on pilings, some jutting far out over the murky, lapping Mississippi. As in earlier days, many of the Under the Hill businesses were legitimate: a saloon called the Silver Street, Ltd., the River Boat Gift Shop, the Cock of the Walk, and the Natchez Landing. But others had very different reputations—places where vamps trolled for fresh dinner when they were feeling frisky and adventurous, or where newly freed vamps looked for their first blood-servants. In some back rooms were trapdoors, presumably leading to storage, though rumors had persisted for decades that they had other, more sinister uses, such as for holding pens for kidnap victims or ways to dispose of bodies. Reports claimed that these were locales where beautiful wo
men or boys were drugged and dumped through trapdoors until they were disappeared into the lucrative sex trade, or were turned over to less-than-savory vamp masters. Or were dumped after being drained.
We eased our way down the hill, looking for anything that might clue us in to Esmee and her redneck hunting buddies.
“Esmee’s cell-phone locator vanished at Silandre’s Saloon,” the Kid said over the com gear.
“Details,” Eli said. We could hear keys tapping in the background.
“SS has been open for nearly a hundred years, in one guise or another,” the Kid said. “And now that it’s no secret Silandre’s a vamp, it’s clear that she owned the place since its original opening, just after the earthquake.”
“She’s not on our kill list. Is she?” I asked.
“Nope. Uh, negative,” the Kid said, and Eli’s lips twitched at his brother’s attempt to sound military. “This totally sucks,” he added. “Silandre is known to have a hot temper and to not take kindly to strangers.” He paused as he pulled up more research. “Aaaaaand she’s a special friend of Hieronymus.”
“Well, that complicates matters,” I said. “Betcha big money H won’t give me permission to go in after Esmee, blades slinging.” Eli watched me out of the corner of his eye. I blew out a ticked-off breath. “Therefore, I need to go over his head.” At which Eli smiled, that annoying twitch of his lips.
“Kid,” I said into the headset, “send your brother pics of Silandre and her scions and blood-servants.”
“Copy,” the Kid said. “On the way. Now.”
Reluctantly, I dialed Bruiser, Leo Pellissier’s real Enforcer and right-hand meal. And the blood-servant who had betrayed me. Holding that thought firmly in mind, I ignored that my heart did a little backflip when he answered, “Jane.”
