Crusade

by Nancy Holder; Debbie Viguié

She heard murmured voices and gleaned that they would soon be arriving in New Orleans, and that the city was a vampire stronghold, even more so than San Francisco.

  Below the plane, slumbering in their houses, the good people of America dreamed on. Good people who did nothing to stop the vampires. Good people who spoke of peace and treaties. Good people who thought that fighting was never the answer. Good people who thought talking and learning more about their enemy was the answer.

  “Good” people like her father, who sacrificed family members to the vampires in exchange for protection.

  Those good people could go to hell. Because of them she was locked in a cage like an animal, suffering for the amusement and feeding of demonic beings that shouldn’t be real. And she had no idea what had become of Jenn. Terrible images of Jenn’s possible last moments flooded her mind, and her chest began to tighten, painfully so. She couldn’t succumb to an asthma attack now.

  If I ever get out of here, I’ll kill every last vampire, she promised herself, lying there in a pool of her own blood and sweat and vomit. If I ever get out of here, I’ll kill my father and every other man who allows this to happen to his daughter. And the thought gave her strength, and she stopped praying that God would let her die and started praying that He would let her live.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Brothers and sisters one and all

  There are those who would see us fall

  They would kill us in our beds

  And part us forever from our heads

  This violence cannot continue on

  Until all that’s good in life is gone

  These are the monsters you should fear

  Kill ye the Hunters both far and near

  JUST OUTSIDE BILOXI, MISSISSIPPI

  JENN

  “Have some biscuits, sugar,” Modean Bethune said to Jenn.

  Jenn and the Bethunes were seated at a table in the Pecan Grove Pie Shop, which was across the parking lot from the motel the Bethunes had checked into an hour earlier. Their Mini Cooper was empty of all their luggage. The border between Mississippi and Louisiana had been shut down for at least the rest of the day. Something about a security breach that Jenn didn’t understand. It had been on the news, and the long line of cars stretched down the highway, slowly turning back around, proved the truth of it.

  A newscaster was repeating the information on the TV that hung from the ceiling above a coffee dispenser. The sound had been turned low, and Jenn couldn’t hear what she was saying. This kind of thing didn’t happen in Spain. She was about to run screaming from the restaurant, steal a car, drive into the wilderness, and cross the border illegally. The Bethunes were philosophical. By their reactions, she saw that this kind of thing happened fairly frequently. They’d immediately checked into the motel and gotten her an adjoining room. She was already making her plans to sneak out after they fell asleep and make a run for it.

  “Good thing you gave your ivy plants a good watering before we left,” Oral said to Modean.

  She nodded. “Jackie, darlin’, you need to eat.” Jenn was using the fake name on her papers. Jacqueline Simmons.

  “Excuse me a moment, Miz Bethune,” she said sweetly. “I am just so plumb worried about my maw-maw.” She held up her cell phone. “I’m going to call her one more time.”

  “You do that, honey,” Modean said, as Oral, who was just too large to be the owner of a Mini Cooper, took the last two biscuits and plopped them on his own plate. Modean gave him a look, which he pretended not to see.

  Jenn walked briskly out of the restaurant and put another call through to Father Juan. He answered at once.

  “Jenn, good news. We’re on our way,” he said. “There’s a priest in New Orleans trying to put us in contact with a band of fighters there.”

  “Hunters?” she asked hopefully.

  “Not exactly. Not like us,” he replied. “Keep your phone on. When I find out more, I’ll let you know.” He paused. “Have they reopened the border?”

  “No.”

  “Stay there until it opens.”

  “Father, no,” she pleaded. “I can’t just sit here eating grits.”

  “You will eat them,” he insisted. “And then you will go to sleep in your hotel room. And you will rest while you have the chance. And then you will let the Bethunes drive you into Louisiana.”

  “But—”

  “I’m your master,” he reminded her. “Do you want me to put the Hunter on, so she can order you to do as I say?”

  Through the plate glass window, Modean waved at her and pointed to the waitress who was setting down large plates loaded with meat loaf and mashed potatoes. Oral smiled at the waitress and held up an empty glass, which had once contained sweet iced tea.

