Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

Yummy growled and leaned out of the limo. The sclera of her eyes was scarlet, her pupils dilated far wider than a human’s. A wet breeze off the Tennessee River blew through, pressing the blood-wet dress against Yummy’s body. She was naked beneath scarlet-soaked fabric. Her blood trickled onto the ground in a thin stream.

Over the earbud came the sound of crashing, splintering wood. Three shots. Then a lot of shots. People shouting. Cops shouting, “Down. Down on the ground.” “Put the weapon down. Slowly.” “Down. Hands behind your head.” Then gunfire. And SWAT returning gunfire. “Multiple civilians down,” Gonzales shouted. “Get me medic!”

“Clear the house,” FireWind said.

Gonzales cursed. Sweat slimed down my back, sticking my clothes to the Kevlar vest. I blinked sweat out of my eyes. Yummy was watching Occam, her hunger with a target.

Seconds ticked away as his men cleared the house. “Clear.” “Clear.” “Clear.” “Clear.” The voices ran together in my brain, none of them familiar, none of them real to me. And all of them out of sight in a firefight.

Yummy grabbed the limo door. Her talons were pointed and sharp as knives in the faint illumination from inside the limo. My hands clenched into fists. I checked my weapon. Again. Silver-lead ammo. One in the chamber. Ready to fire.

“We got a runner,” a SWAT team member said, then shouted, “Stop! Police!”

The sound of gunfire in measured bursts.

Yummy laughed. If Death himself could laugh, that would be the sound. “Huuuungry.”

“One down,” the same voice said. “Female vampire. Not true-dead. Took two torso rounds and staked in the abdomen.”

“Give her to me,” Yummy said, her voice a low snarl.

“Not happening,” Occam said casually. His weapon was at ready. My cat-man wasn’t casual at all.

“I am injured. Feed me, werecat.”

“Not happening,” Occam said.

“Clearing the southern side of the house,” Gonzales said. Seconds later he said, “Main room. Clear. Multiple bodies, human and vamp. Some alive.” His tone changed. “Son of a bitch!” Three shots fired. “Get medic in here now! And blood donors for the fangheads.” He fired three more shots. And three more.

“Copy that,” FireWind said. “LaFleur—” His voice disappeared beneath gunshots from the house.

Yummy stood slowly, dragging herself to her feet. Her dress had been gray. Or maybe green. There was so much blood on it the original color was hard to discern in the poor light. “Huuuungry,” she whispered. Her blood formed a small pool on the soil. Soulwood opened inside of me. Wanting.

“Uh-oh,” I said.

Occam raised his weapon and placed it on the window opening. “Nah-ah-ah,” he said, almost playfully. “Keep it together, fanghead. I have silver-lead ammo.”

“You would kill me?” she asked, a soft accent on the last word.

I raised a hand to my mic and shifted to a private channel. I whispered, “Jo. Yummy’s hurt. Vamped. Get me a donor.”

“Roger that,” Jo said.

I switched back to para freq in time to hear Rick say, “Local LEOs have three limos full of Mithrans under gunpoint. Tennessee plates. Get someone to make sure it’s Shaddock and convince the locals to let him and his people through. He has humans and vamps who can feed our wounded.”

T. Laine said, “Kent here. Dyson and I can handle that.” Their car spun out of the lot, throwing gravel in the glare of the headlights.

I hadn’t even noticed that my teammates were onsite. Yummy didn’t notice that they had left. Her black and scarlet eyes were focused solely on Occam. “Feed me and I will heal you,” she whispered.

“Not. Happening.”

In the earbud, Margot said, “If you need backup to get Shaddock free, let me know.”

Gonzales shouted, “Where’s medic? We have multiple injured. Two bodies in the shrubbery, condition unknown. More in the back bedroom. We need uniforms deployed to keep the house secure so we can expand our perimeter.”

Rick said, “Officers on the way. Local LEOs are moving in to your location and encircling the location of the disabled panel vans in case the vamps show there.”

More cars and vans began to pour in, both here and on the site of the shooting. News vans were being stopped at the perimeter. Yummy’s talons were slowly piercing the steel of the limo door. She stepped from the limo, exposing her torso and abdomen. Occam swore.

