The hair rose on the back of my neck. Beast growled low in my throat and gathered herself tight. My body tightened, tension thrumming through me. I pulled my favorite vamp-killer and felt better with the elk-horn hilt of the weapon in my hand.
More soil fell away, the patch of earth rolling as something shuffled the surface leaves and scattered the shells. As something tried to rise from the center of the pentagram. The silver crosses at head height began to gleam softly.
Crap, I was witnessing the rising of a newborn vamp. A young rogue. A bloodsucking killing machine. I pulled a stake, making sure it was silver tipped. But Beast held me motionless, watching, curious.
"Curiosity killed the cat," I murmured, adjusting my grip on the weapons.
Beast hacked with dire amusement.
The thing was skeletal, white-skinned and filthy, arms like sticks as it dragged itself out of the ground, hands and arms, knobby elbows. The head. Clods of dirt fell away. Long hair, tangled and muddy, dragged the grave. I had never seen a first rising, and it was much like Night of the Living Dead in 3-D, but stinkier. The rogue was female. She wore a party dress, a floral print, once pale with big flowers in bright colors, now foul with death fluids, blood, and the mud of the grave. She pulled her hips from the ground, shook her legs and feet free, and took a breath. Whipped her head to me. And found me in the night.
Her eyes almost glowed, bloodshot. Her neck was ravaged with knotted scar tissue. She hissed, snakelike, hungry. Starving. And coming for me. I started toward her, to finish her off.
No, Beast whispered. Not here. Sire will scent her death. Will know you, be able to track you. Run. Like wounded bird. I had a quick image of a bird darting from a nest, one wing held at an angle, drawing predators away. Spinning, I ran through the trees, deeper into Couturie Forest, watching over my shoulder. Behind me, the rogue grunted, sniffed the air like a feral dog, and pulled herself to her knees. I concentrated on getting away from the grave site, far enough to please Beast, who explored the world through my inadequate senses, her urgency pushing me to speed. Moments later, I heard the rogue start to follow, her balance off, her footsteps uneven.
She whimpered, mewling like a kitten. The kit sounds should have brought out the protective instincts in Beast. Instead, she hacked with displeasure and dug her claws into my psyche. I jumped a downed tree and a rill of water, leftover from Ada's deluge. Beast studied the world as I moved, looking for an ambush site in the dark.
The youngest vamp I had hunted was a year undead. Even then, their entire pasts--memories, sanity, and humanity--were still gone. It took years for a vamp to cure enough to find self-control and not kill any human it found. It took up to a decade to find its own memories lost beneath the hunger. All that was left to a newly risen vamp was the need to eat, drink, and kill for sustenance. The movements and sounds were pretty gross, and I totally got where the myth of zombies came from. Just-risen, young-rogue vamps equaled zombies. Almost literally.
The vamp behind me had lost everything that had made her human, and now she had to start from scratch, relearning how to walk, how to maneuver. Vamp speed, grace, and strength would begin to grow following her first blood meal, after she tracked and drained a victim to death. Or would have followed it, had I not found her first, and prevented that.
Then again, this was my first newly risen vamp. Hearsay among the small community of vamp hunters might be just that. The vamp on my trail might not need blood to be able to draw on vamp gifts and move faster than I could.
In a small clearing strewn with storm debris, I found a huge downed tree, its roots ten feet in the air, its limbs pointing to the sky on one side, and crushed by the wind and ground on the other. I leaped up to the horizontal trunk and walked along it to the first branch. Perched on the limb, I hefted my weapons into a better grip and waited. In my mind, Beast went still.
The rogue vamp wasn't far behind, her scent swirling along the night breezes, her footsteps faltering and noisy in the brush. I didn't think she had her vamp eyesight yet. Maybe vamp vision was part of the benefits of that first meal. Maybe it took longer. What did I know?
Crap. I was so not ready for this tonight. But at least the fear had settled with the movement and an ambush plan. I spotted her on my trail.
She stopped at the edge of the clearing, her nostrils flaring, her eyes staring and wild with that dull smolder they all had. Skin white, almost glowing in the dark, she didn't look up in the low branches, but at the ground. She sniffed loudly, air moving through clogged sinuses. She mewled piteously and wiped her face, smearing filth over her skin like accidental camouflage. Tears trickled through the mess. She was crying.