The Slayer (8 page)

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Authors: Theresa Meyers

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Fantasy, #Romance, #Paranormal

BOOK: The Slayer
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“You mean they got better manners.”
She sighed, out of pure frustration. “They are more aware of the rules of society. You Americans have thrown all that out the door. Everyone is equal. Everyone is the same in the eyes of your government,
da?
”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
“Well, it isn't like that in Europe, Mr. Jackson. Even among the Hunters there is a sense of knowing one's place. And
everyone
has a place. The Hunters there are more like an invisible extension of the military, known but not acknowledged.”
“Huh. Seems like a waste of time to me.”
“How is order and civility a waste of time?”
“Because when it's you up against a demon and he don't give a damn if you or your kin lives or dies, do you think there's time to wait for orders from some higher-up?” The brutality in his voice rattled her spine. She could never forget he'd turn on her in a second if he thought he was in danger. His hand absently ran back and forth over the middle of his left thigh.
“I suppose it is a different life.”
He snorted. “You tellin' me Hunters over there have nice little orchestrated battles with Darkin?”
She raised a brow, slightly surprised. “No. There are treaties in place. They don't fight the Darkin in most of Europe. They have learned to live in harmony with them.”
 
 
Winn was shocked. She could have thrown a feather at him and tipped him right over the rail of the airship. “You telling me they all live
together?
”
She gave a shrug of her dainty shoulders. “I wouldn't say together. More like coexisting. As I said, there are many levels of society in Europe, Mr. Jackson. The Darkin are simply one of them.”
Winn pulled off his hat and scratched his head. Damn. He was out of his depth. “So you aren't asking me over as a Hunter. More like a Pinkerton.”
“A tinker? Hardly.”
“Pink-er-ton.”
She tilted her head, curiosity in her eyes. “Please explain.”
“They're hired security and detectives. Look into crimes, find stolen things, track down criminals, that sort of thing.”
“
Da
. A Pinkerton.”
The land spread out beneath them in hues of brown and tan with fingers of green in the arroyos between the reddish rocks. The sun beat down, and Winn replaced his hat, enjoying the breeze caused by the motion of the airship. He could smell the heavy floral scent that clung to her and tried to identify it. Lilies? Maybe. Roses? No. Whatever it was, the tantalizing fragrance heated his blood and made him painfully aware that she was a desirable woman.
And a Darkin
, he reminded himself as he stared out at the ground moving rapidly beneath them. The shadow of the dirigible skated across the surface of the ground, up and down hills and valleys in a fascinating dance of shadow and light.
“This is the most amazing place I've ever seen,” she murmured.
The wistful sound hit Winn straight in the chest. “Yeah, but as beautiful as the land is, it can kill you in a heartbeat if you don't respect it.”
Her gaze connected with his, and awareness flared deep in his gut. The contessa wasn't just any vampire. She was something far more, just as exotic and beautiful as the desert, and just as deadly. But Winn couldn't ignore the pull to know about her.
“Since you asked me a personal question, may I ask you one as well?”
Her full lips lifted into a subtle smile. “
Quid pro quo
?”
Winn rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, I suppose.”
“What do you wish to know?”
“How'd you become a vampire?”
Humor danced in her eyes as she looked at him. “What a silly question. I was born one, of course. And into one of the oldest vampire families, I might add.”
Winn about choked on the apple-sized lump that suddenly seemed lodged in his throat. “Born? Vampires are born?” He coughed hard against the uncomfortable thickness. “I thought you had to get bit.”
She gave a shrug of her shoulder. “That happens, and those are children by gift, but for the most part we are born, the same as you mortals. We are living vampires, with heartbeat and breath the same as you. Living vampires only fully transition into the undead after their first blood meal.”
“The vampires I've run across don't have beating hearts. Holy water and stakes don't work on the undead.”
“The truly undead are not as impacted by things like sun, salt, stakes or holy water. But the living younglings are much more susceptible.”
“That explains an awful lot about the confusing accounts we got of things working on some vampires and not others,” he said softly as he glanced at the smooth column of her neck. There was no movement of a heartbeat beneath the fine-grained skin, or any indication that blood moved through her veins. It was a bit unnerving. “The black blood you vampires have, that happen after you transition too?”
“
Da
. It is the blood of the undead. There's no life force in it, which is why we must feed on the living.”
“What happens if you feed on somebody who just died?”
“Dead man's blood is poisonous, Mr. Jackson.” She shuddered delicately and rubbed her upper arms. “We do not touch it.”
“I suppose the inventing thing isn't something you're supposed to do either.”
The contessa gave him a sharp look. “It is ... undignified.” She looked away from him, her finger tapping on the rail. “But that does not mean my curiosity for Sir Turlock's inventions is any less.”