Yummy had been shot multiple times, open wounds dripping. Her clothing was drenched scarlet in the glancing lights from the cars all around. She was staring at Occam and … smiling. It was enough to make me wither inside, even as I licked my lips in need. Occam said, “We need humans to feed an injured vampire, at my twenty, now!”

I focused on her neck wounds. Blood dribbled out, looking fresh, though I knew it was cold and watery. My body reacted to the blood on her clothes, the blood splattering on the ground. Bloodlust that been a low, slow need rose and thrummed through me. It moved the way sound waves move along a stringed instrument, humming, a prolonged and varying noise of need.

I wanted to feed the earth. Soulwood was awake and needing.

“Huuunger,” Yummy said.

Huuuunger, I thought.

“Shaddock’s on the way,” Rick said. “He’s dropping off his people at the house and coming directly to your twenty. How badly is she injured?”

I swallowed down my hunger. “Bloody with open wounds. And vamped out.”

“Feed me,” she whispered, leaning toward Occam. Reaching.

“Can you contain her,” Rick said. It wasn’t exactly a question. Contain. Not kill.

I drew a stake. I had never staked a vampire. I’d been taught how at Spook School, but training and combat are very different things. I placed the stake in Occam’s lap and opened my car door. Shoved the low-light/IR headgear off. Raced around Occam’s car, knees bent, my service weapon at the ready. It was loaded with silver rounds. Yummy wasn’t very old. Silver rounds might kill her. But regular rounds would only make her mad. Yummy was a friend. I might have to kill her.

She was focused on Occam, her pupils black and wide, the whites the color of blood. “Cat,” she whispered. “I have missed the taste of your blood.”

My hunger focused on the bloody vampire. “Hey, Yummy,” I shouted. Her head whipped to me. Need ached through me. “You control yourself or you’ll wish you had,” I whispered.

“Maggot,” she hissed.

“Yeah. I’ll consume your dead flesh,” I whispered, barely a breath of sound.

Yummy laughed, the laughter the devil might make while he tortured lost souls. She leaped. At Occam.





ELEVEN




My finger began to squeeze the trigger.

She was illuminated, leaping through the air. A pop of displaced air sounded. And she was gone. Just disappeared. Something thumped on the ground to my side in the dark.

The shock stole my need away. I released the trigger and whipped around, spotting a rolling, hissing, moaning something in the darkness. “What just happened?” I asked the empty space in front of us.

“Lincoln Shaddock happened,” Occam said. “He tackled Yummy into the weeds. Saved our butts.”

I sat down on the ground hard. And just breathed. Mosquitoes buzzed around me. If they had been here before, I hadn’t noticed. I finally holstered my weapon, fighting tears and bloodlust. Occam squatted near me, his knees spread, his hands dangling between them. I could see officers in the dark staring at his scars, but he just looked like Occam to me. He handed me my stake and tapped off his mic. “Good move, Nell, sugar. You okay?”

“I’m just fine and dandy,” I said. The dregs of my bloodlust wriggled deep inside.

“Liar.”

“I am. I totally am.” And I could deal with the comment about Yummy missing the taste of Occam’s blood later. “We need to get into the house and render assistance.”

“Yes, we do.” He offered me a hand and I let him raise me to my feet. “Before I met you,” Occam said to me. “Not since.”

A mishmash of relief and happiness filled my chest and I grinned at my cat-man, who had read my mind. “Good.” Together, we got in his car and sped up the street to Ming’s battleground. Weapons ready to fire, held in two-hand grips, we jogged into the well-lit yard and drive at Ming’s.

There were two pale humans lying, unmoving, on Ming’s lawn. I provided cover while Occam checked pulse points on both victims. They were bloody and maimed, their throats and wrists and upper arms showing holes from multiple feedings. Naturaleza vampires drank from any pulse point on their cattle and I didn’t want to know what other sites had been bitten as the humans were drained.

I started shaking, my fingers tingling. I was hyperventilating. I fought to slow my breathing, wishing I could touch the ground with a single fingertip. Wishing I could call on Soulwood, reaching through the earth to find calm. But the blood on the ground would be construed as sacrifice. I couldn’t claim the victims and the earth for my own. Secrets. I had secrets to protect.

“Nell?” Occam asked.