Page 20 of First Blood
I opened up the attachment she’d sent and stared in horror. They were way, way out of town, about fifty miles to the northwest, into the woods. At a campground, or a cabin — I couldn’t tell. But it’d take at least two hours to get there given the quality and twistiness of the roads.
Two more hours. There was no way Laurie would survive that long; it’d already been at least three hours since he was taken.
I forced it down, under the surface, and made myself grow cold and still, like ice over a raging river. Two hundred years I’d watched people live and die. I could keep it together long enough to get there. But I’d need all the luck I could get.
Chapter 8
Hunted
Luck came in the form of a tall, ninja-esque figure with a massive sword strapped to his back.
Doran flagged me down from the sidewalk as I ran a red light on the edge of town. I pulled over with a screech of tires, halfway up onto the curb, and leapt out of the car.
I left the engine running, left the door open, left the keys. It didn’t matter, not when Doran was already sketching one of his void-space doorways in the air right there on the sidewalk.
“Thank you,” I said, and I’d never meant anything more in my life.
Doran nodded. “All the humans are out of the way of the trolls,” he replied, moving his hand to widen the gap enough for me to step through. “They could spare me for five minutes. You’re on your own from here, though. I can’t take the time to come with you. Fenwick insisted on leading the charge himself, and who knows what he’ll do without me there to talk some sense into him.”
He stepped aside and waved me through like a genial butler in one of the great houses of the last century.
“Don’t get stomped on,” I said, and stepped into nothingness.
I came out in the middle of a small grove of pines, and the doorway vanished the moment I’d cleared it. I used the trees for cover as I took a look around, but there was nothing to see besides more forest. With my eyes closed, I stretched out my other senses as much as possible, straining for any scent, any sound.
There. Voices, not too far away but muffled, and the smell of a recently heated car engine.
And the faintest, most delicate trace of honey and oranges.
Laurie. I breathed him in greedily, letting the essence of him fill my lungs and ground me. He was there, and almost certainly alive, since spilled blood and dead flesh had a dark, bitter undertone to them.
My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out in case Esther or Doran had some new information for me, but it was a number I didn’t recognize: an Oregon area code. My hackles rose, and I answered.
“Victor,” said a deep, raspy male voice. “I know you’re listening.”
“Who the fuck are you?”
He chuckled, but it didn’t sound amused. “I’m the brother of the man you murdered,” he said. “And I have your whore. I’m going to send you directions. Come alone, and maybe I’ll let him live once I’m done with both of you. You have two hours to get here.”
“Prove it.” I knew they had him, but I had to play along. Iftheyknew how muchIknew, they might panic and kill Laurie, cut their losses and run. I was close enough to catch them, but not close enough to kill them all before they killed him. “I don’t think you have shit.”
“Say hello to Victor, bitch,” he said, and there was some rustling.
“This isn’t going to work!” Laurie’s voice, high and panicked. “He won’t come —” There was a sharp crack like a backhanded slap and he cut off with a cry. My phone case snapped into a dozen shards as my hand tightened.
I was going to kill them. No, strike that. I was already going to kill them. Now I was going to make it far more painful than necessary.
“That’s your proof,” the bastard said. “We’re going to play with him until you get here, so if you want there to be anything left, hurry the fuck up.”
The line went dead.
Slowly and deliberately, I muted the phone completely and put it back in my pocket, brushing bits of shattered plastic off my hands. They thought I was two hours away, maybe less if I’d been on the right side of town and if I drove too fast for safety. I had the advantage. Laurie — fuck, Laurie was brave enough to play along, try to tell them I wouldn’t take the bait. That sent some ripples through the veneer of calm I was trying to hold onto. He was terrified, and gods only knew what they’d already done to him. But he was so fucking brave.
Laurie’s life depended on my treating this like any other battle, any other dangerous situation I’d ever been in. I’d fought in wars, and while vampires weren’t easy to kill, it wasn’t because we were invulnerable; it was because we were usually stronger, faster, and deadlier than whoever was trying to kill us. I wasn’t afraid for myself. I never really had been.
I had to pretend this was just another day, another set of assholes who needed to be taken down. No stress. No hurry. No mistakes stemming from carelessness or panic.
The voices had been coming from my left, so I carefully left the stand of trees, slipping from trunk to trunk and making sure I didn’t step on any brittle fallen branches half-buried in snow.
