E. E. Knight - Vampire Earth 3 - Tale Of The Thunderbolt

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TALE OF THE THUNDERBOLT
THE VAMPIRE EARTH 3
E.E. KNIGHT
Possessed of an unnatural and legendary hunger, the Reapers have come to Earth to establish a New
Order built on harvesting of enslaved human souls. They rule the planet. I thrive on the scent of fear. And
if it is night, as sure as darkness, they will come. It's the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order. The alien,
vampiric Kur and their avatars, the Reapers, control most of Earth-their new feeding ground. Humanity is
scattered and survives only at their new masters' whims.
But the Resistance is attempting to reclaim Earth. David Valentine, member of the elite Cat spy force, is
in enemy uniform aboard the aging gunboat Thunderbolt. Whispers have reached him of the discovery of
a long-lost weapon in the Caribbean-the first glimmer of hope for humanity to finally defeat the Reapers.
Control of the ship lies in the hands of a tyrannical captain, and nothing short of full-scale mutiny can win
it back. With only a few loyal sailors at his side, Valentine embarks on a terrifying journey through the
deadly waters of the Gulf, searching for the weapon that will guarantee that this year- the forty-eighth
year of the Kurian Order's domination of Earth-will be the Kurians' last....
Glossary
Aspirants: Teenagers, often sons and daughters of those in a particular caste, who travel with the
Hunters and perform assorted camp functions.
Bears: Hunters and the most fearsome of the Lifeweavers' human weapons; warriors who go into a
battle-fury resembling that of the berserks of old. The Bears are proud to take on anything the Kurians
can design.
Cats: Trained by the Lifeweavers, these Hunters act as spies, saboteurs, and assassins in the Kurian
Zone. Some work in disguises; others work openly.
Dau'wa: "Forward-thinkers"; the minority of Lifeweavers (mostly concentrated on the planet Kur), who
used vital aura to become immortal, i.e., vampires.
Dau'weem: "Backwards-thinkers"; the majority of Life-weavers, who eschewed use of vital aura to
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become immortal.
Golden Ones: A Grog variant, more verbal and organized than the more common Gray Ones.
Fawn-colored fur on their shoulders blends to white on their bellies.
Gray Ones: The most common kind of Grog, an apish humanoid with thick plates of gray skin.
Marginally intelligent, though quick to adapt to human tools and weapons.
Grogs: Any of the multitude of creations the Kurians have designed or enhanced to help subjugate man.
The term grog is in general use for introduced life-forms, but properly belongs just to the humanoid
variants. Grogs come in many shapes and sizes; some are intelligent enough to use weapons.
Hunters: Human beings who have been enhanced by the techno-magic of the Lifeweavers to cope with
the spawn of Kur.
Interworld Tree: An ancient network of portals between the stars, the doors of which allow
instantaneous transportation across the light-years.
Kur: One of the nine planets of the Interworld Tree. A great storehouse of touchstones was found here;
it was a center of Lifeweaver science and learning. Later it became a renegade world when the Kurian
Lifeweavers began to use vital aura to extend their lives, touching off a civil war that has spilled over to
Earth.
Kurians: Lifeweavers from the planet Kur who learned how to indefinitely lengthen their lives by
absorbing vital aura. They are the true vampires of the New Order.
lifesign: Energy given off by any living thing in proportion to its size and sentience. The Reapers use it, in
addition to their normal senses, to track their human prey.
Lifeweavers: The ancient race who discovered the old Pre-Entity Gates between the Nine Worlds.
Pre-Entities: The Old Ones, a vampiric race that died out long before man walked the Earth. From their
knowledge, the Kur learned how to become vampires by living off of vital aura.
Quislings: Humans who assist the Kurians in running the New Order.
Ravies: A virus the Kurians distributed to break up the social order of man, allowing them to take over
more easily.
Reapers: The Praetorian Guard of the New Order, they are in fact avatars animated by their Master
Vampire. They permit the reclusive Kurians to interact with humans and others, and more important,
absorb the vital aura through a psychic connection with the avatar without physical risk. Reapers live off
the blood of the victim, while the aura sustains the Master Kurian. Also known colloquially as Capos,
Governors, Hoods, Rigs, Skulls, Scowls, Tongue-Tong, Creeps, Hooded Ones, and Vampires.