  “Stay with those people. They need to cross the border too,” Father Juan said. “Think with your head, not your heart.”

  “But Aurora’s got Heather.”

  “And she said she would keep Heather alive until Mardi Gras. If something happens to you, we’ll have to rescue you. Escúchame,” he said sternly as she prepared to argue. “We’re going to land at the airport in New Orleans. We have no border to cross. Just several to fly over. Don’t make this harder for us.”

  She drew a deep breath. “All right.”

  “Bueno. Jamie, there is no smoking in here,” he said away from the phone. “Jenn. I know that you don’t believe in prayer, but I do, and I’m praying.”

  “Thank you.” Her throat was tight, and her eyes welled with tears. “Oh, God, Father Juan.”

  “Ah, a prayer after all,” he said softly. “God willing, we’ll see each other soon.”

  She could practically feel him making the sign of the cross over her. He hung up first. She glanced through the window again. Oral Bethune lifted up Jenn’s plate, as if to warn her that her food was getting cold. Holding up a finger, she dialed her grandmother next. The call went straight to voice mail.

  “I’m okay,” was all she said. If someone got hold of her grandmother’s phone, they wouldn’t be able to learn anything about where Jenn was.

  She stood outside for a few moments, collecting herself. Then she went back into the restaurant and sat down, aware that the volume on the TV had been cranked up. The same news anchor was on the screen. Both of the Bethunes had stopped eating, and their eyes were glued to the set.

  “. . . And so, to repeat, the border between Mississippi and Louisiana will be closed for at least another twenty-four hours.”

  “No,” Jenn whispered. “No, please.”

  “Good thing I brought a good book,” Modean said, “and my knitting.”

  “I wonder if they have Pay Per View,” Oral replied. “Jackie, what kind of movies do you like to watch?”

  The evening dragged on. After dinner they watched a spy thriller in the Bethunes’ room. Then Oral announced that he was tired, and Modean took that as her cue to move the party into Jenn’s room. Over canned soda and musty ice cubes from a noisy ice machine, she talked for hours about nothing, really, until she moved to go back to her room via the door that connected them.

  One hand on the knob, she glanced over at Jenn. Her face softened. “It’s not your maw-maw you’re worried about,” she said, “is it?”

  Jenn shook her head. Modean smiled sadly at her. “These are hard times, but things are going to get better.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jenn cleared her throat. “I know.”

  “Once our government and Solomon’s people weed out the bad apples, everything will be back to normal.”

  Are you crazy? Jenn wanted to shout at this woman in her teddy bear sweater. But she maintained her composure and folded her hands in her lap.

  “That day can’t come soon enough,” she declared.

  “It’ll be here before you know it.” Modean blew her a little kiss. “You’re just as sweet as sugar, Jackie.”

  “Thank you, ma’am,” she replied.

  By the time Modean left, Jenn was exhausted by worrying and playacting. She clutc
hed the cheap toothbrush she’d gotten from the front desk and washed up. Then she lay down on the bed. The room deodorizer smelled like bubble gum. Her heart thudded.

  I’ll never relax enough to fall asleep, she thought.

  But Jenn did. And she dreamed:

  Antonio stood beneath a lacy canopy of orange leaves and white blossoms. He was wearing a white shirt and white trousers, with a broad red silk sash worn low on his hips. He was barefoot. His curly hair grazed his earlobes, and his skin was golden brown. There were freckles across his nose, and his ruby earring caught sunset colors blazing across the sky.

  An ocean washed the shoreline behind him. Reaching up, he plucked an orange and pushed his fingertips into the orange skin; then he pulled it apart. Inside, the fruit was orange speckled with red.

  “This is a blood orange,” he said. “There are no apples in this garden.” He held it out to her. “Taste.”

  Her dream self appeared. She was wearing a white gauze spaghetti-strap nightgown, and her dark hair was gathered up loosely with a strip of ivory silk. As she took the orange from him, his fingers brushed hers. They were warm.

  “If I take this and eat, will I be like you?” she asked him.

  His smile faded. “There is no one like me,” he replied.