“I saw you eyeing Tempus.”
She sighed. “I admire a well-crafted invention. It's a brilliant piece of work.”
“You want to look it over?”
Lady Drossenburg glanced at him through the dark fan of her lashes. “Yes.”
He walked with her through the maze of halls and staircases back down into the bowels of the ship. In the half-light thrown by the lantern, Tempus appeared out of the gloom, his black-and-white cowhide making him look more like a real animal than a machine. Winn carefully pulled back the cargo netting enough that he could unlace the cowhide cover and get to the panel in Tempus's side. He wasn't as familiar with the machine as his brother Colt. Living horses were more his thing.
“There's a button here somewhere Marley uses to open Tempus up.”
The contessa bent double, her fingers sliding slowly and gently across the copper skin that formed the outer layer of the clockwork horse. “Here. There's a slight ridge to it.” She pressed the small square indentation. With a click, the hatch to the undercarriage of Tempus opened.
She hunkered down, practically crouching beneath the horse, heedless of the dust and grime on the floor, and held the lantern closer, then gasped. Winn noticed that glint in her eye that Marley often got when talking about his creations. “This is absolutely marvelous,” she whispered. “Look at how he's enabled the gears to shift. That's ingenious.”
He'd never seen a vampire like this before—one so absorbed in the moment that she forgot herself and seemed almost human. “This is one of his better inventions.”
The contessa spared him a brief glance. “You are very lucky, you know. There are many who would love to have Sir Turlock's genius at their beck and call.”
“Oh, I wouldn't say he's a servant or anything. He's more a partner. And, well, sometimes, we're the lab rats. Especially when he's got something new he wants to try out and hasn't got the quirks worked out of it yet.”
“Then you're even luckier.” Lady Drossenburg straightened, dusting off her skirts and smoothing out the rumples. “Thank you for letting me look at this.”
Winn simply nodded. He hadn't done anything except walk down with her and unlace the covering on his brother's horse. What she admired was all Marley's doing, not his.
There actually hadn't been much that he'd done that could be admired. He put everything back the way it had been, then resecured the cargo netting. They walked back in a companionable silence through the ship to the observation deck. Winn just figured she was busy mulling over what she'd seen.
The airship rocked slightly, pushed by a great gust of wind, forcing Winchester to steady himself. He gripped the rail, looking out across the desert. A dark, thick cloud of dust was billowing, growing taller as the wind whipped up the dry, loose soil. “Dust storm is coming,” he said, pointing to it. “Sometimes they blow in on the front edge of a monsoon.”
The contessa looked at it with interest. “I've never seen such a thing.”
Particles began to fill the air, and Winn was even more grateful for the goggles as the grit abraded his skin. The thick, swirling cloud grew taller, approaching like a brown wall across the desert. “Sure that stuff ain't gonna clog up the engines?” Winn shouted over the rising rush of wind.
She frowned, not at all pleased by the thought, and materialized her own pair of goggles, slipping them over her head. “It might. We've never flown through a dust storm before, or a monsoon.”
“We'd better get inside. Now.” The tone of his voice left no doubt this was something serious.
They dashed into the safety of the gondola to escape the wind tearing at their clothes. Through the windows, the approaching brown wall, rising well over a hundred feet above the desert, looked even more ominous as it darkened the sky. Winn had seen these storms tear whole houses away. He sent up a prayer that the fabric and ribs of the dirigible were strong enough to withstand the coming storm.
Chapter 6
The airship shook, the engines whining loudly and sputtering slightly as the blast of wind-whipped sand hit them. “I sure hope those engines hold out,” Winn said over the hissing sound of sand scouring the fabric of the dirigible and the wood and glass of the gondola. The shuddering of the ship grew worse, making Winn's teeth vibrate. “I ain't exactly ready to die yet.”
For a moment it seemed they were suspended in the murk, unable to see more than ten feet in any direction. Bits of paper, dried tumbleweeds, even an old shoe went sailing past as the ship powered forward, determined to stay in the sky despite the forceful strength of the dust storm.
The ship dipped hard and fast, causing Lady Drossenburg to stumble. Winn caught her about the waist and held her for a moment, bracing his feet wide against the erratic sway of the ship. She was soft under his hands, far more woman than monster.
“Dying isn't so bad,” she murmured. “You could always try becoming undead.”
Winn pulled away from her, giving himself a mental shake. That would teach him for thinking of her as anything other than Darkin. “Thanks for the offer, but I'm not interested.”
His agitation increased. They were in real danger. If a monsoon were pushing the sand ahead of it, they were about to get pounded by wind and driving rain. The ship struggled to maintain its position and actually started going sideways.
