The gang collapsed on the floor of Luke’s training room, sweating after a vigorous training session. While Luke grabbed waters from the fridge, Gwen put away the practice swords. Luke had been running Gwen and Pablo through drills while Sam worked on advanced techniques with Delilah. Pablo was coming along nicely, although he hadn’t caught up to Gwen yet. A fact the preteen wasn’t letting him forget as she showed off her skills in their training contests. Fortunately, Pablo was good natured and excited to see Gwen prospering both in the embrace of the pack and in her lessons.
And while she gloated a lot, she was also great at helping him learn where he’d made mistakes or how she’d bested him. If she kept up this pace, she might be able to help Delilah with some of her beginner’s classes when they got their martial arts school opened. Gwen’s natural ability to learn weapons impressed Luke, but her ability to have fun and teach was unexpected. He smiled happily at the sound of her laughter and her lessons.
After they finished their bottles of water, he collected the empties and grabbed a few more full bottles. “Gwen. We could use a little privacy to talk. If you don’t mind? You can go play with Alfie and watch some TV or read. That copy of ‘A Blade So Black’ you wanted is sitting upstairs on the coffee table. It arrived this morning.”
“New book? Score!” Gwen disappeared out the door and up the metal spiral staircase.
“Glad to see she’s still loving books,” Sam said, bringing the water bottle to her lips.
“She’s voracious. Seems like I have at least a couple books a week arriving in the mail. If we make a trip to Powell’s, we usually need a wheelbarrow.”
Delilah laughed. “How many of those are yours versus hers?”
“That’s not important,” Luke replied.
Everyone laughed.
“So things are going well?” Sam asked. “With Gwen?”
“Yeah.” Luke nodded. “I think she’s still in the afterglow of having her situation stabilized. Therapy seems to be going well. She’s nervous about school though.”
“Is she going back soon?” Delilah asked.
“Not until fall, but it’s been a long time since she’s been in school. Obviously her reading is good, but she’s woefully behind on math. Oh, shit!” He looked toward Sam. “I was supposed to see if you could find a math tutor in the pack to help Gwen out.”
“Yeah, crap. Maggie mentioned that, but then everything got so intense with the shipping containers, it slipped my mind.” Sam got up and pulled her phone from her back pack. “There, set a reminder.” Sitting down again, she picked up her bottle and took a sip before turning to Luke. “Speaking of Maggie, how are things going?”
“Good. Finding time in my schedule is sometimes challenging, but she and Zel are good about being flexible.”
“Nice! She’s a wonderful woman. I’m glad you two are seeing each other.” She took another pull from the bottle of water.
“Still thinking about calling the women who hit on you at karaoke? Heather?” Delilah asked. “Since you and Maggie aren’t exclusive.”
“I don’t think so…” Luke said, feeling nervous at the mention of Heather.
“Why? You seemed to be attracted to her.” Delilah grinned, her eyes narrowing as she pressed Luke.
“I mean, I am but…” Luke hesitated.
“What is it, buddy? What’s holding you back?” Pablo sat up, fixing his gaze on Luke.
“How old do you think she is?” Luke asked.
Sam tipped her head to the side and rolled her eyes up in thought. “It was hard to tell in the dark, but maybe in her thirties?”
“How old am I?” Luke asked. When no one replied right away, he provided the answer. “One thousand nine hundred and thirty-three years. Give or take a month or two.”
“So?” Delilah asked.
“Don’t you think the age gap is a bit extreme?” Luke asked. “What are we going to talk about? I’d either have to tell her next to nothing about myself or lie to her. That doesn’t seem like a good way to start out dating someone. Sure, I’m attracted to her. She’s pretty and seems very nice, but in what world is it a good idea to go out with her? Besides. I’m just too busy with everything and seeing Maggie. I couldn’t take the limited time I have away from her just to go out with someone I have no real future with.”
