Octavia's War Read online

  “It’s very dark here, with no cities nearby,” Remmy said. “You can see more. Even the planets themselves, if you have a keen eye.”

  Ángel started to look up every now and again, instead of constantly turning his head. He was restless, too. “I can feel them,” he said. “They’re all around. Why aren’t they attacking?”

  “They like enclosed spaces and dark corners. It is too open here.”

  “Perhaps we’re going exactly where they want us to go,” Octavia said, the unpleasant thought make her heart work even harder. She pulled the denim jacket in around her.

  Neither of them responded to that. Perhaps it was as unsettling for them to consider as it was for her. Only, once she had established the idea of being herded, it wouldn’t go away.

  “What lies ahead?” she asked Remmy. “A bluff and an arroyo, you said. What else? What would make them wait until we reached it?”

  “The whole park is plateaus and rifts and canyons,” Ángel said.

  “And very few people,” Remmy added thoughtfully.

  Octavia came to a halt, her heart sinking. “Oh God, the people….”

  They turned back to look at her.

  She looked at Ángel. “The whole town. Manuel Benavides. They all headed into the park to get away from what they thought was your brother’s excesses. They’re walking right into the middle of the vampeen and they have no idea they’re there.”

  “They will only go to the nearest canyon for shelter,” Ángel said slowly.

  “Will they?” Octavia said. “If they think someone is trailing them, they’ll keep going to try to get away from them. They’ll think it’s someone human.”

  Ángel shook his head. “We can’t go back,” he said flatly. “The townsfolk…they’re not who the vampeen want.”

  “They’ll herd them to where they can deal with them!” Octavia cried.

  “You don’t know that,” Remmy said softly.

  “I know. I know it here!” She pressed her hand to her chest. “Humans are food to them, you said. Of course they’re going to round up a herd of food on foot!” As she spoke, she edged backward. The urge to flee back the way they had come, to sprint back toward the town and find everyone and warn them was almost overwhelming.

  Ángel moved over to her and put his arms around her. “Shh…” he said. “Breathe.”

  “They’ll kill them all!” she cried.

  “You can’t help them if you go back,” Remmy said.

  “They’re trying to draw you out,” Ángel added. “They want you to dash back there and save them. It separates you from us, where we can’t protect you.”

  Octavia drew in a shuddering breath. “You don’t know that either.”

  “It’s what I would do,” Ángel said. “The Grimoré, at least, seem to be able to think strategically and we’re their priority right now. Yes, Remmy?”

  Remmy nodded. “If you don’t go back, the people will be safe enough. Once the Grimoré have you, their use as bait will be at an end and then they will all die. The Grimoré only have to kill one of us to break the trinity.”

  Octavia kept breathing, trying to calm herself and think. There was good sense in what they were saying yet it battled her horror at what the villagers would be going through.

  “We seal the trinity first,” Remmy said. “Then we’ll be stronger and less vulnerable. Then, my dear, you can kick all the butt you want.”

  “Fine, then let’s do it now. Right here,” Octavia said, her temper simmering. She dropped the backpack to the ground and the water inside gurgled. “I’m sick of talking about it. We’re talking ourselves to death while those things are out there controlling everything. So let’s do it.”

  Remmy looked amused.

  Ángel brushed her hair out her eyes. “It’s sealed with sex, sweet one. You want I should drop you to the sand right now and take you? Here?”

  Her breath, which had started to calm, suddenly shallowed. She was almost hyperventilating. The idea of Ángel lowering her to the ground and fucking her, right there, with Remmy watching, even participating, sent heat through her limbs. Every nerve seemed to come suddenly to the alert.

  “It has appeal,” she said honestly. Her voice was husky with want.

  She could almost feel Ángel’s reaction. His hard body was tight against hers and she could sense the tension in him. The sudden way he held his breath, his gaze wandering over her face.

  So she kissed him. It seemed as though it was the only reasonable thing to do right then. It was action and she yearned to do something. If she couldn’t go blow out vampeen brains with the 500, then she could kiss the hell out of Ángel instead.

