Author's Preface
The blacked-out heavy-duty pickup sat idling inside the main bay of High Country Diesel, its twin-turbo engine producing a low, guttural growl that sent a faint vibration through the concrete floor. Tools rattled against the workbenches, disturbed by the steady rhythm of the engine.
All six Vlastari were aboard.
Their dark tactical uniforms were concealed beneath reinforced ballistic vests, weapons secured within easy reach and pressurised helmets locked into place. The cabin was illuminated by a subdued red glow, reflecting faintly across six opaque face shields. Leather, gun oil and the faint chemical smell of the helmet seals filled the cramped interior.
Elena occupied the front passenger seat, her position as Shturman placing her responsible for navigation and operational coordination. A ruggedised tactical tablet rested across her thighs, its display illuminating the inside of her helmet with a network of roads, fuel points and estimated journey times.
Beside her, the Rukovoditel sat behind the wheel, gloved hands resting firmly against the leather steering wheel. She hadn't spoken since climbing aboard.
Behind them, the remaining four Vlastari sat in silence, checking their weapons and securing their equipment for the journey ahead. Fresh magazines were seated into chest rigs. Rifle slings were adjusted. A pair of sheathed Меч rested securely alongside the occupants.
They had travelled together many times before. There was little need for conversation.
Elena studied the route displayed on her tablet before opening the communications channel.
"Marshrut podtverzhdyon, Rukovoditel." (Route confirmed, Commander.)
The Rukovoditel turned her helmet slightly.
"Dokladyvay." (Report.)
"Pai-Bridge. Severnaya Indiana, mezhdu Etna Green i Mentone. Priblizitel'no tysyacha shest'sot mil' ot nashego tekushchego polozheniya. Ya vybrala marshrut s ispol'zovaniyem mezhshtatnykh magistraley, gde eto neobkhodimo, s perekhodom na vtorostepennye dorogi na poslednem uchastke. Osnovnaya dozapravka zaplanirovana v Ayove."
(Pai-Bridge. Northern Indiana, between Etna Green and Mentone. Approximately sixteen hundred miles from our current position. I've selected a route using interstate highways where necessary, with secondary roads for the final approach. Primary refuelling point is in Iowa.)
"Vremya?" (Time?)
"Dvadtsat' shest' do dvadtsati vos'mi chasov, s uchetom dozapravki i proverki snaryazheniya. Mozhem sokratit' vremya, yesli sostoyaniye dorog pozvolit."
(Twenty-six to twenty-eight hours, allowing for refuelling and equipment checks. We can reduce that if road conditions permit.)
The Rukovoditel considered the information for a moment.
"Bez ostanovok, krome neobkhodimykh." (No unnecessary stops.)
"Ponяла." (Understood.)
She reached towards the centre console and pressed the transmitter.
A warning light flashed above the windscreen. Somewhere beyond the cab, the overhead locking mechanism disengaged. With a heavy metallic groan, the reinforced steel bay door began rolling upwards, exposing the cold desert night beyond.
The Rukovoditel released the brake and moved the gear selector into drive.
The pickup rolled forward, its suspension shifting beneath the combined weight of six armoured passengers and their equipment. Its headlights swept across the access road before the heavy vehicle cleared the garage and turned towards the highway.
Behind its darkened windows, six Vlastari travelled in silence.
No insignia. No markings. Nothing to distinguish them from another commercial vehicle crossing the American interior.
Six predators hidden inside an ordinary machine.
Nearly sixteen hundred miles separated them from their destination and somewhere in northern Indiana, Richard Lemington had no idea they were coming.
---
The back garden was filled with the warm, rich scent of woodsmoke, charred seasoned beef, and glowing briquettes.
Zhan stood by the heavily rusted iron barbecue with the practiced flair of a master chef, wielding a pair of long stainless-steel tongs. He carefully flipped Ling's thick, hand-pressed homemade burgers and sizzling hot dogs, the fat spitting satisfyingly against the white-hot coals.
