Jane Read online

  I really missed this. I loved the sun before I was turned and overnight had become completely afraid of the day as my vampire survival instincts rose in full force with my change. Drawing my hood back from my head and removing my sunglasses, I turned my face towards the sun, loving the feel of it on my skin and sensing no ill effects from the sun’s rays.

  All of a sudden Jade was at my side, grabbing my arm, trying to move me back inside the tent. She looked scared. I was one of the most powerful vamps in the country and of the most powerful bloodline possible and I was not going to be pulled back inside that tent. I had no doubt I had become much more powerful with a steady diet of the magic that was Jade’s blood.

  “Not moving, Jade,” I said, as she desperately tried to budge me. I noticed she was starting to tear up and I drew her to me in a hug, whispering in her ear. “I’m good,” I said. “Trust me.”

  We separated, holding hands, and Jade stepped back a bit. “You are so beautiful in the daylight,” she said, sniffling.

  I smiled, showing her my fangs fully extended. “I am not sitting this one out. Show me what’s happening.”

  Hannah had turned back around and we joined her on the southern end of Eagle point, looking toward the edges of pack territory.

  We could hear automatic weapons going off sporadically and as we watched a boom in the distance followed by a puff of smoke rising above the trees.

  “Landmine,” Hannah said, smiling. “Bet they didn’t count on that. Our pack knows where they are and which paths to avoid when they are activated.” As we watched, we heard several other explosions and the sounds of gunfire dramatically increased.

  Hannah turned in a circle and pulled out two sets of binoculars from her backpack. She gave one to Jade and asked her to take a look in other directions to make sure we were not attacked from two sides. “We are really spread out right now,” she said. “Some of our forces are converging on that side while others remain. Once we are fairly sure no additional spot is attacked we will send even more of our pack to where the fighting is taking place. Some of our forces are taking preplanned sniper positions between here and there.”

  “I hear something,” Jade said, walking to the eastern side, raising her binoculars. She wasn’t looking towards the forest I saw, but rather slightly upward towards the sky. I couldn’t hear anything. A shifter’s hearing is better than a vamp’s.

  “Choppers,” Hannah said from behind us, facing west, binoculars up as well. “Many of them,” she continued. “This is something we didn’t count on. We have a few stingers out there but there must be at least ten choppers coming from this direction.”

  She picked up her phone and dialed to alert the forces on the ground. While she waited for an answer she continued, “Heading straight for our position. How many coming from your direction, Jade?”

  “A dozen or more,” Jade said, “also heading straight towards our position. Tell your forces to concentrate on those coming in from the west. I will take the ones coming from the east.”

  I drew Hannah back to the edge of the point. Jade in dragon form would take up much of our little space here. Jade shed clothes and stood in the middle getting ready to shift.

  “We have a little air force of our own,” I told Hannah as Jade changed.

  The transformation to her dragon form was amazing to watch. Jade told me the more magic shifters had inside of them, the larger their beast form was. Jade, as the former Angel of Death and part powerful witch as well, had a ton of magic. Thirty tons of dragon emerged from her shift and she unfurled her wings that stretched from one side of Eagle Point to the other. I grabbed hold of Hannah because I knew what was coming. The crack of wings sent up a big gust of wind and I braced myself so we would not be blown over the edge. Jade was simply beautiful even as a dragon, I thought, as she headed towards the larger group of choppers to our east. At this point, even I saw them as tiny dots in the sky and could just make out the sound of their approach in the distance.

  “We need to move,” Hannah said. “Jade might be able to stop her group but we only have a few stingers and the group coming from the west will be here in a matter of minutes. There is also a cave about half way down on the eastern side that we can take cover in.” She called our security on her phone and gave them instructions to meet us at that spot and then we started our descent back down Eagle Point.

  As we climbed down, Hannah was constantly on the phone and both of us kept looking east through gaps in the tree cover to see what would happen when Jade encountered the choppers. She was huge and they would see her coming. She was covered with dragon scales but I had no idea what kind of protection that would be against bullets and I knew her wings were less protected than the rest of her body. We both stopped at a fairly open area near the cave entrance to observe the battle.

  I heard machine gun fire as she approached them head on. I didn’t know what damage she might be taking but she kept coming. As she got closer, the two choppers in the lead fired missiles at her, both hitting her in the center of her body as she reared up to try and rise above the path of the missiles. I heard her scream of rage and pain from here and she dipped slightly, falling below the level of the coppers, but righted herself in midair and continued her flight now slightly upward towards the group. One of the choppers in the rear veered sharply off to the north and headed away from her approach. Evidently they wanted no part of getting up close and personal with a dragon in flight.

  For the others, it was too late as she was in the middle of the group, swatting a few with her great tail, spewing fire on others and grabbing yet another out of the sky and crunching it with her arms. In a matter of seconds there were choppers burning and exploding and falling out of the sky. The last chopper to the rear managed to fire a missile at almost point blank range as she crushed it to her chest. This time the scream was one of pure agony as I watched her fall towards the ground and behind the trees.

