Strange Brew (32 page)

Evan was similarly dressed, refusing to be left behind, loaded down with talismans, charms, battery-powered lights, a machete, and a twenty-pound mallet, suitable for bashing in heads. It wouldn’t kill a vampire, but it would incapacitate one long enough to stake it and take its head. We were ready to go in when Brax drove up, got out, and sauntered over. He was dressed in SWAT team gear and guns. “What? You think I’d let civilians go after the rogues alone? Not gonna happen, people.”

We hadn’t told Brax. I glared at Evan, who shrugged, unapologetic.

“What are you carrying?” Jane asked. When he told her, she shook her head and handed him a box of ammunition. “Hand-packed, silver-flechette rounds, loaded for vamp. They can’t heal from it. A direct heart shot will take them out.”

“Sweet,” Brax said, removing his ammunition from a shotgun and reloading as he looked us over. “So we got an earth witch, her husband, a vamp hunter, and me. Lock and load, people.” Satisfied, he pushed in front and led the way. Once inside, we walked four abreast as my sisters set up a command center at the entrance. Behind us I could hear the three witches chanting protective incantations while Regan and Amelia began to pray.

We passed parts of several bodies. My earth gift recoiled, closing up. There were too many dead. I had hoped to be able to sense the presence of the rogue vampires, but with my gift so overloaded, I doubted I’d be of much help at all. The smell of rancid meat and rotting blood was beyond horrible. Charnel house effluvia. I stopped looking after the first limb—part of a young woman’s leg.

Except for the stench and the body parts, the first hundred yards was easy. After that, things went to hell in a handbasket.

We heard singing, a childhood melody. “Starlight, star fright, first star. . : No. Starlight blood fight… No. I don’ ‘member. I don’ ‘member—” The voice stopped, the cutoff sharp as a knife. “People,” she whispered, the word echoing in the mine. “Blood…”

And she was on us. Face caught in the flashlight. A ravening animal. Flashing fangs. Bloodred eyes centered with blacker-than-night pupils. Nails like black claws. She took down Evan with one swipe. I screamed. Blood splattered. His flashlight fell. Its beam rocking in shadows. One glimpse of a body. Leaping. Flying. Landed on Jane. Inhumanly fast. Jane rolled into the dark.

I lost them in the swinging light. Found Evan by falling on him. Hot blood pulsed into my hand. I pressed on the wound, guided by earth magic. I called on Mother Earth for healing. Moments later, Jane knelt beside me, breathing hard, smelling foul. She steadied the light. Evan was still alive, fighting to breathe, my hands covered with his blood. His skin was pasty. The wound was across his right shoulder, had sliced his jugular, and he had lost a lot of blood, though my healing had clotted over the wound.

I pressed one of the healing amulets my sisters had made over the wound, chanting in the old tongue. “
Cneasaigh, cneasaigh a bháis báite in fhuil
,” over and over. Gaelic for, “Heal, heal, blood-soaked death.”

Minutes later, I felt Evan take a full breath. Felt his heartbeat steady under my hands. In the uncertain light, my tears splashed on his face. He opened his eyes and looked up at me. His beard was brighter than usual, tangled with his blood. He held my gaze, telling me so much in that one look. He loved me. Trusted me. Knew I was going on without him. Promised to live. Promised to take care of our children if I didn’t make it back. Demanded I live and come back to him. I sobbed with relief. Buried my face in his healing neck and cried.

We carried Evan back to the entrance, where my sisters called for an ambulance. As soon as he was stable, the three of us redistributed the supplies and headed back in to the mine. I saw the severed head of the rogue in the shadows. Jane’s first forty-thousand-dollar trophy.

We had done one useful thing. We had rewritten the history books. We had proved that vampires could move around in the daylight so long as they were in complete absence of the sun. That meant we would have to fight rather than just stake and run. Lucky us.

There were six vampires left and three of us. By now, the remaining ones were surely alerted to our presence. Not good odds.

We were deeply underground when the next attack took place. Jane must have smelled them coming, because she shouted, “Ten o’clock! Two of them.” Her gun boomed. Brax’s spat flames as it fired. Two vampires fell. Jane dispatched them with a knife shaped like a small sword. While she sawed, and I looked away, she murmured, “Three down, four to go,” over and over, like a rich miser counting his gold.