Touchstones: Record-keeping technology used by the Pre-Entities and discovered by the Lifeweavers.
Touchstones hold anything from knowledge to memories; the data is accessible by a sentient being's
touch. This can be dangerous for less-developed minds, such as humans'.
vital aura: An energy field created by a living creature. Sadly, humans are rich in it.
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Wolves: The most numerous caste of the Hunters. Their patrols watch the no-man's-land between the
Kurian Zone and the Free Territories, and they also act as guerrilla fighters, couriers, and scouts.
From the east to the west blow the trumpet to arms! Through the land let the sound of it flee; Let the far
and the near all unite, with a cheer, In defense of our Liberty Tree.
—Thomas Paine, "The Liberty Tree"
They sailed away for a year and a day To the land where the bong-tree grows.
—Edward Lear, The Owl and the Pussy-Cat
Chapter One
New Orleans, January, the forty-eighth year of the Kurian Order: Formerly glorious in its decay, under
the New Order the city transformed from an aging beauty into a waterlogged corpse. Much of the Big
Easy rots under a meter of Mississippi River water—save for the old city's heart, now protected by two
layers of dikes. The rococo facades of the French Quarter, once browning into a fine patina, fall to
pieces in quiet, unmounted. The stately homes of the two great antebellum periods, pre-1861 and
pre-2022, have vanished under a carpet of lush kudzu or riverside saw grass. As if the flooding and years
of neglect were not enough punishment, New Orleans suffered a major hurricane in 2028: a titanic storm
that rose from the Gulf like a city-smashing monster in a Japanese movie. No FEMA, no insurance
companies showed up afterwards to clean and repair the storm-battered city. What was destroyed
stayed destroyed; the inhabitants found it easier to shift to still-standing buildings than to rebuild.
But the mouth of the Mississippi is too important, even to the reduced traffic of the Kurian Order, to be
given up entirely to nature. The metropolis, both the section behind the dike and the Venice-like portions
of the flooded districts, still support a melange of denizens from all across the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean. Counting those living among the lakes, bayous, and in the Mississippi estuary, New Orleans
boasts a population of over two million—a total that few other cities known to the Old World can match.
The rich harvests of seafood, fish and game of the swamps, and mile after mile of rice plantations feed the
masses concentrated at the sodden bend in the river.
The Kurian Order encourages fecund populations. A Kurian lord must breed his polls to supply him with
enough vital aura, for only in feeding on the energy created by the death throes of a sentient being can he
revitalize his immortal lich. The Masters of New Orleans have no regrets about its silenced music, its
smothered culture, its reduced cuisine, or its broken history. Healthy, mating herds of humans, kept from
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escape and from the clutches of rapacious competing Kur, are the only form of wealth that matters.
For the human race, living to see another year is now the paramount pursuit in a city once known for its
sensual diversions.
Though the Easy Street was only a waterfront dive, it was his waterfront dive, so Martin Clive took
pride in every squeaky stool and chipped mug of his saloon. From grid shielded-electric lights to
sawdust-covered floor, he loved every brick of it.
His customers, on the other hand, he could take or leave.
Not that he didn't need them. Clive's herd of cash-bearing cows, properly milked, provided for him.
Clive surveyed the noisy, smelly Thursday-night crowd as the winter rains poured down outside. Safe
behind the badge sewn to the money vest he seldom took off—-even to sleep—and in the ownership of
the biggest bar on the dockyard district of the dike-hugging waterfront, he passed his time and occupied
his mind in sizing up the men as they talked, smoked, and drank. The few women in his bar were there on
business, not for pleasure.
Clive perfected a three-step practice of evaluating customers over the years, now so ingrained that he
did it unconsciously. Separating the "payers" from the "bums" came first. Knowing who had the cash for a
night's drink and who didn't had been second nature to Clive since before he acquired the establishment.
