13 Bullets (Laura Caxton / Vampires #1)

Caxton drove fast but safe, keeping her wheels on the road. The blue flasher on the dashboard played hell with her night vision but she'd trained for this. When they reached Farrel Morton's hunting camp she switched off the flasher and her headlights and rolled up in darkness. No need to make themselves a target. An hour earlier, at dusk, the state troopers stationed at the camp had failed to report in on schedule. They were good men with a lot of years experience between them-they wouldn't just have forgotten to call headquarters. The local cop had called Troop J dispatch and told them he would drop by and see what had happened. He expected the troopers were having radio trouble. He'd reported back twenty minutes later with the news that the troopers were nowhere to be found. He was going to take a look around the surrounding woods and see what he could turn up. He had not called since and his cell phone rang for a while and then went to voicemail.

The sheriff was sending two units. Troop J out of Lancaster was sending every available car. Caxton and Arkeley hadn't waited to hear what came next. They were the closest to the camp and Arkeley seemed to like it that way.

"You're almost smiling," she said as she took the key out of the ignition. "You hoping that somehow this is all a big misunderstanding, that everybody's okay?"

"No," he told her. "I'm hoping this is exactly what it looks like. I'm hoping we get a second vampire tonight. I doubt it, though. They aren't stupid."

Caxton popped the trunk of the unmarked patrol car. She lifted out a riot shotgun and slung it over her shoulder, a Remington 870. The weapon had a shortened barrel and no buttstock so it was easier to carry around, and a black coating so it wouldn't glimmer in the low light. It would be worthless against vampires-the relatively small

#1 buckshot was meant to stop a human being in his tracks, but it wouldn't even penetrate vampiric skin. Against half-deads it might be more effective.

"They weren't supposed to come back here," she said, closing the trunk as quietly as possible. "That was the idea, right? It was too dangerous for the vampires to come back. They would know we were watching the place. They left their coffins behind and they weren't coming back for them. That's what you told me."

"Are you going to blame me," he asked, "when we don't even know what happened yet?"

Caxton pumped the shotgun to put a round in the chamber. With her other hand she unlatched the holster of her pistol. "You want to lead?" she asked..

"With that kind of firepower behind me? Not a chance, you'd cut me in half at the first sign of any danger. You go first and I'll cover you."

The camp was dark, only a single light burning on the side of the building. It made the shadows deeper. She headed around the side of the kitchen wing, staying low, the shotgun pointing straight up. She came to an open window and decided to chance it. She flicked on the flashlight mounted to the top of the shotgun and checked to make sure he had her back. He did, of course. He might not like her very much but he was a skilled cop. Caxton stood up and pointed her light inside the house. Nobody jumped out at her so she took a quick look, panning the light from one side of the room to the other just as she'd been taught.

She saw what she'd expected. Stove. Refrigerator. Piles of bones. A half-dead could have hidden anywhere in the room, in the shadows, out of her beam of light. She didn't see any movement, though. She circled the house with Arkeley following behind her, covering her.

When she got to the back of the house, near the stream, a harsh, cackling laugh wafted through the trees and ran cold down her spine. She froze and ducked down into a firing squat and scanned the darkness all around. Her flashlight rippled across the trees on the far side of the stream and stopped when she found the source of the laugh. A half-dead was hanging in one of the trees. No, not hanging. It was secured to the tree with lengths of baling wire, its arms and legs bound securely. Only its head could move.

She thought immediately of the dead people wired into sitting postures in the camp's living room. "Don't fucking move!" she shrieked.

The creep laughed again. The sound of it irritated her. It got on her skin and made her feel grimy, like he skin was crawling with dirt and cold sweat. "Oh, I promise," it said. Its voice wasn't human at all, nor was it anything like a vampire's voice. It was squeaky and infantile and nasty.

Arkeley came up on her left, his weapon pointed at the sky. He didn't look at her, just at the half-dead.

"I have a message for you, but I'll only tell if you're nice," the half-dead cackled at her. Before she could reply Arkeley shot it in the chest. Its ribs and the stringy flesh holding them together snapped open and shattered. Pieces of bone flew tumbling away from the tree. The half-dead screamed, a sound strangely similar to its laugh.

