“You’re a trained hunter,” she said to herself. “You can do this.” There were five fewer vampires in Oakland as proof of that. Still, she knew that most of that had been luck. She just hoped her luck held, because at this point she was Heather’s only hope. If it wasn’t already too late.
I hate you, Dad. You might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on her chest. . . .
You’ve killed her.
She couldn’t think like that. That vampire—Aurora—had promised to keep Heather alive until Mardi Gras, which was nine days away. But there was a lot Aurora could do to Heather in the meantime besides killing her outright. Torturing her, draining her bit by bit.
Jenn forced herself to remain calm and in control. She couldn’t think like a big sister right now. She had to be a hunter, 100 percent, inside and out.
She pulled out her cell phone and saw one bar. Hoping for a connection anyway, she dialed first Father Juan, and then Antonio, and got no service. She hoped they were en route, coming to help her as Father Juan had promised.
But they weren’t there now. She was alone, aware that Heather was bait and that she was doing exactly what Aurora wanted her to. Why? Surely bagging one Salamancan wasn’t worth all this effort, especially when Aurora could have killed her already. Jenn had spent the last several hours wondering why Aurora had walked away instead of finishing things. She was sure the Cursed One had a reason, and she was equally sure she wasn’t going to like it when she found out what it was.
Squaring her shoulders, Jenn gripped the stake and opened a Velcro pocket, pulling out a glass vial of holy water. If a Cursed One came after her, she could break open the vial against a tree trunk. Holy water burned vampires like acid—vampires, that is, except for Antonio. Wasn’t that proof enough for him that he really did possess a soul?
The bayou sloshed, although the rain had stopped. The sun struggled through the low-hanging clouds and the lacy cypress trees. Weird gray wooden stumps rose from the swirling water. Alligators? Vampires in those little Cajun canoes she’d read about somewhere?
She squinted into the gloom, smelling mud and an undercurrent of rot. Live oaks surrounded the bayou, then extended left to right before her like a marching army—a barrier and a trap. She started walking parallel, hoping to skirt around them. There was a stretch of two-lane road farther on—the “highway” road into New Orleans that the trucker had refused to take. The one he said was too dangerous to take. In the center of the pitted tarmac, a burned-out, rusted Infiniti lay on its side like the skeleton of a dead animal. No one had taken that road in a long time.
Still, the sun shone brighter there, so she kept walking toward the blacktop, stake at the ready, slinging her fingers through her duffel in such a way that she could immediately drop it if she had to. Everyone else on the team could use a bag like that as a weapon, but Jenn didn’t have enough upper-body strength to manage it.
She reached the road and hesitated; more burned, abandoned vehicles stretched down the pavement. The sun beat down on the twisted metal, and she swallowed, bracing herself in case she ran across a dead body. She had not yet become accustomed to seeing corpses. But the wrecks had disintegrated so badly that she guessed years must have passed since they’d caught fire, or been torched; if anything was left of the people who had ridden in them, they would be clean bones by now. The thought did little to comfort her, but she walked on. Behind her, crickets scraped and frogs croaked; a bird cawed. So there was life in New Orleans. Lots of it.
The buzz of something like a dragonfly vibrated against her ear; the sound grew louder as she passed the Infiniti. She felt a vibration against the soles of her boots. It was the roar of an engine coming up behind her on the long-deserted road.
She turned, shielding her eyes against the glare. About fifty yards from her a black panel van swerved around a rusted tow truck, brakes squealing. The windshield was dark, and so was the driver’s-side window. Tinted? A chill ran down her back. The patrol the trucker had warned her about? Was it Cursed Ones, daring to drive in the sun? No vampire she’d ever encountered had tried something so risky.
The van gunned its motor, picked up speed, and angled straight for her. Dropping the duffel, she broke into a run. The van kept coming. The engine was racing. She moved faster. The whine became a roar that vibrated against her bones.
The trees, she thought. It wouldn’t be able to follow her into the tangle of oaks at the side of the road. But was that what they wanted her to do? Were more vampires crouched on branches and leering behind trunks, waiting? And if so, what should she do next?
