Vanquished (15 page)

She didn’t answer her cell, and he was just about to go looking for her when she drifted over the threshold of their flat, moody and fixated elsewhere. When he tried to kiss her, she wandered past him.

She’s upset about her aunt,
he reasoned, trailing after her. But when he called her name, she didn’t even answer, as if she didn’t hear him.

She was standing in the kitchen, staring out the window
at the moon. He walked up behind her and kissed her shoulder.

She hissed at him. Startled, he took a step backward. “Chayna?”

“He’s calling to me. He wants me to come back to him,” she said in a strange, singsong voice. “He’s not done.”

She turned to gaze at him. The pupils in her normally brilliant green eyes were dilated so much that he couldn’t see the green, and her face was slack.

“Chayna? Are you all right?”

“I have to go to him now.”

“Who?” he asked. She was acting so strangely.

“We were wrong,” she mumbled. “It’s so very hard to be one of them. It’s the least I can do.”

“What?”

She seemed to wake up. Her dilated eyes locked onto him. “I’m a donor,” she declared.

“A donor.” Chills ran down his spine. He thought his knees might give way.

“Blood donor,” she said, voice laced with contempt, as though she thought he was an idiot for asking. “I’ve been chosen.”

No. No, no, no.

“Chayna, while you were out, gone from me, did you meet a Cursed One? Did something
happen
?”

“Yes.” She said it as simply as if he had asked her if the stars were shining.

He had heard whispers about people being mesmerized, changing behavior, turning on friends and family who stood in their way. It couldn’t be true, could it? But there was his Chayna, standing there, talking about being a
blood donor
?

He cupped her shoulders and bent his knees so he could peer into her eyes. They were so
vacant
. “You’ve been hypnotized. I’ll call Yosef. He’ll know—”

And with a scream she threw him off and reached behind herself on the counter. She snatched a knife, lunged at him.

“Get away from me!” she shouted.

He jumped back as the knife sliced across his abdomen. He tried to grab her hand, but she moved like a serpent, twisting and writhing.

“Chayna, please!” he begged, as she stabbed him in the thigh.

She yanked the blade free, and he could feel himself weakening as blood flowed down his leg. He grabbed her hand, twisting, trying to make her let go of the knife.

She kicked and bit at him. He stepped forward, and his foot slipped in a puddle of his own blood. They hit the ground together, her on top, the knife trapped between them. He heard a sudden guttural noise and felt hot blood rushing over his hand.

“Chayna!”

She looked down at him, and blood began to run out of the corner of her mouth and drip onto his cheeks. Her eyes
changed slowly, and then she blinked and looked down at him. Love and pain mingled on her face.

“Noah,” she breathed. “Noah.”

“Chayna!” he shouted.

She whispered something so softly that he couldn’t quite make it out.

“What? What?” he asked urgently. “Chayna, what?”

As she went limp, he saw where the blade had buried itself in her chest. Blood was pouring out of her chest, so much. Her eyes went glassy.

She was gone.

He screamed as he gathered her body up in his arms and held her, even as his own blood gushed from his body.

We’ll die together. We’ll be together.

Something cold touched his arm. He jerked; it was the edge of her Star of David pendant poking out of the pocket of her jeans. The vampire who had mesmerized her must have convinced her to take it off. The Cursed One. The demon had to be made to pay.

Noah staggered to his feet and made it to the sink. He grabbed a towel to staunch the bleeding. His free hand shook as he reached for his phone. He would still call Yosef—to get him into the counter-vampire training facility. And he would destroy the bastard who had done this.

Then he would die, and he and Chayna would be at peace.

Salamanca Hunter’s Manual: Your Role as Hunter

Remember this: You are a destroyer. You are like unto the Archangel Michael, who confronted Satan. You have sworn a solemn vow to kill vampires. Death is what you bring. You are not on this earth to comfort, or heal, or pacify. You are a warrior. Your hand must be steady, and your heart must be stone.

