Vampire Redemption (16 page)

"Where's Tom?" Selah glanced around, expecting him to step into sight, his crooked smile in place.

Gordon shook his head. "Tom didn't make it."

"What?"

"We have to move." Lee's voice was sharp, decisive. "Everybody and everything in this valley just saw us go down. We've got to get away from the chopper before they close in on us."

"What do you mean, 'didn't make it'?" Though she knew. She just didn't want to admit it. She stared up at the dark bulk of the chopper where it hung in the cradle of a half dozen shattered trees, groaning and listing. The small clearing in which they stood was filled with shattered tree stumps.

"Come on." Lee stepped past Selah, moving toward the darkness.

Gordon shifted Dominique in his grip and began to follow. McKnight took up a handful of snow and pressed it to the gash in her scalp, her face hollowed out in the light of the moon. She took a few steps before turning back to Selah, who still looked up at the chopper.

Didn't make it.
 Was he up there right now? She felt the feverish glow of the Serum battle the numbness of shock.

"Selah." McKnight took a step toward her. "We have to move."

"We can't leave him up there," said Selah. Lee and Gordon stopped and looked back. "We can't." She knew better, but she couldn't help herself.

"We have to keep moving," said McKnight again. "There's nothing we can do for him."

Selah shook her head. Ignored her instincts. Thought of Tom's arms around her back in the Hybrid base. "
No
. We have to help him." Tears were tracking down her cheeks.

"Selah." Lee's voice was cold, impatient. "He's dead."

She knew that. She 
knew 
it. But she couldn't move. 
You're in shock
 said a quiet voice in her mind.

Lee stepped up to her. Looked her in the face. "Selah? Look at me. I know you liked Tom. He was a good guy." His voice was strangely gentle, as if he were talking to a six-year-old. Annoyance pricked at her. "But he's gone, yeah? He's not feeling a thing. Me? My ass is getting cold. So can you quit acting like a baby and start moving?" He gave her an encouraging smile and two thumbs up.

Fury. Selah lashed out. Not with the speed she once had possessed, nothing close to what Sawiskera had cursed her with, but Serum-boosted speed, her fist aimed at his smug face. Lee swayed aside easily and stepped back.

"How dare you? How dare you!" Selah wanted to tear his head off.

"Good. You angry? You mad? That means you're awake. Let's go." He turned and began to jog toward the trees.

Selah couldn't believe it. She wanted to rend him limb from limb. She looked to McKnight, who shook her head and took off after Lee. Gordon was already moving. She looked up once again. Somewhere in that dark mangled hulk was Tom. She tried to think of something to say, a goodbye, but then shook her head, wiped the tears away, and began to run after the others.

They ran into the trees, Lee taking the lead, Gordon powering along behind him. McKnight and Selah ran shoulder to shoulder, jogging forward in determination. Snow lay a foot deep on the hard ground, making their progress treacherous and exhausting, and the trees were a dark multitude all around them. In moments, they had left the clearing behind and were moving through a shadowland of gray snow and black trunks. The cold was beginning to pierce her, burn her face, but the Serum was a gift from the gods. Selah stared at Lee's back and played his words over and over again. Her anger started to fade. Had he manipulated her that efficiently?

The trees grew sparser and the sky became more visible overhead. Lee found a ridge of rock that he led them along, the mountain sloping steeply down to thicker woods to their right. After five minutes of hustling, he slowed down to a forced march, and Selah felt a wave of contempt. Was he tired already? Then she saw McKnight's face, which had gone from hollowed to drawn with pain.

"You okay?" she asked.

McKnight didn't even look at her. Breath pluming out in the cold, she simply nodded. Selah felt impressed all over again. McKnight was injured and somehow was still keeping up with two Hybrids and a serum-infused Selah.

"Incoming!" Lee's cry split the gelid air, and Selah looked around wildly before catching sight of shapes flitting down the slope toward them. She had a half second to make out their pale faces in the moonlight before Gordon and Lee opened fire. Two of the shapes slowed, staggered, and dropped. McKnight, her reflexes only human, pulled her gun out and took aim. Selah looked around desperately and picked up a branch. It was too green, too flexible, so she cast it away.

