Breach (The Blood Bargain) (24 page)

“Why not?”  Rylie countered.

I pouted at the unconscious woman who stuck out like a sore thumb in the mass of limbs.  “She said she’s from Lake City.  Maybe she can help us get inside.”

“You’re assuming she’s gonna be in a helpful mood.”

“They didn’t try to kill us,” yet, I thought to myself. “They just wanted our stuff.”  I tried to convince myself I’d be the same way if I was out there on my own.  In my few short experiences in the wilds I’d about lost my mind and my life, I could not fathom being out here for years.

“Would be a liability.”  A Rylie word for no.

“Maybe.”  Ethan chimed in.  “
Ry I’ve done these runs before, you think Junction is bad with the wall?  Lake City is an urban fortress.  If we get there and they aren’t in a friendly mood, we’ll need a back door.”

“What about that damned tree
liv?  This bitch isn’t exactly sane.”

“Ben...”  I halfheartedly rebuked him.

“I’m right.”  Wrinkling my nose, I stilled my tongue.  He actually was.  For once.             

In the blink of an eye Candice was back beside us, her hands covered with a black shiny fluid in the moonlight.  Her brow dipped in an irritated expression that had previously been reserved for bad dates.

“Road up ahead is damned thick.  I’m going to clear as I can but it may be a while. Might

want to kick up your feet and sit a spell, make these remaining jackasses rock paper scissors for who  gets to be my dinner. ” With a grin, she was gone.

“That’s that then.” I tried to order them.  “Let’s tie them up inside, make camp.  Get on the road in the morning.”

Rylie
let out a string of profanity, the closest I knew he would get to an agreement.

We took the group into the gas station where China had initially questioned me.  On
Rylie’s advice we bound all of them at the ankles and wrists, putting the rank and file scav’s in the back windowless room while leaving China in front.  According to Mr. Everen, Scavengers weren’t hive mind, they tended to center around their leader just like tribes.  We got the queen bee on board, the rest would follow her lead.  Not that I thought he’d ever done a psych thesis or anything.

In a way it pained me for us to resort to such measures with the living.  The evidence of their harsh life was too prevalent while we bound and moved them.  They were thin, much too thin, most of their bodies scarred in at least one visible place.  One guy was missing three fingers, another had burns on his neck. 
Rylie made Ben move the latter.

When the last of her troops had been placed in the manager’s office, we set China in the center of the store, propped up against the old donut case. 
Rylie sat on the counter, the rest of us spread out likewise, trying to find a comfortable place to wait for her to wake.  Judging from the bruise on her cheek where Candice got her it was going to be a while.

“Think this candy is any good?”  Ben asked as he rifled through some stashed sweets in a drawer behind the counter.

“Oh sure. It’s only like eight years over expiration date.”  Ethan replied with a roll of his eyes.  Ben nodded, happily tearing open the corner of the packaging to some chocolate covered sugary relic.

“Don’t.  We don’t need you with some sort of stomach virus in the middle of an assault.”

“Aww come on, this stuff was so over processed I don’t even think it could be counted as food to go bad.”

“Not risking it.”

“Maaaaan.”  Ben whined, but dropped the bar back in the drawer.

The rest of the night crawled by.  I flipped through magazines outlining gossip on celebrities I barely remembered, looked at fashion trends for boating and reviewed the latest fall color trend.  Turquoise.  Cool, I liked turquoise.

At one point I had worried that Candice had given this poor girl some kind of brain damage-there was a bit of blood dripping from her left ear. Rylie told me her lights out routine was typical for someone who had been incapacitated in that fashion.  Although he did admit she had at least a mild concussion.

Candice was back a few hours before dawn, looking utterly exhausted.  Her jeans and black baby doll shirt smudged with dried blood and fluids.

“Hey.”

“Welcome back girlie.”

“I think we’re clear most of the way.  It seems a huge bulk from the neighboring metro had set in on the road.”