  Hannah was still and silent beside me, not speaking to the voices on her cell phone in front of her face, demanding to know what went on.

  A vampire who has turned someone or has fed from them many times has a blood connection with them. It was good for a few things like knowing when they are near, or in this case knowing if they were still alive. My senses told me she was not dead.

  “She is still alive,” I told Hannah. “I don’t know her condition beyond that.”

  Frank was the first of our security to arrive and entered the cave with us. It was a small cave, dark and wet, going only about twenty feet in before it narrowed and came to an end.

  “I told Gerd to stay below us,” Frank said. “The rest will take positions above. They are almost here. I think we might have gotten a couple of them judging from what I saw and hear but there are still many left.”

  I heard them approaching as well. They were almost at the point.

  “They are not going to know right away that you have moved,” Hannah said. “If Clive is in that group, sensing Jade will not help him and it will be difficult for any shifters up there to track you without them landing.”

  As she finished talking we heard the sound of machine guns firing at the top, probably ripping that tent and our campsite to shreds. Then came the sound of a few choppers descending to land on top.

  “I’m going to help Frank find a few branches to hide the cave entrance from above,” Hannah said. “I’m not certain if they can see it from the air but I don’t want to take that chance.”

  As she left I heard her on the phone telling the rest to dig in and be prepared for fire from both the ground and air. “I am activating the mines and traps around us,” she continued. “This is going to get real ugly real fast.”

  I hoped Clive would be one of the ones on the ground. I could not wait to get my hands around his neck.

  We moved to rear of the cave. Hannah had two phones out, talking to Gerd as well as to Dirk.

  Dirk brought a few of his pack members with RPGs and was almost to our location.


  We heard machine gun fire from outside the cave. As Hannah predicted, they strafed our side of Eagle Point from their choppers. Several bullets zipped through the branches hiding our opening, and we moved to the side as far as we could go so there would be no chance they would hit us with a lucky shot.

  Then a few louder explosions as Dirk arrived with the RPGs.

  “They got a couple of them,” Hannah said. “Dirk said the rest are heading for a clearing not far from here. He thinks they will try and trap us between the forces above us and the ones that are landing now. Dirk has three of our pack with him and can spare no more with the attack still going on at our border, but they are at the base of the point between these guys and our location so they will give us some help that way.”

  “Gerd reports the forces up top have started to descend toward us,” Hannah continued. “They are much closer so we’ll start down and meet up with her just below us and continue on to Dirk’s group. I have activated all mines and traps in the whole sector. Our pack knows what to avoid but they will follow your scent so we’ll come really close to a few mines. We will step over a few trip wires so make sure you follow my steps exactly.”

  As we left the cave there was the sound of automatic rifle and small arms fire above and we heard the bullets whizzing by. I was not liking my first experience with a fire fight. You never knew when an unlucky bullet would find you. Fortunately the trees were thick here and most would be stopped by the time they reached us.

  As we made a slow descent, a smaller explosion from above rang out.

  “Another one,” Hannah said, smiling.

  I followed exactly in her footsteps and we stepped over a few trip lines along the way. She kept up a running conversation with our two groups as we left and I saw Frank waiting for us to join him just below us.

  “Dirk just lost two of his group,” Hannah said. “He reports this group is much larger and he thinks Clive is with them because he smells something not exactly human or shifter approaching. They are starting a slow retreat, with just the two of them left now, and will meet us at the base of Eagle Point below. There’s a group of large boulders there that will provide us some cover from both directions and that’s where we will make our stand.”

  The gunfire was a constant thing, both above and below, and we still heard an occasional mine going off. “Wilfried and Christof are down,” Hannah said a few minutes later. “Silver shot.”

  Vamps were much better when it came to bullets and even silver ones although silver pretty much sucked for most supes and took longer to heal. This is why the supe population is going down, I thought. If I got my vamps back together I would train them the way Dirk trained his pack.

  Modern weaponry was not an equalizer, it was an unfair advantage.

  Big boom behind us at what sounded like the location of the first trip wire we stepped over. The group behind us was closer and had my scent. As we met up with Gerd we sped up a bit, Hannah must be skipping some traps and just avoiding the mines, I thought. We started getting more fire in our direction as well. They knew they were getting close.

  “We have lost Hermann as well,” Hannah said. She took a bullet in the shoulder, and stumbled slightly. “Passed through,” she said, grimacing. “I will be okay.” Gerd was not so lucky, taking a shot through the head and dropping to the ground dead. Hannah continued and didn’t even stop to check for signs of life. Her whole forehead opposite the bullet was gone. We were running. “Almost there,” Hannah said and suddenly we came out of the slope to an area at the base of the point, full of large rocks, small trees, and boulders that had fallen down from Eagle Point over many centuries. We took shelter in the middle of the larger boulders, and she fired back up in the direction we had descended, a few explosions immediately following. “Aiming for the mines near them,” she said. “All of our security is down.”

