I opened the door. The room on the other side had once been the men’s toilet, but the plumbing had stopped working recently and no one had bothered to fix it. I made a face at the stink and the mess and closed the door. Quickly. Shuffling silently, I slid my back down to the next. It was the women’s toilet. And it was where the vamps kept their snacks.
Three naked women were handcuffed to the exposed pipes, and all showed crusted wounds at every major pulse point, blackened eyes, and bodies covered in pustules, evidence of the vamp plague. One cradled a broken arm. Her eyelids fluttered open and she started to whimper, stinking of pain sweat and fear pheromones. I wanted to curse, but I placed a finger over my lips to silence her. Her eyes went wide and she started to cry, realizing that help had arrived. Five minutes, I mouthed to her, showing her my open fingers.
She nodded hard and fast, and mouthed back, Don’t leave us.
I nodded and closed the door. Like I’d ever leave someone prisoner. I held up three fingers to Eli so he knew what I’d seen, and moved on down the hallway. The door at the end hung crazily by one hinge. I ducked my head out and back fast, letting my brain make sense of what I’d seen. Another large room, part storeroom, part kitchen, with a large walk-in refrigerator taking up one corner. Debris and busted furniture covered the floor, but no bodies. Eli joined me at the doorway, still covering our backs, and I moved into the room, checking to make sure I’d missed nothing, no hiding places for a blood-slave with a weapon, no vamp lying in wait for fresh food. I approached the refrigerator. Its door was open and it was empty except for a large white circle painted on the floor. I’d seen one once before and closed the door, making sure it wouldn’t open from the inside. Eli looked curious, but said nothing.
I pointed to the side of the fridge and waggled two crooked fingers, miming climbing stairs, before I stepped over parts of a chair and put my back against the wall. Air flow was moving slowly along the steps, with cooler air moving downstairs near the floor and warmer air near the ceiling rising to the second story, mixing and commingling right where I was breathing. I dropped to one knee and opened my mouth, drawing in air from above over my tongue and the roof of my mouth.
There was the usual herbal smell—sage, grass, and a faint undertang of pine—and there was the fermented smell, slightly beery, I’d come to associate with Naturaleza. But beneath it, like the odd bottom note of a really weird cologne, was a dry, musty, limy scent, like cement dust and roaches. I tried to remember if I’d smelled this particular stink when the vamps attacked Eli and me in the woods, but I hadn’t noticed it. The air had been open and moving there. Here the vamp reek was concentrated, and it smelled dry and scaly, like Francis in Esmee’s garage.
I stayed where I was, kneeling, parsing the scents until I was certain. Upstairs were at least two, maybe three vamps. I held up two fingers, made a waffling motion with my hand, and held up three fingers. Eli bent and looked up the stairs quickly, pulled back, and nodded. He pointed to the flashbangs on his belt. I hesitated and then shook my head. I couldn’t explain it, but the place felt open and large. Flashbangs worked best in enclosed spaces and small rooms.
He shrugged and gave me a thumbs-up. I rose, readied my shotgun, and peeked up the stairs into the pitch-dark. Eli didn’t have his low-light equipment with him. He would be blind. I pulled on Beast’s night vision and speed, taking the steps two at a time, not bothering with stealth, my boots pounding on the treads. My vision expanded into sharp focus, blues and greens and silvers. The upstairs was one large room, exposed rafters, wood floor, low furniture, the ceiling held up with columns. The first vamp charged as I cleared the stairs. I swiveled the M4, squeezed the trigger, and took off his head. He fell as the boom reverberated, and I lost hearing. I raced inside and felt the vamp more than saw her as she leaped at me. From across the room.
I missed the head shot, my round taking her in the shoulder, spinning her off course enough for me to drop the shotgun on its sling as I drew the vamp-killer. She landed with a bounce on her injured side, and screamed the high-pitched squeal of the dying or severely injured vamp. It was loud enough to hurt even above the shotgun-induced deafness. I raised the blade and brought it down with my weight behind it, grunting hard.
The strike cut through the side of her neck and buried the blade in the floor. She stopped moving on one side, so I’d done some spinal damage, but she clawed at me with her other hand. I glanced around, making sure I wasn’t under attack by the remaining vamp, and put a foot on her chest, yanking to free the blade. The fast healing of the Naturaleza half-sealed the cut. She was screaming and brought up her hand to grab the blade. I kicked her hand and brought down the blade again, taking her head with a whack that jarred my arm. Her head rolled free; blood gushed. The usual gore, but this time with the odd stink I’d noticed. Spidey-vamp stink.
