“No,” he said. “My human father taught me to fight.”
“He must have been good.”
“He was.”
Natalie and Brigid were silent in the backseat. He glanced in the mirror to see her watching him. Then he felt the brush of her warm fingers at his neck, and he turned his eyes back to the road.
“You are young. Your body is still developing, and your frame is still filling out. You won’t truly settle into a fighting style for a few years. But all the preparation you’re doing is good. And if there has to be a human guarding Natalie…” He glanced at her again, only to find her sticking her tongue out at him. He smiled. “I’m relatively satisfied that it’s you.”
“Stop with the gushing praise; I’m going to think you have a crush on me.”
“Don’t push it.”
Ben laughed as he reached into the duff ininkel bag at his feet. “I have backup. It’s me, Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer, and my darling Miss Kimber.”
“Good to know you brought friends. That won’t kill them, you know.”
“A .45 still packs a hell of a punch, my friend.”
“Aim for the neck.”
A wicked glint came to Ben’s eye. “Always.”
They had to hike the last five miles to the hunting grounds. Baojia gave Natalie a piggyback ride. Brigid offered to carry Ben, but he refused with red ears and ran to keep up. Carwyn and Tenzin were already at the crater, bickering.
“Stop calling me fat. Just because I’m not as light as a fifteen-year-old girl—”
“I was older than fifteen when I turned, you idiot.”
“Then stop acting like a whiny little schoolgirl. It’s not like you’re not strong enough. You could carry ten of me and not feel it, so stop bitching. Did you feed tonight?”
“Just bagged blood. I didn’t have time to hunt.”
Carwyn grunted. “No wonder.”
“You two fight like siblings,” Baojia said as he set Natalie down.
“Always.” Ben went over and threw an arm around Tenzin’s shoulders. “Stop picking on Tiny, Carwyn.”
“Picking on—?” Carwyn threw his head back and laughed. “Good one. Ah, there’s my lovely girl.” Brigid went over to him and tilted her face up for a kiss, but Carwyn lifted her in his massive arms and swung her around, greeting his wife far more enthusiastically than he had only two nights before. “Mmmm, my lovely, lovely girl… There are caves around here. I’ve already scouted them out.”
“One-track mind,” Brigid muttered as Carwyn coaxed her away from the group.
Baojia rolled his eyes at the pair and turned to Tenzin, who was brushing off Ben’s arm. “Stop calling me Tiny.”
“It just fits.”
He broke in before they could start arguing. “No truck, I take it.”
She shook her head. “Going to sniff around? We just got here. We stopped by Tulio’s place—Carwyn knows him, of course—and let him know what the plan was. He says we can use that tunnel you mentioned to get the girls out. Says it’s safe and he’ll be watching for them. The one human he has is still tucked away.”
“Good. That will help.” He looked around, really examining the hunting ground for the first time. Leaving Natalie with Tenzin and Ben, he walked the perimeter. It was a natural crater, no doubt formed hundreds or thousands of years ago by something massive hitting the ground. The depression was almost perfectly round, and little grew in it except a copse of trees that had sprung up from the middle and a few tumbleweeds. He toed his shoes off and sank his feet into the sand, but could sense no water.
His eyes darted around, taking in bits and pieces. The more he looked, the more subtle evidence of violence he saw. Cracked branches and bloodstains. A pile of rocks had tumbled down the side of the crater where it looked like someone had tried to run up quickly. Though the wind had carried the scent of fresh human blood far away, brown smudges still remained on the sandstone rocks that lay scattered around. And the scent of the predators was everywhere. The traces of energy were old—he guessed no one had been back since the hunt they had witnessed days before, but they were numerous and varied. It wasn’t the same vampires hunting over and over. Though a few signatures seemed familiar, most were unknown and b und witneelonged to unique individuals.
“Hunting parties,” he murmured. Why was Ivan doing it? For amusement? To make money? It was the type of thing responsible immortal leaders had outlawed to avoid exposure to humans, but in this part of the world—where no one was watching, using girls that no one cared about—it certainly wouldn’t be unheard of. Were the other vampires paying him? Did they know they were getting a poison as well as a fresh meal? Somehow, Baojia didn’t think that was on the brochure.
He felt Natalie approach.
“What are you thinking?” she asked.
“I’m thinking… I still wish you weren’t here.”
“Can we stop now, please? I’m here. Talk to me about the plan.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out as she slid her hand in his. “We’ll all hide in Tulio’s tunnel today. Obviously, it’s not happening tonight. It might not happen for days. We only know the girl, Carmen, was taken two nights ago. According to what we can tell, it takes anywhere from two to three days to collect the girls and infect them with Elixir. Was Carmen the first they grabbed for this hunt? The last? It might be tomorrow night; it might be a week from now. Hopefully it’s not a week, but we did bring provisions for you and Ben, and Father Andrade has Ben’s phone number to call us when the truck shows up at the club.”
“And when they do get here?”
She knew this already. They’d gone over it seven times, by his count. She was asking to let him process it in his own mind again, searching for any loose ends.
