Page 75 of Flesh and Fury
Eoghan and Ari crouched just outside the large hole they’d cut in the barbed wire fence that separated the Navajo reservation from King John’s fenced complex. When they’d arrived at ten o’clock that evening to get into place, they’d only known what they were about to find and how to approach because of Joe and Alo’s tremendous groundwork over the last twenty-four hours.
The barbed wire was new and shiny —it hadn’t been necessary previously. Before his overthrow and the bloodbath that killed his family and the loss of his throne, the only boundary between the two reservations had been the desert itself… That and a hundred yards of unguarded space separating the two neighbors. The king had gasped in dismay the first time he’d caught sight of the fence.
Everyone had vampires in their group. Five of Elora’s vampires had accompanied the king, Eoghan, Ari, and the chief to the eastern boundary of the reservation on foot along with five members of the Tahoe shifter clan. Elora, her vamps, and Joe Two Trees’ shifters took the western boundary. Joe and Alo, the south. Finally, Severin and Invictus were watching from their vantage point up above to make sure no one escaped by way of the blood plant, immediately south of King John’s reservation.
They lay in wait, watching the vampire guards driving the one-mile fence line on a newly-built road just inside thebarbed wire. They behaved just like soldiers on patrol, driving from one end to the next, turning, and then going back again. It took them no more than a minute or two to travel the mile from one corner to the other. Using the night vision goggles Joe and Alo had provided, Eoghan could see that the Jeep they drove carried two vampires but was also probably packed with automatic weapons, just in case the fangs they all had, failed to do the trick on any and all intruders.
“Why aren’t they just running the patrol?” Ari asked.
“They’re most likely stocked with weapons,” the chief pointed out just as Eoghan had speculated. She turned toward the others. “Are you ready?” Eoghan heard it in his earbud as well as the sound of affirmatives from the teams at the other access points, even as he turned to see the serious expression on the chief’s face along with that of the man he loved speaking his own soft yes.
“Yes, Chief,” Eoghan reiterated along with all the others.
“We’ll go on my mark,” she said, looking at her watch as Eoghan checked his own. Elora had actually been the one who’d thought of passing out synchronized watches to all the team leaders and the chief had been very grateful. It read exactly midnight, and in other cities in neighboring states, operations just like this were happening at exactly this moment. He said a silent prayer for all the friends they’d made, brave men and women putting their lives on the line for King John and his clan. He watched Priest look up, watching the vehicle returning to the corner nearest them, waiting until they’d turned and were driving back down the two-mile boundary before she gave them the go order.
“NOW! Go…go…go…”
Everyone was on their feet and running at once. Elora’s vampires sped ahead, as did King John, disappearing in the blink of an eye. The rest of them ran. In the distance, Eoghanwatched the Jeep with Bradshaw’s vamp be overtaken by vampires. Snarling, growling, and then wet sounds happened as the king had his revenge on the guards who’d either willingly or unwillingly had become a part of Tillis Bradshaw’s evil machine. Watching the king and the other vampires work, made him realize that Ari had been right when they’d talked about why they were doing this at night. It would have been easier to invade a vampire space during daylight hours and catch them off guard while they slept. But Ari said as an Army Ranger, one of the hardest things he’d had to learn was to let the native Afghans who were with them on missions take their revenge on the enemy when they rooted one out. It didn’t happen every time but it did, quite often. The Afghans had watched the Taliban destroy their country, subjugate their women, and roll their lives back to the Stone Age.
They deserved to execute retribution on their subjugators when the Americans were in agreement. In these cases, the Americans were there only as backup. It was hard but it was a lesson well learned and after he’d explained it, Eoghan realized Ari was right. King John had earned the right to take out Tillis Bradshaw with his own two hands and fangs. They’d destroyed his life, not only taking his throne, but his beloved Rudy and their progeny. And he’d waited a long time to avenge their murder.
Eoghan and Ari kept going, running past the carnage taking place at full speed with the shifters by their side. As far as the shifters were concerned, Eoghan had been surprised and relieved to find a large, black wolf, three huge grizzly bears, and a sleek cat he assumed was a cheetah, run apace with the rest of them after they’d shed their clothing out in the desert and shifted.
