Chapter 11

It would have been too obvious to strike the trailer at dusk. Carwyn wanted the humans to be either sleeping or sleepy. If there were vampires at the trailer, it wouldn't matter when they attacked. But the humans they could wait for. It was roughly three in the morning when they crept close to the clearing.

The trailer was actually two trailers attached to each other with a ramshackle shed at one end. Tracks leading to the shed told Carwyn that's where the vehicles were stored. He couldn't see anything else of interest in the small clearing. Just the trailers, the shed, and an old windmill attached to what looked like a water pump.

"The same as you remember it?" Carwyn asked Grigor.

The giant had melted into the forest, barely visible in his dark clothes and mud-smeared face and beard. "I don't see any changes."

Bj?rn mumbled, "The truck is gone."

"The truck?"

The older man nodded. "There was a new truck parked here the other night. King cab with darkened windows. Covered bed. It was expensive."

"I didn't see the truck," Grigor said. "But if Bj?rn says it was here, it was here."

"Okay, tell us more about that later." Brigid crouched down next to Carwyn and looked from behind a tree. "For now, let's focus on the trailer. I'm scenting four humans and one vampire."

"I don't think the vampire is here," Bj?rn said. "I think he drives the truck."

"I can smell him, but the scent might not be fresh," Natalie said. "There are a lot of competing scents in the area, but something about his stands out. It's… dry."

"Is Ivan an earth vampire?" Carwyn asked.

"I believe so." Natalie kept her eyes on the old white structures. "These trailers are a lie."

"What do you mean?" Brigid said.

"I mean they're new, but they're aged so they don't look new." She pointed to the base. "Do you see any rust? None. Things rust in months up here, if not faster." She pointed to the roof. "No moss. They dirtied up the siding, did a little damage to the panels, and smeared some paint. But these trailers are new. No more than a few years maximum."

Grigor nodded. "That fits. I don't pay much attention to humans, but Bj?rn, does that seem correct to you?"

"I think I found this place about two years ago, but it could have been longer." He shrugged. "Don't keep track of time so well."

"So we have new trailers showing up just around the time that the rate of hikers going missing on the trail spikes up," Carwyn said. "Do you see any of them here though? Any hikers?"

"No," Bj?rn said. "Never. Just the guys. I thought they were growing pot out here, but I couldn't find any fields. And I looked way all around the place. If they're pot growers, that would make sense being all secret-like."

"I suppose." Brigid didn't take her eyes off the trailers. The moon was full over the clearing, and she didn't hear a soul stirring.

Now was the time to act.

Summer shook Dani's arm. "It's time."

Without a word, the man rolled up to sitting, rubbed his eyes, and started packing the small knapsack he'd tied together with a pillowcase and some rope. He stuffed some food and some of the yarrow weed in the bag, then threw it over his shoulders.

One of the things their kidnappers did was take their socks every night and give them fresh ones in the morning. It served two purposes. Their feet stayed healthy with fresh socks, and captives were less likely to leave if they didn't have socks for their hiking boots.

It couldn't matter. They'd wrapped their feet as well as they could with scraps of cloth they'd torn from their clothes and the blankets in their small cabin. Then they stuffed their feet in their boots and forced them on.

Was it comfortable? No. But Summer knew it would be more comfortable than nothing once they got running through the forest.

"I didn't see the Russian tonight," Dani said.

"That means nothing." Summer was hoping that Dani was right and the vampire had other errands to run since the shiny black pickup was nowhere to be found, but she wasn't betting on anything. "Do you remember the plan?"

Dani started wrapping the strips of blanket around his face to protect his skin. "Let you lead. Only step where you step until you signal that it is clear."

"Yes." She was betting on booby traps leading toward the road and a few leading to the creek, but once they were in the creek itself, they'd probably be safe. "We're going to follow the water downstream. If you follow water downstream far enough, you're going to find people."

"Follow the water downstream." Dani nodded. "And keep our eyes down."

"There are probably fishhooks or razor blades hanging in the forest," she said. "That's what the masks are for." The last thing they needed was a fishhook in the eye. "And if we get separated?"

"Follow the water downstream," Dani said. "I got it."

