Chapter Seventeen: Stranded in the Dark
This was out of hand. Someone was already dead and Truman didn’t know where a single vampire was. He could guesstimate from the hole in the curtain and the position of the werewolf but it would mean placing his head where the bullet had landed. Bad idea.
Shit. Truman needed a moment to think. Everyone was shouting, but he took a moment anyway. Held it. Embraced it. Then he told them what needed to be done: they pushed furniture against the doors and windows, closed curtains, ensured the prisoners were still handcuffed with one arm on either side of a leg of the thick wooden beds in the bedrooms. Unbidden, Paddington dragged Rob’s body against the far wall; it was as close to at rest as they could make him.
Even having secured at every entrance, the vampires might still storm the house; everyone was too spread out to defend one spot. Or throw grenades through any of the windows. They could set the house on fire, though that risked the daughters, which Paddington assured him Adonis wouldn’t do. But how far could Paddington be trusted? Hell, he’d just torn open the front door to shout at the vampires and wave his sword around. Because that would help.
In fact the Archians were proving themselves decreasingly trustworthy, because now he was looking at a wolf inside the house. Will had said they would be more useful as people; why had one of them changed?
Better ask him.
“Will?” Truman called.
The wolf stepped forward and bobbed its head. Was it – he – nodding? Truman took a more careful look, since the wolf wasn’t tearing his throat out. The beast had broad shoulders; did traits like that carry from one form to another?
“Paddington!”
He was there in a moment, sabre in hand. “What?” Paddington spotted the wolf. “Ah, that’s Will.”
“He said they were better as people.”
“Anger can trigger the change. He’ll be all right once he calms down a bit. In the meantime, we should check the others.”
“But we… we can’t leave him like this.”
“Why not?”
Okay. Fair point.
And so the tour became a check of who was still human and who was a wolf. Six of the pack had changed. Skylar looked particularly uncomfortable with the wolf in her room, even though he was the smallest one, Dom.
Minutes ticked past and no attacks came. Every half an hour Truman shifted the guards around the house, more to keep them engaged than because it was necessary. The wolves turned back into people and the guard on each entrance was reduced to one person with everyone else sleeping in the lounge at the centre of the house.
After a few hours, tiredness began to show, more in his men than the wolves because they’d spent last night watching the castle in shifts while the wolves had been sleeping on Archi. McGregor and Skylar had bunked down by the lounge.
“I’ve been thinking,” McGregor said. Truman slowed his stroll. Whenever McGregor started a sentence like that, it was worth listening to. Probably he’d determined a weakness in the vampires’ strategy or made another scientific breakthrough.
“Yeah?” Skylar said, more asleep than interested.
“We might not survive tonight,” he said. “I mean, we scraped through last time, but it was more luck than anything. So… I’m optimistic, and I want to survive – obviously – but it’s that we… might not.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“So there’s no point delaying.” McGregor took a breath. Truman knew what was coming and it wasn’t a scientific breakthrough; he looked away to give them a tiny bit of privacy.
“If we survive this, would you like to get a drink, sometime, with me?” McGregor asked.
There was a pause, but not much of one. “Yeah. I would like that.”
Truman hid a smile. Good on McGregor; he’d finally mustered up the courage to ask her. Truman went to the adjoining kitchen and poured himself another cup of coffee from the pot sitting on the little camp burner. “Anything?” he asked Mitchell, who seemed more alert than Truman felt. Maybe he’d been downing cup after cup of coffee, but Truman couldn’t see a mug.
“No movement I can see,” said the northerner. He had on his night-vision goggles and was even daring to peek through the window. “I’d guess most of them were in position before they came to parlay.”
Truman suspected the same. “Keep an eye open.” He kept moving, mug in hand, and reconsidered calling for back-up. They might get a message to his superiors in London, but by the time reinforcements arrived, there would be nothing outside for them to find. Truman would look as foolish as Mitchell had when he’d told his superiors that four of his soldiers had died on an archaeology expedition.
He’d been bumped back down to private for that.
Hmm… Paddington had forced him to tell that lie. He’d ruined Mitchell’s career with a few words and now Truman was relying on him to get them all safe through this battle…
Truman shook the thought away. He just needed more sleep. That was the problem. He was getting paranoid through lack of sleep. They only had to last until morning: once the sun was up, they were safe. Just bunker down and wait until then.
Truman had heard that battles were long stretches of waiting interspersed with periods of terror, but he’d been fortunate enough to avoid real battle in his military career, except on Archi. Certainly he’d never led one before. As time passed, he became more worried about what would happen when the vampires did attack.
