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Gavin nodded. “There’s a way to…” He blew out a breath. “They’ll rise in a tunnel below their hidey-holes.”
“So, Medved helped by blowing the house?”
“I love your martial mind. The things I don’t have to explain to you.” It seemed he wasn’t capable of tempering how often he told this tiny woman how much he cared for her. He should probably work on that, especially when they had an audience.We defused all but one bomb, and it blew a portion of the fence. The house is untouched. While there was a danger of an explosion, however, we enacted a protocol that dropped everyone from their hidey-holes into the caves directly below. My Secundo collected all those still dead to the world, and he moved them to the top of a shaft that leads down into this system. They are in a hidden alcove, and they are also protected by vampires I trust. As the younger vampires rise, they’ll be directed to us.
This was the same cavern she’d been in the night before. While he’d introduced his people to her mother, she’d walked all around the huge room and catalogued who was standing together, who was camped out in the shadows on the edges, and who’d chose to be near Gavin but in the shadows of a stalagmite or column. He didn’t have to be in her head to clearly see what she was doing as she traversed the area.
She was now sitting on one of the many steel benches settled around the room, ten feet away from him. He wanted to hold her, but she was right to move away from him — they needed to talk strategy, and he needed a clear head.
He hadn’t mentioned her calf yet, though he knew that was why she was sitting. Her mother had found the cooler with protein drinks, and had taken one for herself and given one to Lauren. One of his younger vampires had been a medical doctor in his human life seventy years before, and he’d recently been learning about the advancements since he was turned. Once he was safe to be around humans on his own, he intended to move to a city with a decent medical school and go through the program again. When he rose, he could look at her calf.
Meanwhile, Gavin sensed other vampires moving towards them — his people, who’d been in the city, in hidey-holes at the theater. A truck had taken them to a cave entrance in the valley, and they’d swum most of the distance via the underground river. Only a vampire would be able to pull it off — the tunnels moving from the river into the stream that fed this cavern were barely big enough to get an adult body through.
“No need for alarm,” he announced to all who could hear. “Friendlies incoming. They’ll surface in the stream momentarily.”
The vampires had entered the cave system in clothing that protected them from the sun. They’d disrupted the trail cameras they passed by so they didn’t leave images, and had gone into every human’s head they’d encountered, to make them see normal people, rather than people in flesh colored skin suits covered from head to toe, and with clothing over the top. Now, they arrived nude, each vampire toting a waterproof, long but narrow bag behind them, attached by a rope to their ankle.
They exited the stream, dried off, pulled clothes from their bags, and joined the group. One of the acrobats walked to Lauren and handed her a small prescription bottle. “Antibiotics. Take three now, then two a day until they’re gone, starting tomorrow morning, twelve hours apart.”
Lauren looked to Gavin. “I assume this means you’ve cancelled all shows?”
Gavin nodded. “Power is off to that portion of the city. My people blew an important transformer. The utility company will have to bring one in from Little Rock, but we’ve complicated the process so it’ll be ten to twelve hours instead of the four or five it would usually take. Two theaters still have power, but we have a notice up that we’ve been asked to preserve remaining power by not opening.”
“And have we?” Lauren asked.
Gavin nodded. “One of my people went into the necessary human minds to make it so. Enough restaurants are open to feed tourists, and we’ve asked residents to stay home if possible.”
“You’re trying to keep the humans safe, in case this vampire brings the fight to the town?” Kirsten asked.
He met her gaze. “It’s a tourist town. If people are hurt and tourism takes a hit, so does my revenue. If Medved kills me and most of my people, he moves in and takes over my assets, so it isn’t likely he’ll do something to cause those rifts, but Concilio policy is to take measures to keep the humans from finding out there’s a battle for territory, and I’m making a point to show the Concilio leadership I respect their authority.”
“The problem, as I see it,” Lauren said, “is that you don’t know where Medved and his people are, so you’re playing defense. If they don’t know about this place, then nothing is going to happen until someone goes out into the open.”
“Dusty and Link have the in-town shapeshifters at another undisclosed location,” Gavin said. “A few less-powerful vampires have skills I need, so we’ll wait for them to rise and join us, and then we’ll move through the tunnels and come out in the amusement park.” He looked at Kirsten and gave a polite telepathic knock.
Yes?
It’s eleven miles. If we leave three humans, including Lauren, can you wait with them and then flash them to me just before we exit the cave?
I can do that. Yes.
Thank you.
“I’ve made arrangements to get the three humans we’ll need to us once we arrive, so they won’t have to make the eleven-mile trek through the cave system. Shapeshifters and vampires, do whatever you need to do to power up so you can make the journey and then fight. The coterie sheep are in another cavern off to the side,” he motioned towards the tunnel, “and are available to the vampires.” He motioned towards a different tunnel. “We have actual live sheep available for the shapeshifters in animal form — please do not kill more than will be eaten before we leave. We also have a variety of protein drinks and bars for those in human form, as well as sports drinks to take with us for simple carbs just before we fight.”
Gavin looked at Queenie, standing with Lauren, watching over her in wolf form, and then looked around the room. “We have at least two hours, possibly three, before we leave. Queenie is going to nap during that time. Anyone else who needs to sleep, follow her. It’s a dark cave with a sandy floor. She’ll be fine in wolf form, but there are ground blankets available for those in human form. It’s going to be a long night. Decide whether you need food, sleep, or a combination of the two, and then get to it.”
* * * *
Lauren was deciding what she needed when her mother’s hand closed around her arm and the world went to static around them.
She immediately recognized the feel of the room that formed around them — a construct of her mother’s, between realms. A no-where place that was some-where. A few seconds later, Mordecai appeared, a chair materialized in front of her, and he sat so he was closer to eye-level with her. At nearly seven feet tall with huge muscles, Mordecai had always seemed larger-than-life to Lauren.
The ancient god showed Lauren a drawing of an axolotl. It was exactly what she wanted as a tattoo, with a pale pink body and deeper pink gills.
Next, he showed her the same shape, but in browns and greens, and more speckled.
“The less melanistic forms are more sensitive to light. You’ll put it somewhere so it will never be exposed to daylight, but even at that, I recommend the darker version. They don’t have eyelids. They also have really bad vision, and you don’t want him or her to overlay what you are seeing. They have a good sense of smell, and they can feel movement in the water, but they only see the blur of objects around them.”