A short distance across the grass, Richard leaned back against a timber post, taking a slow breath of the crisp air. He watched the family dog, Sunstar, enthusiastically going through her full repertoire spinning in tight circles, dropping into a quick down-stay, and lifting a heavy paw with frantic urgency whenever Zhan playfully gestured toward her with a cooked sausage link.
From the open kitchen window, the sharp clink of glass and the slosh of pouring ice water signaled that Ling was busy inside concocting a fresh batch of drinks for everyone.
Over by the garden bench, Penny sat nestled in the cool autumn sun, holding baby Ruby gently cradled in her arms, swaying her softly while the afternoon chatter hummed around them.
"Looks good on you," Richard said, sitting down beside her.
"What? A baby? Yeah, right." Penny scoffed, glancing down at Ruby.
"I'm being serious, Pen. You're a natural."
Penny looked at him, momentarily unsure whether he was taking the piss.
"Don't start getting sentimental on me, Rich."
Richard gave her a faint smile. "Wouldn't dream of it."
---
"Richard," Penny's voice drifted through the quiet hallway, soft and questioning.
They had been in Pai-Bridge for two whole days, and Richard felt as though he were treading water in a fog. No leads. No answers. No clear direction. Just a heavy, restless inertia while he got swept up in the domestic rhythms of Ling's suburban life.
His mornings were spent pounding the pavement, jogging through the cool autumn mist that hung over the neighborhood driveways. His afternoons dissolved in the back garden alongside Ling, the metallic shhhk of steel and the sharp crack of wooden practice spars rhythmically breaking the silence as they drilled forms until his arms throbbed.
The rest of the hours blurred together. Zhan was out at work for most of the day, leaving the spacious house quiet. Chan, Ling's quiet nephew, was a ghost in his own home. He would shuffle in through the front door late in the afternoon, barely muttering a greeting before slinking upstairs and locking himself inside his bedroom acting out the universal, tight-lipped isolation of a teenager avoiding the world.
"Yeah," Richard called back, tossing his hand towel onto a chair as he stepped out of the hallway.
"I think you might want to see this," Penny said, her voice dropped low and tight.
She was standing in the dim light of the front parlor, clutching a warm mug of tea with both hands while staring at the glow of the television set. On the screen, a news banner read LIVE FROM ST. JUDE'S ABBEY. A yellow-jacketed reporter stood outside the police tape, her voice barely carrying over the grinding roar of heavy machinery as demolition crews began clearing the charred, hollowed-out carcass of the once-grand abbey.
A hydraulic claw crunched into a high stone archway, sending centuries-old brickwork tumbling into a cloud of grey dust. With every thundering impact, a heavy pit of guilt sank deeper into Richard's stomach.
Tom.
The local authorities and the media still hadn't a single clue who the body in the rubble was. The thermite grenade had done its job rather too well-leaving behind only slag, fused iron, and scorched ash. To the news crew, it was an unexplained structural collapse. To Richard, it was the fresh grave he'd left behind.
On the television, a high stone wall caved inward, crashing onto the rubble below in a thunderous plume of dust. But the reporter's commentary registered as nothing more than distant hum to Richard. His whole focus narrowed into a sharp, icy point on the background of the shot. Standing just behind the perimeter barricade, partially obscured by the heavy diesel exhaust of an excavator, was a figure in a fluorescent hi-vis work jacket. A face Richard knew was dead. A face that had to be dead.
> Malloy Featherton.
She was a Level 4-far from an elder, but brutally clever and sharp enough to play five steps ahead. Four years ago in a soaked Massachusetts alley, she had nearly gutted Richard, leaving him coughing up blood before he finally managed to sink a silver blade between her ribs.
He had watched her collapse. He had felt the kill and yet, there she was-standing under the grey daylight, watching the demolition of St. Jude's with a cold, knowing smirk. The parlor door creaked as Ling stepped into the room, tossing a damp hand towel over her shoulder.
"Ling," Richard said, his breath hitching as he pointed a trembling finger at the glowing screen. "Look at the corner of the frame."
Ling stopped dead in her tracks, her dark eyes flicking from Richard's pale face to the glowing television screen.
