by P. T. Hylton
“Not the way I see it,” Ed replied.
“Let me finish. We have a duty to New Haven, and we could be putting that at risk by joining Jaden’s mission. Anyone isn’t one hundred percent behind what we’re doing, I want you to go back and help Owl and George with the ship. You’ll still help us take back New Haven when the ship is ready, and I won’t think any less of you. Once we’re down in that hole, I’ll start giving orders again, but for now it’s up to you.”
Chuck, Wesley, Ed, and Patrick looked at each other for a moment. Then Chuck walked to the edge of the truck without a word, hopped off, and climbed down into the manhole. Wesley followed close behind.
Patrick squinted at Alex. “You didn’t really think we’d puss out, did you, Captain?”
Ed nudged him. “I’m pretty sure that whole speech was meant for Wesley. She wanted to give him an out in case he was scared of getting an owie on his leg again.”
With that, the Barton brothers went down the manhole. Alex followed, a proud smile on her face.
Jaden and his eight vampires stood waiting in the shadows below the street. From their dour expressions, it was clear they had just been discussing their losses with Igor and Natalie. Alex was glad she’d given them a minute alone before sending her team down.
“So what’s the plan, Jaden?” she asked.
“First, we need to find one of their soldiers. We can use him or her to lead us to Mark and Aaron.”
Patrick frowned. “I thought you vampires could sense each other. Can’t you just, you know, feel them out?”
“I wish,” Robert answered. “We have a sense of other vampires, but it’s weak. Think of it like hearing an echo in the mountains. You know you heard the sound, but it’s tough to tell exactly where it came from. Besides, all these Ferals down here are putting out so many raw feelings that it’s tough to sense anything else. The stronger the emotions, the easier it is to sense. And these damn Ferals have a lot of pure emotions, even when they’re sleeping.”
Jaden nodded his agreement. “The closer we are to the source, the easier it will be to pinpoint. Though it still won’t be perfect.”
“Okay, so step one is to capture a vamp,” Alex said. “Seems like a good start. GMT, this will be the only time I tell you not to aim for the head and heart. Make sure to unload on those non-vital areas, though.”
The two teams moved out, heading slowly through the twelve-foot-wide tunnels. Each side of the tunnel had a narrow walkway with a rusted railing. The center was meant for drainage, though it was nearly dry now with just the occasional puddle.
The group crowded close together as they moved down the walkway. Every footstep echoed in the otherwise silent tunnel.
Something felt odd to Alex as she walked, and it took her a while to figure out what it was. She heard breathing coming from her teammates, but not from the vampires. She was struck by the fact that she was surrounded by the undead. She had to stifle a shudder at the thought. It had never occurred to her that she’d one day be walking into battle with vampires by her side.
Up ahead, the light from Alex’s headlamp fell across a slumped form on the other walkway. A Feral, she realized. She raised her pistol. “Heads up, team.”
Jaden glanced at the sleeping Feral. “I got it.”
Before Alex could respond, Jaden leaped into the air, vaulting to the other walkway. In a single motion, he drew his sword and sliced off the Feral’s head. His hand snaked out, catching the falling head before it hit the ground. Then he set it gently on the walkway.
A moment later, he landed soundlessly back on their side of the tunnel.
“Damn,” Wesley whispered. “I like having a vampire on our side for once.”
They’d only gone another fifty yards before Jaden held up a hand, motioning for them to stop.
After a moment, Alex whispered, “What is it?”
“A vampire close by,” he answered. “It’s awake.”
Alex turned her head, shining her headlamp around the tunnel. A row of four-foot-tall pipes blocked the corner where the tunnel turned a hundred feet ahead. If someone was planning an ambush, this would be an ideal location.
She motioned for her team to shut off their headlamps. They’d have to trust the vampires’ eyes in this darkness. When the last headlamp switched off, they were enveloped in a darkness so complete, it almost felt like a physical weight on Alex’s shoulders.