“Don’t you want a chance at a primary partner?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know.” Luke shrugged, his face drooping as sadness washed over him. “Sometimes I have to put aside what I may want for my mission. Maggie understands that and knows who I am. She knows what a mess I am and accepts me. I just don’t have it in me to try to date a human who doesn’t know about our world. I can’t subject an innocent person to my baggage. Does that make sense?”
Luke’s friends nodded, though he thought he picked up some sad looks implying they felt sorry for him. It was his life, and he was used to it by now.
“I guess on to business next,” Luke said, ending the discussion about his love life.
Sam, who’d been sprawling, changed to a cross-legged position. “Bealer and Cassius still haven’t announced their plans publicly. So far, the teams roaming the unhoused camps aren’t reporting any sightings.”
Luke nodded. “Max has been reaching out to the camps. They’re gathering any smaller groups or individuals. They’ve moved a bunch of people into the building. It’s pretty full.”
“Yeah, I’ve got our real estate people coordinating with Max, so we’re freeing up more spots.”
“What, it’s been a week since you crashed their meeting?” Delilah asked. “Do you think he’s going to pull back now that you know? I mean, pull back from this plan?”
“I don’t think so.” Luke stopped for a moment to think about it. “Not as publicly as he made the announcement.”
Sam shook her head. “The PCB is very powerful. Telling them something that big and not following up on it would sink Bealer, since a lot of his backing is from the richer sections of this city.”
“Sam’s right. Even if Cassius wanted to, he’s backed himself into a corner with this one. He can’t sacrifice Bealer and his position or his own credibility now that he’s out in the open. He might have delayed its roll out, but that’s only going to play into our hand. But fundamentally, Cassius is arrogant. He’s going to bet on being able to out muscle us. He’s unsure of our resources, but he’s guessing the international might of the vampires can eventually squash me and the local packs he thinks are aiding me.”
Pablo set his bottle aside. “Where does that leave us? Any follow up from the phone number you gave your old pal?”
Luke snorted, shaking his head. “He must have written the number on the bathroom wall or something. I’ve been getting prank calls and texts. Lots of dick pics. And those are the least of the images they’ve sent.”
“Graphic?” Sam asked.
“Yeah. Feeding on humans. A few freshly turned vamps. And I’m guessing some dead bodies.” Luke shivered. Even after all these centuries, he couldn’t get used to some of the brutal things fangers did to their victims. He sighed. He wasn’t sure it was a blessing that he still wasn’t entirely numb to it after all this time. Sometimes he wished he was. “About the only curiosity is someone offering…‘common cause.’”
“I hope you don’t leave that phone out where Gwen can see it,” Delilah said.
“No, it’s kept secure and out of her reach. She’s just getting to the point where she’s sleeping OK and feeling less grim. I’m not going to jeopardize her mental health by being careless and leaving it around to remind her of some of the gruesome shit she’s lived through.”
Understanding dawned on Delila’s face. “Wait. Did you say ‘common cause’? Is someone looking to rat out Cassius?”
“Could be, but I’m not terribly interested in working with vampires. They’ll always betray you. It could even be Cassius trying to set us up.”
“Can I see the messages? I’m curious.”
Luke shrugged and walked into the sitting room between the training center and the stairs up to his office, returning a minute later with the burner phone fielding his vamp prank calls. Luke found the series of unanswered texts and pulled them up on the screen. After handing the phone to Delilah, he returned to the open space in their circle on the floor.
“Don’t look at any of the other messages. You don’t want to see that shit and have it live in your head.”
Delilah nodded, burying her head in the phone.
“Gwen’s been doing wonderfully. You two are really becoming a little family, aren’t you?” Sam asked, picking up the other part of the conversation.
Luke smiled warmly. “I guess so. We’re working on it.”
“Any decisions on how you want me to get the paperwork drawn up?”
Luke ran his hand over his messy hair, pulling back a hand damp from sweat. “I’m thinking uncle might be the easiest. It implies a blood relation but allows for the casualness of our relationship. It doesn’t seem right to have to shift to something like having her calling me ‘dad.’ Godfather could work too, but seems a bit antiquated and not as common in the US.”
