C.O.T.V.H. (Book 3): Extermination (18 page)

“Put it however you like, you’re a traitor!  Do you think the humans will welcome you in with open arms?  That they will forgive the lives you’ve taken?  They will tie you down and leave you in the sun!  You are a fool!”

Michael smiled, “Maybe, but at least I still have all my appendages.  Can’t say the same for you and your friends.”  Michael reached down and with one hand, snapped Clay’s head from his spinal column and tossed it hundreds of yards away.

A familiar voice called out to him from the darkness.  “Be careful my child.  You cannot fight them all, not alone.”

“Then help me, Gaius!  I know you hate them as much as I do!”  There was no answer.  “Go then, coward!  I will kill them all!  If it takes me a hundred years I will kill them all!  Even if I have to do it alone!”

******

An hour after sunup Jake, with Buck riding on the back of Turner’s Harley, and Henry, with Chris on Buck’s, made it to a small emergency room in a town on the New Mexico/Texas border.

Jake had his head bandaged and his cheek patched up.  Chris had his lip stitched up.  Buck was in far worse shape.  The doctor said he had a concussion, a broken nose, and a bad break to his left arm.  When the doctor found out he'd been brought in on the back of a motorcycle he was amazed that Buck was still conscious.  Jake had smiled at the man and said, "Doc, you don't know Buck.  No one is more hard headed than him."

After they’d been patched up, Chris and Jake went back into the small waiting room.  Clear tape held Chris’s glasses together.  A bandage was wrapped over Jake’s wounded head. Henry, with a neck brace on, was talking on the phone with his C.O. trying to explain why he'd been involved in a traffic accident in New Mexico that had all but wrecked his company vehicle, when he was supposed to be two hundred miles away in Texas. From the sound of it the conversation wasn't going well.

Jake hung up the payphone after the tenth ring and retrieved his quarter from the slot at the bottom.  “Still no answer from Talon.”  Jake dropped into the empty chair next to Chris.

"What are we going to do, Jake?"  Chris asked, tossing his unread magazine back on the table.

"I don't know, but Henry was right.  We can't just charge in and take the war to them. We've got to make plans, regroup.  Our first step has got to be to contact Secretary Hernandez and get the VET involved."

"Do you think Talon or Diana and Whisper got out?  I mean, why isn’t he answering?   Look at what they did to Turner’s men!  They ripped through them like they were nothing.  What if they did the same to Talon?  Or Diana or Whisper?  Jake, I never told her how I felt about her.  I tried so many times . . . stupid, stupid, stupid!" he said smacking his head.

"Chris, it’s okay.”  Jake said gently.  “Turner and his guys got caught out in the open without any cover.  They didn't stand a chance.  Talon isn’t stupid, and Diana and Whisper have the same training we have.  They’ll make it."

"I hope so, Jake.  But if they got your dad, Billy and my dad, they've got the location of every single hunter in the Coalition.  Hell, even some of those not in the Coalition."

"I wouldn’t count your dad out just yet, Chris.  Ben’s smart as they come.”  Jake didn’t really believe that, but they’d lost so much already, but it was clear that Chris was just a breath away from completely losing it.  The kid needed all the hope he could get.

He lowered his head into his hands.  “It all fell apart so damn fast!  In one night they wiped us out.  It was just like an . . .”

"It was like an extermination," Jake finished his sentence. 
One big goddamn extermination.
 
But we’ll pull it back together.
  Cort’s words had stuck with him.  He was done being a victim.  It was time to
do
something about it.

"Do you think Cort and my mom made it out okay?"

"Sure they did.  If anyone could get them out of this mess it's my Grandpa."

There was a loud commotion across the waiting room and a nurse was reaching for the television turning the volume up.  It looked like one of the towers of the world trade center was on fire.

Jake and Chris got up and stood with the crowd gawking at the television.  "What's going on?"  Chris asked one of the nurses.

"It looks like a plane just hit the World Trade Center," she answered.

"What?”  Chris exclaimed.  “What kind of idiot pilot could miss something as big as a skyscraper?"

"You got me sweetheart," she shrugged and walked away.

Jake and Chris continued to watch as a second plane hit.  The crowd of nurses and patients burst into noise.

"My God," Jake said chills running across his body.  “Tell me that didn’t just happen.”

Henry, who had just finished his phone call, came walking over.  "What's going on?" he said, looking at the two towers on the TV with gaping holes in them.

"I think we just went to war," Chris said, sitting down.

"It's worse than that," Jake said, sitting down next to him.  "We just lost our war."

“What do you mean?”  Chris gave him a funny look.  “What’s this got to do with that?”

“I’m betting we just saw the end of the VET.  The government is going to have a lot more on its hands after this.”

Chris stood up, “Someone loan me a quarter; I’m calling Hernandez.”