They waited in silence for a full minute, no one moving and the GMT trying their damnedest not to breathe too loudly.
Then, a soft shuffling sound came from up ahead. It was followed closely by a whisper. It was too faint for Alex to make out the words, but it was definitely someone speaking.
A sliver of light appeared ahead. With her eyes adjusted to the darkness, the faint light allowed Alex to make out the vague shapes of her team around her. The voices were just loud enough for her to understand their words now.
“I think I feel it,” the distant voice whispered. “It’s like a tickle at the base of my spine. Whatever it is, it’s coming from someone strong.”
Another voice answered, “I feel it too. They must be close. We have to call it in.”
Alex’s breath stopped at the sound of the second voice. Even as a whisper in the dark, she knew it. She’d heard that same voice coming through her headset on many missions.
A hand touched her arm, and she knew it was Wesley. He recognized the voice, too.
She felt her pulse pounding in her ears as the adrenaline surged inside her. She wondered if the vampires could hear her heart beating.
The footsteps stopped ahead, and she heard a click. A radio being switched on, maybe?
“This is Firefly. I think we have them. We feel them close by.”
The voice that answered was cut by a bit of static as it came through the radio. “Understood. Don’t engage them until backup arrives. We’re sending them now.”
Jaden and his team crept forward, moving in near silence. Even from a few feet away, Alex could just barely detect the sound of their clothes brushing against itself and the tiny noise of their footsteps.
“What was that?” one of the distant voices asked.
Alex tilted her head is surprise. Apparently vampire hearing was no joke.
“I don’t know,” Firefly replied, “I thought I heard something, but it might have been my imagination.”
In the distance, Alex heard the click of the hammer of a gun being thumbed back.
“I’m sure it was nothing,” Firefly said. “Our army’s on the way. We need to just hang back and relax.”
Something in Firefly’s voice sounded odd to Alex, like maybe he was trying to put on a show for whoever was listening.
Jaden and his team stopped before they reached the turn. Both groups were aware of each other’s presence. Just around the corner, death waited for the first person to show themselves.
Alex slowly crept ahead, motioning for her team to follow. She thought about how Jaden had described daysickness to her. He’d said it was like the worst hangover you’d ever had. And Alex knew a thing or two about hangovers.
As she walked, she slipped her arms out of her jacket. Then she turned and found Patrick in the darkness. She grabbed his shotgun and gave it a soft tug. He held on for a moment, but then let her have it.
She motioned for her team to cover their ears. Hoping they got the message, she hung her jacket on the barrel of the shotgun and approached the turn, moving past Jaden’s team and staying close to the inside wall.
She stopped when she reached the corner, pressing her back against the wall and watching for movement. Seeing none, she slowly eased the barrel of the shotgun into the light.
Immediately two guns fired and bullets tore through the coat. Alex pushed the shotgun forward, angling it as far toward the shooters as she could without exposing herself, and fired. The blast echoed through the confined space of the tunnel. Someone around the corner cried out in pain at the noise.
The GMT spran
g into motion, sliding past Alex and into the tunnel. Ed was the first around, and he immediately fired his automatic weapon. Alex ducked around the corner and saw he had hit a female vampire in the leg with multiple rounds. She somehow kept her feet and raised her rifle.
Before she could get a shot off, Chuck fired his weapon. His bullet struck her in the shoulder, knocking her back into Firefly.
Firefly’s mouth opened in shock and surprise at seeing his old teammates standing in front of him. He stared for only a split second, then he grabbed the injured vampire, threw her over his shoulder, and ran back the way that he’d come.
But Jaden and his team were in motion now. They rounded the corner with blinding speed and charged after Firefly. He was moving fast, but the woman he was carrying him made him slower than the other vampires.
Ed squeezed off another burst of fire, and the vampire Firefly was carrying cried out in pain as a round struck her in the back.