Distinguishing "gents" from "trouble" was yet another specialty. As he aged, and passed the responsibility
of serving out drinks and rousting the "bums" and "trouble" to younger, stronger men, he took up a third
valuation: that of predicting the remaining life span of his customers.
Clive looked at a bent longshoreman, hook over his shoulder and a pewter mug of cheap beer at his lips.
The man had drunk, smoked, and wheezed out a few hours in the Easy Street six nights a week for the
past ten years. Clive had watched him age under grueling physical labor, rotgut alcohol, and bad diet. If
the longshoreman could stay in the good books of his crew chief, meaning handing over kickbacks out of
his wages, he could probably spin out as many as ten more years if he stayed out of the hold. Sitting two
seats down from him, a merchant sailor drank plain coffee, sixty if he was a day, dye rubbed into his hair
to darken it in an effort to look younger. Soon no captain would hire him on, no matter how sober and
upstanding a character he might be. He was due for the last dance within a year or two. On the next
stool, a boy kept an affectionate eye on the aged sailor, perhaps a relative, perhaps just a shipmate. The
boy did not drink either, and with hard work and a clean nose could expect to live another fifty years as
long as he kept indoors after nightfall.
Over at a warm corner table, a young officer drank with three of his men. The officer was a welcome
combination of "payer" and "gent," to the point where Clive bothered to name him. The officer was "the
Major" to Clive, and the Major always ordered a good bottle and never complained about the cheap
whiskey substituted inside. That made him a fine payer. The Major and his men rarely caused trouble;
therefore, they qualified for genthood. They wore the mottled green uniform of the Carbineers, one of the
horsed troops of paramilitary Cossacks who kept civil order and patrolled the streets of New Orleans.
Maybe in other city establishments the Major threw his weight around, took food and drink without
paying, and had his uniform silence objections. But not in the Easy Street. Clive had friends at the top of
the city's food chain.
Clive learned in his youth that if you were in good with Kur, you could thumb your nose at the Port
Authority, the Transport Office, even the police and militia. With Kurian patronage, he bid for ownership
of the moribund Easy Street. A whiff of anything going on in the bar that Kur wouldn't like, and he picked
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up the phone. Clive wore his third ten-year badge on his chest, not due to expire for six more years, and
he was certain of acquiring another. The badge put him off-limits to the Kurians' aura-hungry Hoods—
well, mostly—and brought him peace of mind that muzzled any protest from his conscience.
The inner door of the entry vestibule opened, and Clive heard the wind and splatter of the rain pouring
down outside in the moment before his doorman swung the outer portal shut. Clive liked the rain. It
drove customers indoors and flushed the filth from the city's gutters.
A stranger stood silhouetted in the door.
The man didn't remove his raincoat. Clive took a closer look. A coat could conceal any number of
unpleasant accoutrements. The Easy Street's owner relaxed when he caught a glimpse of uniform under
the coat's heavy lapels. The flash of navy blue and brass buttons revealed the stranger as a Coastal
Marine. From the fit of the coat and the good though mud-splattered boots Clive judged the man a
payer. But something about his face made Clive reserve judgment on whether this man would be trouble
or not.
The marine was tall and lean, but not remarkably so in either aspect. Clive put him in his mid-twenties: he
had the narrow, crinkle-edged eyelids of a man with a lot of outdoor mileage, and the bronze skin of
someone with a hefty dose of Indian blood. The stranger walked with a trace of stiffness in his left leg,
not a false limb but perhaps an old injury. He was good-looking in a clean-shaven, sharp-jawed way,
judging from the looks exchanged by a pair of whores keeping each other company at the end of the bar.
Shining black hair hung in wet tangles, a ropy opal mane thrown back over his collar. A thin white scar
traced his right cheek from the outer corner of his dark eye to his chin like the path of a milky tear.
With a moment to get a good look as the marine moved, Clive judged the man to be wearing a pistol at
his hip, then the capped tang of some kind of knife appeared as the entrant turned. Clive knew how to
spot weapons, long coat or no.
