Page 46 of Tin God
“Problem is,” Buck said, “I don’t know that you’re gonna find the place in the dark on your own. Mike hid his people well.”
“Which makes me wonder how he was found?” Carwyn spoke softly. “Zasha?”
Ben cocked his head. “We have to assume they were involved with all these attacks. The timing lines up.” He looked at Buck. “Anyone else been causing problems around here? Anyone with a grudge against Mike?”
“That vampire has been living in that village for over a century. He doesn’t bother anyone. He takes care of his wife’s family. Last I heard, he was bitching about the tuition bills from UDub because one of the kids just got accepted and he was paying for it.”
“Sounds like a family man,” Carwyn said.
“I mean, he was a stoic old bastard, but he took care of his people. He must have been loyal because I don’t think he even drinks human blood. I remember him making some remark once about how delicious moose blood could be.”
“It’s less gamey than you’d think,” Carwyn said.
Buck and Ben both stared at him.
“What?” Carwyn shrugged. “Let’s find out what happened to Mike. He seems like a good man.”
Ben nodded. “So tomorrow at nightfall.” He looked at Buck. “You take a boat out there with Carwyn and I’ll follow. See if I can see anything from the air your men might have missed. You feel comfortable going out there with the two of us? We have no idea how many vampires Zasha might be working with, but it sounds like there was definitely a group, and there’s no way of knowing if they’re still hanging around.”
Honestly, Ben was hoping they were still hanging around. He wanted to break some necks after hearing about Mike and his family home.
“We won’t force you to go,” Carwyn said. “If you give us coordinates, we should be able to find it on our own.”
“Jennie would kick my ass if I sent you out there on your own, and honestly, coordinates won’t help you find Skala.” Buck shrugged. “I’ll go. If the vampires who did all that are still out there? Well, we all have to die sometime.”
The following night,Buck took them out in a fishing boat roughly a third of the size of the one they’d taken to Ketchikan. This time they weren’t chugging over the open ocean but speeding along the narrow passages and inlets of the Pacific coast.
Ben stayed with Carwyn and Buck for the first half of the trip, then took to the air to survey the dark coast, keeping the lights of Buck’s boat in sight so he didn’t get lost.
The expanse was nearly oppressive. There were few lights along the coast, and the dense forest reached right to the edge of the water.
The darkness wasn’t dark for Ben, and the waning moon was over half full; its light cast shadows in the clouds and along the surface of the water as he flew.
He dipped low, spotting the occasional surfacing of marine life and the churn of large schools of fish as they coasted through the current below.
Occasionally, the bellow of what he thought might be moose sounded in the darkness, and he found himself reaching for any sign of life in the vast expanse of wilderness.
South from Ketchikan and then east and north into an interior dense with evergreen forest, void of human habitation and the bustle of civilization. Ben felt as if he was seeing the world as it rose from the ocean thousands of years before, damp, muddy, and ripe with life.
There was nothing but darkness before him, but he followed the tiny light from Buck’s fishing boat north into a fist-shaped inlet with a lone island in the center of the water.
The wind was steady, but the water didn’t churn as it did on the open sea. The forest and the slopes protected this inlet from the worst of the weather, but the sea was still choppy and a silver wake spread from behind the boat like a bird’s tail.
Ben saw the boat approaching the end of the inlet and slowed. He flew closer and noticed the long dock that cut across the choppy water and led to a scattered group of buildings that spread in a fan around a large stone house.
He landed on the dock and immediately spotted the supplies Buck’s men must have been sent to deliver. They sat on pallets at the end of the dock, and a forgotten dolly was tipped to the side. Beans, canned fish, and bags of rice made up the bulk of the delivery. Staples that would last through a cold, wet winter.
Buck nodded at the food supplies. “Guess I might need some help getting those back on the boat.”
Carwyn’s face was grim as he started walking toward the shore. “Let’s look first.” He motioned to Ben. “Want to fly over and scan the area? See if anyone escaped into the woods maybe?”
Ben nodded. “Good thinking.”
He took to the air and flew over the village and the surrounding forest, but if there was a living human, he found no trace of them. He did see a small cove on the other side of a jut of land that looked like it might have held smaller boats, but there was nothing but a shed with a broken door visible from the air.
The big house was made of stone with a slate-tile roof and wooden beams that wrapped around it to create a massive porch on the second floor. It would have been protected from the sun and the rain, and Ben could see various signs of life on the wraparound porch. A barbecue, a child’s play set. Porch swings and a few rusty space heaters stowed in a corner near the stairs.
This house had been alive, and it hadn’t been empty for long.