by Debra Dunbar
I contemplated the odds of us being attacked while hauling an unconscious woman through the house and down who knows how many stairs. Leonora wasn’t a lightweight. I wasn’t sure Erica and I could manage to drag her let alone carry her, and even if we could I wouldn’t be able to hold my sword and move the vampire at the same time.
“Please. I can’t let her die.”
So many others had died tonight, and I wasn’t Leonora’s biggest fan, but Erica’s plea stirred my sympathy. I’d feel the same if this was Dario. I wouldn’t hesitate if this was Dario. As much as I disliked the Mistress, I couldn’t be so coldhearted as to not at least try to save her. She’d made it through the night without regaining consciousness. There was a good chance she was infected. We’d be risking ourselves for a woman that, if I was completely honest with myself, was most likely on borrowed time.
Erica, with Leonora’s head on her lap, was looking down at the vampire with tear-filled eyes. This was for her.
“Let me check in the hall. If I hear anything, if I suspect that it’s not all-clear, then we’ll need to stay here until dawn. Okay?”
She nodded. As I turned I saw something sticking out from underneath the bed. I bent down, grabbed the leg and pulled, unsurprised to see a dead man, vampire bites on his neck and chest, his eyes filmy. Had Leonora walked in on this and tried to subdue the vampire herself? What had happened to her? Was she infected?
“Is that—”
“Yes.” No sense in trying to hide the fact that Erica had been sitting on a bed with a dead body under it.
Sword in one hand, I went around to collect my magical items, and carefully unlocked the door. It opened about six inches before stopping. I looked through the narrow slit and saw long tears in the carpet, blood smeared on the walls, a headless body blocking the door. I didn’t see or hear anything else, although I got the static feel that meant there were still vampires alive in the house besides Leonora. Hopefully none of them would attack us.
Hopefully one of them was Dario, and he was okay.
I put my weight into it and managed to get the door all the way open before going back to help Erica. Getting Leonora off the bed was hindered by the fact that she was missing an arm. Guess which side I got to carry? Yeah. Vampire blood and gore all over my shirt and hair before I even managed to get her to the door. Once out of the room I struggled to hold the vampire upright while Erica took her sweet time settling her share of Leonora’s weight on her shoulder.
“Is it all clear?” she whispered. Not that it would help. Every vampire in the house would hear her, no matter how quiet she tried to speak.
“I’m not sure. Take the knife out of my pocket,” I told her. “If we get attacked, drop Leonora and protect yourself. I’ll need to get my sword out, and if we meet up with more than one, you’ll need a weapon.”
Actually if we met one she’d definitely need a weapon, because I’d be dead before I could draw my sword. Vampires were fast. My only hope was that we’d manage to make it to Leonora’s hidey hole without coming across any of them.
“It’s a butter knife,” Erica complained, pulling the piece of silverware from my pocket.
“It’s spelled. Just slash and stab. It won’t require any activation, just the motion and intent.”
“Okay,” she eyed it skeptically and stuck it down the front of her gown where the handle showed above her cleavage.
We weren’t two feet from the bedroom door before I regretted not leaving Leonora in her bedroom. As predicted the vampire wasn’t easy to move. Erica had made an attempt to cover Leonora in a sheet, but in the jostling to get her upright and down the hall, it fell off leaving us to haul a naked body, lower legs dragging behind as we made our way to the staircase.
We paused at the top, and I made an executive decision. Dropping Leonora’s weight, I pushed her down the stairs.
Erica gasped, then glared at me. “You just rolled the Mistress of the Baltimore Balaj down a set of stairs.”
“The naked Mistress of the Baltimore Balaj,” I corrected. “She’s a vampire. It won’t kill her to break a few bones on the way down.” On the other hand, this was killing my back. There was no way Erica and I would have been able to gently carry her down, and honestly Leonora would have done the same to me. Actually she would have laughed while she shoved me down the stairs.
