Best not think about that just now, Hale told himself as he felt his fist clench and his arm start to shake a little.
“Nanaja,” he whispered into the chill Alaskan wind, “you place me in the strangest situations.”
His words went unanswered, but that was the way things should be as far as he was concerned. When the gods — or goddesses, in this case — answered you…well, you could be certain that you were in some deep kimchee. Either that or you were insane.
Usually the latter, or he hoped so at least. It would be bad, really bad, if everyone who thought a god was speaking to them was actually right.…
Though, now that I think of it, that could explain the state of the world today.
From experience, Nathan felt that he could comfortably say that the only thing worse than a bunch of lunatics acting the way they did because they were deluded enough to believe gods were speaking to them would be that same bunch of lunatics actually having gods speak to them.
His comm hummed softly in his ear, causing him to stiffen and cock his head away from his spotter scope.
A moment later Nathan set the scope aside and eased his Sassy out and forward, so that the heavy antimateriel rifle’s big barrel was nudged just over the eave of the roof. It was almost time to get back to work.
He uncapped the scope and started checking everything carefully. There was still time, but it would be better to put everything in order now than be found wanting in the clutch.
Elsewhere in the town of Barrow, a very annoyed and increasingly frustrated entity was pacing the cement floor of a large building. Towering machines lifted up all around it, dwarfing the human-sized figures that milled about, watching…waiting.
The term “vampire” meant little or nothing to this one, nor did any other word. Existence simply happened, and the continuation of existence was part and parcel of the way things were. She existed, she would not permit that to be challenged, and that was that.
Even so, it was becoming ever more clear that this situation was untenable.
She’d effectively taken over an entire population center, a feat none had managed in centuries, but now she was trapped.
For hundreds and hundreds of miles in every direction there was nothing but cold, empty land. And soon, if her information was correct, the extreme cold would come in. Freezing temperatures could be withstood for a time but not to the extremes that were reported for this area. She and hers would be frozen in place within minutes, lost to an eternal slumber she had no intention of ever rejoining.
Yet what was there to do?
The lights of Barrow came into sight as the group crested a small rise. Masters knew that they were looking for a fight, but for the first time in his professional life he found himself feeling completely uncertain about what lay ahead.
When he had been drummed out of the navy so many years ago, Masters had walked out of the regimented life of a SEAL and into a world whose existence was a revelation. There were things out there that defied everything he’d ever been taught, everything he’d ever believed, but at the time he’d been too lost to see the forest for the trees.
He knew that if he hadn’t met Norton in that beachside bar down in Tijuana, he’d probably have drunk himself into an early grave, either from liver necrosis or from some slice of darkness that caught up to him as he stumbled home from a bar.
The veil.
Even after a decade, he shivered at the thought of it. The first line of defense for civilized society, and only a fraction of a fraction of people even knew it existed. He’d blundered through it — not when that damned squid ate an Arleigh Burke — class destroyer the way everyone thought — but months later when he couldn’t, wouldn’t let it go.
Some things a man couldn’t unsee, and one of those things had changed his life forever.
Now he was marching across the semifrozen tundra, eyes wide open as he found himself actually looking forward to a vampire hunt of all things.
The three newcomers to his little group were interesting, though he still wondered if he should have taken his first gut check at its face value and told them that there was no chance in hell they could join them. The two men were one thing; it hadn’t taken him long to work out what the old geezer back at the lodge meant when he called them “fell warriors.”
They were military, both of them. Special Forces or he was a jarhead.
The girl…now, she was another story.
She was dressed far too lightly for this kind of weather, but like Norton she showed no signs of being chilled. She carried only knives, unlike her companions, who were armed with some respectable artillery, all things considered.
Tactical shotguns were the order of the day, though both of the men also carried a pair of wicked-looking custom knives and swords over their shoulders. Unorthodox by modern standards, but hell, he was carrying a kukri he’d taken from a guy who’d tried to kill him. Masters figured he was in no position to be calling the kettle black.
He stepped back to where Norton was standing, gazing out over the town.
“Any ideas?” he asked, lips twisted as he too looked out at the lights.
Norton was silent for a time. “Not really. No one’s dealt with anything like this for centuries, Hawk. Vampires aren’t common anymore. Oh, there are still a few here and there, but they usually get cut down pretty fast by the local community. They know what to look for in these creatures’ usual stomping grounds. This kind of thing isn’t supposed to happen.”
“None of this shit is supposed to happen, Alex,” Masters said. “I wasn’t supposed to watch my team get killed by some slimy piece of shit from the depths, and these people weren’t supposed to die by the hands of some old-world monster. I hate to say it, but what’s supposed to happen and what actually does have very little to do with each other. We’re not here to worry about what should happen; we’re here to fix what has happened.”
Norton sighed, but nodded. “Right. Okay, well, we’ve got to find the patient zero.”
“What happens to the others when we take out patient zero?”
“They die.”
The two men turned to look at Hannah, who was standing a short distance away, the chill wind wafting her dark hair about her face as she too looked ahead at the town. Masters glanced from her over to Norton, who shrugged. “Well technically, they’re already dead,” he said, “but yeah.…”
“So kill this patient zero, and it’s like an off switch for the rest?”
Norton grimaced. “They’ll wander around for a while, mostly directionless. Some might go after their families, if there’s anyone left to go after, but without the pack leader to renew them, they won’t last long.”
“They’ll rot,” Hannah offered, “from the inside out, while they’re walking around. It’ll be…messy.”
“Lovely.” Masters suppressed a shiver at the flat tone in the young woman’s voice. There was something about her that didn’t seem to be quite right, in his opinion, and it wasn’t just the fact that she’d joined in on this little hunt. “Do we have any idea where this patient zero is?”
“No.” Norton shook his head. “It could be anywhere.”
“Well, we have to narrow it down,” Masters growled. “We don’t have the time, or the manpower, to search the entire town.”
“She will be somewhere close enough to control her chattel.”
Norton and Masters looked to Hannah, who hadn’t even glanced in their direction before speaking. “She?” they asked at the same time.