This gig wasn’t looking so promising now, and I almost said to beach the boats and hike back. But my cell vibrated in my pocket with a text from Reach. I read, trying to protect the delicate electronics. “Couple missing from karaoke bar. Car in lot. LEOs found blood. Waiting for security footage.” LEOs were law enforcement officers. The bar was just off the highway that Thomas Stevenson would have taken to get to his homeplace.
We took the first rapid, the boat tilted, and I slid my body into the raft bottom. “That’s nothing, girl. We got big water ahead.” I nodded to show I’d heard, but before I could speak, the heavens opened up, proving that the previous hard rain was nothing. Rain pounded down, on the raft, the men, raising a mist on the creek, overriding the sound of rapids. The M4 and blades made sitting impossible, and I half kneeled, hanging on to the ropes at the sidewalls. I held on for dear life as the water whipped and whirled and dunked the raft, and I got more soaked than if I’d actually swam to the site, and I tried to breathe without getting rain and river into my lungs. Twice I called out to Beast, but still she didn’t answer.
As indicated by the GPS data, the address of Thomas’ family farm was hard river right, up a hill, about a hundred yards from the creek, invisible in the storm. “There’s nothing there,” Mike called over the white-noise of drumming rain on land and on river. But I could smell vamp and human blood.
“It’s there,” I shouted back. “Let me out.” With a gesture that sent the raft whirling and swirling to scrape on shore, the river guide beached the small craft. The smell of blood was carried on the chilled breeze, diluted by the pounding downpour. I crawled out of the small raft, my boots full of water, my jeans wet, my body filled with a fine tremor from adrenaline and the cold. I pulled off the poncho and tossed it into the boat bottom.
“Get to the other side of the river. Wait for me where you can see this bank. If I’m not back in hour, get out of here. It means I’m dead. If anyone else comes to shore, or if anyone comes back to shore with me, peel out and get downstream fast.” I handed him my cell. “Even if I call out for help. Even if I’m bleeding. Don’t come back here unless I’m alone and moving under my own power. If I don’t come back, hit SEND to call Leo Pellissier’s right-hand man, George Dumas. Tell him what happened. He’ll handle it. Got it?”
Mike boomed out, “Paddlers don’t leave people behind.”
“If I’m not alone, it’ll mean I failed and he rolled me. If the vamp is still alive, rolls me, or kills me, it becomes Leo’s problem to take him out.” I wasn’t trusting Lincoln Shaddock for anything, even if I knew where to find him. Leo would have to figure it out.
Dave nodded and made a little skirling motion with his paddle, maneuvering his tiny boat back into the current, nimble as a duck. Mike sealed my cell into his waterproof dry-box and rotated his raft back into the current. I waited until both men had their boats secured on the far shore before melting into the trees, walking hunched over, making myself deer-sized, trusting in the ten-year-old security system to mistake me for the local fauna. Beast was still silent, but I have my own memories of the stop-and-go motion of deer, the slow stroll punctuated by quick dashes, to stop suddenly, unmoving.
Dawn, delayed by the heavy clouds, gave me just enough light to see my way, the trees and underbrush providing cover even as they dumped rain down my collar, my clothes hanging wet and heavy, the silver and titanium necklace icy on my skin. As I moved, I went over what I knew and what I could infer about the vamp I was here to take out, weighing my strengths against his, trying to stay mentally and physically loose and ready. Trying not to think about the empty place in my soul. Beast? She didn’t answer.
According to Reach, the perimeter of the house itself had decent security: cameras, motion detectors, and laser lights queued into a wailing alarm. But old motion detectors might be fooled, especially with the movement of rain and wind. Branches were swaying, rain was falling so hard it obscured my footsteps, even to my own keen ears, and filled my faint tracks with water.
Vamps aren’t dead to the world by sunlight. They had a hard time staying awake once the sun came up, especially the young ones, like a kid trying to stay up past bedtime and being pulled under by the lure of dreams, but unless injured they seldom fell over in an undead snooze.
Once I breached the house, any advantage gained by the water access would be lost. I had speed, unexpected attack, silver bullets, and silvered blades. And while Thomas was a soldier and a black belt in several kinds of martial arts, he hadn’t practiced since he was turned. Another thing in my favor—Thomas Stevenson was no vamp master. There would be no master’s speed, no master’s mind tricks honed over decades or centuries of hunting and mesmerizing prey. He was a young vamp with a god-complex and no vamp-experience. But he was also a vamp and Beast was absent, which was putting me severely off balance.