Hunters learned to process situations strategically. Top priority was getting away from the van. If it hit her, it would kill her for certain. She had to do the first thing most likely to keep her alive. For the moment, that meant the trees.
The van roared toward her as she whirled on her heel and sprinted for the nearest oak. Sweat slicked her hands; she gripped the stake, her only one, and kept hold of the vial of holy water in her sweaty left hand. Her heart pounded wildly, and she forced herself not to pant, but to breathe regularly through her exertion—a hunter’s technique for increasing stamina. Her eyes couldn’t make a quick enough adjustment from the bright sun to the darkness of the woods, and she knew she had to slow down, or the impact when she ran into a tree would knock her out. Spanish moss hanging from a branch scratched her forehead as she put on a burst of speed.
Then the van slammed to a stop. She listened hard, dropping to a crouch and grinding her fist against her mouth so whoever got out of the van wouldn’t hear her gulping in air. Sweat stung her eyes, and she wiped her brow with her forearm. It stung, and she realized she was covered with fine scratches from blasting through the crisscrosses of branches.
“It was a chick,” someone—it sounded like a guy—shouted. “Vite!”
A shrill whistle followed.
Vite was French for “first”—it could also mean “hurry.” Jenn had learned a few words from a student at the academy. Simone had washed out, walking away disappointed but free. She was lucky. Most students who left the academy did so in body bags.
But now Jenn was trapped. Her heartbeat stuttered, and adrenaline gushed into her system. Through a supreme act of will she made herself breathe slowly again. Her eyes still hadn’t adjusted; she was blind, for all intents and purposes.
Another whistle pierced her eardrums, startling her so badly she almost fell forward onto her hands. If that happened, she would break the vial. Shifting her weight, she closed her eyes, fighting to adjust.
The whistle was answered . . . from somewhere behind her. Her eyes flew open. The second whistler was in the forest. With her.
Antonio, she thought, because each time she faced death, her last thought was of him. His face blazed into her mind. She remained stock-still, afraid the scent of her fear would carry despite the sultry, leaden air.
Footfalls crashed closely behind her. Could be a vampire, could be a human. Given the sunlight, whoever had gotten out of the van was more likely human, unless the van had rolled into shadow. And the guy had spoken to someone, so there were at least two of them. Maybe they were surrounding her.
Finally, the dim shapes of trees took form, their ropes of Spanish moss hanging like nooses. Half straightening, she glided as silently as she could behind the trunk of the nearest oak. She craned her neck around it, straining to see in the half-light.
“Gotcha,” someone said, as a blow crashed down on the back of her head.
NEW ORLEANS
FATHER JUAN, JAMIE, ERIKO, HOLGAR,
SKYE, AND ANTONIO
“Thank God for basements,” Father Juan said as Antonio stepped from the service elevator and the door closed. They hefted their gear. No one had checked baggage. Everything they had brought, they carried on their backs. That meant they were seriously lacking in weapons of any kind.
“There’s a door leading to the maintenance tunnel, and from there, the sewer.” Father Juan gave Jamie a look. “No sm
oking.”
Jamie huffed and put his cigarettes away. Everyone was tired and dirty, including Antonio. The sun pulled hard on him. When their plane had been delayed in New York, the danger that he would have to walk in the sun had escalated. Luckily the companionways both in New York and New Orleans had been indoors, shielding him.
Eriko walked with Father Juan toward a gray metal door. Antonio glanced at Skye to see if she sensed any nearby vampires, then at Holgar to see if he smelled anything out of the ordinary. He himself had not. Everyone was tense. Father Juan’s contact in New Orleans had e-mailed information designed to help them connect with the local band of fighters, but refused to meet them in person. He said it was too dangerous, that he’d already risked too much by helping them at all. The only reason he had gotten involved was because Father Juan was a Catholic priest, like him.
“So far, so good,” Father Juan announced as Eriko held open the door. “He said there would be a maintenance cart. Then beyond that, we can get to the sewers.”
“Brilliant,” Jamie groused. He glared at Holgar. “You’ll like that, won’t you, wolfman? Sloggin’ about in a big stream of shite?”