“After they drop off the girls, the count starts. An hour, according to Tulio. We’ll have to gather them up and get them headed toward Tulio’s. Or we might just knock them out with amnis and hide them in Tulio’s caverns.” He frowned. “Yes, I think that would be better. Safer.”
“Okay.” She nodded. “Then Ben and I take position.”
He tensed instinctually. “Yes. Carwyn, Tenzin, Brigid, and I will have to remain in the tunnel until they come back, but you and Ben will be in the center of the crater. In that stand of trees there. No use giving them a clear target. There’s no shower here, so your scent will already be heightened, which will draw them.”
“Wonderful. I won’t smell like Elixir, though.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think it will matter. From what I could tell last time, they came already high on the drug. They’d already fed—this was just an added experience. To make it all more exciting.” She shivered at his words and Baojia drew her closer. “I wonder… he doses the humans at the club with it. When they start to get sick, is this their last stop? If Constantina hadn’t run, would she have ended up out here?”
“But Rosa didn’t seem sick.”
“Good point.” He cocked his head, thinking. “Maybe they’re running out of waitresses. Running out of time. They don’t want to wait for healthy girls to get sick. Healthy prey would be more fun to hunt anyway, so why wait for girls to get sick? In fact, find girls who can run and fight back a little. It would make them a bit more of a challenge if they can fight back.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair, taking comfort in her touch, her scent, her warmth. She had wrapped her arms around his waist as they spoke.
He heard her gulp. “It makes a twisted kind of sense, I guess.”
“Yes, it does.” He took a deep breath. “Natalie?”
“What?”
“This is a very sick s a wiworld,” he whispered. “And sometimes I feel like I have lived in it too long.”
“No,” she said. “Just long enough. Long enough for me to find you. Long enough for me to love you.”
The wind whistled past as he felt Tenzin fly overhead. Carwyn and Ben had started a small fire near the mouth of the tunnel where he had killed the ai
r vampire and rescued Rosa. He pulled Natalie down to sit next to him on a large piece of sandstone.
“When this is finished, I want to move north. I think we can live in the Northwest and be safe. I have lots of money. You can find whatever work you want. I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
“Then we won’t.” She laid her head on his shoulder. “Kristy called yesterday. She tried to hold them off, but she and Dan got chewed out by our big boss. I didn’t want her to get in trouble, so I called the Tribune and quit. Officially.”
He looked at her, startled. “You didn’t tell me this when I woke tonight?”
“Didn’t seem all that important at the time.” Natalie gave him a rueful smile. “And I knew going back wasn’t really an option. I’ll manage, I guess. Maybe I’ll publish online. Lots of writers do.”
“Then you can work from anywhere.”
She nodded. “Mmhmm. Even the Northwest.”
Despite everything, he smiled. “I like this plan.”
“And if I work from home, you won’t have to worry about me getting hit by a bus crossing the street or being struck down by a meteor or choking on a donut or anything.” She elbowed him. “So much safer. Well, maybe not from donuts, but definitely buses.”
“Approximately four thousand pedestrians are killed every year, you know.”
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you know that?”
Because she was his world now. And everything he could do to make her safe, he would. As much as she would let him, anyway.
“I want to marry you, Natalie. I want you to have children like you want. Our children.” The vision of his father in the courtyard came back to him. “I will protect them. I can teach them how to fight.”
“You could teach them a lot of things,” she said, her voice hoarse. He looked down to see tears in her eyes. “How to fight. How to play. How to break my cell phone…”
“Yes.” He smiled. “All of those things. I believe I would be a good father.”
“I think you’d be a great father. It wouldn’t bother you? That you can’t—”
“There are humans who cannot father children, aren’t there?” He shrugged. “We will do whatever they do. It won’t make them any less mine.” He looked down. “If that is what you want.”
“Maybe not right away, but…” She smiled. “That’s definitely what I want.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do.”
“Okay.” Natalie heaved a sigh and settled close to him again. “After we kill all the bad guys.”
“After I kill all the bad guys, and you keep your head down.”
“That’s what I meant.”
Ivan’s men didn’t come that night. They didn’t come the next night, either. By the third night, everyone was getting restless. Carwyn had dug more caves off of Tulio’s original tunnel just so they could avoid each other. Brigid and Baojia were both thirsty; Baojia only took a little blood from Natalie, not wanting her weak.tinigi It had caused yet another argument. Which he lost, so he drank again.
When he woke on the fourth night, it was with a distinct sense of foreboding. He left Natalie in her sleeping bag and went outside. Tenzin was crouched at the mouth of the cave, eyeing the horizon.
“They’re coming tonight,” she said.
“Are you sure? The priest hasn’t called.”
She cocked her head to the side, like a bird examining an insect. “Fairly sure.”
He lowered his voice. “Tenzin… If Natalie is injured in this fight, I do not want to lose her.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You ask this of me? Do you trust me so much, Dragon?”
“No.”
She grinned, her curving fangs glinting in the moonlight. “Good. You shouldn’t. So why ask me?”
“I would bargain with you, and your blood is powerful.”
“So is the priest’s.”
