Phantom Shadows

Almost there, David said. He had followed a couple of soldiers from the attack on the network to their base, but told only Seth its location.



I’m going to do a little recon, Seth announced.



David nodded.



Wings sprang from Seth’s back and his clothing fell away as he shifted forms and took to the air. The tips of his feathers brushed branches as he found a break wide enough to allow him freedom from the trees.



Once he flew high above the earth, he saw exactly what David had described: two buildings in the center of a clearing. One was a two-story brick building with few windows. The other was a steel hangar. The open door of the latter revealed a solitary vehicle—what appeared to be a broken-down Humvee.



A pool of asphalt formed a small parking lot beside the main building. Weeds slain by winter’s chill dotted the ground around it. A fence strung with razor wire circled all. But that fence boasted no guards. Nor did the gate—closed and padlocked—at the sole entrance.



Seth sailed past, then swooped around to backtrack. Surveillance cameras clung to the corners of the building, but he could detect no hum of electricity that would indicate they were functioning.



He listened carefully for a moment longer, then returned to David, who waited patiently in the shadows of the nearby forest.



“We have a problem,” he announced as he regained and clothed his form with a thought.



“What’s wrong?”



“No one is manning the gate. And I detected no heartbeats within the building.”



David frowned. “There were men there last night. Many of them.”



“Did you see them or did you hear their heartbeats?”



“Both.”



“So there’s no chance they could be blocking us?”



“No. Not unless they’ve developed a method of doing so within the past few hours. And I have no idea what they could do to block you.”



Seth hated surprises. He really did. They were so rarely good. “Well, let’s go ahead and see what happens.”



“Do you want to take the Texas approach?”



Seth thought about it. He just wasn’t sensing anything. “No. What do you say we simply take a stroll?”



David smiled. “It’s a nice blustery day for it.”



Laughing, Seth walked through the forest to the break in the trees with David by his side.



They paused as though by prior agreement.



“I don’t sense anything either,” David murmured. “The place has a totally different feel to it than when I was here before.”



They strode to the fence and climbed it like humans, careful to avoid the sharp razor wire. If anyone did keep watch through those surveillance cameras, all they would see is two unusually tall men trespassing.



Across the field, then over the blacktop they ambled. No mercenaries raced out to meet them. No bullets struck from concealed snipers. No guard dogs charged, barking and frothing at the mouth. No challenges were issued.



Instead birds chirped. Squirrels scuttled about in the detritus littering the nearby forest floor. A hawk forged a leisurely path through the blue sky above, its shadow scampering across the ground beneath it.



The front double doors of the building were glass, but not of the usual grade. Should someone aim an automatic weapon at them, the bullets would bounce off without so much as cracking it.



Seth and David each grasped a door handle and opened the doors. Unlocked.



David grimaced. “You smell that?”



Seth nodded. Death was not a subtle scent.



They stepped inside. The doors shushed closed behind them.



The heavy-duty white linoleum floor was streaked with dried blood and black boot scuffs. Two hallways were divided by a vacant desk topped with a bank of surveillance monitors, all dark.



Seth took the hallway on the left, David the one on the right. The thud of their boots hitting the floor echoed loudly in the silence. There seemed to be no electricity. The fluorescents overhead were dark. No heater droned. The temperature within the building nearly matched that outside. No heartbeat thumped, speeding at Seth’s approach. No breath stirred. No clothing rustled or weapons rattled.



His way dimly lit by the light streaming through the front doors, Seth reached an open doorway and peered inside.



A classroom?



The next doorway exposed a boardroom with a long table and cushy chairs. The next a clinic, blood-spattered and chaotic. Instruments and red-stained first aid materials were strewn across the floor and every other surface. Flies buzzed around the mess left behind.



The last room was a weight room.



On the opposite side of the hallway, a quartet of identical locked doors with what looked like mail slots gave beneath his strength. Reinforced steel walls. Titanium chains as big as his arms. Clearly, these were rooms meant to hold any vampires or immortals they captured. Two of the rooms were pristinely clean and showed no indication that they had ever been occupied.



The third and fourth . . .



