They crept down the hill, sticking to the shadows and ducking behind bushes when the occasional car drove by. Darting across the street into the shadows of a newly built brick building that belonged to the city, they halted to plan their next moves. Pablo looked at Luke, exchanging a loaded and knowing look.
“You feel it?” Pablo asked.
“Yeah,” was Luke’s staccato, whispered reply. “Lots of fucking vampires. I can’t get any sense of numbers. It’s kind of overwhelming. There’s too many to track.”
“Come here. I’ll give you a boost.” Pablo cupped his hands, offering Luke a place to stand. “Tell me when.”
Luke grasped the top of the eight-foot-tall brick wall that surrounded the building and stepped into Pablo’s hand for a boost. Pablo lifted him up slowly.
“OK,” Luke whispered, and Pablo stopped. Luke could only see part of the village from this angle; the brick building was blocking part of the camp. There was no movement. The village was a collection of mini houses, repurposed shipping containers, and other semi-permanent structures. Narrow walkways and alleys separated the buildings and formed a maze of blind turns, hidey-holes, and dead ends—the perfect place for an ambush. “Down.”
Pablo lowered him, and Luke cursed under his breath, pacing a short path. He calmed down and waved Pablo and Delilah in for a huddle.
“It’s a fucking death trap in there. Sharp turns, dead ends, and all kinds of killing fields. Pablo, I’m gonna need you to go wolf. Can you jump up onto the wall and then the roof?”
“No prob.” He pulled out the earpiece and stripped. Delilah took off her coat and removed the near empty backpack she’d been wearing under it. She opened the top zipper, and Pablo shoved his clothes in.
“Can you keep it quiet?” Luke asked.
“Come on! It’s me you’re talking to,” he replied, giving his best Han Solo innocent shrug.
“Have you seen the movies? Cause it never worked out when Han said that,” Delilah said.
Pablo stuck his tongue out at her.
“Pablo, if you can, keep to the roofs. Attack from above. Keep an eye on us, make sure we don’t get ambushed. Delilah, stick close to me. Let’s keep each other safe.”
Delilah nodded. Her eyes were wider than normal and her nod tight. Pablo waved his hand and motioned they should turn around so he could go wolf, preferring a bit of privacy if the time and location allowed. He tapped them on the shoulder with his pointy wolf claws. They turned as he nimbly jumped onto the high brick wall and then carefully crawled onto the roof of the building overlooking the village. He didn’t make a sound.
Delilah and Luke looked at each other with eyebrows raised and impressed expressions on their faces.
“Like a cat,” Luke whispered to Delilah.
“I’m sure a werewolf would just love being compared to a feline.” Delilah snickered.
“Alright, put your game face on.”
“We just walking in?” Delilah looked incredulous.
“They know we’re coming. We know it’s probably a trap. They’ll try to get the jump on us thinking we’re unaware. We stroll in like we’re oblivious and spring their trap.” Luke shrugged. “Keep moving, watch your back, and call out if you need help.”
Delilah loosened her machete in its scabbard and patted her wooden stakes nervously. Together, they strode confidently out of the shadows and walked down the sidewalk and around the corner of the tall, brick wall toward the entrance to the Portsmouth Women’s Village.
Once they could see the village, Luke began assessing all the information he could gather. The gravel, some of which was strewn out onto Columbia Boulevard, was evenly spread out across the entryway to the village. It was too even. When Luke had visited a few days ago with Max, it had shown signs of use and weather and was unevenly packed. Now, everything was smooth. Some pieces were muddy with dirt lines, giving evidence they’d been churned up from the bottom layer that met the packed earth. Something had torn up the gravel, flinging some out into the street, and then gone to a great deal of trouble trying to erase the evidence.
A few doors looked slightly askew, a hinge displaying a bit too much gap, a screw dangling precariously from a screw hole, and one door propped against its door jamb, leaving a gap at the top and a sizable angle at the bottom. Luke spotted a few streaks where the light glinted off a dark, smeared, sticky liquid. The raid on the camp had been fast and violent, and then just as quickly erased in hopes of fooling the less aware.
Luke pulled the gate open. Unlocked. At this time of night, the gate should have been locked. The sound of the metal gate swinging shut rattled the chain-link fence surrounding the village. Summoned by the noise, the leader of the camp exited one of the small shelters and stopped in the shadows separating her from Luke and the light thrown by the streetlights.
“Tresa, right?” Luke asked.
She shifted her head, a look of confusion passing over face as she shook her head slightly. Her hair, which had been covering half of her face, shifted, allowing Luke a glimpse of a swollen eye on the way to a serious bruise. Once the confusion passed, her visible eye settled into a dazed, half-dead stare.
“Yeah. Tresa. That’s me. You’re Luke.” Her body stood motionless, the only movement that of her mouth when she spoke.
