Sanguinary (Night Shift Book 1) Read online

  I checked my service weapon in my shoulder holster. Guns might not be much good against vampires, but they were great against human servants of those vamps. Then I grabbed one more stake.

  “Let’s go.” Iverson opened the back door of the van and we all piled out.

  The night air was beginning to cool around us, with a tiny hint of the slight chill to come later in the season. The full moon shone through the fading blue sky; I hoped we would be able to use its light to find the electronic fence Dr. Richards had mentioned.

  The three of us slipped through the trees as silently as we could, slowing as we reached the border between the two properties.

  Standing in a line, we stared intently into the oak and pecan trees around us, afraid to take another step in case we set off the alarm. Finally, Iverson waved to get our attention, and then pointed off to the left. I shook my head, and he came up behind me, turning my head and lining my vision up with his pointing finger. There it was. A tiny red light glinting among the trees. We moved toward it, careful to stay on our side of the invisible line.

  We stopped about three feet from the small black box. I scanned the trees around us. Maybe we could go under it. “Cover me,” I whispered. I stripped off my jacket and dropped it to the ground, then knelt, preparing to wiggle under the presumed line of the laser.

  A strange shiver wiggled through my stomach, sending trails of sensation around and up my back. Goosebumps popped out over my arms, and I glanced behind me, a little surprised to discover no one other than Jeanie and Iverson standing there.

  Shaking my head, I turned back to the invisible fence, trying to gauge where the line of the laser might fall.

  “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sugar,” a voice drawled from above me. With a jerk, I looked up into the trees. There, standing in a Y-branch of the tree, legs crossed at the ankle, hands tucked into his jeans pockets, mostly hidden from below by the leaves, was Reese. He didn’t have his hat this time, but he was still wearing his cowboy boots.

  As soon as the vampire spoke, Iverson and Jeanie both swung their crossbows up to aim at him. He didn’t seem especially bothered by it, but he did take his hands out of his pockets and hold them up in the air.

  “Take it easy,” he said. “I’m on your side. Ask the lady.” That strange thrill went through me again at the sound of his voice.

  My squad-mates looked at me out of the corners of their eyes, keeping most of their attention—and their aim—on Reese.

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “He might be.”

  “This is your contact?” asked Jeanie.

  I nodded, watching Reese as a slow smile spread across his face, bringing out his dimples.

  My stomach flipped as another electric quiver zapped through me.

  It couldn’t have been because of his smile, no matter how much I wanted to convince myself it had. I had been shaking before I knew he was there.

  Iverson took his finger off the trigger, letting his bow point to the sky. Jeanie dropped her aim too, but she still watched Reese narrowly.

  “Why are you here?” I asked, injecting steel into my voice and forcing it not to tremble.

  “We had a meeting tonight, sweetheart.” Reese jumped to the ground. It must have been ten feet down, but he landed lightly, barely bending his knees to take the impact. “You missed it.”

  “So you followed me here?”

  “First I did a little backtracking and found out that Mendoza’s group had your partner committed. Then I followed you here.” Reaching into the underbrush below the electric fence emitter, he pulled back the leaves of a bush, revealing a second emitter at ground level. “Try to crawl underneath it and this one goes off.” He pointed up into the tree. “There’s another one about six feet up too.”

  “So how do we get in?” asked Iverson.

  “Up and over is your best bet,” Reese said. “That way is left open for vampires.” He grinned and his fangs gleamed in the moonlight. I felt, more than saw, Jeanie and Iverson tighten their grips on their bows.

  The vampire chuckled—that low unvampy laugh of his—and headed deeper into the trees, paralleling the invisible fence. “Come on. I’ll show you the way.”

  Chapter 10

  Jeanie leveled a serious look at me. “Are you sure we can trust this guy?” she whispered.

  “No,” I replied. “But right now, I don’t know if we can afford not to.”

  Best not to mention the spine-tingling frisson I felt every time I looked at him.

