Coalition of the Damned - 03 (27 page)

“How do you know all this?” Laura asked.

“I live with vampires,” Nadia stated flatly. “They tell me everything.”

“I thought the vampires you live with drank only the blood of animals?” Laura asked.

“They do,” Nadia replied. “But they didn’t always. There used to be a time when they, too, fed on humans. They knew no other way.”

“Much like we wolves, Ms. Youngblood,” Natashia stated. “There was a time when werewolves craved the flesh of humans more than anything else.” Her eyes had taken on an almost feral look and it gave Laura a chill. “Once a wolf gets the taste for human flesh…it’s nearly impossible to break her of it.”

“What happens if a wolf
does
get a taste for humans?” she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

“Usually, the wolf is hunted down and killed by other h
umans,” Natashia answered. She gave her a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “That is precisely why we teach our young from an early age to hunt only other animals when they shift. Gives them the scent of animal blood to sniff for when the moon calls them. Teaches them how to hunt and kill something with
four
legs rather than something with two.” She smiled again, this time the smile definitely didn’t reach her eyes. “It’s also why we take them deep into the woods and away from
humans
when the moon is near.”

“I see,” Laura said.

“Do you?” Natashia asked, shifting forward in her chair.

“Excuse me?”

“Do you see?” Natashia asked again. “Do you have any idea what it might be like to worry that a
human
might hunt down and kill your only child because she might do something during a full moon that she has no power over?”

Laura was taken somewhat aback by the question and was feeling really uneasy by Natashia and her attitude. “Actually, no. I suppose I don’t.”

“I didn’t think so,” She practically growled. “You have no idea what it’s like to—”

“Mother!” Nadia warned. Natashia shot her a look that Laura wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of, but to her credit, Nadia did not back away from. “Ms. Youngblood is our guest and we will not behave this way.”

Natashia glared at her daughter a moment longer then sat back in her chair. She muttered something about ‘monster hunters’ under her breath that Laura didn’t catch but judging from the look that Nadia shot at her, she assumed that Nadia heard every word. There was a ding and the pilot came over the speaker. “We’ll be making our approach here in just a moment. Please make sure that your seatbelts are fastened and all unsecured items are stowed away. Thank you.”

Saved by the bell
, Laura thought as she fastened her seatbelt. The conversation had gone from uncomfortable but tolerable to downright frightening in a very short time. She wondered before the flight what Jack saw in these women. Other than her physical attributes and Nadia’s wonder at everything…she didn’t know if she would ever be able to put up with Natashia’s moodiness and nasty disposition. The sex must be mind-blowing for him to marry into such a messed up den of…Laura chuckled at herself. She had thought ‘den’, and they were wolves. Yeah, she realized she must be stressed if something that stupid made her chuckle.

15

“So that’s it?” Lou asked. “That’s all you got?”

Dom rubbed at his temples, his head hurting. “Yeah, Grumpy, that’s all I have.”

“Nothing you might have left out?”

“It would take a hundred lifetimes to tell you
everything
that vampire shoved into my head. I hit the highlights.”

Lou sighed heavily. “Boy, we don’t have a hundred lif
etimes. We have to get you back to your people so you can stop this bloody bastard.”

Dom shot him a withering look. “How come you get to cuss and I don’t?”

Lou gave him a lopsided smirk. “Who’s the grandpa here, squirt? Who’s the salty sea dog? Who’s the sailor and who’s the Army grunt?”

“Who’s dead and who is still kicking, ya old fart?” Lou smacked him on the side of the head again and Dom yelped. “Hey! Dammit! Knock it off. I told you I have a concussion.” He rubbed at the side of his head and closed his eyes against the pain.

“Yeah, well that’s your real body in the real world,” Lou shot back at him. “Here, you ain’t got no concussion but if you keep back talking me, you’re going to have your hand on your head and a lump under it.”

“I don’t remember you being such a hard ass before,” Dom whined.

“And I remember you being a sweet-natured ten-year-old,” Lou shot back. “Now look at you! You’re as big as a bear and whine like your little sister.”

Dom gritted his teeth as the old man berated him. He clenched his hands into the damp sand and dug his fingers into the coolness. He could feel the grains between his fingers and it felt so real. The breeze felt real and the scents from the island plants smelled real. The spray that the breeze blew from the crashing waterfall that would occasionally mist them and cool them in the sun felt real as well. So why was his brain telling him that this couldn’t be real.

Dom sighed and looked up at his Grumpy. “Why couldn’t we just stay here?” he asked softly.

“What?”

“Seriously. Why can’t we just stay here?” he asked. “I’ve missed you so much, Grumpy. We could fish and eat fruit and…look. We have plenty of fresh water. Who knows? Maybe a boatload of pretty girls will wash up here one day and we could—”

“Stop it, boy.” Lou got to his feet. “You still don’t get how this whole Purgatory thing works, do you?”

