Hit List (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter 20)

THE TREE WAS an old deadfall. It wasn't as heavy as a fresh tree would have been, but it was heavy enough, and big enough that the four of us had to think about how best to use the muscle we had available.

Tilford keep glancing up as well as out into the trees, while we decided where best to grab hold. "Why do you keep looking up?" Newman asked.

"Sometimes they fly," Tilford said.

Edward and I just nodded.

Newman started glancing up, too. He was a quick study; I hoped he didn't die. And the moment I thought it again, I realized I was being morbid. Crap.

We put Tilford and Newman at the front of the tree, and Edward and I took the back. That part was bigger, a little heavier, but there was less of it to shove across the road. Edward counted, "One, two, three," and they pulled, and we shoved. I'd never really tried to use every bit of the new strength I'd gained through vampire marks and lycanthropy. I tried now. Our end of the tree moved, really moved, and it startled me and Edward. He slipped in the leaves a little. I slipped forward and scraped my arm on a jagged root. It was sharp, and immediate, and I knew it was going to bleed before I felt the first trickle. I cursed under my breath.

"How bad?" Edward asked.

"Keep shoving," I said.

He took that to mean it wasn't bad, and we shoved. The tree trunk was onto the road completely now. I felt the vampires wake like a jolt down my spine. It was still light enough that they couldn't come for us, not yet, but we were minutes away. I dug my feet in, put my shoulder down, and prayed. I prayed that if I had any super-strength, I would use it now. I prayed, "God, if I can move this tree, let me move it now."

I breathed out in a yell, the way you do sometimes in the gym when you're lifting something heavy, something that you're not sure you can move. But it moved. Edward put his shoulder beside mine, and the other men pulled, and the tree moved. I yelled again, and the tree slid across the road as if it were on wheels. It just gave. I fell to my knees, because I hadn't expected it to move like that.

"Anita . . ." Edward started to help me up.

"Car, start it now." I said.

He didn't argue with me. He just did what I said. I liked that. I moved my gun around on its strap so it was in my hands and ready.

Tilford crashed through the trees on the other side of the road, with Newman behind him. I pointed at the car, and my right arm glistened with blood, black in the moonlight. "Car, now!"

"They're coming," Tilford said.

"I know," I said. I got to my feet. The SUV roared to life. The three of us ran for the car. I felt the night fall around us like something warm and thick and velvet. I pushed the thought away that it felt like Her. I was just scared, just freaked. It wasn't Marmee Noir. It was just nerves.

I felt the vampires, felt them freed of the last bit of daytime paralysis. I felt them like distant thunder trembling along my skin, rushing toward us through the trees. It made me run, and I was suddenly ahead of the men. Like moving the tree, I didn't run human-slow.

I was the first one to the door. I opened it and turned, looking past the other two men, searching the dark shapes of the trees for something that wasn't trees.

I yelled, "Hurry, damn it!"

Newman slipped and went down, face first into the gravel. Tilford opened the door on the other side, saying, "I'm in."

I heard him shut the door. I saw Newman scramble on all fours as he got to his feet. There was blood on his face. He'd fallen hard, but I kept an eye behind him, above him. They were coming. Moving like wind that never stirred a leaf, or brushed a twig, like a silent movable storm that was coming just for us.

I yelled, "Newman!"

I moved at the last minute so I was farther away from the open door but he could go straight into the car without fouling my line of sight. He fell into the car.

Edward yelled, "Get in!" I realized he had his window down and the barrel of his gun searching the darkness. Windows would mess up the first few shots. He knew we weren't going to get out of here without a fight; so did I.

I put my back against the open door, searching the woods, trying to hear something above the engine's thrum. I thought, Where are they? And just like that, I could feel them on the other side of the road. They were just inside the tree line, hiding in the shadows and the night.

