Black Magic Bayou (32 page)

I gagged, covering my mouth with the back of my hand as a new wave of sickness threatened me. Using the bandana I’d tied around my neck, I covered my mouth and nose just as the stink started to make my eyes water. Whatever I was walking into wasn’t going to be pleasant.

Not that I was expecting it to be a lovely walk in the park, but it might have been nice of these guys to dump their victims elsewhere.

I bypassed the smelly cave entrance—no vampire in their right mind would actually sleep alongside rotting corpses—and skipped the second cave as well.

“And the third one was juuuuuust right,” I said aloud, as if this were a scenario right out of
The Three Bears
. If you come up with a hilarious one-liner, but you’re alone in the jungle and no one is around to hear it, is it still funny?

Probably.

The repulsive odor was less present here, giving me a pretty good indication I was in the right place. Once, I would have been able to smell the vampires themselves, but that part of me was lost, along with my super strength and blistering allergy to the sun.

The tradeoff was worth it. Becoming mortal had given me a life.

It also made it hard to see in the dark.

I took the AR-15 strap off my shoulder and switched the safety off. One thirty-round clip of silver bullets for an automatic weapon cost six hundred dollars. I didn’t pay out of pocket for my equipment, but I got a really stern lecture every time I practiced “wasteful weapon discharge.”

The government would want the spare bullets back.

Engaging the flashlight affixed to the top of the rifle, I took one last breath of fresh air and ducked into the cave.

The passage was wide but short, so even with my petite frame I needed to hunch to keep from bashing my head on the low-hanging rock. The walls of the cave were slick and wet, shining like polished gems in the light from my gun. I had flashbacks to the corridor in the basement of the vampire council headquarters in New York. Both the cave and that twisting staircase had a similar moldy aroma, and both served as a bleak reminder to how easily my life could be snuffed out at the whim of a cranky vampire.

After a minute of doing my best Quasimodo impression, the tunnel opened up and became a wider, taller space where I could stand at full height.

In here the dark was so thick I could practically touch it. The narrow channel of light from the gun was barely able to illuminate the path in front of me, let alone the entire cavernous space I’d just walked into.

This really was a perfect place for the vampires to hide.

This deep into the hillside, the stink of bodies had vanished entirely, blotted out by cloying dampness. Where I’d previously been so hot my clothes felt oppressive, now I was cold enough to shiver. The layer of sweat all over my body had now turned into goose bumps.

Sweeping the light across the floor, I searched for clues of where the vampires might be spending their sleeping daylight hours.

What I found were bones with bits of meat still clinging to the sinew, and heaps of discarded clothing.

Vampires like this gave the rest of them a bad name. For a brief period of time I’d been responsible for the Eastern vampire Council—one third of its leadership Tribunal—and I knew better than anyone how terrible vampires could be. But they were assholes, not monsters.

These guys were mindless killing machines who cared nothing for the destruction and fear they were leaving in their wake. Part of my job was managing the relationships between humans and supernaturals, and what this group was doing might set my work back by a decade.

It’s pretty hard to convince humans not to be afraid of vampires when they go on killing rampages and leave behind piles of body parts.

Normally, in the good old days, I would need an official sanction from the Tribunal to execute these pricks. But now, considering my previous leadership position and my new role within the government, I’d been issued a carte blanche license to kill, sanctioned by the Tribunal and the government alike.

It sounded way cooler than it was.

I was allowed to use my own judgment to decide if a vampire lived or died. It was a lot of pressure.

In this instance, however, I already knew how this was going to end the minute I smelled the rotting corpses outside.

I was the only one who would be walking back out of this cave today.

If I were a vampire, where would I sleep?

Well, when I’d
been
a vampire, I slept in a cute one-bedroom apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, but that logic wasn’t going to help me here.

Given how dark it was inside the cave they could have been anywhere, but my gut told me to find a lower level, something deeper inside the belly of the hill. The human instinct would take them higher, towards the living spaces, but there was a greater risk of sun getting through those crumbling facades. They’d need to avoid that, bury themselves away from the light.