(translated from the Spanish)

“Feckin’ hell,” Jamie said, as beneath the gray sky and lightning bolts four motorcycle riders zoomed in a row along
the near-deserted roadway. The clouds gathered around them like enormous cloaks. Lightning danced and shattered above their helmets.

Jamie was never one to stand down from a fight, but it was four against one, and as they rode closer, a shiver ran down his back. Something was very off about them. Every ounce of self-preservation screamed at him to get the hell out of there. He had the Uzi around his neck, but as sure as they were coming, he sensed the Uzi would be less useful than a rosary. Several of which lay inside the saddlebag.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Jamie swore.

He raced for his bike, hopped on, started it up. He was used to unfair fights but opposed to suicide missions, so he made a half circle as fast as he could and headed around the chain-link fence enclosing the henge.

Motorcycle engines blared as if in response. He glanced in the mirror.

Seconds ago they’d been hundreds of feet behind him; now they were practically breathing down his neck. Witchcraft. Had to be. Maybe they just wanted to ask him for directions.

The bad jokes were Holgar’s department.

And curse it all, he actually wished wolfie were there with him.

He hit the open road. Visibility cut to practically nil, he tamped down his fight-or-flight and tried to find the headspace to strategize. The Uzi was getting in the way of his
driving. Maybe in the movies the hero could grab up his submachine gun and mow down the enemy without a spill, but this was real life. Being a down-and-dirty street fighter didn’t mean you threw all caution over a cliff and dazzled your enemies with super stunts. It meant you did whatever you needed to
survive
.

The four riders kept solidly behind him. He smelled the fumes of petrol mingling with the ozone of the thunderclouds, which broke open in that moment and poured buckets of rain on him. A bolt of lightning stabbed the earth inches in front of the bike, and he would have thrown himself off if he’d been able to pry his hands from around the handlebars. But he was frozen to the bike, by necessity and fear. They were behind him, too close, and he put the pedal to the metal best he could, narrowly avoiding a lightning bolt on his left.

It wasn’t natural lightning. It felt like it was being directed,
thrown
at him. Witches. It had to be.

Another bolt hit to the right, scorching the earth. Another. He dodged each of them, realizing the riders were using them to herd him in the direction they wanted him to go. He didn’t have much choice except to comply unless he wanted to get fried.

But he kept going, realizing he was on the road, merging onto the A303. That’s what they wanted; they were zooming up behind him, herding him like a sheep. To what end? Who were they? He wasn’t about to stop and ask.

But they’re witches,
he thought.
Maybe they know where Skye is. Maybe she sent them here.

So they could hurl lightning bolts at him? Another thing street war survivors did was listen to their gut instincts. And his was telling him to get the hell away from these fellas as fast as he could.

He stared down at his fuel gauge. He’d filled up just before arriving at Stonehenge, and he figured he could get forty miles to the gallon, maybe more. That was two hundred miles. A lot could happen between now and empty. Besides, there was an extra gallon in one of the saddlebags. If he could find a way to refuel without getting hit with a lightning bolt, he could be on a ferry to France and still have petrol left to go to a wine tasting.

They stayed behind him for a good thirty miles. Then a flash crackled overhead as he reached the turnoff for the M25. Swearing, Jamie took the exit. The four stayed within view of his mirror.

He kept going. His minders kept pace. Then he felt something warm in the inner breast pocket of his black leather jacket. Bloody hell, what were they doing to him? He grabbed at it through the fabric liner. Then, as his fingers outlined a hard rectangle, he realized it was the scrying stone.

Skye,
he thought, catching his breath as his heart leaped with hope.

He didn’t believe these bastards were his escorts. Were
they using him to lead them to Skye? The problem with being part of the underground was that you never knew who else was part of it too, or who was just really good at using it to get what they wanted.

He wanted to take the scrying stone out, get a good look in it, see Skye for himself. His heart pounded with the reverb of his motorcycle engine. Sweat beaded his forehead, chilled by the air blasting past him. Twenty miles—she was within twenty miles of him, and were these bastards going to stand between the two of them?

