Bloodfire (Empire of Fangs) (12 page)

“We jump him? That’s the plan?
 
You learn that from Ghostbusters?”

“You got a better one?”
 
Twig asked, still practicing on the curtains.

“Yes, I do actually.
 
Viper Canyon.”

Twig sighed.
 
“Of course, it would have to be a canyon wouldn’t it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“My dream, I was chasing someone in a canyon, but it wasn’t Damon, it was some other creature.”

Zara shook her head, annoyed.
 
“Is that what I am?
 
A
creature
?”
 

“C’mon, I didn’t mean that. You’re not one of them.”

“Oh?” Zara moved to the bathroom and stared at her reflection in the mirror, letting the awkward silence hang between them.

Twig followed her into the bathroom.
 
“Okay, maybe I’m being judgmental here; I just haven’t met too many vampires who were as friendly as you okay?”

“Maybe because they are constantly being hunted.
 
Ever think about that?”

“Yeah okay,” Twig said, throwing his hands up in the air, “use the old ‘It’s society’s fault’ routine.
 
Fine, but the guy in my dream was no saint.
 
He was being chased for a reason.
 
People don’t assemble posses to go chase down jaywalkers.”

“Maybe,” Zara said.
 
“So it’s okay to listen to your feelings but mine are just an active imagination huh?”

“You’re right,” Twig said, flopping down on the bed.
  
“Okay, okay.
 
But what’s the plan here?
 
In my dream it didn’t work out to well for us.
 
He was cornered and he still beat us.”

Zara didn’t want to tell Twig about her brief encounter with Sam
McDermont
.
 
It would only make him more agitated and suspicious of her.
 
Likewise, she said nothing about the ghost she had met in the hallway who gave her a cryptic warning about a devil, or that she had had a vision where the world was burning.

“You remember what you said about the Scout?”
 
Zara asked suddenly.
 
An idea was forming in her head.

Twig gave her a tired and confused look.
 
“Refresh my memory.”

“How next time you would fill the tank so that it would explode?”

“Yeah…” Twig said warily.
 
“Where are you going with this?”

“I’m thinking a truck loaded with enough explosives might be something Drake wouldn’t expect.”

“You want to throw a truck at them?” Twig said, sitting up and leaving his jaw hanging open.
  

“More or less, yeah.
 
Why not?
 
We rig the truck to blow, lure them into the canyon and then one of us drops it on them.
 
As tough as these creatures are, I doubt they can survive an explosion, if it’s big enough that is.
 
We would need dynamite.”
 
She couldn’t help but smirk at the simple genius of the idea.

Twig sat down on the bed.
 
“It’s actually not bad.
 
Better than trying to stake them, they’ll be expecting that and there are going to be too many to fight that way anyway.
 
But dynamite?
 
Where the hell are we going to get that?”

Zara went to the bathroom and got her backpack and began to gather her clothes and stuff them into it.

“What self-respecting wild-west town doesn’t have a bit of dynamite lying around?”

21.

The soldier knocked on Mark’s window with a flashlight.
 
It took a minute for Mark to find the right button to lower the window.
 
“What’s up?” He asked, trying to appear casual in the stolen car.
    

“Road’s closed.
 
The wind is pushing the wildfires north and we’re evacuating all the towns north of Silverthorne.”
 
The young man seemed tired and overworked.
   

“I understand,” Mark said calmly, “but I think my daughter might be in there, she ran off with her, uh, boyfriend and now they’re stuck.”

The guardsman remained stone-faced.
 
“I can appreciate that, but our orders are to keep anyone from crossing into this area.
 
I can assure you that we are working to get everyone out, though.”

“Okay, but—”

“Sorry, but nobody is getting in there.
  
You’re not the only one with loved ones trapped, we let you in we have to let everybody in.
 
Best thing to do is turn around and wait at the YMCA in Colorado Springs, we’re
gonna
be bussing survivors there.”
 
The man cleared his throat, knowing ‘survivors’ was not the right term; he had meant to say civilians.
        

Mark began to speak but the man had started to walk away and wave with his flashlight in big circles, indicating Mark to turn the car around so he could deal with a line of cars behind him, also trying to get in.
 

Mark sighed and navigated the big car around, and started to drive back.
 
He didn’t know what else to do.
 
According to the map he had bought at the gas station on the way up, Lost Valley was about eight miles northwest, and on foot that was a lot of miles through dark woods as well as chasms and gorges.
 
Also, there was the problem of the fire.
 

He would head back and wait.
Just like all the other helpless people
.
 
He made it a mile when the engine began to knock and sputter.
 
“Oh please, not now,” he moaned as the knock became more consistent and loud.
 
