Razors and Revenge #3
Shiloh checked her other amulets: healing workings; one hedge of blood, which could be used as either a shield or, if reversed, a prison; and one stasis.
Only one stasis, the most difficult working in her meager repertoire.
If she’d had time, she would have made ten of the paralytic-style workings.
Then again, there was no proof any of her own amulets would work.
She’d had only hours to make them and no time to test them.
As a witch, she was a three out of ten in terms of training, power, and experience.
Maybe a two.
High in the trees, Shiloh circled the rhododendron thicket, spiraling out. The werewolf scent trail moved east. She dropped to the ground.
The guard team caught up with her in little pops of sound. The three vamps—Mi-sook, a mixed-race Korean woman; her wife, Kang, a blond chick who was the closest thing to a friend Shiloh had left since Atticus was killed; and Fred, also white—were winded, breathing heavily, like humans.
Kang sat and rested her back against a tree, gasping, frowning up at Shiloh. “Girlfriend, you run like the wind.”
Girlfriend… “I’m a little faster, I guess, from the werewolf taint.
Prions. Whatever. It’ll wear off.” Not likely, but no one argued.
Shiloh wasn’t used to friends, except her human blood-servants, and it felt odd that a vamp wanted to be one.
For the last few months, Shiloh had tried to wrap her head around vamps wanting her for herself, and not simply for royal access.
Mi-sook and Kang had no interest in getting closer to the queen. Fred just liked fighting.
“I have better tracking skills than you do,” Kang said. “And I’m better with sword work. I’ll take point when the trail freshens.”
Shiloh’s sense of smell was better than Kang’s. Wolf good. Her sword work was way better than anyone knew. Not that she would share that.
Fred plopped to the ground, propped against a tree, and took a dip of snuff, patting the tobacco inside her cheek.
Her weapons were strapped inside and outside her armored overalls, holstered, pocketed.
Frederica Crabtree had been married to a successful pig farmer in the late 1800s.
When human, she had never flaunted her wealth or been concerned with fitting into society; she was even less interested now.
Fred was an excellent tracker and a better shot.
She’d been bored, according to the queen, when the team met at dusk.
“Even when you’re at point,” Kang said, “you should stay in sight.”
“Trees are faster,” Shiloh said. “And I needed time alone to…process.”
Kang rolled her eyes and elbowed her wife. “Modern scions need to process. When I was human, we did what had to be done. None of this processing.”
Shiloh had no intention of taking their six. “And you’re a well-balanced personality,” she said, sarcastic.
“Yes. You stay in sight.”
Reminder to self: Kang has no sense of humor.
Moving slower, Shiloh climbed into a tree and jumped to another.
“They went this way.” In the trees, she left them behind, tracking scents she remembered from the attack.
The vamps on the ground followed her own scent in the air above them and the blood-scent below. Once out of sight, she raced ahead.
Half an hour later, the terrain plunged into a crevasse, where the faint moonlight vanished.
Hopping to the ground, she vamped out fully; needlelike fangs—indicative of being a young vamp—clicked down.
She was under control, the razors distant.
On foot, she tracked the werewolves along an animal trail as it snaked down the rock wall of a gorge, deeper into the dark.
The walls narrowed until she could touch the rock face on both sides of the wide fracture.
She reached the bottom, where a springhead bubbled out of the rock, becoming a clear crick. Ahead, the rock cleft widened into a small, hidden forest, brightened by hints of moonlight. Wood smoke hung in tree limbs. A narrow path marked the way.
Shiloh knelt and sniffed. She picked out the original six males and the female. Fresh scents overlapped those: three of the males and three new males. The bitch had indeed replaced her pack members.
Returning to the trees, Shiloh sprinted along the limbs, following the small crick, breathing in short sniffs as the scent trace changed. She caught a whiff of the unexpected.
Fainter, older, was a hint of vampire.
She stopped, arms gripping a tree trunk. Breathing, analyzing.
She knew this scent. It was old, but unmistakable. Kang.
Kang had been here before.
Kang had told her to stay in sight. Kang had told Shiloh that she would take point when the trail freshened.
Kang had pretended to be her friend. Playing the long game.
Betrayal stung, clawing through her, sharp as the razors, bitter as wormwood.
