“What about you?”
“I’ll be up in a minute,” He said without looking away from the rifle parts. Amelia regarded him, ever since last night he’d been acting odd for someone who’d told her he loved her. But then, Amelia thought with chagrin, she hadn't told him she reciprocated. Amelia considered saying something, asking what was wrong, but she couldn’t get the words out and stared at his back instead. She wasn’t ready to face the declaration an apology would stir. Shaking her head in resignation, she walked upstairs.
When Amelia reached Kristoff’s room, she looked around at the unmade bed and his and her clothes scattered on the floor. If the state of his room were any indication, it looked like she’d moved right in. Amelia grimaced, staying with Kristoff was a bad idea, he might love her - but he’d said nothing about staying in New York. And from what she knew about him, his job wouldn’t let him. Could they have a very very long distance relationship? She doubted it.
Amelia opened her backpack and pulled out a black tank top and black skinny jeans, she would tuck the cuffs into her boots and wear her motorcycle jacket. By the time she finished dressing though, Kristoff still hadn’t come upstairs, so she went down to find him waiting for her in the foyer. He was already dressed.
“You never came up.”
Kristoff shrugged, “I remembered I had a set of clothes in the guest room.” Amelia eyed him warily, he too seemed to be distancing himself from her. “Here,” he said suddenly, clearing his throat and pulling a knife from his coat pocket. “When I went back after Gianni the other night, I retrieved your sister’s dagger. I sharpened and cleaned it. Now when you go at him you can truly get your revenge for Mona.”
Amelia looked at the blade and then took it, “Thank you. This means a lot.” Tears bordered the edges of her sight.
“Amelia…” He began them cut himself off.
“What?” Amelia asked in concern, her fingers tracing the slick feel of her sister’s dagger hilt.
But Kristoff just shook his head and picked up the bag with the sniper rifle. “It’s time.” And the two of them walked out into the battle Amelia had waited for for years.
Instead of taking the metro, this time they took the car. They parked it close to where they’d met Kolya the night before, then climbed to the rooftops. The trek was silent, and both of them were tensed for the human sentries. Yet despite their unease, they made it to the building across from the warehouse unmolested.
“I’m going across first.” Kristoff told Amelia, “After I go over, you come across so if you can’t quite make the jump, I can catch you.” Amelia nodded.
Hitching the sniper rifle around his shoulders, Kristoff once more took a running leap across to the Italian’s warehouse. Once he was there, he set the bag down and motioned for Amelia to follow. Amelia walked to where Kristoff had leapt, and was looking back across at her. It looked too far. Amelia locked gazes with Kristoff and motioned that she didn’t think she could make it. Kristoff frowned and motioned again, glancing down at the sentries as he did. Amelia too looked to see if she’d been caught, but the guards were unwary. She looked again at the gap she needed to cross with fear. How was she going to make this? She wasn’t even sure how Kristoff did - especially with the rifle bag on his back. She looked back at Kristoff, he looked concerned then mouthed, “Trust me.” And Amelia realized after everything - she did. So, with her own running start, Amelia jumped across the gap.
Just as she had almost made it, Amelia felt her forward motion slow to a downward one and she panicked. She looked at Kristoff in fear. He darted over to the ledge of the building and with only moments to spare caught her by her wrist. Amelia’s boots resounded against the building as they continued their fall and hit the wall with a resounding thud. She and Kristoff froze. Amelia hung suspended precariously over the street below from Kristoff’s grip on her wrist.
“Did you hear something?” Came a guard’s voice.
“Just a pigeon,” replied another.
“I don’t know,” said the first, “I don’t want to be wrong and have them find out.”
“Fair, let’s go look just in case,” said the second, and two pairs of booted feet started clomping their way toward their side of the building.
Amelia looked up at Kristoff and stared wide-eyed into his face in fear, but he seemed to be considering something. Then with what seemed ridiculous strength, Kristoff pulled her quickly over the ledge with one hand, and placed her softly on her feet. Amelia was disturbed by this superhuman act, but decided it was best to wait until later to ask him why he could not only jump wider gaps easily, but lift 120 pounds with one hand. Kristoff, grabbed her hand and pulled her over to the trap door he had photographed the day before. It was padlocked shut.
