I spun, raising my weapon with a snarl. Who dared to impede my progress?
It was one of the witches. The flare of my power flashed off her eyeglasses and washed over her, dousing her insignificant magic. Was this their plan all along? To use me to further their cause, only to turn on me when it was convenient?
Well, she’d learn. They’d all learn. They’d...
A voice inside of my mind screamed, not in defiance this time, but for me to stop. The weak part of me. The part I’d finally vanquished, conquered. Why was she still vexing me?
“It’s over, Blessed One.”
I turned to find the Templar leader, Bernadette, advancing upon me. Over? Was she siding with the witch, then? Yet another enemy at my gates? The fool probably thought she was safe, that my power couldn’t harm her. She was vastly underestimating my other skills, more than a match for her or her people.
“We’ve won,” she added.
The voice inside my head again beckoned to be heard, louder this time, more insistent.
“Yeah,” the witch, Kelly, said. “Let them go. We have to go find our friends.”
It had to be a trick. I was a warrior born to battle. I had no need for friends.
Yes I do!
“Christy and the others,” Kelly continued, her eyes wary. “They need our help. Bill, too.”
Bill?
“They need your help.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I lowered my weapon, though it still sang with power. The vampire? I ... cared about ... hated him. He was my enemy ... friend. I needed to destroy ... no, protect ... save him.
All at once, the lust for battle dissipated, fleeing back to whatever recesses of my mind it dwelled. The glow around me faded and I took several deep breaths, almost as if I’d been underwater for too long and had just surfaced.
I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the last of the Jahabich disappear down toward wherever they were going. The desire for battle swirled within me at their sight, but this time it was small, easily ignored.
Rather than pursue them, I turned back to Kelly. “Sorry about that. I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
“It’s okay. You weren’t that scary.” She lowered her voice and smiled. “Well, maybe you were a little.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Something has definitely changed,” Bernadette explained while I continued to heal the wounded.
“Changed?” I removed my hand from Vincent’s side, happy to see the bullet wound was completely mended. Though he still looked pale from loss of blood, he was strong enough to stand up and make way for Veronica.
“Yeah,” Meg said. “I noticed it, too. That’s why I zapped back down here to help you guys out.”
“Noticed what?” I asked, breaking concentration for a moment. Even with Veronica’s conscious permission, I still had to fight to force my power to heal her.
“The human thralls,” Bernadette explained. “A short while ago, right around the time those creatures burst forth from the ground, they stopped. It wasn’t all of them, and not all at once, but one moment they were seemingly prepared to fight to the death, and the next they were staggering and holding their heads. Some continued to fight, but many just looked confused as if they’d woken up from a long sleep.”
“Or a compulsion,” Meg offered.
“Yes,” Bernadette agreed with a nod. I wondered if either noticed they were actually having a civil conversation with each other.
“And then there’s the way those creepy ass rock golems just turned and marched away,” Kelly added. “Did you hear what they said?”
“Yeah. Hard to miss,” Meg replied.
“Do you think it had anything to do with what Christy was telling us?”
“At this point, who knows?”
I looked up from watching the bruises on Veronica’s face fade. “What stuff?”
Meg was quick to answer. “Ancient history, probably nothing important.”
I raised an eyebrow, meaning to question them further, but then Veronica said, “Thanks! That is so much better.”
I glanced back toward her. “Headache gone?”
“Yep, and much faster than popping a few aspirin.”
“Awesome to have you back, V!” Kelly stepped up and hugged her.
I couldn’t help but smile at them. It was brief, though. There were more wounded to tend to, albeit not as many as I’d thought there might be. Bernadette and her people had managed to save a good two dozen residents from the buildings around us. However, after the fight was over, we found no trace of them. They’d slipped away, no doubt frightened.
Considering how the final moments of the battle had played out, I found myself unable to blame them for doing so.
CHAPTER 36
It appeared as if the resistance against us had either been beaten or pulled back. It was like one moment we were under siege and in danger of losing and the next the streets were quiet. I could barely believe it.
A part of me was certain we were walking into a trap, being lulled into a false sense of security. However, there was no denying that we met no further challenge on the streets of Boston as we walked the final few blocks toward our destination.
We’d lost roughly a third of our men since arriving. The loss of life was regrettable, but I tried to console myself with the knowledge that it could have been much worse.
After I’d patched up those who weren’t beyond help, Bernadette had insisted upon finding a place where the bodies of those we’d lost could be safely hidden until such time as they could be given a proper burial. I understood her need, but at the same time found myself anxious to resume our mission. The three witches were likewise eager to get on the move.
Though I wasn’t happy about it, in the end we decided to split the remaining Templar. Bernadette stayed behind with the bulk of the men to finish her set task. Vincent took command of a smaller group of knights joining us, although I wondered if maybe his desire to accompany us was slightly more than just a need to see his duty through to the end. I’d noticed the way he seemed to be warming up to Kelly, but I decided not to say anything. Lord knows there were stranger matches to be made under the heavens. Though happiness always seemed to be at least one fingernail’s length out of my reach, who was I to deny it to others?