Grime on the windows turned to dark, tear-like streaks as fat raindrops began pelting the ship, the sky ominously dark ahead of them. Winn ground his teeth together and glanced at the contessa. “You better hold on to something,” he muttered. The fury of a monsoon could be terrifying and destructive.
CRAAAACK
. A flare of light lit the sky, brilliant white like flash powder.
BOOM!
The thunder shook the ship hard enough that a jagged line zipped along the wide pane of glass at the front edge of the gondola as it cracked. More lightning tore across the sky followed by thunder, in bursts so fast it looked and sounded like gunfire on a battlefield. Winn and the contessa covered their ears and crouched low to the carpeted floor of the gondola.
Torrents flowed from the sky, rain hitting the airship in massive sheets. Amid the earsplitting thunder, the high whine of the engines stopped, their sudden silence constricting Winn's chest like a vise. The ship pitched violently downward, furniture starting to slide toward them.
Winn grabbed the contessa, wrapping himself around her so she wouldn't get hit. “We're going down!” she yelled over the noise of the lashing rain and booming thunder.
“In that case, you better hope it's quick,” he yelled back, his heart beating hard in his chest, his stomach crawling up into his throat as they began to free-fall.
Winn had never intended to die like this—well, at least not surrounded by Darkin he was working with. He realized with a start there was still more he wanted to do. Things he'd been putting off while playing it safe. He wanted to see more than just the four unpainted walls of his office in Bodie. Wanted to ... live up to the legacy left to him. But deep down festered the doubt that he ever could.
A sputtering cough and fitful stop and start of the engines gave him a small burst of hope, but then they quit again.
“We're not going to survive, are we?” she murmured against his chest.
“Give your crew a chance,” he replied, even while he was thinking that without the engines they didn't have a prayer.
A sputter and cough and one engine started up enough to slow their descent. A minute later the second massive engine sputtered to life, the whine smoothing out until the ship once again flew level. The rain still lashed at the airship, buffeting it about, but at least they were still airborne.
Then, like all monsoons, as quickly as it had released its fury, it moved on. They emerged out of the violent tumult into a clear blue sky, scoured clean by the storm.
Off in the distance Winn spotted their target. “There's Tombstone.” A blast of dry heat, smelling of horse, dust, and the oily scent of creosote, tightened the skin on his face as he opened the door to the outer deck to look over the railing as they neared the town. Far below, the grid-like layout of the growing town was evident. So were the ant-like mounds of tailings from the various mines that surrounded the town.
In moments they were overhead, descending slowly over the main street. A mixture of screams, whinnies, and the galloping of spooked horses filled the air. Winn saw one of the crew cast over an anchor. The thunderous crash of wood splintering as the anchor cleaved through a roof indicated his aim had been off.
“It looks like you are making quite an impression on the locals.”
She glanced at him, humor dancing in her eyes. “We always do.”
Citizens and animals scattered beneath the looming shadow of the ship. Winn pulled at his mustache. He didn't like spooking folks, and he was certain the massive ship, all two hundred feet of it hanging over their heads, was doing just that.
“Prepare the ladder,” the contessa told a nearby crew member. Still wiping grit from his face, the man raced off to do her bidding.
“You're used to people following your orders, aren't you?”
“Why wouldn't I be? I was born to lead.”
Winn stuffed down an irritated grunt. She'd better not presume that, since he was there, she could boss
him
around. He wasn't about to be told what or how to do things by a skirt-wearing vampire, no matter how beautiful she was.
He was only with her to find that missing piece of the Book and get it back here before the moon went dark and all Hell broke loose.
She was a means to an end. Nothing more.
“You might need these.” She held out two more pairs of the dark glass goggles to Winchester.
“We're just going to drop off Tempus.”
Lady Drossenburg gave him a knowing smile. “Humor me. Not all your brothers are as clever as you in hiding their thoughts.”
Winn grumbled, irritated that she'd looked into his brothers' heads at all, but took the goggles and stuffed them into the pocket of his duster. Never hurt to be prepared.
The little half door, built into the railing of the deck, was swung open and latched into position so Winn could descend. He grabbed hold of the railing and eased his boot down on the swinging rungs of the ladder. Once he had his footing, he took it at a quicker pace, eager to see his brothers.
He glanced down and recognized the two smaller figures who appeared from beneath the wooden awning that shaded the walkway.
“About time you made it out,” Winn shouted down to his younger brothers. “I was beginning to wonder if Marley had told me wrong about you coming here.”
They were both armed, but holstered their weapons once they recognized him. “What in tarnation are you doing on a vampire dirigible, Winn?” Colt called out. A large animal that looked suspiciously like a mountain lion paced behind them, but they paid no attention to it.
Winchester made it farther down the ladder and hopped the last few feet to the ground. The dust billowed up in a cloud around his boots as he pulled the dark goggles down to rest around his neck. “Was made an offer I couldn't refuse.”