  And every time he stood behind me, whether or not I knew he was there.

  Iverson shrugged, shouldered his crossbow, and began following Reese through the trees. I jogged to catch up with them, and Jeanie followed.

  “Why are you here?” I whispered when I came up alongside the vampire.

  He kept walking. “I was concerned about you.”

  “No. I mean, how did you know where to find me?” I wasn’t entirely sure I wanted to hear the answer.

  When he glanced down at me, I felt that tug in my abdomen, like a string pulling me toward him. I stumbled and he reached out to steady my elbow.

  “That,” he said shortly.

  “What the hell?” I rubbed my stomach with one hand.

  Raising an eyebrow, he glanced back at Iverson and Jeanie, a reminder of our audience.

  Was I seriously considering keeping a vampire’s secrets from my own team?

  If it meant saving the world, then yes.

  Oh, hell and damn. I am in ten thousand kinds of trouble.

  Reese quit moving and held up his hand for us to stop. “There’s our way in. You wait here. I’m going to make sure no one else is using it right now.” He moved off through the trees, picking his way through the underbrush.

  I could hear our breathing, see the slight mist of it in the warm night air. It took a minute for Reese to return, but every second counted against Andre’s life as he fought off vampires.

  Andre is well trained. He’s fought vampires before. Reminding myself didn’t help me shake the anxiety.

  “All clear,” Reese said, pointing up. Between two trees ran a thin wire, about thirty feet off the ground, strung from one tree to another.

  This time, my flip-flopping stomach had nothing to do with Reese’s presence.

  “I’m going to have to walk a tightrope to get in to save Andre?” I said. “No way. I’m not an acrobat. I don’t do high wires. You’re going to have to find another way in.”

  “There isn’t one,” he said. “When we get up there, I’ll keep you safe. You’ll have to hang from the wire, wrapping your hands and ankles around it, and go hand-over-hand until you get to the other side.”

  “Like in the ‘Be All You Can Be’ Army ads.” I hoped that the fact that we were still whispering hid the shaking in my voice.

  “Exactly like that,” Reese agreed. “Ready?” He stepped up into the first Y-branch of the tree, and then reached down to help me follow him. His hand was cool, as usual—no surprise there; he was dead, after all—but as soon as our fingers met, I felt the tugging in my stomach again, pulling me toward him.

  The climb up to the wire was easier than I had anticipated. I went up first, and Reese moved gracefully from one branch to another behind me. Iverson and Jeanie followed.

  Reese’s hands kept me steady, and as long as he was holding on, I found that I wasn’t afraid.

  I had to keep reminding myself that just because he was keeping me from falling didn’t mean I was safe with him.

  But it felt safe.

  “Here goes,” he said. Then he picked me up and held me over the line. Thank God for his vampire strength, I thought, then wondered if God was the right person to thank. He let me get my hands and feet positioned, and then swung me around gently so that I was hanging upside down.

  I had expected the wire to cut into my hands, but it was coated.

  And if my hands slip, I will fall and die.

  The mere thought gave me sweaty palms.
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  “Now move,” he said. “And don’t look down.”

  It took almost every ounce of courage I had to peel my right hand away from its death-grip on the line and scoot it about six inches farther along, but I managed it. And after that first foot, the going got much easier.

  Until I got to the middle and looked down.

  My fear of heights isn’t rational. It’s primal. And my primal instinct, when I let my head fall backwards and saw the ground below me, was to squeeze my eyes shut and hold on to the wire for dear life. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Then the wire started swaying and bouncing. I whimpered and held on even more tightly.

  “Shh,” whispered a voice in my ear. And there was Reese, kneeling down and balancing on the wire above me, in cowboy boots, for chrissakes.

  “I won’t let you fall,” he said. I found myself looking into his eyes. They began shining with a blue light, his pupils widening until they took up all of the irises, then all of the whites. I felt for a moment like I was falling up—up into the blue glow of his eyes. My head spun, then cleared, and my stomach followed suit.

