He wasn’t wrong. He was, in fact, dead right. But I wasn’t to be put off that easily.
“Look, I may be the best vampire hunter in London.”
“Or in the world?”
“Potentially. I haven’t met everyone. But it’s not like I am the only one. There must be other humans out there who have some skills. And let’s be honest, you don’t need to be the best in the world to take on the wraiths. They’re not great fighters.”
Connery shook his head hard. “They’re not skilled fighters. But when we fight them, they are out hunting and are happy enough to run off and hunt again. You’ll be tackling them when they are defending their master. They still won’t be skilled, but they won’t run off for anything. They will fight to the death. Tear their arms off and they will try to kick you. Nothing will make them lie down and stop. Do you remember when we first went into the catacombs? We had to kill ten of the things because they wouldn’t give up no matter how hard they got beaten.”
“But we did it,” I insisted.
“Of course we did. They’d been waiting in those caves for two hundred years without their master, eating rats and bugs. They were barely more than animated corpses. The ones down there now have the King’s voice loud in their head. They’ve only been turned recently and are feeding on blood practically every night. And there will be a hundred of them. Please tell me that you see why this is impossible.”
“I see why it’s difficult,” I admitted.
“You’re impossible.”
“Merely difficult.”
“On that, we agree.” He smiled. “I’m not a pessimist, Ursula. And I’m definitely not Jack, saying that we’re going to die and there’s no way to stop the King of Nightmares. But I don’t want the woman I love to throw her life away in a futile attempt when she could live and be a vital part of the real victory. When we come up with a sensible plan for how to get a real victory.”
I sat silent a while.
“What?” asked Connery, finally.
“I just hate it when you’re right.”
“Thank you for admitting it.”
“Doesn’t mean I agree.”
Connery sighed. “You still want to go through with this?”
I knew I had a winning argument. “You got a better idea?”
Connery sighed again. “You know I don’t. No one does.”
“Exactly. We went to find Jack so he could tell us how he killed the King. He told us and we’d be crazy not to use that information.” I smiled at Connery’s worried face. “It may be dangerous, but letting the King live is more dangerous. At least my way we have a chance.”
We arrived back at the resistance headquarters that evening and outlined how the meeting with Jack had gone. I presented my plan and Connery presented why he thought I was nuts. Sharpe and Katya listened with interest and when we were done, Sharpe spoke.
“This is actually better news than you could have known. A few things have happened while you were away.”
“What sort of things?” I asked.
“Good things,” Katya put in. “Which may tie in with your plan.”
“Her plan?” Connery instantly objected. “I’m not going to stand by while we send Ursula to her death. Even if she’s the one insisting on going.”
“You should have more faith in me,” I suggested.
“Her plan,” Sharpe interrupted, “but with some changes. We’ve been able to get some help from the resistance in Milan – the Paisan – and I think you’re going to like what they’re sending.”
Chapter 13
“May I say that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.”
The Italians arrived the following day, led by a vampire of the Paisan resistance. I would have been more flattered by his compliment if I hadn’t heard him use the same line on Katya two minutes earlier. I pointed this out and the vampire was swift to apologize.
“You must forgive me. When a man is presented with two such incredibly beautiful women in such a short space of time, he cannot always find adequate words to express it. He may think that he has died and gone to heaven. Except that when I die, I will not go to heaven.” He drew himself up to his full height and executed a flamboyant bow. “Allow me to introduce myself; my name is Marco. I am very good in bed.”
It was hard to decide if Marco was for real or not, but he was oddly likeable. The men and women who accompanied him were even harder to believe in.
“What’s a VT?” asked Connery, as we sat down in the council chamber.
“Vamp Taker,” explained Marco in his accented English. “Not a nice phrase. Although,” he turned to me, “I am led to believe that you yourself are a Vamp Taker, of sorts. I envy those whom you have taken.”
“Marco,” Connery spoke. “This is the third time I’ve felt it necessary to remind you that Ursula is my girlfriend. The fourth warning will take the form of me breaking your arm in six places. If she doesn’t beat me to it.”
Marco threw up his hands. “Apologies. I forget that you British consider harmless flirting to be an affront. In Italia it would be the height of rudeness for me not to mention how desirable Ursula is. Sexually. I have been in fights with men because I failed to make a move on their girlfriend or compliment her body, so now I always do.”
“Can we please stick to the point,” said Sharpe. “The VTs.”
“Of course.” Marco rose and went to the door. “Anthony!”
The leader of the Vamp Takers came in. He was tall, broad and muscular, shaped like a man who knew his way around a gym, and with close-cropped golden hair.
“Anthony here, is human,” Marco explained. “As you can all plainly tell. So are all the VTs.”
“Pleased to meet you all,” Anthony said with a brisk nod.
“Connery,” Marco turned back to the table, “my friend. You are the strongest fighter here; yes? No need to reply, I have no doubt of it. You are a very masculine man. Perhaps you would be so good as to attack Anthony.”
Connery frowned as he stood. “Attack him?”
“Anthony is well-trained,” Marco reassured him. “You will not hurt him.”
