Holding Beast close to the surface, I moved through the trees with catlike grace, slowly lifting and placing each foot. As I moved, I felt for my direction and decided I was heading vaguely north. Beast was better at knowing her bearings than I, but worse at translating and communicating her directional sense. I was sweating heavily, the new leathers' mesh pockets not a big help without a bike-generated breeze.
A tingle of broken magic brushed across my skin. I stopped. I had found a new ten-foot-wide circle in the trees, the shells still covered by debris from the hurricane. I sniffed, parsing the various scents, analyzing. Something was different here. Vamps rose on the third day after they were turned and died their first death. But from the smell, this one had been in the ground a lot longer. Long before Ada. Something said this was important.
Both instinct and experience told me that the many kidnappings of the witch children were about these vamp risings. With the thought, fear started to rise but I crushed it. I couldn't give in to emotion until the children were safe. I would not. I forced my mind back to the puzzle.
Why would witches and vamps work together to steal witch children? Why graves with crosses? And why leave a newly turned vamp longer in the ground? It was senseless. It had something to do with the curse and the curing process--but what? Stopping, I leaned against a tree, my vertebrae pressing through leather into the rough bark. I listened, sending out my senses to taste, scent, hear, feel everything on the night breeze. Traces of magic floated along the skin of my hands and face, appearing tattered, smelling scorched. In Beast-vision, the traces looked much like the broken wards on Molly's house.
Ahead, something groaned softly and breathed through thick tissue, the sound making me think of a congealed mass. I tossed the vamp-killer lightly up and down in my hand, making sure of a firm, sweat-free grip. Ever more slowly, I moved deeper into the woods, staying downwind. The four crosses on my chest began glowing palely, alerting me to the presence of a vamp.
Something coughed. The sound was human, or almost, long and retching. A glob of something gooey was spat and my stomach wanted to turn. Beast's hackles rose, the skin and fine hairs along my neck and shoulders reacting to her instincts, in a rippling of raised flesh. She pushed my nausea down and away, looking through my eyes.
I slid through the trees, silent as a predator stalking prey. I saw movement as something paler than the trees lifted. It resolved into an arm, rising to wipe a face. A male, black, wearing a once-white shirt and dark pants, stood in a little clearing just ahead. His feet were bare. Moving drunkenly, he sat on a downed tree, coughing and spitting. I was about thirty feet away, close enough to study him with my better-than-human night vision. The pants resolved into jeans, and the shirt into a long-sleeved dress shirt, sleeves rolled up and a T-shirt underneath. He was about twenty, with tats up the side of his neck and along his arms in full sleeves. The neck tat caught the moonlight, revealing a black widow, red-dotted abdomen the size of a silver dollar beneath his ear, and its legs wrapped around his neck as if it held on while pumping venom into him. I was pretty sure it was a gang tat.
He smelled of old death and decayed blood and fear. The reek of the grave. Grave dirt and a degenerated slime clung to him. I must have made a noise, because his head came up, inhumanly fast. Far faster than a new vamp should have been able to move. He vamped out, fangs like small needles snapping down and eyes going blacker than the underside of hell. Without a visible tell, he attacked. My crosses blazed with light. A delayed fear response hurtled into my throat.
I raised my left arm to block him and fired one-handed, a three burst, the barrel lifting with each shot. He dodged around the first two blasts, so fast I could see his motion in overlays of images, white shirt shifting back and forth. The blaze of firing burned out my night vision, the last shot pointing to the sky, going wild.
He took me down. Crashing into the brush. I grunted as his weight landed on me. Fear slammed through me. His hands on my wrists shoved my arms apart and down. Trapping me. His fangs tore at my throat. Hitting the silver rings on the leather. Ripping through to the silver chain-mail collar beneath. He screamed with pain. Pulled back. And met my eyes. Spat. He drove for my face with his left claws.
One hand free, I jerked away. His claws landed where my head had been. It was not the uncontrolled action of a young rogue vamp.
It was the action of a trained warrior.