Finally something gave way and the car conked out on the shoulder of the twisting road.
 
He beat his head against the steering wheel for a minute.
 
He couldn’t remember a worse day of his life than the one he was still suffering through now.
 
He didn’t think tomorrow would be much better.
 
His brother was setting him up, and for what else but money.
 
He got out and kicked the car a few times, denting it good.
 
“Dirty bastard, sells out his own brother!” he shouted, and a howling wind took his voice and carried it over the dark valley of rock and pine like a banshee.
 
   

His phone had no signal, and a little red battery was blinking on the screen.
 
Mark threw it hard into the ravine where it bounced and shattered on a rock and its pieces scattered into a babbling brook.
 
He was panting now, and his lungs suddenly burned.
 
The smoke from the fire was coming in strong over the southern hills.
 
What a perfect disaster, he thought.
 
He looked up at the grayish night sky and cursed it and everyone hiding behind it, those cosmic playwrights who had designed this misery.
 
He sat down and leaned against the car.
 
    

“That slimy bastard.”
 
He yelled.
 
“Bastard!”
 
     

He lumbered to his feet and brushed the dust off his pants.
 
Mark looked back down the way he had come.
 
He’d walk back, he thought, explain to the guard how he had put regular gas in a diesel car, not because he stole it from his psychotic brother who was plotting his murder, but because he was just a big dope who didn’t have a clue what he was doing, which was partially true.

He started off, still cursing god and his cohorts, when he heard the rumble of a car behind him on the shoulder.
 
A National Guard vehicle, one of those big trucks with a rounded tent on the back used for transporting soldiers.
 
A kid with blonde hair poked his head out of the driver side window.
 
He had a nasty burn on his face
, probably got it in Afghanistan
, Mark thought.
 
“Need a ride mister?”
 
The young man said with a thick southern accent.
 

Maybe my luck is changing
, Mark thought.
 

22.

“Where can we get dynamite?”
 
Zara said to the entranced old clerk.
 
Twig watched
 
with fascination.
 
It was like watching that show where the psychic from New Jersey made people cry by talking about their dead relatives.

“I don’t know,” the man said truthfully.
 

Zara made an exasperated noise.
 
“This is hopeless.”

“What else explodes? Manure right?” Twig asked.

“How the heck should I know?” Zara said throwing her hands up and slumping on one of the big leather chairs in the lobby.
 

“I return you to normal, or to whatever you were before this,” Zara commanded the man, waving both her hands wizardly in the air.
 

He blinked a few times.
 
“
Nerts
! Don’t you twits know there’s a fire coming?” The man said in a panic.
 
He grabbed a suitcase from behind the counter, put on an old hat with a feather in it, and ran out the door.
 

Twig stared at the door for a moment.
 
“Did he just say
nerts
?”

Zara nodded. “Yeah, some freaks in this place.”

They laughed uncomfortably.

“Jesus,” Twig said.
 
“You think that fire is
gonna
come here?”
 

“It might,” Zara said, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, that’s just wonderful. Just what we need.”

They sat for a minute in silence before Twig leapt to his feet and turned to Zara.

“Propane!” he shouted.

Zara gave him a skeptical look.
 
“Okay…”

“I saw a tank on the side of that general store the size of a
fricken
car.
 
One of those big ones they use to refill empty tanks with.”

Zara smiled and stood up too.
 
“Think it would fit in the back of the truck?”

Twig took a deep breath.
 
“Damn, I
dunno
, it’s big.
 
It’s probably cemented into the ground too.
  
Or bolted or something.
 
But yeah, if we could somehow get in it there, I think the truck could take it.”

Zara flexed her scrawny arms.
 
“Piece of cake.”

“And you’re sure we can get the truck up there?”

Zara took Twig by the hand and led him over to a rack of touristy brochures that sat in neat little rows by the front door.
 
She pulled out one that said “Lost Valley Tours,” and unfolded it and held it in front of him.
 
“There’s a road here,” she pointed to a little blue line on the map, “that goes up to an observation area.”

“Why’s it called Clay’s End?”
 
Twig asked curiously.

“No reason, stay focused.
 
You park here, and I lead Drake into the mouth of the canyon here.”
 
She touched an area where Viper Canyon began, and traced it to Clay’s End.
 
“Once I get them here, you drop the truck on them, boom.”

“How do you propose I do that?
 
I am a mere mortal remember?”

“I don’t know…drop a big rock on the gas pedal or something.
 
And put a rag in gas tank and light it before you do, just like in the movies.”

Twig shook his head.
 
“Yeah, so do all that and try not to blow myself up, and hope to god they follow you in?”

“That would the plan,” Zara said closing the map and giving Twig a serious look.