I heard a slight scraping from behind me, like a shoe scuffing along the ground. Without thinking, I whirled around and brought up the stake I hadn’t even realized I had in my hand.
Tony stood behind me, leaning back with his hands up in the air in front of him as if to ward off a blow. I froze, then looked up at the stake I had unconsciously pointed directly at his heart. I slowly dropped my hand to my side. Tony smiled at me and gave me a thumbs-up. I almost kill the guy and he approves, I thought. What the hell have I gotten myself mixed up in?
The entire exchange with Tony took only about two seconds, but by the time I turned back around Nick had flattened himself against the wall and was following the curve toward the blue light. I followed his lead, hugging the wall with my back as we peeked around into the room beyond.
One part of my mind noted that we must look like a scene from an old Three Stooges episode, with all of our heads poking around the corner at different levels.
The rest of my mind didn’t think anything at all; it was too busy gibbering in terror.
The room itself was fairly small with high ceilings and small windows. The blue light emanated from a small battery-powered lamp against the far wall.
But the space was full of vampires. I’d known coming in that we were going to fight vampires, so I was expecting it. But I think that anyone who came into the room would have instantly known what they were. Or at least what they weren’t: human. All of the vampires I had seen up to that point had moved more or less like humans. Granted, they’d hissed like animals and done some very un-human things, but they hadn’t looked completely alien.
These things did. I don’t know quite how to describe the movement of preternatural creatures who are built exactly like humans—who used to be humans, in fact. But it’s kind of like what you’d get if you crossed a cat with a snake and made it walk on its hind legs. They slithered upright.
Just looking at them made my skin crawl. I think it was trying to go back the way we had come in, and it was only by sheer force of will that I didn’t follow my skin’s suggestion and get out of there as quickly as possible. These creatures were so patently inhuman that it set off some primal instinct in me, a completely adrenalized “fight or flight” response. I shuddered and pulled back against the wall inside the entryway.
Tony patted my shoulder; I got the feeling that he’d had the same response at some point. It comforted me to be reminded that I wasn’t the only human in the building with all these monsters. I took another stake from my arsenal and held them two-fisted.
Nick held up his hand behind him, one finger pointed up. Then he raised a second finger, and I realized that he was counting to three. Oh, God. I hadn’t checked to see where all the vampires were. I didn’t know the plan. I couldn’t remember if we had a plan. I couldn’t run out into the middle of all those monsters. I needed more practice!
Then Nick’s third finger went up into the air, and I felt all my muscles tighten and bunch. Before I even had time to think about it, my body had taken me flying out into the room behind Nick, who had starting shooting his crossbow and reloading as quickly as he could. Tony stepped out from behind me and starting shooting as well, and I saw John and Dominick jump down from someplace toward the ceiling.
We took the vampires by surprise. For some reason, I had expected them to be ready for us, maybe because they had all those supernaturally enhanced senses. But I guess even vampires can be lulled into a sense of security. Nick managed to get two of them before they realized something was terribly wrong. Tony and John each got one with a crossbow shot through the heart, but Dom’s shot went wide, thudding into a wall and sticking there.
That was the end of having the element of surprise on our side, though. As soon as they figured out what was going on, the vampires went on the offensive. There were still easily seven or eight of them, and they attacked.
The room filled with those uncanny vampire snarls and hisses, and I looked up just in time to see one jumping down from a windowsill above me. He had his hands out like claws and would have grabbed my neck had I not side-stepped him. As it was, he got his teeth into my shoulder. I felt my jacket rip and two hot points of pain at the top of my left arm.
I was too busy to do anything about it at the moment, though, because another vampire had rushed me when I’d looked up. He, too, aimed at my throat, but I ducked down and came back up under him, slamming my stake into his chest. His eyes got big and he grasped the stake, trying to pull it out as he sank to the floor.
My movement tore the other vampire’s mouth from my arm—and took about half my deltoid with it if the pain were anything to go by. I spun around to face him, and he hissed, my blood flying out of his mouth in a spray of tiny droplets. My left arm felt numb, but I could still move it. I quickly switched the remaining stake to my right hand. The vampire crouched toward the ground and circled around, looking for a weak spot.
I inched backward, keeping the wall to my back. I didn’t want to get cornered by this guy, but I certainly didn’t want some other vampire sneaking up behind me. The vampire and I watched each other warily.
“You’re going to die, you know,” he said, almost conversationally. I didn’t answer.
“You think you’re tough, but you’re only human. You’re going to die, and I’m going to drink your blood.” His eyes narrowed in pleasure at the thought. “It’ll be hot and salty and will go down smooth.” He drew the last word out in a long, sensuous-sounding syllable.
“You’re disgusting,” I said. He just smiled at me.
I kept moving along the wall, watching for an opportunity to strike. The vampire followed me.
We’d made it about a quarter of the way around the room when something over his shoulder caught my eye. Greg stepped out of the shadows of the entrance Nick and Tony and I had used. He winked at me, then blew me a kiss and faded back out of the room.
The vampire facing me took that moment of inattention as his chance to attack. He sprang from his crouch straight at my throat.