Bastien’s vampires must have been held in there. Based on his visits with them, Seth guessed Joe had been in the third room. There were bloodstains on one wall that indicated the incarcerated vamp had repeatedly slammed his head into it. Bloody stripes marked the other walls where he had clawed them so hard his fingernails had ripped off. A pool of dried blood on the floor smelled of the virus.



It was a large stain. Large enough that Seth wondered if the vampire had bled out, finally finding peace in his own destruction.



The fourth room bore many bloodstains as well. But he didn’t think enough had been lost to kill Cliff.



You need to see this, David said.



Seth retraced his steps up the hallway and headed down the other. Open doors revealed an office, sleeping quarters, a cafeteria, and a lounge with games and a television.



David waited at the end of the hallway, just outside the last doorway.



The scent of death grew to stifling proportions as Seth approached.



He stepped inside.



The bodies of a dozen or so soldiers, all shot in the head, had been tossed into a pile in the center of the room.



Seth stared down into their unseeing eyes. “Why the hell would Emrys kill his own men?”



David stepped up beside him. “I recognize a few of them from the battle. That one there. Those two. I think this one, too.”



“The vampire king killed any of his followers who sowed dissent or spread doubt amongst the ranks. Perhaps these men rethought the wisdom of working for Emrys after coming face-to-face with immortals in battle.”



“Such is my guess.”



“Let’s search the rest of the building, then check the hangar.”



David nodded. “I’ll take the basement.”



“I’ll head upstairs.”



Whatever had filled the rooms upstairs had been removed. Only dust bunnies remained.



Seth heard David curse.



You’d better come down here, the other said.



David met Seth at the bottom of the stairs. The basement was as large as the other floors. Death floated on the stale air down here, too.



David motioned to the first open doorway.



Seth looked inside and felt as though he had stepped back in time to the day he had rescued Ami. A first glance revealed an operating room. A second uncovered the manacles and leather strap that would immobilize anyone unwillingly placed on the steel table’s surface. Whatever tools of torture the butchers had utilized had been removed, leaving only discarded scrubs, a few soiled towels, and a half-empty bottle of rubbing alcohol turned on its side.



“There are three more like this one,” David said and led Seth from the room.



Offices robbed of everything save battered desks and crappy chairs followed the torture chambers. Past those . . .



Seth stared at the bodies, shot execution style like the ones above, in the first cell. “These are civilians.”



“Yes. There are more.”



The dead in the basement included women and children. Some of the women still clutched their daughters or sons, their bodies curled around the little ones in an eternal gesture of protection.



“Let’s check the hangar.”



Aside from the disabled Humvee, the hangar boasted only oil stains and discarded lug nuts.



Seth took out his cell phone. “How are you doing with the daylight?”



David shrugged. “I can take another couple hours or so, more if I stay in the shade as much as possible.”



Seth nodded and dialed.



“Reordon,” a sleepy voice answered.



“I need to show you something.”



“Give me a second to throw on some clothes.”



Seth returned his phone to his back pocket.



“Think his men will be able to lift any prints?” David asked.



“They should. It looks like the mercenaries cleared out in a hurry. Hell, they didn’t even lock the front door.”



“While you go get Chris, I think I’ll search the place for trip wires or explosives. It seems odd that they would leave these bodies here for anyone to find.”



“Think they’re bait?”



“Could be. I’d hate for any of the network employees to lose a life or a limb when they arrive.”



“I’ll join you when we return. We can sweep the entire compound. If anything is here, you and I will find it.”



Chris was pulling on a peacoat when Seth teleported to his living room.



Seth glanced around. Chris’s home was the antithesis of David’s. While David’s was pristinely neat, Chris’s was all chaos, greasy pizza boxes, discarded clothes, and dirty dishes. Since Chris always kept his office neat, Seth wondered if the man wasn’t simply too damned busy to do housework.



“So . . .”



Chris moved some crap around on the coffee table and dug out a pile of small, brand-new spiral notebooks. “Yeah?”



“You ever consider having someone from the network’s cleaning crew come out here to tidy things up a bit?”



Chris grinned. “The clutter aggravating your OCD?”



Seth nodded. “It’s making me feel guilty as hell, too. Is it that you’re too busy to clean or too tired when you finally make it home?”