Yes, Leonora rolling down a staircase made a lot of noise, but the vampires in the house would have heard us by now anyway. Beyond the sound of a naked body thumping its way down the steps, the house was eerily silent. There were dead—both human and vampire, strewn everywhere. I had no idea if the vampires were truly dead or just horribly injured. This close to sunrise, any survivors soon wouldn’t be.
And where was Dario? I fought back panic. First I’d get Leonora stashed in her resting spot, then I’d get Erica out the back door and to somewhere safe. Then I’d come back and look for Dario, hopefully finding him alive before dawn, and before the police arrived.
Wait. Where were the police? I turned to Erica on the staircase. “Didn’t you give the address to the 9-1-1 operator? I called for an ambulance for that woman in the kitchen.”
Who was probably dead by now. Were the ambulance people dead also?
Erica flushed bright red. “I told them I misdialed. No police, no ambulance, no fire department. We can’t have them here. The vampires and the Balaj would be discovered and there would be a war. People would die.”
“People have died,” I snapped at her. “Vampires and humans, and probably that woman in the kitchen.”
I wasn’t sure what the police could do against infected, blood-crazed vampires, but it bothered me that I’d promised that injured woman that help was on the way. I’d left her there by herself to bleed out, or be eaten by a rabid vampire.
“Come on.” I trotted down the stairs and picked Leonora up by her armless shoulder, forcing myself to use her left boob to help haul her upright. We dragged her through the house, rolling her down three more sets of stairs and through a subterranean tunnel to a locked room. I was drenched in sweat and panting, my muscles screaming. After the second set of stairs Erica was no help at all, barely able to rest Leonora’s arm on her shoulder without staggering and dropping to her knees. I shoved the vampire through the door, not bothering to put her onto the rather comfy looking bed inside the dark room.
“If I lock it from the outside can she get out?” I asked Erica. It would be really funny if Leonora came to in the night, naked and missing an arm, trapped in her hidey-hole until one of the two people who knew where she was came to get her. I needed funny right now.
“Yes. There’s a keypad on the inside. The code works from both sides.”
Good. Now onto the next item on my to-do list. “Do you have a safe place to stay? My car is out back in the alley. I can take you somewhere.”
I couldn’t very well leave her here, assuming she even lived here with Leonora. From what I’d seen, plenty of blood-slaves kept their own houses.
“My sister, I guess. She lives in Druid Hill.”
This time I led the way up the stairs, my sword at the ready. We hadn’t encountered any living thing on the way down, but I could sense them. They might be injured, or they could be lying in wait for us.
Three flights of stairs and we were just coming out of the small wooden door that led downward when I heard a noise. I put out a hand to halt Erica, motioning for her to be quiet. With vampire hearing, it probably wouldn’t matter, but I didn’t want to make any more noise than necessary.
Another noise. It sounded like a door closing. Actually it sounded like the flap-smack of the screen door that led from the kitchen to the garden. I headed for the kitchen, noticing that Erica had pulled the butter knife from her cleavage and was brandishing it like a woman about to slice and dice. I wasn’t sure what her experience was, but I was hoping she knew enough not to cut me.
The injured woman wasn’t still in her chair in the kitchen, waiting for the ambulance. I wasn’
t sure if that was a good thing or not. I decided to be an optimist and assume that someone else helped her, or that she recovered enough to get home on her own. What was in the kitchen, though, was a trail of blood. I went into the garden, Erica close behind me.
There was a movement in the hedge by my side. I swung blindly, praying for God to guide my hand. I heard a muffled curse, then the clang of my sword hitting something metal—something solid enough that the reverberation nearly made me drop the weapon.
Bringing the blade around, I hesitated as Dario appeared holding an enormous metal pole that looked like it might have at one time been a clothes line. There was blood and what I’m sure were bits of flesh decorating both jagged ends of the pole.
“You’re not dead,” I exclaimed. Duh. The feeling of relief along with the let down from the adrenaline rush had me shaking. I hadn’t had time to worry about him. Honestly I hadn’t wanted to think too hard about what might have happened.
