Blood Revealed (11 page)

In Blythe’s mind, it was a chokepoint, because once someone was in the tunnel, there was no way to get out other than going through. It was tactically a bad news route. Her kids wouldn’t think of it that way, though. They would only think of it as a way to save five minutes and the effort of having to walk around the block rather than through it.

Her instincts were screaming at her now. So she didn’t drive right up to the mouth of the alley. Instead, she stopped the car about twenty feet away. She killed the engine and eased herself out, shutting the door quietly.

Grouping the big bunch of keys in her fist, she moved over to the mouth of the alley and pressed herself up against the palings. She drew a deep breath, then carefully looked around the corner.

At first she didn’t see it.

Jake and Simone were standing together, clinging to each other, their eyes wide.

Her relief at seeing them both alive was so intense, that at first she didn’t notice anything else.

Then the thing moved.

It was between her and the kids and must have been hunched down, considering its next move. Jake and Simone were frozen with fear, so it had time to consider.

Blythe’s arrival had stirred it. She had been quiet, but clearly not quiet enough. In the back of her mind, she made a mental note that the creature had phenomenal hearing.

It rose, straightening up so that the things it was standing on grew longer. There was a joint in the middle of what would have been legs, that she might have called knees, except that they pointed backward like a dog’s hind legs.

She got the impression of sinewy strength, as the thing turned its head to look at her. Deliberately, she stepped out into the middle of the footpath, cutting off the exit.

The head was bony, with very little spare flesh. Very high cheek bones extended into bony projections that emerged from what might have been its temples. Blythe only processed that in the back of her mind, where her strategic center sat. She was more conscious of the thing’s eyes, which were red and glowing, like something out of a horror novel.

There was a snout and far too many teeth, that were long and yellowy and gnashed together. The bottom jaw descended, then snapped closed.

Her heart leapt. “Get away from my kids, you fucker.”

She had its full attention now. It turned on its springy hind legs to face her.

“Jake. Simone. Run out the other way and around the block. I’ll meet you on the street.”

Neither of them moved.

“
Go
!” She shouted, her throat hurting at the intensity she used. “Now!”

Simone stirred. She took a step back, then tugged on Jake’s arm, drawing him with her.

Jake seemed to shake himself. Blythe had seen that sort of paralyzing shock in civilians caught between crossfire, or who had survived the falling of a bomb that had landed far too close.

“Jake, move your ass or I’ll kick it for you!” She had to get him moving.

The thing between them gave another little spin-hop and turned back to face Jake and Simone. It had sensed that its prey was escaping.

Blythe didn’t panic. The old instincts were in full command now. “Run!” She screamed and at the same time, she sprinted toward the thing. She had no weapons except the keys in her hand and she clenched them hard, forming a fist and letting the points of the keys emerge between her knuckles.

Simone gave an hysterical sob and ran for the street, terror driving her. Jake turned to follow her, finally,
finally
moving.

The thing didn’t like it. It made a sound that even now three hours later, Blythe could still hear in her mind. It was a two-toned screeching, the lower tone like the heavy noise that emerged from a sub-woofer at full volume, the higher note an almost inaudible shriek.

At the sound, Jake turned back to face it. He knew as well as Blythe did that the creature was about to launch itself in attack. It was instinct to turn to face your attacker. He would’ve been better to keep running, although he didn’t know that. He was only fifteen. And he had never been through a war like she had.

Jake held his hands out, not in surrender, but as if he could bail the thing up. Then she realized what he was doing. He was stopping the creature from going after Simone.

Fear speared her and drove power through her legs. As she launched herself at the thing, a sound came out of her that was almost primordial. She was venting all her fear and panic and rage. At the same time she bought her fist swinging up and around. She aimed high, for the facial features that must surely be as vulnerable as a human’s.

She never connected. The thing raised its arm, not with its fists up like a human would have. Instead, its elbows projected out. It swung the elbow which connected with her arm in a glancing blow that only just barely redirected her swing.

That was all that was needed. Hot agony clamped her arm and a sharp pain ripped along the tender flesh of her inner forearm. She cried out and staggered backward. Her whole arm went numb and she just barely caught the keys as they fell out of her fingers. She gripped the keys in her right hand and tried to shake life back into her left. She couldn’t even move it.

She moved back, away from the thing.

It hissed and she knew it was measuring her.

This close to it, she grew aware of the stench that rose from its hide. It was a mix of rotting meat and ancient dust that clogged her nose and made her gag. She gripped her jaw tightly against the reaction and studied the elbow of the creature. There was another bony projection sticking out from the back of the elbow, like a point or a claw. There were more of the claws on the back of what would’ve been its knuckles—the joints at the end of long fingers, which look like they had an extra joint.

She glanced past the Summani and saw that Jake had shaken off his paralysis and had almost reached the end of the alley. Simone was nowhere to be seen. Relief touched her and she looked up at the dark creature speculatively.

The Summani gave another short squawk. She wondered if it was some sort of communication. She couldn’t remember if the vampires had said they could talk or not. Perhaps this was talking for this thing.

It took a step back. Then another.

It was retreating.

Blythe made herself stand still and look into its eyes, daring it to move toward her again. She understood as clearly as the creature did that if she backed down at all, it would leap on her. Perhaps this was the first time it had come across any sort of human resistance. She didn’t know and would find out later. For now she had to hold her ground.

It took another step back. There were fifteen feet between them now. Then it turned and started taking long, loping steps that might have been its version of running. Because of the dark color of the hide, the creature blended in with the shadows, until she could no longer see it.

Blythe immediately turned and sprinted for her car, her teeth chattering as delayed panic set in. She fumbled the keys with her one good hand, because it wasn’t her dominant one. She got the car going and wheeled it around in a hard circle and screamed back to the street.