“I’ll be careful not to,” said Connery.
“That won’t be necessary,” put in Anthony.
“A little violence between friends is something we Italians appreciate,” announced Marco. “It is in our blood. We are fighters almost as much as we are lovers and we fight almost as vigorously as we love. Almost.”
Despite the reassurances, Connery went in gently against the Italian Vamp Taker. It’s pretty fair to say that the weakest vampire is still stronger than the strongest human. And while Anthony looked like a candidate for the strongest human, Connery was decidedly not the weakest vampire; he worked out and it showed. Outside of the powerful older vamps like Jack, I hadn’t seen a vampire who could take down Connery.
Anthony moved faster than I had ever seen a human move as he side-stepped Connery’s attack, backhanding the vampire as he went by, sending Connery slamming into the wall. The whole room gasped and Connery looked stunned as he turned around to attack again. He went in harder this time but still holding something back – he didn’t want to hurt the human just because Anthony had made him look a fool. He needn’t have worried. Anthony blocked the punches, grabbed Connery’s wrist and twisted, sending my boyfriend flying.
This time, Connery wasn’t holding back. He wasn’t going for the kill – he didn’t do that – but he was treating Anthony the same way he would treat a vampire sparring partner. They traded blows back and forth. Connery landed a punch that sent Anthony reeling and I felt a thrill of pride, but the human recovered from it with incredible speed and lunged back into the fight, knocking Connery back again.
“Alright, alright.” Marco held up his hands. “Let us call it a draw and remain friends.”
From the look on Connery’s face, I was not sure if the latter was going to be an option, but a draw was a fair assessment of the fight. Once Connery was invested,
Anthony had not been able to beat him, but nor had Connery been able to take down Anthony.
“There’s no way he’s human,” Connery spoke. “It’s a trick of some sort. A good one, but a trick.”
“We can wait till sunrise to prove it if you would like,” said Marco. “Anthony is human.”
Anthony shrugged apologetically, as if he had done something wrong.
“The VTs were created by the human government in Milan in response to the blood-running problem,” Marco explained. “And the laissez faire attitude of their police force. They are genetically enhanced.”
“Like steroids?” I asked. Truth be told, I was a little peeved that there might be humans out there who could kick vampire ass better than me.
Anthony shook his head. “Not exactly. The enhancements we have do not make us stronger or quicker. They increase our capacity.”
“Capacity?”
“Humans are limited,” said Marco. “Although their records for speed and strength continue to edge upwards, there is a basic biological limit to how fast they can run or how heavy a weight they can lift. The enhancements extend these limits. They don’t make Anthony strong – he was already an impressive specimen when he became a VT – they allow him to become stronger. He still has to work out, but now his muscles do more for their size. Anthony may not be built like Usain Bolt, but he can outrun him.”
“You’re saying,” Sharpe interjected, “that these are humans who have the same physical capabilities as vampires?”
Marco hedged. “Up to a point. Older vampires remain superior. The enhancements only go so far. Anthony is the best we have but he was not able to beat my new friend, Connery. But then, of course, Connery is exceptional amongst vampires. As I am sure the beautiful Ursula will confirm.”
“What we have,” said Katya, addressing the table, “is a group who are strong enough to get through the wraiths, but whose minds the King cannot get into. In fact, he may not even be able to see their approach.”
“Exactly,” enthused Marco. “It is as the beautiful Katya says.”
It seemed like an answer to all our problems.
Over dinner, Marco – in between hitting on Katya, who was now the sole focus of his sexual energy – explained how the VTs had come to work with the resistance.
“Initially, of course, they were kept a secret from all vampires. But our intelligence network never sleeps - and not just because they are making love. We discovered of the existence of the VTs when they set out to smash a blood-running gang that we had also been looking to destroy near Genoa. For a small resistance group like the Paisan, the process of cracking a blood-running gang is like me; long and hard. But unlike me, it does not always come to a satisfying climax. We thought we had a chance of taking out one part of the gang, the VTs took the whole operation down. They were well-funded and strong but they lacked the inside knowledge that we, as vampires, possessed.” He shook his head. “There was a long meeting that night at the Paisan headquarters. The arguments were passionate – as so much about the Paisan is. The room was split between those who felt that, as our interests converged, we should pool our resources with the human authorities, and those who felt that siding with the humans was a terrible mistake, especially if they now had the ability to become as strong as we are. In the end, the former group won the day and we contacted the commander of the VT operation. He too was cautious, at first, fearing that we were laying a trap. So we gave him information that we had been gathering about another blood-running group, of which he was not even aware. They were able to take that group down and they saw the advantage of having vampires on their side.” He gave a rueful smile. “Undercity Milan is a wonderful place. A place of pleasure and luxury, where a man may make beautiful love to as many women as he can handle – in my case; many. A place where he may see the best art in the world, hear the best music, and make love in a public place without anyone calling the cops. The blight on this city is its blood running. The humans live in fear of it and too many vampires have become slaves to it.”
“How did you convince the VTs to come here?” Connery asked, grudgingly interested. “Seems like this isn’t their problem.”
