The Graves of Saints (20 page)

For the first time since coming in view of the place, Charlotte tore her gaze away.

‘Sergeant? What you said before about the place having no right angles? Why did Bannerman build it like that?’

Omondi gave her Expression B. ‘Superstition.’

‘That’s not too vague. Oh, wait . . . it is.’

Expression A. Stoic and sage. ‘Stories about the island being haunted go back to the seventeenth century. Local natives claimed it was inhabited by spirits. Some old legends suggest that a
building without corners confuses ghosts so much that they get lost and lose any malice they might have had toward the living. Bannerman’s grandson once wrote that he believed the island was
inhabited by goblins who would reclaim the turrets and towers after all the people were gone, or something like that.’

Charlotte listened, staring at him, and then shook her head.

‘Christ’s sake,’ she said.

‘Does that trouble you?’ Omondi said, over the wind and the engine.

She grinned. ‘You mean does it creep me out? No. It’s just so fucking cliché. This whole thing . . . I mean, just look at the place. It looks like the set of some Hollywood
movie that they threw up and then left behind.’

Omondi found a third expression. His lip curled in amusement and he raised an eyebrow. Charlotte was proud of him.

The boat’s pilot throttled down and she turned to see that they were almost at the shore, a rocky fringe of stone and dirt that ringed a tall hill of jutting stone and evergreen woods, all
capped by the skeleton of the castle. It did look like nothing more than a façade, as if she could walk behind it and find that it was only two-dimensional, with two-by-fours propping it up
in the back.

Now that she thought about it, she realized that the place was perfect for Cortez. His whole philosophy was to return vampires to the creatures of dread and darkness that they had been in legend
and popular culture for centuries. Nightwalkers, blood-drinkers, bats flying across the moon. Cortez had embraced all of that in the same way that Hannibal had, once upon a time, but with himself
as the alpha vampire. The way Charlotte had it figured, Cortez wanted to build his coven quietly, under the radar, and all around the world, so that by the time the UN found out about it, there
would be too many of them to destroy easily. It seemed obvious that the one person who stood in the way of that plan was Peter Octavian. Cortez needed to take Octavian out of the equation.
Charlotte assumed that killing Nikki had been phase one of that.

A shudder went through her. Her eyes fluttered closed and shards of memory stabbed at her mind and heart, images of Cortez’s vampire thugs above her, beating her . . . taking her . . .
raping her . . . and then Cortez himself doing so much worse.

The engine cut out and the boat coasted onto the shore, dirt and rocks scraping the hull. Charlotte opened her eyes, turned and saw Sergeant Omondi’s team leaping overboard, dropping into
the shallows, and starting up the shore toward the tree line. There had been no gunshots from the sharpshooters, which meant none of the vampires in the nest had tried to flee. They were either not
yet aware they were under attack, or they were lurking in wait, confident and ready.

Bring it, bitches.

She smiled at Omondi, showing fang, and leaped over the side. She landed in a crouch in an inch of water, then raced forward, so swift that she quickly caught up to the frontmost of the
soldiers. Sergeant Omondi would want to call her back, rein her in, but he had nothing to worry about. Charlotte wanted to know what they were going to find in that castle, but she was not about to
run ahead. At her hip was a gun loaded with Medusa bullets, but she had no way of knowing how many vampires were in the nest and she wasn’t interested in suicide.

If Cortez is there
—

The thought nearly made her stumble. Of course he wasn’t there. If he had been, surely she would have sensed him. But if he was, there were other worries than just being outnumbered. If
she pulled some kind of action hero fantasy and ran in there ahead of the troops, Cortez would be much more likely to get away, and Octavian would never forgive her. She wouldn’t do that. Not
to him.

The commlink in her ear crackled with static. ‘Charlotte!’

‘I’m here, Sarge.’

‘Swing west to the road. Follow the plan.’