Robert was the first to reach Firefly. He grabbed the injured vampire by the leg and lashed out with his foot, kicking Firefly in the back. Firefly stumbled, losing his grip on the female soldier and falling to the tunnel floor.
Robert threw her face down on the ground and put a knee against her neck. He pulled her arms behind her back and held her there.
Alex knew Robert had one vamp down and Firefly had fallen, but she couldn’t see if there were others with Firefly and the female. She reached up and turned on her headlamp.
When she looked past Firefly, she gasped.
At least a dozen Ferals were racing down the tunnels toward them.
“The gunshots woke them!” Jaden shouted. “There’ll be a lot more coming. Get ready!”
Firefly rolled to his feet and raised his pistol, but the Ferals were already on him. He managed one shot before a Feral slammed into his arm, knocking the weapon from his hand. Three other Ferals hit him in quick succession, sending him onto his back hard.
One of the Ferals sank its teeth into his lower arm, and he cried out in pain.
Alex dashed forward, holding her pistol in a two-handed grip. At least five Ferals had already sped past Firefly, going for other members of the team. She knew she should help them. But they weren’t about to be devoured by four Ferals, and Firefly was.
He’d been a GMT member. And once a GMT, always a GMT. The Ferals would dismember him in the next few seconds if she didn’t act quickly.
She squeezed off four quick shots. Each round went through the head of one of the Ferals holding Firefly.
But she didn’t have time to consider whether she’d made the right decision. As the four Ferals fell, she heard an animalist scream. She spun toward it and saw a group of Ferals piling onto Robert, who was still holding down the female vampire.
He leaped to his feet, drawing his sword as he stood. The vampire underneath him tried to stand too, but her injured leg slowed her progress. A Feral grabbed her, sinking its claws into her arms, and another one grabbed her head and pulled. A third Feral sank its teeth into her neck and began devouring flesh, tendon, and bone alike. A moment later, her head tore free of her body. The Feral holding her head let out a victorious howl and smashed the head against the wall of the tunnel.
Robert made short work of the Ferals attacking him. If he was less deadly than Jaden, it wasn’t by much. His motions were less fluid than Jaden’s, but his strikes seemed even more brutal. As he finished off the last Feral attacking him, he turned his attention to those attempting to get by him to reach the humans.
Now that Robert was up and moving, the narrow walkway and his frenetic speed prevented Alex from taking a shot at the Ferals rushing toward them. That was all right, though; the last four Ferals didn’t stand a chance against Robert.
After quickly dispatching three of them, Robert turned, catching the last Feral in the neck as it tried to speed past him. The sword cut through cleanly and the head fell from the creature’s shoulders. Before it hit the ground, a shot rang out.
Robert spun around, his mouth hanging open in surprise. The right half of his skull was missing, leaving a C-shaped hole where the rest of his head should have been. He paused for a moment, then collapsed, tumbling over the rail and landing in a small puddle in the center of the tunnel.
“No,” Alex whispered.
Firefly stood, rifle raised, taking aim at another one of the vampires.
This time, Alex didn’t hesitate. She unloaded her weapon into Firefly’s arms until the rifle slipped from his hands.
A cry that was somehow even more animalistic than the Ferals’ howls came from behind her, and then Jaden charged past. His eyes glowed a furious red, illuminating the tunnel around him. Alex had never seen him move like that.
Firefly raised his injured arms and threw a punch as Jaden reached him, but the older vampire batted the hand away like it was nothing. He grabbed Firefly and slammed him into the rail hard enough to bend the metal.
Jaden let out a gut-wrenching snarl and grabbed one of the metal posts holding the railing, ripping it from the concrete and smashing Firefly in the face with it before the younger vampire could even raise his hands to defend himself.
Firefly tried to throw one more punch, and Jaden dodged, letting the blow graze harmlessly past his head.