Bitter boiling coffee coursing through him, Truman headed into the front room. Three of the werewolves were huddled in a corner, heads down, whispering prayers for strength and unity. Prayers to Enanti, probably.
Should he ask if he could join in? Would they appreciate his taking an interest? Probably not; they’d think he was another annoying Mainlander come to ruin a fine Archian tradition. Truman left them to it and stopped in on the Paddingtons in one of the bedrooms. Paddington was sitting cross-legged on the floor; Lisa knelt in front of him with a disposable razor in one hand, removing his post-wolf beard by moonlight because using a torch would broadcast their location to the vampires.
“They’re not going to trade us the Book, are they?” Truman asked.
“Yes they will,” Paddington said.
“Hold still.” Lisa took her husband’s jaw and held it in place so he couldn’t look over at Truman.
Truman stepped into Paddington’s field of vision. “Thank you,” Paddington said. “Adonis won’t leave his daughters with us for a full day. We could smuggle them anywhere.”
“Come sunrise, you think they’ll just hand it over?”
“I think they’ll attack first, test our defences, but if Adonis were confident of success he’d have done it already. Once we beat back the initial onslaught, they’ll give us the Book.”
“Then what?” Truman asked.
“Then we see what the other prophecy says.”
The other prophecy. Hell, they were still so in the dark. No Book, only one of the prophecies, no leverage until the threat of sunrise was closer.
Truman circled the house again, checked in with the wolves who were watching doors. A few he tutored in how to use and reload their pistols. Others he chatted with a little, hopefully forging bonds between the Mainlanders and the islanders. They needed one unified force, not two insular ones, to keep themselves safe from the vampires. Especially since the rain had started up again, hard. Excellent cover for a smash-and-grab job. They’d never hear or see them coming through the downpour. They could be out with the prisoners before anyone knew they’d been in.
With every passing hour, Truman thought of new attacks the vampires might make and how he might counter them. No scenario was lossless. Any attack would cost lives both sides, so for the moment Adonis was content waiting for them to make a mistake. Truman wouldn’t give him one.
Not that every mistake was foreseeable or avoidable. Someone might get unlucky walking through a room and be shot like poor Rob. Tiredness might slow their responses and react
ions enough that the vampires could attack and escape unharmed. And who was to say that they’d be safe when the sun came up? Adonis could hire humans to take their place outside and kill anyone who came out of the house.
After the rain drained away, Truman checked the prisoners and, confident that everything was as secure as it could be, he looped back to the lounge. McGregor and Skylar had inched closer together. There was now only a foot between their sleeping bags.
“Anyway, I got bored,” McGregor was saying.
“You were sent here because you were bored?” Skylar asked.
“Not exactly. But when I got bored, I sort of…” McGregor hesitated.
“You did something computery, didn’t you?”
McGregor nodded.
“Something you shouldn’t?”
He nodded again.
“Give me the short, easy-to-understand version.”
“I found out how to break into Buckingham Palace without being caught,” McGregor said.
Skylar burst out laughing. “I bet they didn’t like that.”
“I didn’t do it, obviously. You’d need a half-dozen men and some quite expensive equipment, but I proved it was possible.”
“How’d they catch you? I’d have thought you could cover your digital tracks.”
“Perfectly. But they detected an intrusion and there were only a few people with the requisite technological capacity and brainpower. I was top of the list.”
They were holding hands, arms reaching across the empty space. “So why aren’t you rotting in prison right now?”
“It took them a while to be sure I didn’t have a back-up of all their darkest secrets and covert ops somewhere in case something happened to me. By that time, I’d convinced them it was all a bit of fun and I told them how to upgrade their security so no one else could do what I did.”
“Still,” Skylar said, “I would have thought they’d have kicked you out.”
“If they did that, they couldn’t send me problems they need solved. Instead, I was posted to the Team and made to sign a waiver never to so much as mention it in passing lest I be hung, drawn, and quartered.”
“So I probably shouldn’t repeat this conversation?” Skylar said.
“That would be appreciated.”
“What’d you do, cap?” Skylar craned her head up.
“What’s that?” Truman asked.
“We’re sharing war stories; what we did wrong to get stuck in this unit. McGregor tried to kidnap the royal family’s corgis—”
“Are you trying to get me killed?” McGregor interjected.
“—and I… There was an incident with a pair of boxer shorts, a flamethrower, and a fire extinguisher—”
“Not in that order,” McGregor said.
“Shush. Who’d you offend to get lumped here?”
“This unit is a privilege,” Truman said, but even he could hear the tremor in his voice.
McGregor shook his head. “That’s not what Paddington said.”
