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My rounds meant the weapon was loaded for vamp with silver fléchette rounds Vamp killers Expensive vamp killers I hadn’t known I had paid for, but under the circu on," he said I gripped the leather handhold over the door as Eli whipped the wheel The SUV crossed the shoulder of the road before leaving the paved surface, tilting down and back up I felt the steel fra and the tires spit dirt and gravel My head sla my hair-stick stakes intoacross the grassy field I grabbed handholds and seat backs and glanced through the backto see three trucks following, bouncing over the low ditch Headlights passed through truck s, and I counted three or four heads in each That h less than twelve, opponents, which were not good odds If they were all Naturaleza vaain The brakes slid and caught with an antiskid shudder I slipped across the seat, tighteningthe shed whip by And then I was out the door, into the woods, Eli onto cover the sound of our ht lights on to dae the pursuers’ eyes

Beast was close in th and speed floodingthe dark, turning the black into silvers and grays and shiht filtered between the leafless trees it lit up the ground like daylight Eli was slower than I was but fell into place behind ht vision eyewear over his head He ines and doors sla and then silence as all the vehicles were turned off, including ours There were no voices, no sound of running feet, no flashlights Vahts Crap

The night was hushed, no bird sounds, no nearby car sounds The air was still and cold, as if waiting for sonant with rotted vegetation, and aspray Over it all was the stench of drying cowlive oaks, maybe fifty years old, stood in even lines, the only trees in sight that still had their leaves We were in the back of a plantation home, in an area used as a nursery

I stopped at the second tree and grabbed Eli, pulling him close, my mouth at his ear "Get up in the tree I’ll take a tree a row over and down a few Let theet between us, then shoot down on them Pincer style"

He looked up and shook his head I understood what he was thinking He didn’t have tiotten about ers and made a cradle of my hands He put a booted foot into the my place until he was situated, his face just a little stunned Then I raced across and down, choosing a tree about thirty feet away on the diagonal I bent into a crouch and leaped, grabbing the lowest branch and hoisting myself up All the months of exercise paid off as I muscled myself halfway up the tree and straddled a branch On the rising breeze, I smelled vamp and sickness and a beery stench And human blood A lot of blood These were Naturaleza And they were here

They poured into the wide space between trees Three in front; two behind Others farther back in the trees were closing fast The three in front dropped forward, feet and hands to the ground, and raced into the clearing between the rows of trees, noses low, sniffing The hair along my body rose in alarm The vamps moved like a cross between reptiles and spiders, with a soupçon of wild hog Their spines see the oddly They were fast

I tucked Eli’s shotgun intothat the recoil would tear at my shoulder joint, but there was no other way to fire doithout the recoil knocking round I aimed at the base of the tree, aware that Eli had done the sa now, all racing around, all acting peculiar, and for va not-vah I couldn’t say what, but the sight of theavenot

The hair on htened painfully One of the varound I could hear the sniffing breaths as she took in ht up, at an ile, as if her neck were made of rubber

I fired Into her face It disappeared So did her head The rest of her fell like a rock to the ground The blast ripped the night sounds away My armpit took the recoil; I’d have a bruise and stretched tendons Thoughts for later

I shifted the weapon up againsta varound, his lower body unun into a fork of trunk and branch and pulled a nine mil I wouldn’t have the luxury of the spread pattern now I’d have to ai until they were still A vamp paused in the center of the space between rows of trees Moonlight danced across his unnatural body I squeezed off three rounds just before he took a step He went doith a load of silver to the thigh and lower belly

One leaped into the tree, landing beside roin He fell, and even with the concussive dae to my eardrums, I could hear his screarip and fired straight down, directly into a face A fes white in the night Soht my eye My last round hit a vaht atthat shouldn’t--couldn’t--be The vamp I’d hit in the middle of the back with the silver fléchettes pushed himself to his feet I’d severed his spine I knew I had And yet he had healed even with silver in his system

Not possible

I aimed carefully and triple-tapped hihtly to the left He staggered And then he turned and stumbled away, into the trees, back the way he had co her face But walking Full of silver that should have burned the pain until it poisoned the A moment later, only the one I’d hit first, the one with the head shot, was left

I studied her froh sohtly, fresh pinkish skin and sments and blood and mush should have been I looked around the rows of trees They were all gone Why had they just left? If they can regenerate like that, even full of silver, they should have stuck around until we made a mistake, and then eaten us for dinner

Across the way, Eli slid out of the tree and landed loose-kneed on the ground, his weapon in a Weaver stance as he studied the area At some point there had been four dead vamps under his tree and four or five beneath mine Noe had one DB No way should sowas hinky here Very, very hinky I’d be chatting up Clark very soon, and not just about business

I reloaded and handed down the shotgun, changed out ripped the liround

There wasn’t enough of the vamp’s head left to take it for a trophy, and a filthy turtleneck top covered her chest and ar a street person would wear, not a top-of-the-line predator I lifted her hands, which still displayed the two-inch-long claws They were jagged and torn, unlike the usual manicured talons vamps displayed I pulled my phone and took several shots of her I’d need proof to try to collect the bounty--try being the operative word Without fangs in a head to display, no va H’s Clan hoht-hand blood meal, with a text about va that the MOC of the entire Southeast USA should know

Eli jutted his chin back the e had coot to the SUV, it was sitting there in the small space between the hay shed and the tree line, four doors open, engine off, keys in the ignition Eli had disabled the interior lights long ago, so the interior was dark Eli crawled underneath--I guess to look for bo odd, but, really, neither of us expected to find anything Our expectations satisfied, we cliun Tonight had given the old saying "riding shotgun," newI lowered the s and pointed the ine and drove us home We didn’t say a word on the reuest-parking space and cut the engine We sat there, listening to the engine cool down, hearing night birds hoot and sing Watching through the s of Esh the roo down in scraggly curls, his face illuht "My brother has absolutely no sense of self-preservation or survival instinct," Eli said "He has no idea we’re out here We could be silver-eating, flesh-regenerating, vah the door to eat his brilliant brain, he’d look up and say, ‘Huh?’" When I didn’t respond, he said, "What were those things?"

"I don’t know They didn’t talk that I heard You?" I asked Eli shook his head "They didn’tsounds that vamps make when they move fast They just flowed, like water" Eli tilted his head in agreement "And I never ever saw a va," I said, knowing ht "And I think I saw one actually flying"