by C. T. Phipps
I looked at him, stunned. “Seriously?”
“I didn’t make my fortune by wasting money,” Thoth said.
“You spent two million dollars on a blood fountain with lesbian mermaids in it,” I said, stretching out my hands in front of me. I remembered that purchase well since Thoth had invited us out to his country estate to unload it. Apparently, part of my duties as bellidix included helping him move stuff.
Yukie looked at me strangely. “Lesbian mermaids?”
“They were statues,” I explained.
“No, I got that,” Yukie said.
“You never know in this town,” I said, honestly.
“That was a gift,” Thoth said, picking up his walking stick. “Also art. Still, your plan is possibly workable. I am one of the richest vampires in the world.”
Thoth was probably exaggerating on his financial status. He was rich but not that rich. Then again, maybe he wasn’t. Vampires were, at least on paper, the richest minority in the world. Dozens of billionaires and thousands of millionaires. Even bigger dollars and cents men than the Saudi Royal Family. They’d managed to pony up a trillion dollars in cash to rescue the United States economy during the 2008 financial crisis.
Supposedly.
The truth was vampires had never been as rich as they claimed and a huge amount of the money they put back into the economy had come from American businesses in the first place. Some people suggested the undead had even engineered the crisis, but I blamed bad housing loans for that. Either way, it was financial leverage, and plenty of undead were scrambling to get their share of it once they were out in the open.
Voivodes who could just mesmerize the tax man away before now had to deal with the government taking their cut. There were also hundreds of poor young vampires for every rich older-than-dirt one. It was part of the reason why New Detroit was such a big deal since it allowed the undead to launder their fortunes and cover up centuries of financial misdeeds. It still pissed me off despite the fact I was now on the other side of the bloodsuckers draining the economy. Oh, and I was fighting the Devil’s top general.
“Glad we have some kind of plan,” I muttered. “You still with us, Yukie? Gog isn’t your fight.”
“He’s responsible for the death of my charge,” Yukie said, still acting like anyone cared about Rebecca Plum’s death. “However, he is also kin to Magog and thus a valid target. Destroying my grandfather, a king of hell, will make me the most famous assassin in the world.”
“Is that a good thing? I kind of think being a famous assassin isn’t doing it right,” I said. “I mean, Oswald, Carlos the Jackal, and Booth are the big names but only because they were caught—”
Yukie just stared at me. “You just never shut up, do you?”
I pointed at her. “It’s your ecstasy meets LSD blood, girl. Not me.”
“I highly doubt that,” Yukie said.
“Kennedy was actually killed by—” Thoth started to say as he was interrupted by a knocking at the recording studio door.
It was Sam. She was wearing a frantic look on her face. She kept beating on the door, and Yukie walked over to let Sam in then shut it and locked it behind her.
“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to stop anything that could threaten us,” I said.
Sam shot me an unhappy look. “It’s not you I’m worried about. I’m a squishy wizard, remember?”
“Right.”
“What’s wrong, Sam?” Thoth said, sounding surprisingly tender. I didn’t think those two were together, but there was a definite respect there he didn’t show many of his people. Maybe it was the fact both could warp the fabric of reality with their brain.
“It’s the BOSS agents,” Sam said, breathing heavily. “It’s bad.”
“You mean aside from the fact they’re probably going to arrest us all. Maybe before we’re left in a cell with a window facing the sunrise?” I suggested.
“That wouldn’t hurt me,” Thoth said.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to risk it,” I said, looking at him. “Because if that doesn’t work, they might leave us without blood for a few months so they can justify shooting us up with explosive rounds. Trust me, I have a lot of bad experiences with cops.”
“I’m familiar with the problem,” Thoth said.
“Yes,” Sam said, looking irritated. “Much, much worse.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked, suddenly paying attention.
“They’re Hollowed,” Sam said, as if revealing we were in the midst of a bunch of Al-Qaeda terrorists.
You could have heard a pin drop in the room.