“You’ve put some thought into it.” Sam reached over and patted him on the knee.
“Yeah. I want it to be as easy as possible for her since we’ll probably need to use the same story for a while, at least while she’s working her way through school. I’d rather come up with a story that works for both of us for a while.” Luke fidgeted with the empty water bottle.
“Hey, Luke…” Delilah held up the phone. When Luke nodded his head, she gently lofted it toward him. “It couldn’t hurt to reply. If we always keep in mind that it’s a double cross, we can judge whether to go in or not.”
Luke shook his head. “Sure. It might work for a while, but it won’t lead to Cassius, and eventually, they’ll stack enough obstacles in our way that we’ll be overwhelmed.”
Delilah fixed her determined gaze on Luke. “But what if it’s our only opportunity? He’s escaped us every time. The longer we go, the more time he has to get the police organized. Pieter and his people have been using vampire tip-offs to clean out Belgium. It could work for us.”
Luke kept eye contact with Delilah, her growing intensity pouring out between them. “Yeah, but that’s because I removed the vampire leadership from Belgium. There’s no one to guide and control the vampires, so they’re fighting for the scraps. The circumstances are completely different here. Cassius appears to have an iron grip on the vampires in Portland. They operate under his aegis and oversight. I’m sure there are some who are itching under his control, but I’m also confident they’d rather live under Cassius’s thumb than die under mine.”
“How many people could be hurt in the meantime if we don’t act now?” Delilah’s voice rose as her brow furrowed.
“Constantly trying to spring vampire traps isn’t going to keep those same people alive. It’s foolhardy, needlessly so at this point. I’ll think about. If we’re still going nowhere, we’ll address it then.”
“But—”
Luke cut her off. “You’re going to have to trust me when I say working with vampires is a dangerous game. Even knowing that they’re going to betray you at some point, you can’t anticipate when that’ll be because your brain tells you you’re going to get the positive outcome you’re seeking. At first, that might be true. Then when you’re getting comfortable, you get dead. I promise you I won’t take the option all the way off the table, but I want it to be when we’re ready to do it because it’s the right time.”
Delilah exhaled heavily, shaking her head. Taking a deep breath, she opened her mouth, looking like she wanted to continue arguing, then audibly clamped her teeth together. She broke eye contact with Luke and nodded. “Fine.”
“So…” Pablo broke the awkward silence. “What is our next move?”
“I think I want to keep the pressure up on Bealer. As long as he’s running around without a heavy police escort, let’s keep up the tails on him. We can add all his stops into our data sets and see where there are correlations. Also, we can send in a sweeper team to sniff around and see if there’s a nest. If we keep a constant random pressure on them, it’ll be harder for them to focus on what we’re doing. We remain unpredictable and flexible,” Luke said.
“We’re getting kind of thin on werewolf resources,” Sam said. “We can’t afford to pull many people off the protection patrols.”
“Well, it may be time to activate a few of the human pack members for safer tasks like watchers. They can park out of the way and watch our back but not engage in any direct confrontation. Also, it may be time to talk to the Beaverton and East Portland packs. Holly seemed to think they’d be amenable to getting involved.”
Sam nodded. “I’ll have Holly reach out and schedule the meetings.”
“What about tonight? What should we do?” Pablo laid on his back, stretching out.
Luke followed Pablo’s example and relaxed a bit. “I feel like killing some vampires. Lots of vampires. I want to turn up the noise in this city. Let’s put some pressure on Bealer and Cassius. I want both their constituencies beating down their doors for solutions. I want to run their cops ragged at night. I want to fuck some shit up.”
* * *
Over the next several nights, they hit potential nests scattered about the city, keeping their raids as random as they could while trying to hit multiple stops in multiple sections of the city to keep the vampires from discerning any pattern. Occasionally, they’d hit multiple sites simultaneously just to turn the heat higher. The randomness and extreme violence of their incursions had two effects, drawing a lot of cops to their first stop and creating a general panic among the nests around town.