“Damn it!” I said. And more in irritation than anything else, I dodged his leap and hit him with the stake. He stumbled, but I didn’t wait to see what happened next. I jumped past him and sprinted toward the exit.
I almost made it, too. But the vampire I had just staked grabbed my bad arm, spinning me back toward him. Apparently, I had missed his heart. Crap.
“I don’t have time for this,” I muttered, reaching up and yanking the stake back out of his chest.
His face contorted in rage as he clutched the gaping wound the stake had left in his chest. He let out a grunt of pain. In retaliation, he grabbed my injured shoulder and squeezed.
The pain sent me almost to my knees and for a moment my head swam.
When the stars had cleared from my eyes, it was as if everything had slowed down. I could almost see my anger flickering around the edges of my vision.
The vampire stood above me victoriously, his eyes completely black and his teeth shining white against the blood drying around his mouth. I leaned my head over as if offering him my neck, and he reared back to strike me with those teeth. At that moment, my right hand came up as if of its own accord, and I felt the wood slide, centimeter by centimeter, under a rib and into a softness at the center of his body.
I swear I could feel his heartbeat reverberating down the wood of the stake and into my hand. It beat once, then twice, then hammered out a tattoo as the vampire recoiled from the weapon that had already killed him.
As his heartbeat faltered to a stop and he crumpled to the ground in front of me, time resumed its normal speed. I had no idea how long the whole thing had taken or if I could even still catch Greg, but I knew I had to try. I stumbled back to my feet and made my way to the hidden entrance. I had to jump over several black-clad bodies along the way. I hoped they were vampires and not our guys, but I didn’t have time to stop and check.
I raced to the end of the small corridor, then squeezed my way out the opening into the
night air.
Nothing. Greg was gone. Probably long gone. I considered trying to track him, but I had no idea which way he had gone. Besides, I was wearing blood-soaked clothes. And a ski mask. Not something that would necessarily blend in, though I wouldn’t put it past people scurrying down the sidewalk at night in the Bronx to ignore, if not actively avoid, someone who looked like I must have looked at the moment.
Besides, some of my teammates were still back in that room fighting vampires. I couldn’t very well leave them to go chasing after my ex, even if he was one of those vampires who might need killing.
By the time I made it back to the tower room, though, the fighting had ended. Twelve dead vampires lay stretched out on the floor. Tony and Dom were systematically going around the room driving stakes into every vampiric heart. Nick and John were nowhere to be found.
“Just making sure they’re really dead,” Dom said, looking up at me as I walked back into the room.
“Want some help?” I asked.
“Sure. Grab a stake and a vamp and set to. But first, get that shoulder tended to.” He jerked his head toward Tony, who had a small medical kit open in front of him.
“Where have you been?” Tony asked me as he poured some sort of anti-bacterial stuff over my shoulder.
“Chasing the one that got away.” I winced as the liquid bubbled up in the wound.
“Any luck?”
“Nope. He really did get away. Where are the others?”
“Scouting out the rest of the place to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.” He spread some clear goop on my shoulder and taped a large sterile pad over it.
“That’s not as bad as it looks. Or as bad as it probably feels. Keep it clean, change the bandage every day, and keep putting this on it,” he said as he handed me a tube of antibiotic ointment.
“You fixed up?” Dom asked. “Good. Here’s a stake. We haven’t done the three on that side of the room yet.”
Just as we were finishing our post-staking staking job, Nick and John came back in through an interior door that I hadn’t really noticed before.
“All done?” Nick asked.
“Yes, sir,” replied Tony. “What do you want us to do with the bodies?”
Nick handed him a gun. I don’t know much about guns, but this one looked big and mean with an extraordinarily long muzzle.
“Put bullets through all the stake holes; that ought to confuse the issue if there’s ever an autopsy.
We’re going to have to hide the bodies on site. I don’t want to risk taking them to the van,” Nick said.
“Do you think anyone will hear the gunshots?” I asked worriedly.
“That’s a silencer on that piece.”
Tony proved Nick’s point by shooting the first of the vampire’s bodies. The gun made a muffled whump sound and the bullet thwacked into the body with a sickening thump.
“Let’s start moving these vamps,” said Nick, grabbing the body underneath the arms. John took the feet and they moved out of the room through the same door they’d used moments before. I followed them.
The inner room of the armory was enormous; I could believe it used to hold that racetrack Nick had mentioned. We crossed it and moved through a set of doors into what was clearly the flooded auditorium I had read about online.
“Oh,” I said, “this place reeks.” I covered my nose with my hand.
John and Nick swung the body a few times, then heaved it into the murky water where it slowly sank.
“It’ll cover the smell of the rotting bodies,” Nick said.
“Ugh. I think I’ll stay behind to help Tony,” I said as we headed back to the tower room.
“Good,” said John. “That means you can help with the rest of clean-up. I can’t even begin to tell you how tired I am of bleaching floors.”
After the smell of the fetid water, bleach sounded just fine to me.
Chapter 13
I was almost sorry I’d volunteered to help by the time we were done scrubbing all the blood off of the floors and walls of what we’d taken to calling the “meeting room.”
