Shaniah was surprised at Hollister’s reaction to being pulled back from the saloon door. Most humans had horrible reflexes, and were she so inclined, he could have been dispatched with little effort on her part. But Hollister had reacted quickly, like a cat, rolling on the ground and rising smoothly, his guns still out, ready to fire. This human confused her. He was sure to die if he entered the saloon, but he seemed determined to do it anyway. All in pursuit of a child who was likely already dead or well on his way to death.
Hollister had been or still was-she wasn’t sure-a military man. She wondered if he considered it his duty to find and protect the child. Regardless, for him, entering this saloon would only result in his demise. And if she let him, she would be that much further from finding and stopping Malachi. She had to keep him out of the building.
Her plan almost worked. He circled to her right, his guns still pointed at her, not yet convinced she was here to kill him. She remained rooted to her spot.
“Are you going to move? Or do I have to shoot you?” he asked.
“You won’t shoot me,” she said.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Because if you kill me, you’ll never find Malachi.”
“Who’s Malachi?”
“The Archaic who nearly killed you in Wyoming four years ago. Tall. Long white hair.”
She was not expecting the reaction she got.
Hollister’s face turned white, then seconds later red again as the heat rose in him.
“It was you! You were there! Why?” he demanded, his voice low.
As he spoke, his left hand wavered and the Colt dropped slightly, no longer pointing at her chest.
Shaniah made her move.
Her plan worked, at least partly. She grabbed for the Colt, her hands moving like a cobra. She twisted both pistols from his hands, but the major shocked her again. Almost as if he’d been expecting it, he pulled the long knife from his belt and held it at her neck. She dared not move.
“I read somewhere your kind has an aversion to pointy sharp things,” he said.
She remained silent.
“Now. Very slowly turn the pistols around, handles first…”
“Major… you have to trust me. I know you are after Malachi. I can help you.”
“Help me what?”
“Find him.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“You shouldn’t. If I were you, I wouldn’t either.”
“Well then,” he said.
She didn’t like the feel of the steel at her neck. She was sure she could disarm, even defeat this man. But something held her back. He knew things about Archaics. The guns she held felt heavier and different in her hands. Unlike other firearms she had handled before. And she’d seen them kill the Archaics. He also understood that decapitation would kill her. What if the blade he held was blessed with an elemental? With even a slight cut, she could be weakened or even killed before she had a chance to counter him.
She sensed a new threat. There were more Archaics stalking them, and those inside the saloon were growing restless, stirring, tired of waiting for Hollister to enter the saloon. She and Hollister were outnumbered. The only advantage they held were that these were new initiates. Freshly turned, they acted like predators, a pack mentality overcoming them, hunting and feeding their only thoughts. Not strategy. Not separating Hollister and Shaniah from each other, making it easier to overwhelm them.
She remembered her turning. It had happened on the steppes of Eastern Europe almost fifteen hundred years ago. Her family were peasant farmers, and Turkish raiders constantly preyed on her village. Her husband, Dimitri, had been killed in a raid two years earlier. She was eighteen years old. They had never had children and she was nearly past the age to marry.
The raiders came during harvest, the villagers were simple people, not fighters, and they had no chance-doubly so, when they discovered that these raiders were not like the others. There was something wrong with them. They didn’t just rape and pillage; their faces were strange-and God help her, but they tore at the necks of her parents, her sisters, and their children, and drank their blood. And one of them fell on Shaniah and she felt the fangs sink into her, and a bloody finger was forced into her mouth.
At first nothing happened, then, in a few hours, she began to change. Some of the people of her village could not tolerate the change and died as the raiders drained them of their blood. But she and some of the others became wild with blood lust. They joined the pack and they hunted. And since then, she had been an Archaic. Only, unlike her brethren in her homeland, she kept her human memories. This puzzled the Old Ones. No Archaic had ever remembered their human life. It made them believe she was ideally suited to deal with the oncoming encroachment of humankind. It was one of the reasons she had been chosen leader over Malachi.
Shaniah knew it took time within the change for primal urges to recede and for intellectual capacity to reassert itself. Shaniah remembered her first weeks as an Archaic. She understood that, right now, the newly turned Archaics in the saloon could think of nothing but killing and blood. With time, they would control it; and the longer they survived, the easier it would become.
The major still hadn’t moved. His eyes never left hers. Something in his look reminded her of Dimitri, her long-dead husband, a human she should no longer remember. Hollister’s eyes were dark, like his had been. He was beginning to show a faint growth of beard on his face, most likely because he found shaving unimportant. His duty came first. At least that is what she imagined. It suited him, giving a clearer definition to his chiseled features.
She snapped back to the moment, silently cursing herself for letting the human distract her.
“Major, please. I beg of you. Trust me,” she said.
“Why?” he asked again.
“If you look slowly to your right, just slightly, you will see that there are Archaics standing in the street. We’ve only got a few seconds.”
Hollister pivoted his head, just as she’d said. Sure enough, he saw three Archaics in the street in his peripheral vision. He could hear the rasp of their breath.
He made a snap judgment.
“Can you shoot?” he asked her.
She nodded.
“The gun in your left hand… aim for the heart.”
The three Archaics leapt at them.