"Tell me now or I'll shoot off your feet," Arkeley said.

"My master awaits you, and you won't like him so much!" the half-dead crowed.

"He says you're going to die!"

"Tell us the goddamned message," Caxton growled.

The half dead shook and rattled, its bones straining against the wire. As if the simple effort cost it enormously it lifted its arm and pointed one bony figure across the stream, deeper into the forest.

"Where is he?" Arkeley demanded. "Tell me where he is. Tell me."

The half-dead was still shaking though, convulsing, tearing itself to pieces. Without warning its head slumped forward and crashed to the ground. Clearly they wouldn't get any more answers out of it.

Its arm remained pointing toward the shadowy woods.

Caxton stared at the out-stretched finger. "This is a trap," she said.

"Yes," Arkeley told her. Then he splashed across the creek and into the trees. She rushed forward to catch up with him and take the lead again. Her boots hit the stream with a splash and freezing water soaked her socks. On the far side she hurried into the dark, her flashlight bobbing through the trees, its light swinging across the trunks, leaping up among the branches, searching among the roots. When it became clear they weren't going to die instantly she figured she could afford to ask more questions. "What happened to being cautious?" she asked. "To wearing seat belts and not keeping a round in the chamber?"

He turned to look at her in the near dark. "This way we know we're in danger. If we headed back to the car they might spring on us without warning. When you know your enemy is trying to trap you the only course of action is to rush forward. Hopefully you can spring the trap before your enemy is fully prepared."

Half the time she thought he said things like that just so that he could be right and she could be wrong. She tramped after him into the gloom but she didn't like it, not at all.

It didn't take long to find the two state troopers and the local cop. They were wired to the trees just as the half-dead had been. Their bodies were twisted and broken-clearly they had died in terrible pain.

"The vampire," Caxton breathed.

"No." Arkeley grabbed the barrel of her shotgun and pushed it to move the flashlight around until it shone on the face of the dead police man. Blood dripped from his lacerated nose, blood still steaming with residual body heat. "No vampire would leave a body like that. They wouldn't spill out blood on the ground, not if they had time to clean it up."

"Lares spilled blood all over the place. I read your report."

"Lares was desperate and in a hurry. This vampire can afford to take his time. We don't even know his name." He let go of her weapon. "We're wasting our time."

She turned to go.

Arkeley shook his head. "I didn't say we were done here."

Caxton spun around and saw it-a patch of dirt between two trees lifted and cracked open. A skeletal hand shot up and clutched at the air. She turned again and saw a half-dead coming at her between the trees, a butcher knife in either hand. She lifted the shotgun and fired.

The half-dead's body exploded in a fountain of ash and dust, bones splintering into fragments, soft tissues bursting open, tearing, bouncing off the trees. The knives flashed forward and clattered together on the ground.

"Jesus!" she shouted. The thing had just... blown up, its body literally shredded by the tungsten shot.

"They rot pretty quickly. After a week or ten days they can barely hold body and soul together," Arkeley explained. A half-dead appeared at his elbow and he pistol-whipped its jaw off, then fired one of his cross points right through its left eye. If the half-deads were easy to destroy they had one advantage, however-superiority of numbers. There were suddenly dozens of them, cackling in the darkness, running between the tree trunks, their weapons shining in the moonlight or glinting in Caxton's flashlight beam.

Reinforcements were on the way. The sheriff was sending two cars. She wanted to grab her cell phone and find out how soon they would arrive, but that would mean taking one hand off her shotgun. And there was no chance of that. Something sharp dug into the flesh of her ankle just above her boot. She screamed and kicked at a skinless hand that was reaching up from below to grab at her. Finger bones went flying as her boot connected but the half-dead under her feet kept trying to climb up out of the dirt. She had the urge to shoot straight down but she would probably destroy her own foot in the process. Instead she waited for the half-dead's scalp to crown up out of the dark earth and then she kicked it in with her boot. "Watch out," Caxton shouted, "they're coming up from the ground!"

Arkeley scowled at the darkness. "We don't have enough bullets," he said. Caxton pressed her back up against a tree and pumped the shotgun. Where the hell were the reinforcements?