If their small group had arrived together, Kang could have obscured her former presence here by simply racing ahead. Shiloh hadn’t waited. Kang had to realize Shiloh knew her secret.
Worse, there had been an attack by enemy vamps on the queen’s wedding party a few weeks past—and a werewolf had been with them. An ally. Kang was working with the queen’s enemies, the last supernats who had vowed to never bow to a Dark Queen. Kang. Maybe Mi-sook. Hell, maybe Fred too.
Kang was a traitor. Kang would die at the queen’s order if she was found out, unless the older vamp managed to kill Shiloh first.
She checked her cell. No signal in the narrow valley.
The distant sound of stealthy footfalls indicated the vamps behind her were starting down the chasm.
Turning on her new speed, Shiloh kept to the trees to avoid contaminating the evidence trail, following the path.
Racing toward the smoke. Breathing in short sniffs to detect other vamps. So far, only Kang.
Step one: Find the outer perimeter guards. Determine entrances, exits, defensive systems, and attack options. Access and/or take out comms.
Eli had trained the queen’s scions in paramilitary methods. His remedial lessons in warfare had stuck. Step two: take out the guards.
At the highest speed she could achieve without losing the stealth of silence, Shiloh circled a small clearing tree to tree.
It was an open-ended, canyon-type, triangular valley, with the narrow end at the source of the water and the other open to forest. The footpath led out.
At the open end of the valley, city lights brightened the distant horizon.
Shiloh spotted one guard, male, in human form.
His two-way radio was clipped to his tank top, the kind of shirt they used to call wifebeaters, and a pair of stretchy shorts, clothes for shifting shape. She knew his scent.
Staying downwind, she completed a full perimeter search, finding a one-room log cabin with fresh chinking, a smoking chimney, no visible electric, no sign of a comms system, and an aromatic outhouse in back.
The smell of rotten flesh and viscera came from a pit near the tree line, most likely the remains of their kills.
She heard multiple voices inside the cabin, laughter. Too loud to hear heartbeats.
Nowhere had she smelled the scent of other vamps. Just Kang.
Shiloh had started to believe the vamp might become a real friend. Her first real vamp friend. Instead, Kang was a traitor working with the werewolves who had killed Atticus.
Her human need to breathe increased. Her heart beat. Razors scratched, almost gently.
Returning to the lone guard, Shiloh positioned herself in the limbs, downwind of and above the wolf-man, just as he checked in with whoever was on the other end. “All clear,” the guard said.
“No shit.”
The connection ended.
“Asshole,” the werewolf said, clipping the talkie to his shorts.
He carried what looked like a gun in his shorts pocket, and though the pack hadn’t used silver-lead rounds last time, they might have learned a lesson during the fight with Atticus and her. His breath blew in white clouds, and a light steam rose from his skin.
Shiloh remembered his smell, his stink, his fangs…
Yeah. He was a dead dog. Vengeance.
Shiloh heard the faintest of sounds from the bottom of the cliff wall.
The wolf turned toward the sound.
The razors clawed. There was no time to contain them, fight them, control them.
For the first time, she reached inside and drew the razor crazies into her.
Unexpectedly, the crazies blended with her useless witch magic.
It was like fireworks going off inside her brain, a kaleidoscope of light and energy. And power.
She drew her vamp-killer in her off hand.
Leaped. Curved her arm across her body, the blade in front of her.
At the last second, the wolf-man looked up.
Her boots caught him at the hips. Blade at the side of his neck.
She cut backhanded, a brutal backswing. Her weight bore him down.
Almost in slo-mo. Weird laughter burbled up inside her.
They hit the ground. Bounced. His body beneath her, his head a few feet away.
The worst of the blood spray missed her, but the wind picked up, carrying the scent back along her original trail, toward her teammates.
Grabbing the head by its scraggly beard, she leaped into the trees and dashed back along her original limb path.
Instead of fighting the razors, she embraced them, adding to her strength, speed.
Something like ecstasy rode through her veins after the too-short fight. More. She wanted more. Vengeance.
The three fangheads appeared, Kang in the lead, marking a new scent trail. Covering her old scent trail by jumping from one side of the animal path to the other.