"Yee haw!" Trip shouted, watching the clouds of smoke rise, and the almost slow-motion falling of debris. It had been a spectacular display of firepower.
Harbinger came over the radio. "They ain't done until you cut off their heads. Watch out. VanZant, keep that mortar on them. Pile it on!"
I tossed the empty tube down. Behind us the mortars continued to thump. I could not see anything moving besides the smoke. "Trip, Holly, grab some more rockets. Go."
"Movement. Vamp on the right," the radio said. Gunfire and rockets flew from the treeline on that side. A burning figure emerged into view, only to disappear again as the dirt around it exploded upwards into a volcano of flame. The shells continued to pepper the area, each one flattening a massive space. There wasn't going to be anything bigger than a microbe that was going to survive the punishment we were putting into that area.
"How much damage can these things take?" Lee asked.
"Beats me," I replied. I saw something emerge from the front. "Vamp in the center. On the road." Lee let loose with a burst of .308, stitching a path of impacts and tracers up the road and into the jerking creature. The flaming vampire ran toward us at impossible speeds, seemingly twisting between the bullets, then disappearing as an RPG landed in its path. The smoking body landed a moment later, crashing down to the pavement, and instantly popped back up out of the crater. They healed too fast.
The vampire was engulfed in a thunderous explosion as something roared from the center. The blast from the Spig recoilless rifle shook us all. It made me glad that I had taken the time to help Julie haul it up from her basement. The smoke cleared long enough to see that the vampire was gone. Holly jumped back into the ditch with arms full of rockets. She thumped me in the shoulder and pointed upwards.
I tracked in on the movement. The torn remains of the vampire were just reaching the apex of their arc, and began descending rapidly toward the earth. The biggest piece of the creature splattered onto the road not fifty feet from our position. The supernatural was no match for the laws of physics and some well-directed artillery.
"Yes!" I shouted. They were killable.
I choked off my triumphant shout when I realized that it was still moving. The head, one claw, and the torso was trying to pull itself toward us, twitching and splurting fluids from its burned flesh. If it regenerated enough to regain its faculties, it would be able to shape-shift and live to fight another day.
"No way, man!" Lee shouted as he directed a stream of tracers into the body. The heavier rounds from the National Guard Browning .50 began to pepper the carcass as well, kicking up gouts of dirt and vampires bits.
"Edward. Go! All teams hold fire along the front," Harbinger ordered. He was still standing by the National Guard, and he personally made sure that they ceased fire.
A dark shape exploded from the trees, leaping in huge bounds across the burning grass and rain-swollen ditches, claws tearing up plumes of mud and vegetation. Edward hugged low to the mane of the mighty warg as it moved with predatory speed toward the downed Master. Edward drew a sword from his back as he leaned low, hanging barely above the ground as they approached their target. The orc's arm flew upward, like a scythe ready to harvest wheat. It swung down, pushed not just by the power of the orc, but by the speed of the seven-hundred-pound beast driving him forward.
Edward's masterful aim was true. The ancient blade sang through the air. It met little resistance from the charred and ashen flesh, and it crashed against the hardened vertebra with a clang that every Hunter could hear. Did he make it through?
The warg passed by, screeching to a mud-soaked halt, before spinning around, red tongue rolling like a giant dog, tearing at the earth and charging back at the vampire. Edward sheathed his sword, hung low, and dragged his fingers through the grass. He swung up, returning to the back of his stead, a trophy held triumphantly above his head.
It was a blackened skull.
Lightning crossed the sky from every direction. Thunder crashed. A gust of wind tore through us, pushing to the north. The skies protested as the ancient vampire's spirit was finally forced from this world. The Hunters began to cheer. The warg bounced back into the trees, Edward still holding the vampire's severed head extended for all to see. The mortars began to fire and drop more explosives into the valley. Only I could hear the mental screams from the other Masters.
Fools. I warned you of the humans' modern weapons. Flee. Protect our Lord.
The burning. It will not stop burning.
No time . . . to heal . . . too much damage . . . so weak . . . need blood.
They have destroyed Gurgo. Sythak is dying. I shall avenge them.
See, I told you so. Assholes.
