Razors and Revenge #4
Before she bothered to think, Shiloh threw the severed head underhanded, softball-style.
Hit Kang mid-chest. The woman reeled. The head flew.
Shiloh swung from the trees at Kang, repeating the same move she’d made only moments past. They crashed down together.
Her bloody vamp-killer at Kang’s throat.
Kang’s head arched back, staring up into the sky, held in place by Shiloh’s fist in her blond hair.
“Draw your weapons and die,” Shiloh said into Kang’s ear. Kang spread her arms to her sides, palms open on the ground.
Two weapons made the schnick of semiautomatics being readied to fire.
Softly, Mi-sook asked, “Girl? What the hell?”
“Walk up the trail fifty feet and come back,” Shiloh said. “Tell me what you smell.”
Kang snarled. Began to vamp out, her three-inch fangs clicking down on their hinges. Her pupils went black, sclera flashing red.
Shiloh pressed in. A thin line of red appeared along the blade edge.
“You kill my wife,” Mi-sook said, “and I’ll bring your head to the queen, you being her favorite or not. Don’t care.”
What? “Not in my plans, Mi-sook,” Shiloh growled, fighting a fanghead response to Kang’s fury.
Fred placed the barrel of her gun at Shiloh’s head. She said, “Swords are fast. Bullets are faster. Your blade moves a fraction, Shiloh, and I’ll make a couple new holes in your head. One entry, one exit. I’ll deal with the consequences of the queen’s wrath. Got it?” She spat to the side.
Mi-sook disappeared with a little popping sound.
Favorite? Wrath? Shiloh was tolerated. The queen had favorites among Shiloh’s witch family, but none were her.
Moments later, Mi-sook was back, standing behind Kang, facing Shiloh. She had vamped out fully. Tears trickled down her face. Her vamp-killer was drawn, point up. She brought the small sword down. Hard. Fast. The pommel slammed into her wife’s forehead. Kang’s eyes rolled back. She went lax.
Faster than Shiloh could react, the point of Mi-sook’s blade was poking into Shiloh’s throat. Shiloh dropped her weapon.
“How did you put my wife’s scent here?”
Shiloh slowly raised her hands in the air.
“I’ve been under constant supervision for weeks.
If someone planted Kang’s scent here, they had to have her sheets, underwear, clothes, and anything they used would also carry your scent.
And then there would be the planter person’s scent too. Use your brain.”
Fred stepped back, lowered her nine-mil to point at the ground. “Well, sheeit.” She spat again between her yellowed fangs. The smell of snuff was strong on the air. Werewolves would never know where she was, confused by the snuff spit all over. Interesting.
The two vamps stepped back. Still on her knees, Shiloh eased away from Kang.
“How long will she stay down without being staked?” Fred asked, scratching her chin with her off hand.
“No one stakes my wife.” Mi-sook sprayed chaw juice over the ground.
Reluctantly, Shiloh said, “I have a stasis amulet in my pocket.” She had hoped to use it on a werewolf, but if she was right about Kang, an attack from the rear was possible.
She searched the downed vamp while she detailed the particulars of the clearing and the cabin.
She took all Kang’s ammo, her sidearm, and her blades, strapping them to her own body.
Mi-sook didn’t quarrel. With her thumbnail, Shiloh activated the stasis working, placed the amulet into Kang’s lapel pocket, and stepped away.
Five seconds later, it initiated, a wave of sparkling witch magic. It worked. She hid her relief.
Retrieving the wolf-man’s head, she stuck it on a winter-dead sapling. Bloody. Messy.
“How you want to handle the dogs?” Fred asked.
When Mi-sook turned away, Shiloh realized Fred was asking Shiloh to make an assault plan. On the fly. She stared back toward the cabin, her head clearer than it had been in weeks. There were now three vamps against five male weres and their bitch.
“Anyone got a hand grenade?” Shiloh jested.
Fred pulled one out of her overall bib. “Ain’t legal. Only got the one. But I also got three flash-bangs. And a pepper bomb.” She spat again, her tobacco-stained fangs dripping.
“We drop the pepper bomb down the chimney,” Shiloh said, “ram the door open, and toss two flash-bangs.”
“Pros to your plan,” Fred said, “simple, easy, uncomplicated. Cons: Dogs’ll shift.
Pepper’s too much for their noses. We don’t want to fight them in full wolf or hybrid form.
We don’t breathe, but our eyes will be affected by the pepper, and I got one pair of goggles.
I ain’t givin’ mine up.” She spat again, far into the woods.
Wiped her fangs on her armor sleeve. “Despite you two being blind from the pepper, we’d have to go in fast and take them down mid-shift.
