A pause while we each held our breath. “Two more minutes, then we evacuate and seal the tunnels. If they’re in here, the bats will take care of them.”
“What about the boss’s whore?”
“If the Abomination hasn’t already eaten her, leave her. Paulo said he’s tired of her bitching anyway.” There was a muffled snort of laughter in front of me. Maria stiffened beside me, her lips peeling back from her teeth in a silent snarl.
So, this had been a trap from the beginning. Only the fact that I refused to cooperate, hadn’t allowed myself to be led where Maria had wanted to go, had kept us alive this long.
There was a soft gasp from Luis as he realized the truth. She had planned to lead him to slaughter. But his gasp wasn’t soft enough. I felt the air shift as the man in front of me turned.
The moment he was in range, I leapt, bringing my knife up at an angle. If he was tall, it would catch him in the guts; if average height, it would hit under the ribs. I put my all of my weight behind the attack, because if he was wearing a spelled vest, the knife might not get through at all.
He wasn’t tall, and the spells on his vest weren’t a match for my strength, along with the magic of a knife that qualifies as a magical artifact all by itself. The knife slid in and I felt his weight start to sag as wetness poured out over my hand. He tried to shove his gun into me but I slammed my hand onto it and his shots went down, ricocheting off of the floor and into the alcove.
Luis swore in pain and startled anger, and I smelled that he’d been hit by a stray bullet. I was just glad none of the ricochets had hit the tank strapped to his back.
The scent of blood was everywhere. My vision sharpened, my canines elongated. Saliva filled my mouth. I wanted blood. I wanted it like I’ve never wanted anything in my life. I heard the rattling sound of the bat in a nearby alcove taking his first breath of the evening and I hissed at him on pure instinct. The vampire part of me wanted to bite down on the neck of the man I’d gutted while the last flicker of life left his body, to taste the warm, salt-sweet flavor that was like nothing else in this world.
But no. I was human, damn it. I would not feed from a human. Never.
There was a flash of blinding light, a whooshing noise, and flame roared out of Luis’s homemade flamethrower, filling the alcove, setting the waking vampire ablaze as Maria and her brother stumbled past me.
The heat was horrendous, breath-stealing. I could only whisper a silent prayer of thanks that we were near enough to the main tunnel that we could still breathe after the blast. I gasped, the nauseating smell of burning hair and flesh filling my nose and lungs, making me cough till I gagged. As suddenly as the blood lust had come, it was now gone. My stomach lurched; I pulled my knife from the guard, flinging his body to the ground.
Distant screams echoed through the rocky tunnels. The vampires were rising and some of the human guards hadn’t made it out.
Oh, fuck a duck.
I picked Serena up by her waist and tossed her over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes. She didn’t complain. We ran. By the light of flickering flames I could see the fork in the passage that led to the open desert outside. I could smell the sand. Twenty yards to the fork, so maybe thirty past that to the outside. We were nearly there. But closing fast from the other direction were vampires, newly risen and hungry for blood.
Maria stumbled and Luis went down with her. Luis struggled to his knees, trying to get off a blast from the flamethrower. Then a pair of vamps was on him. They rode him to the ground. Fast, they were so fast. Serena turned her head, saw him bleeding, and screamed. The bats looked up, eyes glowing. I didn’t doubt mine were as well because everything was in hyperfocus. I managed to pull my gun, but I was having to aim carefully so as not to hit the tank, and with Serena kicking in panic, it was hard. Luis’s scream of agony cut off abruptly as the larger male broke his neck with a single vicious twist.
Another pair of bats, two females, surged forward. Maria began firing wildly, not aiming—which was useless. Grabbing her arm, I flung her ahead of me.
“Run!”
I screamed, as I fired blessed bullets into the vamps to slow them down. It wouldn’t stop them entirely, but I needed to buy us enough time to get to the cave entrance. Once there, I’d shoot the gas tank with a tracer round. The explosion would take out the vamps and, if we were lucky, block the tunnel entrance behind us.
Just a few more steps. I twisted, firing over my shoulder, struggling to stay balanced while carrying Serena. I pulled the trigger again and again until the gun clicked empty. I was almost to the exit. I could see the stars above and smell cactus and sage. So tantalizingly close now—but they were gaining on us.