I raced to the center of the room, hearing Eli shouting, “Lights!” I whirled, seeing nothing, then stopped and closed my eyes. Electric light flooded the place. And the last vamp rammed Eli, taking him to the ground. She was fleshy and powerful, dressed in what might have once been a white dress but was now covered with dried blood and filth. Her dark hair streamed out behind her like a whip as the two impacted.
With my left hand I pulled a silver stake, knowing that the silver wouldn’t be deadly even if I hit her heart but all the other weapons might injure Eli. The Ranger rolled, lifting her over his body, ramming her into the wall. I sprinted across the room, bringing my left arm over my head. She rebounded from the wall and landed on Eli before he could find his feet, her momentum bowling them both over. I timed my steps and brought my arm down, piercing her dress, back, and internal organs. Not feeling the heart give, knowing I’d missed. And made her mad.
She raised her head and hissed. I was pulling the M4 around to fire when she leaped. And landed on me.
Her fangs caught my elbow, biting deep, tearing flesh. I didn’t feel the pain yet, not with the adrenaline flooding my system. But she was too close to position the shotgun. She growled, and I felt the vibration through the flesh of my arm. She shook me like a wolf shakes prey, to break bones. I felt something inside snap and was instantly nauseous. I fell and rolled with her. Her taloned hands stabbed at me, hitting my jacket and catching on the thin, silvered mesh between the leather and me.
Her jaws ripped out of my arm and I felt it this time. Her fangs tore at my throat, raking at the silver-plated titanium collar, guttural growls coming from her throat. When she couldn’t bite through the mesh, she lifted my head and rammed it against the floor, her talons breaking the skin of my scalp. I saw stars for a moment, sparkles of white on a black surface. My vision cleared with a blink to see a metal bar that became the barrel of a shotgun.
The blast shredded the back of her head. She fell away from me. Leaving me gasping on the floor. A second blast took her through the throat, decapitating her. Eli stood over her, making sure she was dead. “Clear,” I whispered softly, knowing she was the last one.
He raised the gun and I wasn’t surprised to see the M4. I’d dropped it along the way to nearly being vamp bait. He hadn’t understood, or maybe hadn’t heard, my clear, and he walked the perimeter of the entire story, checking for other fangheads while I eased up into a sitting position, fished a tourniquet from a pocket, and clumsily tried to get it around my left arm. The bone was sticking through the leather. “Humerus,” I whispered, and laughed, because it wasn’t humorous at all. My stomach rebelled. I twisted to the side and threw up my lunch.
I was gasping, the room tilting at a ninety-degree angle. The blood spurting across my arm to the floor seemed important, but I couldn’t figure out what to do about it. There was a lot of blood. A lot.
The buzz in my ears went higher pitched, annoying. I shook my head to clear it, but all I did was sling my blood from the talon wounds across my face.
Eli pushed my fingers to the side and secured the tourniquet, his hands feeling hot on my chilled skin. I was going into shock. His lips were moving but I couldn’t hear anything except the roar in my head. My vision telescoped down into a single bright light, and then to the blood-spatter stains on the timbers over my head.
CHAPTER 17
I Know I’ll Have to Choose
My next coherent moment showed me Eli on the cell, his lips moving. He’d propped me against a center roof support. He closed the phone. I went dark again, and woke to see him taking off my boots. Which was just wrong. His fingers undid the Velcro and the ties beneath, pulling off the boot to expose my white cotton sock. I blinked and my eyes felt dry, like I had ground glass in them. I knew that was a bad sign, but couldn’t remember what kind of bad sign it was. “Eli? Whatcha doin’?”
He looked up for a moment and back to my feet. “Good. You’re back. Rick’s on the way. He says you have to shift to heal the arm.”
“You called Rick?” I realized I could hear, the annoying buzz had damped to little more than a high hum. “Why?”
“Boy Toy’s the closest thing to furry I know. You took a blow to the head. He says you might have trouble shifting.”
“Yeah?” That seemed off. “How’s he know that?”
“He’s Big Brother PsyLED. He knows his sh— his stuff.”
PsyLED knew about skinwalkers? How? Oh yeah. Rick would have told them about me. And they probably had lots of old papers and reports for intel, way more than in the woo-woo room in New Orleans cop central. I worried with that thought while Eli pulled off my other boot. PsyLED knowing all about me was info I didn’t know what to do with, so I concentrated on what I did know. Or did want to know. “So, why’re you taking off my boots?”
“And your pants.”
“You try”—I stopped to breathe and realized I was woozy—“to take off my pants”—more breaths—“and I’ll shoot you.”
“I disarmed you.” I looked down and realized that while I was unconscious, he had unzipped my jacket, pulled my good arm out of my sleeve, and taken every single weapon. They were piled close by, but too far to reach at the moment. I looked back down. I had blood all over my nice, clean silk-knit undershirt. “Well, crap.”