My lord, use the artifact. Place me into their midst so that I may tear the life from their hearts. Their weapons require distance to work against us.
IT SHALL BE DONE.
"Oh, shit!" I exclaimed, turning from the battlefield, looking over my shoulder back the way that we had come. I keyed the radio. "Earl, vampires are going to gate in close, too close for bombs."
"Where?"
I concentrated, but the moment was past. The voices were gone. I narrowed my eyes on a point to the side of our parked convoy of vehicles. For some reason it drew my attention. It was almost as if I could see the invisible energy forming, swirling in preparation.
"Behind us, thirty yards off the road. South side!" I shouted as I surged out of the ditch, sprinting toward the spot as fast as I could. Abomination slammed back and forth against my chest. My boots were sodden with water and seemed to weigh hundreds of pounds. My breath came in gasps as I closed the distance. I was never a good sprinter. If the vampires could appear in our midst, we were as good as dead. They moved far too quickly to be stopped with the weapons that we could use at close range.
There was a crackling noise as the rift opened. A red line appeared out of thin air, and then spread wide. I reached under my raincoat and pulled one of the sharpened white-oak stakes from my load bearing gear. I held it low at my side as I ran forward. It was going to be close and ugly.
The creature appeared through the rift, stepping lightly onto the grass. Blood-colored eyes blinked, adjusting to what was, for it, brilliant light. It had already shed its human appearance, ready for battle, looking like a twisted, gray, hulking bat-thing, all fangs, muscles and claws. It saw me.
Too late to do it any good. I jerked the stake upwards, bellowing, my weight and momentum carrying me forward. Crashing into the vampire was like hitting a brick wall. I pushed the stake with all of my might, coming under the rib cage and stabbing into the pulsing black heart. The vampire shrieked so painfully loud that my hearing protection momentarily shorted out. It grasped my hand, trying to pull out the stake. Its jaws opened wide enough to fit my head inside the maw. I continued to push the sharpened wood deeper into the creature's black heart.
A stake through the heart would kill any living thing. It would instantly paralyze any regular vampire. On a Master, it seemed to merely weaken it. At its normal strength, the creature would have been able to break me in half, now it was almost as if I were fighting someone only twice as strong as a normal person.
The creature swatted me across the chest. I flew back, airborne for what seemed an impossible time, landing hard on the hood of one of the SUVs, shattering the windshield, and sliding down until I fell on my hands and knees onto the pavement. The vampire struggled to pull the stake free. Trip and Lee barreled into the creature, hacking wildly at it with their blades, trying desperately to take its head off. The monster shoved them away, but not before Trip fiercely planted his tomahawk into the base of its skull.
With a wrenching squeal, the stake was torn free. The creature roared in triumph, but only for a moment. Its eyes widened as the grill of a Suburban smashed into it at thirty miles an hour. The tires bumped as Holly gunned it over the fallen vampire, crushing it beneath. She slammed it into park, with the thing still trapped, opened the door and hopped out.
"Keys were in it!" she shouted as she turned and pulled a grenade from her armor. "Run!" She pulled the pin, the spoon popped off with a clang, and she tossed it into the front seat of the vehicle. I pushed myself up and ran for my life, trying to get as far away as I could before the five-second fuse went off. If that vehicle had been as loaded down with munitions as ours had been, this wasn't going to be pretty. The vampire bench-pressed the SUV off of itself and rolled the vehicle onto its side. It stood, broken bones quickly knitting, looking for prey.
I dove behind one of the vans and tried to get as low to the ground as possible. The initial detonation of the grenade was relatively mild. The pressurized napalm tank it ignited was not. The crate of 81mm mortar rounds that went off next was downright amazing. The van I was using as a shield rocked up onto two wheels and every window shattered under the pressure.
Once the thunder had died, I slowly lifted my head. I peered around the edge of my scorched cover. The Suburban was reduced to a burning pile of distorted scrap lying sideways in a freshly dug crater. A chunk of metal landed in the grass a few feet away. I realized that it was a door. A burning tire rolled past.
"Wow" was the most articulate thing that I could think of to say.
"Think we got it?" Holly shouted from under the warg trailer.