We moved on. Down a level, deeper into the mountain. Jane led the way now, ignoring some branching tunnels, taking others, assuring us she knew where we were and where Carmen was. Like me, she ignored Brax’s questions about how.

Just after we passed a cross-tunnel, two vampires came at us from behind, a flanking maneuver. I never heard them. In front of me, Jane whirled. I dropped to the tunnel floor, cowering. She fired. The muzzle flash blinded me. More gunshots sounded, echoing. Brax yelled, the sound full of pain.

Jane stepped over me, straddling me in the dark, her boots lit by a wildly tottering light. I snatched it and turned it on Brax. He knelt nearby, blood at his throat. A vampire lay at his knees, a stake through her chest. My ears were ringing, blasted by the concussion of firepower. In the light, I saw Jane hand a bandage to Brax and pull one of her knives. Her shadow on the mine wall raised up the knife and brought it down, beheading the rogues; my hearing began to come back; the chopping sounded soggy.

She left the heads. “For pickup on the way out. The odds just turned in our favor.”

I couldn’t look at the heads. I had been no help at all. I was the weak link in the trio. I squared my shoulders and fingered the charms I carried. I was supposed to hold them until Jane said to activate them. It would be soon.

We moved on down the widening tunnel. Jane touched my arm in the dark. I jumped. She tapped my hand and mouthed, “Charm one. Now.”

Clumsy, I pulled the charm, activated it, and tossed it to the left. The sound of footsteps echoed, as if we were still moving, but down a side tunnel. Then I activated the second charm, the one my sisters and I had worked on all day. The obfuscation charm. It was the closest thing in all of our histories to an invisibility spell, and no witch had perfected it in hundreds of years.

Following the directions I had memorized, I drew in the image of the rock floor and walls, and cloaked it around us. I nodded to Jane. She cut off the light. Moments later, she moved forward slowly, Brax at her side. I followed, one hand on each shoulder. The one on Brax’s shoulder was sticky with blood. He was still bleeding. Vampires can smell blood. The obfuscation spell wasn’t intended to block scents.

A faint light appeared ahead, growing brighter as we moved and the tunnel opened out. We stopped. The space before us was a juncture from which five tunnels branched. Centered, was a table with a lantern, several chairs, and cots. Carmen was lying on one, cradling her belly, her eyes open and darting. Two teenaged girls were on another cot, huddling together, eyes wide and fearful. No vampires were in the room.

We moved quietly to Carmen and I bent over her. I slammed my hand over her mouth. She bucked, squealing. “Carmen. It’s Molly,” I whispered. She stopped fighting. Raised a hand and touched mine. She nodded. I removed my hand.

She whispered, “They went that way.”

“Come on. Tell the others to come. But be quiet.”

Moving awkwardly, Carmen rolled off the cot and stood. She motioned to the two girls. “Come on. Come with me.” When both girls refused, my baby sister waddled over, slapped them both resoundingly, gripped each by an arm, and hauled them up. “I said, come with me. It wasn’t a damn invitation.”

The girls followed her, holding their jaws and watching Carmen fearfully. Pride blossomed in me. I adjusted the obfuscation spell, drawing in more of the cave walls and floor. Wrapped the spell around the three new bodies. The girls suddenly could see us. One screamed.

“So much for stealth,” Jane said. “Move it!” She shoved the two girls and me toward the tunnel out. Stumbling, we raced to the dark. I switched on the flashlight, put it in Carmen’s hands. Pulled the last two charms. The empowerment charm was meant to take strength from a winning opponent and give it to a losing, dying one. It could be used only in clear life-and-death situations. The other was my last healing charm.

We made the first turn, feet slapping the stone, gasping. Something crashed into us. A girl and Jane went down with the vampire. Tangled limbs. The vampire somersaulted. Taking Jane with him. Crouching. He held her in front of him. Jane’s head in one hand. Twisting it up and back. His fangs extended fully. He sank fangs and claws into Jane’s throat, above her mail collar. Ripping. The collar hit the ground.

Brax shouted. “Run!” He picked up the fallen girl and shoved her down the tunnel. The last vamp landed on his back. Brax went down. Rolling. Blood spurting. Shadows like monsters on the far wall.

In the wavering light, Jane’s throat gushed blood. Pumping bright.

Carmen and I backed against the mine wall. I was frozen, indecisive. Whom to save? I didn’t know for sure who was winning or losing. I didn’t know what would happen if I activated the empowerment charm. I pulled the extra flashlight and switched it on.

