Chapter 26

Ingomar Club, midnight.

It wasn't much to go on and they'd have to be careful following whatever vehicle picked Brigid up. Carwyn and Baojia had switched out the SUV for an old pickup truck that could have been any one of the hundreds that populated the mountain roads. The rest of Baojia's people would have to come up when they learned where the hunt was happening.

Carwyn kept his eyes on Brigid from a hotel room across the square. "They're late."

"Maybe they had other vampires to pick up," Baojia said.

Baojia was looking at his vampire-safe tablet. "I missed a video call from Natalie."

Carwyn looked over. "Do you need to call her back?"

"I'll message. It was probably a video chat with the kids before bed." He set it to the side. "They'll be asleep now."

"Why don't you go down to the truck and start it. Or at least stand by. If we're still up here when they take off—"

"Wait." Baojia jerked forward. "They're here."

They left everything but the radios and their phones behind them and booked it down the back stairs to where the truck was waiting.

By the time they started it and turned onto the road, the black SUV was already pulling out of the square.

"Baojia…"

"I know." The vampire punched the gas and nearly collided with a homeless man who was crossing the street. Baojia swerved and kept the SUV in sight. The vehicle entered the highway and headed north.

"Do you still see it?" Carwyn felt disconnected in the truck. He wanted to be on the ground with the wind around him and the earth under his feet. It had been two nights now since he'd taken Brigid's blood, and though their bond was ironclad, it wasn't a creature of asphalt and mirrored windows.

Baojia flipped on his radio and spoke briefly into it, using a low voice. "Misha, we're headed off the 101 North going east on the 299. Keep in range."

A voice crackled back. "Done."

Carwyn looked at the radio, which was probably more useful in some of the heavily wooded areas. "Katya's driver?"

"He's coming with the rest of them."

There weren't many vehicles on the road. It was fall on the Redwood Coast, and fog blanketed the twisting roads. Carwyn and Baojia followed Brigid in silence, trailing the black SUV at a safe distance as it steadily headed north by northeast. Every now and then Baojia would pull off the road, wait for a car to pass in front of him, then pull on again, keeping the vehicle at a distant watch. Eventually the black SUV turned off the main highway toward smaller roads that wound through ghostly timber towns, and they had to drop back even farther.

"They're heading toward the Klamath." Baojia's eyes were intent on the road. The old truck bounced and chugged along, its dashboard shorted out from vampire amnis. "I'd bet you anything. We're gonna lose cell signal pretty quick. Hey, Cara?"

The voice command turned on. "How can I help you?"

"Call Mike N."

There was a pause. "Calling Mike Nelson."

The phone rang, and Carwyn asked, "One of yours?"

"Nope. He's an accountant. He's also a liaison of Katya's. He's immortal and Hupa." Baojia nodded forward. "We're headed into Hupa land, so I call Mike."

"They're the indigenous people here?"

"Yes." Baojia pointed at a green road sign. "See that? This road is gonna end in about five miles; then we turn north or south. I'm betting it's gonna be north—it's more remote, and a fire swept through the area toward the south last year, so not much tree coverage. Going north puts us heading toward Hoopa Valley and Klamath River country."

The phone picked up. "Baojia?"

"Hey, Mike, how you doing?"

"Can't complain, my friend."

Baojia kept his voice low and even. "Letting you know we've got an issue up around your mother's place."

"Understood." The sound of papers shifting. "Any of my people affected?"

"Shouldn't be. You can call Katya, she'll give you details. I have a feeling we're headed up into the backcountry though. Nothing happening in the valley."

"Anything on the big river?"

"Not sure yet. Probably not. I'm gonna lose connection here in about five minutes, but I wanted to give you a call."

"I'll let people know you're around." The line crackled. "—long?"

"How long?" Baojia frowned. "We'll have things resolved by tomorrow night."

Or earlier if Carwyn had anything to say about it. As long as they could get reinforcements in place before dawn, there was no reason that Brigid needed to stay in Ivan's company another day.

The phone was crackling again, and Baojia hung up. "He'll call Katya if he needs more information. There are landlines."

"Is Mike under Katya's aegis?"

"Technically." Baojia nodded. "But he's a lot older than her and prefers to keep to himself. She's smart enough to let him do his thing. Mike is not Mike's original name, but that's what he goes by now. Pretty sure he's related to Katya's sire somehow, but I'm not clear on details."

"His mother's place?"

"Hoopa Valley Reservation. He maintains very close ties with his people. We're gonna drive right through it if we go north." Baojia slowed and pulled over as the SUV in the distance pulled up to an intersection. He switched the lights off, watched the black vehicle turn left, and then pulled back on the road. "If they're watching behind, they still might spot us, but hopefully we just look like an old farmer."

As they headed north, the small highway turned into an even smaller highway that twisted through pine forests, dipped into small hollows, and wound along a flowing river. The road was smooth, and the fog dissipated as they made their way down into a narrow river valley.

"And mobile service is gone." Carwyn looked up from his phone. "There won't be any until it's finished, will there?"

"Nope." Baojia frowned, studying the road ahead of him. "At some point they're going to turn on private land and we won't be able to follow, but at least we'll know where to start searching." He glanced at Carwyn from the corner of his eye. "I'm counting on your scouting abilities to be as good as you say.

"I found Summer, didn't I?"

"We had more than a little help on that one, don't you think?"

"Still found the girl, even in those woods." Carwyn stared off into the darkness.

