Left for Undead (12 page)

“A message!” the lead Vampire shouted. “Know me as
Caleb, the destroyer! I have been sent to deliver word from Elder Vlad.”

It was a standoff; the Fae monarchs and Garth held
wands at the ready. What was left of the Fae archers took aim at the six
Vampires in the clearing. Sasha and Hunter lowered their heads, poised for an
attack lunge. The silence was deafening as they waited for the Vampires to
speak.

“We have no fight with you, wolves,” the female
Vampire said, cautiously watching Sasha and Hunter. “That is why our gargoyles
pulled back. But if you continue to fight with the Fae, we will take that as an
invitation to war.”

“Sixty Unseelie Fae have been slaughtered!” Caleb
shouted between his fangs, and then tossed the head of one of Queen Cerridwen’s
guard gnomes to her feet. “Ten for every Vampire viceroy you subjected to
daylight invasion until I deliver you to Elder Vlad, dead or alive, milady.
Your choice.”

“Never!” Sir Rodney shouted, his fingertips beginning
to dangerously spark. “We have new evidence entered into the hall of records,
and you will owe my queen fifty-four Vampire heads for the archers of the
Seelie clans that were unnecessarily slaughtered tonight!”

Caleb hissed and then spit on the ground. “ ’Tis truth
and a shame that your men were unnecessarily butchered, but that is on your
head, however. Were you not allied with
your queen
and had you allowed
her to meet justice for her offenses, Seelie Fae lives could have been saved.”
Caleb turned to the female Vampire at his side. “What say you, Mara? It seems
that the Fae have joined forces now and one side is just as culpable as the
other, yes? Frankly, I can no longer tell them apart; can you?”

“No, Caleb,” Mara said with an angry glare. “The
Seelie monarch said ‘my queen.’ How cozy, how familial.   how very,
very stupid in a time of war and retribution.”

Garth cut a worried glance toward Sir Rodney and then
the wolves.

“Seems your elderly advisor also finds this folly.
Dismay is written all over his wrinkled face. Shame that you have not heeded
his counsel,” Caleb said with an evil smirk. “No matter. Be ye foolish or wise,
sixty Fae will die per night until Elder Vlad is satisfied with his request for
your queen.
We are done for this evening, as we have met our nightly
toll from your legions.”

“Then tell Elder Vlad this, messenger,” Sir Rodney
said, boldly walking forward. “The Seelie had no hand in violating his
viceroys’ graves, nor did the Unseelie. The wolves had no hand in that affair
whatsoever, as you know, and I will not involve them as anything more than investigators.
We will uncover the truth. We have found evidence of Erinyes at Bonaventure’s
tomb—”

“Games and falsehoods that any good wizard could
produce from a coven’s shelves,” Mara sneered, staring at Queen Cerridwen.
“That is not evidence; it is
a pity
if it is the best you can do.”

“My best is beyond your comprehension,” Queen
Cerridwen said with eerie calm, making the female Vampire back up as ice
crusted the ground beneath her feet. “For the price of sixty innocent Fae,
there will be blood.”

“Make sure you carry our full and allied Fae message
back to your cartel!” Sir Rodney shouted. “Vlad is the fool, a madman foaming
at the fangs, if he is to believe that we will allow the Fae to be subjected to
torment and death without retaliation. There will be no grave deep enough or a
night dark enough to hide him from the Fae onslaught that will leave his
ancient bones bleached by the sun! Give him that message, faithful dog!”

“Oh, I shall,” Caleb said in a dangerous murmur. Then
they were gone.

Sasha and Hunter shifted back into their human forms
and slowly walked to find their clothes. What was there to say? War had just
been declared. The Vampires didn’t want to hear jack about possible secondary
sources. The Fae were so outraged by the loss of lives tonight that they were
beyond reason. Now that the Vampires understood that the Seelie and Unseelie
were going to stand as a united front, that meant all the Fae establishments in
the center of New Orleans—ones that were blindly frequented by human tourists and
locals—would be under attack. And as stubborn as Sir Rodney was once he got a
righteous Scottish bee in his bonnet, there’d be no closing a place down for
the cause of fear, even if it meant human lives were at risk.