“Oh for hell’s sake,” I muttered. “For those of us who aren’t spending their nights pouring over dusty old tomes?”
“You’re familiar with the story of Faust, Peter?” Thoth asked, not entirely certain.
“Yeah, dude sells his soul to the Devil,” I said, frowning. “It ends poorly for Satan because he never does well in these bargains.”
“Sometimes,” Thoth said, frowning. “Unfortunately, the act of making an infernal compact is not a revocable act in real life. Once you pledge yourself to an archdemon, they usually claim your soul instantaneously and replace it with a lesser demon. The resulting creature will look, talk, sound, and even act like the person they once were but they are wholly evil.”
“Which means?”
“In this context, they are incapable of disobeying their demonic masters,” Thoth said. “An army of perfect obedience because they possess no free will and only the malevolent will to do whatever they are commanded to—no matter how heinous.”
“So, they’re a bunch of demonic Terminators,” I said. “Absolutely will not stop until we’re dead.”
“Thankfully, they’re no tougher than their human counterparts,” Thoth replied. “Their patrons can lend them supernatural powers or even teach them magic, but it is their role as doomsday cultists that makes them dangerous.”
I felt a headache coming on, which was biologically impossible for a vampire. “Just so we’re clear, the Feds investigating us are answering to Satan?”
Thoth adopted a harsh expression. “So it seems.”
“Yeah,” Sam, looked between us. “Every last one of them has made a soul pact and has had their spirit replaced. We’re surrounded by a good twenty to thirty Hollowed.”
I cursed. “How the hell did Gog convince a bunch of good old boy right wing nutjobs to sell their souls?”
“It’s happened before,” Thoth said, frowning. “Majestic-12 and the Men in Black were completely corrupted before being purged by the Star Chamber. Many fundamentalist churches have their leaders make the pledge as the literal existence of the Devil is almost a relief for many struggling with their faith.”
I pulled out my Desert Eagle and checked my ammo. I still had a nearly-full magazine. “What’s the chance they’re going to let us out of here alive?”
“Slim,” Thoth said. “We walked into a trap.”
Yuki placed her hand on the hilt of her katana. “I’m not afraid of a bunch of humans.”
“Hey!” Sam said.
“You don’t count,” Thoth said as if he was paying her a compliment.
Which, from his perspective, he was.
“Killing a bunch of federal agents isn’t the best way to make sure vampiredom lives to see another sunset. As bad killing Rebecca Plum looked, it’s going to be worse to have us suddenly looking like terrorists. My solution? We all just run really, really fast for the stairs with the vampires pulling up the back. We can take any bullets the bad guys can toss at us.”
“Unless they’re blessed or enchanted like all bullets BOSS agents have are,” Thoth pointed out.
I blinked. “Okay, I’m an idiot.”
“Yes,” Sam said. “Especially since you have the power to stop time.”
I looked over at her. “Stopping time? No. Slowing down time? Yes. I also point out that doing it on one person is easy. Doing it on a room? Multiple people? Sorry, you need Do
ctor Who for that kind of craziness.”
“In the show, he’s just the Doctor, not Doctor Who,” Sam said.
Yuki felt her face. “God, I am trapped by the federal government with an army of supernatural nerds.”
“Says the girl straight from an anime,” Sam muttered.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?” Yukie asked, ignoring she was a beautiful white-haired werefox assassin.
“Because it’s true,” I said. “Okay, listen, we need to just kill these bitches. Any objections?”
“I object to the word bitch,” Sam said. “It’s derogatory and sexist. It should only be used to refer to dogs and werewolves.”
“One problem at a time,” Thoth said.
I nodded. “Then let’s do that.”
The intercom spoke above us. “Peter Stone, we have your slave. If you do not come out here to get him, we will cut off his head then set the remains on fire.”
“That’ll kill me, right?” David asked, his voice coming over the intercom from behind whoever was speaking.
“Yes,” the man speaking said.
“Dammit,” I said. “Well, I know what I’m doing in that one minute.”
