"Just do it." I stepped back from Steve and oriented myself toward the entrance, preparing for battle. There was no way I was getting taken to the Old Ones. I rotated my head and cracked the vertebrae in my neck. My adrenaline was beginning to flow, my breathing unconsciously quickening, filling my blood with extra oxygen. My vision tunneled in on the gray shape of the door, and the sounds of the room seemed to become muted. Outwardly I was calm. Inside I was terrified. If the shadow man came for me here, I had nowhere to run.
The others were worried now. They knew that something was horribly amiss. I heard prayers coming from men who looked like they had not spoken to God in a very long time. The temperature began to drop. Section Six had been warm and humid. It came so suddenly that it took precious seconds for my mind to recognize the brutal, unnatural cold. My breath hissed out as steam in the moonlight. The other men in my cell began to unconsciously crowd in the corner away from the entrance.
The heavy iron door that secured Section Six creaked open on rusted hinges. A hush fell over the room. A lone figure stepped into the blue moonlight. High heels clicked on the concrete floor. I could make out a familiar feminine shape silhouetted in the faint light, and for a split second I thought it was Julie. Tall, perfectly proportioned, shapely, but the supernatural cold told me I was wrong. A larger figure entered the room behind the woman. A broad-shouldered man, almost as tall as me.
"Oh no," I said with much greater volume than I intended.
"Owen, what the hell's going on?" Steve was -terrified, and he was hard to understand over the chattering of his teeth. The temperature had dropped to near freezing.
Approaching, they passed directly under one of the windows. I was right. It was them. The woman started toward my cell, walking delicately down the path between the cages. She was achingly beautiful, perfect. But sex appeal to a vampire was like one of those deep ocean fish with the bioluminescent light bulbs dangling over their jaws, just an efficient way to catch their prey. The heels continued to click. The brute glided silently behind her. I didn't take my eyes off of the approaching pair. "Remember when I told you about my in-laws?"
Steve nodded quickly in the dark.
"They're here."
Some poor idiot who hadn't seen a woman in decades made a horrible mistake. Unable to control himself with the ethereal beauty passing before him, he opened his big stupid mouth. The language was such profane slang that I couldn't have translated it even if I had been able to understand the lowest level of gutter Spanish.
Susan Shackleford paused before answering the man. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Her Southern accent was obvious, her voice perfect. When she smiled I could see the white of her teeth. Chills ran down my spine.
"Yeah, puta, I show you good time!" Some of his buddies whooped for him. These guys must have already forgotten the hundreds of rounds of gunfire that had just been expended. Well, it wasn't the cream of the intellectual crop that ended up in places like this.
The big figure stopped. "That's my wife you're talkin' about, asshole." In the poor light, it was hard to tell what happened next. The prisoner was standing in the center of his cell, well out of reach from the bars. Yet somehow Ray Shackleford reached through the tight barrier, grabbed him by the neck, and pulled the prisoner through the bars. Iron bent and bones shattered. The man screamed in agony before his heart exploded as it was jerked through the two-inch gap. He ended up dangling a few feet above the ground, mangled top half in the alleyway, pelvis and kicking legs still inside the cell. A puddle began to widen under the twitching corpse.
"Thank you, honey. That was downright chivalrous."
"You're welcome, dear."
The population of Section Six exploded. Everyone surged against the far corners of their cells, pushing against bars or chain link. Dozens of voices rose into the night air, panic, confusion, terror.
"Y'all be QUIET!" Ray bellowed. I involuntarily covered my ears as the shockwave hit. His voice shook the building. Dust fell from the ceiling.
Now there was only whimpering and crying. The prisoners knew that something terribly inhuman was in their presence. The vampires approached slowly. "Owen. Good to see you again." Susan smiled at me. Her eyes seemed to glow pale in the dark.
"Heya, kid. How's it hanging?" Ray waved.
"Susan . . . Ray . . ." I nodded at them. Every joint in my body ached with fear. I was a dead man, or worse. Much worse.
I had fought Susan twice before. Both times I had been lucky to escape with my life. She was a Master vampire, strongest of all the undead. The first time we had squared off she had taken a twenty-second burst from a flamethrower and a direct hit with a grenade, and had walked away. The second time she had only been turned aside by the faith of Milo Anderson. Compared to Milo, my faith sucked. She could move faster than the human eye could track, tear a man's head off with her pinky finger, and I had personally put half a dozen silver shotgun slugs through her skull with no effect. If Susan wanted to kill me, there wasn't a damn thing that I could do about it.
