The vamp ignored me and said, “You let a woman fight your battles for you?”
“Two things,” Eli said, his voice without inflection. “One: I’m not letting you goad me into ruining this mission. Two: the Enforcer is not just a woman, just a human, or just an anything,” Eli added, his masculinity not the least injured. “Once this is over, I’ll beat your ass. But for now, the Enforcer needs your cold undead body to rescue your head of security. Either you are in or you are out. And if you’re out, I’ll happily secure you with silver tape and leave you to burn while we complete this mission.”
The vamp seemed to consider that for a moment. Then he said, “Challenge accepted.”
“Knives,” Eli said. “Numbers limited to two, each no larger than a six-inch blade.”
“First blood,” I said, hoping to keep Eli uninjured, and the vamp alive. “And if the human is injured, he will be healed.”
“Done,” both males said.
“You’re both idiots,” Alex said, grumpy as only a nineteen–year-old, younger Younger could be. “And an apology still hasn’t been issued.”
“Noted,” the vamp said.
Alex started to continue the argument, but I held up a hand and he subsided. A working frenemy was the best I’d get and I sat back as the van took the narrow, twisting road up as night fell.
***
We halted the panel van in Nell’s drive and I went to her door. She opened it before I knocked, her eyes wide and skin pale. She was breathing fast, and with Beast so close to the surface, I could hear her heart beating too fast, and smell her reaction to . . . what? “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“Something dead,” she whispered, staring at the truck repair van. “Something wrong.”
“Vampires,” I said. “They won’t hurt you. I promise.”
“Will they hurt the colonel?”
“Planning on it.”
Nell nodded, the movement jerky. “Good. But they still feel wrong.” She closed the door in my face.
To save Nell more discomfort, the vamps and the blood-servants exited the van and raced into the woods, their night vision allowing them to see the narrow opening in the trees where a trail had once woven. They scattered through and along the old farm road, ducking into hiding places. Eli followed, his low-light and infrared headgear allowing him to see as well as the vamps.
I stayed with the driver and Alex as the van rolled across the back of Nell’s three-acre lawn and into the trees, following the trail as far as the vehicle’s city-street-undercarriage could manage before making a twelve-point turn to face back down the mountain. I made sure the van had a working sat signal before slipping out and taking off after the insertion team. As I ran, I pulled on Beast, who flooded my system with adrenaline and shared her night vision, turning the world silver and gray with tints of green.
I caught up with and passed the two vamps who were staying on the road to make sure we all got out, placed to maintain coms with Alex. Both lifted a hand to acknowledge me. I left them in my dust.
Beast chuffed inside me. Hunt. Ready to hunt. Want to kill and eat.
Let’s try not to kill anyone, and the idea of eating humans and vamps is not appealing in the least.
Hunt deer. Soon.
Yeah. Deal, I thought at her, spotting sprinting human-shaped forms just ahead.
***
The race through the woods revealed no barricades, no downed trees, and no booby traps. The colonel hadn’t expected attack from this direction, and the topo maps had shown why—a long vertical drop of nearly fifty feet into the compound. No human law enforcement agency would have been able to manage the descent with any kind of order or speed. And the little slip of a girl who looked like something you could break her in two with one hand tied behind your back was clearly no menace, not with a spy in the trees.
We ducked beneath the rock ledge that hid the old road from the eyes-in-the-sky and sprinted through the deeper dark, around the heart of the ancient mountain, and out the far side. The trees were smaller on this side of the mountain. The underbrush was thick and dense. The land smelled different from Nell’s property. Stressed and sleeping and unhappy. Weird thoughts for another time.
We crested the hill and the compound appeared below us. The hill fell away, a sheer drop seen on the topo maps, but not realized until now. Nearly fifty feet of vertical fall. There was no fence. No barrier. Just the drop. My heart stuttered and sped. The terrain must have seemed like the perfect protection to the church’s security crew.