The new customer glanced around the room. His gaze flicked from the massive fireplace at the west end,
big enough for a barbecue, to the game tables at the east.
The marine froze. Clive followed his gaze. Before he could determine whom he had recognized, the
scarred stranger approached the bar nonchalantly. Clive guessed he had recognized the Major, for the
table in the corner had gone quiet. Probably some old quarrel over a girl, or a smuggling deal gone bad.
The Coastal Marines, with their mobility and lack of supervision, were notorious black-marketeers on the
coast stretching from Galveston to the Florida Floods. Intrigued, Clive looked across the bar to the
Major's table. The gents had their heads together. Clive's nose, after years of smelling the various aromas
of a saloon—tobacco, liquor, sweat, urine, sawdust, and vomit (usually in that order)— was not as
straight as it once had been, but he smelled trouble.
'Tea and rum, if you've got either," David Valentine said, dripping from head to foot on the
sawdust-sprinkled floor. His coat trapped the wet of his shirt better than it kept the rain out.
"Got both, Coastie."
"The hotter, the better," he said, pulling his hand through his slick hair again to get it out of his eyes. The
gesture gave him a chance to look at the corner table. A silent mental alarm had tripped a switch in his
nervous system, warming weight around, took food and drink without paying, and had his uniform silence
objections. But not in the Easy Street. Clive had friends at the top of the city's food chain.
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Clive learned in his youth that if you were in good with Kur, you could thumb your nose at the Port
Authority, the Transport Office, even the police and militia. With Kurian patronage, he bid for ownership
of the moribund Easy Street. A whiff of anything going on in the bar that Kur wouldn't like, and he picked
up the phone. Clive wore his third ten-year badge on his chest, not due to expire for six more years, and
he was certain of acquiring another. The badge put him off-limits to the Kurians' aura-hungry Hoods—
well, mostly—and brought him peace of mind that muzzled any protest from his conscience.
The inner door of the entry vestibule opened, and Clive heard the wind and splatter of the rain pouring
down outside in the moment before his doorman swung the outer portal shut. Clive liked the rain. It
drove customers indoors and flushed the filth from the city's gutters.
A stranger stood silhouetted in the door.
The man didn't remove his raincoat. Clive took a closer look. A coat could conceal any number of
unpleasant accoutrements. The Easy Street's owner relaxed when he caught a glimpse of uniform under
the coat's heavy lapels. The flash of navy blue and brass buttons revealed the stranger as a Coastal
Marine. From the fit of the coat and the good though mud-splattered boots Clive judged the man a
payer. But something about his face made Clive reserve judgment on whether this man would be trouble
or not.
The marine was tall and lean, but not remarkably so in either aspect. Clive put him in his mid-twenties: he
had the narrow, crinkle-edged eyelids of a man with a lot of outdoor mileage, and the bronze skin of
someone with a hefty dose of Indian blood. The stranger walked with a trace of stiffness in his left leg,
not a false limb but perhaps an old injury. He was good-looking in a clean-shaven, sharp-jawed way,
judging from the looks exchanged by a pair of whores keeping each other company at the end of the bar.
Shining black hair hung in wet tangles, a ropy opal mane thrown back over his collar. A thin white scar
traced his right cheek from the outer corner of his dark eye to his chin like the path of a milky tear.
With a moment to get a good look as the marine moved, Clive judged the man to be wearing a pistol at
his hip, then the capped tang of some kind of knife appeared as the entrant turned. Clive knew how to
spot weapons, long coat or no.
The new customer glanced around the room. His gaze flicked from the massive fireplace at the west end,
big enough for a barbecue, to the game tables at the east.
The marine froze. Clive followed his gaze. Before he could determine whom he had recognized, the
scarred stranger approached the bar nonchalantly. Clive guessed he had recognized the Major, for the
table in the corner had gone quiet. Probably some old quarrel over a girl, or a smuggling deal gone bad.
The Coastal Marines, with their mobility and lack of supervision, were notorious black-marketeers on the
coast stretching from Galveston to the Florida Floods. Intrigued, Clive looked across the bar to the
Major's table. The gents had their heads together. Clive's nose, after years of smelling the various aromas
of a saloon—tobacco, liquor, sweat, urine, sawdust, and vomit (usually in that order)— was not as
straight as it once had been, but he smelled trouble.