  Her kiss infected him with the same urgency. She could feel it in the way his hands moved against her, restlessly exploring her back and her ass and holding the back of her head so he could drive himself deeper into her mouth.

  Their bodies pushed together and she could feel the frantic quality in their movements. His hands were against her bare skin, up under her shirt. They were hot and restless, sliding over her flesh as if he couldn’t get enough of it.

  Until he staggered backward, as though he was wrenching himself away from her. He stood with his chest heaving.

  Remmy’s hands were tightly coiled fists at his sides.

  “We’re not going to last,” Ángel said. His voice was strained, thick with lust. “I don’t know how it works. I don’t know how we figure it out. I do know we can’t wait to seal this when we’re somewhere civilized with a door that locks.”

  Remmy cleared his throat. “You might be right.”

  Octavia knew he was right. Her body was aching with the emotions and feelings whipsawing through her, from one extreme to another in a few moments. The need to have them both inside her was becoming a central image in her mind around which all other thoughts battled for space and attention.

  “I can’t keep dealing with this,” she said. “It’s getting stronger, every hour. I can’t think of anything else.”

  Remmy stirred. “There is a place, a few hours ahead…we might be able to hide there for a while.”

  “A house?” Ángel said, startled. “There is no such thing, not in here.”

  “No, it’s not a house,” Remmy said.

  “Then…?” Octavia said.

  “You’ll see.” Even in the dark, she could see Remmy’s smile.

  * * * * *

  Alex stood with his chest heaving, staring down at the body at his feet. He had been surprised into sudden violence, which never failed to tax those systems that had once been autonomic.

  He heard running footsteps, then the door burst open and Diego and Wyatt almost fell into the room. Diego had his guns out and Wyatt had his iron knife in his fist.

  Diego halted and bent over, his hands on his knees, the guns still under his fingers. He blew out a breath. “Man! I thought someone had stuck a pig. That was the most awful sound I’ve ever heard. Even worse than a vampeen in full fight mode.”

  “He died hard,” Alex said regretfully. “He wouldn’t put down the machete.”

  Wyatt came up to him. “Are you all right?” He spoke English, unlike Alex and Diego, for he was not fluent in Spanish. Alex didn’t even have to think about it. He had stopped speaking English almost the moment he had crossed the border. Diego was worse. He changed dialect to match whatever anyone was using who spoke to him. Between the two of them, they had quartered the little town of Manuel Benavides, speaking to the very few residents who had crept back to their homes under cover of the night, asking them where they had gone and why.

  Alex gave Wyatt a fond smile. “He surprised me. I’d let my guard down, so this is my fault. I might have talked him out of it if he’d given me time. He just charged at me.”

  Diego put the guns away under his jacket and turned the body over onto its back on the handwoven and blood-soiled rug.

  Alex looked away from the man’s throat. He had been forced to move quickly and had gone for the jugular. It
had not been a clean severance and the man had writhed in pain and shock.

  “Who is it?” Diego asked. “Did he think we were the ones who killed the people we found in here?”

  Alex tilted his head, looking down at the face. “I know this man. Not in person. I’ve seen his likeness somewhere.”

  “A wanted poster?” Wyatt asked, pulling out his big cell phone. Mia had taught Wyatt how to use computers and networks to help him in his work and now he was very comfortable with technology.

  “Everyone around here is in the pockets of a cartel,” Diego said. He glanced around and shivered. “Didn’t you say the Sub-officer in Santa Maria thought La Espada chopped up those people with a machete?” He toed the handle of the long machete laying on the rug next to the body.

  Wyatt held up his phone. “Bingo,” he said in English. “La Espada, or The Blade. Severo Garcia is his real name. There’re half a dozen others, too. Racketeering, drug importation, sex trafficking…hell’s bells….” He fell silent, scrolling down the list. “Murder, over and over and over,” he added quietly. He let out a heavy breath. “Guess your instincts are in top form, Alex. This guy wouldn’t have let you talk him out of the day of the week.”