Brax rolled. Into the light. Eyes wild. The vampire rolled with him. Eating his throat. Brax was dying. I activated the empowerment charm. Tossed it.

It landed. Brax’s breath gargled. The vampire fell. Brax rose over him, stake in hand. Brought the stake down. Missed his heart.

I pointed. “Run. That way.” Carmen ran, her flashlight bouncing. I set down the last light, pulled stakes from my pockets. Rushed the vampire. Stabbed down with all my might. One sharpened stake ripped through his clothes. Into his flesh. I stabbed again. Blood splashed up, crimson and slick. I fumbled two more stakes.

Brax, beside me, took them. Rolled the vampire into the light. Raised his arms high. Rammed them into the rogue’s chest.

Blood gushed. Brax fell over it. Silent. So silent. Neither moved.

I activated the healing amulet. Looked over my shoulder. At Jane.

The vampire was behind her. Her throat was mostly gone. Blood was everywhere. Spine bones were visible in the raw meat of her throat.

Yet, even without a trachea, she was growling. Face shifting. Gray light danced. Her hands, clawed and tawny, reached back. Dug into the skull of the vampire. Whipped him forward. Over her. He slammed into the rock floor. Bounced limply.

Sobbing, I grabbed Brax’s shoulder. Pulled him over. Dropped the charm on his chest.

Jane leaped onto the vampire. Ripped out his throat. Tore into his stomach. Slashed clothes and flesh. Blood spurted. She shifted. Gray light. Black motes. And her cat screamed.

I watched as her beast tore the vampire apart. Screaming with rage.

We made it to the mine entrance, Carmen and the girls running ahead, into the arms of my sisters. Evangelina raised a hand to me, framed by pale light, and pulled the girls outside, leaving the entrance empty, dawn pouring in. I didn’t know how the night had passed, where the time had disappeared. But I stopped there, inside the mine with Jane, looking out, into the day. In the urgency of finding the girls and getting them all back to safety, we hadn’t spoken about the fight.

Now, she touched her throat. Hitched Brax higher. He hadn’t made it. Jane had carried him out, his blood seeping all over her, through the rents in her clothes made by fighting vampires and by Jane herself, as she shifted inside them. “Is he,” she asked, her damaged voice raspy as stone, “dead because you used the last healing charm on me?” She swallowed, the movement of poorly healed muscles audible. “Is that why you’re crying?”

Guilt lanced through me. Tears, falling for the last hour, burned my face. “No,” I whispered. “I used it on Brax. But he was too far gone for a healing charm.”

“And me?” The sound was pained, the words hurting her throat.

“I trusted in your beast to heal you.”

She nodded, staring into the dawn. “You did the right thing.” Again she hitched Brax higher. Whispery-voiced, she continued. “I got seven heads to pick up and turn in”—she slanted her eyes at me—”and we got a cool quarter mil waiting. Come on. Day’s wasting.” Jane Yellowrock walked into the sunlight, her tawny eyes still glowing.

And I walked beside her.

Faith Hunter
has written three urban fantasy novels in the Rogue Mage series, about stone-mage Thorn St. Croix, and collaborated on a role-playing game by the same name.
Skinwalker
, based on the character Jane Yellowrock, introduced in this story, will be released in July 2009 from ROC. Being totally schizoid, she has also written numerous mysteries and thrillers under her pen name, Gwen Hunter. She lives with her husband and two long-haired yappy dogs, works full-time in a hospital lab, and writes two books a year. She would write faster but discovered that occasionally she needs sleep. You can find out more about her at
www.faithhunter.net
  or
www.gwenhunter.com
.

Ginger
Caitlin Kittredge

A Nocturne City Story

I’m not brave. Ask anyone.
Sunny Swann? Oh yeah, she’s a complete wuss. Scared of her own shadow
.

When I was ten, my cousin Luna convinced me that if I fell asleep, Freddy Krueger was going to come into my room and behead all my dolls. When I inevitably
did
sleep, she sneaked around taking all their heads and putting them into bed with me.

At least the two of us get along better now. Hell hath no fury like a ten-year-old with headless dolls.

Luna’s always been the brave one. Older. Taller. Tougher. She ran away to Nocturne City from our going-nowhere hometown, and I followed. She got tangled up with some bad blood witches, and I helped her. She’s the troublemaker. I’m dependable.