"Tea and rum, if you've got either," David Valentine said, dripping from head to foot on the
sawdust-sprinkled floor. His coat trapped the wet of his shirt better than it kept the rain out.
"Got both, Coastie."
"The hotter, the better," he said, pulling his hand through his slick hair again to get it out of his eyes. The
gesture gave him a chance to look at the corner table. A silent mental alarm had tripped a switch in his
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nervous system, warming him better than any fire. Details stood out: florid printing on the bar bottle
labels, the meshed ranks of gray hair on the barman's arms, a blemish on a prostitute's neck, footsteps
muffled by the sawdust scattered on the floor, the rancid smell out of a spittoon.
The officer leaned across the corner table to speak to his men. Valentine trembled as his mind raced.
"You cold, Marine?" a whore asked, brushing a wet lock of hair behind his ear. Gold lame and blond
hair covered what little skin she didn't have on display. "I got a way—"
She'd been attracted by the uniform. Ironic, because its thick, high-quality fabric and solid brass buttons
repulsed him every time he put it on. Whenever he looked at himself in a mirror, he saw the Enemy
looking back out of his own eyes.
"Some other time, perhaps." Valentine turned away from her.
His conscience hammered at him until his eyes shone wet with more than rain. Fool! Lazy, irresponsible
fool! Over a year's worth of preparation, service to the Kurian Order under a false name, all turned to
shit and flushed. Just because he'd been tired and felt like coming in out of the weather.
Valentine racked his brain for the name, picturing the hawkish face in the hammock that summer in the
Yazoo Delta during his training in Free Territory. Lewand Alistar, a freshly invoked Wolf six years ago
and posted missing, presumed dead. So the Reapers hadn't killed him after all. Perhaps he had been
captured and turned; perhaps he had been planted in Southern Command as a spy who saw his chance
to get away clean. Whatever put him in a Carbineer's uniform in New Orleans was immaterial. The fact
remained that mutual recognition occurred.
Valentine remembered Alistar as a quick-witted, active comrade. A hot mug of spiked tea arrived, and
Alistar chose that moment to rise and take up his coat. Valentine blew into the steaming crockery.
Alistar's companions shifted their chairs around. They pretended to watch the barmaids and hookers, but
all three heads were pointed at Valentine.
Valentine heard Alistar move behind him. He readied himself to turn and fight, should the footsteps
approach. But the Quisling left the Easy Street in a hurry. Typical of Alistar—not heroic but smart. No
wonder he wore a major's cluster in the Kurian Zone.
Valentine needed to get out of the bar, too, without being impeded by Alistar's comrades, who he
guessed had been ordered to keep him from leaving. He reached into his pocket, wadded a ball of
money in his hand. He raised his mug in a come-hither toast to the whore who had approached him.
"Interested in a little fun and a lot of money?" he asked, his rough voice low.
"Always," she said, smiling at him with a decent, if tobacco stained, set of teeth behind compound layers
of lipstick. "My name's Agri. Like as in agreeable to anything."
Valentine thrust the money into her shirt, pretending to feel her up. "Glad to hear it. There's a hundred
and then some, Agri. Which girl here rubs you the wrong way?"
"Huh?" she said.
"Quick, or a man. Who don't you like here?"
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She dropped the attitude at the quiet urgency in his voice. "Umm, there's Star," the woman said, leaning
out to look around Valentine's wide shoulder. "The head of hair with gold earrings. She's always breaking
in and screwing my work up."
He followed her gaze. "Which one is she, in the pink?" he asked, spotting a prostitute with a mass of
wavy hair framing her face like a lion's mane. "Okay, I'm going to go talk to her. I want you to start a
fight, fast."
"And that's all I gotta do?"
"Make as big a scene as you can. Yes, that's all."
"Shit, Marine, I'd do that for free."