McKnight shoved Selah aside as a whipcord-lean woman fell upon them, her clothing torn, blond hair in two wrist-thick braids which whipped about as she fought to bury her teeth in McKnight's neck. Selah almost tripped over a rock, and then hauled it up. It was the size of a football, and without thinking, she fell forward and brought it down with all her strength on the vampire's head. She felt bone crack and give way. The vampire's struggles grew erratic and weak in McKnight's grip as Selah fell to her knees.

Yells and screams from behind them. Selah turned and saw spinning, whirling bodies in the darkness. The Hybrids were moving as fast as the vampires, and for a moment Selah thought they were evenly matched. But no. Lee and Gordon were two of the most dangerous men in the entire US military. Coupled with their Serum-boosted power, there was no contest. In a few moments, both vampires were down, mewling and spitting with fury, bones and joints broken and shattered.

Selah hauled McKnight to her feet. Gordon placed a new clip in his handgun and aimed it at a fallen vampire's head, but stopped when Lee pushed his gun down. "Save the ammo." He nodded and they turned to McKnight and Selah.

"You two all right?" The scorn was gone from Lee's voice. Selah nodded. McKnight took a deep breath then did the same. "Good. Stay tight. The night's just getting started."

They took off, leaving the vampires to writhe impotently in the snow. Adrenaline led them at a run again along the ridge, then for reasons of his own, Lee led them down into the woods, following a shallow declivity until Selah heard the sound of a stream. Under the canopy, the air was dark and close, but when they reached the stream, it ran like liquid metal under a sliver of open night sky. Lee turned and followed along its bank, keeping to a narrow shelf of smooth snow.

McKnight was tiring. Selah felt like surging forward, but forced herself to keep pace with the Sergeant. She couldn't tell where else she might be injured beyond the scalp wound, but McKnight began to stumble. How long had they been running for? Selah had no sense of time. Cries sounded from across the stream, yipping calls of delight and hunger, and Selah thought she could see shapes keeping pace with them.

"What are they waiting for?" asked Selah. "Why don't they attack?"

Gordon didn't turn around, kept jogging with dogged strength, Dominique in his arms. "Gathering numbers."

Lee dropped back. He ignored Selah's stare and touched McKnight's elbow. She swung around and stumbled again. Selah steadied her.

"Sergeant. You with us?"

"Yeah. I'm all right." Her words were slightly slurred, as if she had been drinking.

Gordon looked over his shoulder. "How she doing?"

"Concussion. We need to give her a shot."

One of the vampires left the darkness of the tree line and came forward toward the opposite bank. He didn't run. He didn't come charging across the snow. Instead, he walked. It was this slow approach that drew their attention. Selah stared at him and her stomach tightened into a vicious knot. Her mouth ran dry and the febrile power that washed through her blood suddenly felt as thin and insubstantial as flames licking a sheet of paper.

She knew him. Knew his face, dark with might and fallen majesty. Had seen his features lit by the neon lights of Miami. Had studied them by moonlight in the Huntington Garden in LA. With his help, she had slain the vampire king, the eldest of them all, and when she had seen him last, it had been to consume his heart, raw and bloody. Theo. Sawiskera's child, known once as The Dragon, who had loved her and had made the ultimate sacrifice so that she could beat back Sawiskera's curse.

He wore only a black shirt over dark jeans. The cold of course affected him not at all. He moved with the grace and poise of a natural dancer, each step fluid and certain. He radiated menace, though he made no threat. His presence poisoned the air, caused the hairs on the back of her neck to stand. They had fought down some vampires, true; but The Dragon was a whole other matter. The Dragon was in a league of his own.

Lee turned slowly from McKnight as if pulled against his will by Theo's gaze, and stepped up next to Selah. Stared across the narrow stream that separated them from Theo. The vampire stood but ten yards away, a silent shadow. "Who is that?" he asked, breath ghosting out before him.

Selah didn't answer. Theo was staring at her. His eyes were hidden in shadow beneath his brow, but she could feel his gaze lying heavy upon her soul. The foul taste of his heart came back to her lips, and she felt her gorge rise in protest. 
I will come after you. I will hunt you. I will seek to eat your heart. 
His last words echoed in her mind and she shook her head, unable to answer.

Lee raised his revolver. He did so without rushing, and aimed it at Theo. Who continued to ignore him. For a second, they all stood still, a frozen tableau, and then Lee lowered his gun and turned to McKnight. Moving with unnatural speed, he took out a hypodermic, opened a pouch in which serum capsules were held, and slipped one in. McKnight focused on him and began to shake her head. He ignored her and jabbed the needle into her shoulder, holding her tight with his other hand. Pressed down the plunger and then tossed the capsule away.