Holgar ignored him.
“And they’ll find us in the sewers?” Skye prompted.
“That’s the plan,” Father Juan replied.
“Ambush us, more like,” Jamie said.
“Please, be quiet,” Eriko said.
They found the cart and wound their way through the warren of service tunnels, moving deeper into darkness and away from the airport. It was Mardi Gras season. Antonio had never been, but the traffic in the terminal had seemed sparse for such a festive occasion. People were afraid to come to New Orleans.
He thought of Jenn all alone, working her way here, and felt a clutch at his unbeating heart. She was a fully trained hunter, chosen by Father Juan, but she was so much more to him. And he had been born to a time when men took care of their women.
Yet you failed the woman who looked to you for protection, he thought. And now she is dead.
He pushed away his guilt and concentrated on moving the team to their rendezvous point. But he couldn’t push away his fear.
For Jenn.
The hours stretched; Antonio determinedly brought up the rear as they kept going. Then he smelled death, and glanced at Holgar, who nodded.
“We’re underneath one of those cemeteries,” Holgar told him. “They bury their dead in those little houses. What do they call them in English?”
“Tombs,” Antonio said.
“So they won’t wash away in the gutters,” Jamie groused, avoiding the fetid water trickling down the center of the tunnel they were in. “Bloody hell, this is worse than the catacombs.”
Then Father Juan jerked, and cocked his head. Antonio watched him, listening to someone’s strangely pounding heartbeat. Except . . . it wasn’t a heartbeat. He squinted, concentrating.
“Voodoo drums,” Father Juan said. “In the cemetery above us.”
“Magicks,” Skye affirmed. “They raise the dead.”
“As zombies,” Jamie added. “We got nothing to fear from ’em. Can barely move. We’ll mow them down.”
“Alors, stop right there,” a voice rang out in the darkness.
The sharp click of a weapon echoed close behind it.
“Friend or foe?” Father Juan said loudly.
There was no answer.
THE BAYOU OUTSIDE NEW ORLEANS
JENN
As the blow to the back of her head propelled Jenn against the tree trunk, she pushed with the flats of her hands and tilted her head, slamming it into the face of her assailant. She heard him grunt and felt him stagger backward, and she executed a sharp round kick as she whirled to face him. Her boot caught the side of his head.
He was a tall, dark-skinned black man, and as he crashed to the ground, she threw herself on top of him, capturing his left arm with her right leg. Straddling him, she pushed on his right shoulder and jabbed his chest with her stake, hard enough to make a dent but not to break the skin.
“No, no, no!” he screamed, flailing at her with his unpinned arm. “I’m human!”
“You attacked me,” she reminded him, realizing that that might not make sense to him. What she meant was that her vow not to harm humans went out the window if she needed to defend herself.
“That’s enough,” said someone to her right. It was the voice of the man she’d heard getting out of the truck. “I got a rifle aimed at your head.”
She was a hunter. Hunters didn’t surrender.
“I’ve got a stake pressed against his heart,” she said, raising up on her knees and allowing her body weight to push on the stake. Now the skin did break. As he screamed, she rolled off him, then yanked him up to a sitting position like a rag doll and draped him over her chest. She repositioned the sharp point against his carotid artery, straining to make out the figure of the other man. But it was too dark. If he could see her well enough to shoot her, it was likely he was a vampire—or he had a nightscope.
“If it goes in, he’ll bleed to death!” she yelled.
“Oh, merde, merde,” the black man whispered. “Lucky, stop!”
“What are you doing here?” the other man—Lucky—demanded. “No one comes here.”
“Drop the gun!” she bellowed, grabbing her prisoner under the chin and holding his head still. “Now!”
“Shit,” her prisoner rasped. “Lucky, just do it!”
“Wait, stop, everybody.” The voice belonged to a third person—a woman. “Lucky, I think . . . I think she’s a Hunter. She’s got a patch from Salamanca. They have an academy, don’t they?”
They’d found her duffel. Her jacket with her Salamanca patch was folded inside.
A flashlight winked on, washing her and her captive with yellow light. She didn’t stand down, keeping the stake pressed against the side of his neck. He looked at her with huge eyes.
