He closed his eyes for a second and saw Allan’s face as she was dragged away, her mouth lax and her eyes too surprised to be afraid. Yet. A long graze on the side of her face—received when Willie shoved her into a tree—had dribbled blood down onto her starched buff collar.
“Follow the dirt path from the car,” Took said as he scrambled to his feet. He reached back and pulled his gun from the holster at the small of his back. It was heavy and solid in his hands, the weight of it familiar as he checked the chamber, and if it didn’t feel as familiar as his usual weaponry, it would just have to do. “You can’t miss him. I’m going to go after Allan.”
The operator tried to argue with him. Took just dropped the phone next to Gatlin to keep him company and broke into a jog as he followed the path—and Willie—farther into the woods.
It was supposed to be a milk run. No one was meant to get hurt.
“Arrogance,”his old instructor had told them at training. “Never take a hunt for granted. Never think you know them. Arrogance kills more agents than vampires ever will. Remember that.”
OLD SCARSitched as the sun got to them—pinprick nerve twitches that crawled around under his skin and even scratched their way up under the sleeves of his T-shirt. Took knew it would only make it worse if he scratched, but he paused to dig his finger into a particularly irritated comma-shaped scar over his collarbone. It didn’t help. The itch just spread down the bone into the nearby tissue.
Took gave one last scrape and let it go. It would fade eventually.
The dirt road had evolved into a cracked concrete path. Muddy footprints—department-issue boots and patched-up sneakers—scuffed over the gray stone and then dried up and faded away. It didn’t matter. They could only be heading to the big old house that stood derelict at the end of the drive.
Years of exposure had bleached the redbrick walls down to pink and yellow. Kudzu had made inroads on the foundations, a green crust that had anchored itself in the mortar. The windows were still intact, but the glass was scabbed with dust on the outside and mold on the inside.
Took paused at the gate. A white sign bolted to the gate announced it was the Ron Bern Life Center, the first step on the road to a life free from addiction. From where he stood, Took could see rows of bottles neatly lined up along the weathered porch that wrapped around the house. Tall and small, the distinctive brown beer bottles tucked in among the clear spirits. Someone hadn’t taken the place’s motto to heart.
He pulled up the hem of his T-shirt and wiped the sweat and a splash of Gatlin’s blood he hadn’t realized was there from his face. His hands were steadier than he expected. After two years on suspension, he’d started to believe they were right—his nerve was gone, and he wasn’t fit for field duty anymore. Instead the punch of adrenaline had left his mind clean and sharp. He felt steadier with a gun in his hand and blood under his nails than he did in his therapist’s office as they traded lies about how well he was doing.
It might feel a little too good, but he wasn’t going to tell the therapist that.
Took pulled his shirt back down, wrapped both hands around his gun, and gave the gate a nudge with his boot. It had dropped on its hinges and one corner was buried in a well-run rut, but it moved when Took put his weight against it. The scrape and groan of rusted metal might have given him away, but he doubted it mattered. Willie had hung around to gloat over Gatlin’s corpse, and he’d seen Took scramble back to his feet in the aftershock of the blast.
The Goat knew that Took was on his heels. Speed was going to work better than stealth here.
The grounds had been landscaped once. Roses grew scrubby and wild among the weeds that overran the flower beds, all thorny canes and small white flowers. The long expanse of the lawn still had a mostly sharp square shape, even though the grass was yellow and spongy under Took’s feet as he loped toward the house.
Old habits creaked rustily back into play. Even though he was on his own—VINE two states away, local backup ten minutes out and more concerned with their injured man—his brain broke radio silence anyhow.
Attempting entry through the front door,it chattered to no one as he jumped onto the porch and put his shoulder against the doorjamb.Unsub is armed and has a hostage. Hold fire.
Took tried the door. It was locked.Good.He left it closed and cautiously made his way to one of the dirt-crusted windows. Filthy curtains, whatever pattern they’d originally had hidden under a spiderweb of frilly mold, were pinched tightly closed in front of them. It was hard to tell through the grimy glass, but Took would bet they’d been sewn.
He punched the glass with the butt of his gun. It shattered—always a louder sound than he expected—and he used his gun to clear the leftover pieces from the crumbled putty.
Front window right,his brain supplied as he grabbed a handful of the slimy curtains and wrenched them down.Cleared.The curtain pole snapped and hit the cracked linoleum with a rattle, followed by the crumpled pile of old fabric.
Fresh blood—Gatlin’s blood—smelled like pennies and salt. Old blood smelled like rotten meat and sweat, thick and slimy enough to coat your nose and slide down your throat. The inside of the derelict building smelled like old blood—a lot of it.
“Fuck,” Took muttered as he spat to clear the taste from his mouth.
That wasn’t a two-corpse stink. It wasn’t a sane-vampire stink either. Most of the undead didn’t want to live in their own filth any more than the people they’d been before the bite would have. Unbalanced and a monster—that was always messy.
Took crawled through the window, bits of glass he’d missed in the frame sharp as they scratched against his arms, and into the dusty, blood-sour room. It had been an office once, based on the broken desk in the middle of the room and the dented filing cabinets on the wall, but now it looked like a squat. There was a pile of sleeping bags in the corner. The shiny blue fabric was blotched with bleached-out patches and wear.
More bottles were lined up along the wall, but instead of spirits they held the dregs of clotted, black liquid. Maggots squirmed in the bottom of them, lively and bloated.
Took grimaced and walked over to the sleeping bags. He poked them with his foot and flies rose in a lazy haze and buzzed resentfully away. There was something wrapped in the old blankets and sleeping bags, but not something that moved.
It was pointless to hold his breath—everything stank—but Took did anyhow as he crouched down and gingerly peeled the folds back. The man had been dead for a while, although he looked like he’d died badly. The pock mocks on his collarbones and gnawed into the bend of his elbow were sunken into rotted wells, and his skin was pulled tight over his bones. His collarbones jutted through his skin like knives, and his hair was dry and patchy.
Someone had tried to turn him, tried quite hard, but it hadn’t taken. Some people, all it took was a bite and a lick of spit. Others, though, could have their blood replaced pint by pint with ichor, and all it would make them was dead.
“It might not have seemed it,” Took said as he pulled a tattered corner of blanket over the gray, withered face. “You’re one of the lucky ones.”
Even if he had turned, gone cold, and grown fangs, he wouldn’t have been much of a person anymore. The Anakim…. The code-switch to the politically correct term in this situation—you couldn’t exactly call your colleagues vampires to their face—was so automatic that it almost amused Took for a second… until he remembered there was no one to offend or to back him up. Vampires cosseted the about-to-be-turned like wagyu beef, inoculated them to the curse with each Kiss they gave until something like them sat back up. Turned like this, the curse spat into him from a dozen different hungry mouths, all that would get up was a body that would hunger and do what it was told. Back in Europe they called it a ghoul, and old families had whole packs of the empty retainers.