"I hope so." I lifted the rifle and approached the wreckage. "Trip! Lee! You guys okay?" In the distance the mortars continued to fire.
"Pitt! Status?" Harbinger's voice sounded in my ear.
"I think we got the vampire. I can't find two of my guys."
"This is Mayorga. One of them has broken through. It's in the trees on the left. Puta got Abe."
"This is Cody. Got one on the right too."
"Earl," I said into the radio. I kept my gun up, pointed toward the burning vehicle. "There's only one left in the valley. And it's badly hurt. It can't regenerate until it gets blood." Holly extricated herself from under the trailer, and I tossed her rifle back.
"How do you know?" he asked. "Shit, never mind. VanZant, stop the barrage. Edward, clean up in the center. Phillips, roll right. Paxton, reinforce left. Now they're up close, but we've hurt them, so they're gonna be weaker and slower. We can take them. Pitt, my team is coming your way."
I did not respond. I scanned the surroundings. No sign of the vampire. No sign of Lee or Trip either. "Hey guys? Anybody hear me?" I shouted.
"I'm okay," answered Lee. He approached from the other side of the wreckage. His armor was smoking. He struggled with the FN MAG in his hands. It was almost as big as he was, and the exposed belt of ammo hung to the ground. "That was one big-ass fireball."
"Have you seen Trip?" He shook his head in the negative.
"Oh no . . ." Holly trailed off. "I killed him."
"You don't know that!" I shouted. "Trip! Can you hear me!"
Nothing.
"Look." Lee gestured with the machine gun barrel. I turned quickly, hoping to see my friend. Instead I saw that the flickering rift into the cavern was still open. It floated a few feet above the ground, a door out of nothing, but I could clearly see that there was something on the other side. I lifted Abomination warily, clicked on the flashlight and shined it into the shimmering gap. The powerful light pierced the darkness and illuminated a rock wall.
"Grant!" I exclaimed. Grant Jefferson was lying bound and gagged on the cavern floor, seemingly only forty feet away. "Earl! Earl! We found Grant. We've got a back door into the cavern!"
"On the way," he responded.
"We better hurry before it closes," Lee said.
"How do we know it isn't a trap?" Holly asked. "What if it closes while we're halfway through?"
"I don't know." Wild gunfire crackled through the forest as the other Hunters battled the two Masters. "We've got to try." I reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of glow sticks. "I'm going in. I'll try to grab him and bring him out. Cover me." I cracked the sticks, shook them, and tossed them through the rift. They landed and scattered across the cavern floor, providing a soft green glow. I couldn't see anything else moving.
"Good luck," Holly said, "you big brave idiot."
I ran toward the rift, no use screwing around. I closed my eyes right before I hit it, only to open them to find myself barreling into the cavern. I had not felt a thing. I gulped in the moist cave air. I turned around, and the rift was still there, only now it showed the valley and the ominous green storm clouds overhead. My remaining teammates were waiting for me.
"Hurry up!" Holly shouted.
That was good advice. I swung my shotgun around, letting the light shine on the damp walls and the slick stalagmites. I did not see any threats. I shined the light on Grant. He moaned softly when the brilliant light hit him.
"Come on, buddy, let's get out of here." I knelt at his side and pulled the gag away.
"Pitt?" he gasped. I heard something shuffle in the darkness. I spun the light around. Wights. Lots of them.
"Yeah. Time to boogie." I grabbed him by the straps of his armor and, with a grunt, hoisted him over my shoulder. I sprinted for the rift, ignoring the two hundred pounds of extra weight. The wights began to scramble over the rocks toward me. One stepped into my path, only to be nearly decapitated by a burst of Lee's machine-gun fire. Apparently bullets went through the rift just fine. I passed the falling creature and jumped through the portal.
I was back outside.
And the wights were right behind. Lee ripped off the rest of the belt into the portal. Holly stood at his side, blasting any undead that came too close.
"We could use a hand, chief!" Lee said as he dropped the huge gun, pulled his pistol and fired at an approaching wight.