Valentine turned away from her and moved to the darker woman in a hot pink half-top. "I've heard
you're quite a woman," Valentine said, raising an eyebrow suggestively. The whore cocked her head and
smiled welcomingly.
"That's my up, you bitch!" his paid prostitute shrieked.
Noisy, even better, Valentine thought.
Star reacted with a speed that would have done credit to many of Valentine's former comrades in the
Wolves. She planted herself, lowered her hips, and spread her arms.
The two women fell to the floor, fighting bobcats spitting and hissing at each other. A ring of hooting
barflies formed around the combatants. Valentine backed through the crowd, snatched a hat off of an
unattended table, and moved out the door before any of Alistar's soldiers had a chance to push through
the crowd to guard the exit.
The conditions could hardly be worse for tracking a smart man in the crowded—and dangerous, thanks
to prowling Reapers—city with a two-minute head start. Night, rain, and the rickshaw-cluttered streets
all conspired to hide his quarry. Visibility nil—the big bosses never bothered much with public lighting.
Most men would not have had a chance.
David Valentine was not most men. He was a Cat, one of the select specimens of humanity called
Hunters trained by the Lifeweavers to fight against the abominations of their vampiric brethren, the Kur.
The Kur controlled most of the planet, and the regions that remained outside their grasp, like Valentine's
adopted home in the Ozarks and Ouachitas, owed much of their freedom to the sacrifices of the Hunters.
The Hunters, outnumbered and weak compared with the Reapers and the other creations of the Kur,
relied on enhanced senses, physical ability, and tight mental discipline. The last was of paramount
importance. The Reapers, the Praetorian Guard of Kur, tracked human prey by reading lifesign, psychic
auras sent out by sentient beings.
Valentine needed to wash the fear from his mind. At the moment he was alone among enemies,
surrounded by thousands who could gain a ten-year badge protecting themselves from the Reapers by
pointing him out as an enemy of the New Order. And somewhere in the rainy darkness, a man whom he
knew to be no fool was hurrying to ring the alarm bell.
Alistar would not just run to the nearest phone. He had no idea if Valentine was working alone, or with
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others who might have picked up a surreptitious signal and followed him out of the bar. Valentine
remembered him as a man who liked to be in command. It was possible that he would get a posse of his
own Carbineers together, to better take the credit for his coup in capturing or killing one of Southern
Command's "terrorists."
The barracks of the Carbineers would mean a long walk, too much time wasted. But Valentine knew
from months of working the port that a contingent of them guarded then-supply warehouse by the docks.
Some of Alistar's men would be there.
It was only a guess, but as good a guess as he could make. Valentine ducked through an alleyway and
broke into a sprint down a road parallel to the one Alistar probably took. Even if he had guessed wrong,
the farther he got from the Easy Street, the better.
He loosened his coat to run. If anyone saw him, pounding down the center of the near-empty street,
splashing through puddles, they might mistake him in the wet and darkness for a Reaper. His sprint did
not end at the hundred-yard mark; he called on his reserves, and they answered, propelling him through
the night with legs and lungs of flame. Astonishingly, at least to anyone who did not know what a Hunter
was capable of, his speed increased.
The warehouse he sought was in an old, brick-paved part of town. Garbage lay in heaps on every
corner, and better than half the buildings were fire-gutted shells. Empty, glass-less windows gaped out at
the street like skulls' eyes when they were not boarded up.
One closed-up window wore a freshly spray-painted skull with a heart around it. According to the
graffiti of New
Orleans's streets, someone just lost a loved one to the Reapers within.
Any of the empty buildings around might contain a prowling Reaper. This was one of the districts of the
city where it wasn't considered healthy to be out after dark, even for a man in uniform. He relaxed his
mind, let his vision blur, tried to feel for the cold, hard spot on his mind the Reapers sometimes made.
Sometimes. He prayed his psychic antennae were working tonight.
He pulled up at a noisome alley, partially blocked at one end by a stripped car turned on its side. Its
gutters served as the local populace's latrine, judging from the smell. Hand tapping at his pistol butt,
Valentine cut down the alley and back to the main thoroughfare. Alistar was a former Wolf, and there
was every possibility of him scenting Valentine before seeing him without some kind of masking odor.