Summer looked out a crack between the cabin walls and saw moon shadows from the brilliant night sky. "Okay, we need to go. Follow me."

Summer moved to the back of the cabin and shifted the two boards she'd loosened over the previous few days. She let them fall down, then shimmied out the opening before she loosened another one so Dani could get through.

"You got it?"

Dani wriggled his body through the narrow gap, the backpack trailing over his head. Then he righted himself and gave her a thumbs-up.

Summer began the careful trail behind the cabins, headed to the creek path where she'd worked one day, helping one of their human captors fix the pipes that watered the plants at that top of the hill. It was barely more than an animal track leading down to a creek with a wide shallow pool and falls below it, but Summer figured that worked to their advantage.

Climbing over the falls would be tricky, and she was counting on their captors thinking any escapees would choose the faster escape route of the road.

She grabbed a walking stick she'd stashed near the drying house and used it to feel the path in front of her. As they left the rough clearing where their cabins and the marijuana fields were, the forest became darker, denser, and more oppressive.

She could hear chittering in the woods and knew there were more animals here than the deer that occasionally wandered into their camp. This was mountain lion country. Bear country. And while neither of those two predators would choose her and Dani as a first meal, if they were hungry, all bets were off.

She poked her stick at the ground and walked carefully, keeping her eye out for the guard who patrolled the cabin area at night. Summer was betting on him passing out with the six-pack she knew he stashed behind a redwood tree.

He was counting on all their captives being exhausted from the day's work and sleeping. Summer was counting on his laziness.

She poked the ground in front of her as she walked, steering them around two pit traps. She waved a pine branch overhead, careful not to walk into the lines of fishhooks ten feet away from the clearing. It was a haphazard effort that they ducked around, easily finding their way back to the path after detouring around some brush to avoid them.

"Are we clear?" Dani whispered.

"We'll be clear when we get downstream," Summer said. "Don't get casual." She didn't mention the slice one of the branches had taken out of her arm. There had been a few razor blades attached to branches.

She was poking at the path and alternately waving the branch overhead, their progress necessarily slow, when she felt it against her ankle. "Fuck."

"What it is?"

"Tripwire." Her mind raced. A tripwire, even if she eased her ankle back, could be rigged to set off an explosive, an alarm… damn near anything. "Dani, I'm going to ease my ankle off it, but stand back. There could be an explosive or something."

"An explosive?"

"I told you to stand back!"

The minute she eased pressure off the wire, she heard a gunshot go off in the trees.

"Dammit!" It was an old sort of alarm that bootleggers often used, a way of warning people away and alerting the compound all in one go. "Now we gotta move."

She picked up the pace, and Dani kept close behind her even as they heard voices shouting in the distance.

Though Summer and Dani had been walking for what felt like hours, moving slowly and avoiding the booby traps, their progress had been slow. Summer could just barely hear the waterfall in the distance.

"Summer?"

"Keep going." She kept her eyes on the path, kept moving forward, kept pushing toward the creek.

Once they reached the creek, the booby traps would be history and they could move faster. Once they reached the creek, they'd have a chance.

Brigid moved through the shadows, her body a blur that Carwyn could barely see in the darkness. She rushed the front of the trailer with Natalie and Ross on her heels as Carwyn, Jamie, and Grigor moved around to the back. Bj?rn sat waiting at the edge of the clearing with a shotgun and a clear line of sight.

Moving around the back, Carwyn saw a door about five feet off the ground, a back entrance that had never had steps built up to it. He glanced at Grigor and himself, then at the door.

Grigor nodded. "This is a good idea."

Carwyn heard the door to the front of the trailer burst open and a shot rang out.

"Brigid!" Carwyn bashed the door in, splintering the bottom half in one swift punch.

"Alarm," Jamie said. "They had a shotgun rigged to the door."

While it was nearly impossible that a shotgun blast, even a direct one, would kill a vampire, Carwyn was still furious. He tore away the remnants of the door and pulled himself up into the trailer with one heave, only to be faced with a trembling human pointing a gun at his face.

The man snarled, "Wait a goddamn min—"

Carwyn roared and punched a fist into the man's face as the handgun fired into his shoulder. It burned through his flesh, and his fangs ran down. Carwyn bared his teeth and batted the human to the side, throwing him into a wall where the man crashed, then crumpled to the ground.