She stepped closer, setting her hand towel on the arm of the sofa, her gaze narrowing as she tracked the figure in the hi-vis jacket standing past the police tape. The camera panned slightly as the reporter continued speaking, but Ling's sharp, electric-blue hair barely shifted as her head tilted, analyzing every detail of the woman on screen.
"Malloy Featherton," Ling said softly, her voice dropping into a low, dangerously calm tone. "You told me you turned her into ash in Worcester."
"I did," Richard insisted, his jaw clenched tight as he stared at the screen. "I drove seven inches of polished silver straight through her chest. I watched her go down, Ling. I know what a dead vamp looks like."
"Then either she's got a twin sister working site security in Massachusetts," Ling replied, her dual silver blades clicking softly against their scabbards as she shifted her weight, "or someone pulled a fast one on you four years ago."
Penny looked back and forth between the two of them, her hands tightening around her teacup. "Who is she?"
"An old headache," Ling said, never taking her eyes off the broadcast. "Smart, "That means nothing to a Level 4, Pen," Ling explained, her eyes still glued to the screen. "If they cover up enough, they can manage an hour or two in daylight. For females, it's easier, heavy makeup, wide collars, UV block. It's a trick, but it works."
Richard heard her words, but they sounded muffled, as if passing through yards of thick water. His focus had drifted completely away from the television set, pulled toward the lace curtains of the front window.
Across the quiet street, standing on the grass verge, was the old woman.
The exact same old woman from the postal square two mornings ago. Same pastel pink sweater. Same faded trousers. Same unblinking, heavy stare directed straight at Ling's front door. A cold wave rushed through Richard's limbs. The room seemed to shrink, the walls crushing inward like the sides of an iron box as his chest tightened.
Then, the grounded weight of the parlor slipped away entirely, replaced by a sudden, jarring sensation of weightlessness. In his mind's eye, he was suspended high above the quiet rooftops of Pai-Bridge, looking down on the neighborhood like a silent observer. He could see the ordinary suburban life unfolding across the block-neighbors tending to their gardens, children chasing a ball across a lawn, a woman hanging fresh white sheets out on a clothesline in the autumn breeze.
From that strange, elevated vantage, he watched the familiar rhythm of the house play out below: Zhan stepping out the front door and driving off to work, Chan slinking down the walk with his backpack slung over one shoulder on his way to school...
And then, turning tightly onto the edge of the quiet residential street, the heavy, shadow-dark frame of a pickup truck.
Then the world below lurched forward into a horrific nightmare.
The heavy black pickup pulled to a smooth stop outside the house. Six tall, black-clad figures spilled out of the doors with mechanical speed and precision. In the next breath, the front door was kicked off its hinges, and the peaceful suburban silence shattered under a deafening storm of automatic gunfire, breaking glass, and muffled screams.
Three short, brutal minutes later, the gunfire ceased. The six dark figures calmly exited the wrecked doorway, boarded the black pickup, and sped away, leaving only thin plumes of smoke curling through the shattered windows.
Down the street, lawnmowers stopped. Neighbors peered over fences, shouting in panic and scrambling for their phones to dial the police, their voices distant and panicked in the cold air and then, with a sickening, dizzying jerk, the vision snapped into black.
----
"Richard... Richard!"
He felt a firm hand shaking his shoulder, dragging him upward through thick layers of darkness.
"Richard... Richard!"
He blinked, the world came crashing back. Ling was kneeling beside him, a deep, heavy frown cut across her forehead. Her dark eyes were searching his face with a rare, naked anxiety.
"Oh, thank God. Richard," she breathed out, her tone dropping its usual sharp edge.
He felt hands bracing his back and under his arms, helping guide him up into a sitting position on the cool grass.
"You okay?" Ling asked softly.
"Yeah... yeah, I'm okay," Richard muttered, rubbing a hand over his face. His skin felt slick with cold sweat, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird.
"What happened?"
"We were just talking, and then you just blacked out. Folded right up."
"Yeah... sorry," he rasped, scraping a thumb through his tangled hair as his mind spun, trying to anchor itself back to reality.
"What's the last thing you remember?"
"Erm..." Richard scratched the back of his neck, staring blankly at the ground between his boots. "The news report."