We’d circled the last few blocks in a crisscross pattern, just to be safe, as we closed in. We’d already walked into enough ambushes for one day. However, our precautions appeared to be unnecessary.
We turned the last corner and spied our destination, the Sparkling Moonbeam Car Wash – an interesting name considering the previous management.
The building itself stood alone. A large parking lot sat in front of it, obviously part of the normal décor. Less normal was all the empty space on the remaining sides. Judging by the residual rubble lying about, my guess would be that multiple buildings had been recently leveled so as to give the facility a three hundred and sixty degree view of their surroundings and anyone approaching.
“Is it me or do things not look entirely normal?” Meg asked.
At first glance my heart sunk as it appeared the element of surprise would be impossible to maintain, but then her words registered with me.
There was an odd cant to one wing of the structure. Smoke billowed freely up from it. Not too far away, a section of the parking lot appeared to have a pronounced indent, as if something had exploded or perhaps collapsed beneath it. Of greatest interest, though, were the entrances. The doors to both the office and the wash itself stood wide open.
“I thought they said the entire facility was locked down, with blast doors and all that shit,” Kelly said.
“They did,” I confirmed.
She reached out and pointed. “Look, cameras.”
Indeed there were, atop the lampposts that surrounded the facility. It was probably safe to assume there were many more we couldn’t see.
“I got this one,” Veronica said a bit too eagerly. She stepped out from our cov
er and shot a lance of power toward the nearest before any of us could stop her.
The sizzling blast of energy hit the top of the pole and sheared it clean off.
Meg rounded on her. “Way to ring the bell, genius!”
“Maybe not,” Vincent said. “Look.”
I followed his outstretched hand. All I saw was the broken post and the smashed and smoldering equipment now on the ground. “Okay, that’s one. So what?”
“There’s no discharge coming from the wiring. It’s like she blew off a dead hunk of plastic. Not even an arc of electricity.”
I glanced at him, then back at the destruction Veronica had caused, and finally toward the building. Though it was daylight out and thus difficult to tell, it did appear as if the main building was dark on the inside, albeit that meant nothing where vampires were concerned.
“Wait here.” Ignoring the hushed protests that followed, I raced out into the open. I expected a trap to be sprung at any moment. Heck, for all I knew, I was running straight onto an asphalt covered minefield.
Nothing happened, however, and I reached another of the lampposts unmolested.
Here goes nothing. I drew my blade, focused my power through it, and struck ... silently hoping I was properly grounded. The blade cut through the metal as if it were butter. I expected a shower of sparks, but all that happened was the post fell over with a loud crash.
Now here really goes nothing.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I glanced back toward Kelly, shrugged, then grabbed hold of the bare wires poking through the base. Hopefully my aura also protected me from purposely trying to turn myself into a piece of toast.
Nothing. I pulled my energy back, just to be sure, but felt not even the barest of jolts. The power was out. I let out a nervous laugh and waved my allies over.
Weapons drawn – or in the witches’ case, powered up – they made their way over to where I stood.
“That was really fucking stupid,” Meg chided.
“I am forced to agree,” Vincent added.
“What?” I asked innocently. “It’s the end of the world. If there ever was a time to live a little, it’s now.”
♦ ♦ ♦
Prior to driving up, we’d been given a brief rundown on the innards of the facility. Thankfully, though many of Sally’s memories of the last year had been wiped out, the rest of her experiences were intact – including details on some of the myriad underground layers of the Boston lair. That was fortunate because Bill, Tom, and Ed’s account of the place was a jumbled mess of contradicting statements. Nice guys they might be, but I had a feeling I’d be wise to never ask any of them for directions.
I’d expected heavy resistance, but instead, eerie silence greeted us in the darkened facility. The Templar produced flashlights while me and the witches used our respective powers to light the way. It negated any hope of surprise, but it also gave us a fighting chance in case of an ambush.
None came, though.
Though our sweep wasn’t as thorough as Vincent would have preferred, the first two levels we checked appeared to be completely vacant.
“What happened here?” one of the Templar asked.
“No idea,” Veronica said.
“Think it was Christy?” Kelly asked.
I shared a glance with her. “Or Bill,” I added, remembering that he’d come to an arrangement with the beast inside of him.
“Do you think they could have done all of this?”
I shrugged non-committedly. We didn’t even know what this meant. So far we hadn’t found anything – no trace of battle, no residual dustings, no bodies. Also, as powerful as I’d heard Bill’s wild side could be, I had a hard time imagining him slaughtering the entire facility, even with Christy’s help. Regardless, there was no evidence any such thing had occurred. For all we knew, the full strength of this place still lay somewhere below us. I urged caution against such a possibility.
Without any clues as to what had happened, we decided that the best course of action was to make our way to the Prefect’s level. Bill had told us when last he was here, that was where Vehron had set up shop, no doubt in mockery of the power he’d usurped.