  Dirk and one of his pack members joined us from the other side. We were now just where they wanted us, the devil on one side and certain death back up the mountain.

  CHAPTER FOUR: BIG BOOM

  HANNAH WAS WHISPERING REAL low. I had a hard time picking it up. A shifter’s hearing is better than a vamp’s.

  “Only five that I can smell on the up-slope,” she said.

  “Double that on our side,” Dirk whispered back. “I have a large group of help on the way, maybe fifteen minutes before they come up behind them. The initial attack at our border was not successful and only a few of them managed to escape back out of the territory. We took few losses there, as it was simply a diversion for the real attack on Jade and Jane.”

  Dirk and his remaining pack member, a man named Jonas, were facing back the way they had come, popping up out of the rocks to fire a few shots. On my side, Hannah and Frank were doing the same, shooting back up the slope. I sat in the middle staying low, trying to see a way I could help. Fifteen to five was not good odds, especially since one of those five had never fired a gun before.

  “We don’t have that much time,” Hannah said. “They sent one on our side back up the slope. I can hear him climbing a tree, probably a sniper. We’ll be sitting ducks in just a few minutes. I am firing in that direction but if he’s smart he is climbing up the opposite side and I would have to get really lucky to hit him.”

  As she spoke I extended my vamp senses back up the slope. A vampire could sense certain things, not so much a function of hearing as much as a form of vamp magic. There were five heartbeats up that way and I sensed which one she was talking about.

  “I have an idea,” I said, pulling the dagger out of my boot. “That little vamp trick might come in handy about now.” I was talking about the illusion a vamp has of moving from one place to another in the blink of an eye. Jade said it was a combination of speed and a form of vamp magic like a glamour the Fae use. Regardless, if I could pull it off, they would not know until I was there. It was a lot of ground to cover even to reach the closest but I sensed I could pull it off and I would head for the guy climbing the tree.

  “Do you have a way to set off the remaining mines up that way?” I asked Hannah. “I need a distraction. We either do this now or make a run for it which doesn’t sound too promising.”

  “Do it,” Dirk said, nodding towards Hannah.

  “Five seconds,” Hannah said, pushing a button on her cell phone.

  That would be all the time I needed to prepare as I had already begun to think about it. A big boom went off, a multitude of explosions back up the slope all the way to the point rang out so close together that you could hardly tell it was more than one.

  I was up and over the rocks in the blink of an eye and at the first asshole’s position before he knew what was happening. I would to have loved to sink my fangs into his neck and drink and my fangs were fully extended but I simply could not take the time, as enjoyable as it might be. My dagger in the side of his head, in and out in an instant and I was gone and at the tree the sniper was scaling before he even hit the ground.

  It’s not true that vamps can fly, but for the more powerful ones like me, going up a tree is almost as easy as going for a jog in the park. About the time he heard me and looked down from his spot about two-thirds up the tree, my dagger took him under the chin and up into his brain. I flung him from me and ascended the rest of the way to the top so I saw what was happening.

  Two of the remaining three had a tree between themselves and me, probably shifters, I guessed, smelling vampire and spilled blood behind them. I took out the cell phone and said, “One and three o’clock, Hannah, short burst only please.”

  I saw Hannah and Frank pop up, getting a quick burst off in those directions. About the time the sound hit I was down the tree and at the other attacker’s position.

  My vamp magic was getting a bit thin by now and he saw me coming a second before I got to him, getting one round off into my chest before he also had a dagger in his brain. “Fuck,” I said, sliding to the base of the tree sitting on my ass. The bullet missed my heart but it would take
a minute for me to recover enough to regain my feet. Vamps are hard to kill, but easy to disable with silver shot in the right places.

  I reached over to the man I’d killed, pulled his neck to my mouth and drank his still warm blood, emptying him in seconds. That is the cure-all for most wounded vamps and I felt myself healing up. The high powered round had passed right through me, and in a few moments it would be like it never happened.

  CHAPTER FIVE: HELL HATH NO FURY

  I LEANED WITH MY back against the tree for support as I pushed myself to a standing position. I let my vamp sense spread out, checking on the other two still alive on this side. I sensed two human heartbeats but they were moving away, heading east from my position.

  I pushed the button for Hannah on the phone she gave me and asked for their status.

  “Just exchanging fire with the other group below,” she said. “We got one, no injuries to our group. I smell the other two on your side bugging out, heading towards our eastern border. We managed to wing one of them but they look like they don’t want any part of what you did to the rest of their group.”

  “I am going back to the sniper tree,” I said, making my way up the slope as fast as I could stagger then ascending up the tree not nearly as quickly as I had done a few minutes ago. I was healing quickly.

  As I got near the top I paused to look in their direction. I pulled out the phone, still connected to Hannah’s phone, and reported. “Looks like they are all close to the tree line on your side.” Just as I finished two of them darted into the open area carrying what looked like grenades.

  “Grenades!” I shouted into the phone. “Shoot now!”