The Vampire's Ultimatum (Fatal Allure Book 10)

by Martha Woods

  I huffed a laugh under my breath, taking one last look at her and backing myself out, “Yes ma’am. Take care of everyone here for me.”

  “Always,” She replied, smiling gently and waving even softer, “Always.”

  * * *

  “So, I just got another call,” Joseph said, looking back at us from the driver’s seat, “Some reinforcements that hadn’t been there today just arrived at the hotel, it looks like they know that something is coming for them and they’re helping fortify the place.”

  “Reinforcements?” Damon asked, cradling the bruise in his side under his vest, “How many are we talking about here?”

  “Somewhere around twenty… maybe thirty…” Joseph didn’t bother keeping the grimace from his face, there was no way to spin this in a positive light. “Honestly I was expecting Tristian to keep some men away from his big finale this morning but I didn’t think it would be this many.”

  “He always liked to keep some of us away from the big fights, being a hunter means you lose the element of surprise if you keep fighting every single week for whatever reason. A vampire or a werewolf will recognize me on sight, but a tax accountant? They won’t process them as a threat until there’s a knife in their back.” In the silence of the moment that followed, Damon laughed to himself, “Ok, it’s becoming clearer and clearer that this is just some kind of cult, isn’t it?”

  “You had sleeper agents Damon, I think you were living in a conspiracy thriller for most of your life,” Vincent chuckled, “I always hated spies, this is going to be even more fun now.”

  “Whatever the case, we have potentially forty, fifty men all holed up in there, we’re going to have to be even more careful with how we handle this.” Joseph checked on us in the rearview mirror, giving each of us a onceover to make sure we were in able condition. “Everyone ready?”

  One by one we all nodded, my hand trembling around the handle on the door and my breath coming in shaky gasps. This was it, the last step in this ridiculous journey before we could all finally just… move on with our lives, I wasn’t going to let myself back out of it now, no way. If only I could tell my shaking hands that, then we’d be able to step out and get this all started.

  “Here,” Damon said, “Let me.”

  When he leaned over me to open the door his hands were shaking just as much, but with a clench of his fist all movement ceased and he was as steady as a rock. He was still human, he could still die like a human, and if you were going into a fight where you were going up against as many as fifty men all armed to the teeth you were probably due for a little bit of nervousness at least.

  “Just relax, think of something nice that you’re going to go back to after this, like Cara, or a juicy hamburger.” Flipping a gun around in his hand, he offered it to me wordlessly before pocketing it at my refusal. “Stay behind me, we’ve both got vests on but I’ve been shot in one before, I can take it better.”

  “I’ll have you know that I can get shot just as well as you can, thank you very much.”

  “I know Amy, I know, no one can get shot better than you, the last few days have told me that much.”

  When I pushed open the door my hands weren’t shaking anymore, I was steady as a rock and ready to just get this over with. Standing in front of the building probably wasn’t the best plan, given that anyone could have just shot us in the street, but they likely wanted to avoid that whole mess if they could get away with it. Even with a high-ranking member of the local police force inside, you were going to have a hard time justifying being part of an armed militia that gunned down four people in the street. Corruption could only get you so far, eventually they would have to bring you in just to justify not being arrested themselves.

  “You two ready to go?” Joseph asked, “Vincent and myself will go in through the back, you two make a lot of noise and keep them distracted, we’ll come up behind them and destroy them that way, sound good?”

  The two of them almost vanished at our nods, I know that they’re fast but… wow, surely there’s a limit to that sort of thing, how could anyone possibly kill them if they were that fast normally? Either way, it was up to Damon and myself to cause a distraction, and if the hardware on Damon’s back was any indication we were about to cause one hell of a scene.

  “Damon? Where did you even get all of these?”

  “A bunch of hunters are ex-military, they have some hookups on where to get some of the really good stuff.” He racked the bolt on a shotgun that looked far too bulky and intimidating to be completely legal. Which meant it probably was. “Definitely stay behind me for this, this thing is loud and bad, anything in front of us isn’t going to be there much longer.”

  I peeked my head over the edge of the window, seeing a group of them already standing with their guns aimed at the door and their fingers on the trigger. A quick glance down showed me the hotel staff tied up and held behind the counter, clearly they hadn’t been a fan of the hotel being used as a stand in for the Alamo.

  “Hey, Damon,” I whispered, “They’re already standing and looking.”

  “Really?” He looked between the door and the window, thinking for a moment before pulling something off his vest and handing it to me. “When I blast the window pull the pin on that and throw it in. Try and get it as far back in the room as you can, we want them to be completely done.”

  He must have seen the look of horror that crossed over my face because he was quick to jump back in and reassure me. “Don’t worry, it won’t kill them, just blind them for a bit, ok?”

  “Alright...” I nodded, I could deal with that. Come on Amy, get it together.

  Counting to three and giving me time to prepare myself, he took aim and shattered the window with a single blast, the grenade in my hand following the shot into the room and clattering across the floor into the midst of the group. I was glad that it hadn’t landed near the staff because the blast from the grenade going off was enough to push the rest of the glass out of the frame and leave a ringing in my ears even outside the building, I could only imagine how the hunters were feeling.

  Taking aim at the door handle, Damon disintegrated it and kicked the rest of the door in, firing shot after shot into the center of the room as soon as he saw it was clear of staff members. Each powerful blast hurt my ears even through the buds, the drum underneath his weapon seemingly containing an unlimited amount of shells as he blasted apart furniture and walls alike, hesitating for a moment before turning it against the men. I wanted to look away as the first one went down without much of a sound at all, his chest turning into a near fountain and his mouth falling open in bewildered shock, but I forced myself to stare forward and see all of them.

