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For now I just wanted options, because one human against twenty vampires wasn’t the greatest of odds.
“I don’t suppose you have any grenades in that magic box, do you?” I grinned, because I was mostly kidding, but Eduardo didn’t smile.
He also didn’t hesitate.
Back into the lockbox he went, rummaging with the kind of single-minded focus one usually only sees on a dog that has caught the scent of a squirrel. A moment later he straightened up, triumphant, and handed me a heavy green egg.
“I would not recommend using it in there,” he cautioned gravely. “You may mean to kill them, but you would be dooming yourself as well.”
“Noted.” Into a pouch went the grenade.
I returned to the front of the jeep where I clipped the metal hook from the winch and affixed it to my climbing harness.
“Have you ever done this before?” he asked.
“What, hunted vampires? Sure, lots of times.” I backed towards the edge of the cliff, mentally going through my weapon inventory to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything.
“No. Rappelled down a cliff using only a winch.”
I glanced down at the claw hook latched below my bellybutton, then gave him my most reassuring smile. “No. But how hard can it be?”
Three
Famous last words.
Well, Secret, as it turns out it’s actually very hard to rappel down things.
Lesson learned.
I braced myself against the side of the cliff face, my arms and legs shaking like they were made out of Jell-O. Perhaps I should have assessed the distance before jumping off the ledge. And maybe a smarter woman would have inched their way down.
Nausea swelled in my belly, and I fought the urge to puke on the slick rocks.
If there was a long way up, I was taking it.
“Ms. McQueen. Are you all right?” Eduardo’s voice drifted a hundred feet down to meet me. “I don’t think you were supposed to go that fast.”
“No, I’m cool.” I gave him a thumbs-up and a fake smile, swallowing back the knot in my stomach. Now I just had to hope this was the worst part of the day.
I unhooked myself from the harness and got out of the binding contraption, feeling instantly more relaxed without it riding up my crotch. I double-checked all my weapons and found nothing missing.
Show time.
The easiest access to the waterfall caves was along a narrow ledge that went right under the cascading water.
I couldn’t tell if that would make my frizzy hair more or less of a disaster.
I hugged the wall, wanting the option to grab on to the rocks if things got slippery, and inched my way along until I was within reach of the first cave. The smell hit me immediately, which I didn’t think was possible with my now-reduced human senses.
Under the damp, humid scents of rotting vegetation and jungle air, and the clean wet smell of the waterfall, was the unmistakable reek of death. The pungent rot of blood and decaying bodies.
I gagged, covering my mouth with the back of my hand as a new wave of sickness threatened me. Using the bandana I’d tied around my neck, I covered my mouth and nose just as the stink started to make my eyes water. Whatever I was walking into wasn’t going to be pleasant.
Not that I was expecting it to be a lovely walk in the park, but it might have been nice of these guys to dump their victims elsewhere.
I bypassed the smelly cave entrance—no vampire in their right mind would actually sleep alongside rotting corpses—and skipped the second cave as well.
“And the third one was juuuuuust right,” I said aloud, as if this were a scenario right out of The Three Bears. If you come up with a hilarious one-liner, but you’re alone in the jungle and no one is around to hear it, is it still funny?