  “Enrico Garcia is the head of the cartel here,” Diego said slowly, “and this one is Severo Garcia.” He looked at Alex. “Relative?”

  “Son, I think.” Alex felt a touch of uneasiness.

  Diego slapped his shoulder. “No sweat,” he said cheerfully. “Every gang between San Francisco and San Diego already wanted your head on a platter. Now you just added northern Mexico to the list.”

  Wyatt gave a grimace. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Alex said dryly. “Well, at least we have a direction to head in now.”

  Wyatt looked out the window at the bluffs that seemed to rise out of the ground from the very edge of the little patio. “Into the park,” he said. “A nice, lonely place where anything can happen.”

  “Even better,” Diego said happily and yanked out his guns once more. “What are we waiting for?”

  * * * * *

  Beth pulled out one of the empty steel chairs at the big industrial dining table and sat. The little redhead, Zoe, was already there, wolfing down a chicken dinner in big bites. Declan was sitting next to her, watching every bite go down.

  “Hungry?” Beth asked.

  “The autopsy took twelve hours!” Zoe said and scooped up a forkful of mashed potato and peas. “I’m starving!”

  “Actually, I was asking Declan that,” Beth said, smiling.

  Declan raised his brow in surprise.

  “You looked as though you were salivating,” Beth pointed out.

  “I was, I think. At least in here, I was.” He tapped his temple.

  “Have you ever tried eating or drinking something?” Beth asked curiously.

  “He took a mouthful of my coffee,” Zoe said and rolled her eyes. “It fell right back onto the floor, as if I had tipped the mug myself.”

  Declan looked rueful. “Hunger and thirst are just mental leftovers now,” he said. “Like they are for vampires, I imagine.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” Beth said honestly. “My vampire has to eat.”

  Zoe giggled, covering her mouth. “Cole just sniffs hard, then sighs. He used to really like his food, poor guy.”

  “It passes, that longing, I believe,” Beth said to both of them. “The oldest vampires I know barely even look at food and drink the same way as we do. It doesn’t figure into their conversation except as habits of speech that linger.”

  “Like ‘fit for a king’?” Declan asked. “It used to be ‘a feast fit for a king’. Now it’s rare anyone says the whole thing anymore.”

  “Yes, that’s it. I didn’t want to wait until you were ready to report in my office. We’re as secure here as anywhere else in the complex, including my office. I’ll let Zoe finish her meal, if you’d like to fill me in on the autopsy findings?”

  Declan nodded. “Where would you like me to start?”

  “Tell me what killed it, first,” Beth said. “That’s the million dollar question I’ve been waiting to answer.”

  Declan looked rueful. “I’d like to tell you it was that bear shifter who ripped the thing’s guts out, but I’d be lying.”

  Beth just looked at him.

  “The physiology is all wrong, so I might be off in my guess,” Declan said. “These things truly are from someplace other than Earth. You can tell that just by looking at what is inside them. However, they do breathe air and convert oxygen to energy, which means they have lungs…although it took me a while to even figure out that what I was looking at was lungs. What was inside them told me they were lungs.”

  “Which was?”

  “Streptococcus pneumoniae.”

  Beth blinked. “You’re joking.”

  “Sorry.” Declan shrugged.

  Zoe looked up from her chicken breast. “Sorry about what?”

  “You’re telling me the Grimoré died of pneumonia?” Beth said.

  “Actually, it died of asphyxiation. It choked to death because there was so much infection in the lungs it couldn’t breathe anymore. It’s a nasty way to go and I can’t think of a single creature that deserved it more than they do.”

  Beth sat back. “Pneumonia,” she said flatly. “Well, that’s not something we can add to bullets or dump into the air over their heads.”

  “You may not have to weaponize it at all,” Declan said. “Pneumonia bacteria are incredibly common. We breathe them in all the time, only most humans’ immune systems can kill the buggers off.”

