“Alright,” Wayne said. “Jump in the truck.” The river wasn’t far, but they needed to be indoors by sunrise. Even though the sun hadn’t even set yet, every second counted.
Serena jumped to her feet. “Oh, I call–”
“The back of the truck,” Sarah said.
Serena’s glare was muted by her mask, but there was definite hostility behind it.
Wayne stepped between the two before a fight could break out. Looking up at Serena, he tried to deflect her attention. “Is Zoe still asleep?”
“Out like a light,” Serena said, her eyes wrinkling in a genuine smile.
Great, Wayne thought even as he returned her smile from behind his own mask. I’ve got a bipolar vampire on my hands who thinks she’s my girlfriend. Or thinks I’m her servant.
“If you could keep her from sliding around,” Wayne said, “I would appreciate it.”
“Alright,” came the instant response. “I can do that.”
Shaking his head, Wayne turned to Sarah. He gave a sharp nod towards the truck’s cab before climbing back into the driver’s seat.
Sarah circled around to the passenger side and got in without a word. She remained silent until they had been driving for a few blocks.
“So,” she said, tentative hesitation plain in her voice, “the girl…”
“The kid or the granny?”
A heavy thump cracked the rear window. Looking through the mirror, Wayne saw a pair of eyes glaring at him.
“Guess she can hear,” he mumbled to himself.
“Zoe,” Sarah said. “Serena told me how you saved her, and that’s great, but what do you plan to do with her?”
“Find some orphanage and drop her off.”
“That’s it? Simple as that?”
“Simple as that. Why?” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to glance in her direction. “You want to adopt her or something?”
“I’m a vampire.”
“So?” He paused, considering his words. Serena, he didn’t like the idea of her raising Zoe. But his sister… “You’re not going to eat her, are you?”
“I’m a monster.”
“No. You’re my sister and you’re being overdramatic.” Wayne gave a long and drawn out sigh through his mask. “Sarah. It’s cliché but worrying about being a monster is a great sign that you’re not. Your message to me was about caring for the stupid dragons of all things. Not exactly the kind of things a monster would worry about.”
Smiling, Wayne said, “then again, those dragons are evil.”
“Wayne,” she snapped, slapping him lightly on the shoulder.
That was the response he had been hoping for. Why she cared about the overgrown lizards was beyond him, but she did.
“Maybe having a kid to care for will help keep you on the straight and narrow.”
Wayne caught a glare out of the corner of his eyes.
“Rich,” she said, crossing her arms, “coming from you.”
“I wish I was rich. Wouldn’t have to,” he coughed, “borrow so much.”
“So you’re just going to foist her off on me?”
Wayne cricked his neck back and forth. “Why not? She’s middle school, maybe elementary school aged. Only a few years before you can ‘foist her off’ to an academy. Her mother was a mage.”
“So I heard.”
“Either that or an orphanage,” Wayne said with a shrug. He turned down another road, bringing the river into full view. “In the mean time, let’s find a boat.”
“There’s a neighborhood,” she said, pointing vaguely, “they literally dug channels from the river into their backyards.”
“Rich people neighborhood?”
“Oh yeah. Unless they all took the boats, we should have plenty of choices.”
A genuine grin spread across Wayne’s face. “Perfect.”
—
“Two towers,” Wayne said as he passed his binoculars to his cohort. “A sniper and a spotter on top of each along with mounted flame throwers. Several soldiers patrolling along the shoreline fences.”
“And a big net dangling off the bridge to catch anything that tries to swim past,” Serena said, finishing his explanation. “Which shouldn’t be a problem for your flames. And I’m sure you’re proficient enough to take control of their flames.”
“Their bullets worry me the most. Both Sarah and I should be able to erect thaumaturgical shields without much difficulty, but they won’t stand up to the amount of lead that they can pour in our direction.
“The river is flat and free from obstructions. Not even much smoke down here. They’ll see us coming the moment we move the boat around the bend.”
Serena hummed a sing-song tune. “I’ll handle them.”
“I have no doubt that you can kill them or just slip past them, but the rest of us can’t. They’ll call for reinforcements. Those reinforcements will call for reinforcements. Someone will report our boat. Soon enough we’ll have an army trailing after our boat and they won’t stop if we ditch it.”
“You worry far too much, Wayne. Forgetting my strain? Never fear, the boat will be the last thing on their minds.” Serena tapped him on the nose with her finger. “But you’ll need to be fast. Return to the boat and rev it up. Charge full speed through. Both you and your sister should have your shields at maximum strength just in case.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Now now,” she said, chiding. “Can’t reveal all my secrets, even to you. Go, we’re already wasting moonlight.”
Wayne thought to protest, but shrugged. He scooted back carefully and slowly–he had no intention of being spotted by the spotters just yet–leaving Serena behind some bushes on the riverbank.
The boat they had found wasn’t the best in the neighborhood. It did, however, have its keys in an easily accessible lockbox next to the boathouse. Zoe was huddled up under a few blankets and a few life vests just behind the driver’s seat.
Sarah, who had been sitting on the edge, stood up as Wayne approached.
“Where’s the vampire?”
“Distracting the army.”
“Distracting or killing?”
“Didn’t ask,” Wayne said, hopping into the boat. “Come on, we don’t have much time.”
The engine of the boat roared to life. They had to siphon some gas out of the truck they had stolen, but it otherwise appeared fine. Probably hadn’t been used much for a few months.
Wayne was just glad that the river hadn’t frozen over.
“Well?” Wayne said. Sarah hadn’t moved to join him in the boat. “The army would have heard that. We don’t have time to debate. Get in and put up the strongest shield you can.”
“I thought you said that she would distract them.”
“Just in case,” he said, repeating Serena’s words.
After shaking her head, Sarah hopped into the passenger seat.
Before she even had a chance to settle in, Wayne gunned the engines.
At the same time, he heard the crystal clear crack of a rifle’s report. Machine gun fire followed soon after.
“What’s going on?” Sarah asked even as the telltale haze of a powerful shield popped up in front of their boat.
Wayne gripped his tome, adding to the magical effect. “A distraction,” he said with a light grunt.
Accelerator at full speed, Wayne swung the boat around to face the blockade.
Distraction might be an understatement.
Every gun the military had in this section of town was firing. None of them were firing towards the river. Trees and the buildings of a marina were the targets of choice.
Serena stood silhouetted against the white floodlights of the military. One hand held Wayne’s binoculars up to her eyes while she held the other out extended. One finger pointed out with the thumb up in a facsimile of a gun. As she mimed her finger-gun firing with recoil, a black beam shot out of the binoculars, aimed at one of the sniper towers.
Flame started spouting from the mounted turret, all aimed away from the river.
She repeated the action for the other tower, which also started spewing impotent fire, before turning to face the oncoming boat.