“Silver, then.”
“Yeah. If we’re being followed by humans, that changes things. You want to call it in?”
“If we call in the cops and the people behind us are drunken rednecks out for a little fun at the vamp hunter’s expense, we’ll look stupid. Looking stupid is dangerous in a town full of vamps. It makes us look like prey.” I repositioned all my spare magazines into my pockets and crawled over the seat back. There was a midsized tote bag full of boxes. Heavy boxes. Ammo. I stuck extra mags into my pockets and waistband, but I didn’t take any boxes of bullets. Chances were, if we needed to reload the magazines we had on us, we’d already be drained.
“And if it’s Naturaleza vamps out for a little blood at the vamp hunter’s expense,” Eli said after a moment’s thought, “we’ll look dead.”
“True. You want me to call it in?” I asked.
“No. There’s an open field a mile ahead with a shed full of hay. If we can make that, we can make a stand from the woods or the shed. Decide later how serious our tail is.”
“Works for me.” I said. I remembered the location he was talking about. The shed was at the back of the field, about a hundred yards off the road, near a stand of trees. A shed full of hay was moderately good at stopping bullets. So were trees. Options were nice to have.
My foot hit something on the floorboard. I bent and lifted it into the faint light. “Did you know there’s a shotgun back here?”
“Huh. I wondered where that thing had got to.”
“Yeah. Mine runs and hides too. What’s it loaded with?”
“Your rounds. More in the ammo bag.”
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 circumstances, I wasn’t about to protest.
“Hang 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 frame give, heard the suspension twang and the tires spit dirt and gravel. My head slammed against the SUV roof, grinding my hair-stick stakes into my skull. And then we were up and over and bouncing across the grassy field. I grabbed handholds and seat backs and glanced through the back window to see three trucks following, bouncing over the low ditch. Headlights passed through truck windows, and I counted three or four heads in each. That meant more than nine, though less than twelve, opponents, which were not good odds. If they were all Naturaleza vamps, we might be screwed.
“Hang on!” Eli shouted again. The brakes slid and caught with an antiskid shudder. I slipped across the seat, tightening my grip on the overhead handhold at the last second, seeing the shed whip by. And then I was out the door, into the woods, Eli on my heels. He had left the engine running to cover the sound of our movement, the exhaust to hide our scent, and the SUV’s bright lights on to damage the pursuers’ eyes.
Beast was close in my mind, her claws a steady pain on my brain, her strength and speed flooding me. I raced into the night, her vision brightening the dark, turning the black into silvers and grays and shimmering greens. Where the moonlight filtered between the leafless trees it lit up the ground like daylight. Eli was slower than I was but fell into place behind me, trusting me to see in the dark until he got his low-light vision eyewear over his head. He moved to my side when he could see.
Behind us I heard engines and doors slamming and then silence as all the vehicles were turned off, including ours. There were no voices, no sound of running feet, no flashlights. Vamps have excellent night vision; they didn’t need flashlights. Crap.
The night was hushed, no bird sounds, no nearby car sounds. The air was still and cold, as if waiting for something to happen. Ahead I could smell standing water, stagnant with rotted vegetation, and a mixed bag of strong chemicals. Fertilizers. Herbicides. Bug spray. Over it all was the stench of drying cow manure. A stand of young live 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 them get 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 time to climb that high before they were on us, but he’d forgotten about my skinwalker strength, now augmented by all my new muscle. I laced my fingers and made a cradle of my hands. He put a booted foot into them and I tossed him up into the tree, holding 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 seemed to be jointed at the waist and nape, allowing them to bend in strange places, their legs folding oddly. They were fast.
I tucked Eli’s shotgun into my armpit, knowing that the recoil would tear at my shoulder joint, but there was no other way to fire downward without the recoil knocking me to the ground. I aimed at the base of the tree, aware that Eli had done the same with his handgun. There were five vamps in the clearing now, all racing around, all acting peculiar, and for vamps that was saying a lot. These were acting not-vampy. More like something else, though I couldn’t say what, but the sight of them scampering through the moon shadows of the trees gave me a case of the willies. They were something not meant to be on this world. Something wrong.
The hair on my arms tightened painfully. One of the vamps paused at the base of my tree, nose to the ground. I could hear the sniffing breaths as she took in my scent. She lifted her head straight up, at an impossible angle, 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 against my shoulder and fired again, taking a vamp midback. He fell, his upper body writhing on the ground, his lower body unmoving, his mouth open.
I slammed the shotgun 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 aim and hit—which meant waiting 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 down with a load of silver to the thigh and lower belly.
One leaped into the tree, landing beside me. I fired at point-blank range into his groin. He fell, and even with the concussive damage to my eardrums, I could hear his scream. I adjusted my aim in a modified two-handed grip and fired straight down, directly into a face. A female fell, her eyes fully vamped out, two-inch fangs white in the night. Something caught my eye. My last round hit a vamp in midair. He looked like he was flying. Right at me.