Omondi had laid it out for her. They didn’t have the numbers for a thorough search of the island – at least not until sunup. The woods surrounding Bannerman’s Arsenal could be
crawling with vampires. It seemed counterintuitive to approach so blatantly, without making any attempt to conceal themselves, but Sergeant Omondi believed that any vampires in the castle would
already know they were coming, and Charlotte figured that to be true. The woods would be a very bad idea. In close quarters, enough vampires could slaughter the invaders in minutes, no matter how
many pairs of night vision goggles and Medusa bullets they’d been issued. On the road – not much more than an overgrown path that led up to the ruin – they’d be out in the
open and more likely to be seen, but it would be harder for Cortez’s coven to get the drop on them and thin out the attacking forces.

Charlotte ignored his order, working her way up the steep hill, moving through the trees and over the blanket of pine needles on the ground. It was a full thirty seconds before his voice
crackled in her ear again.

‘Charlotte, form on me.’

‘I don’t think so, Sarge,’ she whispered. ‘If they come at you all at once, consider me your ace in the hole.’

‘Be careful,’ Omondi replied.

A reply began to form on her lips, something snarky, but she chose to keep silent. Omondi was a serious sort of man to begin with, but more than that, he was part of Task Force Victor. It ought
to have been his job to kill her, and instead he was expressing concern for her safety. She felt a gratitude toward him that she would never speak aloud. It made her less alone than she’d
been just a moment before.

Charlotte raced uphill through the trees, cognizant of the noise she made but unable to avoid it. Thin branches snapped and pine needles whispered underfoot. She could hear Omondi’s team
making their way up the road and she listened for sounds of an ambush. As she weaved through the woods she caught glimpses of the neglected turrets of Bannerman’s Arsenal and she scanned the
windows and the tops of the walls for any sign of habitation.

When she emerged from the trees at the top of the hill, standing in the shadow of the castle’s ruin where the moonlight could not reach, she shivered. With its broken face and vacant
windows, the castle truly did seem like a ghost. She glanced right and saw nothing that seemed out of place . . . crumbled architecture, overgrown ground, and trees. The view to the left held
nothing more, save for the broken, rutted track that had once served as a road. It led up to what must have been the main entrance to the castle but was now a yawing darkness of fallen stone and
wild weeds.

Sergeant Omondi and his troops came up the road moments after she’d emerged from the woods and began to spread out, quickly setting up a perimeter around the castle. Charlotte drifted
toward the scorched and faded wall in front of her. She could hear Omondi giving orders over his comm and some of the replies as well; they were reporting back about where the best entry points to
the castle had been found. In moments they would go in, ready to destroy every vampire they came across. One of the soldiers, a woman called Bennett, referred to them as leeches. Charlotte had
heard the word many times before, but never with the weight of so much disgust. Task Force Victor weren’t afraid of vampires.

They think
they’re
the bogeymen
, she thought. And in a way it was true; after she’d turned, Cortez had warned her about Task Force Victor the same way mothers had
once warned small children not to stray far or the bogeyman would get them.

But the soldiers were wrong, too. The vampires would be wary of them, but not afraid. Bloodlust eclipsed fear, and once they got into a fight, all the vampires would be thinking about was the
soldiers’ blood. That was how Cortez had trained them.

This is wrong.

The thought came upon her with such certainty that she nearly shapeshifted in order to get over to Omondi faster, but she stopped herself, worried that any reminder of her being a vampire might
inadvertently end with her getting another dose of Medusa, or worse. She tried to remind herself that she was more than a vampire, she was a Shadow. But with so many fingers on so many triggers,
she didn’t want to risk her life on such subtleties.

She ignored the soldiers who had already taken up positions around the house. Sergeant Omondi would be at the main entrance with his handpicked squad. She ran alongside the ruin. Crossing into
the pool of moonlight that came through the space where the castle’s front wall ought to have been, she remembered her commlink and mentally chastised herself.

‘Omondi, you there?’ she said.

‘Go ahead, Charlotte.’

‘Something’s wrong,’ she said. ‘Hold ’em back.’

‘What do you—?’

‘Just hold them for a second!’

Omondi’s squad swiveled around as she ran up, weapons trained on her. They’d all been briefed on her presence, all had a good look, and even in the moonlight it would’ve been
hard for them not to recognize her red hair and pale skin. Still, she halted and put her hands up, waiting several seconds until gun barrels were lowered and a soldier waved her forward. By then
Omondi had come to the front of the group.