The more paranoid nests posted look outs with poorly hidden guns. If the approach was too dangerous, Luke and team would drive by and find another target. If they thought they could assault the house, they’d bust in and take out the guards, blasting through the house just to run out and tear off down the street. Luke wasn’t concerned with killing every last vampire, if some got away, better to spread the panic. Their raids were fast, violent, and effective.
While they waited for Jamaal and the construction crew to get their temporary hub up and running, Luke set up a table in one corner of his training room with a laptop containing the spreadsheet with all their tracking data on potential nests. On the wall, Luke hung a giant map of Portland like he used to before changing his methods when he joined forces with the North Portland pack. Pins in various colors stuck out all over the map—yellow for potential sites, green for their next targets, red for nests they’d raided, and black for police precincts.
Delilah and Sam were working over the spreadsheet, planning tonight’s assignments while Pablo helped Luke carry in his surprise for everyone.
“Got tonight’s delivery’s planned?” Pablo asked, setting down a plastic tub.
“Deliveries?” Sam asked.
“Ass whoopins, Sam. I’ve got a parcel of ass whoopin’s that need to be delivered with extreme prejudice.” Pablo flexed, shifting between a couple poses.
Sam and Delilah rolled her eyes.
“Nice. You got an eye roll in stereo, Pablo,” Luke said.
Pablo held up his hand, waiting for a high five. Luke set down the crate he’d carried in and obliged him.
“Ugh. You two are the worst.” Delilah shook her head, turning her head back to the laptop’s screen.
“You got our spots for the night?” Luke asked.
Sam stood up. “Yup. We’re going to hit one in deep northeast and Archie’s team is going to hit one in Sellwood. Then we’re going to meet up and hit a big house in Beaverton.”
“Cool. We’ll give them their assignments when we meet them at the pack house. I’ve got some presents for them.”
“Whatcha got?” Sam looked excited.
Luke flipped the handle clip to the unlatched position and tipped the lid open. “Boomsticks.”
The smell of leather and oiled metal wafting from the tub. Luke pulled out a pair of freshly sawed-off twelve gauge shotguns, handing one to Delilah and one to Sam. Pablo reached in and grabbed one of his own.
“All freshly cut down and ready to go.” He opened the lid of the other tub. “I’ve also got some new shot for us.”
He pulled out a box of shotgun shells and opened it up. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled another shell out. The end of it looked looser than the ones in the box. Prying the end open, he dumped the contents out in his hand, holding it out for everyone to see—a larger metal ball, several small metal balls and some tiny wood chips.
“What’s going on there?” Sam asked.
“This is a mixed load shell. The balls are mixed silver and lead. The bigger ball should hit harder and penetrate the main target. The smaller buckshot will spray out more. I’m hoping the larger ball will improve the efficacy and kill more effectively. I’m also hoping it’ll drag some of the wood in with it.”
“Will the diluted silver still work?” Sam asked.
“We’re going to find out. I had them make several batches for us at different silver percentages. I want to see how low we can go while still killing. We’ve got to stretch our silver supply. This is a fifty-fifty mix.” He extended his hand for everyone to see.
Delilah picked up the larger silver-lead ball and turned it around in her fingers before putting it back. “What happens if it doesn’t kill?”
“It’ll hurt like hell, worse than just lead. And if you hit in the heart, it’s still gonna stop them. We’ll just have to clean up later with a stake,” Luke replied.
Pablo reached his left hand out, stopping over Luke’s palm. “Hold your hand steady.”
Pablo took a deep breath and held it as he slowly lowered his pinky and pressed it against the large ball. A faint sizzle sound and a tiny wisp of smoke rose from around the end of Pablo’s pinky. He yanked it back, looking at it, then showed it to everyone. The angry red circle was blistering. Luke waved his hand in the air over the hand holding the new shell load, trying to dissipate the funky burnt skin smell Pablo’s experiment had left.
Sam shook her head. “Go wash your hand and bandage that up. Put some antimicrobial ointment on it too.”