Baojia stopped as Ben crawled out of the cave, grumbling about the heat and muttering something about clean water. He walked away from them, no doubt looking for somewhere to relieve himself, and Baojia saw Tenzin watching him with an amused smile.
“Perhaps,” he said, “I think you would understand my wish to not lose a human so valuable to me.”
Tenzin’s eyes cut toward him, narrowing.
“Perhaps,” Baojia said, leaning closer, “you would do the same, even if it was not that human’s wish.”
“Perhaps you’re right.” She stood, brushing off the dust. “I’m going to look around and see what’s coming.”
“Is that a yes?”
“I would say… perhaps.” Tenzin took to the air, disappearing into the black night.
Baojia sighed and stretched, enjoying the feel of his muscles working. He took off his shirt, folding it neatly and laying it o
n a rock before he centered himself and faced the darkening western sky.
Perhaps.
He closed his eyes and swept a leg out, crossing his arms, then pulling them away from his body before he brought them back to center and flexed his shoulders.
Perhaps.
Baojia practiced his forms as the moon rose and the others gave him the gift of their silence. They all knew what the plan was; they simply needed the enemy to arrive.
Perhaps?
He breathed deeply, sensing a welcome—but unexpected—gift on the breeze. His amnis jumped when he felt it. It couldn’t be… His eyes flew open, searching the sky just as Tenzin landed.
“There is good news and bad news, as they say,” she said, walking toward him.
“Bad news?”
“Four SUVs are heading this way, following the delivery truck that will be here within a few minutes.”
Four. With three or four immortals in each SUV, that would mean anywhere between twelve and sixteen opponents. And four of them. Normally, he could handle that many on his own, but with the Elixir involved, the odds were unknown.
“And the good news?”
She grinned wide. “There’s a storm coming.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
One minute, she was sitting quietly, watching him practice his martial arts forms itinigmbp:pagen that steady, meditative rhythm, the next, everything happened at once. Baojia spun around and picked her up in one swoop, carrying her to the tunnel so fast the world around her blurred. He was speaking to Tenzin in rapid Chinese as they raced toward Tulio’s cavern.
“Stop!” she finally yelled. “English, please! I don’t know what’s going on!”
“They’re on their way. The girls are in a large delivery truck and they’ll be here in a few minutes. We have to hide and hope they don’t sniff too closely. I didn’t think about the danger of us camping here. Our scents could be everywhere. If the driver is a vampire—”
Carwyn broke in. “Father Andrade mentioned a human driver to me. So did the girl. I think we’ll be fine, but we need to get everyone inside so we’re not seen. How long do we have after the women are dropped off?”
“Tulio said an hour, but I don’t know. His sense of time is not all that accurate.”
Natalie was dumped in the tunnel while the others raced around, tidying up their little camp and trying to erase any evidence of their existence.
“Too lax,” she heard Baojia mutter once when he dropped off a shirt Brigid had draped over a bush to air out. “I have been too lax.”
Everything around her turned into a blur.
Vampires were coming. Fast, inhumanly strong vampires, hopped up on some vampire drug that made them irrational and bloodthirsty. And those vampires were going to kill Natalie, Baojia, Ben, Tenzin, Carwyn, and Brigid unless they killed them first. Everyone around her was pulling out swords and guns, strapping them to arms and waists and thighs in strange holsters that curled around their bodies like deadly ribbon. Even the teenager, Ben, had more weapons than the average SWAT officer. And Natalie had… a stun gun.
What the hell had she been thinking?
She was desperately trying not to throw up when Baoji
a—the vampire who, two nights before, had basically proposed to her—pulled her hand and tugged her farther into a deserted alcove off the main cave. He straightened her shoulders and Natalie stared at his chest, still bare and exposed to the night air. There was a light sheen across it, almost as if he’d been sweating. She frowned. He didn’t sweat.
“You’re scared,” he said.
“Yep. Terrified.”
He nodded. “Good. Be scared. Use it. It’ll make you more aware. Don’t take chances. And make sure you stay with Ben.”
“Okay.”
“And when we get out of here, we’re getting serious about your self-defense lessons.”
“Okay.”
“And we’re going to get out of here.” He tipped her chin up so she was forced to look at his dark eyes. “Do you understand me?” He was all calm and cool collection in that moment. Confident. Sure. The only rock-solid thing in this pile of crazy she’d landed in weeks ago.
Only weeks? It seemed like a lifetime.
“I love you, George.” Her voice broke. “I’m really happy all this happened. No matter what.”
He shook his head. “Don’t act like that. We’re going to be fine. You’re going to be fine. Stay with Ben and trust me.”
She nodded, trying to smile. “Okay.”
“You have your guns?”
She nodded, patting the holster Brigid had brought for her. She wore two and had a small duffel with the rest that she’d take with her.
“Natalie?”
“Uh huh?”
He paused for a moment, looking nervous for the first time that evening. “We only have a few minutes before the girls get here. I can hear the truck. I need to know… You shouldn’t be hurt. I have every confidence you won’t be, but if you are… I need to know if… if you want—”
“Want what?” Her heart began to pound. “For you to make me a vampire?”
He shook his head. “Not me. If I did—”
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