Octavia's War (9 page)

Remmy’s hands were tightly coiled fists at his sides.

“We’re not going to last,” Ángel said. His voice was strained, thick with lust. “I don’t know how it works. I don’t know how we figure it out. I do know we can’t wait to seal this when we’re somewhere civilized with a door that locks.”

Remmy cleared his throat. “You might be right.”

Octavia
knew
he was right. Her body was aching with the emotions and feelings whipsawing through her, from one extreme to another in a few moments. The need to have them both inside her was becoming a central image in her mind around which all other thoughts battled for space and attention.

“I can’t keep dealing with this,” she said. “It’s getting stronger, every hour. I can’t think of anything else.”

Remmy stirred. “There is a place, a few hours ahead…we might be able to hide there for a while.”

“A house?” Ángel said, startled. “There is no such thing, not in here.”

“No, it’s not a house,” Remmy said.

“Then…?” Octavia said.

“You’ll see.” Even in the dark, she could see Remmy’s smile.

* * * * *

Alex stood with his chest heaving, staring down at the body at his feet. He had been surprised into sudden violence, which never failed to tax those systems that had once been autonomic.

He heard running footsteps, then the door burst open and Diego
and
Wyatt almost fell into the room. Diego had his guns out and Wyatt had his iron knife in his fist.

Diego halted and bent over, his hands on his knees, the guns still under his fingers. He blew out a breath. “Man! I thought someone had stuck a pig. That was the most awful sound I’ve ever heard. Even worse than a vampeen in full fight mode.”

“He died hard,” Alex said regretfully. “He wouldn’t put down the machete.”

Wyatt came up to him. “Are you all right?” He spoke English, unlike Alex and Diego, for he was not fluent in Spanish. Alex didn’t even have to think about it. He had stopped speaking English almost the moment he had crossed the border. Diego was worse. He changed dialect to match whatever anyone was using who spoke to him. Between the two of them, they had quartered the little town of Manuel Benavides, speaking to the very few residents who had crept back to their homes under cover of the night, asking them where they had gone and why.

Alex gave Wyatt a fond smile. “He surprised me. I’d let my guard down, so this is my fault. I might have talked him out of it if he’d given me time. He just charged at me.”

Diego put the guns away under his jacket and turned the body over onto its back on the handwoven and blood-soiled rug.

Alex looked away from the man’s throat. He had been forced to move quickly and had gone for the jugular. It had not been a clean severance and the man had writhed in pain and shock.

“Who is it?” Diego asked. “Did he think we were the ones who killed the people we found in here?”

Alex tilted his head, looking down at the face. “I know this man. Not in person. I’ve seen his likeness somewhere.”

“A wanted poster?” Wyatt asked, pulling out his big cell phone. Mia had taught Wyatt how to use computers and networks to help him in his work and now he was very comfortable with technology.

“Everyone around here is in the pockets of a cartel,” Diego said. He glanced around and shivered. “Didn’t you say the Sub-officer in Santa Maria thought
La Espada
chopped up those people with a machete?” He toed the handle of the long machete laying on the rug next to the body.

Wyatt held up his phone. “Bingo,” he said in English. “
La Espada
, or The Blade. Severo Garcia is his real name. There’re half a dozen others, too. Racketeering, drug importation, sex trafficking…hell’s bells….” He fell silent, scrolling down the list. “Murder, over and over and over,” he added quietly. He let out a heavy breath. “Guess your instincts are in top form, Alex. This guy wouldn’t have let you talk him out of the day of the week.”

“
Enrico
Garcia is the head of the cartel here,” Diego said slowly, “and this one is Severo Garcia.” He looked at Alex. “Relative?”

“Son, I think.” Alex felt a touch of uneasiness.

Diego slapped his shoulder. “No sweat,” he said cheerfully. “Every gang between San Francisco and San Diego already wanted your head on a platter. Now you just added northern Mexico to the list.”

Wyatt gave a grimace. “Congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Alex said dryly. “Well, at least we have a direction to head in now.”

Wyatt looked out the window at the bluffs that seemed to rise out of the ground from the very edge of the little patio. “Into the park,” he said. “A nice, lonely place where anything can happen.”

