Page 59 of Queen of Darkness
“Hold up.”
Aaron’s barely audible command brought our entire column to a halt. We automatically crouched while Jaxton deployed the team around us so that we had various angles covered by their guns.
“What do you see?” I murmured, keeping my voice low, without any harsh whispers that could be carried on the soft breeze.
“Guards,” he said, frustration evident in his voice.
I knew he’d hoped to get closer without being spotted, but the odds of that were against us at this point. Elenia was on high alert. She’d taken out a Blood Letter on me, and now, she’d threatened my mother. Shehadto know we would come after her.
The hope was that she wouldn’t be prepared for the seven of us to come together, loaded with enough weaponry for an infantry battalion. Modern weaponry at that, something generally eschewed by the paranormal community, as I was finding out. They had old-fashioned notions of honor and the like.
Guns were not their favorite.
Too bad for you,I snarled mentally at Elenia, beyond eager to exploit that shortcoming.
“How many?” I asked, not wanting to peek around the corner. I wasn’t used to this sort of stealth movement, and I didn’t want to give us away by moving too quickly or doing anything else that might alert the guards ahead.
We approached the Realm of the Undead’s entrance by climbing a chain-link fence and coming through the rear of an old water park on the outskirts of Kellar. It was still in use, and even now, the dull thrum of pumps and machinery could be heard as the water cycled through, keeping things clean for the morning when guests would come again.
Everything had been going swimmingly—hah!— until we’d reached the dirt road behind the slides and wave pool. That was when we’d nearly been spotted. An employee of the park, or maybe a security guard, had nearly pinned us in his headlights as he fired up a truck and came around a bend ahead unexpectedly.
We’d managed to duck into the tall grasses on either side of the road, but it had been close. Now, we had to contend with more guards.
“Three,” he said.
“Vampires or human park security?”
“Vamps,” Aaron replied immediately, confident in his assessment.
“How can you tell?”
He looked back at me, not impressed at having his judgment questioned. I shrugged. Too late now, I’d already asked.
“The giant swords strapped to their backs and the fact they’re hanging around an old dumpster might have something to do with,” he said dryly, still keeping his voice low. “Instead of near the offices and within the park itself, where security guards might actually be somewhat useful.”
I nodded an apology.
“No time to waste,” I said. “Do it however you want, but take them out. We can’t get stuck on this side of the gate. We have to get through it and start making our way to Madrigal.”
Aaron nodded. He made a flurry of hand gestures to Jaxton, who then pointed at Alexi and Fred, motioning for them to accompany him. They crept farther along the wall of the building we were using for cover. Fred joined them, and one by one, he boosted them up onto the roof. The trio disappeared, with Fred rejoining us.
I didn’t hear a sound as the vampires got into position. I waited with my shoulder against the wall as Aaron carefully watched the guards.
My ears twitched with a trio of loud coughs, all sounding almost simultaneously.
“Go,” Aaron whispered, and he rushed to his feet. I followed. We raced across the ground while Jaxton and the others dropped from the roof to join us, weapons held across their torsos as we ran.
The suppressors on their assault rifles had kept the noise to a minimum. There were no shouts from anyone, and nobody seemed to hear the guards crumpling to the ground. All three were down and out, lying limply in various positions.
“Alexi,” Aaron said. “Deal with them.”
Alexi and Pieter started hauling the bodies into the overgrown bushes behind the shed. We couldn’t leave any sign of our passage. Nothing that would raise the alarm or give away our presence. To vampiresorhumans.
Half a dozen people running around with rifles in the dark would surely provoke alarm if anyone employed by the water park saw us, that was for sure. We didn’t want that. The goal was to ensure we had an open way back as well.
Once the bodies were gone and the piles of blood were covered by kicked-over dirt, Aaron turned our attention to the dumpster itself. It was one of those open-topped ones, where the thin side could also be opened, like a storage container. It was rusted to hell, the ochre flaking metal a darker orange than the bin itself, and based on the weeds and even a tree growing up around it, it hadn’t been moved in a long time.
The lock on the door, however, was shiny and new-looking. Aaron grabbed it, and with a flex of his arm, he tore the lock from the rusted dumpster. I saw that the lock hadn’t even been warped. He’d simply ripped hard enough that the anchors of the dumpster had come free.