“Set in, or put in as a barrier?”

Candice snorted. “I don’t know, do I look like I talk to deadheads?”

“Do you need to feed?”  Ben asked her quietly.  The look on his face a mixture of anticipation and fear at her possible responses.  I could assume Ben had probably one too many fantasies about his ex-girlfriend joining
vampnation.

“Yeah bring me a
scav.”  He frowned, opening his mouth to protest.  “Really.”  She pushed.

Ben complied, obviously hurt she didn’t want to use him as her meal of choice. Knowing all of the mind entanglements I’d had since taking up with
Dimitri, I think I understood why she was snubbing Ben.  Not that I’d ever tell him that.  I preferred to just let him stew in the fact that he was a two timing jerk.  Seemed fair.

“Are you sure you are alright?” I asked
Rylie carefully, he seemed to be the kind to take concern as an implication of weakness.

“Had worse.”  He answered flatly while subconsciously dipping his head to further hide his scars.  In the back corner of the room I saw Ben dragging one of the men out of the backroom by his Vikings jacket to the back corner of the station.  All I could see from that point was the twitching of a worn tennis shoe from behind the isle.    Instinctively, my hand went to my throat.  Body numb, all I could smell was pine needles.  The rustic scent that always accompanied
Dimitri.  I found myself growing increasingly worried about him.  That last dream had been filled with such agony, not that I had expected him to be receiving five star treatment up north. Still, since awakening in the car it felt like he was drifting farther away from me.  Not physically, in that regard he was stateless, but on a pulse level.  Like tail lights fading on a dark night.  Or a drop of blood dropped into a bucket of water, fading-

Why am I thinking about blood?

Shaking my head I turned towards Ethan.  “How’d they get the drop on you anyway?”  I had to ask, anything to get my mind off of Candice feeding.

“That’s my bad.”  Ben offered up with a shrug.  “This girl came running up failing her arms in the whole damsel in distress thing, even had a deadhead shambling behind her.  Got our guard down.”  Walking back over to us, Ben collapsed on the floor with a groan taking his axe off his back and setting it in his lap.  He reminded me of a bear, his back rubbing up against an old candy bar display.

“Wouldn’t listen to me.”  Ethan grumbled from his perch on the coffee counter.

“We will all learn from that mistake.” 
Rylie nodded in his direction with a wince.  The swelling around his eye slowly reducing, red discoloration morphing into dark purple blotches.

“She didn’t seem triple S.”  Ben pouted, rolling the wooden handle of his large axe around in his hands.

“Leave it to you to see a skirt and expect nothing but the finest reward.”  Ethan grumbled.

“I know I messed up okay?  Damn…”

“Stop it.  This doesn’t help a thing.”  I groaned, stretching out on the cool tile floor.

“
Liv, this may be a good time to discuss what we talked about in the car with the rest of the team.”  Rylie brought it up like a pending weather report. 

“Keeping secrets again
livvy?”  Ben kicked up an eyebrow, crossing his thick arms over his chest.

“It’s not like that.”  I protested, tucking my hair behind my ears.  I had cut it a bit too short around my face, the brown locks falling in front of my eyes despite my best efforts.

“Remember the whole meeting we had about the missing caravan?”  I started slowly.

“How could I forget?”

“What missing caravan?”

“The one Lake City never sent.  Was a whole misunderstanding concocted by the doctor before he ran
outta town.”  Ben answered Ethan.

“Not exactly. We had been right Ben.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Dr.
Tommen had been working with one of the vamps to intercept the teams running supplies.  He split the people with the vamp.  She ate half, he used the other half for experiments.  Was doing studies on the dead inside of Junction.”

“…what?”

“I found the bodies…that distress signal I was all hot to trot about?  Came from inside our walls from the old church rec room where they had a CB.  Where she kept them when she drained them dry.”  I cleaned my throat.  “That’s how I got my legs broke, she dropped me in the middle of downtown Des Moines, left me to get eaten.”