♦ ♦ ♦
Finally, we began to see traces that something catastrophic had indeed happened in this place.
The lower we descended, the more it became obvious something was wrong. Though the upper levels appeared intact, we began to notice signs of some calamity. At first it was minor, a crack in the wall here or there. Then it became more pronounced – bent doorframes, whole rows of cubicle walls knocked over like dominos.
“Holy shit,” Kelly said “You can’t even escape the cube farms when you’re dead.” The rest of us glanced sidelong at her. “What? Spending eternity as a bloodthirsty monster or even as some sparkling virgin waiting for true love, that stuff I can understand. But being an office drone until the end of time ... that’s some real evil right there.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“Stand back!” I ordered. We’d finally reached the level where I was told the Prefect’s office was located. Here the destruction was evident. It looked as if an earthquake had hit the place. Some rooms had partially collapsed. Wires hung from the ceiling, some still sparking weakly. This level was either the source of the power outage or close to the epicenter.
It was here that we found our first signs of life, in a manner of speaking.
The vampire’s legs were crushed beneath a small mountain of rubble, pinning it down. He was on his stomach, trying to crawl his way out, but not making much headway. Had he been human, he would have surely been screaming in pain. Instead, he appeared inconvenienced at best by his predicament.
At first sight of him, I felt a snarl instinctively well up from deep inside of me, but I quickly pushed it down.
In the time it took me to regain control, Vincent stepped up and produced a metal cross. “Tell us what befell this place, beast!”
The vampire didn’t answer. He just continued to scrape his claws against the ground in a futile attempt to get away.
“Tell us...”
I stepped up and placed a hand on Vincent’s shoulder. He nodded and stepped aside to make room for me. I knelt in front of the creature.
“Blessed One.”
“Shhh,” Kelly said. “Let the girl work. This is her area of expertise.”
I flashed her a quick grin before turning my attention back to the vampire. He continued in his attempt to scrabble along, paying me no mind.
“We’re not here to fight unless you make us,” I said.
Again no response.
Finally, I reached down and grabbed hold of his hair to force him to face me. I expected him to bare his fangs, maybe even attack. Instead he stared slack-jawed ahead, his eyes so clouded over that I was certain he didn’t even see me. I confirmed this by snapping the fingers of my free hand in front of his eyes. He didn’t flinch or give any other acknowledgement.
“He looks stoned,” Meg said.
“Compelled,” I corrected. “Really heavily, it would seem.”
“Can you break it?”
“I would caution us not to,” one of the Templar said. “What if it raises the alarm?”
“I don’t see an alarm, nor anyone to raise it to,” I replied. “As for snapping him out of it...” I’d seen vampiric compulsions in person, including a few by Bill. The thought brought him back to the forefront of my mind. We still had no idea where he and the others were or whether they were safe.
Despite the threat of Vehron, that was our first priority. “We don’t have time for this. Leave him.” I stood and turned to lead us away.
“Hey, what are you doing?”
I thought Kelly’s voice was directed at me, but a moment later a flash of light registered in my periphery. I spun in time to see the vampire’s form immolate from the inside out. One of the Templar stood above his remains, his sword sticking into the floor where the vampire had been moments earlier.
<
br /> “Stand down,” Vincent ordered.
“It is what we do. It is what the Lord commands,” the knight argued.
Stunned silence descended for a moment, but then I strode toward him, pushing past everyone in my way.
“Blessed...”
I cut off the Templar, grabbing him by the collar of his cape and dragging him toward me until we were eye to eye. “Why did you do that?”
“They are the enemies of decency.”
“He was helpless. No threat to us.”
“He was a beast. No more.”
My power flared up in anger, in no small part due to the warrior half of me wanting to agree with him. Sparkles of light flashed all around me as the remains of the vampire were burnt away to nothing in its fury.
The Templar’s eyes opened wide. Though my power was harmless to him, I had little doubt it looked impressive as all hell. “You think they’re animals, do you? Maybe you should try looking in the mirror for a change.”
I let the Templar go and pointed a finger in his face. “Nobody does anything without my say so going forward. Is that...”
A hand grasped my arm. “Sheila...”
I spun toward Meg, my aura flaring in annoyance. “I’m serious. Unless something attacks us first, we are better than this. Nobody is to...”
“Listen.”
“What?”
“I said shut up and listen.”
I narrowed my eyes at her for a moment, but that’s when I realized the silence that seemed to permeate this place wasn’t as absolute here as I’d thought.
The creaks and groans of fatigued metal could be heard, as well as the shifting of rubble. Whatever had happened here had been recent, perhaps within the hour. Then I heard it ... voices. “There’s someone else down here.”
“No shit, Sherlock,” Meg replied with a sly grin.
Though the words were too faint to make out, there was definitely life ahead, although whether they were survivors or the perpetrators of this calamity, I had no way of knowing. But I intended to find out. “Follow me. Stay close and stay quiet.”
Shining Fury: from the Tome of Bill Series Page 16