Burning Road

Cold- Part I

Warning: Strong and inflammatory language. This chapter may be inappropriate fr some readers.

"In the end we had no choice, but to fall back to our base of operations.  Keaton sent word to The Guild so there was nothing to do but wait... wait while a vampire lay siege to a small community.  It was the longest two days of my life.  James Winter, and Martin thought we should just cut our losses.  Vampires barely carried the blue dust The Guilds paid so much for, and our chances of bringing down the creature unscathed were lower than we wanted to admit.  If the people of Sumner didn't want us in their town then who were we to force the issue.  We are hunters.  The color of our skin doesn't change that.  Keaton felt the same way we did but he was a dutchman so the southerners treated him differently.  Traveling with us might catch him a beating, but we'd catch the noose.

In the end The Guild told us to stand down, and sent a team of all white men to deal with the monster of Sumner.  When those men didn't return someone spoke to the local sheriff, and arrange for safe passage.  Lot of good that did.

The Klan was waiting for us.  There we were trying to help them with a monster that left nothing but corpses and revenants in its wake, and all the people of Sumner could see was three ni****s and a ni***r lover.  They took Martin that first night, the vampire took four more victims.  We tried to do our jobs, but it was hard especially for me... Martin was my everything, and without him I was lost.

When they came for James Winter we fought back.  Those hooded devils left with their tails between their legs.  It was a victory, but it came with a price.  They'd beaten Keaton to death.  A southern white man lost his life for two black boys from New York.  We buried him in the woods west of Sumner and in the dead of night the vampire found us.  The hunters had become the hunted..."

Cali closed the book, unwilling to finish the entry.  She was already scared.  Lowering her spirits wouldn't help anyone.  When DotPrince called they'd just settled on dessert.  He was on the side of the road and needed a ride.  The alarm bells rang.  Cali knew something bad had happened, why else would he ditch his bike?  Cali'd let Mimi finish the pies while she paid the tab.  The pair jumped in the rental van, and rushed to his rescue.  The look in his eyes confirmed her gut feeling, something had gone wrong.

Cali had assumed he'd totaled his bike.  In retrospect she wished she'd been right.  A real demon, not some poor retail worker possessed by a black goo dickhead, an honest to god demon showed up at DotPrince's home.  The creature made threats towards his family and tried to hire him.  Of course Khouri said no, the heroes never worked with the villains unless there was a bigger villain.  Who knew how long before the demon came back, it probably wouldn't ask next time.

As if things weren't crazy enough, Littlehawk wanted to meet in the middle of nowhere under the pretext that it was a matter of life and death.  DotPrince was convinced something was wrong.  Littlehawk told him to bring Mimi along.  DotPrince was sure he'd never mentioned Miminda during their one phone conversation.  He found it fishy, and the implications weren't good.  If they couldn't trust The Guild then they were on their own.  That scared Cali as much as their demon problem.

"What is a Charlie Denver?" Mimi asked, giving voice to Cali's own thoughts.  She sat in the second row of their sixteen passenger van.  The first row had DotPrince's arsenal, and the candy rations Cali grabbed from 7-Eleven.

"Charlie is... an old friend, my oldest friend," DotPrince grumbled as he aggressively switched lanes.

"That means she's your only friend besides us.  The way you say friend sounds like the way you call Mimi a troll, so you probably think she's yumsy too," Cali observed.