Ling tilted her head, her blue hair shifting in the breeze. "What news report?"
"You know... on the telly in the front room. About St. Jude's Abbey. Malloy Featherton in the hi-vis jacket standing behind the police tape."
Ling stared at him in complete, dead silence.
"Abbey? Report?" Ling said slowly, her voice dropping into an unsettling register. "Richard... nobody's watching the TV. You're in the backyard."
Richard froze.
He looked around. The TV was gone. The parlor was gone. He was sitting on the damp lawn behind the house.
A few feet away, the iron barbecue let out a soft hiss of coal dust. Zhan was standing by the grill, tongs held loosely in his hand, looking over his shoulder with deep concern. Over on the wooden bench, Penny was sitting quietly, gently swaying baby Ruby in her arms, her eyes wide with worry as she watched him.
The entire news broadcast the abbey demolition, Malloy Featherton, the old woman on the curb, and the black truck repeating its brutal three-minute assault on the house had all happened inside his head while he lay unconscious on the grass.
Or had it?"What time is it?" Richard asked, pressing his palms against his temples as he tried to anchor himself.
"A little after eight," Ling said softly, watching him with razor-sharp intensity.
"Ugh, my head..." Richard muttered. His vision swam in dizzying circles, the green grass and suburban sunlight tilting on a violent axis before slowly settling back into place.
"Here," Zhan said, stepping over and offering a tall glass of ice water. "You okay now, buddy?"
Richard took the glass, but he couldn't drink. Down in the deep pit of his stomach, something cold and heavy flipped over that exact same sickening knot of gut-level instinct he had felt right before everything exploded at the abbey. The quiet signal that hit his nervous system when something was wrong. Really wrong.
He stared up at Ling, then turned his gaze straight onto Zhan.
"They're coming," Richard said, his voice flat, dead, and utterly devoid of doubt.
Zhan frowned, looking back and forth between Richard and his wife. "Who? Who's coming?"
"I don't know," Richard rasped, pushing himself up from the turf as the ice rattled in his glass. "But they're coming. We need to leave. Right now."
Zhan blinked, stunned. "But... but Richard, the food is on the grill, Chan's upstairs, I have to-"
"No buts, Zhan!" Richard snapped, his eyes wide and burning with pure, unadulterated urgency. "We get everyone in the car and we get out of this house now!"
---
Ling, baby Ruby, Chan, and Sunstar were all loaded into Zhan's car, the engine already humming in the driveway while Richard and Penny threw their gear into the back of the Dodge. Richard leaned through the driver's window, staring Zhan dead in the eye with white-knuckled intensity.
"No cards, just cash. Got it?" Richard said, his voice low and tight. "Draw out as much as you possibly can, then high-tail it out of town. And absolutely no phones."
"My girl" came the unmistakable, sulky whine from Chan in the backseat.
"Will live."
"Your not serious are you?"
Richard snapped his head toward the teenager, his expression stone-cold. "Deadly serious, Chan. And whatever you do, don't head for any established safe houses. Stay off the grid."
Zhan's hands tightened around the steering wheel, his face pale as the sudden reality of the situation crashed down on him. "When can we come back?"
"Give it four days," Richard said, tapping the car door twice. "If it's clear, you'll know. Now go!"
Richard stood at the end of the gravel driveway, hands resting heavily on his hips as he watched Zhan's car pull out into the quiet street. Zhan offered one last weary smile through the glass, raising a hand in a hesitant wave before accelerating away, taking Ling, Chan, baby Ruby, and Sunstar to safety.
The taillights vanished around the corner, leaving the suburban road dead silent again.
"What now?" Penny asked, her voice cutting through the autumn chill as she stepped up beside the Dodge, her dark eyes searching his face.
Richard didn't look at her immediately. He stared down the empty street, the lingering shadow of his vision still fresh behind his eyelids.
"Now, Penny... you leave."
"Leave?" she echoed, taking a sharp step back.
"Yeah."
"Why?"
Richard turned slowly to face her, his jaw set tight, the faint glint of dark resolve in his eyes.
"Because in the next few hours, I'm gonna do something stupid. I just hope Ling's got insurance"
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