Delilah shifted nervously, her feet kicking up a grinding noise as her shoes crunched the loose gravel. Floorboards straining and creaking broke the silence that hung between Tresa and Luke.
Finally, Tresa spoke again, “Sorry about the voice mail. I hope it didn’t cause you any inconvenience. Um, someone got the phone and thought it would be amusing to play a prank.”
“I see…” The sound of a pebble skittering was the only warning Luke got that something was happening behind them as a chain flew through the gate and was quickly wrapped around the gate post. The click of a padlock sealed them in. The sound of Delilah’s machete being drawn sent his hands to his own weapons. He yanked out his gladius and rudis.
“There’s no cause for alarm…” Tresa droned on.
Doors were kicked out of their frames as vampires emerged into the courtyard. A tall, lanky female vampire strode out of the building Tresa had appeared from. She turned to Tresa, stroked her cheek, and said, “You may go hide now, my pet.” Tresa turned and walked woodenly back into the little house.
“So you’re the one who’s been interfering with our plans. It looks like your adventures in slaying end tonight.” She lazily raised her arms and gestured toward Luke and Delilah. She looked around at the vampires, all champing at the bit to chomp on the humans. “I do so enjoy my job.”
She snapped her fingers and pointed aggressively at the humans as if giving commands to an attack hound. Responding to their mistress’s order, the vampires edged toward Luke and Delilah, looking cautious and, in some cases, trepidatious. Luke scanned the crowd, looking for signs of who’d be first. Homing in on a couple of vampires exchanging glances, he exhaled, his muscles relaxing into readiness as their eyes shifted from questioning to decided.
Luke exploded into violence. Where his gladius landed, limbs fell and blood flew. A head, an arm, a back slashed, a gut opened, four vampires down and crawling away or writhing on the ground holding stumps. Delilah darted out from behind Luke and dispatched one of the downed vamps with a precision stake strike before tucking in just behind Luke and to his left. The rest of the vampires, seeing the vanguard so efficiently and brutally handled, halted their progress, eyeing each other and hoping someone else would be ballsy enough to advance on Luke. Their attention was so firmly fixed on Luke, they had no idea a hulking werewolf was about to drop on them like a ton of angry bricks.
“You assholes got anyone here that can actually fight?” Luke taunted them loudly, hoping to distract them from any noises Pablo might make. “What a bunch of clowns. Just a friendly piece of advice. You should probably flee while you have the chance, or you’ll end up one more pile of vampire sludge oozing into the gutter and winding your way to the sewage treatment plant.”
They ignored his bravado and returned the scowls and snarls to their faces. Pablo dropped down into a narrow alley between two of the tiny houses and began tearing into the vampires. As the dismembered head of one vampire struck another vampire in the head, the vamps realized they might be in more trouble than they wanted.
“Oops. Too late…”
Nobody paid attention to Luke’s banter as all hell broke loose. All eyes were on the werewolf ripping bodies to shreds. Pablo had grabbed one vampire by its arms and kicked it in the chest so hard that he was left holding a pair of arms. Doing a passable imitation of Luke’s sword work, Pablo smacked vampires in the heads and bodies with his arm cudgels. Using the distraction, Luke charged into battle, Delilah racing after him.
Not sure what to do, the vampires scattered, running through the tight alleys and darting into various buildings. A few of the more valiant ones engaged Luke or tried to face off with the raging werewolf. Luke closed with his first vampire, getting inside its clawed reach, and delivered a wicked slash to its face. The fanger stumbled backwards until it reached the perfect distance for the incoming stab from the wooden sword in Luke’s other hand. The vampire went rigid, then sloughed off the rudis into a vampire standing behind it. Delilah, using the distraction, darted around Luke and staked that vampire, quickly withdrawing and pulling another stake from her belt.
Pablo, done playing with his arms, had tossed them aside and was busy wrenching the head off another vampire. He chucked it straight at Luke, who ducked to avoid it as it smashed into the vampire sneaking up behind him. Delilah raked a backhanded slash of her machete across the face of the vampire before pivoting in with a stake to its heart. Straightening, Luke nodded his thanks to Delilah.
The last of the braver—or stupider—vampires had finally broken and run, leaving the tiny courtyard deserted. Behind Pablo, a set of shadows in the window of a darkened home jostled, trying to get as far as possible from the door. Luke caught Pablo’s eye, nodded his head toward the tiny house, and pointed with the tip of his sword up to the roof of the house next to it. Pablo jogged over to the second house, leapt onto its roof, reached across the foot-wide gap, and ripped off the corrugated tin roof, chucking it aside and jumping in. The sound of vampires screaming serenaded Luke’s ears as he kicked in the door of the shelter closest to him.