“Perhaps,” said Marco. “But I convinced them that it is only a matter of time before it will be. For one thing, with the rise of the 1st King of Clubs, Milandercity becomes the only Undercity in the world without a totalitarian ruler. How long will it be before someone sees the gap and seizes upon it? More likely and more immediate; if the King of Hearts cannot invade Undercity London for fear of the King of Nightmares, how long will it be before he turns his eyes upon bella Milano?”
That was all true. Perhaps it had taken self-interest to get the VTs here, but there was no harm in that; it was because of self-interest that we wanted them here.
The VTs were well-practiced in vampire hunting, but what they could expect from the wraiths was unlike the sorts of vampires against whom they usually fought. I was not sure how much training would help, but Connery was insistent and others on the council agreed. I could not help wondering if Connery had an agenda of his own, of sorts.
“Right, you two attack me and let’s see what you’ve got.” Now that he knew what these humans were capable of, Connery seemed to feel a need to prove what he was capable of in the training room.
The two VTs attacked and Connery met them, moving with that speed and animal grace that always excited me to see, even when he was just practicing. The VTs were good, they had obviously been trained on how to fight vampires and they had the necessary strength and speed. But they weren’t Connery. The first of them he flipped over his back, taking them to the ground and miming rather than delivering the killing blow before the second could reach him. He evaded the second, then swept the legs before ‘killing’ that one, too.
“Not bad. But not good enough.”
“As I understand it,” the VT leader, Anthony, spoke up, “the wraiths won’t be as good of fighters as you.”
Connery shrugged, modestly. “Generally not. But wraiths are diverse and how well they fight as wraiths depends on what sort of vampires they were. If I was turned into a wraith – which could happen – then you would face a version of me. That version wouldn’t have the same combat instincts, but it would have my strength and speed.”
“We’ll be armed, of course,” pointed out Anthony.
“But you’ll be tackling many more wraiths than just one,” added Connery.
“Then,” Anthony tilted his head to one side, “why are we training one on one?”
I had a hunch that the reason for that was that Connery still had a point to prove after Anthony had taken him by surprise in the council room, but he defended himself well.
“We’re building up to it. Don’t want your people to become disheartened.”
Anthony nodded. “That’s kind of you.”
I didn’t quite have a read on Anthony yet. Maybe it was because he was speaking in a second language, but I couldn’t tell if he was as nice as he seemed to be.
“But,” Anthony went on, “maybe it would be better if one of us took on two of you, rather than the other way around.”
Connery raised his eyebrows. “I’m not sure your people are ready for that yet.”
Anthony shrugged. “Well, they need to be. And what could give them more confidence than seeing their commander,” he stood, “prepared to take on a couple of vampires.”
Connery nodded. He was still smiling but the smile had become fixed. “Louis! Lexie!”
Husband and wife team, Louis and Lexie, were one of the resistance’s top teams in the nightly wraith hunts. There was no way that Connery would have taken on Anthony alongside another person, because if he won then it would have looked as if he needed help to do so – he had nothing to gain.
Anthony stripped off his T-shirt, which seemed unnecessary, but maybe had a psychological effect. He had a bodybuilder’s physique, expansive muscles forming a rolling landscape across his torso and arms that looked
thicker than my thighs.
“Impressive looking guy,” I said to Connery as he sat down beside me to watch.
“Are you trying to wind me up?”
“Yep.”
“It’s working.”
“Good.”
The two vampires made for Anthony, splitting up, one on each side. As they lunged, Anthony dived forwards, rolling across the matted floor, and bouncing up into a spinning kick that knocked Louis off his feet. Lexie darted in but Anthony was again too quick, dodging and blocking her punches.
I saw Connery’s fists tighten with each missed hit. He really wanted Anthony to lose.
Louis was now back on his feet and rushed back to help his wife. For a while the fight was a whirl of limbs, the two vampires attacking and Anthony somehow managing to block or dodge both. Finally, as Louis grabbed Anthony’s arm, Lexie managed to land a punch that knocked him back.
“Yes!” I heard Connery hiss, under his breath.
“They’re on our side, you know.”
“I know.”
But Anthony wasn’t down for long. He flipped back up onto his feet, feinted left at Louis but went right, body-checking Lexie to the ground and rolling away before Louis could attack. He roundhouse kicked Louis, and in the same movement took out Lexie’s arm as she tried to get up, before delivering the mimed killing blow with an imaginary stake. Louis attacked furiously, as if the VT had actually killed his wife, but Anthony met the attack and used Louis’s force against him, rolling back, kicking up and sending Louis flying, carried by his own angry momentum. The imaginary stake stabbed again.
Anthony turned to face Connery, who had reluctantly joined me in clapping. He rubbed his chin where Lexie had hit him.
“Shouldn’t have let that happen. Careless. You’ve got some good fighters here.” Coming from another man that might have seemed mocking, given he had just kicked their asses, but from Anthony it seemed genuine. I still wasn’t sure if it was, but the VT commander’s pleasant manner just irritated Connery more.
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