The Graves of Saints (6 page)

Tori moved out onto the stoop. A strong breeze blew past her, bringing the rich smells of earth and plants and apples.

‘Ed?’

He shot her a look that spoke of fear and wonder in equal measure. ‘Tori, please. I’ve seen a lot of things since coming to work here, and I can’t complain. You and Cat gave me
the rundown before I started. Elemental magic, naked witchy rituals, loving the earth . . . to be honest, I like it. And not just the naked part. I don’t understand witchcraft –
earthcraft, or whatever – but I know you’re good people and that there’s only love in what you do. But this is . . . Hell, I don’t know what.’

‘
What
is going on?’

Despite his farmer’s tan, the foreman looked pale.

‘You’ve gotta just come with me,’ he said. ‘If I try to explain, it’ll sound crazy or stupid or both.’

‘All right.’ She glanced back into the house, thought of Cat in the shower, and then pulled the door shut behind her. Whatever this was, she’d be back soon. And she had her
cell phone; Cat would call or text her if she was worried.

Ed climbed onto the ATV and Tori got on behind him, holding tightly to him as she straddled the machine. Growing up, she’d always ridden like this on the back of her brother Johnny’s
dirtbike, and the memory rose up and lingered in her head as Ed drove her down the road and turned up into the orchard. Johnny had died when she was fifteen, and memories of him were always
bittersweet. She loved her life, loved Cat and what they’d built here at Summerfields, but she’d have given almost anything to have another day with Johnny. Unfortunately, there were
some things even magic could not do.

The ATV jounced through a pothole in the path leading up into the orchard. They passed pumpkin beds and entered the thick of the orchard, with rows of apple trees stretching across the hill for
acres in either direction.

When she realized where Ed must be taking her, she clutched him even tighter.

‘What the hell
is
this?’ she called over the guttural growl of the ATV’s motor.

He turned his head and raised his voice to be heard. ‘You’re going to have to tell me.’

Then they were pulling into the clearing where they had said their goodbyes to Keomany that morning, and where they would be conducting their equinox ceremony. In the center of the clearing
stood the new tree that Keomany had nurtured from seed to maturity in moments. It was the most robust tree in the orchard, now, with the finest apples.

Something else had grown in the clearing.

Ed killed the ATV’s engine, its growl echoing in Tori’s ears for several seconds. The silence that followed, broken only by the rustle of the breeze in the trees, felt like the world
holding its breath.

She climbed off the back of the ATV. Ed stayed where he was, staring at the new thing that had sprouted from the soil. He had obviously come across it while traversing the orchard and now,
having seen it once, had no interest in getting near to it again.

‘Goddess,’ Tori whispered as she walked toward it, unsure even as she spoke if it was a prayer or a cry for help. The smell of earth and apples filled the air, swirling on the
breeze.

Her heart thrummed in her chest, a captive hummingbird. Her face felt flushed and her breath came in short, shallow sips as she knelt in the dirt and stared at the new growth, which looked like
no tree or bush she had ever seen. Perhaps fourteen inches high, it had skin like an apple, and thick roots that went deep into the ground, covered in bark. It had the shape – the figure
– of a woman, though it did not move except for the stirring caused by the wind, and though it had no expression, it did indeed have a face.

Keomany’s face.

Goddess.

Tori began to weep. Though she felt a shiver of fear, most of what she felt – what made her hands shake and caused the grin that broke out on her face – was the joy of miracles.

‘Ed,’ she said, her voice cracking with emotion. ‘Get a fence up around this right away. Tonight.’ She stood and looked at him. ‘And don’t breathe a
word.’

Airborne

The deep, bass chop of the helicopter’s rotors felt like an assault on Charlotte’s ears, a thumping on her chest, as if she sat inside a quickening heart that beat
from without instead of within. Normally she would not have been quite as nervous. A vampire could easily survive a helicopter crash – even an explosion. But she still had traces of the
Medusa toxin in her blood and she didn’t like her chances if the chopper went down.