“I almost was about two seconds ago,” he commented dryly. “I’d figured you’d hustled Erica away out a side door when everything went crazy. Imagine my surprise when I heard you two arguing inside the house just now.”
“We locked ourselves in Leonora’s bedroom until we were sure it was all over.”
He transferred the pole to one hand, stepping close to touch my cheek with a finger. “You okay?”
“I’m okay, thanks for asking. I know everyone’s worried sick about me,” Erica snapped. Then she burst into tears. I looked back and forth between her and Dario, not sure what to do. I didn’t feel like I knew the woman well enough to comfort her, but should Dario? That would be…weird.
“We’re fine. She’s fine. Well, except emotionally. Leonora was attacked. We walked in on her being munched on by another vampire, whom I killed, but she’s unconscious and missing an arm. We dragged her downstairs and locked her in her daytime space.”
Dario shot Erica a sympathetic glance. “I’m sorry she had to see that. One of the infected vampires from yesterday bit Rosa, so it must be a symptom of the illness.”
Like cannibals. Like zombies from a horror show. I rubbed a hand over my face—the hand not holding my sword. “Is she okay? Rosa, I mean.”
Dario cast a quick glance at Erica. “She was at sunset, but I don’t know how she is now.”
So Leonora might be infected, or she might just be unconscious and missing an arm.
“It’s a blood-bath inside. Bodies everywhere,” I told him.
He nodded then waved a hand. Balen appeared from the shadows.
“Boss?”
“Head in and gather any injured vampires. Haul them downstairs and lock them in the cells for the day. We won’t be able to tell who’s infected or not until sunset. Have Zoe and Jasmine help you when they get back.”
Balen nodded and vanished back into the shadows. Dario waited a few moments before turning back to me. “Three quarters of the vampires here tonight went crazy, attacking and killing humans as well as other vampires. Balen and I managed to take care of things out here. Zoe and Jasmine went to track down a few vampires who ran off, just in case they’re infected.” He sighed. “We’ll be lucky if we have fifty vampires left in our Balaj after tonight.”
“Can we go?” Erica’s voice wobbled on the edge of another sob. “What if the ones in the house heal and come after us? What if more attack? I just want to get out of here.”
Her words sounded harsh after what Dario had just said. I bit back a retort and tried to remember that she probably had no combat training at all. She had to be feeling helpless and scared, especially seeing her powerful Mistress incapacitated and missing an arm.
I shot Dario a sympathetic look and put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “Of course. We’ll get you out of here so Dario and his family can concentrate on getting their injured safe before dawn.”
We followed Dario as he escorted us through the garden and down the alley to my car. The whole way I tried to shield Erica from the gory view of limbs, heads, and dark patches of blood. Once I’d gotten Erica settled in the passenger seat, I walked around to lean against the driver’s door as I spoke with Dario.
The vampire set his pole against a nearby fence and rubbed the top of his short hair. “We’re done for. Leonora’s down. We’ve lost so many, and the remaining ones are scared. They’re afraid of this illness, they know we’re vulnerable. All Simon needs to do is make an attack tomorrow night and Baltimore is his. I don’t think we have enough left in the Balaj to hold the city.”
I suddenly realized that none of the vampires in the house had been Simon’s. In fact, when we’d returned from the kitchen, the Philadelphia vampires were nowhere to be found.
“Is it possible that you have a traitor? The only thing in common here is the blood donors. Someone must be infecting them deliberately. It’s pretty convenient that none of Simon’s vampires were affected, and that they’d managed to high-tail it out of here before the killing started.”
Dario nodded. “I was thinking that too. There have been instances in the past where traitors were fully welcomed into another Balaj, especially if their services were particularly valuable. Although Simon could be acting alone. If he’s in charge of the plague demon, then he’d ensure his vampires would have immunity.”