He turned to the left and saw Brigid moving swiftly in the darkness, fighting against an agile human with knives.

Jamie launched himself into the trailer, immediately heading into the dark back rooms, hunting knife ready for action.

And Ross…

Carwyn blinked as he saw the quiet mountain vampire rip off a human's head with one swift twist. Blood was dripping down the man's jaw and neck. Ross saw Carwyn and Grigor watching him.

He lifted a hunting knife. "I gave this to Summer for her birthday. Bastard tried to cut me with it." Ross flipped the knife over in his fingers and shoved it into his pocket, blade-down, before he followed his brother to search the back rooms.

The invasion of the trailers took only a few swift minutes, but when they were finished, four humans were lined up against one wall, their hands tied behind them, and three were dead on the floor, blood leaking from their broken bodies.

Ross came out of the back hallway, wiping his chin and neck with a black bandanna, his face grim. "We didn't find any hikers, but there's a woman here."

Brigid stepped forward while Natalie and Carwyn watched the human captives. "Where? Who is she?"

Ross dropped his voice. "I have a feeling she's a sex worker, but I know she ain't here of her own choice if you catch my meaning. Not with a face as beat up as hers is. Jamie's talkin' to her now, but she's real skittish. Might be better if you or Natalie join him." He looked over at the mess of bodies on the floor. "And she sure don't need to be seeing any of this."

Natalie and Brigid exchanged a look; then Brigid walked back down the hallway while Grigor and Carwyn dragged the bodies into the room where the rest of the humans were tied up.

Carwyn sidled over to Natalie. "I heard the shotgun."

She rubbed her chest. "We weren't quite fast enough. Bastard got both of us in the shoulders, but it was scattered. I'll be picking bird shot out of my boob before I go to sleep."

"Now that's an experience I imagine you didn't get when you were a print journalist."

She nodded. "That is a very accurate statement."

The creek was in sight when Summer began to feel the first hint of relief. She turned to Dani just in time to see one of the guards running toward them, brandishing a club.

Her eyes went wide. "Dani, duck!"

She pulled him down, but not fast enough. The blow to his head glanced off, and he fell to the ground.

The slope near the creek was a tumble of rocks and branches, the winter rain not yet flushing the waterway to its banks. Summer and Dani stumbled and tumbled toward the water, the guard with the club nearly on top of them.

"I found them!" he shouted. "Tell Ivan I found 'em!"

No—this couldn't happen. They were almost there. They were almost to safety. "Dani, get up!"

The guard was on them again, beating Dani in the abdomen as her boyfriend grabbed for the club.

"Summer, run!" he yelled.

No, she couldn't leave him. She raised her walking stick and brought it down on the guard's head. She jabbed his shoulder and tried to trip him with the stick, but he wouldn't go down.

"Hey, Ricky!" Another guard had found them.

Dani turned to the guard and hurled her stick like a javelin in his direction. "No!"

"What the fuck?" The other guard ducked away from the stick but didn't change direction. "Hey!" He sent out a sharp whistle. "Ricky found 'em by the creek!"

Summer picked up another small log to try to knock the man off Dani, but her boyfriend was on the ground, rolling toward the water and clutching his belly while his head bled over the rocks.

"Dani!" Summer was sobbing. "Get up! Get up please!" She reached for his hand, but the guard brought the club down, breaking her hand and bloodying Dani more.

Her boyfriend looked up and spoke through bloody lips. "Summer, run."

She looked at the guard who'd been beating Dani. He was running toward the creek bed, crawling over the rocks to reach his partner.

"Summer, I love you. Get out of here!" Dani's mouth was bloody and his face was smashed. He was moving his arms, but his legs were frighteningly still. "I can't… you know I can't."

She shook her head. "Don't ask me to leave you."

"Get help." He blinked hard and shoved her away. "If we have any chance—"

"Ivan's coming!" one of the guards said. "I just called; he's on his way back."

Summer's head shot up and her eyes went wide. Ivan. The Russian. The vampire.

Dani gripped her hand with the last of his strength. "Summer, run."