‘Report,’ he said, as if she were a soldier and not an undead nineteen-year-old girl.

‘There’s just something off,’ she said, cringing at how lame that sounded.

‘You’ll have to be more—’

‘They’d never wait,’ she said. ‘Not Cortez’s coven, don’t you get that? If there were two or three of them, they’d have turned to bats or mist and
they’d be gone. Your snipers would have taken them out or missed them entirely, but they’d be gone. If there were more than that, five or ten or twenty, they’d have come out the
second they knew we were here. They’re stuck on this island, hiding out, hunting when they can? You guys showing up like this would be like their moms calling them for breakfast.’

‘We’ve killed more than that,’ one of the soldiers said.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Charlotte argued. ‘They’d have come down from the sky or through the trees, hit and run in the dark. With Medusa ammo and me along as backup,
you’d have won, but they’d have come. There’s no way they’re just sitting in there waiting for you.’

Sergeant Omondi frowned. ‘Then there’s no danger in proceeding.’

Charlotte returned his frown, her own personal Expression B. ‘No, no. That’s what I’m saying. I
feel
them, Sarge. They were here. I can feel it under my skin. They
were here and they’re gone, now. Maybe they got a tip we were coming or maybe they cleared out for some other reason, but I don’t think it’s any of that. You hear anything moving
in the woods on your way up here? A few night birds, that’s it. Nothing on the ground. There had to be squirrels or something, right? So where are they?’

Impatience etched deep lines on Omondi’s face.

‘Step aside,’ he said. ‘Abandoned or not, we’re here to find a vampire nest, if it was ever here to begin with.’

As Omondi gestured to his squad and they started around her, she saw the suspicion in the eyes of a couple of soldiers and realized they thought she was purposely stalling, maybe to help Cortez.
Charlotte bristled, wanting to scream at them.

‘This is Omondi,’ he said into his commlink. ‘Move in.’

Charlotte could do nothing but follow as they trooped over the fallen masonry and through the broad space where a door must once have been. One side of the ruin was washed with moonlight and the
other sunken in shadow. Voices muttered in her ear, TFV soldiers following orders, entering the castle through jagged, broken walls and half-blocked doorways.

She kept silent, following Omondi closely, but they hadn’t gotten very far inside the ruin when the breeze died down and she froze, inhaling deeply.

‘Sergeant,’ she said.

Omondi, only a few feet ahead, turned to give her a hard look. ‘What now?’

‘I smell blood,’ Charlotte said, but it was more than just blood. Her nostrils were full of the stink of dead things.

Before he could reply, voices rang out, echoing off the bare, ruined walls around them. Weapons at the ready, Omondi’s squad quickened their pace, taking care not to fall on the
treacherous footing amongst the wreckage of Francis Bannerman’s ambitions. The various squads had their lights out, now. With no immediate sign of attack, they swung flashlights about and
called to one another as they cleared dark corners and the remnants of rooms. Bannerman’s Arsenal reminded Charlotte of photos she had seen online of the Roman Coliseum, nothing but
deteriorating walls open to the sky. But there were blockaded rooms and stairs to nowhere and at least one set of steps leading down into the ground, underneath the castle.

Soldiers were spread out, the lights mounted on their weapons shining as they stood guard over the rubble, as if they had just claimed new territory for Task Force Victor. Omondi’s squad
and one other had gathered on the far side of the vast ruin, where a rounded corner of the castle remained intact, a squat little room much like a turret, though it was nowhere near where a turret
belonged.

‘They were here, all right,’ one of the soldiers said.

Omondi cast a glance at Charlotte but said nothing. She moved up beside him and peered between two soldiers. There were clothes strewn about the room, and some of them seemed to have been folded
and stacked with a certain orderliness. She saw a few books and a great many empty bottles of wine.

Charlotte wrinkled her nose.

There were dead things in there as well. Rabbits, squirrels, birds, and something she thought must be a fox.

‘This is what you smelled,’ Omondi told her.

‘No. It isn’t.’

Charlotte turned and strode across the ruin, making her way around rubble, to the place where those stairs descended into the bowels of the castle. Half a dozen soldiers were already there, two
of them starting down the stairs with their lights guiding the way.