A bat grabbed at my leg, causing me to stumble and nearly drop Serena. I kicked the bat in the face until she let go but that gave the others time to get closer. There wasn’t time to pull out the derringer in my ankle holster.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Maria had reached the cave entrance ahead of me. She’d pulled herself together, and though there were tears streaming down her snarling face, she stood, gun drawn, feet solid. She wasn’t aiming at me. “Go, Graves! Get Serena to safety. They won’t follow. I swear.”
She waved me past, giving me a shove in the back with preternatural strength that sent both me and Serena sprawling a dozen feet from the tunnel exit. I pushed to my feet and screamed, “Maria! Get out! You can still make it.” Even as I yelled, the bats leapt toward her. Crap.
She didn’t go down when they hit. They hung on her, fangs embedded in her snarling form. One hand braced over the other, she took careful aim and sent a tracer round back into the tunnel. I followed the blaze of fire as it flew straight and true, right into the tank of her brother’s flamethrower.
I threw myself over Serena to shield her from the blast, but I had to look back. The explosion was pretty spectacular, imprinting red onto my retinas and turning Maria, Luis, the guards, and a dozen bats into charcoal.
Yes, she’d betrayed us, but Maria Ruiz Ortega had found her path to redemption from Paulo and his cartel.
2
T
he explosion
attracted the notice of the U.S. authorities. They arrived in record time: Border Patrol, DEA, CIA. The hole in the desert floor was a popular place for the next few hours. I didn’t know any of the agents, but I had a few friends in high places I could call on to convince the guys on-site that I was trustworthy and on the side of the angels. It also helped that I had my current passport, concealed carry permit, and FBI consultant badge hidden in zippered pockets sewn into my pant legs. Modesty be damned. I was out of those jeans in two shakes to get to my IDs once I was in custody and in a clean, well-ventilated holding cell.
The paperwork helped more than the friends, I think.
“Just one more time, Ms. Graves. How were MagnaChem and the drug cartel connected?”
I sighed. “As I have said to the last four people who asked, they
weren’t
. I was guarding new management who were sent to the MagnaChem plant after the CEO was arrested and her board was replaced. Paulo Ortega just happened to decide to use the same town as a base, so the arrival turned into an evacuation. Serena Sanchez was the last employee out. Paulo was
very
annoyed that I managed to keep him from getting his hands on rich Americans to use as hostages. He’ll also likely be annoyed that I told the agents on the scene how to find the drugs and guns I spotted in the tunnel.” The man questioning me nodded, just as the four other agency representatives had. Then he left, and I sat, waiting for the next interrogator.
Finally, a day later, after painfully thorough debriefings by each of the agencies, I was allowed to go home. The agent who escorted me out of holding let me know that Serena had been airlifted to a hospital and undergone surgery on her broken leg.
I nearly wept when I saw my beach house, I’d been gone so long. This was probably my longest out-of-town job to date and it had definitely been one of the most tiring.
My first call was to my attorney, Roberto Santos. When I’m traveling out of the country and have no idea when I’ll be back, I have my mail forwarded to his offices. For a hefty fee, the nice secretaries and accountants attached to his firm pay my bills, respond to crank letters and fan mail, and deal with most other types of problems. Roberto was one of my friends in high places—he’s a very well-known attorney in government circles, which is why he’s
my
attorney.
“Anything to report, Roberto?” I couldn’t help but smile as I sank into my favorite recliner with a tall glass of crystal-clear water. After weeks of drinking liquids that I tried not to think about too hard, I was thrilled to have water without things floating in it. I mean, really. Water shouldn’t come with
chunks
.
“Nothing other than what you already know. You certainly caused a stir this time. Three different agencies are torn between giving you a medal and charging you with obstruction of a government operation.”
The water took on a bitter taste. “I hope you convinced them a medal was more appropriate.”
He chuckled. “What I convinced them is that with you involved, all of the agencies had both plausible deniability of the deaths at MagnaChem and access to a large cache of weapons and drugs to splash on the front pages. I also
suggested
that you wouldn’t claim any credit in the press. I hope I can count on that.”
A snorting noise came out of my nose and I nearly spit water across the floor. Instead, I swallowed and replied, “No problem. They’re welcome to the credit. I’d rather nobody even knew I was there.”
