“Jon. We’re ready,”
I say into the black receiver.
“Good. I’ll be there with her in exactly twenty minutes.”
Curiosity gets the best of me, “How can you be so sure?”
“Apparently, these old bitches really like Were-blood. And one thing I can do is turn on the charm when I have to.”
Grateful for the military precision, I’m not going to question his faulty logic any further. If the werewolf thinks he can get her here on time, then I’ll take his word for it. I click off and shove the phone into my pocket. “Jon says they’ll be here in twenty minutes.”
“Good,” my boss says as she turns to examine the setup once more. I’m not ashamed to admit her illusions scare the ever-loving crap out of me. I would swear in a court of law, what I saw earlier was real. Unless she was to pull it away mid-way through, I can’t see how anyone could see through such detail.
Anxiety roils in my gut as the minutes tick by. In an attempt to shut out Paul’s endless stream of mental complaints, my guarded thoughts drift back to Eric. Seeing my brother gave me a sense of purpose again. I wonder if lesser seethe members can go on trips away from the ‘family’? Does Eric even see our dad anymore? Could I risk it now that Brett knows about the supernatural side of the world?
Now is not the time to ask, but the money I’ve earned this week will be more than enough to help me travel back and forth to the east coast in safety several dozen times. Where the hell did his wolf pack hail from again? Wasn’t it some remote location in Canada? Images of hanging out with Pat and Eric, drinking beer, and shooting the shit fill me. Tension flows out of my body as I realize I can do this.
It may not be the Army, it may not be serving our country for the greater good, but it’s all I have and I might as well make the best of it. A smile curves my lips as I think of my balding father barking out an old favorite bit of advice,
“How’s bitching about it going to help? Shut up and
do
something.”
“Two minutes,” calls out Drew.
“Rafe,” Vivian says in a soft voice, “stand off to the side and out of the direct scene. She’ll want to get up-close and personal with the corpse. Drew, move into position by Asa with your bloody sword drawn.”
My boss projects the illusion; soon the partially-destroyed clearing takes on the vibe and very real feel of death again. Every sense in my body screams it’s true, even though my mind knows different. Can other vampires cast complex glamours like this or is it rare? Before I have a chance to dwell any longer on the horrifying thought, Vivian motions me to take up position next to Paul’s transformed body.
In a moment, Jon and Coraline enter the semi-darkness surrounding our group. “One of your seethe killed her?” the blond says while stalking closer to the criminal. “I think this breaks the rules. The idea wasn’t for your happy little snow-bound group armed with GPS locators to kill the rogue.” She snorts in disapproval. “Seems rather unsportsmanlike, all things considered.”
“I had no choice,” I say. “She attacked me again and I wasn’t in the mood to be another snack.” The small woman smirks while her eyes travel over me head to foot. The all-too-new tingle of fear skitters up my back, putting my senses on high alert. I will not be another random victim to some old vamp with a taste for blood from their own kind.
Rafe’s voice breaks into my thoughts,
She’s messing with you. Chill.
I take a deep breath and rest a hand on the butt of my revolver.
“We were scouting together,” Drew adds. “When she leaped on him I couldn’t stand by and… watch it happen.”
Cora kneels in the bloody snow next to the body, her long leather coat fanning out behind her. “I still don’t like it. We may have to talk with the Tribunal to determine a fair outcome.” She glances over her shoulder at me. “Why haven’t you cut out her heart yet?”
Vivian answers, “I thought you might want to bear witness for the last step.”
The tiny blond woman stands and shakes out her coat. “True.” She nods my way. “The body looks drained already, might as well finish the job.”
I whip out my silver dagger, brushing the thigh holster for my Smith and Wesson 500 on the way. Kneeling down over the headless body, I turn the blade at the last moment, hiding it along my forearm, and mimic the strokes of cutting out the undead heart with the handle. Gaping flesh appears beneath the blunt end and I mime cutting through the rib cage. Paul has thankfully quieted his previous ongoing mental litany and remains perfectly still throughout the procedure.
“Will you be bringing the body home with you via the plane or leaving it here for us to dispose of?” Vivian effectively distracts Cora from watching at the crucial point where I slip the red snow ball into my fist to mimic the removed heart.
“Do you have any idea of how long we’re in that little plane and how many times we must stop to refuel?” The council member shudders and shakes her head. “No thanks. Burn her heart and bury the body whenever this frozen hell will allow you.”
A collective sigh of relief goes through the seethe’s mental connection. We’d all worried what to do if she chose to bring the body back with her; unlikely though it was, it was still a risk. I suggested packing the mutilated Sanji and it was agreed she was the only viable option if we had to provide a corpse.
Cora watches as I slip the heart into a pre-bloodied brown bag, which appears clean at the moment. Blood slowly blooms across the paper; the effects of the illusion are fascinating to behold even when I know they’re false. Vivian doesn’t leave even the smallest detail unaccounted for. Rafe’s phone rings and he steps off to the side to answer it.