A thunk and a metallic clatter sounded from one of the broken windows, hitting him like a shot. He spun,
crouching against the half-expected leap as he drew his revolver. His keen ears picked up the sound of
the skittering, scrambling claws of a fleeing rat within.
Valentine edged sideways down the alley, gaze flicking from paneless window to window until his heart
slowed again.
He paused in a deep well of darkness under a fire escape, reholstered his gun, and drew a stiletto from
his boot, nerving himself for what he had to do. Killing in battle, with bullets cracking the air all around
and explosions numbing his senses was one thing. Premeditated murder of a fleeing opponent required an
entirely different side of his persona. It was a version of himself who had killed helpless men in their
Control Tanks in Omaha; blown a bound policeman's head off with a shotgun in Wisconsin; and knifed
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lonely, frightened sentries on isolated bridges. Cold-blooded need provoked those killings, but his sense
of exultation in the deeds bothered his conscience more than the acts themselves did.
Valentine heard footsteps over the steady patter of rain, coming from the direction he expected Alistar.
Two people hove into view in the middle of the street, walking together under some kind of tarpaulin
sheltering both from the weather. Not his quarry then, but—
One was definitely pulling the other along. The insistent guide was about the right size and sex. Clever.
Trusting his hunch, Valentine collected himself for a leap. As he crouched, the analytical side of his brain
appreciated the irony of Alistar using a woman as camouflage, paralleling his own subterfuge in the bar.
The tarpaulin provided just the right touch of shape-concealing cover. He probably grabbed her out of a
doorway, tucking himself under the improvised umbrella with her and ordering her to accompany him.
Alistar had always been cool in a crisis.
As they passed, not seeing him in the rain and dark, Valentine leapt. His standing broad jump covered
five meters, ending in a body blow that caught Alistar in the small of the back. The two tumbled down,
the man ensnared in the wet canvas.
The girl screamed out her fright, and Valentine heard her stumble and right herself. He paid no attention,
concentrating on getting his knife to the Quisling's throat. The man struggled in the folds of the tarry
material like a netted fish.
He straddled Alistar, pinning his chest and arms with the full force of his body weight and muscle as he
cut open the tarp. The stiletto dug into his former comrade's neck, eliciting a squeal. "Dave, no! Wait!"
Valentine paused, not moving the knife either farther in or back. He had not been called Dave since his
days as a recruit.
"Not what you think," Alistar said as his face drained to white. "You think I wanted this? You remember
how it was, we got separated.... The Reapers were after us. One got me, picked me up. They took me
all the way back to Mississippi. After questioning, it was join 'em or die. Never really joined though,
never really joined. That's why I ended up in this rear-area pisser, didn't want to fight against y'all. You
have to believe me. I met a girl, got married. We've talked about running—every chance we get alone,
we discuss it. Lois wants out."
"You could have contacted me in the bar, then. Quietly. What did you run for?"
"I—I got scared."
"Looked to me like you were running for help."
"I didn't tell the guys you were with Southern Command. I said we fought over a job. You threatened
you'd kill me if you ever got the chance. I ducked out to go get my wife, I was going to have her go in
there and talk to you. Make you see our way. Lois's honest—you can tell just by talking to her. I knew
you could always read people, Dave. You'd be able to get us out."
Valentine listened with Lifeweaver-sensitized ears for anyone approaching to investigate. He let Alistar
speak.
"We can be ready in an hour. Hide out wherever you tell us. I dunno why you're here, but maybe you
need some advice about how to get away." Alistar paused. "Or not. Any way you want it. Just trust
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TALEOFTHETHUNDERBOLTTHEVAMPIREEARTH3E.E.KNIGHT  Possessedofanunnaturalandlegendaryhunger,theReapershavecometoEarthtoestablishaNewOrderbuiltonharvestingofenslavedhumansouls.Theyruletheplanet.Ithriveonthescentoffear.Andifitisnight,assureasdarkness,theywillcome.It'stheforty-eighthyearoftheKurianOrder.T...

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