“He won’t have any Jesus in him,” Yummy said around her fangs, “but scared blood is the best kind.”
For once I didn’t disagree.
We found the colonel’s house and entered, to the accompaniment of a new hymn from the church, “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,” and I had to wonder if the colonel was singing with the men, bragging to God that his people had defeated the government types at the gates. But he wasn’t singing. He was in bed with three naked girls, one who looked about twenty and two others who looked much, much younger.
The colonel rose to his knees on the mattress and shouted, “Guards! Guards!” I switched on a lamp to see the shriveled, wasted man, his skin hanging in long folds on his lanky, pasty body. His tanned hands were fisted in the hair of a child. She wasn’t crying. She didn’t even seem to be afraid. She was staring out the window into the night, vacant-eyed, empty-souled.
His was the scent on the women in the punishment house. His scent was on the child he held. The anger that was simmering in my blood began to boil. I felt Beast’s claws press against the tips of my fingers. Kill one who hurt kits, she thought.
“Your guards, they’re not gonna help you,” Yummy said between her fangs.
“Vampire! I call upon the Holy Ghost to smite thee, demon of hell!” he roared, shaking the child by her hair. Her body juddered and quivered. But she didn’t make a sound.
“Me and the Big Guy up There are close personal pals,” Yummy said. “He’s too busy at the moment to answer. You’re all mine, baby.”
I reached across Yummy, stopping her forward movement, and took the colonel’s wrist in mine. The girl couldn’t see what I was doing. What I was going to do. Silently, watching his face, I broke his index finger. The colonel cursed and let the girl go. I dropped the colonel’s maimed hand and covered the girl with the blankets. Sometime in the last few moments, the other women had disappeared out the front door into the night.
Yummy laughed, her eyes on me, and said, “Yeah. Just like that.” To the colonel, she said, “The Holy Ghost wants to have a word of prayer with you, old man.” Faster than I could see, she gripped the man around the throat and yanked him to her.
Yummy’s power raced over me like a burst of static electricity, lifting the hairs on the back of my arms. “This one is mine,” she said, her words measured and low. It was a challenge I wasn’t going to argue. I gave her a slow, steady nod. Yummy took the old man out the front door, carrying him by the throat.
It was against the law for vamps to kill humans. My morals and the law were at odds, but . . . I looked at the silent girl, huddling on the sheets, still staring into the dark. I didn’t feel the least bit bad about the colonel. He had been alive when I last saw him. As far as the law was concerned, that was enough to protect me.
Sirens sounded in the distance. We were out of time. Local law enforcement and the state cops had made the trek through the crevasse and were on the premises, somehow with a cop car. I tapped my mic on and whispered, “Time’s up. You got her?”
“We have her,” Prince said. “We are taking her up the cliff now.”
“Let’s go home, boys and girls,” I said into the mic. “See you back at the van.” As I left, I checked the Cohen house out, the one marked on Nell’s map. It looked secure. I smelled women and children. No blood. I hoped their safety was worth whatever Heyda had been through.
***
The drive back was silent except for the sounds of Heyda feeding. She had been out of her mind with anguish and blood-loss when found, and it had been all the vamps could do to get her back to the van. Once off the mountain and heading home, all the humans from her clan fed her, followed by all the vamps. It took a lot of blood to feed a drained and tortured vampire back to sanity. I’d seen a vamp drained into madness before. It was pretty awful.
Heyda’s skin was the blue-white of death, except where she was bruised from beatings. Her head had been shaved. There were dozens of half-healed cuts on her. Her wrists and ankles had been shackled with silver and were blistered, the skin torn and blackened in places. I didn’t know what Yummy had done with the colonel, but no matter what she had done, it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t.