Clarion leaned forward in his seat. Lonely adjusted the collar of his open Hawaiian shirt. They didn’t look at each other. Just like that.
It hit me that this was Scout, the real Scout. Not the whiny little brat or the jailbait whose too-short skirt this version of Scout was still wearing. The seventeen-and-three-quarters-year-old negotiating the integration of two warring armies while recruiting and organizing her own army and herding the dumbass figurehead into place.
“We need to talk strategy,” Clarion said. “How many of your recruits are armed?”
“None,” Scout said. “I had Cash—Lonely’s cousin—do a flyover of Colt’s place to see if there was anything we could salvage, but the foot soldiers have cleaned out the arsenal and burned the cabin to the ground.”
Colt would’ve had a cache somewhere else, just in case, I thought at Lonely. Maybe a couple of them.
“Where?” Lonely asked.
I know where they were when I moved out. No way he kept them there, though. He used to make us rotate them into new spots every six months.
Clarion’s good eye jumped back and forth from my throat to the crow. He must’ve been able to tell that I was talking, maybe the way I breathed out while I thought the words, even though I didn’t need to anymore.
“Give me all the places you remember,” Lonely said. “We’ll send someone to see what they find.”
It’d be easier if I went and checked them out myself once it got dark.
Lonely grinned. “Best know what we’ve got now. Concentrate on the places. I’ll see them.”
Yeah, he definitely knew about my plan to make a break for the Dark Mansion.
I pictured the huge burl walnut stump out by where the creek turns back, the ancient falling down chicken coop southwest of the cabin, the natural lee of a fall of cedars near the highway, and old tires in the wet sand of the creek about twenty yards upstream from an overhang of tree roots. Because fuck him. I could wait.
Lonely went to go tell his crow buddies.
Scout was staring at me.
I crossed my arms and stared right back. You might boss those NPs around, kiddo, but you don’t scare me. I used to help Mom change your diapers.
Probably the worst thing anybody’s ever thought about someone that they’d had sex with. But what was one more worst thing ever? With my record, people probably expected it by now.
Scout opened her mouth. “Tough, if you need to drink off me…”
I shook my head.
“It’s not like you can just do a line of shots now,” she said. “And with the way you are, you know a random groupie isn’t going to be enough.”
No. The spell or binding or whatever it was that she’d done with the sex-magic-feeding had worn off a while back, so she couldn’t hear me anymore, but I hoped she could see the absolutely fucking not on my face. Having sex with her and drinking off of her had been some rock-bottom shit. We weren’t doing it again.
My hands picked that second to start shaking. I jammed them down into my pockets.
I’m not touching her again. Not happening.
Sure you’re not. Until you get to jonesing for real.
Clarion cleared his throat. “So, uh, you two together?”
I glared at Scout. Don’t you dare say yes.
“It’s complicated,” she said, smoothing out her skirt.
My ass.
“Huh,” was all the coyote said.
Lonely came back and plopped down on the crate he’d been on earlier. “Should know pretty soon whether or not the white knight’s weapon caches are still out there. In the meantime, we’ve got what’s here at our disposal.”
Scout nodded. “Clarion, can you get a report of everything the coyotes brought?”
“I’ll have them start an inventory,” he said. “Six packs are still unaccounted for, but we’ll add their weapons as they come in.”
“Awesome.” Scout turned back to me. “So, Tough, how many vamps do you think you can make in a day?”
Colt
A knee plowed into my gut. A head-butt cracked my cheekbone, sealing shut an eye that was already half-closed.
The snap and rustle of wings never stopped. It was always there, just under the wailing of tortured souls, sometimes so close that I felt the brush of feathers against my skin just before the next blow landed.
The Gatekeepers of Hell. A whole host of them.
At first they had been too fast for me to stop every blow, but over the course of the fight I had slowed down so much that even a human would’ve been getting in hits on me. My arms were dead weight. I couldn’t have pried my fists open with a claw hammer. Blood and sweat rolled down my face in rivers.
I’d been fighting for God knew how long. The only measure of time or distance I had was my fatigue and the certainty that I was getting closer to the wailing. Before, I’d thought the mournful, keening cries were throatless, endless, and directionless. Now I realized they were coming from the Pit. I could feel the screaming resonating in my eardrums and chest. It was in front of me—for a second, anyway, then I took a hit that spun me around. Now the screaming was…at my six. Another hit. Three o’clock. Or was it at my nine? Another. This one rattled my brain so much that the noise from the Pit faded out to a whine.
They were letting me keep fighting. Any one of them could’ve stepped up and ended it at