I found a couple small pebbles that were as close to perfectly round as I could see and walked towards another fork in the tunnel maze. The light from my AR-15 didn’t penetrate far enough to know which way the tunnels went, and I didn’t have a lot of time to waste. I needed to finish this off before sunset, or more people were going to die.

Starting with the left-hand tunnel, I tossed one of the pebbles down the path. It bumped twice before it stopped and rolled back towards me. All right. I did the same with the right-hand side, and this time the small stone bounced and kept right on rolling, skittering well out of the reach of my light.

Not a perfect science, but probably a good indication that way would lead me in a downwards direction.

I adjusted my grip on the gun, making sure my hands weren’t too sweaty, then did a final mental check of where all my weapons were placed. I paused and unzipped the pouch where the grenade and spare clips were stored. If I needed something, I didn’t want to be fumbling with zippers in the heat of the moment.

I mean, unless we were talking sexy heat of the moment, and zippers on pants. But that was a different story, and my husband’s pants were with him in upstate New York.

Mmm. Husband sexy times.

Okay, kill a den of vampires, then go home and mercilessly bone my man. Sounded like a good tradeoff to me.

My nose tickled under the bandana, and now that I was out of reach of all the rotting bodies, I figured I could probably take it off.

I took the downward cave, navigating with cautious, silent steps. Any loose rocks or gravel underfoot might sound my arrival before I wanted to. This time of day they should all be dead to the world—literally—but I’d seen some insane things in my time, and if this vampire “god” could convince legions to die for him, he had to have some pretty impressive skills. If he was old enough, he might be able to stay awake during the day. Sig, the two-thousand-year-old vampire who I’d served with on the Tribunal, could do a lot of really unnerving shit. He used to be able to control me, something I was glad to be free of now that I was no longer a vampire.

Old vampires were creepy motherfuckers.

As I descended, the air got colder but drier. The darkness swallowed me up, so the only light to guide me was the narrow shaft from my gun-mounted flashlight, and that barely did anything to help. After about five minutes of constant decline, the ground leveled out a bit, and unless my eyes were playing tricks on me, there was an actual light at the end of the tunnel.

And someone was chanting.

I lowered the gun, straining to hear, but I wasn’t imagining it. Someone was definitely chanting. It was a quiet, constant sound, but I could make out words, and much to my astonishment they were in English. I’d expected Latin—number one cult leader chanting language of choice—or Spanish since we were, you know, in Bolivia. English was a bit of a surprise.

Uh, there was no way that many vampires should be awake in the daylight, let alone making coherent sentences. I strained to better hear what they were saying.

“Kneel. Bow before your lord. If you give blood to me, I will give you life eternal, for I am god, and I can bestow the gift of immortality or snuff life out with a whim.”

Okay, so, if it was big-daddy vampire talking, this whole spiel wasn’t exactly horse manure. He could grant life immortal for the cost of some blood swapping, but that sure as shit didn’t make him a god.

A choir of voices responded, “You are our lord. Our blood is your blood. Your blood is our blood.” They’d clearly said these lines hundreds of times. They repeated them over and over.
Our blood is your blood, your blood is our blood
.

Ugh, fuck this guy.

I shut off the gun’s light, not needing it with the flickering glow at the end of the tunnel. No sense in announcing my presence before I had a chance to take them by surprise. I edged closer, keeping my back against the cool rock wall. In the past I’d have been able to get some sense of numbers before even seeing them, but the good ol’ days were done. Now I’d need to actually get a look at them to know how bad my one-against-many odds were.

The end of the tunnel greeted me a bit too soon, and before I knew it I was looking into a huge cavern lit by hundred of candles and torches on the walls. Wonder which of the grunts got stuck with that job.