“They had immunity because they left, and they were careful not to select infected donors,” I insisted. “According to Reynard’s research, the illnesses they create and spread don’t discriminate between the good guys and the bad guys. When this particular demon was summoned to take out an opposing army, anyone who happened to be in camp was infected too—no matter which side they were on. There was no demon here tonight. Unless there’s a significant dormant period, someone brought the infection in, or gave it to the humans directly beforehand.”
Dario’s eyes narrowed. “Simon would have had to know who the blood donors were, then spiked their drinks or made sure they were infected. Which would mean we do have a traitor,” he commented. “We were extra careful about who knew the donors for the feast. Bertram, Lawrence, and Scotty were in charge of organizing the donors for tonight. Scotty’s dead, but I’ll check with Bertram and Lawrence, and find out if any other vampires or humans had access to the lists.”
The infection had to have started with humans, yet Wolfram said a vampire was behind the spread of it. Plague demons liked to throw an illness out and watch it spread. Going around and infecting one human donor at a time wouldn’t be their style. There was always a single cause—undercooked chicken, poorly washed vegetables, bad shellfish—and it was always where it would spread and infect the greatest numbers. That’s why new flu strains always went to some poor schmuck who was traveling to twenty cities in three days.
Was Wolfram wrong? I needed to check with him again, and to ask him about how the infection was spread. But in the meantime I needed to know more from Dario and daylight was fast approaching.
“Can you get me a list of all the vampires who were infected since the beginning? I want to cross compare it to the humans and your donor lists just to make sure, but it does seem someone had access to those lists, and was using something provided by the plague demon—tainted water or shellfish or something—to infect your donors right before they provided their blood.”
The vampire looked around the alley, his face grim. “This whole thing is a disaster. I told Leonora not to throw this party, not to bring those wolves to our door and invite them inside our house.”
“She’s not good,” I warned him. “From what I could see it was just her amputated arm, but she remained unconscious the whole time. Hours we were up there with her and she never moved. No moaning, or even a blink of her eyes. She didn’t even stir after I rolled her down the stairs.”
Dario’s lips twitched. “You rolled Leonora, the Mistress of the Baltimore Balaj, down a set of stairs?”
“The main steps then those three flights down to the tunnel. She’s heavy. I’m a Templar. I didn’t train to haul two-hundred-poun
d vampires down four flights of stairs. Oh, and she was naked at the time. Erica tried to drape a sheet over her, but we couldn’t keep it on.”
He laughed. “She’ll kill you, you know.”
I shrugged. “I’m not telling. Besides, I’m sure a few broken bones are the least of her problems.”
That sobered him right up. “I’ll take a crew down to check on her at nightfall. In fact, I think I might position a few Renfields to stand guard, just in case.”
I knew what he meant. It wasn’t just Simon’s vampires or Renfields he needed to worry about. Leonora might be infected, and if she woke up crazed with hunger who knew how many she’d kill before he got to her?
I looked at my watch. “Forty minutes until sunrise. I better get Erica to her sister’s. Is there anything else you need me to do before dawn?” It was going to be a long, sleepless day. I had a lot to do, including prep for the Halloween ritual.
He started. “Sister’s? You can’t take her there. Even if Simon’s not behind this, she’s a target, and if you take her there, both of them might wind up dead.”
“She’s still a target? I doubt Simon would need to kill Erica with Leonora possibly at death’s door.”
“Simon likes to tidy up loose ends. He’s the type that would rather kill a few extra people than leave a potential enemy alive to attack him in the future. Erica is a blood-slave to our Mistress. We need to offer Erica sanctuary. We’re a family. The moment we can’t trust one another to care for those we call our own is the moment our Balaj falls apart.”
It made sense. And I was relieved to have somewhere safe to take Erica. “So where? Your place? Is there another spot where everyone is congregating?”
He nodded, then looked around the alley, his gaze sharp. “I’ll drive her, but first I want to make sure you get home safely.”
“It’s almost dawn. Do you have time?”
Dario glanced at the horizon, his jaw set. “I’ll make time.”
Chapter 23