“I thought that might be the case.” I heard a voice in the background and realized I might have interrupted him.
“If you have an appointment, we’ll talk later. I need a few days’ rest anyway.”
“That sounds perfect, Celia. I’ll get your mail service restored and include our bill in the first batch. Be warned, it’ll be rather large.”
That made me laugh. He’s nothing if not honest. Another reason I like him. “Well worth it, in my opinion. I’ll be adding your bill to
my
bill to MagnaChem. Charge what you will.”
I drank my water slowly, savoring it, and turned on the television to catch the latest news. Big shock—there was no mention of a small town being overrun by drug cartels just over the Mexican border. No breaking-news alerts about the murderous bastard who intentionally herded people into tunnels to be slaughtered by vampires. There were stories about similar atrocities in Africa, Indonesia, and the Middle East. Just not too close to home. Heaven forbid.
I nearly turned off the set, but stopped when the next story came on: an update on the M. Necrose pandemic that had begun sweeping across the country a few months earlier. I’d been one of the first victims of a bacterium that turned people into zombies. I turned up the sound.
“Mortality rates have dropped for the first time since the outbreak started,” the silver-haired anchor read from his prompter. “Los Angeles General reported only five new cases this month and all were in early stages, treatable with antibiotics. The crematorium here in Santa Maria de Luna had only one disposal this week.” The anchor took a breath as a graphic appeared on the screen: a color-coded map of the United States, showing the heaviest concentrations of the disease. “Every U.S. state now has reported cases, with the exception of Alaska and Hawaii. Officials at the Center for Magical Disease Control speculate that extra security measures for flights into Anchorage and Honolulu might have stopped the mages who were hired to infiltrate the schools.”
Wow. The CMDC had gone mainstream since I’d been gone. That’s the problem with having no access to television for weeks. It used to be that the magical branch of the CDC in Atlanta operated in secret. I hadn’t even heard of it until I was exposed to the disease. The general belief was that the public would panic if it learned there were magical diseases that could spread to the human population, so nobody had ever mentioned that the agency existed.
It was true that there had been mass panic when the first cases appeared and there was no cure. People died. Lots of people. But we’d adapted. It had taken months, but parents were sending their kids back to school. Church attendance was up and telecommuting was giving way to heavy traffic. Pity about that part. I had liked the lack of traffic jams.
“The M. Necrose pandemic has now become the fourth deadliest disease outbreak in history, surpassed only by the Black Plague, the Spanish Flu, and the Bird Flu. Next up, sports on News Center Eighteen.”
I turned off the TV then and took another long drink of water. It was as though I’d never been gone. The world had gotten along just fine without me. I leaned back into the cushions and listened to the sounds of the ocean through the open screen door. I might have dozed off; I’m not sure. Suddenly I heard a bang, started, and looked out the picture window to see my neighbor, Inez, at my door. She was wrapped in a towel.
Inez used to be the housekeeper for my best friend, Vicki Cooper, who had owned both my beach house and Cooper Manor, the mansion at the top of the hill. When Vicki died, she left me the beach house and left the mansion to Inez and her husband, David, who had been the groundskeeper. I trusted them to keep an eye on my place and to water my plants in my absence.
I opened the door with a smile. I hadn’t seen her since well before leaving for Mexico. “Hey, Inez. How have you been?” I opened my arms to give her a hug but she just motioned behind her with a thumb.
“I was pretty good until your
puppy
dumped seaweed in my pool. I was swimming at the time.”
That was when I looked outside. “Crap!” One of the abilities of a siren, besides being able to mentally influence some people, is an affinity with the ocean. I’d been away from the water too long in the Mexican jungles; my control was fuzzy.
So thinking about the ocean just now had caused the water to move inland. My cousin, Adriana, the Pacific siren princess, told me this was a common problem when sirens come into their power. The sea follows us. The water was up to the bumper of my car and had indeed dumped seaweed into the lower swimming pool. There’s an upper one as well, but Inez prefers the lower one because it’s on the beach. I doubted that seaweed was all that had been dumped in it; there were probably a few buckets of sand and a variety of small sea creatures playing there now. “Oh, man. I’m so sorry, Inez. I’ll clean it up.”