I’d already gotten David killed once. Despite the fact he was the shittiest servant ever, that he disrespected me at every turn, and the fact he’d taken to eaten human flesh—I wasn’t going to lose him again. He was my friend, my brother, and there was no way in hell I was going to let Gog’s literally goddamned cult kill him.
“Peter—” Thoth started to say.
I kicked off the door of the recording studio then charged out. “This is how we do it Downtown!”
That was when the blessed bullets started flying.
Chapter Twenty
I pulled on every single bit of blood in my body and used it to power my time powers. The resulting effect was full-on Chow Yun Fat bullet time.
Time slowed down to a crawl around me with the sight of the Hollowed standing outside of the recording studio. There were three federal agents dressed like typical Men in Black with black suits, sunglasses, shoes, the works. They had their pistols drawn and one of them managed to fire but the bullet moved so slow, I was able to step out of the path of it then aimed at his head before firing.
My bullet moved quickly until it was about three feet from me then slowed down. Still, it went through the front of the BOSS agent’s head, creating a beautiful crimson spray. His friends managed to fire another two shots that I ducked under before getting close to them and firing directly into the bottom of their heads.
“Lobby scene from The Matrix, Smith!” I shouted.
Okay, that sounded lame even to me.
I wanted to grab one of the agents and drink their blood dry. Whenever I had the opportunity to kill someone, I did my best to drink their blood. I didn’t want to believe I was killing people for their blood but just being efficient. However, knowing how much I wanted to drink up the viscera flying around me—I felt ashamed.
Thoth and Yuki followed behind me, slower than I was moving but faster than any normal human would under the circumstances. Yuki had her katana drawn while Thoth had a sword made of blood in his hands. A miasma of red mist surrounded Thoth and Yuki both, which I assumed was some of his blood sorcery and a protection spell. I should have waited for him to cast some around me. I didn’t see Sam during this but suspected she was going to be hanging back and doing enchantments from a distance.
Wizards.
That was when a seven-foot-tall bat-eared deformed werewolf came around the corner of the hallway, opening its mouth and breathing out a column of green flame. The thing was, in the wolfman form of his kind and moving at a slow pace but not nearly slow enough to not be dangerous. I managed to duck under the fire, only for it to hit Thoth and Yuki’s protection spell, splattering against it like a wall.
“WTF!” I said, lifting my pistol and firing a half-dozen shots into the creature. I might as well have been using a squirt gun since they pounded into the creature’s chest, only for it to cross the distance between us and grab me by the shoulders. I could smell the hairy thing’s fetid breath against my face, and the guy could use a Tic-Tac. It was like rotted meat mixed with brimstone and almost as bad as the fact it looked ready to bite my face off.
“Duuuuucck,” Thoth said behind me, his speech slurred.
I ducked, pulling myself out of the werewolves’ grip and tearing my shirt. The creature was then impaled by two shards of blood that stabbed through its shoulders. It howled in pain as time sped back up to its original speed. Yuki charged upwards and sliced its head clean off with a single strike.
We were talking a clean Kill Bill-esque strike.
“Goddamn, you are like the Japanese Uma Thurman,” I muttered. “Olivia Munn needs to play you in a movie.”
I didn’t get a chance to say more because two more of the BOSS agents came around, wearing Kevlar vests and carrying M4s. Both of them immediately levitated upwards, dropping their guns before their bodies started to expand before exploding like water balloons full of blood. I looked back at Thoth before looking back at the walls now showered in viscera. The splatter was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.
“Thoth, blood magic is just fucked up,” I said, looking back at him.
“It’s not blood magic,” Thoth said. “Just magic involving blood.”
“Uh-huh.”
I didn’t pay attention to him and picked up one of the bloody M4s off the ground before charging out into the lobby of the radio station. I was fully expecting to engage in a bloody fight, only to find a half-dozen other BOSS agent bodies with the police standing there, motionless, their eyes glazed over. In the middle of the corpses next to a traumatized-looking Mina Murry was David, who had two severed arms in his hand.
