“After the blasts, we go in.” I pointed to Gee and me. “We’ll take care of any vamp old enough to still be standing after the candle flash. Derek and his men will round up anyone blinded and temporarily disabled.” Flashbangs produced enough noise and light to incapacitate a human and to blind vamps. Maybe permanently. But old vamps had enough power to survive things the young ones did not, and I’d never tested them on a master. Without a pause, I went on.
“Innara, you and your fan—vamps come in behind us. No drinking, no killing. I want them alive.”
Her eyes lit up, bleeding back to human, her pupils shrinking, sclera paling down from scarlet to merely bloodshot. “So that we can make them tell us everything they know. Yes! I like your plan.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but I didn’t argue. For some reason they were listening to me. Maybe that ill-fated Enforcer situation. Derek handed two flashbangs to me and one to Gee, demonstrated the use of the military-grade, M84 stun grenades, which I was pretty sure he should not have had in his possession. He said, “We need to pull and throw together, otherwise the suckheads will have time to react and look away, cover their eyes. It’ll be on three.” He tapped his mouthpiece three times to demonstrate.
The vamps moved into the night like snakes in the grass, their bodies weirdly not human, disjointed. I dropped into the hay, Derek behind me. It wasn’t a long crawl, but it wasn’t going to be easy as loaded down with blades as I was. And wearing the wrong boots. And the wrong clothes. Not that I would gripe about it. I didn’t have time to gripe about anything.
We crawled through the hay, crushing the stiff stalks, disturbing insects, sending rodents scurrying and snakes slithering. From one whispered curse, I gathered that Derek was not fond of reptiles. We also set up a cloud of mosquitoes as we moved. With all the activity, the vamps had to see and hear us coming. Great plan. We’d have been better to just charge, except that one group had done that, and engaged someone at the front of the barn. Blades clashed and voices shouted.
I stood up at one corner of the barn, Gee across from me. We met eyes, and the smaller man nodded. Derek tapped his mic. On one, I pulled the pin. On two, I stepped to the door, Derek behind me, mirroring my actions. On three, I threw the grenade. Derek’s lofted high and at a different angle from mine. I pulled the pin on the second flashbang and tossed it, eyes closed, and continued the arc of the throw, bringing up my hands to cover my eyes and ears. A flashbang explodes at 170 decibels and a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and ammonium, at over six million candela. The night went white in a series of blasts. Moments later, we rushed in.
I figured it was useless, but I shouted as I ran, “Surrender and you’ll live. Put down your weapons.” Surprisingly, a few listened and surrendered. The fight with the rest was short and brutal. Derek and his men herded half-blind vamps and injured humans out into the night and dropped them onto the ground. Three enemy vamps who could still see went after Derek and his men, leaping off huge farm equipment and out of the hayloft at the former marines. Innara and her vamps attacked before they landed. Sneak Cheek moved off the side at a dead run and clubbed two vamps to the ground. They stayed down. Tequila Sunrise staked them in the lower bellies to immobilize them. It was nice work.
Gee and I turned to the two vamps rushing us from the corner. I fired the M4 at one, emptying both barrels, two hand-packed, silver fléchette rounds into his abdomen, the recoil reverberating through me. The vamp went down but was still alive, struggling back to his feet, even without any flesh between ribs and hips, and only a damaged spine holding him together. He was gripping a sword and an old six-shooter pistol. I kicked the gun away and blocked his human-slow-because-he-no-longer-had-blood-inside strikes until he fell for good.
Shotguns loaded with silver made fighting vamps way too easy, especially the old ones. They didn’t have the mind-set to fear guns and so took few precautions against them. But there was no fair in war. I stood over the vamp. “Yield and you’ll live,” I said.
“No,” he gasped, his face set in stubborn, frantic lines as he bled into the dirt.
I waited until he stopped gasping for breath, until his blood stopped flowing, giving him a chance to surrender. Then, when he looked dead, I took his head to keep him from rising as a revenant.
Gee was a two-blade fighter, moving like the love child of a flamenco dancer and a bird of prey, his swords like two wings, sweeping together and apart, cutting and slicing, his feet balletic, his body graceful. After making sure there were no more vamps in the barn, I holstered the M4 and leaned against a wall, watching him play with the vamp. And it was play, because though the vampire had obviously been fencing for centuries, he looked like a first-year student against the Mercy Blade. I had never fought against Gee DiMercy, and it was a good thing, as he would have cut me to ribbons. Literally. Just as he was doing with a fighter who was way better at swordplay than I was.
When he took mercy on his opponent and called for him to surrender, the man charged him, and Gee took his head. It was just like in the old TV shows and movies about the Highlander, and the saying “There can be only one.” Only without the lightning and wind when the head fell. I couldn’t help it. I clapped.
And Girrard DiMercy whirled with a flourish and bowed, one sword behind him like a wing, the other across his body, pointed down to the floor. “Very pretty,” I said.
He rose with another dramatic flourish and said, “I am, aren’t I?”
I snorted and followed him out of the barn, to find Innara casually staking a vamp.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Whirled and Caught the Naked Man
She was using a silver-tipped wood stake, which was much longer than one of mine, and she wasn’t aiming at the heart. She was stabbing him in the right side of his chest. He was screaming and bleeding, his chest already punctured several times. I raced up and caught her wrist, ripping the stake out of her hand. Innara whirled on me, her short blond hair flying. Before I could react, her fangs were at my throat.
And then she was ten feet away, screaming in pain, dancing like a burned child. Her lips were blistering, swelling as I watched. I touched my silver mesh necklace. I’d never seen it work quite so well on a vamp. Usually they had to bite me, or attempt to, and their tongues might sting a bit before they jerked away. But this—
A blur I halfway saw and totally felt tackled me from the side; her anamchara. My spine formed a sharp C shape and slapped me against the earth with a whiplash speed. I might have cursed again had I any breath. Instinct made me grab her hands, forcing her back and off me. I caught a breath and it hurt when my ribs moved. Another broken rib. Great. I held Jena off; her lips were blistered too, and she hadn’t touched my necklace. Anamchara are mind linked, meaning that they know the other’s thoughts and feelings, and apparently, if they are linked closely enough, their bodies react to the other’s pain. Now I had both of them ticked off. Then I caught a whiff of the blood. Leo’s blood.
I whipped my head to the vamp Innara had been torturing, and threw Jena from me. She let me, landing on her feet and backing away, half stumbling, arms out to the side like a wounded bird.
Derek and El Diablo were holding the vamp up, Derek with the vamp’s hair in his fist, supporting his head. Diablo was still smiling, and this time the smile was calculated and cold. I was still holding Innara’s stake, and I twirled it like a marching band baton as I strode to the vamp. I didn’t even look at Derek. I bent over the vamp and breathed in his scent over tongue and mouth with a soft scree of sound. He hissed at me through two-inch fangs. Which I ignored. I leaned so close I could feel the grave-cold of his chest on my face as I sniffed. Yes. Leo’s blood mixed with the blood of this vamp. I moved close to his face and caught the odor of Leo’s blood on his mouth. I placed the tip of the stake against his heart and looked at Derek. “Do we know where Leo is?”