Jake and Simone were clinging to each other again, standing under the full light of the streetlamp, their heads turning as they looked for her. Simone spotted her first and pulled Jake into a run toward her. They tumbled out onto the street and Blythe stamped on the brakes long enough for them to open the doors and fall into the car.

Then she got the hell out of there.

On the way back to the house she dialed 911 and reported what had happened. There was a long silence at the other end of the phone, then the woman’s professionalism kicked in and she took the details down without a quiver.

“The Summani didn’t feed,” Blythe told the woman.

On the seat behind her, Simone drew in a quivering breath of horror.

“If it’s hungry,” Blythe continued, “it will continue to hunt until it finds food. There are kids, families, all over this neighborhood. You have to warn them.”

Then she disconnected and tossed the phone onto the seat next to her, because she needed that hand to drive. Using just the side of her wrist and her knee didn’t lend to accurate driving.

Simone and Jake were silent until they reach the house. Still driven by fear and shock, they ran into the house. Blythe checked the front and back yards, the keys held firmly in her hand, then secured the house. Everyone helped her check all the doors and windows and when they were finishing, Simone looked at Blythe with big eyes. “Won’t they be able to just break the windows and come in?”

Jake jerked, like he had been touched with a live wire.

Blythe considered and discarded a dozen different reassuring answers. Pleasant lies would not serve them now. So she looked all three of her kids in the eye. “They won’t break windows to reach us because there’s too much food just walking around out there.”

Simone began to cry silently, her tears rolling down her cheeks. Eloise hugged her, while Jake stared out the window, his shoulders square. He was shaking, too. He was very white.

There was one patent cure for shock that worked on everyone Blythe had ever administered the cure to. She turned toward the stairs. “Hot chocolate for everyone,” she declared.

She put lots of sugar in the mix and insisted everyone drink up. By the time they had all finished their mugs of chocolate, she was starting to feel some life come back to her hand. The arm was still mostly useless. It was good to know that the toxin was not a permanent one.

Even though it was still relatively early, Blythe insisted everyone go to bed. Sleep was another restorative.

She tucked all three of them in, even though Jake protested that he didn’t need to be tendered to like a three-year-old. Then he yawned mightily.

Blythe kissed him, anyway.

Then she made herself another hot chocolate and sat down at the kitchen table with her laptop to catch up on blog posts.

Now she was staring at a blank screen, wondering what to write.

It had been Jake’s suggestion that she tell everyone about the Others and how to fight them, that first night when the vampires had come out.

It had never occurred to her that her family would be among the first humans to deal with the Summanus. She had managed to tuck the knowledge about the Others into the far recesses of her mind and for the last two weeks have been living a perfectly normal life. This was despite having told the kids that they were on a war footing. Now she was paying for her lack of discipline.

The problem was, she hadn’t been able to take any of it very seriously, even though intellectually she understood that this was not a hoax.

Well, now she knew better.

And it just happened that she had a platform that others would listen to. Jake was right. Not only must she tell everyone what she knew about the Summanus, she had a moral obligation to shout it as loudly as she could.

She resettled her hand so her fingers were lined up on the keyboard properly. She thought for a moment, then began to type.

The Summanus are not like anything you’ve ever seen before. They look like animals that have been put through some mad scientist’s laboratory experiment and have emerged at the other end as some ungodly creature that has an appointment with the devil. They are not animals the way that you and I think of them. They are smart. And they know how to fight.

They have defense mechanisms you’ve never seen before. They will use them against you if you try to fight them. So let me tell you about them….

Los Angeles, three weeks later.

Dominic trailed after the other three as they all walked into the big living room. As usual the room was filled with light, the sun streaming through the big windows. Dominic wasn’t sure why he’d ever thought the room was attractive. All he knew as he dragged himself one foot after another behind the others was that he didn’t want to be here.

Where the hell would he go?

Nial, Sebastian and Winter had been forced out of their house by a combination of media frenzy and hypocritical neighbors who had used all their considerable financial clout to pull strings and have them removed.

A lot of legal precedents had been quoted. What Dominic understood was that Nial, Sebastian and Winter were not wanted.

Perhaps Nial had understood that just as clearly, because he had not tried to fight the injustice of being turfed out of a home that he owned and a neighborhood in which he had lived peacefully for years. When Roman, who had been a lawyer in a lifetime some years ago, had glanced over the writ, he had shaken his head. “There’s all sorts of room to argue the point here,” he had told Nial. “This is very close to being a nuisance suit. They’re really stretching it. You could argue it and I think you might win.”

“There’s no precedents, because vampires have never been processed as themselves in the eyes of the law,” Nial pointed out.

Sebastian had been steaming. “So
you
will be the precedent.”

Nial curled his fingers around Sebastian’s neck. “I know this is hard,” he said softly. “We knew that this sort of thing might happen. For now, we give way. This is not the time to argue civil rights, not when the Others are out there.”

“So where are we going to go? What people will accept us?” Winter had asked, voicing the question in Dominic’s mind. As he had been living in the big house for over a year, he was as interested in the answer as they were.

He had assumed that Nial would try to reach some arrangement with Garrett, Roman and Kate. Garrett, however, killed that prospect from the get-go. He had been frank. “I’m being forced out of my own corporation and they’re talking civil suits, too. So I’m going to be setting up permanently here in LA. I’m sure that Kate and Roman would want you to stay with us, but we just don’t have the room. It’s a small house. We never planned for anyone other than us three to live here.” He shook his head a little. “Although if this goes on, we may have to think of a more permanent arrangement for everyone. Living as humans in individual living quarters may become impractical.”