Dr. Cook’s raised voice can unmistakably be heard coming through the connection by every undead in the clearing, “She slipped the chains like Houdini while the last bag was attached.”
Just then, a soft electric whir brings me around and I see a black shadow at the edge of the clearing, bordering the woods. Recognizing the sound of a digital camera lens retracting and realizing it’s got to be Emiko taking pictures of our staged scene, I reach for my gun. Logically, it makes sense that no telepathic illusion can be picked up on camera. Our staged scene will appear in the image exactly as it is—fake.
My 500 clears the holster in the best vampiric imitation of Bob Munden the world will never see and I squeeze off two shots in rapid succession. The first lands its mark as the reflexes of the ninja prove no match for my increased accuracy since turning. The report from the gunfire distracts Vivian and her detailed illusion wavers.
For a split-second, it’s Paul’s decidedly masculine form lying in the snow and not the petite fugitive. Cora’s face mottles with rage while Vivian struggles to maintain the glamour. “I knew it!” she screams while launching across his body toward my boss.
Her power lashes out and our trampled patch of snow fills with energy. My gut roils and my knees go weak. Paul shrieks as Cora yells, “You’re a manipulator! No one else could cast such an illusion to another vampire!” The blond council member tackles Vivian and Rafe lunges to his wife’s aid.
I’m not sure what a manipulator is, but I intend to find out later. Time seems to freeze for an instant as the fight drains out of Cora and she slumps to the side. Vivian’s mental shields drop for a few seconds, and through our connection I’m able to see directly into her mind. A twisting path of shapes, like the colored tubes of a Habitrail, writhe together over a gaping abyss of something… something that feels very evil.
Flashes of brutal slayings and barely-leashed serial-killer thoughts sear into my brain. Headless corpses stacked up and burning like kindling in an old barn. The twisted bodies of drained children, a dripping blade held over a hacked up, and dead male vampire. Shock reverberates through my soul as I try to wrap my mind around what I’m seeing.
Run!
Screams my inner voice of reason.
Get the hell away from her!
A calming energy pours over the concentrated darkness and I recognize Rafe’s mental signature as the flow of access to Vivian’s mind closes. The redhead’s extreme focus arrows in on the other woman as she stares intently at Coraline’s face. Right before our eyes the bright blue pin attached to the council member’s leather lapel turns black.
“Did you see that?” asks Drew.
“It’s a detection charm,” says Jon. “I’ve seen charms like it before for other things.”
“No, I meant the other stuff,” he says, his voice hollow.
Paul brushes the snow and frozen blood from his face. “Why isn’t Coraline moving? What did you do to her?”
“Christ! Don’t stand around like fools!” screams Rafe. “After Emiko!” He rips the brooch off the woman’s coat, breaking the backing in his haste.
Paul scrambles up and darts off with Drew into the darkness after the rogue. I take out my GPS to save time by tracking her before running off blind.
“I can handle Coraline,” Vivian says to her husband.
Dr. Cook calls out to Rafe and he looks at the forgotten phone in his hand. He places it back to his ear and she tells him the two silver manacles are also lying in her exam room. “Nothing is cut or broken,” her shaky voice relates. “I don’t know how she did it.”
He ends the call and looks to me. “The GPS will be useless.”
“Shit,” I say. “Where do you think she’d go?”
Vivian’s steady voice issues from her position staring into the council member’s mesmerized eyes, “Same place I’d go when surrounded by a vast frozen tundra with no way out on foot—the airstrip.”
I knew ninjas were tricky bastards,
notorious for eluding capture and executing heroic escapes, but I never would have thought a poisoned one could wiggle out of silver chains. I bet Vivian didn’t bargain on it, either.
My mind reels in turmoil as we race through the dark. A few random footprints where Emiko took our picture were all we had to start the trail. Drops of her blood litter the base of a tree here and there, but the trail appears random. The pines are dense in this area, requiring us to slow our speed so we don’t run into them.
Is Vivian a manipulator? I’d heard stories from my old seethe about a mutation in the bloodline that allowed a vampire to control another vampire. The mutations supposedly occurred frequently many centuries before my time. I wasn’t sure I believed the elders, taking the repeated tales for the powerful undead as myth and exaggeration. One person even likened it to a human born with a necromancer gene and that perhaps the virus, which makes us semi-immortal, mutates when it combines with the dormant trait.
But, they also said every manipulator has been killed upon discovery; the trackers wore cloth-lined silver caps to thwart the dangerous ability of their prey.
The trees whiz by as both Paul and I silently scan the darkness for traces of blood. Footprints in the snow appear every now and then; but not enough to indicate she’s running. Could she be jumping from trunk to trunk and hanging onto the trees to prevent a visible trail? We trudge on, as fast as we can, not knowing where the injured vampire might be headed.
What does this new development with my master mean for me? Will she confirm my suspicions or deny them? Could she alter my memories and I wouldn’t know it? The idea of a detection charm was clever, but it can’t be the only fail-safe idea Coraline’s inner group came up with. Taking the charm from the Tribunal member and convincing her she never had it will only keep suspicion off Vivian until the curly-haired vamp reports back to her co-conspirators.