Not bloody likely.

He began to scan the roadsides, looking for a place to make a stand. The rolling hills of England: villages, sheep. The warmth of the scrying stone was driving him mad.

Then to the right, atop a small hill, he saw the ruins of what appeared to be an abbey. There was a steeple. He could leave the road, get over there, throw down the bike, and climb the steeple. Let the Uzi rip and—

They have lightning bolts,
he reminded himself.
And what are you going to do if you dismount and they set your bike on fire first? Set you on fire second?

Raging with frustration, he let the abbey pass. He saw the canted graves of the old churchyard, and then, past that, the road sloped downward into a valley. The valley of the shadow, to his way of thinking. The four would have an advantage over him as he descended.

I ain’t going down into that,
he thought.

And then, without thinking, he whipped the bike around, hard, and he did grab the Uzi, like in the movies, and began shooting. The recoil nearly threw him off arse first; blinded with anger and adrenaline and wind, he sprayed the lads as hard as he could.

Lightning bolts answered; then he barely ducked in time as a feckin’ fireball whistled straight at him like a bomb. He had no idea how he was staying on the bike. Every time he thought he’d lost control, he managed one more save. Maybe Skye was helping him. Or maybe the sainted Holy Mother herself.

In shock he watched as one of the four tumbled off his bike.
Bullets can kill them.
The other three reacted, two of them slowing, one lobbing another fireball at Jamie. Jamie got off a few more rounds, then wheeled back around and rode for all he was worth. Down into the damned valley, where there were shadows, he began to turn right off the main road but saw nothing but trees pressed closely together; a bit beyond, there was a sturdy-looking stone wall. Not a good place to go.

He had to press his advantage; he went flat out through the valley. Then a lightning bolt slammed down directly in front of him. He swerved left, nearly losing his balance.

The scrying stone moved from warm to hot. It was nearly too hot to bear. He went left, off the road and into some trees. Hotter still. He yelled out a curse and kept going, dodging low-lying branches.
Skye, I’m coming.

Then a large, flat megalith such as at Stonehenge suddenly appeared about twenty feet in front of him. He prepared to throw himself off the bike when he remembered other times, other barriers, into which Skye had bored magickal holes. They were invisible to the naked eye.

“Is that what you want?” Jamie shouted. “Skye, bloody hell, is this you?”

More likely it was the lads behind him. He had to decide now: throw himself off the bike and risk broken bones—break his neck, maybe—or splatter himself all over the stone—

They’re gonna catch up,
he thought. Then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and drove straight for the block of stone in front of him, gritting his teeth and waiting for his life to flash before his eyes. Nothing was flashing. He was blind with fear. In the next micro instant he would either die or—

Noah knew that he had very little time left before he was discovered talking to Dr. Michael Sherman. He stared at the vampire scientist. “So, tell me about the virus.”

“It’s a blood virus, a mutated strain of leukemia. When I was human, I was suffering from the disease. Now no more.
But if I’m successful, the new strand will kill me along with the others.” Sherman preened as if it were the best news of his life.

Noah was fascinated. Could it be that Antonio wasn’t the only vampire with tendencies toward goodness?

As if he had read Noah’s mind, the scientist shook his head. “What drives me, what keeps me doing my research and not destroying the humans here, is my hatred for the Cursed Ones and what they have done to me.” He nodded. “Revenge, as it turns out, is stronger than blood.”

Noah pondered that. “How fast will the virus spread?”

“Very fast. We’ll release it into the air, and as the wind carries it . . . those closest will die in seconds.”

“Vampires don’t breathe,” Noah said.

Dr. Sherman smiled, exposing wicked-looking fangs. “They don’t have to. Infection will take place at a sub-molecular level. They can try to block it, but we’re kicking out potential blocking agents one by one.”

“You’re creating an antidote?” Noah asked.