And kill.
Among the flames Nemesis walked, and with him came death for his own kind. The fire naturally escaped its bounds, sending tongues along summerdry scrub. Mortal authorities were no doubt alerted to the danger by now, further adding to general chaos—not that sanguinant cared overmuch, since rebuilding near such a prime resource was a certainty and human calamity most often brought good hunting.
The last to fall, surprisingly, was sneering, skulking Jaye, only recently past fledgling status and much given to tactics of berserker ferocity. Yet even he burned like a candle, resisting the fire-kiss a few moments—a signal achievement, showing he was made of stern stuff indeed.
Nemesis did not wait. He wheeled in the direction he had last seen his leman and put on all the speed he could stillmuster, riding a searing, invisible wave even as his hair smoked and stinging, smarting eyes nearly collapsed. Burning branches, mortal alarm stirring in a residential area past an overgrown, tinder-dry hedge, distant sirens beginning to howl…
…and a faint thread of rose-scent tinged with musk, fresh coffee, and the darker note of his blood in her sweet thrumming veins.
His leman was running. The slight trace of her managed to peel a layer of rising ossification from his senses, a sharp jolt of much-needed lucidity filling him for a dizzying moment.
The thrall woke, twisting inside his bones, far hotter than the escaped inferno. Every instinct protective and possessive, predatory or tender, demanded to find her, hide her, make her safe.
Cold unerring logic answered she would never be secure until every sanguinant he could also smell or sense within the city was slain. For their reek overlaid his prize’s delicate footsteps, and now it was only a matter of time before Antinous hunted her down.
A soldier’s desperate plan now entered its second phase—a running battle instead of siegebreaking. Nemesis was widely held to excel at both.
He hoped the estimation was accurate.
CHAPTER 23
Worst gameof hide and seek ever. Layla crouched in a pocket of deep shadow, listening to distant thunder and the frantic call of emergency sirens, her ribs flickering as she gasped. As soon as she evaded one group of biters another appeared, and the only thing saving her was Max’s advice.
Listen to your body,it will save you.
She had help. It wasn’t so much the way she could streak across open spaces, her braid nearly snapping like a whip as she burst into motion, or the sudden turns and leaps she was now capable of. The real, true friend was a tingle of instinct at her nape, the sense of unfriendly, invisible watchers lurking on an otherwise deserted street, the sudden clearno don’t movefreezing her solid or thego, go now, go NOWsending her into places she never would have glanced at as a regular old human.
Time to move, the little voice said. She burst into motion, streaking across four lanes of momentarily deserted highway and catching the top of a chain-link fence. A rattle, a lunging effort, and she was in darkness again—a waste lot choked with weeds, ancient railroad tracks turning to rust, and the backside of a strip mall behind another fence.
O’Shaughnassey and his crew had trained Dan’s group in the art of finding cover, always knowing where the next alley was, never looking at a building without thinking about the exits, all the little paranoid habits which were actually kind of fun if made into a game. Dodging surveillance cameras, working angles, sensing which neighborhoods were likely to be deserted during certain hours and which had nosy eyes at every window day or night—she was no more than an assiduous amateur, really, but it was a lot easier with eyesight turning the darkness to bright noon and hearing jacked up into hearing separate heartbeats inside houses, cars backfiring several blocks away as if they were right next to her, howling sirens and smaller cries of surprise, the bumbling passage of raccoons and other wildlife taking advantage of darkness to scavenge in corners and trash bins.
Layla found she could scramble up downspouts by the simple expedient of throwing her body at a wall, simply letting it find purchase with burning, scrabbling fingertips and boot-toes. Her wrists ached; she was sure she left scratches on brick or paint, and those faint traces might look very much like biter claw-marks to an experienced hunter.
Or to her pursuers, who had to see just as well as she did, hear just as well—the wild pounding of her heart somehow didn’t give her away, if she lurked near enough to traffic or occupied buildings active at this hour.
She even had allies, sort of. The animals knew, and their scuttling for cover—cats stray or well-fed, armadillos, rats she shuddered upon hearing the tail-drag scrape of, dogs and slinking coyotes, even a few snakes desperate to avoid contact with anything possessing legs, a whole-ass petting zoo—warned her of the shadow-blurs, sanguinant using their semi-invisibility trick to whistle along at freeway speed. There were strange shimmers she didn’t like hanging about streetlamps or lurking in shadowed places;feelinga disembodied gaze ooze or slicepast was a matter of instinct as well, judging by goosebump and the stiffening of fine hairs.
She was a bundle of exposed nerves, a shrinking animal scuttling between walls, cutting through backyards, scaling fences, slipping along back alleys choked with junked cars or dumpsters half-open amid drifts of reeking refuse, avoiding clusters of human and biter activity alike. No plan to her wandering meant she could not quite be anticipated—or so she hoped as she simply reacted, moving when any kind of notice drew close, often freezing in the smallest, darkest spot she could find when pursuit temporarily drew away.
Culverts were good, for herandfor nocturnal critters. The furry, scaled, or feathered evinced little desire to bite, rattle, or hiss; she returned the favor.
In fact, she thought she was doing pretty okay, except for the goddamn dry spot at the back of her throat. It grew a little larger anytime she made an extreme physical effort, and though the sensation sharpened her hearingandsight it also made her skin sensitive as hell, filled her mouth with a strange numbing almost like monster blood, and worse of all, gave her the shakes when she heard human heartbeats.
Even the tiny skittering pulses of ’dillos or cats woke a dozy trickle of interest from that rough thirst. She could very easily imagine the sensation getting worse, and worse, and overwhelming as the thought of water, coffee, juice, booze, or any other liquid caused faint nausea and an intensifying throb in her throat.
She knew what it wanted.
Would she eventually rip the cloth top off an old, well-maintained convertible to get at an insistent human pulse? Would another man look at autopsy photos of his dead wife and silently swear vengeance on things that went bump in the night, or would the weird-ass murder be swept under the rug bycops unwilling or unable to investigate, some owned by big-time biters and others knowing all too well not to fuck with strange, inexplicable shit the entire world teemed with under a crust of normalcy?
She was slowing, and that was bad. Stopping to listen at certain houses where only a few pulses beat, scrambling away from buildings when doors opened and people stepped into the night for a smoke, an errand, an emergency call; parks where teenagers necked in cars, their proud galloping hearts announcing youth and pleasure to the night, streets where crowds gathered or worse, furtive hurried steps meanteasy prey, easy prey…
One hand clapped over her mouth, where her teeth ached, ached,ached. She ran or hid, shrank into pools of darker shadow, heard a mutter of excitement and intensifying clamor as the dozing town noticed a false sunrise on the northwest horizon.
The oil fields were burning, maybe the holding tanks or a refinery as well. A big unholy mess, and she hoped it wouldn’t spread.
Layla had no time to worry about other people’s problems. Just as she thought she might be able to work down a long sagebrush-starred hill and make it to the freeway heading east—she’d been seeing signs for onramps in the distance for what felt like hours, though unable to even get close to one—she was caught.
A rattle, a crescendo of alarm from her instinctive warning system, and for a single heartstopping moment she thought it was Max, the crashing disappointment of being grabbed meeting a wave ofoh thank God,that at least the devil she knew had appeared.