Hunter tossed Sasha her jeans and top, finding their
clothing pile first. They said nothing as they dressed and simply listened to
the Fae as they gathered their dead and injured.

“We need to help them get to the Sidhe and then warn
our people,” Hunter said in a flat tone.

Sasha simply nodded without looking at him and then
stooped down to tie her boots.

“Oh.   my.   God.  ”
Clarissa stared at Sasha hang jawed as both Sasha and Hunter filled in the
team.

“That’s why I need to know everything you can tell me
about what a frickin’ Erinys is,” Sasha said, sending her gaze from Bradley to
Winters and then Clarissa. “We need to understand why one would be in a
graveyard opening vamp tombs, how they come out, when they come out—”

“How to kill them,” Winters added in, staring at his
computer screen as he did a database search. “Just sayin’.”

“Right. You took the words right out of my mouth,
Winters.” Sasha looked at Doc and Silver Hawk. “If there’s a way to barrier
these Erinyes things and gargoyles from establishments in the same way we can
keep vamps out with a prayer circle, that would help here as well as at the
Fair Lady tavern in town or at Finnegan’s Wake, and Dugan’s Bed and Breakfast.”

Hunter’s grandfather nodded and his expression
remained calm, set in the leathery wrinkles of his face. Two long silver braids
hung down his chest over his plaid flannel shirt and he breathed in slowly and
exhaled slowly, as though in a semi-meditative state.

“Daughter, I have already gone to the four corners of
this military facility to say chants and send prayers up to the Great Spirit
that the plague of war will pass us by, and it seems that my prayers were
answered. The wolf clans have been absolved of any violence. But I will make
prayers in the daytime for our Fae friends and to protect humans that visit their
sites from harm. This will take time, though. They have many businesses and
shops. How long do we have before the next Vampire onslaught?”

“We may have, at most, twenty-four hours until the
next bloodletting,” Hunter said, locking gazes with his grandfather.

“I can accomplish that with Doc,” Silver Hawk replied,
gaining a nod of agreement from Sasha’s father.

“But Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow should be with you,
Grandfather, to protect you as you are sealing a building in prayer. The
gargoyles are not bound to the darkness and at dusk they attacked. We have seen
what they can do.”

“I have advised Bear Shadow and Crow Shadow not to
travel here yet by human aircraft,” Silver Hawk said quietly. “Especially not
Crow Shadow, who now has a human mate who cannot enter the shadow realms. I am
an old alpha with shaman sight and can easily navigate the shadow paths. You
and Sasha are clan alphas and have the protective amber and silver amulets to
keep you from accidentally entering a demon portal while in the realm between
worlds. It is best that only a few of our people come here to investigate and
that we remain as neutral as possible so that we can learn the truth.”

“We can cover them,” Woods said. “Me and Fisher may
just be so-called familiars, with a little wolf in our DNA, and can’t shift or
whatever, but we are Delta Force trained and can handle a mean M16, an RPG
launcher, and ain’t bad on mortars. So if some gargoyle mofos want some action
while Silver Hawk is praying around buildings with Doc, we can bring it.”

“Much obliged, Lieutenant. It would sure make me feel
better to know you and Fish were out there in a Jeep covering our clan elders,”
Sasha said, dragging her fingers through her hair.

“Roger that. Consider it done,” Fisher said, giving
Sasha a nod.

“Okay, so whatcha got, Winters?” Sasha walked over to
Winters’s computer propelled by nervous energy.

“Wikipedia says—”

“Please,” Bradley muttered, and then stood to go to
the crate of books he’d brought to their temporary lab at NAS. “They are
chthonic entities, Greek demons of the underworld. ‘The Erinyes’ means, quite
literally ‘the angry ones.’ ” He flipped open a page in a thick, dusty tome and
began reading, “ ‘The Furies are the same creatures, but the Roman version.’ ”

Looking up, Bradley held the group captive with his
minilecture. “They are without number, but the three prominent ones that come
to the fore in literature are Tisiphone—who punishes crimes of murder. Her name
translates to ‘Avenging Murder.’ Then there’s Megaera, or ‘Grudging,’ and Alecto,
‘The Unceasing.’ They go after those who have sworn a false oath, if they have
been called. To call them requires a ritual sacrifice, a live victim, that must
be placed in a megaron—a sunken chamber—where they rip the sacrifice to shreds
and eat it alive.”

