Blood Trade

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 soupcon 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.

And then I saw something that shouldn’t—couldn’t—be. The vamp I’d hit in the middle of the back with the silver flechettes pushed himself to his feet. I’d severed his spine. I knew I had. And yet he had healed even with silver in his system.

Not possible.

I aimed carefully and triple-tapped him, two chest shots midcenter and one slightly to the left. He staggered. And then he turned and stumbled away, into the trees, back the way he had come. The female I’d shot followed him, holding her face. But walking. Full of silver that should have burned them with mind-shattering pain until it poisoned them true-dead. Dead vamps walking. A moment later, only the one I’d hit first, the one with the head shot, was left.

I studied her from the tree. She was dead, true-dead, though somehow, she had regenerated slightly, fresh pinkish skin and smooth bones showing where only fragments and blood and mush should have been. I looked around the rows of trees. They were all gone. Why had they just left? If they can regenerate like that, even full of silver, they should have stuck around until we made a mistake, and then eaten us for dinner.

Across the way, Eli slid out of the tree and landed loose-kneed on the ground, his weapon in a Weaver stance as he studied the area. At some point there had been four dead vamps under his tree and four or five beneath mine. Now we had one DB. No way should so many have survived. Something was hinky here. Very, very hinky. I’d be chatting up Clark very soon, and not just about business.

I reloaded and handed down the shotgun, changed out magazines, and chambered a round. One-handed, I gripped the limb I was squatting on and swung, dropping bent kneed to the ground.

There wasn’t enough of the vamp’s head left to take it for a trophy, and a filthy turtleneck top covered her chest and arms. Her jeans were dirty too, like something a street person would wear, not a top-of-the-line predator. I lifted her hands, which still displayed the two-inch-long claws. They were jagged and torn, unlike the usual manicured talons vamps displayed. I pulled my phone and took several shots of her. I’d need proof to try to collect the bounty—try being the operative word. Without fangs in a head to display, no vamp MOC had to pay me anything. Still, I sent the pics to Big H’s Clan home, and to Bruiser, Leo’s right-hand blood meal, with a text about vamps who were resistant to silver. It seemed like something that the MOC of the entire Southeast USA should know.

Eli jutted his chin back the way we had come, and this time I followed him. When we got to the SUV, it was sitting there in the small space between the hay shed and the tree line, four doors open, engine off, keys in the ignition. Eli had disabled the interior lights long ago, so the interior was dark. Eli crawled underneath—I guess to look for bombs—while I checked under the hood and sniffed for anything odd, but, really, neither of us expected to find anything. Our expectations satisfied, we climbed inside and closed the doors, and Eli handed me the shotgun. Tonight had given the old saying “riding shotgun,” new meaning. I lowered the windows and pointed the muzzle out at the night. Eli started the engine and drove us home. We didn’t say a word on the remainder of the trip. Not one.

He swung the SUV into the guest-parking space and cut the engine. We sat there, listening to the engine cool down, hearing night birds hoot and sing. Watching through the windows of Esmee’s house as the Kid walked through the rooms, his head bent over an electronic tablet, hair hanging down in scraggly curls, his face illuminated by bluish light. “My brother has absolutely no sense of self-preservation or survival instinct,” Eli said. “He has no idea we’re out here. We could be silver-eating, flesh-regenerating, vampire zombies, and when we busted through the door to eat his brilliant brain, he’d look up and say, ‘Huh?’” When I didn’t respond, he said, “What were those things?”

“I don’t know. They didn’t talk that I heard. You?” I asked. Eli shook his head. “They didn’t make the popping sounds that vamps make when they move fast. They just flowed, like water.” Eli tilted his head in agreement. “And I never ever saw a vamp move like it was half spider, half lizard, half wild hog,” I said, knowing my math was totally wrong—but was also totally right. “And I think I saw one actually flying.”

“Jumping. He jumped into the tree beside you and jumped between the branches right at you. Good shot, by the way.”

“You’re sure the shotgun was loaded with vamp rounds?” I said, not doubting, but needing to be certain.

“I stole them from you. So yes.”

I made a humph sound. Broke open the shotgun and removed the fresh rounds. In the feeble light, I determined that they were indeed my rounds, hand-loaded with silver flechettes by a gun nut pal in North Carolina. I dumped them into the bag with the others.

We could have gone inside. We should have gone in. But we sat in the SUV, night air moving through, chilled and damp. I started to speak, but Eli beat me to it.

“We need to find a way to kill silver-eating, flesh-regenerating vampire zombies.” His brow crinkled. “They weren’t zombies. Were they?”

“No. They were vamps. But they were a different kind of vamp. I informed Bruiser. Maybe he’ll know something.”

“Maybe.” He opened his door, and I followed Eli Younger into the bed-and-breakfast, to discover that our problems of the night were only just beginning.

Jameson met us in the foyer, hands on his hips and a frown on his face. “Where is she?” he demanded.

“Who?” we both said.

“Esmee.” His eyes widened and he dropped his arms. “She didn’t meet you?” I could smell his alarm over the stink of gunfire that clung to us. At our puzzled expressions, he fished a key out of his shirt pocket and opened the door of an inlaid cabinet to reveal a gun safe. Four empty spaces showed where weapons had once hung. He scrubbed his face with one hand. “Beau is going to kill me.”

“She took guns?” I said. And then I understood, putting together all of Esmee’s earlier comments about killing things. “She’s gone to hunt vamps.”

“Most likely with two of her less-than-civilized, less-than-refined, uneducated neighbors. She left just after you did, claiming that you had asked her to introduce you to the mayor as part of your research and that you were sending a car for her. But I would bet a month’s pay that Buddy and Bubba picked her up, and I doubt that those