Choice of the Cat (Vampire Earth 2)

The Grog had reflexes. Ahn-Kha went down on all fours by the window before Valentine chambered the first round in his PPD.

"From where?" the Grog asked.

"The lakeside, to the north. Let's check the front." Valentine crawled for the front window. He stayed out of the light and examined the new stand of woods and brush between the house and what was left of the suburban road. Yes, there were Grogs out there. One of Ahn-Kha's Gray Ones had his long rifle in the crotch of a tree, sighted on the front of the house.

He returned to the common room. Ahn-Kha threw wet sand from their toilet bucket into the fireplace, killing the light.

"It is the Wrist-Ring clan, perhaps," Ahn-Kha said. "One of their scouts may have seen us in the house or read our tracks. There are six approaching from the lake. They have ropes. Perhaps they mean to take me back and place a harness on my back. If so, they'll find this old horse can still kick."

"Did they see you?"

"No, I believe not, they would have charged-or taken cover."

Valentine checked to make sure he had put his map case away in his pack along with the rest of his possessions.

"The way I see it," he said, "we have three options. Fight it out from in here-"

The Grog shut and opened his eyes. "They will burn the house around us, my David."

"The second option is to try to talk or bargain our way out of here-"

This time Ahn-Kha remembered to shake his head side-to-side. "The Wrist-Ring would make the best deal they could, so we do not waste our bullets fighting them, and then kill us afterwards."

"Or we could just run like hell."

"Often the wisest choice," Ahn-Kha agreed. "But they will shoot us as we run."

"Follow me," Valentine said. He picked up his pack and led the Grog into the garage. Light glimmered down from a hole under the peak of the roof, where the broken edges of a porthole window stood festooned with bracken. The wooden door still stood in its rusted tracks.

"They'll probably rush the house," Valentine said. "They'll come noisy, with grenades if they have them."

"No, my David. Grenades are too valuable to waste on drifters. There is always the chance that we have powerful friends, too. Perhaps you are a wandering Twisted Cross official. They would come in and shoot anyone not in a uniform they recognize. Why do we speak in this place? It has no exit, and it will take time to climb out of that hole."

"We're not climbing out the roof. You're making a new door."

Ahn-Kha gripped the submachine gun, cradling it tight to his body in his massive arms. When Valentine heard an unintelligible cry, and the breaking sounds of the Grogs crashing through doors and windows, he counted silently to five, and then nodded at Ahn-Kha.

The Golden One lowered one of his saddle-size shoulders and charged the closed garage door. He struck it with the force of a demolition charge going off, splintering the ancient wood.

Ahn-Kha spotted the sniper at the crotch-tree, just where Valentine described a moment ago, but now Ahn-Kha had a much better angle than he would have had shooting from the house. He loosed a burst that peppered tree and Grog alike, sending it reeling backwards. Ahn-Kha twisted to his right and fired another burst into the Grog covering the living room from outside as its clan-mates went in. The wounded Grog dropped the rifle it had just begun to aim in their direction.

As planned, his living battering ram turned and tossed the PPD to Valentine, who lay down with the gun pointed at the front door. Ahn-Kha loped out into the front yard, to the tree where the late sniper positioned himself. The fawn-colored Grog picked up where his distant relative left off, sighting on the doorway.

Valentine backed down the driveway, now pointing the gun at the corner leading to the backyard on the garage side. He heard something coming around that side. Half a face appeared, peeking around the corner. "Your eye ain't much good if it doesn't bring your gun along," a gruff old Wolf had told him once, and Valentine taught the Grog the same lesson by aiming a burst at the half-face. He missed, splintering the corner of the garage, and the face withdrew.

He turned to run, and heard Ahn-Kha fire the booming fifty-caliber at something in the doorway.

"Cover me!" Ahn-Kha urged, and Valentine slid to the ground again, this time with the gun pointed at the midpoint of the house. Valentine marveled at how he worked with this remarkable creature-a being that was technically an enemy he might have killed on sight until a few days ago. Ahn-Kha stripped the sniper Grog of a bandolier glinting with shells and reloaded the cumbersome-to a human-weapon. Valentine saw motion in the front window and gave the trigger a twitch. The bullets went in the window; whether they struck anything was a matter of luck. Hips never leaving the ground, he wiggled next to his companion and lay down behind the fallen Grog.

The dead Grog had a homemade "potato masher" grenade jutting out of its bag. He held the grenade up to Ahn-Kha. "Can you throw this over the house?"

"I can throw it over the lake."

Valentine pulled the fuse and handed it handle-first to the long-armed warrior. Ahn-Kha drew back an arm, putting the other forward in the classic javelin-throw pose, and sent the grenade spinning over the deadfall-covered roof.

They ran, Valentine in the lead, cutting away from the house at an angle in order to force their attackers to get them with a crossing shot. They went over a fallen log in the middle of the road, Valentine hurdling it and Ahn-Kha vaulting over it sideways, using his long left arm as a brace.

The grenade Ahn-Kha threw never went off; perhaps the fuse went out, the bomb malfunctioned, or some desperate Grog behind the house extinguished it in time. The pair sprinted southward. Shots thwacked into trees around them as they ran.