Chapter 15

Summer was finished. The vampire's men pulled her out of the truck just before sunset and sprayed her down with a hose before they put her in a brand-new cabin with sealed floorboards and walls, an empty bucket in the corner, and a lock on the door. She lay on the ground, staring at a wall made of sealed boards, and thought about Dani.

She didn't care what happened to her anymore. Dani had been right. They should have stayed at the camp. They'd tried to escape and nothing had happened to her, but Dani was dead.

Summer, run!

She couldn't stop hearing his voice. Couldn't stop seeing his face. Hearing the fists pounding against his body as she ran away.

She ran away.

How could she ever face her family again? Mackenzies didn't abandon people they loved. Mackenzies didn't run from danger. They defended the wounded. Helped the injured. It was a code of honor she had breached when she abandoned Dani to the Russian's men. She could never show her face to her father or her uncle again.

This was her fault.

The door creaked open after the sun had hidden itself behind the mountains, and Summer knew that the vampire called Ivan had decided to pay her a visit.

"Summer Mackenzie."

She hated the sound of her name in his mouth.

"I thought you should know your family did come looking for you."

She blinked, but she didn't move.

"I'm sure you think that they'll find you here, but they won't. We're miles and miles away from the trailer they raided. Very far from where you were taken."

Something touched her neck. It was Ivan's cold fingers on her skin. He picked up a curl and smoothed it down. "Such a wild woman you are, Summer Mackenzie."

She resisted the urge to cringe, the urge to flee, the urge to react in any way. She stared at the wall with her back to Ivan and the door.

"A wild, untamed thing." Ivan's finger ran over her shoulder and down her arm, but still Summer didn't flinch. "I do so enjoy you."

In the distance, Summer heard a truck start up and a woman cry out. Then a door slammed and she heard nothing else.

"I suspect your pretty man noticed that people were going missing." Ivan must have been feeling conversational. "So you decided to escape." He patted her hip. "Don't worry. That won't be you. We only get rid of the ones who are worn out by the work. You are nice and strong."

"What do you do with the weak ones?"

"Oh, you decided to talk." He leaned closer, and his finger touched her hair again. "Lovely. What do we do with them? You know, you're the first person I can share this with, Summer. The first person who understands our world."

Was he giving them to vampires? Summer knew there were vampires who kept broods of people to drink from, like humans kept milk cows, but most vampires she knew either drank from paid employees, hunted animals, or went into the city to vampire clubs if they were real old like her Grandpa Logan.

"I don't understand that much," Summer said. "I'm not like you." In so many ways.

"But you know what we eat." There were his fingers again, crawling along her neck, combing through her hair, and pulling so hard when he reached a tangle that her eyes began to tear up. "You know we like a bit of fun. We're predators, my dear. Blood always tastes better with a healthy chase to season it."

Her stomach turned, but Summer didn't throw up and she didn't flinch. "So you're running hunts with humans?" It was a practice her grandfather had told her about, but Summer didn't know it still happened. Human hunts were supposed to have died out over the centuries. Only sociopaths would still hunt people when there were far more civilized options available to modern immortals.

"Not… precisely. See, how would that be a challenge? We're predators, but we're rational too. What fun is a hunt if the prey is weak?"

You sick, sick bastard. Summer continued to stare at the wall even though she felt like throwing up. "So you give them weapons or what?"

"In a sense," Ivan said. "What I do is… even the playing field a bit. Try to keep it more challenging for everyone."

"So it's a fair fight?" Yeah right. Summer had seen her father spar with her uncle. Her father might have been a fierce and skilled man, but there was no contest between him and her immortal relatives.

Ivan chuckled. "It's as fair as I can make it." He petted her shoulder. "You don't need to worry about that business though. I find you far too interesting to waste."

"Goody for me." I'm going to kill you. I'm going to drive a knife through your heart, put a bullet in your neck, and chop your head off with an ax. Imagining all the ways she planned kill Ivan was the only thing that allowed Summer a fraction of peace.

She wondered if he knew she wanted to end his life. After all, Ivan wasn't an idiot. He likely knew how much she hated him; he just didn't care.

She could be patient; she could plan. She wasn't fooling herself over her deficiencies as a human because one of the first things she was taught as a child was how to recognize mortal vulnerabilities and work around them.

Summer lay on her side, wide awake and glaring at the walls of her wooden prison, ignoring the monster who petted her like a toy poodle. He would get nothing from her. Not a reaction; not a tear.

And when she was ready, he would die.

The dirt track that led off the main road near a bend in the Eel River was little more than a horse path, but they were able to navigate it with a little luck, and there were only a few places where Carwyn had to get out and move the van onto less muddy ground.

Brigid sat in the passenger's seat while Carwyn drove over the bumpy track. Natalie, Jamie, and Ross were sitting in back, and Baojia's vehicle followed them.

Jamie spoke up from the seat right behind Brigid. "I suppose this would be completely impassible if it were raining harder."

Brigid smiled. "This isn't rain."

"This is mist," Natalie said.

Ross muttered, "Looks like rain to me."

Brigid turned to look at him. "Mist isn't rain. Trust me—coming from an Irishwoman—this is mist."