“Even better,” Diego said happily and yanked out his guns once more. “What are we waiting for?”

* * * * *

Beth pulled out one of the empty steel chairs at the big industrial dining table and sat. The little redhead, Zoe, was already there, wolfing down a chicken dinner in big bites. Declan was sitting next to her, watching every bite go down.

“Hungry?” Beth asked.

“The autopsy took twelve hours!” Zoe said and scooped up a forkful of mashed potato and peas. “I’m starving!”

“Actually, I was asking Declan that,” Beth said, smiling.

Declan raised his brow in surprise.

“You looked as though you were salivating,” Beth pointed out.

“I was, I think. At least in here, I was.” He tapped his temple.

“Have you ever tried eating or drinking something?” Beth asked curiously.

“He took a mouthful of my coffee,” Zoe said and rolled her eyes. “It fell right back onto the floor, as if I had tipped the mug myself.”

Declan looked rueful. “Hunger and thirst are just mental leftovers now,” he said. “Like they are for vampires, I imagine.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Beth said honestly. “
My
vampire has to eat.”

Zoe giggled, covering her mouth. “Cole just sniffs hard, then sighs. He used to really like his food, poor guy.”

“It passes, that longing, I believe,” Beth said to both of them. “The oldest vampires I know barely even look at food and drink the same way as we do. It doesn’t figure into their conversation except as habits of speech that linger.”

“Like ‘fit for a king’?” Declan asked. “It used to be ‘a feast fit for a king’. Now it’s rare anyone says the whole thing anymore.”

“Yes, that’s it. I didn’t want to wait until you were ready to report in my office. We’re as secure here as anywhere else in the complex, including my office. I’ll let Zoe finish her meal, if you’d like to fill me in on the autopsy findings?”

Declan nodded. “Where would you like me to start?”

“Tell me what killed it, first,” Beth said. “That’s the million dollar question I’ve been waiting to answer.”

Declan looked rueful. “I’d like to tell you it was that bear shifter who ripped the thing’s guts out, but I’d be lying.”

Beth just looked at him.

“The physiology is all wrong, so I might be off in my guess,” Declan said. “These things truly are from someplace other than Earth. You can tell that just by looking at what is inside them. However, they do breathe air and convert oxygen to energy, which means they have lungs…although it took me a while to even figure out that what I was looking at
was
lungs. What was inside them told me they were lungs.”

“Which was?”

“Streptococcus pneumoniae.”

Beth blinked. “You’re joking.”

“Sorry.” Declan shrugged.

Zoe looked up from her chicken breast. “Sorry about what?”

“You’re telling me the Grimoré died of pneumonia?” Beth said.

“Actually, it died of asphyxiation. It choked to death because there was so much infection in the lungs it couldn’t breathe anymore. It’s a nasty way to go and I can’t think of a single creature that deserved it more than they do.”

Beth sat back. “Pneumonia,” she said flatly. “Well, that’s not something we can add to bullets or dump into the air over their heads.”

“You may not have to weaponize it at all,” Declan said. “Pneumonia bacteria are incredibly common. We breathe them in all the time, only most humans’ immune systems can kill the buggers off.”

“You’re saying this is like the Martians dying of the common cold in
The War of the Worlds?
” Beth asked.

“I’m saying it’s almost exactly like that.” Declan leaned forward. “Only, the Grimoré know of the vulnerability and they’re making moves to minimize the threat.”

“Moving down from the north, away from the cold? I didn’t think pneumonia was a result of coldness,” Beth said, turning it over in her mind.

“The dampness doesn’t help.” Declan put his hand on the table. “I can’t give you solid evidence, because I’m only just starting to understand their biology, yet I think the Grimoré might once have been a hibernating species. They
like
warmth and the old instincts are pushing them south. Pneumonia bacteria don’t like hot, dry conditions and that will help them.”

“So we know their direction and we know why,” Beth said slowly.

“It also explains some of the unprecedented vampeen attacks lately,” Declan said. “If the Grimoré really do control and direct them, then when they get ill and weaken….”

“Amok time,” Beth breathed and shivered.