Then Jaden drove the metal post through the side of Firefly’s left thigh and then through his right one. With the metal impaling both legs, Jaden squeezed the ends together until they touched, immobilizing the former GMT member’s legs. Then he ripped another post from the ground.
Firefly was wriggling in pain now as Jaden grabbed both his arms and held them behind his back. Jaden drove the other post through Firefly’s biceps, once again twisting the ends to pin his arms behind him. Then he shoved him facedown onto the ground.
Jaden’s eyes blazed red as he stood over the whimpering Firefly. He reached down and wrapped his fingers around the other vampire’s skull.
Alex realized with a start that Jaden was about to rip Firefly’s head off, just like the Ferals had done to the female vampire. She quickly pushed her way toward him, shuddering as she glanced at Robert’s unmoving body in the water.
“Jaden, no!” she shouted.
The old vampire turned and glared at her, his lips curled in a nasty snarl.
“We need him to find his masters!” she said. “They’re the real enemies. You said it yourself, this vampire is just their slave.”
Jaden turned back to Firefly and stared at him for a long moment, his fingers still squeezing his skull. Firefly’s wide eyes darted around madly as if searching for someone to save him from this animal.
Finally, Jaden stood, raising himself to his full height and pulling Firefly up with him. Then he let go, and Firefly dropped to the concrete.
20
Alex was relieved to see Jaden’s eyes return to normal as he turned to face the other vampires, but his voice sounded dead when he spoke.
“Someone get Robert’s body. We need to regroup.” With that, he picked up Firefly with one hand and began walking back the way they’d come.
Natalie jumped down and grabbed Robert’s body, then quickly rejoined them.
Jaden told them they’d be returning to the place where they’d convened underneath the alley. It was an out-of-the-way spot, an offshoot of the main tunnels, so it seemed unlikely that any vampires would stumble across them.
As they walked, Alex wondered why they weren’t encountering any Ferals. Even the one who’d been sleeping last time they’d passed through here were gone. She wondered if perhaps it was Jaden’s inhuman cry that had sent them scurrying. Maybe they’d realized he wasn’t someone they wanted to tangle with today. Or maybe there was some honor among vampires. Maybe they’d heard the pain in that cry and were leaving him alone for now.
Whatever the reason, the GTM and the Agartha vampires seemed to have the tunnels to themselves for now.
Wesley sidled up to Alex and leaned close. He spoke in a whisper. “Holy shit, Alex. That was insane. Why
did Firefly—”
“I don’t know,” she answered tersely, cutting him off.
“Okay, but is he even still Firefly? I mean does his consciousness—”
“I don’t know.”
“Yeah, I get that. I’m just saying, do you think he’s going to—”
She turned toward him. “Wesley. I do not know. We are in uncharted territory here. It’s going to take time to sort it out. So, could you please just give me a few minutes?”
He blinked hard, taken aback by her harsh response. “Yeah. Sorry, Captain.”
She bit back the apology that almost came out. She felt bad speaking to him sharply at a time like this, but she needed to focus if she was going to keep them alive. She was all too aware of the questions, and she didn’t have any useful answers.
When they reached the area under the alley, Jaden set Firefly face down on the tunnel floor and went to work setting up a perimeter.
Alex walked over and knelt beside Firefly. The metal bars through his arms and legs had been twisted together, effectively hogtying him, but she was still careful to not get too close to his face.
“Are you in there, Firefly?” she asked softly.
He slowly turned his face to her. The despair was clear in his eyes. “I’m here, Alex. I’m damn glad you and the team are alive. Is Owl okay?”
She almost told him Owl was at the ship, but she stopped herself. Maybe giving him information about the team wasn’t the best idea. She had no idea how much he could communicate back to his masters. “She’s fine.”
“Good,” Firefly said with a weak smile. “I didn’t know… I wasn’t sure you would make it after Fleming had Sarah sabotage the away ship.” The smile left his face and the despair returned. “I’m so sorry, Alex. I should have stopped Fleming. I’m sorry for everything.”