Five people shared the rear compartment of the helicopter with her. Three of them were rank-and-file members of Task Force Victor, soldiers-turned-vampire-hunters who clearly had a very dim view
of her. The youngest, a buzzcut Chinese guy named Song, no more than twenty, kept stealing glances at her that seemed to say he thought it was a shame that a cute girl who looked near his own age
was a bloodsucking freak. Song kept getting disgusted scowls from the only other woman on the chopper, a Brazilian named Galleti who had a quartet of scars on the left side of her throat that could
only have been clawmarks. The two of them took orders from Sergeant Omondi, a New Yorker by way of Kenya. He was maybe thirty, six and a half feet tall and built like a tank, though the intellect
sparkling in his eyes belied that great size. Omondi was no brute.

As much as they intrigued her, these armed soldiers who had dedicated their lives to exterminating her kind, she was far more interested in the other two people riding in the back of the
chopper. The rumpled, goateed Barbieri carried a few too many pounds, especially as he looked to be nearing fifty, but he had kind eyes. He certainly didn’t match any image her mind would
have conjured of a forensics expert specializing in tracking vampires.

Of all of them, it was Commander Leon Metzger who scared her the most. When she’d been taken into custody in front of the Shadow Registry building, it had been Metzger’s order that
kept her from being burned alive with the assassins Cortez had sent. Charlotte had been bustled indoors and into a room that was the equivalent of an iron box and seated in a steel chair bolted to
the floor, where she had waited alone for hours while someone – she was sure – tried to persuade Leon Metzger to burn her and be done with it.

Peter Octavian was the only reason they hadn’t killed her on the spot, and the reason that instead of burning her, Metzger had come into the iron box with two cups of coffee and sat down
across from her.

‘I know, it’s a TV show cop cliché. But it’s here if you want it. Actually, the coffee around here’s pretty good,’ he said, taking a sip as he slouched back
in his chair.

Charlotte hadn’t hesitated. She’d taken the coffee and swigged it, wishing for more sugar but relishing it just the same. A little bit of civilization in the midst of madness. And
she hadn’t spent a moment worrying about what kind of signal it might send that she was so willing to drink . . . to accept what he offered. Either he was playing some kind of head game with
her or he wasn’t; she couldn’t bring herself to care.

‘Thank you,’ she had said, and she thought he’d known she’d meant it as gratitude for both the coffee and her life.

‘I’m not going to drag this out,’ Metzger had said. ‘Octavian says you can be trusted, and that’s good enough for me. Whatever issues my predecessor had with him, I
don’t share them. So in a few minutes I’m going to have someone come in and explain the Covenant to you and then you’re going to sign it, both because you say you want to and also
because if you don’t, you won’t leave here alive.’

The strangest part of that bit of interaction had been that when he’d said it, Metzger had smiled in such an amiable way that Charlotte had smiled in return. She’d found herself
somewhat charmed by a man who had just threatened to kill her, and so she had told him that she had come there specifically to sign the Covenant and nearly been killed already by assassins who
wanted to make sure that never happened. Metzger had turned thoughtful, then.

Two soldiers – Song and Galleti, though she hadn’t known their names at the time – had come in with a pen and a copy of the Covenant. Charlotte had only skimmed it, but she got
enough of the gist. It wasn’t hard to imagine what humans would want by way of promises from vampires.
I won’t hunt humans. I won’t take blood without permission. I’ll
be a good little Shadow.

Then the interrogation had begun, about Cortez and the killers who had been hunting her, about Octavian and how she’d come to meet him, about what she’d done while she’d been
answering to Cortez, and after. It had gone on for so long that she’d lost track of time, until Sergeant Omondi had come in to interrupt his commander with news that he was needed on the
phone. Metzger had been irritated, right up until Omondi told him it was Peter Octavian calling and that he’d said it was urgent.

Less than thirty minutes later, they’d been boarding a helicopter, Charlotte and a handful of people who made their living hunting down vampires. Now here she was riding in the back of a
chopper with them like she was somehow part of the team, and it felt like one of those dreams about going to school in your underwear. Charlotte had been vulnerable most of her life, and she
didn’t like it. She had been drugged and raped and murdered and transformed into a monster, and the only upside of all that horror was that people couldn’t physically hurt her anymore.
Medusa had taken that away and now Charlotte felt haunted and uneasy, acutely aware of every possible threat to her well-being.

The thrum of the chopper pounding at her ears, she glanced out the small window beside her. The pilot had said the trip would take about forty minutes, so she figured the sprawling lights below
must be the city of Philadelphia. That was good; it meant they would be landing soon. Thus far today her luck had been for shit – sort of par for the course of her life – but if it
turned in her favor at all, she would never have to get on a helicopter again.