I breathed, "Shit." I climbed into the truck, shutting the rear door behind me. I had time to say, "Drive!" Edward put it into gear and started backing up at speed. I made Newman move over so I could try for a seatbelt as the SUV slithered across the gravel. I knew right where they were; I felt them standing there watching us drive away. Why were they just watching? My pulse was in my throat. I was suddenly more afraid than I had been a second before.

"They aren't chasing us, Edward. They're just watching from the trees."

"You saw them?" Newman asked.

I ignored him.

"Why are they just watching?" Tilford yelled from the front passenger seat.

"I don't know." I slid the buckle of the seatbelt home just as Edward found the four-way with its stop signs. He turned the big SUV in a circle of flying gravel. He got us facing the right way around and hit the gas. The car jumped forward. He had a moment where I could feel him fighting to keep us on the road, and then we were speeding away from them.

Almost at the edge of even my night vision, two figures stepped out from the trees. They stood and watched us go.

"That's them, isn't it?" Newman asked.

I nodded, watching the two figures as if afraid to look away, for fear of what would happen if I took my eyes off them. It was silly, almost superstitious, but I watched them stand there until even I couldn't see through the thickening dark.

"Why didn't they chase us?" he asked.

"I don't know," I said.

"I don't care why," Tilford said, and he turned around in the front seat so he could see us both, "I'm just glad they didn't."

"They didn't need to chase us. They blocked the road again," Edward said.

We all looked, and this time it looked like they'd pulled up half a dozen trees and formed a wall. "That took time," Tilford said, "and more manpower than we thought they had."

Edward slowed the car. "Tilford, you're driving."

"What?" Tilford asked.

"Anita, cover me. Newman, help her." He was already climbing out from behind the wheel. Tilford cursed under his breath as he fought to slip behind the wheel before Edward was completely out from behind it. The SUV swayed, but we stayed on the road.

Edward was climbing past us and into the far back. "What are you going to do?" I asked.

"Shoot them if they get too close. Shoot anything that moves around that barrier." He was rummaging around in the back in some of the weapons that were too big or too cumbersome to carry easily. It always scared me when Edward started getting into his big stuff. The last time it had been a flamethrower, and he'd damn near burned a house down with us in it. But I did what he asked. I rolled down a window and divided my attention between the barrier on the road and the way we'd just come.

Tilford had stopped the car. "What do you want me to do?"

"Move forward, slowly," Edward said. His upper body was mostly below the back of the seat.

I did my best to ignore him and do my part of the plan. Edward had a plan, and I didn't, so he was in charge until either he ran out of plan, or the plan turned out to be too crazy. Though right that second, I couldn't think of anything crazy enough to make me say no.

Newman said, "Holy Jesus!"

It made me glance back at Edward. For a blink, I thought it was just a bigger gun, and then I forgot to watch the dark or hunt for vampires. I took a few seconds to stare at what he had in his hands.

"Is that . . ." I said.

"Light anti-tank weapon," he said.

"It's a LAW," I said.

"Yes," he said. He rolled back over the seat so he was kneeling between Newman and me. "Open the sunroof," he said.

"If you had this, why didn't you use it on the tree?" I asked.

"It's the last one I have," he said.

"Last one," Newman said. "How many did you have?"

"Three."

I said, "Don't argue, just open the door. Watch the road edge and the sky and be ready to jump back in when Tilford guns it."

"Why not just aim through the windows?"

"Because we can't watch the sky as well from the window."

"But . . ."

"Just do it," Edward said.

Newman glanced at me, then at Edward, and opened his door. I did the same on my side. When I was standing with one foot on the ground and the other on the running board, MP-5 snugged at my shoulder, I said "Edward."

"Anita?"

"Do it."

I heard him slithering up through the sunroof. I just trusted that he was halfway through the sunroof.

Tilford asked, "Do you want me to start easing up toward the roadblock?"

"No," Edward said, "we don't know what they put in the pile; better farther away until it blows."

I kept staring out at the moonlight and trees as I said, "What could they put in the pile to make it dangerous?"

