Dianne Duvall: Darkness Rises

He reached into his bag again and drew out an iPad. “Here’s a satellite image of the area,” he said, bringing it up for them.

Seth set the tablet on the desk so David could examine it, too, and leaned forward. “Did one of your new contacts send you this?”

“No. I’m leery of risking their involvement.”

Seth hesitated to say anything. Chris still labored under the ass-load of guilt piled on his shoulders after discovering that his former contacts and their spouses and children, had all been either tortured to death or shot execution style by the last mercenary group they had fought in an attempt to extract information and send a message. But one of the things that made Chris indispensable to the Immortal Guardians was his ability to recruit contacts in very high places. Contacts who had been invaluable in the past. “Chris—”

“I know. I’ll get there. I will. If I thought lives depended on it now, I would risk it in a heartbeat,” he said.

“Then where did you get this?” Seth tapped the satellite image of a building surrounded by forest.

“This is a map I got off the Internet. You can get satellite images of just about any place on the net by typing in the address or GPS coordinates, but the images are often out of date.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” Seth murmured. “I don’t have time to explore crap on the Internet.”

David nodded. “And I’d rather read a good book when I find a few free minutes.”

“Admit it,” Chris said. “You’re both just a couple of old farts who are technologically challenged.”

“True.”

“Admitted without shame.”

Chris smiled and shook his head. “You can zoom out or in by pressing these buttons.”

David pressed the zoom out minus sign a couple of times and studied the area. “So this is probably out of date? The mercenaries could have expanded the structure or added security features?”

“Yes. This looks pretty generic, so I think you can pretty much bet on it. If they transport the mercenaries blindfolded and in windowless vehicles, I’m pretty damned sure they’re going to have every kind of security and surveillance feature they can afford.”

Seth caught David’s gaze. “Shall we go have a look?”

“I’m game.”

Chris slumped farther down in his chair. “I’ll wait here until you get back. Give me a call if you get into trouble.”

“Go lie down,” David urged him, rising.

Chris shook his head, eyelids heavy. “I’m good here.”

“You said it yourself,” Seth pressed. “We’re a couple of old farts, not youngsters.”

“Several thousand years your senior,” David added.

“So you don’t have to baby us,” Seth finished.

“To quote Sheldon and Melanie: Says you.”

The elders laughed and shook their heads. Striding from the room, they headed down the hallway, out the front door, and into bright afternoon sunlight.

“Teleport or fly?” Seth offered.

David closed his eyes and turned his face up to the sun. “Fly.”

That had been his choice as well. Flying was a real stress reliever.

The shadows they cast on the brick path morphed into that of large vultures as he and David shifted form and took to the sky.

North Carolina was a beautiful state. The area above which Seth and David soared boasted rolling hills and meadows, corn fields, hay fields, and forest. Rivers and streams wended through the countryside like arteries, feeding numerous lakes and ponds. Wildlife abounded. And the two eldest immortals were not the only “carrion birds” surfing the breeze.

A vulture that shared their glossy black wings joined them, searching the ground below to see what had caught their attention and regarding them curiously.

Inwardly, Seth smiled.

I needed this , David said.

I did, too.

The trip did not take long by air. Soon the land beneath them began to mimic the satellite image Chris had shown them. There were differences, as he had warned. Fewer trees, thanks to logging and a new housing development under construction that was still in the skeletal stage. The mercenaries probably wouldn’t like that. They wouldn’t want neighbors so close to their home base.

That must be it , he said as the thick trees beyond parted, revealing a building that looked quite different from the one in the dated satellite image.

The mercenaries had doubled its width, but the different-colored roofs—old and new—allowed Seth to discern the original structure. The flowering trees in front of it had been removed, leaving a large open area and a small parking lot. Two large hangars rested like small football stadiums nearby. Barracks that reminded him of those their previous mercenary enemy had employed formed rows between the main building and the hangars. A nice collection of Black Hawk helicopters rested on helipads beside the hangars, in which Seth glimpsed armored personnel carriers and Humvees.

All was surrounded by a twenty-foot fence woven throughout and topped with razor wire.

As with the other PMC encampment, one road led in and out and required inspection by guards armed with automatic weapons.

Déjà vu , David uttered.

Seth agreed. It was all very similar to Emrys’s base, to which Donald and Nelson had been frequent visitors.

Do you think all mercenary bases look like this? David asked.

I know little about them , Seth confessed.

Each building bore surveillance cameras. The main building bore two different-colored bricks where Seth guessed they had replaced windows with walls. The front door was steel.

More soldiers, bearing automatic weapons, walked the grounds and the perimeter.

I’m getting a bad feeling, David said.

So was Seth. The feeling that they had indeed screwed up and missed something. The similarities were too numerous. This base was too reminiscent of the other. Coupled with the knowledge that these men had acquired the tranquilizer, Seth could only conclude that—

We must have missed something, David announced grimly.

Yes.

Do you think it’s Donald and Nelson?

Their memories were wiped, so if it is them, they’re operating on whatever information the hard drive or whatever gadget we missed contained.

Which could be a little or a lot.

Their feathered companion swung away just as a scent reached Seth.

You smell that? he asked.

Death.

They banked, circling around to follow the vulture to its feast.

“Are those vultures?” he heard a guard down below ask.

“Yeah. I told you the body was too close. If the wind changes it’s gonna smell like shit.”

The vulture led them to the body of a mercenary who had been shot in the head.

Seth and David joined the bird in circling above it.

Do you think it’s one of the men Lisette, Étienne, and Krysta tagged? David asked.

I’m not sure. Why kill only one of them?

And, if they killed him because they found the tracking device, why are they still here? Why aren’t they all bugging out?

Let’s widen our circles so we can fly over without raising suspicion and pick their brains. Perhaps they’re busy designing a trap if they think we know where they are.

Reading the minds of the guards from this distance was a challenge, simply because maintaining this form already took a lot of concentration, but both elders could do it.

You weren’t exaggerating, David said. Had they been in their usual forms, Seth knew David would be shaking his head. They know almost nothing about the outfit that employs them.