Pablo nodded and headed upstairs.
“He’d stick his hand in fire to test if it was hot…” Sam mumbled.
Delilah snorted, shaking her head with Sam.
“So, I think we’ll start out with the new shells. I have plenty of the old ones as backup, but I want to give these a good test.” Luke pulled out their ammo bandoliers and started loading in the new shot.
Nodding her head toward a third tub on the floor, Delilah asked, “What’s in the third one?”
Grinning, Luke set down the bandolier and pulled the top off, taking out a vest and tossing to Delilah. “Kevlar vests arrived.”
She turned the vest around in her hands, then pointed the back toward Luke. “Luke, why does it say ‘PORTLAND POLICE’ on the back?”
Luke’s grin slipped into feral territory. “It’s just Velcro, but I thought it might keep the neighbors from calling the cops if they think we’re already there, at least until the gunfire goes off. But by then, we’ll be gone.”
Sam crossed her arms, a neutral expression on her face. “This isn’t going to contribute to Portland trusting its law enforcement.”
“Do they trust them now?” Luke asked. “I’ve lived here off and on for almost seventy years. Portland Police Bureau has a brutal record of violence. They don’t get the big press like New York or Los Angeles, but the feds are regularly going after PPB for excessive force and civil rights violations. Besides, should they trust them? With Cassius and Bealer calling the shots for their own warped ends?”
“Who don’t we trust?” Pablo asked, entering the room.
“The police,” Delilah answered.
“Yeah, fuck them. The number of times I’ve been pulled over for a DWB…” He left it hanging, anger tainting his normally jovial face.
“DWB?” Luke asked.
“Driving while brown.” Pablo picked up a bulletproof vest. “So we’re cosplaying cops now?”
“Thought it might cut down on neighbor interference. At least for a while.”
Pablo shrugged. “It’s as good as any of our other plans, probably better than some. Archie and the gang are waiting for us at the pack house.”
They reloaded the tubs, put on their vests—except Luke, who slid on his armor—and headed upstairs. They climbed into Pablo’s truck and drove to Maggie’s house to drop off Gwen.
As soon as the door opened, and the aroma of cookies drifted out, Gwen called “goodbye” over her shoulder and ran in to investigate the scent. Maggie, chuckling, stepped out and hugged Luke.
“You’re always so big and brawny-looking in your armor.” She placed her hands on his metal-encased shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss. “I know you’ve been busy, but let me know when you have some free time. I’d love to see you.”
“I will. I think I’m about due for a night off. I’ll discuss it with the team. We’ve been going hard with this new plan, but I think they can manage without me for a night.” Luke ran his hand along Maggie’s cheek.
“They could all use a night off. They won’t tell you about it because they don’t want to let you down, but you might want to force some nights off.”
Luke smiled at Maggie. “You’re probably right. I’ll make sure everyone gets some downtime. It’ll give me a chance to rotate in some new people and get them trained. I forget sometimes that not everyone is as doggedly single-minded as I get when I’m on the hunt. Thanks. I appreciate it. Tell you what. Can you do the evening after tomorrow night? That’ll give me time to plug someone into my slot and rejigger the schedule for everyone else.”
“I’ll check with Zel and let you know.” She stood on her tiptoes, Luke towering over her in his thick soled combat-style boots, and gave him another kiss. “Good luck tonight.”
“Thanks, Maggie.” He smiled at her, turned around, and headed back to Pablo’s pickup.
“I was beginning to think you’d stay up there all night kissing her,” Pablo said, waggling his eyebrows at Luke.
“Don’t worry,” Sam said. “I let Archie know we’d be another few minutes. Luke had to get his sugar levels refilled.” She may have been teasing him, but her bright smile said she was happy for him.
When he joined Delilah in the back seat, she reached over and patted his knee. “Gwen keeps talking about the cookies Maggie and Zel always make for her, yet you’re the only one getting some sugar. Make with the cookies.”
Luke chuckled. “I’ll have Maggie bag up a few for the road next time.”