The Children of the Sun (16 page)

Ashayt found herself weeping again, trembling with rage and loss, furious with this creature and its inability to understand the things it had taken from her.

The thing that once had been called
Harad’ur
, that once had feasted on the blood of tiny children left in its circle of stones as sacrifice, looked back at her, unspeaking. If any of her words touched it in some place where once had dwelt a soul, Ashayt could not see it. Its expression did not change. Its gaze did not falter. It only looked on, mute and uncomprehending, and she hated it all the more for this.

“Go away from me,” she said, and, turning back to the river, she began again to pick her way among the stones.

She did not look back, and after some time, she felt the creature’s presence disappear.

* * *

Ashayt made her second vow while standing on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea, some two hundred miles from the darkened alley in which she had killed her lover. Here was the border. Here was the edge of her homeland, the place she had lived every day of her life since coming screaming into the world, and now she turned her back to the waters and looked at the lands she had crossed to reach this point. After a time she knelt in the damp sand and closed her eyes. She thought of nothing until it seemed that the rushing sound of the waves had filled her entire body with a sort of thrumming energy. At last she raised her head to the black sky above, dotted with the tiny sparks of the stars, and looked out into that eternal night.

“Amun Sa,” she said, and waited. “Amun Sa, are you listening?”

There was no response. Only the lull and crash of the waves, and Ashayt put her hands over her eyes and waited, waited in that damnable, deafening, crashing silence, that forever-void she had created when she had taken his voice from the world and sent him on to the land of the dead. Then she tilted her head up, neck extended, back arched, arms out, and screamed his name to the uncaring heavens. She let forth her cry again, and again, and again, until at last her voice shattered like crystal on stone, and she doubled over in pain, digging her fingers like claws into the wet sand.

“I will never return,” she screamed at the sand in her broken no-voice, embracing the pain that tore her throat, that made the tears pour from her eyes in a torrent, that made her whole body twist in upon itself.

“This is my punishment. This is my penance. My love, my dearest, my Lord, my beautiful Amun Sa, I will never again touch this land. I will never again see the home of our people. I will never again set foot in the place where I knew your love. Amun Sa, I loved you. I loved you and I killed you, and even if I live until every star in the sky has burned out and the Gods have grown old and frail and senile on their thrones, and even if every day from now until then is agony, it can never be enough. It will never, ever be enough.

“Please forgive me for what I’ve done, my love. Please forgive me, for I never will. That is my promise. That is my punishment. I will never return to the land of our love, because there can never be forgiveness.”

Somewhere below, in the Land of the Dead, she hoped that Amun Sa could hear her. Ashayt pressed her forehead to the cold, wet sand and then kissed it with her lips. She could taste the salt of the sea, and with it came a dry and calcified aroma, the scent of the hundred, billion, trillion ocean creatures that had come before her, and those that would go on living long after her sad, sorry life had at last come to its close. She thought of the way he had smiled at her on that first day when they had met, and how she had known instantly and beyond the smallest doubt that she was to be his forever and ever, until the end of all things.

Kneeling there in penitence for a sin from which she could never be absolved, the girl from the desert began to sob.

Chapter 8
A Stunning Success

“We are presently located fifteen minutes away from the target by car, and we have two hours to get set up before the sun sets,” Vanessa Harper told her people, glancing around the room to ensure their attention. “Our trackers have assured me that the target is in her building. Their reports show common behavioral patterns, and while we don’t expect her to deviate much from them tonight, we’ll need to be prepared if she does. We don’t know whether she’s armed, but she’ll be dangerous even hand-to-hand.”

“She alone in there?” Janus asked.

“That’s what the scouts say. Just the girl. For a while she was spending her nights with someone, another vampire, but he’s been out of the picture for a few weeks. He headed back to the city.”

“Weird,” Connors said. “Why’s she out there all alone?”

“Does it matter? We’re going in tonight and when we’re done, whatever it is she’s doing, well, she won’t be doing it anymore.”

There were chuckles at this. Even the Captain smiled. Vanessa continued.

“Park and Brennan will handle exterior surveillance and communications. The Captain, Janus, Connors, and I will be at the front line. Burke and Oliveira will handle the bungalow’s two entrances and deal with anyone who comes along. Lethal force is acceptable for any encounter, but if they’re human, at least try to avoid killing them.

“This woman is quick and likely very strong. She may have mental abilities that we’re not aware of. Rely on your training. Finally, everyone in this room is under strict orders not to attack her unless the Captain explicitly requests it, no matter what happens, even if it seems like the Captain’s in trouble. That’s correct, Ma’am?”

“Yes,” Captain Perrault said, nodding. “I want her on my own.”

There were some raised eyebrows at this, but no one objected. Muttered remarks and bad jokes aside, none of them doubted her abilities in combat. She was faster, stronger, and more ferocious than any of them by a wide margin.

Vanessa resumed her speech. “Your dossiers include a full floor plan and an area map. She’s staying in a posh resort up in the foothills, and there’s a lot of space between each bungalow without much security. Unless there’s shooting, we don’t expect to be noticed.”

“When do we hit her?” Carrie Brennan asked in her typical, quiet tone.

“We move into position one hour after dark, and the forward team will enter via the rear door as soon as Park has everyone located on the scanner. She usually starts her nights slow. The scouts have never seen her leave the building before ten or eleven.”

“Why aren’t we doing this during the day?” Janus asked, and there were murmurs of agreement.

“Her type can handle the sun,” Vanessa replied. “She doesn’t sleep through the day – they’ve seen her moving around. So there’s not much advantage. Plus, the place is big and flat and there’s not much landscaping … we show up in combat outfits and someone there calls the police in about ten seconds. The night helps her, sure, but it helps us more.”