“Delilah, watch my back.” Luke shot inside, leading with his gladius. As he pulled his other arm in, he stabbed to the left with the rudis. His eyes, already used to the low light outside, quickly adjusted to the dark space of the interior. Empty. “Coming out.”
“Thanks for the heads up.” Delilah looked around the empty courtyard nervously.
“You’d feel pretty bad if you stabbed me by accident. On to the next.”
Luke peaked into the gap left by a door hanging off one hinge but couldn’t tell if anyone was inside. There were still too many vamps for him to be able to sense where they specifically were. He kicked the door just next to the hinge and sent it flying. He repeated his previous maneuver, leading with his sword. Unlike last time, someone was there. A body flew out the window. Reacting on pure reflex and nerves, Delilah chopped down with her machete, nearly taking off most of its left arm. The vampire landed on the ground in a heap. As it struggled to get up and away, Delilah finished it.
A vampire, taking a cue from Pablo, had gotten to the rooftops and sneaked onto the building Luke was in. Luke stepped out, and the vampire sprang. Delilah called out as the roof squeaked and cracked under the vampire’s leap. Luke spun and caught the vampire, impaling him with both swords. He rolled to his back, coiling his legs between himself and the falling vampire, and kicked out, launching the vampire over him and onto the ground behind him. The vampire hit the ground hard, the impact shattering it into dust. One of Luke’s blades must have pierced its heart.
Delilah hacked her blade into the doorjamb, sticking it in the wood. She reached down, grasped Luke’s forearm, carefully avoiding his blade, and helped him up. She reached out and yanked her blade free. Luke raised his eyebrows at the casual maneuver with her blade but didn’t comment. He turned and slipped into the shadows of one of the narrow alleys.
Somehow, a vampire had wedged itself into the tiny space between two of the buildings. As Luke passed, it stabbed out with a knife. Luke jumped out of the way as the vampire’s sleeve snagged on a nail, then sliced off the vampire’s forearm. Dropping the gladius, he grabbed the vampire’s stump and pulled its torso toward the gap. The vampire tried to get its other clawed hand out to protect itself, but had picked too small of a space to wedge itself into. Its left-handedness only exacerbated its problems as Luke slowly slid his rudis through its armpit and into its heart.
Luke let go of its stump, then kicked it off his rudis before retrieving his gladius. Delilah had worked her way around Luke and kept an eye on the dark alleys, nooks, and dead ends they still hadn’t cleared. Luke, startled by a shadow moving across the light, looked up to see Pablo once again stalking across the rooftops. Luke caught Delilah’s eye as her gaze drifted to the roofs. Delilah nodded, then moved forward, popping her head around the corner before pulling it back. She gave Luke the “OK” signal, and he darted around the corner. She followed him.
Once they cleared the corner, doors sprung open, and vampires poured out from every hiding place, quickly surrounding Luke and Delilah. Luke didn’t wait for them to make the first move and charged the nearest fanger. He shoved a pipe out of his way as it swung toward his head, delivering a stab to the face, and withdrew his sword into a backward slash that bisected another vamp’s arm. He followed through with a stab from this rudis. Delilah was doing her best to keep her back to Luke’s as she hacked at anything that moved within the range of her machete.
Pablo, having finally made his way to the last mini house, dropped into the back of the alley and worked his way through the vampires surrounding his friends as the vampires between him and Luke were pressed into each other trying to find room to fight. Delilah switched from defense to offense and tried to keep up with the butchery of her companions. As she positioned herself to swing toward her next target, Luke shoved her out of the way, knocking her back into the building. Luke had shouldered her out of the way and was slicing bits off the vampire Delilah had gone after.
Delilah huffed, blocked by a hulking werewolf and Luke. A car horn sounded in the distance, blasting three long honks. The vampires not currently fighting desperately against the marauding slayers ran, jumped, and climbed out of the village. Luke and Pablo put their last vampires down.
Luke, his back still to Delilah, looked around for more vampires to pursue. Delilah thwacked Luke across the back of his thighs with the flat of the machete blade. He yelped, jumped, and turned around. He squatted a bit and squirmed, unable to rub the back of his thighs with his hands full of swords.
“What the hell was that for?!” Luke asked.
Delilah pointed her machete at his chest and shoved him back against the building. She closed the distance, going almost nose to nose with Luke.
“Do. Not. Fuck. With. My. Kills. Ever. Again. Understand?”
“Uh, I, um, I, uh…” Luke stammered.
“I don’t want to hear anything out of your mouth except ‘understood,’” she ground out between clenched teeth. To emphasize the point, she cocked her arm back, showing Luke the flat of her blade.
“Understood.”
Delilah lowered her arm, wiped her blade clean on the shirt of a dead vampire, and shoved it back in its sheath.
Luke turned around and tried to look at the back of his legs. “Is there vamp blood on my pants where you hit me?”
