Kang was a traitor. Kang would die at the queen’s order if she was found out, unless the older vamp managed to kill Shiloh first.
She checked her cell. No signal in the narrow valley.
The distant sound of stealthy footfalls indicated the vamps behind her were starting down the chasm. Turning on her newspeed, Shiloh kept to the trees to avoid contaminating the evidence trail, following the path. Racing toward the smoke. Breathing in short sniffs to detect other vamps. So far, only Kang.
Step one: Find the outer perimeter guards. Determine entrances, exits, defensive systems, and attack options. Access and/or take out comms.
Eli had trained the queen’s scions in paramilitary methods. His remedial lessons in warfare had stuck.Step two:take out the guards.
At the highest speed she could achieve without losing the stealth of silence, Shiloh circled a small clearing tree to tree. It was an open-ended, canyon-type, triangular valley, with the narrow end at the source of the water and the other open to forest. The footpath led out. At the open end of the valley, city lights brightened the distant horizon. Shiloh spotted one guard, male, in human form. His two-way radio was clipped to his tank top, the kind of shirt they used to call wifebeaters, and a pair of stretchy shorts, clothes for shifting shape. She knew his scent.
Staying downwind, she completed a full perimeter search, finding a one-room log cabin with fresh chinking, a smoking chimney, no visible electric, no sign of a comms system, and an aromatic outhouse in back. The smell of rotten flesh and viscera came from a pit near the tree line, most likely the remains of their kills. She heard multiple voices inside the cabin, laughter. Too loud to hear heartbeats.
Nowhere had she smelled the scent of other vamps. Just Kang.
Shiloh had started to believe the vamp might become a real friend. Her first real vamp friend. Instead, Kang was a traitor working with the werewolves who had killed Atticus.
Her human need to breathe increased. Her heart beat. Razors scratched, almost gently.
Returning to the lone guard, Shiloh positioned herself in the limbs, downwind of and above the wolf-man, just as he checked in with whoever was on the other end. “All clear,” the guard said.
“No shit.”
The connection ended.
“Asshole,” the werewolf said, clipping the talkie to his shorts.
He carried what looked like a gun in his shorts pocket, and though the pack hadn’t used silver-lead rounds last time, they might have learned a lesson during the fight with Atticus and her. His breath blew in white clouds, and a light steam rose from his skin.
Shiloh remembered his smell, his stink, his fangs…
Yeah. He was a dead dog.Vengeance.
Shiloh heard the faintest of sounds from the bottom of the cliff wall.
The wolf turned toward the sound.
The razors clawed. There was no time to contain them, fight them, control them. For the first time, she reached inside and drew the razor crazies into her. Unexpectedly, the crazies blended with her useless witch magic. It was like fireworks going off inside her brain, a kaleidoscope of light and energy. And power.
She drew her vamp-killer in her off hand. Leaped. Curved her arm across her body, the blade in front of her. At the last second, the wolf-man looked up. Her boots caught him at the hips. Blade at the side of his neck. She cut backhanded, a brutal backswing. Her weight bore him down. Almost in slo-mo. Weird laughter burbled up inside her. They hit the ground. Bounced. His body beneath her, his head a few feet away. The worst of the blood spray missed her, but the wind picked up, carrying the scent back along her original trail, toward her teammates.
Grabbing the head by its scraggly beard, she leaped into the trees and dashed back along her original limb path. Instead offighting the razors, she embraced them, adding to her strength, speed. Something like ecstasy rode through her veins after the too-short fight.More. She wanted more.Vengeance.
The three fangheads appeared, Kang in the lead, marking a new scent trail. Covering her old scent trail by jumping from one side of the animal path to the other.
Before she bothered to think, Shiloh threw the severed head underhanded, softball-style. Hit Kang mid-chest. The woman reeled. The head flew. Shiloh swung from the trees at Kang, repeating the same move she’d made only moments past. They crashed down together. Her bloody vamp-killer at Kang’s throat. Kang’s head arched back, staring up into the sky, held in place by Shiloh’s fist in her blond hair.
“Draw your weapons and die,” Shiloh said into Kang’s ear. Kang spread her arms to her sides, palms open on the ground.
Two weapons made theschnickof semiautomatics being readied to fire.
Softly, Mi-sook asked, “Girl? What the hell?”
“Walk up the trail fifty feet and come back,” Shiloh said. “Tell me what you smell.”
Kang snarled. Began to vamp out, her three-inch fangs clicking down on their hinges. Her pupils went black, sclera flashing red.
Shiloh pressed in. A thin line of red appeared along the blade edge.