“Calling Hernandez?”  Jake said completely dumbfounded.  “What?  You have his number on speed dial?”

“He and Dad spoke on a weekly basis.  We had a direct line to his office.”

“Well that’s great, do you remember the number?”  Jake asked.

“Sure I do,” he said pointing to his head.  “It’s all up here.”

“You’ll never get through,” Henry said reaching into his pocket and handing Chris his cell phone. “Not with this shit-storm in DC’s lap.

“I’ve got to try,” Chris said, taking the phone.

For the next forty minutes Jake and Henry sat with their eyes glued to the TV, watching the chaos in New York unfold.  Chris came back shaking his head.

“I take it you didn’t get through?”  Jake asked.

“Yeah I got through, it took me over thirty minutes of being on hold and getting transferred more times than I can count but I got through,” he sat down in the seat next to Henry.

“Well?”  Jake asked.  “What did he say?”

“I’d just barely managed to tell him all that’s happened when the call was cut off.  I’ll try again in a few minutes.”  Chris leaned back rubbing his temples.  “My head is killing me.”

Jake’s eyes grew huge as the images from New York switched to Washington, DC.  He gripped Chris’s arm tightly.  “What?”  Chris said looking up.  The Pentagon was smoking with a large hole in its side.  “Oh no . . . oh no, no, no.”

“Tell me his office isn’t in there, tell me it’s in The Capitol building or . . .”

“No.”  Chris shook his head.  “It’s in the Pentagon.”

“God help us,” Jake said, the last bit of hope fading from him.  “We really are all alone.”

Epilogue

Cort

Somewhere in New Mexico

September 11, 5:12am

Cort and Cat pulled away from the safe house hightailing it down the road at over eighty miles an hour.  Cort stared in the rear view mirror at the safe house now ablaze behind them.  They weren't taking the chance of letting any more information falling into the vampires' hands.

"You think they'll be okay?"  Cat asked.

"Yeah they’ll be all right,” Cort nodded.  “The Ranger will take good care of them.  It’s us that I’m worried about."

"I just can't believe this is happening!”  Cat put her head in her hands.  “I just spoke to Ben a few hours ago!"

"I know Cat but Ben is tough, he might surprise us yet."

“I wish I could believe that Cort, but a day ago I would have said the same thing about John.”

“I can't believe he’s gone.  It just happened so damn fast!  One second he was there the next he was on Jake like a madman . . . I don’t know Cat, I just can’t believe it."

"Do you think Talon and the girls got out?  Or Pam?"

"I'd like to think so Cat, I really would."

The two sat in silence for the next few minutes when suddenly Cat stared at something out the windshield.  "Cort, what is that?"

"What, what is it?"  he said straining his eyes.  "I don't see a damn thing."

"Slow down a bit.  I think someone is stranded up there."  Soon a car came into view of the headlights, its hood was up and smoke was pouring out of the engine. A lone woman was standing in the road waving her arms.  "Wait a second I think I know her, slow down."  Cat said, rolling down her window.

"Are you sure Cat?  It could be a trap."

"I'm sure Cort, I've definitely seen her before.  Let's stop she might need help.  We don't want her to end up as a meal for these bloodsuckers. 

“Hell I don’t want to end up as one either!”  Cort said but slowed the truck down to a crawl.

“Need a hand?” Cat yelled out the window.

"Yes please!"  The woman yelled back.

Then it dawned on Cat where she'd seen her.  It had taken her a minute because she hadn't seen her in almost twenty years.  But the woman hadn't aged a day.  "My God . . . Cort!  Go!  Go!"  she screamed.  “Get out of here!”

Cort didn’t hesitate.  He hit the gas just as an arm jerked his door open and yanked him out of the truck hard onto the pavement.  The truck rolled off the road with Cat and two other figures inside the cab. "Cort!  Cort!"  Cat screamed over and over from inside the truck.

"Get away from her you bastards!"  Cort yelled trying to fight the giant Maker holding him to the pavement.

“Calm down Grandpa,” said a familiar female voice.  

Wait a second.  I know that voice. 
Cort strained his neck to see the source.  “Julia?”

“Hello Cort.” she smiled with a mouthful of fangs, her eyes glowing blood red.  “It's been awhile.  Now.  Where the hell is my son?”

Author’s note:

Thanks so much for taking the time to read Extermination.  This book was especially difficult for me to write and ended up taking a lot longer than I had anticipated.  Regardless, I hope you enjoyed the finished product.  I plan on writing at least one more novel that follows Jake, tying up his storyline.  I also plan on writing a series of novels revolving around Michael and the makeup of the Immortal/Vampire hierarchy.  If you enjoyed the book(or even if you hated it) please take a minute and leave a review.  If you’re not comfortable leaving a review but would like to leave me a comment/suggestion/criticism, you can email me at:
[email protected]
.  Thanks again!

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