Valentine surreptitiously examined the quarter-full bottle. It was hard to tell the color of the liquid in the dark, but Valentine smelled whiskey.

"Nice of you, Sergeant, but I'm trying temperance until I find my feet here".

"I'm not", Gide said, and Coombs passed her the bottle.

As they got settled in, Walker showed up with a camera and took their pictures, both from the front and in profile. Two more days passed while various orders wandered up and down the chains of command. Gide's face turned red from her cold, or maybe the back-mountain whiskey, and they got sick of washing their clothes and darning socks.

The motel had a water heater that they kept fired up from six until nine in the morning, so Valentine enjoyed hot showers every day. They "exercised" for two hours in the afternoon on a chain-link-fenced basketball court that had replaced the motel's pool, bringing back

uncomfortable memories of his time in the Nut. The rest of the time they filled in companionable silence. Though Gide relished stories of his travels and descriptions of the effect Quickwood had on Reapers, Valentine had turned moody and taciturn when not even Walker visited on the second day; he wondered if he'd be sentenced in Washington for crimes committed in Arkansas.

"It's not fun, you know", Valentine said when she asked about the Wolves, and how many women made it into the ranks. "You'll be tired and bored most of the time. Then there's a lot of noise, and you'll look around with your ears ringing and realize half the people you know are dead".

"I don't expect this to be fun", she said. "I just want a chance at them. I'm sick of standing around watching it happen. I can hack it".

"A couple of tattoos don't make you hard", Valentine said, and instantly regretted it.

She crossed her arms and turned away, looked out at a patch of blue sky through the barred window from the front chairs.

"I'm sorry, Gide".

She studied the street. "Whatever".

"Being cooped up with nothing to do gets on my nerves".

"I've killed a man, you know. Two men", she said.

"Sorry to hear that", Valentine said.

"My dad was drinking a lot as he got older. He got scared of going into towns to get work. Thought they'd pick him up, you know? Finally ... I'd just turned fifteen. He tried to sell me. For sex, you know, I was a virgin and all. Some rich guy from Tempe and his manservant came for me. The servant washed me up and combed out my hair and told me how I shouldn't be afraid.

"He got sick of me after about a week or so and sent me back to Pa. But I learned the ins and outs of his house, and knew when the servant door in the wall was unlocked. I got me a couple of mean rattlesnakes and chopped off their rattlers. He had this little toilet room with a phone in it. Always went in there first thing in the morning. I cut the wires, broke the bulb, and put them in there.

"The snakes got him, sure enough, and he started hollering. The servant came and put down this big cut-down shotgun to drag him away from the snakes, I suppose so he could shoot them without blowing his master's leg off. I snuck up and got the gun, shot them both in the face. One barrel each.

"Funny thing is, the guy was nice enough. Really loving and gentle with me, and he gave me some kind of pill when it was over that flushed me out, made sure I got my period. The one I wanted to shoot was my father. Maybe not in the face, in the foot or knee or something. I heard later they hauled off the servants, the ones who worked there during the day, and that seemed the most unfair thing of all. A cook, a gardener, and a housekeeper, who all lived miles away and had to take a broken-down old bus even to get there. Up until then everything about the Order was scary, but in this theoretical sense. When I saw it in practice, it changed me more than getting poked by that old guy.

"I ran for Yuma, wanting to get across to Cali, and made it. But I met a nice kid in Yuma, working part-time at the store while he apprenticed at the airfield in electronics. He got purified, though, my first year there".

Valentine waited until he was sure she'd stopped talking. "What happened to your dad?"

"Dunno. I should have gotten a job in town, kept him somewhere out of the way. He wasn't on any sets of official books, I don't think - no one would have looked for him. Stupid old drunk".

"You are tough", Valentine said.

"Only on the outside. Like a bug".

Valentine nodded. "I know what you mean".

* * *

A thunderstorm rumbled outside when higher authority called for them. Valentine put on a pair of moleskin trousers they'd given him and his only shirt with a collar, a field turtleneck.

They took them down the road to the echoing halls of the high school, where maybe thirty or forty people worked in classrooms in a school built to hold a thousand.

Patched cracks from earthquake damage ran across the floors and up the walls.

It had been a long parade of death since the "turnover" of 2022, when mankind relinquished its throne at the top of the food chain...

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net