A makeshift altar had been erected at the far end of the cavern, and a man in long black robes was standing on it, holding a goddamn severed head in his hands. I counted fifteen vampires kneeling on the ground in front of him, and he passed between them, holding the head over them and letting the blood drip into their waiting mouths.

“Say it again.”

“Our blood is your blood. Your blood is our blood,” they chanted.

I was doing some mental math while the black-robed vampire fed his disciples. I had three thirty-round clips for the AR-15. The Sig had a full clip, plus a spare, giving me another thirty bullets there. That should be more than enough silver ammo to take out the baby vamps, provided I could get off decent headshots before they retaliated. If I was quick—and they were sluggish from being awake during the day—I could kill at least ten of them before I needed to change a round.

Big Papa would be tougher.

Not only was he awake in the middle of the day, he’d managed to keep his whole flock conscious as well. That was some serious power. He’d be fast, and he’d be strong, and I really doubted my trigger finger was going to do me much good against him.

I had the knife, and I had the machete.

I took another look at the amassed group. The baby vamps were all men, most in their twenties or early thirties from what I could tell. They were still tan and human-looking, like they’d just wandered into the cave from a hard day of farming. The head vampire, though, was as pale as paper, his skin almost clear. He had dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, and his fangs were already exposed as he watched the blood dribble from the head.

I had no idea who he was, but we were standing in his grave.

The first bullet caused something of a paradox. The shot rang out so loud it echoed in the chamber, but it created a perfect silence in its wake.

I stood in the entrance of the cavern, feet planted firmly and the AR-15 pressed to my shoulder, my eye lined up with the sight.

The vampire I’d fired at was still on his feet, but I could see a candle on the wall behind him flickering through the hole in his head.

He slumped to his knees and fell face-first to the stone floor.

“I dunno, guys. I think a god might have seen this one coming.” I took three more out in quick succession,
pop-pop-pop,
before any of them had a chance to react to the first guy dying.

Blood sprayed the dark rock walls, and two candle flames guttered out, their wicks wet from flying gore.

“
How dare you?
” the head vampire snarled, his voice booming in the cathedral-like space. “You would defile this holy place?”

The eleven remaining lackeys had realized this wasn’t just a shooting gallery and they
could
move, and advanced towards me.

Pop-pop-pop-poppop.

And then there were six.

A guy on the ground pushed himself back up to kneeling.

Okay, seven.

I scooted back a few steps, putting the wall at my rear so no one could come up and surprise me. The wounded vamp could wait; he wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry.

The rest of them, however, were moving a lot faster than I’d anticipated. The daytime should have made them groggy and sluggish, but they were
fast
.

I had enough time for
pop-pop
.

One of them dodged the falling body of his comrade and knocked the rifle out of my hands with a fierce slap. I probably should have expected that, but it still managed to take me by surprise. He got me by the throat, and before I had time to process what was happening he’d lifted me off the ground, my toes barely brushing the stone. I gagged, slapping him in the face to absolutely no effect.

“Our blood is his blood,” the vampire said, baring his fangs at me.

“Then why don’t you share it with him,” I wheezed in response.

He hadn’t noticed the Sig on my thigh and definitely didn’t know I’d armed it until the barrel was pressed under his chin. I fired.

Fine red mist fell around us as his grip went limp and we both fell down. My ears were ringing from the proximity to the discharge, but I still managed to scramble out of the way before one of the four vampires got ahold of me.

Pop
, right in the face.

I got back to my feet and took one of my precious few seconds to admire the path of fallen bodies leading from the master vampire up to my feet.

I fired at a lunging vampire right as he leapt for me, and sidestepped to let his body sail past and land in a heap near the mouth of the cave, his head reduced to a fine, faceless pulp.

Where was the rifle?

He’d landed on it.

Motherfucker.

Two vamps left, but the would-be god of vampires was having none of this insolence. He shrieked, a sound like that of a dying animal caught in a trap. “
Kill her
.” His hands were in fists, and his pale face was now a putrid shade of purple.