Her eyes narrowed on the Tzitzime blood mage Tlaco. "Rayan Zar Davi," she said, her voice like thunder. "She lives still?"
"Yes, Beautiful Mistress. The traitor is in a cell awaiting punishment."
"Good. Rayan Zar Davi has served us faithfully for more than two hundred years. It is fitting she serve us one last time. I wish to summon Sudden Bloodletter, the Death Bat."
Tlaco's fear scent surged deliciously.
Chapter 2
Fog covered the broken ground as the two women slipped through the old graveyard, edging past the weathered, crumbling tombstones. The night was pitch-black, the southern stars obscured by clouds, but Angie Ritter wore a set of fourth-generation night-vision goggles—NVGs—strapped to her face and saw the ancient cemetery in crystal-clear shades of green. Her companion, Erin Seagrave, didn’t wear NVGs but probably saw more clearly than Angie thanks to her werewolf condition, which also gave the young red-haired woman enhanced hearing and smell, as well as near-superhuman speed and strength. Angie was a small, superbly fit woman, but Erin was like a Greek goddess come to life, all muscle and beauty. Both women wore camouflaged combat uniforms, with their faces and hands darkened by camouflage paint, and each carried a silenced sub-gun, but Angie also wore her hexed side-sword Nightfall on her hip. She had wrapped a piece of cloth around its polished hilt to hide its shine.
The small village’s graveyard sat at the base of an old Catholic church. The church, with its tall steeple, was surrounded by an eight-foot-high stone wall and sat atop a hill overseeing the small mountain village through which Angie and Erin had passed. They had neither seen nor heard a soul. Both village and church were dark and silent, hopefully fast asleep. With luck, she could use her magic to scout out the church, and then both women could return to the others.
Weeds grew wildly in the graveyard, some reaching their knees. The wooden fence had fallen apart in places, and many of the tombstones had collapsed—or been kicked over. It was clear that no one in the village had maintained the graves since the arrival of the Aztalan military garrison in the church. The Aztalan government had contempt that bordered on hatred for what it termed the "New World" religions—meaning any religion that had its roots in Western civilization and not Mesoamerican culture. The distinction was pointless in Angie’s mind. Eighteen years after the Awakening—after the great dragons had brought down the Fey Sleep, awakening humanity to the supernatural that had been hidden from it since the Spanish Inquisition—there was little point to terms like New World, Mesoamerican, or Western civilization.
There was only the Awakened World now.
Angie took care to avoid stepping on the graves, but Erin walked where she'd make the least noise, not that the other woman ever made a sound anyhow, even with a bullet wound in her hip. Fortunately, the bullet had only torn through the muscle, creating superficial damage, and Angie had helped Erin’s oldest brother, Rowan, stitch it closed. Erin claimed it was nothing, but Angie was pretty sure if it had been her, she wouldn’t have been able to walk on it, let alone sneak through the wilderness. But Erin wasn't like other women, maybe because she was a werewolf, maybe because she was a badass who had grown up surrounded by warrior brothers. Angie was just glad she was her best friend.
As they slipped closer to the hillside, Angie tasted sweat beading on her upper lip. Even this late at night, almost two a.m., the air was muggy. After days of hiding and hiking through the mountains of southern Baja California, her clothing chafed her skin. She was pretty sure she smelled worse than a Feral tribesman. They needed to get out of the wilderness and get to safety. If anywhere was still safe during an invasion.
When Erin froze, Angie did the same, her breath catching in her throat. What was—
Less than a dozen paces away, two large dogs, their eyes flashing green in Angie’s NVGs, stepped out from behind a set of crumbling tombstones. The dogs’ hackles were raised menacingly, their teeth bared in a silent growl. Both dogs looked wild, but if they barked this close to the fort...
Angie's finger drifted over the trigger of her sub-gun, but she didn’t want to use the weapon. This close, even a suppressed gunshot would awaken the fort. Erin stood tall and glared at the dogs and then growled, baring her teeth. Goose bumps rose on Angie’s skin. The dogs' heads dropped in frightened submission, and a moment later, both darted into the underbrush. Erin looked over her shoulder and smiled at Angie, her teeth flashing.
Dogs didn’t mess with werewolves.
Erin moved on, and Angie followed. They approached the worn path leading up the hill to the church and its high stone wall. Angie did her best to walk as Erin had taught her, setting each foot carefully along its outer edge and then rolling forward on the foot’s edge—ghost walking. She was getting better at it, even she realized that, but she felt like a lead-footed clown next to Erin. Angie had been a soldier, a mage in the Commonwealth of Cascadia’s Home Guard, and she had been trained in fieldcraft, tactics, and weapons, but she’d never be as stealthy as Erin. Erin could sneak up on a squirrel without it noticing. But then, Angie had been the unit S2, the intelligence officer, while Erin and her brothers had been the unit’s elite door-kickers, a family of werewolf assault troops. Of course, that had been before Angie and the Seagraves had become traitors to the Commonwealth. If they returned home now, they’d be hanged on sight.
It was a price Angie had been more than happy to pay to save her friends.
It was hard to see from the base of the hill, with the stone wall surrounding it, but Angie knew the old Catholic church was a large single-story structure with a high bell tower. The church was ancient, probably well over a hundred years old, and built of wood and adobe, a sun-dried brick of clay and straw that didn't really age very well. Once, it had been whitewashed, but the paint had long since faded away through exposure. Old or not, the church remained the highest place in the mountain village and easily defensible. This close, she now saw that a tall radio antenna rose above the church tower—The fort has a radio?
After the Awakening—or A-Day, as it came to be known—the magical backlash that followed the breaking of the global Fey Sleep spell had also destroyed most of the planet's electronics, plunging humanity into a new dark age. Some electronics had survived, the rare equipment that had somehow been shielded, and some others—the simpler stuff—had been rebuilt by the survivors, but working radios, much like functioning generators, were always hard to come by and worth more than lives. If the Aztalan military could afford to put a radio in a small outpost like this, so far removed from the war, then they were far better equipped than anyone suspected.
And that was a disturbing thought.
Erin brought Angie up the path to the stone wall and wrought iron gate, closed and locked, of course. From this close, the scent of wood smoke was strong, most likely the embers of a still-smoking campfire.
Rowan had estimated the garrison’s strength to be no more than a section of men, eight to ten soldiers with a senior sergeant in command, but they needed to know for certain. Erin had tried to scout out the church from a higher vantage point a kilometer away but couldn't see much over the wall. She had seen horses and a makeshift wooden stable next to the church, which was what had interested Rowan the most. Here, at the southern end of the Baja California peninsula, they were more than a thousand kilometers from safety, deep within hostile territory with the Aztalan military actively hunting them. If they wanted to escape, they needed horses. Two of their party didn’t even have footwear, and there was no way they were going to walk a thousand kilometers barefoot.