Steve began to flick the lighter.
"What, you want an encore or something?" Ray laughed. " ‘Freebird'! Whoo!"
"If you've come for me, I'm not going down without a fight," I snarled.
"You've got cojones, kid," Ray said. "I'll give you that. See, dear, I told you he was a good match for Julie. She always had the best killer instinct of our kids." He gestured at me. I had only known Ray for a brief time, and that had been after I had sprung him from an insane asylum. The last time that I had seen Ray he had still been human, barely alive, and rapidly bleeding to death from the savage wound Susan had inflicted on him, so I had to admit that he looked a lot better now. "If we wanted to off you, we would've done it already."
"Wrong. You can't come into a home if you aren't invited. And this is currently my home," I said as I gestured around my cell. Though many of their limitations were a mystery, I knew that at least some of the vampire legends were true. "So back off!" I ordered with a lot more confidence than I felt.
Susan sighed. She approached the bars and leaned against them. It was shocking how much she looked like her daughter, only Susan was inhumanly perfect. Her fingernails were painted bright red and showed up like beacons in the dark. I took an involuntary step back. "Owen, honey, don't lawyer up on me now." She absently flicked one finger towards Jorge. Her piercing eyes didn't waver from mine. "Can I come in?"
The prisoner gasped as she invaded his mind with all the subtlety of a battering ram. His eyes rolled back into his head and he began to convulse violently. I started toward him, but I was too late. "Si!" he sputtered, then toppled over, dead.
"See? If you weren't so damn obstinate he'd still be alive. No great loss, weak mind, easily controlled, and so disease ridden I wouldn't have drunk him if I was starving." She drew her long fingers away from the bars, and then slowly pushed her face against the iron. She seemed to compress into the space. The gap was only a few inches across, but Susan slid through easily. She stepped into the cell and then casually brushed the dust from her skin-tight dress.
One Ear screamed like a little girl.
I waited for her to make her move, though realistically if I even saw her coming it was only because she wanted to play with her food. Susan looked down at one of the cots in disgust, shrugged, then sat on it. She crossed her legs, briefly showing off entirely too much thigh, and placed her hands on her knees. Ray frowned.
"Sit. We need to talk."
I looked at her stupidly.
She gestured at the other cot. "I ain't here to hurt you. I'm here with a business proposition."
"You've got to be kidding me. . . ." I said.
Susan's gaze did not waver. "Ray, you told me he was smarter than he looks." She began to absently drum her fingers on her knee, impatient.
"He is, but it takes him a minute to warm up." Ray folded his arms and leaned against one of the other cells. The hardened prisoners huddled in the far corner. Ray assessed them like I would size up steaks in the meat department. "Hey, honey, how about Mexican for dinner?"
"Sure, just pick a good one. . . . Look, Owen, I promised a truce, and I'm good for it. You didn't come looking for me, and I can respect that. I'm prepared to leave you and my precious daughter alone, just like I said before. That isn't why I'm here. Please sit. We don't have much time before their reinforcements arrive and you don't want to force me to kill a bunch more innocents. Do you?"
I backed up and slowly sat, careful to keep my eyes on her the whole time. Susan Shackleford emanated predatory danger. Every instinct in my body screamed for me to fight or flee. I tried to steady my voice. "Okay. . . ."
"So how've you been?" she asked, trying to sound casual. Was it possible that this was awkward for her too? I never really wondered if the undead had societal niceties. Apparently Southern politeness really did die hard. "Wedding still on for August?"
"Yep. We're fine. So how are you guys? Still dead and evil? Ray still insane?"
"No, he's much better now." She uncrossed her long legs and leaned forward, pouting. "So much for being pleasant."
"Pleasant would be you doing us all a favor and going for a long walk on a sunny day."
"Kid," Ray growled. "Your terminal smart-assitude is starting to piss me off. You better show a little more respect."
He had a point. "It isn't anything personal. We don't want anything to do with you. Leave me alone."
Susan sighed. "Fine. Let's cut to the chase. I want to hire MHI. I've got a job for you to do."
My mouth dropped open. "Serious?"
"Duh. You think I came to this shit hole for fun? I'm serious. Not hiring MHI as much as hiring you in particular. And this is a mutually beneficial arrangement. The man, or used-to-be-a-man, that attacked you yesterday, I want to help you destroy him."
That didn't make sense. "Why?"
"He's your enemy. He's trying to suck up to the Old Ones, so he means to deliver you to the Dread Overlord itself."
I licked my lips. "Susan, last time we met, you were a servant of the Old Ones."