“Can you pick the lock?” Amelia whispered.
“I can do better than that,” Kristoff grunted, then he gave the padlock a sharp pull that twisted the lock free. The more Kristoff did on this mission, the stranger he was becoming. Amelia wondered where he was gaining super powers from and why he’d hidden them.
With the latch free, Kristoff flipped the hatch back. Then he dropped carefully down into the machine room, and motioned for Amelia to drop the sniper rifle down to him. With a heave, Amelia did. After Kristoff set it down, he once more motioned for her to follow, and that he’d catch her.
Amelia glanced at the sky as she prepared to drop. The sun was falling rapidly moving from a ripe pumpkin to the persimmon before twilight, they would only have so long before the night time denizens of the warehouse would be up and around. And they still needed to take care of the daytime guards. Amelia looked back down at Kristoff, who pointedly held his arms out, and with only a slight pause, she jumped. Kristoff caught her silently and then carefully set her down so as not to make noise that would signal the guards.
The machine room was lit only by red emergency lights, and was a maze of humming and clanking pipes, which gave it an almost subterranean feel. Kristoff grabbed Amelia’s hand again and they wove carefully through the humid pipeline jungle. When they finally reached the door out onto the warehouse’s upper catwalk, Kristoff crouched to the ground and began unzipping the sniper rifle. Without a sound, and more efficiently than Amelia would have guessed for a man who claimed not to like guns, he put the thing together. Once finished, he set it up on its tripod so that the barrel faced the door’s opening, but just slightly off to the right to be sheltered by the wall.
“Amelia,” he whispered. “Go kill the lights.”
“Where?”
“The breaker box, you’ll know it when you see it. This building is too old to have anything but old glass tube fuses. Just pull them all out.”
Amelia nodded and walked back out into the hot metal mess, keeping along the walls of the room, knowing it would be the best way to find the box. On the back wall, Amelia finally came across it, the thin grey metal door was shut by a small lock. Amelia pulled at it ineffectually. Why was Kristoff able to break even bigger locks with ease? Pulling out her sister’s dagger, Amelia leveraged the blade through the lock and broke it. “Lights going out,” Amelia rasped into the darkness to Kristoff. Then taking the butt of her knife, she shattered every last fuse in the box.
The room plummeted into darkness momentarily, then the red lights in the machine room flashed back on - back up generator for emergency lights she figured. The silence was broken when Amelia heard a door swing open. Had they already been found? Amelia rushed to where she remembered leaving Kristoff, but it was he who had opened the door. Beyond the crack he had wedged open to shoot through, Amelia could see only black, and heard voices trying to sort out why they were in a power outage.
“What the fuck?” said a voice.
“I don’t like this,” responded another nervously.
“Stop being a sissy and go up to the machine room to replace the fuses,” snapped someone else.
“But I can’t see a damn thing,” the second voice whined back. “I could fall down the damn catw
alk stairs.”
“Dammit, I’ll do it,” came a fourth voice, and the sound of boots ascending the grated metal floors came to Amelia’s ears. “Goddamn pussies,” the man’s voice grumbled. Still as stone Amelia and Kristoff waited for the man to get closer, first they could hear him on the upper steps and then the catwalk leading to the machine room door. In minutes his footsteps were only yards away.
“What are you doing,” Amelia hissed out anxiously “Shoot him!”
“Wait,” gritted Kristoff out.
In seconds, the man would be at the door.
Amelia pantomimed frantically to Kristoff that she thought he was insane. But in the moments it took her to make her annoyance known, there was a soft whup and the sound of a body hitting the ground. The oncoming man groaned, “FUCK! I think I’ve been shot.” He called out to the others waiting downstairs. And suddenly there was a rush for the stairs, as Gianni’s guards became aware they were under attack.