Silver-lead rounds or silver-edged blades. ”
“Shiloh likes trees,” Mi-sook said, her eyes on her wife. “She takes the chimney, tosses the pepper bomb. I’ll ram the door. Fred, with the goggles, goes in first and I’ll back her up. Shiloh picks off any runners.”
“Done,” Fred said. She tossed Shiloh a small can of pepper spray. Neither one mentioned the bitch-queen, or how to handle the three new werewolves who hadn’t bitten anyone. Nor had they come up with a go sign. Figure it out on the fly.
She focused on the pepper spray bottle’s instructions. Fred strode into the dark beneath the trees. Mi-sook followed Fred, not looking back.
The pepper spray worked like a grenade, sort of. Pull the tab and it released the pepper in four seconds. Easy, if she could hit the chimney with it. She would get only one try.
Shiloh tucked the pepper grenade into an overfull ammo pocket. She leaped straight up into the trees and ran, swinging from tree to tree, angling toward the metal roof.
When she found a perch that would allow her to hit the chimney—if she was lucky—Mi-sook was already in position. Shiloh pulled the tab and tossed the can. It rattled down the air shaft.
The vamp raced toward the door at vamp speed, air popping behind her.
Shiloh realized she heard no sounds, no laughter, no heartbeats from the cabin. She opened her mouth to shout a warning.
Mi-sook hit the door.
The cabin exploded.
The walls and roof of the cabin blew out.
She came to about ten feet lower down, the world whirling, swimming below her in the night, like oil on water.
Blinking, she tried to orient herself. Her midsection was sandwiched—part of the metal roof structure above and the tree trunk at her waist below.
The tree had sheared off and lay horizontal, precariously balanced on another downed tree.
Pretty sure I’m alive. Undead. Ish.
Deaf. Bleeding. She was a piece of vamp-meat dangling from the trunk.
She vamped out again, the darkness gone, her night vision like day.
A werewolf stood directly below her. He was in fighting form, half man, half wolf, eyes gleaming in the night. He leaped.
She jerked her hands, head, and feet up, banging her head against a roof beam. She saw stars and gagged. Concussion much?
He landed on all fours and leaped again.
She pitched her body to the left. Twisting her hands along her sides, she tried to locate a weapon.
Nothing was in the right place. She had gotten her hand around a nine-mil and was wrenching it free when the dumbass wolf realized he needed a boost. He dragged up a log.
Stepped on it. Contracted his body. And jumped.
Shiloh got her weapon up. Fired. He was dead before he impacted. The shot—and being dead—made him miss his mark. His fangs crashed into the downed trunk.
It shuddered and slid. The metal of the roof cut into her left hammy.
The werewolves had probably detected her during her initial search and had been outside the concussive blast range with their paws over their ears when the cabin blew. Because this was a freaking trap.
She slithered, shoved, and pushed herself out before the gunshot brought reinforcements.
She was too slow. Before she freed her feet, she fired at another wolf, this one in full wolf form.
No kill shot. The wolf tumbled, floundered, and ran away.
Fast. Might have been yelping. She was still deaf.
But her sense of smell was back. She could smell her own blood and the stench of werewolf.
When she worked herself free, Shiloh fell to the ground in a heap and puked everywhere.
She hadn’t even known vamps could vomit.
Rancid blood. Coffee. She gagged again and the world swirled.
She had to get off the ground and pick a shooting position, because she was in no shape to fight close quarters.
She beheaded the dead werewolf first, just in case it could regenerate or something, and stuck the head on a shattered limb. Her trademark now.
The world whirling, she limped to the nearest intact tree, a dying fir, and pulled herself up, hand over hand, maybe twenty feet.
Saw a muzzle flash—the gun kind, not the wolf kind.
Fred stood in the middle of the clearing, twenty yards from her, near the remains of the cabin.
The vamp’s feet were braced to either side of…
She was standing over what was left of Mi-sook.
Protecting her. Firing. Firing. Into a ring of three wolves.
Two wolves were injured, circling, limping, slavering.
The third was closest to Shiloh’s tree, in half-wolf form.
That one was holding a gun. His finger configuration was wrong to squeeze a trigger, but he worked the tip of his oversized pinky into the trigger guard.
Shiloh had no time to think. She shouted, “Concretus sanguinis!”
Misshapen magic shot from her. The working hit a scorched log with a flashing bang.
The werewolf’s shot went wild. Fred popped in, stabbed the wolf-man in the gut with her silver-plated vamp-killer, wrenched the shortsword up, disemboweling him, and popped back to Mi-sook before the other wolves could react.