David’s eyes were yellow, his face had taken on a terrifying countenance, and there was something decayed about him. He’d become something similar but distinct from a vampire. Thoth had somehow combined the ritual necromancy of Haiti with vampire blood to create something more and less than a regular zombie.
“Hey Peter,” David said, looking like he was finally the zombie from the movies. “That was a lot easier than I expected.”
There was so much blood. The smell of it was everywhere. I’d been barely able to hold it together around it, and Thoth had left the room to go to the sound stage to avoid it. Faced with so much, I couldn’t help myself.
“Fuck it,” I said, throwing myself on the ground and starting to suck it from wounds, lapping it up like a dog.
I even chewed on an arm like David and knelt in viscera, ignoring the fact it was the grossest, most awesome, thing in my life.
Jesus.
Then it was gone. Thoth stood over me and waved his hand, causing all the bodies to crumble to dust. The arm in my mouth becoming ashes. Even the stuff staining my clothes just became a fine powder.
“No!” I said, before regaining control of myself. “Okay, that was fucked up. I went a little blood crazy there.’
“Honestly, you comported yourself better than most vampires would in your situation,” Thoth said. “I had to wear nose plugs in World War 1 or I would have been rolling around like a bat in batnip.”
“You mean a cat in catnip?” Yukie asked.
“I know what I said,” Thoth said. “I turn into a bat and a wolf when I want to shapeshift.”
“Wow,” Yuki said. “How traditional.”
“That was awesome!” David said, looking. “I mean, I was held down by the Boss agents, and I was like...you know, let’s kill these bitches.”
“That is a ridiculous thing to say,” Yuki said. “Did we get all of them?”
Yuki waved her hand in front of one of the police officers. “What’s happened to them?”
“Actual blood magic,” Thoth said, causing his blood sword to disappear. It transformed back into his staff. “Which means there’s still a wizard among the group. Alive somewhere. We’ll have to check the build
ing floor by floor.”
“And there was a fucking werewolf among them too,” I said, angry as hell. “BOSS agents forbid vampires from joining but are letting in the mutts? That is bullshit.”
I mean, I expected the government to be racist, but I at least expected them to be consistent about it. If they were letting shifters and mages in among them now, that was just coming down on vampires specifically.
“They also sold their soul to the devil,” Yukie said. “Keep some perspective, Peter.”
Oh, yeah, right.
“You okay, Mina?”
Mina continued staring forward. “I feel like I just witnessed your dorky friend rip apart a bunch of people and shower me with gore. Now I’m dusty like an old book. I’m fine.”
“Do you want me to remove the memory?” Thoth asked.
“Yes,” Mina said, nodding.
Thoth waved his hand again.
Mina bolted up and looked around. “Okay, I am awesome. What the hell is going on?”
Thoth smiled.
“Hey Thoth, if you could remove all of these bodies with just a wave of your hand, why is every vampire paying for the Cleaners to clean up the aftermath of their murders?” I asked, turning to Thoth.
“Peter, who do you think owns the Cleaners?” Thoth said. “If you’re going to succeed in business you need to chase down opportunities. I learned that from Dracula.”
Mina muttered something about her asshole grandfather.
Before I could ask what that was about, I heard the voice from the intercom. “Filthy animals. You’re a scourge on the world. An abomination against all the gods of the universe and the spirits of my ancestors.”
I turned around to see a pasty white BOSS agent holding a gun to the head of Sam as he held his arm around her neck. He was radiating a kind of soft energy that I didn’t fully understand. It was the same energy I’d often felt from Thoth but much weaker. Better than the idiot I’d killed in the bathroom but not by much. Sam’s hands were tied behind her in handcuffs, and I sensed power inside them too, bound with some kind of unholy energy.
Sam looked frightened but not panicked. “Hey, guys, I’m sorry. He got the drop on me. On the plus side, I stopped him from summoning his master.”