"Ask me later," Edward said. I heard him move again. Enough that it made me glance back to find that he was standing on the headrests on the front seats, as if height were important.

I got a glimpse of Newman staring, too, and pointed at my eyes, and at him, and back out into the night. He went back to looking sort of guilty, as if I hadn't been doing the same damn thing. I went back to glancing up at the star-filled sky, and then down at the trees. Nothing moved but the wind. It made the leaves shudder and gave that sound that always makes me think of Halloween, as if the leaves are skittering across the ground like little mice. Normally I like the sound, but tonight it was distracting, and the leaf movement made me jumpy.

Newman shot into the dark. It made me jump. Newman yelled out, "Sorry."

"Nothing there, Newman," Edward said.

"I said, sorry."

"Get a grip, rookie," I called.

Tilford spoke from the front. "We all shoot at shadows when we're new, Blake."

He was right, but I'd apologize to Newman later if I needed to. I went back to watching my own windy section of trees, and dark sky, and road. They came onto the road behind us, two of them in the same long black cloaks and white masks. It made them anonymous, impossible to tell if they were new Harlequin or ones we'd seen before. The only thing I was almost certain of was that they weren't the ones Edward and I had wounded in the woods. These two moved in a slow, athletic glide. The moment they moved, I knew they were wereanimals and not vampires. Vamps move like people, just more graceful.

I called, "Newman, watch in front. I've got the shifters behind us," I said.

There was a whoosh like the world's biggest bottle rocket overhead. The heat pushed at the back of me, so that I flinched and dropped to one knee, turning as I did it to bring the MP5 up to aim at the Harlequin behind us. The explosion from in front of us made me flinch again and want to turn that way, but I had to trust Newman to handle anything in that direction. I knew there were two Harlequin behind us, and I knew I was fast enough to wound them; I didn't know the same of Newman.

But there was only one thing in the road now. It was on fire, a blazing, burning shape, so bright that it chased back the dark in fire shadows, as it crouched on the road.

I heard Newman say, "Holy Jesus."

It made me glance behind me to the roadblock that wasn't there anymore. The road was clear. Tilford yelled, "Blake, get in!"

I got to my feet, the gun aimed back at the figure in the road. I realized he wasn't crouching; he was trying to shift form. I stood on the running board, one hand on the handle by the roof, the other pointing the gun at the burning mass in the road. Did he think shifting form would help him heal, or put out the fire? Or maybe it was all he could think to do. Then he started to scream. It was a low growl of a scream as if a human throat and some large growling animal were both screaming at once. It was the kind of sound that would haunt your nightmares, or cause them. I'd seen vampires burn "alive," but never a wereanimal. Vampires burn faster and more completely than humans do, but wereanimals are just people that heal almost anything. Anything but fire.

The SUV jumped forward. I grabbed the inside edge of the roof, one foot on the running board, the other on the door edge. My free hand aimed the MP5 out at the trees as they began to rush by. The open door brushed the trees and swung in on me. I used my knee to keep it riding just out from me. Edward was still at the sunroof. I wasn't sure if Newman was in or out. Tilford was driving. I knew as much as I could. The car picked up speed. It bounced hard, and I was almost airborne. I couldn't stay like this. I slipped into the open door and closed it behind me and hit the button for the window to rise. I had a moment to see Newman securely inside the car on his side. Edward slipped out of the sunroof and hit the button to close it. Then he yelled, "Anita!"

I was aiming at the window before I saw anything to shoot at. There was a gleam of silver, but it wasn't at my closing window, it was at Tilford's open one. I fired, and the bullet went past his head and into something dark at the end of that gleam of sword, because that was what it was, a sword, a fucking sword.

The shot was thunderous in the car, too small a space to be shooting without ear protection. I was deaf for a moment, but the figure fell and didn't come back. The sword stayed like an exclamation point in Tilford's shoulder and the seat. He was pinned.

