Valentine's Resolve (Vampire Earth 6)

"Mutfurker", Valentine croaked.

"I suppose you know you've made a lot of powerful enemies. Someone gets to be too big a thorn, it gets pulled out and snapped". A throat clearing followed by a soft cough. This voice was the same as the one in the car.

"Death teams, man", the husky voice said. "You got death teams on your ass. Just like the one that got your folks. Just like the one that has you now".

"He's awake now, I saw his head jerk", the faraway female voice said.

So that's it, Valentine thought. / wonder if they'll leave me strung up like F. A. James in Iowa. No, some Kurian will get me.

Husky voice: "Big reward. All we have to do is take you north of the Missouri. We'll all be rich".

"Spend it right away, you pricks", Valentine said. The words were slurred but sounded intelligible enough to him. "There's some Bears and a Cat who'll get you in turn".

Valentine heard light footsteps and the bag came off his face - a little painfully, it took a scab on his chin with it.

Alessa Duvalier stood in front of him, holding the feed sack. Her freckles had faded with the season and she had a fresh bandage on her hand. A long, tattered coat hung off her thin shoulders. "If I'm s'posed to be the Cat, I wouldn't be so sure, Val", she said. "I still remember the tap you gave me in St. Louis. The cut inside my mouth took forever to heal".

Confused relief flooded Valentine. He tried to form words, but they wouldn't come. His eyes went wet.

"Get him some water, Roberts", a woman in uniform said from the other side of the room. The air smelled like mold and termites. She had her back to him, and was studying a series of wedding pictures on the wall. It had peeling paper and old, dust-covered fixtures that at one time had thrown light on the pictures. A few pieces of furniture with the cushions long removed had been pushed against the walls, and Valentine noted that he sat at one end of an oval dinner table, once a fine piece of work but now scratched and water warped. A single fat white candle leaned at the center of the table, providing the only illumination in the room.

A short, wiry man with horn-rimmed glasses in a Southern Command uniform offered the mouth of a canteen. Valentine noticed a

corporal's chevron on his arm. "Just water", he said, in a surprisingly deep voice for his slender frame. Valentine drank, marking another man in Wolf leathers snoring on the bare spring bed of a sofa, oblivious to the conversation.

"So I've been recaptured by Southern Command?" Valentine said.

"For the record: name, place of birth, most recent rank?" the female with her back to him said.

"David Stuart Valentine, unincorporated Minnesota, major", Valentine supplied.

"He's sensible enough", Duvalier said. "Hungry, Valentine?"

"I'll eat". Valentine was shocked to see Moira Styachowski step in from another room. His artillery officer from the fight for Big Rock Hill on the banks of the Arkansas had put on a little weight since last he saw her, but her face still looked pale and her eyes tired.

"Quite a reunion", Valentine said as Duvalier slid flatbread and a jar that smelled like fatted bean paste across the table.

"More than you know", the woman studying the photos said. She turned. A trim, neatly attired woman with a colonel's bird on her tightly buttoned collar regarded him with sparkling eyes.

Valentine felt a little like a hog at a county fair set before a judge. Sharp chin to match the eyes ...

"Dots", Valentine said.

"For my sins, Colonel Lambert now", she said, her words cold and hard.

"Excuse me for not saluting", Valentine said. "I'm cuffed".

"Val, don't be difficult", Duvalier said.

"It's a private joke, Smoke", Lambert said. "I remember he once told me that he'd be saluting me someday, back when he was at the War College".

Duvalier, now sitting at the table, raised an intrigued eyebrow at him and he shook his head.

"Can I clean myself up?" Valentine asked.

"Please", Duvalier said.

"Roberts, take off the cuffs and show him his things", Lambert said.