She went down the stairs. Hugh was waiting for her in the lower bailey.
“You promised me you would tell me what was in the barrels, Preceptor. Now you’re sneaking off with them.”
“I told you I’d show you if you played your cards right. You should’ve tried harder last night, sweetheart. With more enthusiasm.”
Oh you jackass. “If you’d impressed me with what you offered, I would’ve tried harder. But a woman can only do so much with mediocre equipment.”
He grinned at her. They strolled through the gates, following the cart.
Stoyan turned the horse left and stopped. Bale and Lamar took the first barrel off and set it on the ground. Bale raised his hands, index and middle fingers crossed. Stoyan knocked on the cart three times, then spat over his left shoulder.
“What the hell are you two doing?” Lamar asked in a low voice.
“For good luck,” Bale told him.
Lamar shook his head. Together they tipped the barrel over the water. Lamar broke the seal, unscrewed the lid, and lowered it into the water. The two men gingerly slid the barrel into the moat and let it sink. Nobody moved.
“Now what?” Elara asked.
“Now we find out if we’re fucked.” Hugh pulled a small metal flask from his pocket, stepped to the edge of the moat over where the barrel had sunk, unscrewed the lid, and poured the dark contents into the water. The dark liquid spread over the surface. Magic slid over Elara like a tepid rotten smear. Vampire blood.
The water lay placid.
Bale waved his crossed fingers around.
The water boiled, as if something large slid underneath it. The red stain vanished.
“Ha!” Bale barked.
“Shhh,” the three other centurions hissed at him.
Stoyan pulled on the horse, leading it around the moat.
“What is it?” she asked.
“What will you give me if I tell you?”
“Hugh,” she ground out.
“Fine. Some years ago, Roland sent me up to Alaska to talk to Ice Fury. It’s the biggest shapeshifter pack in the US. The talks got us nowhere. The Ice Fury shifters are separatists. All they want to do is to run around their woods and be left alone. They spend most of their time in animal form. The way they’re going, in a couple of generations they’ll forget how to be human. So the talks didn’t go as planned, but since I was already in Alaska, I figured why not make a trip of it. We went up North and ended up in Mekoryuk. It’s a city on Nunivak island. Nuniwarmiut people have lived there for two thousand years. While I was there, I met an old woman who told me they weren’t worried about Roland or his vampires, because they had dirty ice and it would protect them. Long story short, I went and got some of that dirty ice. Cutting it out and dragging it back home was a pain in the ass, but I knew Nez or whoever came after him would be gunning for me sooner or later. Here we are.”
The cart stopped, and Felix and Bale took another barrel off. Elara watched as they took off the lid and sank it.
“Yes, but what’s in the ice?”
“A bacterial strain,” Hugh said. “Nasty bugger, highly aggressive. We had to cut down to permafrost to get it. Harmless to humans as far as I can tell. Loves water. Guess what it likes for dinner?”
“Vampires?”
He nodded. “Any undead is fair game.”
“Have you used it before?” she asked.
“We tested it.”
“But not in actual battle?”
“No.”
“So you don’t know if it will work.”
“There are no guarantees in life,” he said.
“Now isn’t the best time to get philosophical, Preceptor.”
“Would you rather have an empty reassurance?”
Yes, she thought. She would. It wouldn’t do her any good, but right now reassurance would be nice. Sadly, nice wasn’t something she could afford at the moment.
“Vampires don’t swim,” he said. “No air in the lungs. They sink to the bottom, so they will have to wade through. Considering the distance and typical vampire speed under water, they are likely to be under between ten and twenty seconds. In lab trials, that was enough to cause critical damage. The trick is raising the concentration high enough. The higher the concentration, the more effective the bacteria will be. The bacteria will need food to multiply. Our supplies of undead blood are limited.”
“We have some blood and bones in storage. We’ll add what we can.”
“Thank you.”
“Do you think it will be long enough?” she asked.
“We will find out,” he said.
They followed the cart again. Dread settled on Elara and weighed her down. Two more weeks. Less now, one week and six days. There were other preparations to be made. The preparation for when everything went wrong. The memory of the ice flickered over her mind. She didn’t want to do it again. She didn’t want to remember what it was like but knowing she might have to gnawed at her.
“What if we sank some concertina wire?” she asked. “It’s a long flexible razor wire that comes in coils. Military grade.”
“I know what concertina wire is. How much do you have?”
“I don’t know. It comes in 50-foot bails,” she said. “We have a warehouse of it.”
He stared at her.
“We bought it off a derelict prison,” she said. “We meant to use it as a wolf deterrent, but wildlife and livestock kept getting caught in it and it was cruel, so we didn’t.”
He looked to the sky and laughed.
“I don’t see what’s so funny.”
He turned to her. “I’m trying to save us. Had I known we had concertina wire, I would’ve planned our defenses differently.”
She shrugged.
“I can’t effectively protect us if you keep relevant information from me,” he said.
“You seem to be doing fine,” she told him.
“You really are a harpy, you know that?”
“If you want to know if we have something, Preceptor, I suggest you use your words and ask. We do not volunteer information, because we don’t trust you. The only way to change that is by demonstrating your intentions and following through.”
Hugh shook his head. “I had a crazy thought.”
“By all means, do share it.”
“What if I’m dead and this is purgatory, and you’re my punishment?”
“I doubt it,” she told him.
“Why?”
“Because if I’m your punishment, you’re mine. The Christian god is the god of forgiveness. He is too kind to do this, even to us.”
He laughed again.
The fog parted, and a creature landed next to them, a shaggy, dark meld of human and wolf. The shapeshifter contorted, collapsing into a human shape. A nude woman shook herself, as if trying to fling the last of the fur from her skin. Karen, Elara remembered. One of Hugh’s scouts.
“Found them,” she said. “Fifteen clicks north at the Rooster ley line point.”
High turned to her. “Call your people. We have a strategy to plan.”
Elara slumped in the chair. Her feet still hurt. She nudged her sandals off, let them drop, and curled her toes.
The study was full. Savannah sat in an overstuffed chair to Elara’s right, perfectly dressed, her make up unsmudged. The only indication of the late hour was her loose hair that framed her face like a halo. Johanna perched on the table to Elara’s left, in her usual spot. Stoyan sat next to Savannah. He’d glanced in Johanna’s direction once when he came in and then proceeded to look everywhere else. Not fooling anyone. Across from Stoyan, Bale, who had come in a few minutes ago looking hung over, slumped forward in his chair, his head on the table, resting on his crossed arms. Felix, a quiet shadow, leaned against the wall behind Bale. Karen, the female werewolf scout, paced the length of the study, newly dressed.