“What do you mean?” Dom asked getting to his feet as well.

“This isn’t forever, son. If you don’t figure out whatever it is you got to figure out…you don’t just stay here. You
have
to move on,” Lou informed him.

“What do you mean move on?” Dom asked, desperation seeping into his voice.

Lou avoided his eyes. “This is just a weigh station. This isn’t permanent.” He swept his arm to indicate the island. “You may have created your own little version of heaven here, but this isn’t the final destination. If we don’t get you back to where you belong, you have to go on.”

“Go on?” Dom asked, afraid of the answer. “To where?”

“Where do you think?” Lou said. “The other side.”

“The other side?!” Dom cried. “The other side of what?”

“Don’t play stupid on me, boy.” Lou finally met his eyes, his face stoic. “You know exactly what I mean.”

“Heaven?”

Lou’s features hardened. “If that’s where you’re intended to go, then yes.”

Dom’s face fell. He could feel his guts tighten. “What do you mean, if that’s where I’m intended to go?”

“I don’t know where you’re headed, boy. That’s above my pay grade.” Lou sighed. “I was just sent here to get your ass back home.”

Dom felt his knees weaken and he plopped back into the sand. His hands went instinctively to the dirt and he grabbed a handful of it. It felt
so
real in his hands. He squeezed it tightly and he could feel the individual grains biting into his flesh. He could feel the small rounded pebbles, washed smooth and made round by thousands of years of water rushing over them, smoothing them, polishing them and now he squeezed them in his hand until they left indentions in his skin.

He breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly. Once, twice, three times, trying to calm himself. It was one thing to prepare yourself to die for your cause, but quite another to question where your eternal soul may end up. He had never questioned that before. But now…here he sat. In Purgatory with his dead grandfather and neither had a clue where he might end up if he ran out of time.

Dom nodded, finally accepting his fate. “Fine. Let’s do this.”

“Do what?”

“Whatever the hell we have to do to figure this out.”

Lou smiled at his grandson. “That’s the DeGiacomo spirit. Never give up.”

Dom smiled back at him. “Hell, Grumpy, I have one foot in the grave with the Grim Reaper on my ass and I ain’t giving up.” He stood up and clapped his grandfather on the back. “I got my Grumpy again. Who could possibly stand in my way, right?”

Lou shot him a questioning look. “You do realize I sunk my own boat, right?”

“Yeah,” Dom said slowly. “Thanks for the encouragement.”

*****

“Master! Master!” The little messenger yelled as he ran down the hallway. “We know where they are going!”

The little messenger burst into the cathedral but the dark vampire was not to be found. The messenger ran into the cour
tyard, but again, the Sicarii was not there. He turned and ran back down the hallway and threw open the door to the computer room.

“Master!” he cried out, but with a quick look around the room, the tall dark vampire could not be found. “Have you seen the Sicarii?” he asked of the computer technicians.

One of them looked up from his work at the keyboard and simply shook his head no then went back to work. The other was going to mess with the messenger and say ‘yes, I have seen him, he’s about six foot tall, dark complexion, dark hair, dark eyes, lots of power’ but decided that the messenger probably would not appreciate his sense of humor. He, too, simply shook his head. The little messenger scampered out of the room and down the hallway again. As he rounded a corner at full speed he nearly ran into the Sicarii and two of the enforcer vampires. The little messenger slid to a stop and fell on his back in front of the dark vampire who stared at him.

“Yes, Puppet?”

“We found where they are going, Master,” the messenger stated excitedly. Once again, the dark vampire waited for the messenger to continue and decided that, rather than ask, he would simply continue to wait until the messenger realized his mistake. It took an awkwardly long time.

The two enforcers finally stepped forward and one of them said, “Say something, you blithering idiot, or I’ll cut your fuc
king head off!”

“What?” the messenger asked. “Oh?! Forgive me, Master! I’ve done it again! I’m so sorry…I…er…they…I mean, the h
uman hunters, they’ve all gone to Nevada! They are all landing as we speak.”

“Nevada?” the Sicarii asked. “What could possibly be in Nevada?”

“I have no idea, Master,” the little messenger answered, not realizing it was a rhetorical question. “As you know, I do not have a tactical mind as you do.”

The dark vampire turned to his enforcers, “You two, with me.” And the three of them marched off to the computer room leaving the messenger in the hallway. When they entered, the Sicarii ordered one of the computer operators to pull up the tra
cer on the planes. “Where in Nevada are they?”

“It looks like they’re in the middle of nowhere.” The tech stated.