“Great, Brads.” Sasha blew a damp curl up off her
blood-splattered forehead, wanting a shower in the worst way. “So, we’ve
possibly got an avenging, grudge-holding, unceasing crew of very angry demon
bitches in the mix to contend with—ya gotta love it.”

“If we can figure out which one was called or, better
yet, who called it, maybe we can find out who’s targeting our local Vampire
population.” Doc looked around the group and let his gaze settle on Clarissa.
“Between you, me, and Silver Hawk, we ought to be able to do some sort of
divination.”

“No,” Sasha said before Bradley could open his mouth
to protest. “The Vampires always lie, so they could have sworn a false oath
that pissed anybody off from an average tarot card reader to the Devil himself.
Until we know how far and deep this goes, I don’t want anybody trying to do a
divination on a creature that is some kind of avenging demon, all right.”

“Sheesh,” Winters muttered. “You don’t have to tell us
twice.”

“But that’s probably why the Vampires didn’t want to
hear our findings. They damn well must know what one of these creatures is, and
may simply believe Queen Cerridwen conjured it up from the depths.”

Sasha stared at Hunter’s dirty face, loving him even
more for the way his shrewd mind worked. “Which has to be why they want her
brought to Elder Vlad, preferably alive. Now that I think about it, their
gargoyles didn’t seem to be trying to kill her out in the swamp. They just
circled her and Rodney like birds of prey, swooping and diving, making them hunker
down while they slaughtered their soldiers. They didn’t even go after me, you,
or Garth.”

Hunter nodded. “It is all very curious.”

“Yeah, well, it certainly makes sense why all the
local psychics went into hiding. If the Vampires are looking for human
diviners, those with a soul who can connect with one of these things and figure
out who called it up, I’d take down my shingle for a coupla weeks, too—at least
until all of this blows over.” Bradley glanced at Silver Hawk. “So, can you add
some extraspecial barriers around Clarissa.   just in case?”

“It is done, now that I understand the enemy we face.”
Silver Hawk folded his arms over his chest and closed his eyes.

“What say we go check out the local black-magic
covens?” Sasha said, looking at Hunter. “They may be shady, but they are human
and the Vampires must have gone to them, right?”

Hunter rubbed his jaw and frowned. “Yes, so why would
the normal psychics go into hiding, then?”

“Yeah, true.” Sasha let out a hard breath and slumped
against the wall. “Shit.”

“When you debriefed us, didn’t you say that the locks
were frozen and then shattered, which is how whoever got into the crypts to
open them?” Winters glanced between Sasha and Hunter. “Seems real coincidental
to me.”

“Yeah,” Hunter said, now giving Winters his full
attention along with everyone else in the room.

“Well, the use of cold is in the purview of the
Unseelie,” Winters pressed on, pulling up an Excel spreadsheet that he was
using to track the facts, “and if the Unseelie were involved, wouldn’t they
have the spell-casting know-how to cover their tracks to human divinations?
Like, I’m just sayin’, they’d know that the first thing a pissed-off Vampire
cartel would do would be try to get a black coven or a really strong diviner to
figure out who called up some Erinyes on them, right? And, if you ask me, it
really does look fishy that both the lock was freeze-busted and then evidence
of this avenging demon was out there.   around the same time a human
body got buried in the graveyard..   Ahem, let us not forget Mr.
Romero.”

“You are indeed a boy wonder,” Sasha said, pushing off
the wall she’d been leaning against. “Because let’s face it, the Unseelie could
break into the tomb, but a seriously old and powerful Vampire is no slouch in
the strength department. One might be able to bust open a crypt door, but it’s
quite another thing to be able to physically or even magically drag a
superstrong Vamp out into the sun without Unseelie causalities.”

“It would have to be a team effort of several Unseelie
working in unison to have that much combined power to overthrow the death
struggle of a viceroy,” Hunter said, walking off to stare out the window. “Or
it would take the strength of an Unseelie monarch.” He rubbed the nape of his
neck and then turned back to stare at Sasha. “Which is why all things point
back to Cerridwen, who had both opportunity and motive, unless some rogue
Unseelie Fae simply opened the tomb and then.  ”