This was absurd. Truman turned to the kitchen so Mitchell could back him up, but he was no longer at the window so instead Truman doubled back to the bedroom with the Paddingtons in it, fully ready to yell. He measured his tone when he saw Lisa asleep – her head in Paddington’s lap, his hand on her stomach – but made sure his anger came through at a quiet volume. “What’s this I hear about my Team being the armpit of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces?”
“That’s what Mitchell told me,” Paddington said.
“It’s ridiculous.”
Paddington arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying you didn’t piss someone off?”
Did Paddington really think he was that kind of soldier? “No!”
“I assumed that’s why you’d kept up a fake accent for four years: because you came to the Team to hide.”
“I came because I thought this unit was more than a joke.” Truman forced himself to calm down. As leader, he had to be in control at all times. He hunkered down next to Paddington so he could drop the American accent. “We moved around a lot in America. Never stayed in the same place for more than a few months except once in the deep South. UFO Central. It did its damage, I guess. I joined the army for the structure and stability my home life lacked and when I heard some of the guys talking about this kooky British troop that investigated all that crap, I transferred as soon as I was able. I was proud to have been offered a place among these men and all but gushing when I was chosen to lead them.”
There was a long pause as Paddington compared this expectation with the apparent reality. “Ah,” he said at last.
“But shucks, partner,” Truman said, “if the rest of my men are shit I’ll sure look into it.”
So. On top of having to command his unit for the first time – as well as a group of non-soldiers who were only in this for revenge – in a battle against five-hundred year-old vampires, he now learned that apparently his soldiers were all rejects.
Great.
Truman did another lap of the house. He checked the security. He considered what actions to take should the vampires enter from a dozen different locations; his reaction if they made a grab for the prisoners. He prepared, as much as he could.
Should he try to interrogate the vampires again? That would mean taking the gags out of their mouths, and if he did that they’d probably give away their positions in the house, which would make it easier for the others to break in and take them back.
Best to leave them, then. Wait until sunrise. The wolves were scattered at the doors in groups of two or three, one sleeping while the others kept watch. McGregor and Skylar had fallen asleep, or at least stopped talking. Mitchell was back in the kitchen.
“If this siege lasts much longer,” Mitchell said, “we’re going to need to consider the latrine arrangements. The bucket in the laundry won’t last much longer.”
“There’s no water pressure for the toilet,” Truman said. Wow. Little details could make a big difference, details the action movies didn’t show: tripping over something in the dark; smells creeping through, setting people on edge; not knowing how to drive stick shift. Little problems could become big ones in a blink.
Or several thousand blinks could pass without anything happening at all.
No; he couldn’t let himself think that everyone was safe just because bullets weren’t raining down. Not much he could do until the attack started, though, so Truman put it aside. One problem at a time was enough. One enemy at the door, keeping them in the dark, isolated, spread too thin around the spacious house was more than enough for him. Truman found a spare patch of floor in the lounge and lay down.
Someone shook him awake. It was Skylar, looking bleary-eyed but alert. “Something’s up,” she said.
Truman ran for the kitchen, where McGregor was typing at his laptop with undue force. “What happened?”
“They turned on the streetlights,” McGregor said. “I don’t know why.”
Surely they’d prefer darkness, given their excellent night vision. Why the lights?
Unless this wasn’t an attack, it was a declaration of victory…
“Check the prisoners!” Truman shouted. People scattered. Truman waited. What was probably only seconds seemed to stretch into years before they reported in.
“Themis is fine,” Mitchell called.
“Sir!” That was Skylar, in Ianthe’s room. Truman ran. The room was empty and the window was open, Skylar standing beside it.
“She got out,” Truman said. Damn; now they only had one prisoner to barter.
“No,” Skylar said.
No? What did that mean?
Truman walked to the window, trying to stay to the side in case an Andraste was pointing a rifle at it. There wasn’t a very good angle, though; the house next door was too close. The shooter would have to be on the roof, which meant he’d only have a clear firing line three feet into the bedroom.
Unfortunately, Truman had to get closer than three feet to see what Skylar was looking at outside.
Heart racing, sweaty hands gripping his rifle, Truman inched toward the open window. Through it was a thin strip of concrete that ran between this and the house next door.
And lying on the concrete, her head twisted to the side, was Ianthe.
Someone had killed her and tossed her corpse out the window like she was trash. Someone determined enough to kill her by hand rather than use a gun. Someone who could approach the window without the Andrastes shooting him on sight…
Gods, he’d done it. He’d actually done it.
Paddington had killed Ianthe Andraste.