There was a moment of silence, and when it became apparent that no one had further questions, Vanessa wrapped things up.

“We leave in ninety minutes. Go on, get dressed and study your maps. This should be easy … in, out, and the Captain’s doing all the work. But assuming it’ll be easy is the best way to make sure it’s not, so I want everyone prepped. In the event that shit hits the fan, we rendezvous back here by any means possible. If this location is compromised, make your way back to HQ on your own. Any more questions? No? Good, dismissed then.”

Her crew headed off, and Vanessa went to the room she shared with Carrie to change into combat fatigues. It was only once they were both inside, with the door closed, that the other woman spoke up.

“Can I ask you something, Ness?”

“Go for it,” Vanessa said, pulling off her jeans.

“You think the Captain can handle this?”

Vanessa was pulling on what she thought of as her work pants. She brought them up over her hips and buttoned them, then looked over at Carrie. The other woman, short and pale with straight black hair cropped just below her ears, was looking back in expectation.

“You weren’t on the mission in Chicago, or you wouldn’t have to ask that. The Captain is a hell of a fighter, Carrie.”

Vanessa belted her combat fatigues and sat down to pull on her boots. Carrie pulled her shirt up and off, her ribs clearly visible under the skin beneath her small, freckled breasts. All of the Children soldiers were in peak shape, and Carrie was no exception, but she bordered on too thin for her own good.

“No,” Carrie said, pulling on a black turtleneck. “It’s not … I know she can fight, but this bat we’re going after is a big deal, right? Are you sure the Captain won’t decide to go back to playing for her original team?”

That will forever be the question,
Vanessa thought. Out loud she said, “The Captain hates vampires as much as you or I do.”

“But she used to be one of them.”

“Sure, and I used to be a Catholic. Wouldn’t stop me from gunning down a nun if she grew a set of fangs and started drinking blood.”

Carrie grinned, swapped her pair of khaki shorts for combat fatigues, and shook her head.

“Once a vampire, always a vampire. That’s what I think.”

“It’s not what the Emperor thinks.”

“That’s why I’m here. You know I’ll do anything he says. But this girl we’re going after … it’s not like she’s some dipshit Burilgi who just made the change and thinks she’s a superhero.”

“No, she’s not. That’s why there are eight of us going, instead of one or two. Carrie, if the Captain turns … then she turns. If it looks like that’s going to happen, I’ll put a bullet between her eyes myself, but I don’t think it will. She
hates
them. Only person I know who hates them more is you.”

“We all hate them,” Carrie said. “I’m not special.”

“No, but …” Vanessa paused, unsure how to continue.

“Are you trying to figure out how to ask me why I’ve got a glass eye and big scars all over my face, and why my talking’s all fucked up, and why everyone thinks I have a snake tongue?” Carrie asked. She cinched her boot-laces and looked up, a cold smile on her face.

“Figure you’ll tell me if you want me to know,” Vanessa said. “And I didn’t think you’d heard about the tongue thing.”

“It’s amazing what people will say when they think you’re not listening, even when you’re in the same room,” Carrie said. She stuck her tongue out at Vanessa. Like her face, it was deeply scarred, and a chunk of it was missing on one side, but it was not forked.

“OK, so no snake tongue,” Vanessa said.

“No. It’s partially paralyzed. I can’t bring the tip of it up the way I’m supposed to, so that’s why I can’t say T-H sounds. Doctors said I was lucky to keep it at all. Also, I can barely taste food, so that’s why I’m built like a twig.”

“Yeah, so … now I have to ask what happened, and you’re not allowed to get mad at me for it.”

Carrie sighed. “No, I brought it up. But I’ve never told that story to anyone. Not even Charles. Not the whole thing, anyway.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Carrie shook her head, bit her lower lip, and took a breath. “Six vampires, all dressed in gang colors, high on God knows what, broke into our house one night. They rounded my parents and me up in the master bedroom and flipped a coin to see which adult to kill first. It came up tails, so they took turns feeding off my mom, and when they were done they shot her in the head. She actually lived, if you can call what she ended up as ‘alive.’ The brain damage was so bad that she was on life support for almost eight years, just an empty shell. I couldn’t visit, of course, but I kept track. I was twenty-one when they gave up and pulled the plug.”

“Jesus,” Vanessa said.

“Yeah. That would’ve been enough, right? Would’ve been plenty for me to hate them. But then they got the idea that it would be funny if they … if they held a shotgun to the back of my dad’s head and told him to f-fuck me.”

Carrie’s voice was shaking, her breath hitching, and Vanessa put a hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” Carrie said. “I want someone else to know, and I like you. I trust you. It was … they told my father if he did it, they’d let us go. They put the gun against his head and two of them held me down and pulled up my nightgown, and they made him take off his boxers. I was thirteen, so I had a pretty good idea of what to do, and I told him it was OK, that he should do it, and I opened my legs. They all started laughing, telling him that I was a slut and a hoochie and a
puta
, that I wanted it, and he knelt down …”

“Christ, did he actually do it?”

“He couldn’t get it up! He tried for like ten minutes, begging them to let us go, but they weren’t interested. I don’t think … now, I don’t think they’d have let us go even if he’d done it, but back then I believed them, and I was trying to encourage him, and I think that made it worse for him. So finally he’s crying and apologizing … he’s
apologizing
because he can’t make himself fuck me. And I said, ‘It’s OK, Daddy,” and the vampire holding the gun goes, ‘I am so fucking bored of this’ – I remember it exactly, the words, the tone, like he couldn’t believe he had wasted his precious time – and then he pulls both triggers.”

“Fucking vampires,” Vanessa said, her voice hoarse. “Then they cut you up?”