‘You don’t look good,’ a voice called.

Charlotte glanced up to see Metzger watching her with ice blue eyes. He arched a wiry gray eyebrow as if punctuating the comment, turning it into a query.

‘I’m fine,’ she said.

Metzger cocked his head to indicate he hadn’t heard. With the roar of the rotors it was necessary for her to speak up.

‘I said I’m fine!’

He nodded, though he looked doubtful. ‘Not hungry? When was the last time you fed?’

Charlotte winced at the question.
Fed
, not
ate
. Like an animal. A beast on the prowl. It shouldn’t have surprised her to get this peek into the way Metzger saw her kind,
but thus far he had treated her fairly humanely, so it did shock her a little. And how was she supposed to answer that, anyway? Yes, it had been a while since the last time she had had human blood
to drink, but she would survive. She figured the most fundamental difference between the Shadows who lived in peace with humanity and those who chose to embrace the word ‘vampire’ was
self-control. She chose to ignore Metzger’s question, turning again to look out the window.

She didn’t hear him unsnap the rig that belted him into his seat, but she caught sight of the motion in the corner of her eye and turned back just as he grabbed hold of her wrist and
crouched beside her seat. Charlotte glanced at the others. Barbieri had nodded off, but the three soldiers were alert with tension, watching their CO closely.

‘Let’s be clear,’ Metzger said, squeezing her wrist for emphasis, gazing at her with those ice blue eyes. ‘I’m not just being hospitable. If you need blood, I will
see that you get it, not because I’m just that nice a guy but because I don’t want you losing control and trying to drain one of my people. You might hurt somebody, and then we’d
have to kill you. Octavian would be pissed and nobody wants that. I don’t want the guy turning me into a newt, right?’

He grinned as if this was a joke, but Charlotte could hear the truth in it.

‘You still haven’t told me why we’re doing this,’ she said. ‘Octavian sent me to you and now you’re bringing me back to him?’

Metzger gave a small shrug. ‘It’s Octavian’s business. You’ll learn soon enough. But I brought you along because he asked for you, and because I trust him. If I
didn’t trust him, I’d have to kill him, and I’m not quite sure how to go about it. So I don’t really have a choice – I have to trust him. Don’t get to thinking
that extends to you, though. The last time the commander of Task Force Victor trusted a vampire, it didn’t turn out too well.’

Charlotte scowled. Allison Vigeant had been a Bloodhound for Task Force Victor until its previous commander, Ray Henning, had gone kill-crazy and tried to take down every Shadow he saw, ally or
enemy. Allison had put him down like a rabid dog, which was fairly close to the truth.

‘What was it you were saying about blood?’ she asked, raising her voice over the chopper noise. She smiled and her fangs slid out.

Metzger hesitated, staring at her teeth. ‘I see the Medusa toxin is starting to wear off.’

Charlotte ran her tongue over the sharp tips of her fangs. ‘Sure looks like it.’

Metzger nodded slowly. ‘When we’re on the ground, I’ll make a call to local law enforcement and set up a volunteer. There’s always some freak who’s willing to
share.’

She didn’t rise to the bait of his disdain. After a second, Metzger slid back into his seat and buckled himself into his restraints. The chopper began to yaw and pitch a little, in
addition to the usual shuddering, and she glanced out the window to see the lights of the airport below, with trucks darting to and fro and the large H of a helipad looming closer.

They were landing. Octavian would be waiting with answers, but for the first time, Charlotte wasn’t sure she wanted them.

There were cops in the hotel lobby, keeping an eye on everyone who came and went. Two uniformed officers stood near the elevator bank and checked the identification of everyone
who went up or came down, keeping a log. Charlotte saw a pair of men in dark suits talking to a cop who looked like he must be a captain or a lieutenant or something, and figured the suits for FBI.
Whatever had happened here, Octavian was right in the middle of it, and it had been significant enough to warrant this kind of attention. The nineteen-year-old girl in her wanted to make a run for
it, but all of these grim-faced investigators with their guns and handcuffs weren’t there looking for her. Besides that, she could feel the Medusa toxin wearing off, her ability to alter her
flesh returning almost like an injured muscle regaining its limberness.