I reluctantly peeled myself away. I’d spent a lot of time trying to keep my most fractious team members away from each other over the last few weeks, and I now resented that effort. I could have had this entertainment weeks ago.
I found Colin in the shooting range, a designated field just outside the gate. A few weeks ago, I’d been doing my best to dodge bullets. It was a pleasant return to normalcy to have a target for practice again instead of being the target.
“You want to keep your gaze steady on your target,” Colin explained to a group of gathered vampires, his short-cropped black hair covered by a tweed flat peak cap that he’d adopted as part of his look for some reason. I stared at the paper target tacked to a dummy down at the end of the range. “Your eyes may be more powerful and more accurate than humans’, but there’s a lot more that goes into hitting a target than just looking at it. Wind speed. How you hold your weapon. Your breath. How quickly the target is moving. Accuracy all comes down to practice.”
Teaching the vampires to shoot had been Morag’s idea. “There’s no such thing as being too prepared,” she argued when pitching the idea to the vampires. “Even if you are faster and stronger than humans, you can still be wounded or otherwise compromised. Those X-75s, the nasty dark energy guns the Bureau developed, can take you guys out in, what, five shots?”
“That seems to be the minimum,” one of the researchers confirmed. “In the tests we’ve been able to conduct so far, it seems one shot creates dizziness, nausea, and an energy spike similar to an adrenaline rush. Two shots intensify these symptoms and begin to overload the senses, increasing the heart rate to an uncomfortable level. Three shots remove most of the vision and make the subject incredibly sensitive to sound in addition to all other symptoms. The fourth shot activates a deeply primal mode in which the subject is incapable of rational thought and communication.”
“If you guys know how to use a weapon of your own,” Morag continued, “if you get hit once or twice or end up having your fangs restrained or something, you can back out of the range of the X-75s and still be able to fight. If you know how to handle a weapon, you will know how to disarm someone without endangering yourselves. I know a few of you are still recovering from bullet wounds.” She looked at Sike, Gavril, and a few others. “Gunshot wounds may not hurt you for as long as they hurt us, but they still bloody hurt. So”—she held up a pistol—“if you want to learn how to shoot this and other firearms properly, drop by the range.”
Most of the vampires, even Kane, had started taking lessons after that. Sike was an impressively good shot. Apparently, he found the practice meditative, although he said he didn’t like the idea of killing with guns. “The death is wasted,” he’d said. That was something many of the vampires struggled with—to kill a human with a bullet left the soul unclean. But it was better than dying themselves, as Dorian had pointed out.
I caught Colin’s eye and tapped my watch. He nodded and began to wrap up the lesson.
My last stop was the library. It was a smaller room, permeated by the yeasty smell of decaying books, which had once been someone’s office. Local people and Scottish organizations had donated the books to our group for our stay in Scotland, with more arriving each day from charities and pro-vampire groups. Some of the vampires burned through them quickly, eager to learn more about this world they found themselves in. I poked my head in the door to see Laini and Gina sitting on the desk, reading. Arlonne sat in the chair with a book open before her, but she was looking at a second book with Kren, one of Eskra’s adopted daughters. The tween vampire read from the page as Laini clapped a hand over her mouth, stifling a giggle.
“‘He gazed at Angela with passion dancing in his burning red eyes. Holding her hand to his chest, she knew that she would never feel a heartbeat in his gorgeous body. Undead, but not unlovable. She would teach him how humans loved. He bent to brush away a strand of her long chestnut hair, whispering that she was more beautiful than any creature he had known, vampire or human,’” the tween read dramatically. “‘He was hers forever. Her vampire. Her immortal lover.’”
Arlonne smiled crookedly, shaking her head. Gina erupted into laughter alongside Laini, who was nearly crying.
“I can’t believe I own all these,” Gina wheezed. “It all sounds so stupid now.”
“‘Undead, but not unlovable,’” Laini said dramatically, between bouts of laughter. “This sold a million copies?”
Arlonne checked the cover. “Two million,” she corrected.
I grinned as I watched the group. Laini had never looked so animated. I privately suspected that Major Morag, who had teenage daughters of her own, had donated the vampire romances to either get them out of the house or to stir the pot. Maybe both.
“Mission is a go soon,” I announced and winked at Kren. “Sorry to break up book club.”
“Oh, I think that’s all we can handle today,” Laini said assuredly. “Now, Lyra—please tell me how to act for this press event, because my undead body evidently lacks a heart.”
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered as our squad of black Range Rovers drove up. A complex line of security guards waved us along past Canongate until the driver parked in front of the Scottish Parliament building in the heart of Edinburgh. Guards swarmed around us—the security was tight. My gut clenched in a thrill of anticipation. This was it. Everything needed to go smoothly today.
I slid out of the car, my knee-high black boots catching the sun and making the leather shine. Major Morag strode toward our caravan. She looked strange out of uniform, having gone for a black pantsuit today. I wished I’d known that was an option. I felt vaguely uncomfortable wearing a dress for the first time in months. She pushed her sunglasses up off her face. Her gray-peppered red hair was an unruly mess of curls, but it made her look approachable rather than unprofessional. As various car doors slammed around me, I looked around to make sure everyone was accounted for. Dorian, Bryce, Kane, Roxy, Laini, Colin, Sike, Louise, and Tahn had joined our mission today. Tahn was a good noncombatant choice suggested by Kane. He came from the new cohort of vampires and gave off nonthreatening vibes. With short white hair and a long white beard, Tahn’s green eyes shone brilliantly in his light brown face as he swept a careful look over the Parliament building and gathered crowd. Today, he wore a scarlet knitted cardigan, tan slacks, and a pair of polished brown shoes. Essentially, he was a vampire grandpa. It impressed me that Kane possessed the social savvy to suggest him. Zach had coordinated the outfit with Gina and Louise’s help.
Soldiers styling vampires. Just another average day.
Morag shook my hand, surveying the group gleefully. “Not too shabby, Sloane. Our press conference will love this. The fashion is optimal vampire public relations.” Her eyes fell on Kane, who looked especially dapper in a white button-up shirt with a dark green tartan blazer. It had taken an army to convince him to leave the cape behind, but from the way he subtly preened in the car’s reflective window, I suspected the look was growing on him.
Morag whistled lowly. “Impressive! The cameras will love you, Kane.”
Kane scowled, apparently uncertain whether that was an insult. “Excuse me?”