Edward crawled over the seat and took the wheel. "Stay on the gas, Tilford." He took Edward at his word because the car leapt forward as if he'd buried his foot to the floorboard. Edward steered one-handed, the other keeping the gun up and ready, though he had to watch the road, which left Newman and me to watch everything else. Fuck.

There was a noise from the roof, soft. I wasn't even sure why I heard it over the engine and the ringing in my ears. It was almost as if I'd been listening for that soft slither of a sound. "They're on the roof," I said.

Newman didn't react, so I said, "Newman, one of them is on the roof."

He gave me wide, startled eyes. It was hard to tell in the dark, but he looked pale. The pulse in his throat looked like it was trying to jump out of his skin. He was scared, and I didn't blame him. If I'd had time I'd have been scared, too.

I was looking up at the sunroof when someone looked down at me. I had time to register that there was no mask. It was just dark eyes in a pale face: vampire. I was firing up into the face before I had time to really "see" everything. The face slipped away, but I didn't think I'd hit it.

Newman fired up into the roof after I did, but he kept his finger on the trigger so that the car was an echo chamber for the bullets, and the hot casings spilled on me. Most of them hit my jacket, but one found the back of my hand and there was nothing to shoot at now.

I grabbed his hand, yelling because I was too deaf to know how loud to talk to be heard. "Stop! You're wasting ammo!"

He looked at me, eyes wild, showing too much white, like a horse about to bolt. I aimed his gun a little down. I could feel air through the holes he'd punched in the roof. "Ease down. Save your ammo." I was probably still yelling, but he stared at me as if either he couldn't hear me over the ringing in his own ears, or he couldn't understand me through the fear. Sometimes when you're afraid enough, the sound of your own blood in your ears is all you can hear. I remembered those days.

I got him to nod at me, and then I turned to look at the front seat. Edward and Tilford were driving like a team. We went through the smoking remains of the roadblock so fast I had only the barest glimpse of the charred remnants.

I saw the flashing lights in the distance, down the road, before I realized I'd been hearing sirens for a while. My hearing was not happy with all the shooting in the car. I wondered if everyone else was as deafened as I was.

I probably yelled, because I had no way to gauge my own voice, "Who called backup?"

Newman yelled back, "I did."

It wouldn't have occurred to Edward and me to call for help. We'd been lone wolves too damn long. For once I was very glad the rookie had done a rookie thing; he'd followed procedure and called for backup. The Harlequin were invested in remaining secret. We were safe, for now.

We began to slow down. Edward's voice echoed thin and distant in my head, as he yelled, "Tilford, Tilford!"

Shit! I slipped my seatbelt as the car slowed to a stop and reached around the seat to Tilford's shoulder with the sword still sticking out of him. I knew better than to try to take the sword out; that was a job for a doctor, but the bleeding, I could do something about that. I took off the Windbreaker and it was only as I slipped it over my arm that I remembered I was hurt, too. The jacket scraped over the wound, and the pain let me know I was hurt. The fact that I'd started to feel the pain let me know that the adrenaline and endorphins from the emergency were beginning to fade.

Edward brought us safely to a stop. He put the SUV in park. The cars and sirens barreled down on us, the sirens still not as loud as they should have been.

I realized that my blood was all over the jacket, though. I turned to Newman and pantomimed him giving me his jacket. I looked at my hands and they had my blood on them, too. I carried lycanthropy in my blood. I didn't change shape, but that didn't mean that if my blood got in Tilford's bloodstream that he wouldn't. I couldn't risk it if there were other blood-free hands to hold the wound.

I changed places with Newman and managed to direct him how to hold his jacket and hands around the sword. He moved the blade by accident and Tilford passed out.

Newman mumbled/yelled apologies. I waved them away. The first cars were parked, and marshals, uniforms, detectives, emergency personnel of all kinds were spilling out toward us. There'd be an ambulance in there somewhere.