They will surely know what a missing charm and a spotty recollection will mean. What’s next? Will our haven in the Arctic and my new relationship with Chelly be ruined before I’ve had even a few months to enjoy either?
Rage starts to spill into my blood, increasing my slow pulse to a pounding in my ears. It wasn’t enough to lose Angie? I might lose my new home and what I’m building with Chelly, too? The adrenaline in a vampire magnifies the fight-or-flight human instinct to dangerous proportions. I welcome the shaky focus it gives me and embrace the desire coursing through my veins to kill in order to protect what is mine. I wandered for eighteen months before I found this place, I don’t intend to run any more.
The blood trail angles toward the apartments and soon dies away to nothing. We pace back and forth through the woods, scanning for a trace of Emiko. With nothing to guide our way, Paul and I are left to continue on instinct.
“Do you think she’s dumb enough to head back to the apartments for fresh blood?” Paul asks.
“It looks like the last blood drop in the snow confirms if she was intending to go back there, it certainly wasn’t direct.”
“Would she try and take a circuitous route to confuse us?”
“Can’t say. Up ahead,” I point. “Do you see those indentations in the snow?” We jog forward and see a series of footprints. “She seems to be running flat out now, wherever she’s going.” Just then it hits me. She’s heading for the damn planes. Safe to assume when you’ve lived 250 years you’ve probably had time to master how to fly a plane.
“What do you think that thing Vivian did back in the clearing was?” The fear in Paul’s voice too closely resembles the emotion I’ve got brewing in the pit of my stomach. “Did you see the dead children in her head?”
“She didn’t kill them,” I say quickly. “She killed their predator.” The images crawl back into my mind and the rage she felt in the moment engulfs my senses. So much anger and hate. I push it back as best I can, determined to focus on the here and now and not some distant past swirling around in my master’s brain. “Let’s talk about it later and stay on task. I think Emiko’s headed for the airstrip.” I grab my phone to notify the others and find the screen blank. “Dammit, battery’s dead. Is your cell working?”
Paul pats his pockets. “Shit. Must have fallen out be back in the clearing. I can’t find it.”
I reach out with my mind….
And touch no one, not even Paul.
The mental shield Rafe threw in place must be blocking us all while Vivian plays in Coraline’s head. Once again, the implications of what she’s doing and what she can do scare the hell out of me. Will they come for her? Will the council hunt us all down for being in the seethe of a manipulator?
Paul nudges my shoulder and motions down the trail, “Let’s go.”
We quicken our pace and see a few large patches of flattened snow. “She must be weak,” I say in a cloud of vapor, my breath freezing in the air before us. “This marks the fourth time she’s stumbled.” In a hundred yards, the footprints disappear altogether.
“She’ll be slower while she’s still trying to hide her trail,” Paul says.
“Let’s get there as fast as we can and try to come up with a way to slow her down. Maybe one of us can get to a phone in the hangar and call the rest of the seethe.”
The airstrip lies about a mile north and to the east. We race through the darkness with only the puffs from our infrequent breaths giving us away. I’d rather not be paired up with Paul when facing down Emiko, I doubt he can fight… but two has got to be better than one.
The sound of my neck breaking in the peace of the greenhouse still haunts me. This woman is deadlier than anyone I’ve ever fought. Will the two of us be enough to take her?
My own past leaves my fight skills wanting. Sure, I was trained in fencing while growing up, but that didn’t prepare me for much when I changed. My first master, the Whitechapel serial killer, liked his prey weak and vulnerable, getting off on their fear. With his superior strength and position of rank, his victims never fought back. He told me he avoided encounters with other vampires and when he turned me I noted quickly that his fight skills were mediocre at best—not much help in training me to defend against my fellow undead.
However, he did master the element of surprise, which might be our only way to slow Emiko down. The large dark mound of the corrugated steel hangar comes into view. I raise a hand to indicate a halt and, thankfully, the inexperienced vampire sees it and understands.
Security lights dot the corners of the building, their glow a welcome respite from the woods. Two other structures lie farther away and a rope links a far door of the hangar to a nearby low building with lights on. The ropes are used to navigate short paths by hand during storms. What may seem like a straight walk between two buildings can become a death trap in the right weather conditions.
Paul shivers in the cold, wrapping an arm around his middle. “There should only be a skeleton crew up here, right?”
“Yes,” I answer, recalling the change in the normal weekly schedule. “We weren’t planning on anyone landing during the expedition, so there should be just two in there right now.”
“Do you think she’d go in for blood because of the injury or head straight for the planes?”
“We didn’t find a bullet dug out on the way.” I stomp some circulation back into my feet. “I’m guessing the shot was a through-and-through. Either way, I’d run first.”
Paul scans the area around the two closest buildings. “We don’t even know if we beat her here or not. I’m thinking the best spot to ambush her would be in the hangar.”
“Yeah, me too.” A screech of metal rolling on metal rends the air and we both strain to see the leading edge of the building. “Shit. She’s already here.”