Chapter Twenty-Three #3
Reluctantly, he left her and leaped the stairs to Raccoon and his first cousin, the vampire-witch, Le Vampire Sauvage.
Cousin Wacko. Silently, he assisted her with reviving Raccoon.
When the shooter was breathing again, coughing and gagging like Angie, Shiloh, a step below him, grinned into his face.
“I couldn’t get in and you did. You incapacitated her. We’ll split the bounty.”
“Bounty…” By the time he understood what she meant, Shiloh had leaped over his head, drawn her longsword, and spun into the apartment, swinging around the doorjamb like a kid on a playground. He heard the sword descend, hitting the floor with a squishing thud.
Shiloh reappeared at the opening, holding Gertrude’s head in one hand. The smell of scorched, undead flesh and hair rode the air currents to his nose. Gertrude looked like her prewar pics again; the glamour that had clung to her flesh, gone with her life. Blood dripped from the stump.
“Money, money, money, moooooney!” Shiloh sang out. She whirled and leaped through the open window.
“Holy crap,” Angie rasped out. “Cousin Wacko strikes again.”
“All the Everharts are seriously insane,” Raccoon said, his voice as damaged as Angie’s. “She’s just the worst of the bunch.”
“What happened in there?” Angie asked between coughs.
“We’ll talk at our place. For now, we need to search the apartment and take everything we can find that will tell us everything she knew, wipe the security system, and get out of here.”
The air working had taken care of their tracks. There wasn’t a hint of dust anywhere.
Walter entered the gym and chose a chair by dumping Pretty Thang out of it.
The man grumbled his annoyance, but Walter ignored it and sat.
Legs extended, feet pushing, he swiveled slightly back and forth in the silent room.
Every eye was on Walter, Shiloh, or EJ. The unit didn’t fear vampires—they worked with them all the time—but it was an instinctive, prey reaction to a bigger predator. EJ just had intel.
His elbows on the chair arms, fingers steepled in front of his mouth, Walter said, “Talk.”
EJ lifted a green smoothie and drank, getting a hit of blended raw seaweed and spinach, nuts, chia seeds, turmeric, and garlic.
When it was down, he said, “In the Witch War she went by several names.
I knew her as Gisselle Werner. She was a vampire who worked both sides, looking for intel and taking the biggest payout.
Looked nothing like the pic of Gertrude, so her glamour was undetectable and silent.
“When she sold info that got some of our people killed, the allied command placed a bounty on her head and when no one could find her, they sent me after her. We fought. She got away. It’s possible she was after me.
It’s possible she was after Angie. And it’s almost certain she was after Konstantin for the bounty.
It’s possible she was after Nyoka, and also conceivable that Nyoka was her sire.
” Evan Junior looked at Walter. “Accidental turnings are rare but still possible, yes?”
Reluctantly, Walter tilted his head in acknowledgment. “Bounty hunters have often killed the young and those abandoned in the devoveo.”
EJ transferred his gaze to Shiloh. “Like our cousin, Gisselle/Gertrude became a bounty hunter. It’s likely Gertrude’s plan was adaptable, with layered goals.”
“All that lovely bounty from various wars is, yes indeedy, still outstanding,” Shiloh said stretched out, belly down on the coffee table, her unicom in front of her face as she scrolled. “Still outstanding. Though not as lovely as the bounty on Konstantin. That one is delectable.”
EJ plugged Gertrude’s unicom into Ojos. The AI had sectioned off the data and now began to drill its way into encrypted information.
A moan of what might have been pleasure came from Shiloh.
The team kept eyes on her as she slapped her unicom onto her wrist. She sat up in partial lotus, gave Walter a cat’s grin, and gripped a mug of strong coffee.
Her eyes slid to the head she had stuck on a fifty-inch sho-stick, taken from the weapons wall.
Like a pike. Like the security unit putting heads on pikes.
EJ would have a hell of a time getting the blood off the sho-stick once the vampire finished playing games.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Shiloh asked for the third time, admiring. “I’ve never seen a glamour like that one.”
The glamour on the head came and went, Giselle one moment, Gertrude the next.
But the time spent as Giselle was diminishing and Gertrude was taking over, now that the head had moved from undeath to true-death.
One of the guards had placed an ice bucket beneath the head to catch the drips, but the burned head reeked and the stench had permeated the gym.