Retribution

WILLIAMS SAID WHEN HE FIRST ARRIVED AT the fire that the safe house was close. It is. The address is less than a mile from the warehouse. Smoke and ash still cast an early twilight to the neighborhood and an eerie orange glow.

There are two of the white vans from the warehouse parked outside the rambling, shabby clapboard house. It's set back from the road by a wide expanse of withered grass and surrounded by a three-foot-tall wooden split-rail fence. Wild roses spill over the length of the fence. Bushes so dense, they have grown into the fence, becoming part of it. Bloodred roses saturate the air with the reek of their perfume.

My knock at the front door is answered by the same woman who pulled me out of the fire. She smiles. "Glad to see you looking so well," she says.

She holds out her hand and I take it. "Anna Strong."

"Oh, I know who you are." She turns and heads into the interior of the house, beckoning me to follow and adding over her shoulder,

"My name's Rose Beechum."

Rose? With the flowers outside, it seems appropriate.

She reads my thought. Yes, it is, isn't it? I've lived in this house all my life. My parents planted those bushes sixty years ago.

When we enter a back room, small talk ceases. Five of the vampires from the warehouse are seated on cushions on the floor. Curtains are drawn across small, high windows, plunging the room further into an eerie red-hued dusk. There is a peculiar stillness to the room, too, that is unnatural and disturbing. The sight and the feel of it sinks my spirits lower.

Rose is watching for my reaction. You feel it, don't you?

I'm not sure if she means the stillness these vamps are throwing off or my reaction to it. I let my gaze sweep the room without replying.

Each young woman is now covered by a blanket. Each is feeding, eyes closed, faces burrowed into the neck of a human host. Each is still wearing that terrible collar. The spike cuts into the jugular, making it difficult to drink. Blood seeps from the wound with each swallow.

None are experiencing the exquisite joy of feeding. This is a slow, painful act of necessity and survival. It sickens me to see it.

There's something else. The young vampires aren't projecting any emotion or response. No thoughts reach out to me, no greetings are returned. Is this what Rose meant?

Maybe it's trauma. Maybe when the collars are removed . . .

Rose looks doubtful. We can't attempt to remove the collars until they are stronger. If we do, they will bleed out the same way a human would with a similar wound.

I watch the interaction between host and vampire. There is no pleasure being offered or taken. For the human as for the vampire, it is an act of sacrifice.

"Who are they?" I ask Rose. "Where did you find hosts willing to do this?"

"There are some in the human community who think vampires hold the key to human survival. The ones who believe in the apocalypse.

They align themselves to us because they think we alone will be saved. At the end of the world, they will turn to us for help as we have turned to them."

These humans want vampires to turn them when doomsday comes? I stare at Rose, to see if she's serious.

She is.

The idea turns my stomach. Still, what is important is what they are doing now to save the girls.

Why can't we help? I ask. Why can't you and I use our saliva to staunch the flow? It works on vampires as well as humans. I know. I've done it.

They are too weak. They need human blood first. To start the healing. She beckons me once again to follow and starts down a hall.

Come. The four strongest are back here. In the bedroom. We have been able to remove their collars. You can speak with them if you wish.

She leads me into a back bedroom. It's set up like a dormitory, three sets of bunk beds along the walls. No windows. They have been covered over with sheets of plywood. No other furniture. It's an odd setup until I remember that Williams called this a safe house. But a safe house for what purpose?

Rose answers without prompting. Sometimes it is necessary for our kind to go underground. You have not been vampire long enough to have experienced such a time. The last was ten years ago when the Revengers renewed their efforts to wipe us out. For now, my house and others like it are used for situations like the one you found at the warehouse. Safe haven for wounded vampires.

My gaze sweeps the room. The four female vamps in here are feeding. The collars have been removed. As I watch, the throat wounds on two are closing. The jagged holes are rough edged, as if the spikes were serrated. There are bruises where the collars bit into the flesh.

The other two are not so far along in the process. Their throats still bear gaping wounds, seeping blood and a clear liquid. There is desperation and pain in the way they grip their hosts. The humans are quiet and bear it well.

Better than me. The urge to turn away is strong.

But suddenly I realize what it has taken some minutes to register. Shaken, I turn to Rose. There are only nine.

She releases a breath. One didn't make it. She was too far gone.

One of the vamps whose wounds are almost closed sees me at the door and gently pushes her host away so that she can stand up. She is the first woman I saw when I entered the basement. Someone has given her a sweat suit, and she tugs at the hem of the top as she approaches. She's very young, can't be more than a few years older than Trish. Her blond hair is tucked behind her ears and she smiles at me shyly.

My mind recoils from the horror that this girl has experienced-first being made vampire at such a young age, then finding herself a victim of torture.

In spite of it all, she's smiling at me. "I'm glad you're here," she says. "I never got a chance to thank you."

She's small-boned and waifish. How long have you been vampire?

She looks at me expectantly as if waiting for a response to her greeting.

I try again. How long have you been vampire?

The expression on her face remains the same-eager, a little puzzled now at my silence. When I probe her thoughts, I realize with a start that she isn't hearing me telepathically.

You see, Rose says. Something's wrong. She is much stronger than the others, much farther along in the healing process. She should be able to understand us.

The girl is frowning now, picking up on negative energy without understanding the cause for it. "What's wrong?" she asks, her voice trembling.