One of the enforcers elbowed the other and he smiled. “Area 51.”

The Sicarii turned to the enforcer and raised an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

“Area 51.” He pointed to the map of Nevada that was pulled up. “This is about the right spot for where it should be. It’s a top secret military base in the middle of nowhere. I think it’s supposed to be a part of Nellis, but I’m not really sure.”

“How do you know this?” the dark vampire asked.

The enforcer blanched. “I, uh, like to read magazines, Master.”

“Magazines?” the Sicarii asked.

The other enforcer smiled and said, “UFO magazines, Master.” He stifled a snicker.

The dark vampire’s face fell. “You’re telling me that
this
is the base where they put the UFOs that all of the crazies talk about?”

The first enforcer turned stoic. “Yes, sir.”

The dark vampire turned back to the screen and looked at the beacon that was flashing on the screen. Surely there had to be some mistake. Were the human hunters hoping to use some kind of
alien
technology to stop him? He looked at the screen and studied it. “Why is there no base showing here on the map?”

“It is top secret, Master,” the enforcer informed him. “Al
though most of the population knows it exists, the government refuses to acknowledge it. That is why so many believe that there are UFOs out there.”

The Sicarii felt a laugh begin to form in his belly as he i
magined the human hunters attempting to stop him using other-worldly technologies! Silly humans, God himself refused to stop him. In the Sicarii’s mind that meant that his actions were preordained and already written as the cause of the fall of man.

“If the human hunters all wish to gather in one spot…to put all their eggs in one basket, so to speak, then who am I not to come along and break them all for them?” he said softly. He looked up at the computer techs. “Spread the word to all my people. We assemble here, in Nevada. The Blood Apocalypse begins here.”

*****

Colonel Mitchell hit the ground running. He arranged to meet with the project leaders who were still on base, military personnel and the captain of the security contractors and in his new office…just as soon as someone showed him where the hell his new office was. The moment Laura touched down, she was put in charge of getting their personnel on the ground and co
mmandeering what buildings were available and getting the squads set up. He needed a list of assets that were available to him ASAP. Matt was introduced to a Major Flemings, military attaché to the numerous civilian contractors and from what Mitchell could tell, one hell of a sharp cookie. She quickly ran him through the basics of what was what as far as the different military aspects of the base and explained that the civilian contactors pretty much took care of their own stuff. Mitchell got the distinct impression that Flemings was one he was going to be going to quite often in the near future.

Once everybody got off and running he pulled Flemings aside and had a heart-to-heart talk with her. “Major, I understand that Anderson pretty much bailed on everybody without so much as a kiss my ass before he headed out the door…”

“That was pretty much his M.O. when he was CO here, sir,” she stated flatly.

Mitchell sat back in his chair and nodded. “I figured the man was a turd when I spoke to him, but I never would have thought that he would have run his command like that as well.”

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Major Flemings asked.

Mitchell eyed her and cracked a smile. “Always, Major. I expect my officers to be able to speak their mind.” She eyed him cautiously before she spoke.

“With all due respect, sir, Anderson is an Academy man who wanted nothing more than to get his next promotion. He didn’t care whose neck he stepped on to get it either, sir.”

“I’m well aware of that, Major.”

“Are you also aware of the fact that he didn’t actually run this base, sir?” She squared her shoulders. “I did,” she stated rather proudly. “I made it run like a Swiss watch. For all intents and purposes, this base was
mine
.”

Mitchell smiled more broadly. “I am so happy to hear you say that, Major.”

She shot him a questioning look. “And why is that, Colonel?”

“Because, to be honest, I have no flippin’ clue how to run a base like this,” he stated. He rose to his feet and walked around his desk. “And to be honest, I have no
desire
to run a base like this.” He sat down on the edge of his desk and looked her square in the eye. “I’ve got bigger fish to fry and more important tasks at hand.

“Now, Major, please don’t think I just want to hand the whole kit and caboodle over to you and simply say ‘here ya go, it’s your mess now so you handle it’ without some kind of recognition and restitution.”

Flemings’ brows rose up. “I’m listening.”

“You keep doing what you’ve been doing. I’ll do what I need to do. We work together to make it work. I’ll pull whatever strings I have to pull to get you promoted and as soon as it’s possible, we get you made the Base CO all proper like.”

Her mouth set in a disbelieving line. “Right,” she quipped. “I do your job for you and you’re going to hang me out to dry.”

Matt gave her a hard look. “Major, I’m going to pretend that you didn’t say that. I will, however, give you the chance to meet my XO and my people. Talk with them and find out from them the kind of man I am. Once you’ve done that, if you don’t b
elieve my offer, I’ll leave it up to you. You can stay and continue your job just as you’ve always done, or you can put in for the billet of your choice.”