These woods…

He wasn't being poetic when he thought of them as haunting. These were old forests planted long before humans set foot on this continent. They held secrets Carwyn couldn't even begin to fathom.

Baojia turned on a radio in a thick plastic case and held down a button. "Daxa, you there?" he murmured into the device.

A voice came back, but it was hardly audible through the static. "Hey —oss."

"You still following that SUV?"

"—got it. It hasn't turned off the main roa— long as it stay—" The radio crackled. "—ood, I think."

"Keep on it," he said back. "I'm radioing the guys."

"Understood."

Baojia flipped to another channel and held the handset to his lips. "Misha?"

A muffled voice came back immediately. "Still on 299."

"You're going to want to head up toward Hoopa Valley. Quick as you can. I'm following this truck, and I'm guessing it's going to make for the Klamath."

"East or West?"

"Not sure yet."

"Let us know."

"I will."

Brigid couldn't see what was happening in the darkness around her because the windows of the SUV were completely blacked out. She sat quietly, trying not to be too obvious in her examination of the other riders in the car.

There were four besides her, a couple and two individuals. The couple was a man and woman: he was Asian and she was Black. They appeared to be in their early twenties, and they were dressed impeccably in current designer jeans, fitted jackets with fancy labels, and expensive, if well-worn, hiking boots.

Brigid smiled demurely at the woman, and the stranger smiled back, showing just a hint of fang and raking her eyes over Brigid's legs, which were clad in silk stockings under a short black dress.

Interesting. It was a cheeky sexual invitation from a stranger, but then, Brigid was getting the idea that the hunt was only part of the entertainment during this "excursion."

She shifted her eyes toward the other two individuals, a middle-aged man with Latin features and another European vampire who appeared androgynous in the distinct way of some very, very old immortals. They were very pale and had a shock of red hair.

All the vampires, save for Claire, were wearing fashionable clothing with an outdoorsy feel, but something about the red-haired vampire unsettled Brigid.

Brigid leaned toward the woman. "Are we hunting tonight? I confess, I packed the things I bought to wear outdoors." Claire wiggled her foot, which was wrapped in a slick black heel.

"It's fine." The woman's amnis felt familiar and earthy. She flashed some fang again and tossed her long braids over her shoulder. "We flew in from Paris and came ready to play, if you know what I mean."

"I do." Best not to dash the woman's hopes when she might prove useful. "I wasn't originally planning this… type of thing. I don't even have the clothes for it." Claire smiled. "I suppose if I want to really get in touch with my roots, I could always hunt naked."

The woman and her partner laughed.

"So it's your first time?" He smiled, and it was the careful smile of a politician. Water vampire? Probably.

Claire nodded, letting the excitement shine in her eyes. "Yours?"

They exchanged a glance.

"Oh no," he said. "We try to do something like this at least every six months."

The woman said, "I think it keeps you healthy. We're not supposed to be tame, you know?"

"There's nothing tame about Ivan's hunts." The androgynous vampire spoke in a soothing, low voice. The menacing immortal turned their eyes on Brigid. They were nearly black and rimmed with thick, pale lashes. "You will find out who you really are."

"Oh." Brigid only mouthed the words; she was honestly taken aback by the vampire's demeanor. They were beautiful in the way a painting was beautiful, but utterly cold. Brigid tried to get a sense of their amnis but could read nothing. They were an elemental blank.

Powerful. She knew it without a sliver of doubt. This vampire was more dangerous than the others.

"I heard this was going to be the last excursion," the middle-aged man said quietly. "At least for a while."

"Ugh," the young man said. "That means Katya must have gotten wind of it. She's such a bore."

And this was why they needed to cut Ivan off at the knees. He'd just keep moving to different places and starting the same routine, over and over. This time he'd escalated from drugged humans to newborn vampires as objects of the hunt. What barbarous twist would he think up next?

"Is it just us?" Claire asked, placing herself in the ingenue position in the group. "Are we the only ones?"

The young woman spoke again. "There are probably some people already up at the lodge."

"The lodge?"

She nodded and licked her lips. "You're in for a treat, little one."

How many vampires were they dealing with? How many newborns? According to Summer, seven humans had disappeared from the camp since she'd been kidnapped. Were they all changed into vampires? Were there more?

The SUV swerved abruptly and veered left, bouncing over a rocky patch and making the young woman across from Brigid let out a peal of laughter.

"We're almost there." She was nearly bouncing in her seat.

One of the drivers—who were both human—exited the vehicle. She heard the hard creak of a rusted gate; then the SUV pulled forward. Another creak as the gate swung closed; the second human climbed in the vehicle, and then they were bumping along a dirt road, heading deeper into the hills and the dense pine and redwood forests.

The driver rolled all the windows down, and suddenly they were enveloped in the scent of pine and damp, mossy fog. Giant trees crowded around them and ferns and vining bushes tangled in the underbrush.

They drove for what must have been another fifteen minutes before a clearing opened up in front of them and a golden-lit mansion appeared, framed by giant redwoods. Made of timber and stone, it looked like it was straight out of a magazine for luxury mountain living, save for the lack of windows on the second floor and the subtle signs of lightproofing around the house.

A fire roared in the middle of an ornate stone hearth that dominated the clearing in front of the house. Brigid counted at least a dozen isolated shadows moving at a distance in the flickering shadows.

This was not some grimy pot farm in the middle of the forest or a makeshift hunting cabin; Ivan had built an immortal fortress.

And Brigid was going to destroy it.