“More like a slaughter room, if you ask me,” Dom muttered. He was crouched over the last of the bloodstains, scrubbing at it with a bleach-soaked sponge.
When we were finished, we changed clothes in the van. All of our blood- and bleach-soaked clothing went into one of Nick’s ubiquitous black gym bags and I realized why he had insisted that I bring a change of clothes.
“I’ll send these through the incinerator at the shop,” he said. The shop again. This time I didn’t ask.
I almost balked at the thought of stripping down in front of four men I didn’t know very well, but I finally decided I was too tired to care. I’ve never been terribly modest, anyway, and surely killing a bunch of vampires together counted for something in the “ways to bond with new people” category.
“Okay, Dixieland,” Nick said, turning around to face me as John pulled away from the curb.
“I’ve changed my mind. I want to know where you got the info. Time to talk.”
I told him everything: sneaking into the law offices, printing out the files, getting caught by Greg, finding the bloody t-shirt, breaking up with my undead ex. Seeing him in the meeting room tonight. All of it. It didn’t take as long in the telling as I had anticipated, and no one interrupted. When I was done, Nick looked off into space over my head for a long time.
“So Pearson’s got a guy on the inside,” he finally said.
“Apparently. But I’m not sure about Greg’s reliability, Nick.”
“Me either. He’s a vampire. You can’t trust vampires. Alec should know that by now.”
“So what are we going to do?”
“You’re not going to do anything yet. I need to think about this some more, check a few things out. Hold tight; if I need your help I’ll let you know.”
“What about us?” Dom asked.
“I’ll let you know, too,” Nick said, his voice sounding distracted.
I felt better for having told him. I was glad to let someone else take over for a while.
“You didn’t tell this Malcolm guy anything about the vampires?” Nick asked me.
“No. I thought he might be safer if he didn’t know.”
He nodded. “You were right—the fewer people who know, the better.” He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “You think he’s got any connection to the vamps?”
“I really don’t think so, but I could be wrong.”
Nick nodded again and stared out the window thoughtfully.
By the time we pulled up in front of my building and Nick sent John to walk me up to my apartment, I was wiped out, completely exhausted from the night’s events. I fell into bed and was asleep almost instantly.
A DULL ACHE IN MY SHOULDER woke me up the next morning. I got up and took some Advil. Then I took a shower, changed my bandage, made a pot of strong coffee, and considered the shape of my life as I sat on my couch and blew across the top of the cup to cool the hot coffee. I do that a lot in the morning. It’s not the same as staring blankly at a wall until I wake up. Really.
At nine o’clock, I called a vet and made an appointment to take my cat in to get her shots.
Okay, I know it sounds odd: kill some vampires, inoculate a cat. But more than anything, I wanted to try to keep at least some aspects of my life as normal as possible. And continuing to be the sort of Responsible Pet Owner that all the brochures in the vet’s office advertised meant getting Millie’s vaccinations.
So the next two days were perfectly normal. I worked to make them that way. Actually, to be entirely honest, it wasn’t all that hard. I was still floating in some sort of post-killing rush. I felt light, like some enormous weight had been lifted off me. It hadn’t, of course. But I felt better for having enlisted Nick’s help. I went to my classes on Friday. I felt almost normal.
Then Jenna pulled me aside after class. “Hey,” she said. “We’re all going out tonight. Want to come? I think i
t would be good for you. And we’ve missed you.”
I stared at her blankly for a second before realizing that she didn’t know not to go out at night.
My feeling of normalcy fled, and I frowned.
“No thanks,” I finally said. “Maybe some other time.” I tried to think of some way to warn her but couldn’t.
Jenna stared after me worriedly as I walked away, toward the library.
Still, it wasn’t until day three that I really began to droop. It was one thing to pretend I had a perfectly normal life. It was another thing to spend that life scurrying home before dark just in case the vampires came out in search of me. I suppose I should have felt safer after killing five vampires all on my own. But the first time I had been out of my mind with rage. And I’d had backup on vamps two through five. I wasn’t entirely certain that I could actually take out a vampire all on my own—especially if that vampire happened to take me by surprise.
So I continued to spend my evenings at home alone. Millie pouted for a while about her shots, then resumed her habit of curling up on my lap to sleep.
But even though I adored Millie, she wasn’t quite enough in the way of company. Cats aren’t strong conversationalists. I finally had to admit to myself that I missed Malcolm.
Still, I had broken up with him, at least inasmuch as it’s possible to break up with someone you’re not dating. I knew it wouldn’t be fair to call him, so I resisted the urge.
That lasted all of about twelve hours. And I spent a lot of that time picking the phone up, dialing, and hanging up before the number went through.
I didn’t even get an E for effort.
I finally gave in and let the call go through, but he didn’t answer. I didn’t think much of it when I first heard his voicemail click on. For all I knew, he was on campus working and had his ringer off.
But then an electronic voice came on the line and told me that his message box was full. That’s when I started to worry. I called Nick and left a message on his cell phone. Apparently, no one was answering tonight.
Legally Undead (Vampirarchy Book 1) Page 11