The place Remmy had spoken of took just over two hours to reach. Octavia had no doubt they had arrived. It was like stepping inside a secret paradise.

Reaching the little grotto required squeezing through a tiny fissure in an otherwise blank cliff face. It was so narrow Octavia was forced to take off her backpack and turn sideways.

Remmy and Ángel had to push themselves through.

If Remmy had not been leading them to something, Octavia wasn’t sure she would have tried to get through the squeeze. Even though there were stars overhead, having the rough rock walls press in so close around her was claustrophobic.

The narrow passage turned a sharp corner just beyond the squeeze, so when they peered through the crack it looked as if there was nothing beyond but a blank wall. Once they had turned the corner, the passage widened to the point where they did not have to sidle along the sandy path.

No one spoke. Far overhead, where the cliffs ended, the night wind sighed over the fissure opening, sounding mournful and lonely.

The passage opened up into a wider, dead-end canyon, like the bottom of a teardrop. It was almost perfectly symmetrical and the walls of the little pocket were smooth rock, worn over centuries.

At the far end, almost in the middle of the wall, there was a narrow waterfall, dropping from the top of the cliffs above. The water formed a pool at the bottom and plants grew everywhere—soft ferns, big glossy-leaved palms and spindly grasses.

The sand underfoot grew deeper until it was as though they were walking on beach sand.

“Amazing,” Ángel said. “I have lived in Chihuahua all my life and I didn’t know this was here.” His voice did not echo in the tiny canyon because the soft sound of the water muffled it.

“In summer it is not here,” Remmy said. “The waterfall is snow melt and rain run-off, which you only get in winter. For a month, perhaps, the water runs, the plants explode and those who know of this place, including all the creatures that live here, visit and refresh themselves. When the water stops, though, the plants die and this place is nothing but sand and rock.”

Ángel dropped the duffel bag and stretched. “The pool drains?”

“There are cracks in the rock somewhere. It trickles down to underground water tables.”

Ángel stripped off his jacket, then the shirt beneath. His skin gleamed in the diffuse moonlight as he moved over to the edge of the pool of water and bent down to wash.

Remmy lowered the heavy bag to the ground, then sat in the sand next to it, watching Ángel.

Octavia rid herself of the backpack and her denim coat. She pulled off her boots gratefully. The night air was cool against her arms, neck and face. It wasn’t cold enough to want to cover up, not after walking for two hours.

She sat next to Remmy and listened to the splash and tinkle of the water on the rock below. “Makes me want to take a shower,” she said.

“Help yourself.”

“Won’t it pollute the water in the pool? You said animals use this place.”

“The pool drains and renews itself.”

Now Octavia understood Ángel’s question. “Maybe later,” she said. She let the silence grow again. Remmy was a big man and sitting beside him in this way made her very aware of her size compared to his. She had only caught a glimpse of the differences his vampire state made, including his immense strength and indefatigable energy. They were startling hints that made her want to know more.

Except that now a mood was pouring off Remmy that deflected questions without him speaking. He seemed…sad.

“Penny for your thoughts,” she murmured.

“In eighteen fifteen, a penny was actually worth something.” He eased off his boots and socks and pushed his feet into the sand, wriggling his toes.

“Is that where your thoughts were? Back in eighteen fifteen?”

“Back in time, yes, ma’am,” he said softly. “I learned a long time ago not to linger there too often. Vampires have a very long tail of history behind them and those who look back too often…well, they forget how to look forward.” He looked up and around the grotto. “This place always takes me back there.”

“Why is that?”

“It reminds me of Oregon.” He looked down at the sand and lifted his toes so it trickled between them.

Ángel stood and kicked off his boots, then his jeans, the big belt buckle rattling with a soft metallic clink as he dropped the denim to the rocks at his feet.

Octavia was mesmerized by the sight of Ángel’s ass, high and hard. The spread of his shoulders. The powerful thighs.

She realized she was holding her breath, waiting for him to turn so she could see the front half.

“There is a place like this in Oregon?” she asked Remmy.

He was watching Ángel, too, she realized. His eyes were narrowed. He had stopped kicking at the sand.

“All of Oregon is green like this,” Remmy said, his voice distant.