“Antonio, where are you?” the first voice cried out in concern. “Where’s the shooter?”
“I don’t know, it’s dark and I can’t really see.”
“We’re coming to you! Hold on!” Cried the third voice. And soon the thunder of many lug soles raced towards her like storm waves pressing the shore.
“Call in the guards outside,” the second one yelled, “They must have been sitting on their ass because someone has obviously gotten in!” A light streaked across the darkness, a moment of fading sunlight, and more guards darted in. As soon as the door to the outside shut again, all were left in darkness once more. And Kristoff started firing like he was in a carnival shooting gallery.
With a series of soft sounding impacts, Amelia could hear bodies falling everywhere, and feet fleeing. What she also heard was that none were dead, all were crying out in pain and cursing - but there was no telling silence. “You’re not killing them,” Amelia whispered in confusion.
“No,” Kristoff said shortly, without looking up from his glowing green sight. “They’re human, we can round them up later. Hunters don’t kill humans unless necessary.”
“But they still have guns,” Amelia gritted out. “If you haven't shot everyone’s arms off, they can still shoot us!” she added in a hiss.
“So bloodthirsty. I suggest you go unarm them then.” Kristoff smiled. “You can easily do it in the dark, they’re sitting ducks.”
Amelia nodded and squeezed out the machine room door.
“I see a light!” Yelled a guard. “They’re in the machine room!” A hail of bullets rained down on the door Amelia had just passed through and she worried momentarily about Kristoff. But once more his muffled shots popped off and she knew he was still ok.
Amelia came upon the first guard they’d shot only steps from where she had left Kristoff behind. The sentry was writhing and holding his thigh, his nasty automatic was still beside him however. Amelia ran swiftly and kicked it over the edge of the catwalk, it fell and the clatter it made when it hit the ground floor punctuated the tension.
“Wha..?” The guard asked, looking around for where the movement had come from. But Amelia just knelt behind him and slammed his head into the iron grates. With a sharp grunt he fell in to unconciousness. Amelia stood back up slowly sticking to the wall.
“Antonio! Can you still hear me?” That first voice called nervously. When Antonio failed to reply, a palpable ripple of fear went through those still standing.
“Whoever it is, is coming down.” Someone whispered.
Amelia crept along the wall keeping close, scanning for the next fallen guards. On the following level she came upon two crouching together in a dark corner as she turned off the stairs. They were supporting each other from what looked like a shattered ankle and a blown knee from how they held themselves. The two of them faced out into the darkness, their faces frozen in terror, with their guns pointed out scanning the nothingness before them. Amelia came at them from an angle, and drew her sword smoothly from her back sheath. With a sharp chop, she knocked the pistols from their hands, unfortunately making them too aware of her. “I see her!” Cried one of them, “She’s…” But before he could speak, Amelia’s hand shot out and she got him with a right cross. The one beside him whimpered and looked up at her.
“Don’t kill me,” he plead. Amelia regarded him silently and realized why hunters never killed humans, they were just pawns.
“I won’t,” Amelia assured him quietly. Then dropped him into unconsciousness as well with a hard blow of her sword hilt to the back of his head. But the one who had cried out had warned the others still hiding in the lower levels, and a muttering was rising.
“It’s just one girl?”
“We can do this.”
“Come on out and fight like a man.”
Amelia smirked, but she wasn’t a man she was a Dagda hunter. Then she dropped to a crouch and looked down the next stairwell leading to the level below. The stairs were made of pressed metal and rebar, they would offer little cover if anyone caught sight of her. Amelia frowned, then set a careful foot down on the first step. Nothing made a sound, at least not one the sentries could hear over their own nervous taunting.
Taking each step slowly, Amelia scurried down the stairs.
Until some bright individual brought out a flash light.
For a moment Amelia was ringed in light, she was blinded by the change from staring into darkness. Immediately a cry went up and she was showered with shots. Amelia tucked and threw herself tumbling down the final steps then flattened herself against the wall. But it was too late, she’d been seen.