"This area reminds me of North Wales," Carwyn said. "Different trees but the same feeling."

"Young," Ross muttered.

Brigid frowned. "What's that?" Was he implying something about her age? What the fuck?

"The mountains here." Ross stared into the darkness as they drove along a ridge. "They feel young."

Carwyn smiled at the man. "Yes. I know what you mean."

Brigid tried not to roll her eyes. Earth vampires.

"I'm just glad everything is damp," she added. "The last thing I want to worry about is accidentally setting off an uncontrolled burn." In California, with its dense, overgrown forests, that was something Brigid worried about almost everywhere she went. Luckily, the coastal north was far less flammable than other places.

The fog hung low over the forest as dry brush, oak trees, and manzanita along the river gave way to underbrush heavy with ferns, tumbled granite rocks, and soaring pines. They had turned away from the path that followed the main tributary and were climbing up the side of a steep hill, switching back and forth as they drove toward Rocky Creek.

The mountain peak above them was lost in the dark, heavy cloud cover, but even if the sky had been clear, Brigid suspected the woods were too dense to allow much light to filter down.

She reached for the map. "Carwyn, you might be getting to the redwoods." She'd spotted massive leaning giants in the distance. "Be ready to stop." She glanced behind them to see the truck carrying seven vampire soldiers and Baojia was still close. "Do you think Katya's men—?"

"Baojia's men." Carwyn raised an eyebrow. "He'll have trained them."

"Are they all water vampires like Katya and Baojia?"

"I suspect they'll be a mix. I'm pretty sure at least two of them are human, though they do a hell of a job blending in. They'll have some earth vampires with them for defense or quick escape."

When it came to disappearing quickly, nothing beat a skilled earth vampire who could literally make the ground open up and swallow you.

"So you won't have to dig their shelters," Brigid said. "Good."

"I can help if they need it," Ross muttered. "Ain't no thing when they're lookin' for our girl."

"Remember this." Brigid turned to the two Mackenzies. "Baojia isn't just a friend in all this; he's Katya's enforcer. His priority will be to eliminate Ivan and any other immortals or humans who are collaborating with him. That means that finding Summer is on us."

Ross and Jamie turned to Natalie to get her reaction to Brigid's words.

"There's no divided loyalties," Natalie said. "I do my job; my husband does his. Look at it this way: We'll be able to look for Summer better knowing they're dealing with Ivan and his crew."

"What if we need to get information from Ivan?"

"Then you better ask him quick." Natalie's face was grim. "My husband and this vampire have a long history. Baojia is pretty keen to end it."

"We're here," Carwyn announced.

Having driven the van in a complete circle and finding no outlet, he parked under a bushy redwood tree that had sprung new shoots from the base. They tangled and clumped together, knitting themselves into a monstrous apparition in the darkness, nearly twice as tall as the average human.

"You know," Brigid said. "It's not hard to understand why Bigfoot legends started here."

Carwyn shut off the van and pocketed the keys as the vampire and human passengers began to unload. "I don't know what you mean." He frowned. "Are you talking about Grigor?"

"That definitely helps." Brigid wandered around the van, taking in the darkness, the dense fog overhead, and the soft scampering in the distance. "I mean all of it though. A forest so old and alive you can nearly feel it breathing." She walked along the circle of the grove. "Earth so rich anything you plant just springs to life." Brigid kicked a clump of earth dug up by some animal burrowing. "Everything around here feels like it's watching you."

Natalie looked into the trees. "If we stumble onto someone's illegal farm, the forest very well could be watching you. Some of the growers up here plant cameras near their fields." She looked at Ross and Jamie. "You guys know about all the tricks moonshiners have pulled over the years?"

Ross frowned at Natalie. "Uh, you might be surprised to know a few of my brothers and me were those moonshiners. So yeah, we know what to look for." He looked at Jamie. "You reckon they have bear traps out here?"

"Hopefully not."

"Any well-worn path," Natalie started, "look for fishhooks. If you have a hat, wear one even though the sun is down." She tugged on a baseball cap with a long brim. "Look down. There could be pit traps, and yes, also animal traps, the old kind."

Brigid continued, "Be aware of your surroundings. Mountain lions aren't aggressive unless they have cubs; but they're fast and they're silent. Rattlesnakes will warn you, but they also strike faster." She was forgetting something. What was she forgetting? "Oh!" She smiled. "Good old trip wires are also pretty common. That's why Carwyn will be going first along the trail."

He frowned. "What? Why me?"

"Well, you're quite sturdy, aren't you?" She patted his shoulder. "You aren't afraid, are you?"

She was teasing him. The real reason Carwyn would go first along the trail was to scent for Summer. He had the keenest nose in the lot of them, even Summer's own relatives. She tossed him the backpack with the sealed clothes. "Once we get to Rocky Creek, you'll need this."

"Find Rocky Creek," Carwyn said. "Then we'll have to make camp. We aren't going to get enough time to go upstream tonight."

Brigid looked into the woods, securing her backpack before she stared up into the stars.

Keep going, Summer. Stay alive.

We're coming for you.