  “You’re saying this is like the Martians dying of the common cold in The War of the Worlds?” Beth asked.

  “I’m saying it’s almost exactly like that.” Declan leaned forward. “Only, the Grimoré know of the vulnerability and they’re making moves to minimize the threat.”

  “Moving down from the north, away from the cold? I didn’t think pneumonia was a result of coldness,” Beth said, turning it over in her mind.

  “The dampness doesn’t help.” Declan put his hand on the table. “I can’t give you solid evidence, because I’m only just starting to understand their biology, yet I think the Grimoré might once have been a hibernating species. They like warmth and the old instincts are pushing them south. Pneumonia bacteria don’t like hot, dry conditions and that will help them.”

  “So we know their direction and we know why,” Beth said slowly.

  “It also explains some of the unprecedented vampeen attacks lately,” Declan said. “If the Grimoré really do control and direct them, then when they get ill and weaken….”

  “Amok time,” Beth breathed and shivered.

  Chapter Eight

  The place Remmy had spoken of took just over two hours to reach. Octavia had no doubt they had arrived. It was like stepping inside a secret paradise.

  Reaching the little grotto required squeezing through a tiny fissure in an otherwise blank cliff face. It was so narrow Octavia was forced to take off her backpack and turn sideways.

  Remmy and Ángel had to push themselves through.

  If Remmy had not been leading them to something, Octavia wasn’t sure she would have tried to get through the squeeze. Even though there were stars overhead, having the rough rock walls press in so close around her was claustrophobic.

  The narrow passage turned a sharp corner just beyond the squeeze, so when they peered through the crack it looked as if there was nothing beyond but a blank wall. Once they had turned the corner, the passage widened to the point where they did not have to sidle along the sandy path.

  No one spoke. Far overhead, where the cliffs ended, the night wind sighed over the fissure opening, sounding mournful and lonely.

  The passage opened up into a wider, dead-end canyon, like the bottom of a teardrop. It was almost perfectly symmetrical and the walls of the little pocket were smooth rock, worn over centuries.

  At the far end, almost in the middl
e of the wall, there was a narrow waterfall, dropping from the top of the cliffs above. The water formed a pool at the bottom and plants grew everywhere—soft ferns, big glossy-leaved palms and spindly grasses.

  The sand underfoot grew deeper until it was as though they were walking on beach sand.

  “Amazing,” Ángel said. “I have lived in Chihuahua all my life and I didn’t know this was here.” His voice did not echo in the tiny canyon because the soft sound of the water muffled it.

  “In summer it is not here,” Remmy said. “The waterfall is snow melt and rain run-off, which you only get in winter. For a month, perhaps, the water runs, the plants explode and those who know of this place, including all the creatures that live here, visit and refresh themselves. When the water stops, though, the plants die and this place is nothing but sand and rock.”

  Ángel dropped the duffel bag and stretched. “The pool drains?”

  “There are cracks in the rock somewhere. It trickles down to underground water tables.”

  Ángel stripped off his jacket, then the shirt beneath. His skin gleamed in the diffuse moonlight as he moved over to the edge of the pool of water and bent down to wash.

  Remmy lowered the heavy bag to the ground, then sat in the sand next to it, watching Ángel.

  Octavia rid herself of the backpack and her denim coat. She pulled off her boots gratefully. The night air was cool against her arms, neck and face. It wasn’t cold enough to want to cover up, not after walking for two hours.

  She sat next to Remmy and listened to the splash and tinkle of the water on the rock below. “Makes me want to take a shower,” she said.

  “Help yourself.”

  “Won’t it pollute the water in the pool? You said animals use this place.”

  “The pool drains and renews itself.”

  Now Octavia understood Ángel’s question. “Maybe later,” she said. She let the silence grow again. Remmy was a big man and sitting beside him in this way made her very aware of her size compared to his. She had only caught a glimpse of the differences his vampire state made, including his immense strength and indefatigable energy. They were startling hints that made her want to know more.