  I was no longer afraid.

  I nodded at him and unclenched my hands. I moved first one arm, then the other, smoothly, easily. I skimmed the line all the way to the end, watching the ground slide past me as I went.

  Reese followed me, stepping across the wire like a cat on a windowsill. The cat we had when I was growing up fell off the windowsill, as often as not. But Reese didn’t fall. He didn’t falter.

  He stepped off the wire and into the crook of two branches above me.

  Without thinking about it, I scrambled down to the ground, and Reese followed.

  “Okay,” he said. “You’re good here.” I nodded and he moved back onto the wire toward Jeanie and Iverson, stepping along it with that strange motion that most vampires have, all sinuous and balanced.

  I realized then that he didn’t normally move that way. In fact, until I saw him walk across the wire, I hadn’t seen him move in any way that couldn’t be described as normal. Human.

  I wondered if that meant anything. Were some vamps better able to mimic humans?

  Not human, I thought.

  Vampire.

  And that’s when I started to shake.

  I had looked into his eyes and he had taken away all my fear of falling.

  I hadn’t thought anything of it. Not until he was gone.

  And if he could take away that fear, what else could he take away?

  I slid down into a crouch and wrapped my arms around my knees. Then, on second thought, I reached behind me and pulled out a stake from its holster at the small of my back.

  If he tries to bewitch me again, I’ll kill that S.O.B.

  Seconds later, Iverson swung from the tree and dropped to the ground beside me, Jeanie right behind him.

  “You okay?” Iverson asked, frowning.

  “I think so.” I wasn’t shaking any more, but my hands felt ice-cold.

  Jeanie followed Iverson out of the tree, and Reese, once again walking the wire, followed her.

  “Okay,” said Reese, swinging out of the tree to land on the ground. He paused, taking in the stake in my hand and my narrow-eyed glare. Taking one deliberate step back, he nodded at me.

  Electricity crackled between us, tugging me closer to him even as I stood up and leaned away from the vampire.

  “Let’s go.” He moved away from the wire and onto a well-worn path.

  We emerged from the trees and there, in front of us, lay the back side of the Tudor-style mansion that housed the Westlake clinic.

  “Vampires are always expected at night,” Reese said. “Stay with me and you’ll be fine.”

  We were halfway across the lawn when the screaming started.

  Chapter 11

  The screams came from inside the house, of course.

  We all broke into a run. Reese soon outstripped the rest of us, loping across the lawn in a smooth stride that looked wholly unnatural. By the time the rest of us got to the door, he was already out of sight.

  We didn’t need to see him to follow the screams coming from somewhere above us. We took the stairway to our right—probably originally a servants’ staircase, given the narrow, steep steps and the claustrophobic walls.

  There was more than one voice, and now that we were closer, I could hear sobbing mixed in with it. And begging. “Please,” someone wailed, “not again!”

  We tumbled out of the narrow stairway and into a hallway. Iverson and Jeanie were in front of me, so I didn’t immediately see what brought them staggering to a halt. I ran straight into Iverson’s back. It’s a good thing he’s as big and solid as he is. If I’d run that hard into anyone smaller, he’d have fallen right into the middle of the mess in front of us. Iverson only tottered a bit before catching his balance.

  I grabbed his shirt to keep my own balance, and then edged around him to see what had made them stop.

  The lights were off, but moonlight glinted in through several windows. Blood and gore streaked the walls, some of it new and shiny, but most of it dried up, stains of deepest black in the darkness.

  Everywhere I looked, vampires were attached to people in various kinds of sleepwear. Some of the humans were trying to fight the vamps off, but they weren’t succeeding very well. And worse, some of them weren’t fighting at all. In that first glance, I didn’t see Andre or Garrett, but it was hard to tell who anyone was in the semidarkness.

  Without hesitation, I reached over to the wall beside me and flicked a switch.

