Vampire Uprising

the trigger of the M-16 in his hands.

When Paige reached out for Cole, she was held back by the SWAT guy who’d taken him into custody. “I don’t give a shit what kind of pull you have,” he snapped. “This one’s in our custody now.”

The man with the M-16 and pockmarked face replied, “He’s all yours. We’re willing to cooperate.”

“If you would’ve been so generous before, maybe the rest of these assholes wouldn’t have gotten away!”

The man with the pockmarks kept his mouth shut and stepped back.

“You need to go with them, Cole,” Paige said.

Suddenly, the sight of her wasn’t so comforting. “What? That’s how you fixed this?”

“Just trust me. Go with them.”

“Go where?” Cole asked.

“If I had my way, you’d be goin’ into a fuckin’ box and buried under six feet of dirt for all those cops you killed,” the SWAT officer said. In a harsh whisper he added, “And if it weren’t for them news crews, I’d do the job myself without losing a damn bit of sleep over it.”

Cole was pulled away from the van and shoved toward another one parked ten feet away. He nearly fell on his face after two steps, finding out only then that someone had locked shackles around his ankles while he’d been looking at Paige. He looked at her again, still waiting for her to step in and play whatever card she’d been saving for him.

“You set this up!” Cole said once he realized that card wasn’t coming. “What happens now? Huh?”

Catching up to him, she explained, “I didn’t have a choice, Cole. We all got set up too well for me to do anything else. There’s another one in town somewhere.”

“Another what?”

“One like Hope. If things didn’t turn out like this, more would have died. I’m sorry.”

Cole was turned away from her and forced into the van. His stomach flipped and it became increasingly difficult to maintain his balance. Cars and vans filled the street beyond a perimeter the cops had set up. He didn’t recognize all the letters painted on those vehicles, but they had to have represented most or all of the local news stations. In the time it took for him to figure out that much, lights from a dozen different cameras were pointed his way.

Muscles strained against the metal restraints as well as the hands that shoved Cole into the back of the van. His senses were overloaded with everything from camera lights and venomous words to the scents of recent gunfire and exhaust fumes from the vans that were about to take him into a cell or possibly a shallow grave on the way to the police station.

“She would have killed you, Cole,” Paige shouted to him. “If it wasn’t Hope, it would have been the other one. I couldn’t let that happen to someone else that I …” She had trouble getting her next few words out but was also being jostled by the police officers taking over the scene, as well as the soldiers who’d been with her in that helicopter. When Cole was seated in the van and getting his shackles bolted through a steel ring between his feet, she spoke again. All he could hear was, “It was Tara! I won’t let her—”

The helicopter’s rotors powered up, washing out Paige’s voice in an all-encompassing roar.

Cole could still taste oily blood in the back of his throat. When he moved his arms, he felt certain he could pull the chains apart in a few good tries and there was enough healing serum in his system to absorb some punishment from the cops along the way.

He could get out of that van if he wanted.

At that moment, knowing what Paige had done, he just didn’t want to.

As the van doors slammed shut, sealing him in a steel box full of chains, shotguns, and an angry SWAT team mourning friends they thought he’d killed, Cole found solace in words from another man who’d become an enemy to his own people.

Is it too much to ask to receive a little gratitude? Jonah Lancroft had written in one of the journal entries that had stuck with Cole long after he’d read them. I’ve purged villages of evil, only to be chased out by the same frightened simpletons who’d begged for help from a deity that in all likelihood doesn’t exist. If God does exist, why wouldn’t He be far from here, creating new miracles while his former ones eke out a life of their own? If there is a God, I believe we are not forgotten by Him. We are simply allowed to live on our own and enjoy the gifts we have been given. Why, then, must so many choose to be blind to the evils that so obviously exist and can be seen, felt, and heard every day and night?

I have withdrawn into a life of quiet research, founding my reformatory as a place to keep monstrosities away from those they may harm. I have spent years studying ways to improve my fellow Skinners and give them a fighting chance against demons that have proven to be more resilient and adaptable than those who kid themselves into thinking they are the favored ones on this earth.

If we are made in God’s image, then I do not want to pray. Those words would only be seen as weakness and turned against me, just as my pleas and confessions have been thrown into my face by the select few with whom I’d mistakenly aligned myself.

And still, because I am a Skinner and know of no other way, I continue to fight. Is it wrong for me to desire a word of thanks or gesture of gratitude? Is it wrong to want the solace given to any common soldier who bleeds for home and country?

I suppose it is too much to ask. And so, from this day hence, I will never ask again.

Cole set his jaw in a firm line, clenched his fists and allowed his strength to bleed into his grip upon nothing instead of using it to make a break for it. Freedom didn’t do him any good if there was nowhere left to run.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Byers Peak, Colorado

Kawosa crouched at the edge of a sharp drop-off separating the narrow path behind him from the side of a mountain. His bony knees were splayed to either side, one of which poked out through a tear in his ragged pants. Narrow arms reached down between them and gripped the ground a few inches in front of his stubby toes. When a cold wind scratched along the Rockies, it set Kawosa’s stringy black hair into motion without flushing cheeks that were more weathered than the mound of ancient stone. Denver was a glowing collection of light and movement sixty miles to the east, and Kawosa gazed at it as if tracing every last glimmer back to its source.

A burly figure bounded through the National Forest below, appearing between the pines and leaping over sections of ground that were too densely wooded to cross on foot. If the creature had been inclined to take a more deliberate pace, its black fur would have allowed it to blend in with its surroundings. As intolerant of the terrain as he was with most everything crawling on or beneath it, he shouldered past an old tree with enough force to knock a piece of its trunk away before launching himself into the air.

In a matter of minutes the Full Blood had emerged from the forest and was crawling up the side of the mountain. Taking the narrow trail forced him to shift into the human body he’d all but cast aside over the last few days.

“Where are your Mongrel friends?” Kawosa asked.

“Having a word with the packs in Montana and Wyoming,” Liam said in his thick, vaguely antiquated, cockney accent. “From there they’ll head south into New Mexico and out into the desert. Plenty of lost souls out there.”

“Do you think they will come around to our way of thinking?”

“After what we showed Max and Lyssa? They’d be insane to stay on their own.”

One of Kawosa’s eyebrows shifted upward so slightly that even a Full Blood’s senses might have missed the gesture. “Perhaps I should have a word with them just to be certain.”

Liam crouched so his legs could offer the rest of his body some protection against the wind’s chill. “Like you had a word with Randolph?” When Kawosa glanced over, he added, “He was sticking real close to you until now. I assume you must have done something to escape from his watchful eye.”

“He has business of his own.”

“You’re referring to the two Full Bloods that came over from across the pond?”

Smirking, Kawosa said, “He thinks there is only one new arrival.”