“Is that true?” he ground out. “You’re a Hunter?”
She didn’t answer. But he started to cry.
“Merci,” he whispered. “Merci, God.”
“If you’re a Hunter, you’re among friends,” said the woman. “I swear it.”
The light whirled against the trees, then came to rest on the faces of a young woman and a guy—Lucky. Neither of them looked older than early twenties, maybe younger. The woman had hennaed red hair pulled up into two pom-pom ponytails. She was wearing tattered blue jeans and a black T-shirt silk-screened with a Japanese geisha face, and Jenn’s duffel was in her arms. Lucky looked mildly gothy, with kohl-rimmed eyes and rings on all his fingers. His ears were pierced multiple times.
“Look,” the woman said to Lucky, holding up Jenn’s jacket.
Lucky showed Jenn his rifle and laid it on the ground, stretching out his hands and slowly straightening, his arms above his head. The woman held the flashlight steady with her right hand and dangled the jacket from her fist.
The fourth stranger, a man, approached Jenn from behind. In the glow from his flashlight, she saw that he was taller, with gray hair. He appeared to be unarmed.
The quartet looked at her. She lifted the stake away from her captive’s throat and got to her feet. She still didn’t entirely trust them. But as Father Juan often said, one had to go by one’s instincts. She lowered her weapon and raised her chin.
“Yes,” she said, facing the three. “I’m a hunter.”
Lucky and the woman began cheering and dancing. The man she had nearly staked turned and threw his arms around her. And the older man lowered his head.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Our masters have sought out one another, and organized us into fighting bands. We are sent out where we might do the most good—that is, cause the most harm to our common enemy. But creating teams of hunters is a new concept; working with other bands is just as new, and we have tensions and problems equal to those of our older, supposedly wiser, elite fighting forces. Many who have heard of us have protested our very existence, c
alling us children on a crusade.
—from the diary of Jenn Leitner
NEW ORLEANS
JENN
“There are tunnels beneath most of New Orleans. They’ve been here for ages,” the redheaded woman told Jenn, as the older man squeezed the black panel van into a narrow alley behind a beautiful three-story apartment building laced with wrought-iron balconies. “Pirates, bootleggers, kids have all used ’em. Now it’s us. And the vampires.”
The woman’s name was Suzy, and she was from Ohio. She’d been working in Le Pirate, a restaurant in the beautiful and historic Vieux Carré, or French Quarter, of New Orleans. They’d been allowed to stay open because, after all, people had to eat.
It turned out that Jenn’s “friend” the trucker had seen the foursome patrolling, and he’d pulled over and told them about his passenger and her odd behavior. There were prices on all their heads—they were outlaws, rebelling against the current government of their city—and people did terrible things to each other these days. That made her highly suspect, worth checking out. They’d accidentally struck gold, capturing a hunter.
“Let me carry that for you, Hunter,” Matt, the driver, offered, as Jenn climbed out of the back, hoisting her duffel over her shoulder.
“Thanks,” she said, allowing him to take it from her. If he took care of the duffel, she’d have her hands free for battle. Besides, she was massively exhausted. She had barely recovered from her last concussion, and she hoped that she didn’t have a new one thanks to the latest head blow.
Moving stealthily, the others climbed out. Bernard, her former attacker, was their leader. While they pressed against the wall, he sidled down the alley, scanning left, right, and nodded at Lucky, who was a runaway sixteen-year-old from Tampa. Life had clearly aged him; he looked older. Jenn gathered by their dark humor that “Lucky” was the most ironic of nicknames. He’d run away from home to New Orleans, for God’s sake.
They advanced a few feet, then paused beneath a sickly sweet magnolia tree. Engulfed in its perfume, Jenn almost sneezed, but she managed to hold it, her chest constricting painfully. With the others she watched Lucky dart to the center of the street and scan the area. She wanted to tell him that his furtive behavior was an attention grabber for sure; there really was no way to casually slide back a manhole cover, but he was raising more red flags than necessary. As the heavy cover scraped against the street, Lucky nodded once. Then he climbed down.
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