  Then the sun fell into the ocean and the black sky lit up like a bonfire. Blue moonlight on his hair, his eyes gleaming scarlet, he opened his mouth wide, and his fangs—

  Jenn bolted upright, gasping. Bathed in sweat, she pulled up her legs and wrapped her arms around them. Trembling, she rested her forehead against them. A nightmare, just a nightmare.

  Or had it been the sweetest of dreams?

  MADRID

  FATHER JUAN, JAMIE, SKYE, ERIKO,

  HOLGAR, AND ANTONIO

  “Tell me again why we’re doing this,” Jamie grumbled at Father Juan as he plopped down beside the salt-and-pepper-headed priest in his clerical collar and handed him the coffee the good father had requested. The entire team sat in Madrid International Airport, awaiting their flight to JFK Airport in New York City. To avoid detection they were scattered at three different gates, and Jamie had roundly protested being separated from Eriko. He’d argued that no one on earth would figure the girl in the auburn bob wig and enormous sunglasses to be Eriko Sakamoto, the Salamanca Hunter. Jamie had covered up the majority of his tatts with a black sweater and leather jacket, and a loose black knitted cap pulled low over his brow. He looked so highfalutin, he doubted his own ma would recognize him. If she had still been alive.

  After the Cuevas mission their pictures had ended up online. Their YouTube hits were in the millions. Fortunately, all the cell-phone video was blurry.

  So what if the airport security were wandering about, keeping sketch over the lambs about to board planes for places other than Spain? They surely wouldn’t realize that the Salamancans were about to quit the continent.

  In addition, with the help of witchy Skye, the good father had placed hocus-pocus on their doctored passports, giving whoever touched the documents a feeling of goodwill toward the passport’s holder. The magicks would work better on some than others—as was the case with all defensive weapons—but between that and Father Juan weaving spells as often as other Catholic priests actually prayed, like priests were supposed to, Jamie saw no reason why he couldn’t watch over his partner.

  “Sit down, Jamie,” Father Juan ordered him. Jamie’s master had been texting; Jamie tried to read the words off the phone, but the father slipped it back into his jacket pocket and took the coffee from Jamie’s half-gloved hand. Jamie knew what was up; they all did: There were two teams in Russia, up against some monster vampire there named Dantalion, who was torturing hunters to death and worse. They had been begging Father Juan for help. It never ended.

  But instead of going there, where they could do some good, the Salamancans were bound on yet another fool’s errand in the opposite direction. Another one doomed to failure.

  Jamie seethed.

  Father Juan glanced up at him, every hair in place, face cleanly shaven, heavy brows and deep-set eyes betraying nothing of his inner turmoil, which Jamie knew had been increasing during the many, many text messages he had been trading with Russia. They all knew it. If he wasn’t praying, he was working his beads, sending up prayers to the Blessed Mother. Or the Goddess, or whoever he really worshipped. Jamie was beginning to wonder about Father Juan’s brand of Catholicism. All right, then, not beginning to wonder. He’d wondered about it all along.

  “Siéntate,” Father Juan ordered him. Sit. “You pace worse than Holgar.”

  Rolling his eyes, Jamie flopped into the empty black plastic-and-chrome chair beside the priest. “At least I don’t walk in a circle three times and sniff my own arse before I sit down,” he grumped. He knit his blond brows and cocked his head. “New York,” he prompted. “New Orleans. This is all arseways.”

  “Shh,” Juan murmured, as he pried the plastic lid off his coffee and took a sip, all showy nonchalance and ease. “We’ve discussed this. Jenn’s alone, and her sister has been taken.”

  “Heather, you said her name was? You know the chit’s dead,” Jamie snapped. He stared into his own cup, seeing his own family there. His own sister, torn apart before his eyes by werewolves when he was ten. Seeing the faces of the vampires who had cornered her in the alley outside their parish church so the wolves could get at her. Jamie, screaming at his priest, Father Patrick, to do something, anything, when all Father Pat could do was hold him back so that he wouldn’t die that night too. Maeve, his sweet girl, shredded, as the wolves howled and the vampires doubled over, hissing and chortling. And none to help. No revenge taken, still, after years.

