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I opened the door The room on the other side had once been therecently and no one had bothered to fix it I made a face at the stink and thesilently, I slid my back down to the next It was the women’s toilet And it here the vamps kept their snacks
Three naked women were handcuffed to the exposed pipes, and all showed crusted wounds at every major pulse point, blackened eyes, and bodies covered in pustules, evidence of the vaue One cradled a broken arm Her eyelids fluttered open and she started to whi of pain sweat and fear pheroer over my lips to silence her Her eyes ide and she started to cry, realizing that help had arrived Five ers
She nodded hard and fast, and mouthed back, Don’t leave us
I nodded and closed the door Like I’d ever leave soers to Eli so he knehat I’d seen, andcrazily by one hinge I duckede rooerator taking up one corner Debris and busted furniture covered the floor, but no bodies Eli joinedour backs, and I , no hiding places for a blood-slave with a weapon, no vaerator Its door was open and it was ee white circle painted on the floor I’d seen one once before and closed the door,sure it wouldn’t open fro
I pointed to the side of the fridge and waggled two crooked fingers,stairs, before I stepped over parts of a chair and putthe steps, with cooler airdownstairs near the floor and war and co I dropped to one knee and opened ue and the roof of rass, and a faint undertang of pine--and there was the ferhtly beery, I’d come to associate with Naturaleza But beneath it, like the odd bottone, was a dry, musty, limy scent, like cement dust and roaches I tried to remember if I’d smelled this particular stink when the vamps attacked Eli and me in the woods, but I hadn’t noticed it The air had been open andthere Here the vamp reek was concentrated, and it se
I stayed where I was, kneeling, parsing the scents until I was certain Upstairs were at least two,ers Eli bent and looked up the stairs quickly, pulled back, and nodded He pointed to the flashbangs on his belt I hesitated and then shook my head I couldn’t explain it, but the place felt open and large Flashbangs worked best in enclosed spaces and save un, and peeked up the stairs into the pitch-dark Eli didn’t have his low-light equipht vision and speed, taking the steps two at a ti on the treads My vision expanded into sharp focus, blues and greens and silvers The upstairs was one large roo held up with colued as I cleared the stairs I swiveled the M4, squeezed the trigger, and took off his head He fell as the boo I raced inside and felt the vamp more than saw her as she leaped at me From across the room
Iher in the shoulder, spinning her off course enough foras I drew the vamp-killer She landed with a bounce on her injured side, and screa or severely injured vaun-induced deafness I raised the blade and brought it doith h the side of her neck and buried the blade in the floor She stopped e, but she clawed atsure I wasn’t under attack by the re to free the blade The fast healing of the Naturaleza half-sealed the cut She was screarab the blade I kicked her hand and brought down the blade again, taking her head with a whack that jarred ore, but this time with the odd stink I’d noticed Spidey-va Eli shouting, "Lights!" I whirled, seeing nothing, then stopped and closed ht flooded the place And the last varound She was fleshy and powerful, dressed in what ht have once been a white dress but was now covered with dried blood and filth Her dark hair streamed out behind her like a whip as the two i that the silver wouldn’t be deadly even if I hit her heart but all the other weaponsher over his body, ra my left arm over my head She rebounded from the wall and landed on Eli before he could find his feet, her ht ans Not feeling the heart give, knowing I’d missed Andthe M4 around to fire when she leaped And landed onflesh I didn’t feel the pain yet, not with the adrenaline flooding un She growled, and I felt the vibration through the flesh of my arm She shookinside snap and was instantly nauseous I fell and rolled with her Her taloned hands stabbed aton the thin, silvered mesh between the leather and me
Her jaws ripped out of s tore at uttural growls coh the ainst the floor, her talons breaking the skin of my scalp I saw stars for a moment, sparkles of white on a black surface My vision cleared with a blink to see a un
The blast shredded the back of her head She fell away fro on the floor A second blast took her through the throat, decapitating her Eli stood over her,she was the last one
He raised the gun and I wasn’t surprised to see the M4 I’d dropped it along the way to nearly being vamp bait He hadn’t understood, or maybe hadn’t heard, my clear, and he walked the periheads while I eased up into a sitting position, fished a tourniquet froet it around h the leather "Huhed, because it wasn’t humorous at all My stomach rebelled I twisted to the side and threw up ree angle The blood spurting across ure out what to do about it There was a lot of blood A lot
The buzz inI shookmy blood froers to the side and secured the tourniquet, his hands feeling hot onbut I couldn’t hear anything except the roar in ht, and then to the blood-spatter stains on the timbers over my head
CHAPTER 17
I Know I’ll Have to Choose
My next coherentHe’d propped ainst a center roof support He closed the phone I went dark again, and woke to see hiers undid the Velcro and the ties beneath, pulling off the boot to expose my white cotton sock I blinked and lass in then, but couldn’t ren it was "Eli? Whatcha doin’?"
He looked up for a moment and back to my feet "Good You’re back Rick’s on the way He says you have to shift to heal the ar buzz had dah hu to furry I know You took a blow to the head He says you "
"Yeah?" That see Brother PsyLED He knows his sh-- his stuff"
PsyLED knew about skinwalkers? How? Oh yeah Rick would have told them about me And they probably had lots of old papers and reports for intel, way more than in the oo rooht while Eli pulled offall about me was info I didn’t knohat to do with, so I concentrated on what I did know Or did want to know "So, why’re you taking off my boots?"
"And your pants"
"You try"--I stopped to breathe and realized I oozy--"to take off my pants"--more breaths--"and I’ll shoot you"
"I disarmed you" I looked down and realized that while I was unconscious, he had unzipped ood arle weapon They were piled close by, but too far to reach at the moment I looked back down I had blood all over my nice, clean silk-knit undershirt "Well, crap"