The human soldiers may clean up the leavings.”
“Wrong. No one eats or drains the vamps or the humans,” I said.
Innara growled and the hairs on my neck quivered in atavistic response. “No one tells me who I may not drain on the field of battle.”
I carefully did not make eye contact, to avoid ratcheting up the tension. “The vamps are diseased. And maybe on some chemical. Drug. Something. Can’t you smell it?”
Innara lifted her nose and sniffed, her head moving like a snake, in little jerking motions with each breath. “I smell nothing.”
“Well, I do. It smells metallic.”
“Like silver? Many of our old masters were poisoned when a blood-slave drank colloidal silver and brandy and allowed them to drain her.”
I knew that story. I lifted my blade and sniffed it, smelling the iron in the steel and the silver in the plating. I frowned. “Not silver. Not iron. But something metallic. Maybe a drug. Just don’t drink from them and don’t get bit. Okay?” Innara studied me. The disparity in our heights should have allowed me to feel superior, but I didn’t, I wasn’t. Not next to the fierce little vamp, her fangs picking up the moonlight.
“You think their bite is dangerous?” she asked. “You think the blood of their servants is poisoned?”
I shrugged. “I smell something that isn’t right.” And vamps were getting sick. I didn’t have to add that part.
“My anamchara and I will herd them into a small group. And then we will cut off their heads.”
I chuckled softly at the bloodthirsty comment. “It would be nice to have something left to question after. Also there are cops nearby. I’m surprised they haven’t shown up here already.”
“The police are human, and humans can be swayed to see what we wish them to.”
Which sooo did not make me happy.
Derek walked up, nearly silent in the night, with his soldier’s training, but Innara and Gee DiMercy turned, hearing him coming. “I won’t be part of a slaughter,” he said, “even if the fangheads are naturally armed and bat- shit crazy.”
“You will do as you are told, human,” Innara hissed.
“Enough,” I said. “Derek, do you have flashbangs?” At his nod, I said to Innara, “No slaughter. You and your vamps make a diversionary feint directly at the front of the barn. Gee, you go left with half of Derek’s men, aiming for the open, middle stall door. Derek, you and the rest of your men go in on the right”—I pointed—“to that door, but behind me. When we get to the barn, we throw in every stun grenade we have. It isn’t a confined space, which will limit the noise and concussion factor, but I’ll take what we can get with the light.
“After the blasts, we go in.” I pointed to Gee and me. “We’ll take care of any vamp old enough to still be standing after the candle flash. Derek and his men will round up anyone blinded and temporarily disabled.” Flashbangs produced enough noise and light to incapacitate a human and to blind vamps. Maybe permanently. But old vamps had enough power to survive things the young ones did not, and I’d never tested them on a master. Without a pause, I went on.
“Innara, you and your fan—vamps come in behind us. No drinking, no killing. I want them alive.”
Her eyes lit up, bleeding back to human, her pupils shrinking, sclera paling down from scarlet to merely bloodshot. “So that we can make them tell us everything they know. Yes! I like your plan.”
It wasn’t much of a plan, but I didn’t argue. For some reason they were listening to me. Maybe that ill-fated Enforcer situation. Derek handed two flashbangs to me and one to Gee, demonstrated the use of the military-grade, M84 stun grenades, which I was pretty sure he should not have had in his possession. He said, “We need to pull and throw together, otherwise the suckheads will have time to react and look away, cover their eyes. It’ll be on three.” He tapped his mouthpiece three times to demonstrate.
The vamps moved into the night like snakes in the grass, their bodies weirdly not human, disjointed. I dropped into the hay, Derek behind me. It wasn’t a long crawl, but it wasn’t going to be easy as loaded down with blades as I was. And wearing the wrong boots. And the wrong clothes. Not that I would gripe about it. I didn’t have time to gripe about anything.
We crawled through the hay, crushing the stiff stalks, disturbing insects, sending rodents scurrying and snakes slithering. From one whispered curse, I gathered that Derek was not fond of reptiles. We also set up a cloud of mosquitoes as we moved. With all the activity, the vamps had to see and hear us coming. Great plan. We’d have been better to just charge, except that one group had done that, and engaged someone at the front of the barn. Blades clashed and voices shouted.
I stood up at one corner of the barn, Gee across from me. We met eyes, and the smaller man nodded. Derek tapped his mic. On one, I pulled the pin. On two, I stepped to the door, Derek behind me, mirroring my actions. On three, I threw the grenade. Derek’s lofted high and at a different angle from mine. I pulled the pin on the second flashbang and tossed it, eyes closed, and continued the arc of the throw, bringing up my hands to cover my eyes and ears. A flashbang explodes at 170 decibels and a pyrotechnic metal-oxidant mix of magnesium and ammonium, at over six million candela. The night went white in a series of blasts. Moments later, we rushed in.
I figured it was useless, but I shouted as I ran, “Surrender and you’ll live. Put down your weapons.” Surprisingly, a few listened and surrendered. The fight with the rest was short and brutal. Derek and his men herded half-blind vamps and injured humans out into the night and dropped them onto the ground. Three enemy vamps who could still see went after Derek and his men, leaping off huge farm equipment and out of the hayloft at the former marines. Innara and her vamps attacked before they landed. Sneak Cheek moved off the side at a dead run and clubbed two vamps to the ground. They stayed down. Tequila Sunrise staked them in the lower bellies to immobilize them. It was nice work.
Gee and I turned to the two vamps rushing us from the corner. I fired the M4 at one, emptying both barrels, two hand-packed, silver fléchette rounds into his abdomen, the recoil reverberating through me. The vamp went down but was still alive, struggling back to his feet, even without any flesh between ribs and hips, and only a damaged spine holding him together. He was gripping a sword and an old six-shooter pistol. I kicked the gun away and blocked his human-slow-because-he-no-longer-had-blood-inside strikes until he fell for good.
Shotguns loaded with silver made fighting vamps way too easy, especially the old ones. They didn’t have the mind-set to fear guns and so took few precautions against them. But there was no fair in war. I stood over the vamp. “Yield and you’ll live,” I said.
“No,” he gasped, his face set in stubborn, frantic lines as he bled into the dirt.
I waited until he stopped gasping for breath, until his blood stopped flowing, giving him a chance to surrender. Then, when he looked dead, I took his head to keep him from rising as a revenant.
Gee was a two-blade fighter, moving like the love child of a flamenco dancer and a bird of prey, his swords like two wings, sweeping together and apart, cutting and slicing, his feet balletic, his body graceful. After making sure there were no more vamps in the barn, I holstered the M4 and leaned against a wall, watching him play with the vamp. And it was play, because though the vampire had obviously been fencing for centuries, he looked like a first-year student against the Mercy Blade. I had never fought against Gee DiMercy, and it was a good thing, as he would have cut me to ribbons. Literally. Just as he was doing with a fighter who was way better at swordplay than I was.
When he took mercy on his opponent and called for him to surrender, the man charged him, and Gee took his head. It was just like in the old TV shows and movies about the Highlander, and the saying “There can be only one.” Only without the lightning and wind when the head fell. I couldn’t help it. I clapped.
And Girrard DiMercy whirled with a flourish and bowed, one sword behind him like a wing, the other across his body, pointed down to the floor. “Very pretty,” I said.
He rose with another dramatic flourish and said, “I am, aren’t I?”
I snorted and followed him out of the barn, to find Innara casually staking a vamp.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I Whirled and Caught the Naked Man
She was using a silver-tipped wood stake, which was much longer than one of mine, and she wasn’t aiming