  There’d been no Hunter in Belfast. No one to stand up to the monsters who terrorized the streets. And why was that, when every fecking village in England had a Hunter? The capital of Northern Ireland, with three million souls begging for help, and no one to champion them?

  At the gritty, working-class graveyard, as they lowered the box of what was left of Maeve and his da and his ma into the ground, Jamie had sworn on their coffins that he’d lay a werewolf pelt in front of his fireplace before he left this world. That was why Jamie had traveled to Salamanca—to be ordained the Hunter. He’d fought and trained harder than any of them; he’d sat in the chapel in the middle of many a freezing-cold night and more boiling-hot ones—Christ, Spain was like hell!—and begged sweet Mother Mary to put the mark of the Hunter on his brow. And he’d sworn on the memories of his murdered family that the second he’d drunk that elixir down, he’d go back to Belfast and rid his folk of vampires and werewolves, too.

  But not only had he not become the Hunter, he’d been persuaded to stay in Salamanca to fight as part of a bleedin’ hunting team. It went against all hunting custom and tradition, and if Father Juan had been the only master to put a team together, Jamie would have suspected Juan of working with the English to make sure Belfast remained defenseless. Jamie was positive that the English government had made a backroom deal with the Cursed Ones—We’ll let you have the Irish, if you leave us English alone.

  The local Cursers in his rough west Belfast neighborhood still ran with the same pack of wolves who had ripped Maeve limb from limb. Still carted off little girls and old men, leaving the tourists alone (if any were fool enough to wander into west Belfast), which gave additional weight to Jamie’s conspiracy theory.

  “I know you’re angry,” Father Juan said “But she is one of us. We don’t leave our own behind. Ever. She needs our help.”

  Jamie gulped down half his scaldy, sending a boiling river of tea down his throat. It barely registered, he was fuming so. If he, Jamie, was going to gallivant off and take care of anyone’s sister—well, Belfast was full of good Catholics with sisters and daughters and mothers who needed saving.

  “Our American needs more help than we can give her,” Jamie snapped. “First she bollockses up the Cuevas job; now we’re leaving our home base—leaving Europe, for
God’s sake—because she couldn’t even keep her own sister safe from the locals. . . .”

  “Papeles,” said a uniformed man who came to a standstill in front of Jamie. Papers. With a jowly face and black sideburns, he was wearing the new Civil Forces uniform—dark blue dress jacket, black trousers, and an insignia on his shoulder of an eagle holding a sword. Before the war lots of Spanish battalions had featured crosses. As vampires could not abide crosses, the images had all been redrawn as swords. To show courtesy, it was said. But it was appeasement, pure and simple.

  Father Juan figured it was only a matter of time before the vampires moved against the Church, whether or not they got humans to help them with that. On that day mankind would truly be doomed.

  Beside Jamie, Father Juan moved the pointer and middle finger of his left hand and moved his lips. Casting another spell.

  Jamie reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out his forged passport. It was still Irish-issued, wine-colored pleather stamped with a gold Irish harp—no sense trying to deny that Jamie, with his heavy accent, was anything but feckin’ oirish.

  Jamie’s hand was steady as he handed the passport to the soddin’ traitor to his species, and the Spaniard made a show of examining it, staring at Jamie’s photo and then at Jamie himself as if he were memorizing the answers to a test. Then the guard handed it back as if himself was doing Jamie the greatest of favors and dipped his head respectfully at Father Juan.

  “Buenos días, Padre,” the man said, and moved on.

  Once he was out of earshot Jamie turned to Father Juan. “What the bloody shite was that all about?”

  “You invite scrutiny because of your negative energy,” Father Juan said simply. A public announcement in Spanish echoed through the speakers, and he put the lid back on his coffee. “That’s our flight.”

  Father Juan rose and looked down expectantly at Jamie, who finished his tea—what the hell, he had no nerve endings left in his throat anyway—and stood his ground.

  “I’m waiting here for Eriko,” he declared, crossing his leg over his knee.