I roughly tossed Grant on the ground, tugged a pair of grenades off of my webbing, pulled the pins and chucked them through the portal. "Off to the side!" The others responded, moving out of the path of the shrapnel. They exploded at the feet of the wights, blasting them into bits of pulsing tissue. A cloud of gravel fell from the cavern ceiling.
"Owen!" Julie called. Her team and several other Hunters were approaching quickly. "I don't believe it. You found Grant!"
Harbinger nodded in approval. "Sam, Milo, cover that rift."
"My pleasure," Milo answered, pushing past Lee, and shooting a rising wight through the spine with his AR10 carbine. "Wow, cool magic portal thingy!"
I drew my knife and cut the cords binding Grant's wrists. His eyes looked wild and frightened. "It's okay, dude. We got you. You're safe."
"Die!" Grant screamed. He grabbed me by the throat, trying to crush my windpipe. I grabbed his hands and tried to pry them away.
"Grant! What are you doing?" Julie cried. "Stop that!"
"Acckkkkk . . ." I said, trying in vain to get some oxygen.
"Die, interloper!" Grant shouted, crazed eyes bulging, spraying spittle into my face. Either he knew that I had moved in on Julie or he was insane. Either way, it totally hurt.
"He's enthralled," Holly said simply. "Susan must have bitten him."
Julie stood over him, calmly raised the butt of her M14 and cracked him sharply alongside his head. He was out like a light. "Grant, honey . . . I think we need to start seeing other people."
I rubbed my throat. "Damn, that hurt." On the bright side, it was strangely satisfying to not only rescue my competition, but have the woman we were competing for give him a concussion.
"Is he going to be okay?" Lee asked.
"The enthrallment will wear off pretty quick. But when he eventually dies, no matter how long it takes, he's going to have to get his head cut off, or he's going to come back as one of them. The undead curse is in his blood now," Holly explained. She knelt and pulled Grant's armor open at the neck. There was a ghastly wound on the top of his chest, now caked in dried blood.
"That sucks."
"Yeah, pretty much. But you get used to it," she answered.
"The rift is holding," Harbinger said. "Let's go get the CO." The gunfire continued in the distance. "Now that the vampires h
ave closed the range, we've got a hell of a fight on our hands. Maybe if we kill him, this cloud cover will disperse."
"Roast them bastards good." Sam spat, noticed something moving in the cavern, aimed his rifle and fired. "Let's get some." He levered another mammoth shell into the action.
"Okay, I'm on point. You guys stick behind me . . ." He paused, his nose twitching. Harbinger began to spin, but the Master vampire rising behind him was too fast. It grabbed him by the straps of his armor and hurled him through the air at an insane velocity. Harbinger struck one of the SUVs, crumpling the frame around him as if it had been in a high-speed collision and shoving the massive vehicle several feet across the road.
Nobody could have lived through that.
"Earl!" Julie cried as the Hunters opened fire.
It was the Master from the rift, the one that Holly had blown up. It was fully healed now, and no longer encumbered by a stake in the heart. Bullets struck to no effect. It lofted something in one gray claw, and launched it toward us in a blinding flash. Lee's leg exploded in a shower of blood as Trip's tomahawk head pierced his thigh. He screamed as he toppled to the ground.
The Master moved too quickly to track, dodging and weaving toward us as silver bullets dug divots into its muscled flesh. It swooped onto Gus. One claw stabbed out and impaled the Hunter through the throat, unleashing a spray of arterial blood. The vampire held him there as it licked its lips. I aimed around Gus's twitching form and shot the vampire in the mouth. The slug exploded out the back of the creature's skull. The wound closed instantly. Enraged, the vampire pulled its bloody talon free, leaving Gus staggering, gagging and choking, hands at his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. The Master lashed out with one arm, and I instinctively dodged aside as Gus's head flew past.
The vampire had moved ten feet before the headless body had even begun to fall. It charged the next Hunter in line. Sam was struck in the arm, and the sound of bones snapping could be heard across the valley. The big cowboy roared in pain, somehow dodged under another swing and fell to the ground. He worked the action of his lever-gun with one hand, letting the weight of the barrel carry the weapon down, and then flicking the action closed with his wrist. Sam extended the muzzle and launched a silver bullet up through the vampire's head. It did not even slow the thing down.
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