  The scene was even worse in full color. The walls were still streaked, but the streaks looked more horrific somehow, ranging from bright, dripping red, to dark black gobs, to a crusty dried brown. The coppery smell of blood tinged the air, overlaid with the more pungent aromas of urine and feces.

  The vampires who were feeding looked up, some of them dropping the patients they had been holding, others merely watching us over the bodies of the humans they drained, their mouths continuing to move in time to their victims’ slowing heartbeats.

  I spotted Reese about three quarters of the way down the hall, pulling a female vamp off a patient and tossing her halfway back toward us.

  As suddenly as they had stopped, Iverson and Jeanie moved, both pulling out stakes and wading into what was quickly becoming a more evenly matched fight.

  I pulled my own weapons out and moved in the opposite direction, a stake in each hand. There weren’t as many vamps down this way, but I knew I needed to watch my team’s back. At this end of the hall, four vamps had been busily feeding off their prey, but they were now moving toward me.

  I backed up to a blank wall, stake held out in front of me. The vampires were making inhuman hissing noises, staring at me as they inched closer. There were humans on the floor between the vamps and me, and they were stirring now too, clutching their bleeding bits: One clamped his hand to the inside of his elbow, the other to her shoulder, the final to her neck. They looked around blearily, their eyes widening when they caught sight of the vampires.

  “Come over to me,” I said, motioning them toward me with my head. “I think I can hold them off.”

  But one of them, the man, actually walked toward the vampires.

  “Please,” he whispered, “take me.”

  Dear God. Defend me from addicts who don’t want to be saved.

  At least it distracted the vamps long enough for the two women to scrabble across the hardwood floor and crouch down behind my legs. They clutched each other, their eyes huge in their pale faces.

  The man stretched out his arms as if to embrace one of the vampires, a dark-haired male with a Billy Idol-esque sneer on his lip. The vamp brushed the man away with his fingertips, like you might flick away a fly that was bothering you. As far as I could tell, the vamp’s fingers barely touched the man, but he went flying across the hallway. He hit the wall with a sickening crunch and slumped down to the floor, unconscious at least, and more likely dead.

&n
bsp; The vampires moved toward me, making that spine-unhinging hissing noise and sliding across the floor with inhuman steps.

  Without taking my eyes off any of them, I reached into a jacket pocket and removed four stakes. I fanned them out in my hand and held them behind me.

  “Take these,” I told the two women still cowering behind me. “If they get through me, you’ll need them. You should aim for the heart. It’s easier than it sounds.”

  There wasn’t time for any more instruction, because all four vampires were heading toward me, eyes glowing blue, tongues flicking across their lips as if in anticipation. I pulled my Bowie knife from its sheath, stepped out from the wall, and crouched slightly, waiting for the lead vamp to telegraph his first move.

  I reached down inside myself for the slow calm that always overtook me when I entered a fight. I felt it steal over me, the world narrowing down to this hallway, this moment. Time seemed to slow down, and my eyes narrowed in anticipation.

  There it was. The tiniest flick of a motion toward my left, the slightest twitch on the vampire’s part, and I lunged that direction, simultaneously ducking, shoving my knife into the vampire’s ribs as a distraction, and slamming my stake into his heart.

  I hit him dead on, too. I ripped the stake out of the vampire’s heart, and a gush of blackened, rotted blood followed it out and across my hand. The knife scraped across bone as I pulled it out, just in time to stake the second vampire of the group. I shoved him as he fell, propelling his body outward toward any oncoming threats. It crumpled onto the ground next to the first kill.

  I stepped back again and watched the other two vampires coming down the hall. They crouched slightly, their hands held out like claws in front of them, ready to grab and immobilize me if I gave them a chance.

  One of the vampires was a woman with long black hair and extraordinarily pale skin, even paler than the usual run-of-the-mill vampire. She was almost lily-white. The other was also a woman, but this one had color. A lot of color. The kind of color a vampire gets only after she’s fed a lot. And recently.