“Those bloodsucking mother f-“

“Caius didn’t condone this.  He killed the girl who was in league with the doc.”

“Deadheads inside the walls…”  Ethan muttered, frowning.

“So let me get this straight…Lake City had been sending peeps south, and our residents killed them?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh shit.”

“It gets worse.” 
Rylie prompted me to continue.

“How the hell can it get worse?”

“The vampire, Antonia, also killed a vampire from Lake City.”  Both Ethan and Ben cursed simultaneously.

“So you are telling me, we’re going into a hotbed of people who pretty much are going to want us dead?”

“As a doornail.”  Candice added with a smile.  “Don’t fret big guy, that’s part of the reason I’m here to help.  So no one drains all your yummy blood.”  I had to stifle a laugh at that as Ben paled, she certainly was enjoying torturing her ex as much as possible.

“So the mission parameters have changed slightly.  The ability for open communication may be limited.” 
Rylie’s gravelly voice cut over Ben’s whining.

Ben rubbed at his face with both hands, obviously hoping the friction would help him think through this mess. “Well…what options do we have at this point?”

Candice hopped up on the counter and crossed her legs. “There are no options, my directions were clear.  Infiltrate Lake City, rescue my brother, eliminate Zhang by any means necessary.”

“A goddamned assassination?  We were sent north for a goddamned assassination?”  Ethan hissed, his face flushed.

“And a rescue.  Don’t forget that part.”  Candice added casually, her eyes focused on her nails. Left hand hard at work pushing back the cuticles on the right.

“Well shit, we’ve done crazier with less.”  Ben drawled. “Not like we have a damned choice.  Our colony volunteered us for this suicide shit.”

“No, I handpicked you.  If you die, it will be by my order.  For that.  I am sorry. I did not know what we were getting into.”

“It’s my fault, it really is.  I shouldn’t have kept this to myself.”

“Screw that.  It’s the goddamned councils fault, those old geezers act like castle lords in their damned tower.  I ain’t no serf.”

“Agreed.  Perhaps their ten year reign has corrupted.  Perhaps…elections when we return.”  Ethan smirked.  “Put a little democracy back into our survival.”

“Why wait?  Let’s just go home.”

“The situation with the north needs resolved.  We can’t just walk away from it.”  I muttered.  “Junction is our home, we’re all in this together.”

“How very communist of you.”  Ethan winked at me. 

"Looks like our pet is waking up." 
Rylie cracked his neck, then his knuckles.

After a few unsuccessful eye flitters, China managed to keep them open long enough to glare at us.  “Just kill me already.”

“Good morning to you too sunshine.”  Rylie quipped, hopping down off the counter.

“We don’t want you dead, we want your help.”  I offered, obviously the good cop in this duet.

“Help?  You just killed half my camp.  Or are they all dead?”  Venom laced words matched the fire seething from her eyes. Pure vengeance.  “Not sure how you had so many waiting in the wings, our scouts didn’t pick up any of them.”  I kept my poker face, the whole event had gone down so quickly she didn’t realize her team had sprung our vamp from the back of the van.  Nice.

“We did what we had to do.  Just like you do.”  My turn to be a jerk. “And they’re not all dead.  At least not yet.  That depends on what you say next.”

She was quiet for a long time, staring at the muddy beige tiled floor.

“And just what makes you think you can trust me?”

Stalking over to our prisoner Rylie put his face inches from hers.  “Nothing.”

“
Rylie, hey.”  Tugging lightly on his arm, I maneuvered him back to minimum non-threatening distance.  “We don’t know that we can trust you, however, we want the same thing.”

“And what's that?  A new pair of heels?”

“Zhang Qi out of Lake City.”

“Tall order for a flimsy human.”  The slight kick of an eyebrow told me I had peaked her interest.  “Why would a bunch of cattle from Junction care about something like that?”