Drawing her sister’s knife, Amelia weighed her sword in her right hand and crouched to prepare to take on the incoming guards. She wasn’t sure how she’d get past all the guns, but she had to try. A stampede of footfalls came crashing up the stairs and a waving light darted from wall to wall looking for her.
“There!” One yelled as the beam crossed her path.
“A little help here!” Amelia yelled at Kristoff, diving away from the revealing light. Suddenly a soft thud came from the dark and the light bearer fell off the catwalk, plummeting with his torch below. Amelia quickly moved in on the group that scattered when the shot had taken their compatriot. They looked around themselves desperately, terrified and confused as to where the shot had come from. Amelia went through them like a whirl wind. Snatching guns and cutting at ankles and hands, as each fell and cried out.
When they were all down she looked them over. Was this the last of the sentries? Amelia looked over at the floor below and scanned for any more standing bodies.
“That’s all of them,” came Kristoff’s voice from behind her, and Amelia started from being taken by surprise. “Which is good,” he added stiffly. “Because we’re out of time.”
Chapter 30
Amelia looked down and saw light spilling from a stairwell leading down from the lowest floor to the basement beyond - the vault had to be there. Soon the vampires living within would be up, and she would be at a disadvantage with their excellent night vision. Kristoff grabbed her wrist firmly. “Come. We need to be down there when they arrive, so we will have some advantage of surprise.”
Amelia and Kristoff darted down the last set of stairs as quietly as possible. They pulled back and hid on the first floor below the catwalks. From out of Kristoff’s pockets, he withdrew sodium flares, and breaking them, tossed them out into the open floor beyond. It would offer just enough light to even the odds. But the abrasive red and yellow glow gave the whole room a hellish satanic feel. Amelia drew back closer into Kristoff’s chest and stared grimly at the basement stairwell which was now full of light. The vampires had to have their own generator separate from the warehouse’s.
The light of the stairwell flickered, a dark silhouette passed through the glare. A vampire was on the stairs. Kristoff motioned to Amelia to stay and held his finger to his lips. He tread in complete silence to where the opening of the stairs met the basement floor. Kristoff took one step forward
to look down into the stairwell, then stepped a few paces back and crouched. Amelia flinched. He was too close.
Less silently than Kristoff, Amelia came to his side, only to be shot a reprimanding glare. But it was too late, she was there, and she wasn’t moving. Finally, the sound of several light footsteps came from the steps and the glow from the passage was again obscured by a body.
The first vampire up glanced around warily and seemed to stiffen. “Gianni,” it called. “There’s something wrong…”
No sooner had the vampire spoken, Kristoff sprung behind him and severed his spinal cord with a decisive blow from his knife. The vampire became powder.
But the warning had been called and all of the vampires from below came streaming up the stairs. To Amelia’s surprise, there were only ten of them.
When they reached the surface of the warehouse floor, their eyes immediately darted to Kristoff and Amelia, both backlit by their hellish flares. Gianni was the last to come up. With slow steps the Italian clan master sauntered onto the floor. Slowly clapping.
“Bravo little one. You’ve made this a rather entertaining chase… And my dear Kristoff, how’s your brother these days?” Gianni looked unconcerned.
Amelia glanced at Kristoff when Gianni mentioned Kolya, but she assumed it was just a threat on Kristoff’s noncombatant brother. “Stop messing around,” Amelia growled loudly at Gianni. “I’ve come for you.”
Gianni laughed dryly, rocked back on his heels and clasped his hands in front of him. Just standing there he looked like a well-off businessman in his thirties. But Amelia, knowing his depravities, would have considered him debauched even if he had been human. “Well, as they say, you’ll have to go through them to get to me.” And with that announcement, Gianni’s vampires attacked.
“Oh!” Gianni’s voice cried out imperiously above the rushing din of dashing feet,”Leave the girl to me. You can play with her, but I want her alive.”
A Guide to Vampire Hunting: ...and other failures (Alchemy Inc. Book 1) Page 21