Delilah gave him a quick look-see. “You’ve got blood splatter everywhere. Not sure I added much. Get to staking, sword boy. We need to get out of here.”
She pulled out a fresh stake and worked her way through the bodies that weren’t showing signs of having been given their final dispatch. Luke, sheathing his gladius, did the same with his rudis. Pablo, still in his bipedal wolf form, guarded them in case any vampires decided on an encore performance. The silence of their work was only broken by the squelching sounds of decaying vampires and stakes going into torsos. Luke startled as a rattling sound came from inside his hoodie. He fished out the pouch from under his armor and pulled out his cell phone. He stared at the screen, blood rising in his face, his jaw clenching and unclenching, the muscles of his jaw quivering.
“Luke, what is it?” Delilah asked, looking concerned.
Luke thrust the phone at her. She looked at the message. They took Max. They broke into his home and took Max. Please help! - Pam
“What number is this? It’s not coming up as their camp phone…” Delilah said. “It might be another trap.”
Luke didn’t answer. He was stomping back and forth, his body shaking with rage. He spied a loose head belonging to a body they hadn’t staked yet laying on the ground, reared back with his foot, and kicked it as hard as he could, letting out a scream that was half rage-filled roar and half frustration. It splatted into the metal wall of a shipping container living unit like a rotten melon.
Delilah drove through north Portland toward Hazelnut Grove. Luke, still too angry to talk and, apparently, to drive, had tossed her his keys as they approached the car. Pablo had reassumed his human body and was shimmying into some clothes in the backseat. Luke fumed, staring out the passenger window. She pulled into their usual parking spot and put the car in park. They poured out of the Volvo and jogged up the bike path. Just before they reached the camp, Pablo put his hand on Luke’s shoulder, only to have it shaken off.
“Hey, Luke. I understand. You’re angry. But you can’t walk in there looking like you’re about to demolish the place. Their trusted leader is gone. They’re scared. You need to pull it together. OK? Also, if it’s a trap, you’ll need your calm.”
Luke took several deep, slow breaths and forced his muscles to relax. He nodded curtly at Pablo and put on a calmer face. Even if he didn’t really feel that much calmer, he could fake it. He was used to wearing façades.
Someone must have seen them approach because Pam and Jim were walking briskly toward them. They waited at the edge of the glow cast by the streetlight. The camp, despite the extremely late hour—it was closer to sunrise than midnight—was a hive of activity. Not sensing any vampires, Luke calmed more. Once they got closer, he could see that Pam had been crying. Her eyes were puffy and red. Jim looked solemn and scared.
“What happened?” Luke asked without preamble.
Jim spoke up first. “Someone woke us up. Said there were suspicious strangers at Max’s. By the time we got there, it was too late. He was gone.” He paused, looked down, then made eye contact with Luke again. “You better see this.”
Jim walked toward Max’s place. Pam fell in behind him with the rest of them. As they walked through camp, people gave them frightened and wary glances as they looked up from packing. Jim stopped about ten feet from Max’s door. It swung slightly in the early morning breeze.
“Is this how you found it? Door open?” Delilah asked.
Jim nodded. “Yeah. I peeked inside but made sure nobody disturbed anything.”
Luke walked forward, bending at the waist, and looking over the ground for clues. Finally, he got to Max’s door. Nothing looked disturbed. Everything was still neatly in its place. The only sign of anything out of place was the bed. Luke stepped inside and turned around slowly. That’s when he noticed it. The cell phone he’d given to Max was nailed to the wall next to the door, a spike driven through the top of the screen. Underneath it was a folded piece of paper.
Luke pulled it free of the nail, ripping the corner of the fold. He opened it and read,
The night belongs to us. All who dare go out into it belong to us. Portland is ours, and you’re next. Leave while you can or we’ll come for you next, you two-bit Buffy wannabe.
The bottom was signed with a happy face with dripping fangs added to the line smile. He walked out of Max’s house and handed the note to Jim. Pam read over his shoulder. She gasped, covering her mouth, partially hiding the horrified look on her face. Jim handed it to Pablo, who held it so Delilah could read it as well. Everyone deflated. They all stared at the ground, helpless to help their friend. Luke looked around and watched as tents were disassembled.
“What’s going on here?” Luke asked.
Jim startled out of his daze. “People are running away. It’s not safe here. It’s not safe anywhere…” he said the last to himself.
“Don’t go north. We just came from the Portsmouth Women’s Village. They emptied it,” Delilah supplied.
“Yeah. Southeast, I guess,” Luke said, recalling his map with all his meticulously plotted vampire kills and attacks. “Deep southeast, further south than Johnson Creek. I don’t know if it’ll be any safer after this, but it’s all I got.”
“Wha…what about Max?” Pam finally chimed in.
“I’ll do what I can to find him, him and anyone else I can.” Luke squeezed the bridge of his nose. “I’ll figure something out.”