Consecrated Ground


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER 1
 The gnarled oak greeted Joan like an old friend. Half a mile from the Calvert town limits, its lowest thickest limb marked the curve in the road just as she remembered, but she ignored the sign to slow down. 
 If she did, the three men blocking her side of the two-lane road would probably try to stab her tires.
 One was armed with only a menacing look, but the others held a crowbar and a knife, respectively. One was Black like Joan but with short, thick matted natural hair, and shorter than her near six feet in height. Crowbar guy had a few inches on her. All three of them were too grimy and underfed to gauge their ages any better than between twenty-five and forty.
 They stood in direct sunlight, so they weren’t vampires. Even cocky new vampires who thought nothing could touch them avoided the sun. Ultraviolet rays made dead flesh decompose faster. These men were most likely vampire thralls, human minions under vampire control.
 “Well, Luther,” Joan said, her SUV ever the patient listener. “It’s always somethin’, right?”
 Joan revved the biodiesel engine in warning, but they didn’t budge. This wasn’t the first time she regretted making the trip. Coming back to Calvert had never been part of her plan but circumstances had changed. Now a two-hour drive inland from the Oregon coast had somehow ballooned to five, and she wanted to be done already.
 Maybe these losers would move, and she wouldn’t have to clean anything from Luther’s grille today. A behemoth of a Range Rover customized to travel through dangerous lands, Luther wouldn’t stop a vampire horde, but it would protect her against one or two attackers—or all of these guys, who didn’t look like much of a threat. Filthy clothes hung loose on their malnourished limbs, another sign of their dwindling humanity. Vampires never seemed to feed their humans well. The irony might have been funny under different circumstances.
 Crowbar tried to knock out a headlight, but the cages on the grille prevented that sort of thing. The one with the knife fell over in an attempt to stab a tire, then rolled clear when she sped up.
 Joan glanced in the rearview mirror. The short, unarmed guy helped his fallen comrade to his feet. Would they give up and leave, or lie in wait for the next traveler? This close to the county line marking the outskirts of her hometown, they were bound to run into the town watch. 
 She chalked the whole event down to a wide, boring miss. Today was a bad day for a fight anyway. Who knew what was waiting for her in Calvert after all this time? 
 Joan pressed on the gas pedal.
 Then the dog showed up.
 Even for a Siberian husky he was large, with black, gray, and white fur warring for dominance over his coat. He should have been lumbering down the highway, as big as he was, but all that muscle raced in spectacular symmetry. 
 The dog passed Joan as he ran in the opposite direction, bearing down on the enemy behind her.
 In the rearview, he leapt for the neck of the human thrall with the knife and took the man down in one clean pounce. Crowbar raised his weapon with obvious intent.
 Joan hit the brakes so hard, the tires screeched in protest. She shifted into reverse.
 A honk of the horn distracted them from the dog. She jacked the wheel to one side before parking Luther at an angle in the lane, then opened the door and leapt to the road without her gun. A ranged battle was always better, one where the enemy never got the chance to touch her, but if she shot her semiautomatic pistol into this mess, she might hit the dog. 
 Instead, she drew a six-inch black powder-coated Bowie from the worn leather sheath at her thigh. 
 Knife Guy lay on the ground wrestling with the dog, thankfully forgetful that he held a weapon. The amount of blood leaking from his neck suggested he was losing. Crowbar came at Joan, but she blocked his overhead swing with one arm. She swept her other elbow at his jaw. He grunted in pain and fell back but didn’t drop the crowbar.
 Shorty moved in, his fists raised like a boxer’s, but without gloves one solid punch would break his hand. Joan tried not to roll her eyes in the middle of a fight.
 She tapped her tongue twice against the roof of her mouth and puffed a burst of air in his direction. A small cloud of mist appeared in front of his face, and he pulled back in surprise. She almost felt bad for him. The chances these guys had ever faced a war witch were slim, and even basic battle maneuver spells—ones that didn’t require incantations—would give her an advantage.
 “It’s okay if you want to forsake your masters,” she said. “I swear I won’t tell.” Maybe she could end this without killing any of them. Human thralls deserved pity—no matter how they’d ended up in vampire clutches.
 None of them had her level of training, but it was still three against one. Against two, if she counted the dog, who had scrambled away from the guy on the ground when he grabbed at an ear hard enough to make the dog yowl. 
 Crowbar had long greasy hair and a thick, filthy beard. Thanks to her elbow hit, one of his lips was split and bleeding. He adjusted his grip and came at her again. Knife Guy moved more slowly, looking grislier by the second as the blood flowed down his front. Shorty lurched into any gap where he’d fit, even if he didn’t seem to know what he was doing.
 It was madness in close quarters as she hit them