Eoghan guessed that the cheetah could have left them all in the dust but chose not to show off. She’d introduced herselfto him the moment they’d met at the truck stop’s staging area the night before…and he’d been utterly charmed. Her name was Clarice and like her namesake fromSilence of the Lambs, she was small but determined. And Eoghan guessed…just a little bit brave, having volunteered for the cause as soon as Two Trees asked his clan.
The grizzlies were big, hulking Native American men who’d introduced themselves with one-word hellos and several grunts which were probably not meant to make him and Ari feel at ease. That was fine with Eoghan. He’dneededto be on edge with all the waiting and infinite patience that had been required in this case.
The wolf was an entirely different sort altogether. He’d walked over to them and shaken their hands, smiling shyly at Ari who stood almost a foot taller than he was. The man was a petite version of a librarian sort with thick, round glasses and a bit of a limp when he walked in human form. As a wolf, he was smaller than any wolf Eoghan had ever seen but what a magnificent creature he was, sleek and black and stunning as he ran, limp completely absent.
As the sounds of the vampire revenge faded, they made it to the wall of the first building they’d come into contact with. During their infinite preparations, King John had sketched a crude floorplan of his reservation and the buildings on it. There weren’t a lot. Other than two residential streets with homes and one large apartment building, the palace itself took up most of the real estate in the town.
There was a post office, movie theater, and a bowling alley. The single store in town that sold food, had been filled with refrigerators stocked with synthetic blood. Their small health center served as a place where live donors filled the eight beds when it was fully operational and underway. There were two bars, one was nicely appointed with a large dancefloor apparently and the other one catered to vampires who wanted to get their drink on and pick up a partner for the evening. It was aptly named Quick and Dirty. Eoghan remembered thinking how weird it was to see the map of an entire town without one single restaurant…not one.
It had already been decided that King John, Eoghan, Ari, Deputy Chief Priest, Elora’s five vampires, and the shifters running alongside them, would head directly for the palace. The king knew a secret tunnel which would take them directly into the throne room where they all agreed Bradshaw would probably head once he realized what was going on, if he wasn’t in one of the other buildings. The rest of Elora’s shifters along with the balance of Two Trees’ shifters would clear all the other buildings along with Joe and Alo and the vampire leader herself. Eoghan really hoped they’d have enough manpower to stop Tillis Bradshaw and put an end to everything.
The wall they ran up against was the movie theater, silent and empty at this time of night. They crept along toward Main Street and waited until Priest motioned for them to go. She ducked around the corner and they all followed.
Almost instantly the vampires and shifters in their party were fighting, snarling and growling as they were set upon by vampires who either happened to be in their path or were lying in wait.
At this moment, holding his gun and firing lethal vampire rounds at targets who moved faster than he could track with his naked eye, Eoghan could think of only one thing.
They’d been betrayed.
ARI
He couldn’t believe his eyes. One moment everything had been quiet and the next, the screams of the fight and the dying were all around him. They’d stocked up on lethal vampire rounds, filling their tac pants with as many clips as they could hold but it felt like the vamps were coming out of every building all along the street, heading right for them. Memories of being back in Afghanistan were forefront in his mind as the attack went on. He kept Eoghan in his peripheral vision for the first few seconds of the ambush and then grabbed him, pulling him behind an open door.
“You wanna fight?”
“What? Of course I want to fight,” Eoghan shouted over the sound of gunfire.
“Then you stay by my side. Hear me?”
“Yes, but—” Whatever Eoghan was going to say was cut off when a vampire rushed into the room and grabbed him, aiming a mouthful of fangs for his throat.
The vampire round Ari emptied into his skull, dropped the vamp to the ground in a gory display and then they were both out of the doorway and in the street, back into the mix of it all. Several shifters had joined in the melee, not the ones they’d brought with them, meaning the ones fighting vampires out in the street were from Two Trees’ pack. He’d never seen so many predatory beasts fighting vampires in his life, then again, he hadn’t known about paranormals before taking this crazy job at the I.S.R.
He turned and shot a vampire as he rushed him. The vamp instantly hit the ground and Ari barely had time to leap over him to shoot another one sneaking up on Eoghan’s back, before another came at him. There were so many. He hadn’t expected this, not at all. Whatever had happened here, whoever had shared their plans to attack the seat of Bradshaw’s power, with the false king himself, was a mystery to Ari.