Rose and I look at each other. Neither of us knows how to respond.

The girl is becoming agitated. Her hands fly to her throat, her body begins to shake.

I step to her, put an arm around her, hug her close. She doesn 't deserve more terror. "I'm sorry," I say. "Nothing is wrong. You're safe." I feel her ribs through the fabric of her top. I turn her back to her bunk. "Sit, please."

She lowers herself onto the bed, clings to my hand.

The other three vamps are watching. The same sense of silence pervades this room that I felt in the other. I project my thoughts into their minds. I get flashes of emotion, but nothing else. No recognition, no response to indicate they are aware of my probe.

Rose echoes the question in my own head when she says, They are not like us. They are vampire, but different.

I look from one of the girls to the other. They are all staring at Rose and me, feeling our anxiety, projecting their own.

Anxiety is the only thing they project. I don't understand it. I know I heard them in the warehouse. Heard their screams. It's how I was able to find them.

But now?

The girl beside me on the bunk gives my hand a squeeze. When I look at her, she says, "My name's Rebecca."

I push my concerns away for the moment. "Hi, Rebecca. I'm Anna. Do you think you could answer some questions for me?"

She nods.

"How did this happen to you?"

Rebecca closes her eyes. "I don't know," she whispers.

"Can you tell me how long you were there?"

A voice on my left answers. "She was the newest. She was brought in three days ago."

I turn. The speaker is a woman in her early twenties, dark hair, huge eyes. The marks on her neck are almost gone. "They only brought in a new one when one of the others-"

Her voice breaks off. She pauses, gathers herself, continues. "It happened the same for all of us. We are newly made. We were to meet our sires for the first hunt. We were directed to an abandoned building. When we got there, we were drugged. We woke up in hell."

She speaks in a measured voice, calm, detached. She projects an inner strength, perhaps because of all who made it out, she, in spite of her youth, may be the oldest.

"What happened then?" I ask gently.

"We were given something to wake us up. There was a man, a human. He bound us and strung us up. Then he -" A sharp intake of breath, a hand to her throat. "He forced the collars on. The pain was terrible but we couldn't move, couldn't scream. To try only made it worse. When he was sure it was on properly, he attached the bags. We watched our blood-our life-drain into those little bags a drop at a time."

Rebecca is crying beside me. I put an arm around her shoulders. "I'm sorry." It's directed at all of them but it echoes like an empty sentiment even in my own head. Saying I'm sorry means nothing.

Killing the witch who is responsible will mean something.

Rose raises an eyebrow at me. Find out what you can.

She ushers the human hosts out of the room and leaves me alone with the girls. They all have the same expression on their faces.

Expectant. They're looking at me as if I have answers, when in reality, I have nothing to offer. Not yet.

"I know this will be hard for you, but I need your help. I need you to tell me everything you remember about the people who did this.

Can you do that?"

The brunette is the first to speak. "What do you want to know?"

"The man who collected the blood, did he ever talk to you? Mention what he was doing with it?"

They look at one another, heads shake slowly from side to side.

"Can you describe him?"

"Sadistic."

"Cruel."

"Enjoyed his work."

Rebecca wipes at her eyes. "He was big," she says, finally giving me something I can use.

"How big?"

"Like a sumo wrestler. But he had soft hands. I remember thinking how odd it was. He didn 't talk to us. He just went about his work with a grim smile on his face."

Sumo wrestler-Burke's bodyguard?

"Was there ever a woman with him?"

Rebecca shakes her head. "No. He was always alone."

"What about the vamp who sired you? What was his name?"

"He called himself Loren," Rebecca replies.

"He sired all of you?"

The others nod. Rebecca adds, "But that wasn't his real name."

"It wasn't?"

"No. I overheard him on the phone once. When he answered he said, 'Jason Shelton.' Like he was answering a business phone."

"That's very good, Rebecca. Did you hear anything else?"

She shakes her head.

"What did he look like?"

"He was short. Maybe five feet five. Stubby. Had cold eyes."

"How did he find you?"

She looks down and away. "On the street." She points to the blonde. "He found her in a shelter. And her. He was a talker. When he first brought a girl in, he'd talk to her like she was awake and make fun of how easy it had been to fool her."

Runaways. Easy pickings for a predator. "How many died before I found you?"

"Six."

The bodies that Williams told me about in Beso de la Muerte. He was right. Someone had been killing vampires.

Rebecca rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands as if rubbing away the nightmare. "I thought I was so lucky when Loren-when Jason-found me. He promised me freedom and money and eternal life. I should have listened to my instincts. I knew it was too good to be true. And I was right. First he made me have sex with him, then he bit me. I didn 't feel any different. He said that would change after I fed from a human. He sent me to a vacant building that stunk of piss and shit and was overrun with rats." She shudders. "I hate rats. I think he expected me to eat them."

Rose is back, listening from the doorway. She reaches out. Have they given you anything you can use to track these monsters down?

I can't answer. Rebecca's words have sparked a flash of-what? My brain wrestles with an image. It's blurred, like a picture through an unfocused camera lens. I concentrate harder.

An abandoned building.

Rats.

A man with something in his hand.

"Rebecca, how did Jason drug you?"

She shakes her head. "He shot me with something. It looked like a crossbow but it was smaller."

My heart begins to race.

I saw it.

I saw it all.

In a dream.