Selah registered all this dimly. It was as if she and Theo stood on a shore of their own, the shore of a great black lake under a moon ten times as large, and the others were ghosts lost in the fog. Their eyes were locked. Pain keened within her. For him to be brought to this. For him to look at her with such cold hunger. She knew exactly what he was doing. Knew why he wasn't attacking, and that knowledge sickened her.

McKnight groaned, coughed, and then spat. More vampires began to drift from the forest edge to stand arrayed behind Theo. Three at first, then five, then seven. They were silent, their grins and splayed fangs moronic when contrasted with Theo's intensity. Selah tore her gaze away. "How long till dawn?"

"Dawn?" Gordon looked reflexively toward the sky. "Another four hours."

Selah shook her head. Calm fury had descended upon her. "We have to move." It felt futile to say so. They were dead. She would fight, oh, she would fight to the bitter end. But with The Dragon himself hunting them through these damned woods, they didn't have a chance.

"McKnight?"

"Fuck you," the Sergeant said, her voice low with curdled anger. "How dare you?"

"Good girl. Let's go." Lee whipped around and raised his gun, aiming it at exactly where Theo had stood. He was gone.

They all scanned the far riverbank. The other vampires were dispersing, retreating toward the tree line, but of Theo there was no sign. He had simply vanished. Lee grimaced and put up his weapon. He clapped McKnight on the shoulder and began to jog forward, feet crunching in the snow. Selah took a shaky breath and followed after, fighting to dispel the cold that gnawed at the edge of the Serum. And the pain, she realized. The pain was still there. Hidden, masked, but smoldering beneath the surface. She was still hurt. The Serum wouldn't last forever. She wondered which would come first--the pain or the end.

They moved. The world was a morass of shadows and moonlit patches of snow. As a group, they trudged forward, all of them but the comatose Dominique powered now by refined vampire blood, riding high on Blood Dust in its purest form. It kept them alert and focused long after they should have degenerated into shambling and exhausted wrecks. They maintained a steady pace, Lee taking point, Gordon powering after, his tree trunk legs shoving snow aside so that Selah and McKnight could follow in his wake.

After ten minutes, they left the stream where it plunged into a small waterfall, crossing it at a narrow ford with long leaps and followed a sharp decline that led them down and into the woods beyond. Into a thick stand of fir trees, the ground underfoot only dusted with snow that lay like icing over the matted fir needles. Selah felt eyes upon the nape of her neck and knew that she was being examined; she forced herself to remain focused, however. To not look wildly around. To concentrate on Gordon's broad back and keep running.

The first attack came suddenly as they crossed an open field of snow. It was small, a ragged trapezoid of open space marred by boulders, and as they coursed across it, moving ever downhill, the wave of thralls came. Selah felt relief. Their yips and laughter meant they came alone. Lee put on speed, and they broke into a sprint, racing between the rocks as the thralls converged upon them.

Running all out, the sound of her breath almost blocking out everything else, she saw a large man leap down from a boulder to crash into Gordon, knocking him and Dominique sprawling into the snow. Selah didn't think. She reached down and snagged a great branch from the ground, adrenaline giving her strength, and as she passed where Gordon wrestled with the vampire, she swung with all her might like a mounted polo player. The end of ponderous branch cracked against the vampire's skull and he went over. She ran on. McKnight would help him up. They couldn't stop. If they did, they were dead.

Gunfire. A scream of anger, then a bloodcurdling one of pain. Selah ran on. Around a great rock twice as tall as she was, and there was Lee, grasping one vampire woman by the throat, arm outstretched to keep her at bay even as a second was driving him to the ground, hissing her fury to the night sky. With a cry of desperation he tripped, and fell.

Chapter 14

Selah came in low and hard and swung her branch right at the second vampire's head. It shattered, dry splinters exploding everywhere, and the vampire sagged over. Selah crouched and grasped her by the throat and then leaped up, so that she raised the vampire woman to her feet and then crashed back down two yards away, driving her head against a rock. It cracked with a sickening wet sound, but that didn't stop her. The vampire's eyes gleamed wetly in the light of the moon, and face distorted by desire and hunger, she raked out with her hand and clawed Selah's face open.