Remington stood gussied up like some city-slick lawyer in his fancy pinstriped pants, long black jacket, and red paisley vest. His middle brother gave him a narrow-eyed look, glancing upward at the dirigible. “You in trouble?”
Winn couldn't resist smiling at him. If there were two people he loved more than anything in this world, it was his little brothers, even if they were always spoiling for a fight. “No. Not yet. Seems the vampire royalty in Europe thinks they could use our help in tracking down a missing third of the Book. The contessa says they sent her here to request our assistance.”
“Who
they
? Vampires? They want
our
help?” Disbelief tinted Colt's tone. In his denim jeans, battered brown duster, and matching Stetson and boots, Colt looked even more disreputable next to Remington.
Winn shrugged. “Simple matter of survival. If Rathe wipes out humanity, their food supply disappears.”
Remington grimaced, his hands reflexively gripping his guns. “Hardly seems like the best of reasons for us to forge an alliance with them,” he muttered, more to himself than his brothers.
People peeked out from behind their doors, and drapes moved in windows. Across the street the tinny sound of a piano started up again. As odd as the dirigible was, just like in Bodie, nothing could get the hardy souls of Tombstone ruffled for long. A gust of hot wind blew, kicking up dust along the mostly deserted street and making the rope ladder sway and clatter against the hull of the dirigible.
“Considering how little time we've got, if Marley's calculations are correct, I don't see much of an option. If we want to discover where all the pieces of the Book have been hidden, we'll have to split up,” Winn pointed out. “You two any closer to decoding Pa's message?”
Colt caught Remington's gaze for just an instant, then turned his attention back to Winn. “Remy thinks it's got something to do with either the Weaver's Needle in the Superstition Mountains or a place called the Eye of the Needle outside of Phoenix, close to McDowell.”
Winn rolled the sharp, waxed end of his mustache between his fingers, and frowned in concentration. “Phoenix.” He paused for an instant. “I could get you there in about an hour.”
Raw-arr.
From behind them the mountain lion growled, and Winchester gave it a pointed look. “What is that? And what is it doing here?”
“You mean
who
is that,” Remington corrected him.
Winchester nodded with understanding. “Shifter?”
“China McGee,” Colt and Remington said in unison.
China?
Winn's eyes widened slightly in recognition, and his gaze darted to Colt. He at least had the decency not to let his jaw drop. “Not the same one who—” He waved his hand. “Never mind. I don't want to know.”
Remington tried to hide his amused smile, and Colt punched their middle brother in the arm. That was the thing about brothers. They never let you forget anything, especially if it was embarrassing, and Colt's first run-in with China had been a whopper, leaving him buck naked and tied to a bed. How could Winn and Remy ever forget something like that?
“It wasn't my fault,” Colt growled.
Raw-arr.
The mountain lion growled again in retort.
“She begs to differ.” Remington holstered his guns and flipped his long jacket back over them. “Despite that, she's agreed to go with me down to follow the clue Pa's friend Diego left about the map in Mexico.”
Colt gazed up at the dirigible and frowned. “You sure the contessa would be all right with extra company?”
Winn smiled. Colt was going to be surprised. “We already have Tempus on board. Thought we might drop it off for you. We're flying to Europe.”
“And now Phoenix is on the way to Europe?”
“It could be. Are you up for it?”
Colt nodded. “Let me go and fetch Lilly down here from Remy's office and we can get going.”
Winn scowled. He thought once they'd taken the riddle to Marley and decoded it, Colt would have sent her back to Hell. “You still hanging on to that demon?”
Colt pulled back his shoulders a bit and set his jaw. “She's with me until we find Pa's part of the Book.”
Damn, that boy was stubborn. Colt had long ago passed the point of taking anyone's advice but his own. “Just watch yourself,” Winn said simply. He wanted to watch Colt's back every step of the way, but that was proving impossible. Not if he was going to be protecting his own from a dirigible full of vampires.
The tension gone, Colt jibed back, “Look who's talking. You better consider wearing extra starch in your collars. You might need it, considering the company you're keeping.”
That was true. Funny how things seemed to twist upon themselves like that. Winn smiled. “Fair enough, little brother. Go fetch your demon and let's be on our way.”
Colt took the steps two at a time back up to Remington's office. Winn waited until the door closed behind his little brother, then speared Remy with a glance, and jerked his head up toward the second-story office window. “What do you think of the demon he's with?”
“Nice enough looking.”
Beside Remington, the shape-shifter in cougar form chuffed and growled deep and low, the tip of her tail twitching.
“Wasn't what I meant and you know it. Do you think Colt is in danger?”
“Well, on one hand, I think he's as safe as he lets himself be. He's got good hunting instincts, and he seems to have struck a fair bargain with the demon.”

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