Havermouth, Present Time“I don’t understand,” Meguitte said quietly to the spider-web bound Bianca as she watched Connery, Verina, and Mercy finish off with clearing out the house. Verina and Mercy both had contented expressions and so she suspected that a couple of the occupants of the house had disappeared, devoured, and then disintegrated by the powder that Leighton’s family used to clean up their messes. “Aislen is your friend. Why would you work against her like this?”“We’re not working against her,” June Barnham protested. Connery had tied her to the fence by her wrists and she was twisted at an awkward angle to talk to Meguitte. “We are working ultimately for her. We all want to win this war.”“You don’t believe that.” Meguitte said to Bianca. “Do you?”Bianca had not stopped weeping, the seep of tears seemingly without end. “You don’t understand. You don’t understand at all.”“Have you conspired against her all along?” Meguitte wondered. There was something about the level o
Rideten, Present TimeIt did not take long before the werewolves sent someone to investigate why Aislen and her mates had invaded one of the houses that were used as secret entrances to the bunker below. The pair of casually dressed soldiers nonchalantly entered the front living room and looked around at them. “Can we help you?”Aislen glanced over her shoulder at them. They were clever these two, she thought, and if she wasn’t able to read their thoughts, she might have thought that she’d interrupted the human owners of the house working on their renovations. But she could read thoughts and knew that they’d been sent from below in response to their appearance on the monitoring equipment situated around the house.“We’re just going to hang here for a couple of hours until it gets dark,” she told them. “We have an errand, and then we’ll be off to meet Victor’s people. So just ignore us, and we’ll all be fine.”As the soldiers withdrew, Cameron pulled a face. “I guess that means we can’
Rideten, Present TimeThe dragons were surprised by Aislen’s request, but quickly saw the sense behind it. The Van Helsings would not be expecting an attack from above. They were human, and thought and planned according to human limitations, so they were expecting an attack from the road or on foot. Or at least, that was what Aislen was hoping as she held tight to Ember, and she took to the sky.“I’m heavy,” Aislen apologized. It was evident that it had taken Ember some effort to get off the ground. Aislen was also wary of the fire dragon’s wings. They put off a lot of heat, causing Aislen to break out in sweat. She wasn’t keen to find out whether they were hot enough to burn her.“I’m just…” Ember was straining. “Muscles have not been used in a long time, and I’m still weak from my injuries and time as a prisoner.”“You’re being kind,” Aislen said with honesty. “Things have gotten curvier than ever with me recently, despite all the exercise. I probably weigh more than Heath.” She cou
Rideten, Present TimeRhett tilted his head back and squinted into the dark sky. He could just make out the outline of Heath and Samuel overhead. A distant glint might or might not be Aislen and Ember. Shit they were high if it was them. It made him queasy just to think of it. When they’d decided who would be flown in and who would enter on foot, it hadn’t even been a question that he was going in on foot.He hoped the dragons didn’t drop his mates.He refocused on the job ahead of him. He was crouched in the trees of the landscaping around the Van Helsings’ headquarters. Although they gave the impression of vigilance in their guards and patrols, it was all show. The soldiers were sloppy, their attention more on their phones than the streets.The Van Helsings had been in Rideten for weeks, and with the community support, they were the dangerous ones, not the ones that needed to fear, so the vigilance had relaxed into routine, and the soldiers were doing the minimal.Good for him, Rhet
Rideten, Present TimeTalen paused in the doorway as a pair of Van Helsing soldiers passed through the hallway beyond. They did not look his way as they passed by the open door. If they had they might have noticed the two bodies that he held by the collars of their uniform and the destruction of the security monitoring room behind him, the third guard on duty lodged still through one of the screens.He was prepared to kill them should even a stray glance fall his way, and yet neither did, deep in a conversation between them about a girl one of them was going to hook up with their shift ended.Talen watched them go, mildly amused, noting that they took the stairs up to the next level. He’d be joining them up there soon enough, but for now their death had been delayed by their inattention to their duty.Once they were gone, he crossed the hallway to the little janitorial closet that he'd located and added the two bodies he held to the pile growing between the shelves of cleaning product
Rideten, Present TimeThe final door at the end of the hall opened onto a balcony overlooking a church. If they followed the balcony around, they would come to the church organ, or the minstrels gallery where the choir would sing, their voices soaring over the congregation.The church was well lit, the pews glowing with soft foot-level lighting, and sconces set against the ancient stone walls to pick up the hand tooling marks left by the stone masons of old. The light was not kind to Heath or herself, Aislen thought wryly. Hybrid night vision didn’t have a lot of color distinction, and things tended to be more different shades of grey, so the splatter over their faces, in Heath’s hair, and across their clothing and arms, had been softened by its grey-tones. In the light, they were walking blood-baths dripping gore onto the well-worn floorboards.Heath’s top was grey, and the blood showed as darker patches that could be sweat. Hers (well, Rhett’s, though she was considering his wardrob
Rideton, Present DayTalen pulled the chair over and straddled it, crossing his arms over the back. “Who was it that you were talking to just before?”The Van Helsing’s skin had blanched, and his eyes appeared sunken from the pain of three broken limbs. Talen was impressed that the man was still conscious and fighting for survival. Dragging himself across the floor to the wall had done his compound fracture no favors, and the air was filled with the scent of blood.“Stop looking at me like that,” the man rasped.Talen realized that he was hungry. It had been a night filled with activity after all, and due to the need for quiet and speed, he had refrained from drinking from those he killed, using brute force and breaking necks, instead. “My apologies,” his grin said the opposite of his words, revealing his elongated teeth. “I haven’t eaten recently.”“Fuck,” the man half whimpered the word, his face screwing up in despair.“Don’t worry,” Talen purred the words. “You’re not exactly to m
Rideton, Present Time Other than the movie-watching werewolves, their floor was pretty clear. Which was a good thing, Rhett decided, because Cameron was still off after vomiting. He needed a good feed to make up for what he’d lost and put the color back into his cheeks. “It’s no different,” Rhett tried to encourage his mate to feel better about the massacre. “To chopping the head off a chicken, or slaughtering a lamb, or even taking down a deer on a run.” “Yeah, it is different,” Cameron wasn’t buying it. “And it’s different to what we did at Havermouth, too, because these people are just… peopling. They’re not soldiering.” “They could be soldiering, though, and that’s the point,” Rhett told him. “That they’re not soldiering at the moment, doesn’t mean that they aren’t still soldiers.” “Plus, the butcher kills the lambs and chickens,” Cameron added under his breath as he pressed his ear against a door. “Lots of people in here,” he said softly. “But… Someone’s crying. A kid. I don’