  This was the choice I’d made, these were the consequences of the choice that I’d made.

  The others by now had gotten the message that someone was here to kill them, even if they still couldn’t see who it was, diving to the sides behind pillars and couches that hadn’t yet been torn apart by gunfire. A few of the more daring ones tried to fire back, though when one of them lost his entire arm in response they instead focused on ducking down to avoid everything at all costs. They were shouting and screaming orders at each other, struggling to be heard over the thunderous roar of the shotgun, though as their voices started to die out one by one it didn’t take a genius to know that our backup had arrived.

  The first of them screamed harder than I’d ever heard anyone scream before, it was hardly the first time that I’d heard someone be killed by a vampire but… it had never been quite like this before, the sound of grunting and fingernails scraping against the floor making all of us pause for a moment while we tried to process what we’d just heard. I could only imagine what the staff was thinking, though hopefully, they were temporarily deaf from the grenade. It would save them a world of trauma at least like they needed more of that from everything else going on already.

  Half of the unfortunate hunter that had been grabbed was tossed back carelessly into the center
of the room, answering the question of whether it had been Vincent or Joseph that had killed him. I don’t know what it is with Joseph and tearing people in half, but he’d certainly perfected it as an artform. While my, and no doubt everyone else’s attention was on that horrific scene, we all missed the other two hapless hunters that had gone missing, only realizing something was amiss before they crashed down from the ceiling in a wet pile, blood oozing from twin holes in their necks and leaving only one hunter by himself in the midst of all this chaos.

  No matter what he’d been planning to do, or what he had already done going by the tied-up staff, I couldn’t help feeling bad for him while he flailed around helplessly, still blinded from the grenade and no doubt barely able to hear anything at all. Even Joseph and Vincent looked hesitant to actually do anything to him, humans were normally easy prey for them but this… this was just sad.

  “Sorry bud,” Damon said, stepping forward and taking aim, “Gotta get all of you.”

  This time I didn’t need to watch.

  * * *

  “Looks like that’s the lobby cleared, now we just… need to get the rest of the floors I guess.”

  “How many floors are there?” I asked, “I didn’t count outside so…”

  “Another five,” Joseph answered, “At most ten men for each one, though probably less. Tristian and Rick are going to be at the top most likely, we’ll just have to push our way through to them.”

  “Definitely not the company that they’re going to want,” Damon quipped, loading shells with his offhand and looking around at the destroyed state of the lobby, “But it’s probably the company that they’ve got coming. I’m just wondering how we’re going to explain all of this to the cops.”

  Joseph scoffed, “You leave that to me, one way or another they’re going to leave this alone, and given the way that they’ve treated Amy recently I’m thinking it’s going to be another.”

  “Don’t eat the fucking cops please,” I said, walking towards the stairwell and checking upwards for any signs of hunters, “Things are complicated enough without you serving them up like a steak.”

  “We don’t eat people Amy, I thought you would have figured that out by now!” Joseph smirked. “You’re really just glorified milkshakes to us if anything, much easier to consume.”

  “That’s charming Joseph, now how are we going to do the rest of what we came here to do?”

  “I think that I’ll take the elevator, all this killing has my feet rather sore and I don’t feel like marching myself up all those stairs.” Pressing the button and stepping inside the elevator, he turned back and shrugged at us. “Don’t worry, I won’t open the door until I’m sure that you’re all at the next floor with me. Better hurry though!”

  We took a second before all realizing at once that he was rising up to the next floor with no doubt at least a dozen weapons pointed right at the doors, not exactly what I would call a welcoming committee. “I thought he said we were going to have to be more careful!”

  “Yeah, that’s Joseph,” Vincent said, grabbing both of us and leaping upwards to the door in the stairwell, “Overly dramatic, completely asinine, but undoubtedly a lot of fun to work with. You just have to get used to his way of doing things.”

  “I’d rather get used to having a plan and sticking to it, but what do I know right? I’m only the one who started this whole thing.”

  He smirked. “I suspect that his method is also supposed to piss everyone he’s working with off, it keeps them too distracted to be afraid anymore.”

  “Well, mission accomplished there.” I shook out my hands, feeling the blood in my veins crackle with electricity and my skin harden like a stone. “I’m going, to be honest, I’m still not one hundred percent sure how to use all of this, but I’ll try it at least.”

  “Long as we’re not standing in front of you when you do it, I don’t mind.” Damon took his place at the side of the door, peeking in through the crack and darting back quickly as the frame shattered with the impact of a bullet. “Fuck! Yeah, they definitely know that we’re coming.”

  “Stand back!” I yelled, not hesitating for a second after he moved to gather the energy that had been massing in my fists, driving them into the wall and shattering the concrete outwards. Thin tendrils of lightning shot out of my fingers, stinging slightly as they passed through the skin and flicking between each hunter from front to back. There wasn’t enough force or voltage in the lightning to kill, I don’t think I had the strength for that and I definitely didn’t have the will to do something so violent so soon, but that worked out just fine for me.

  I could only really see a few of their faces, but the bulging veins on their necks and the agonized clenching of their teeth was enough to show that the effects were what we needed, weapons dropping from their hands and knees dropping to the floor, all of them laying incapacitated just as the elevator dinged its arrival.

  “My,” Joseph said, brushing off his coat while he stepped out, “That elevator is miraculously slow, I have no idea how no one has complained about that yet. I missed all the fun!”

  Fortunately for him, it seemed that not everyone was affected the same way by the lightning that I’d just shot through them, though I was certainly feeling its effects. A big hunter, one who looked to be a solid wall of muscle, stood quickly and moved as fast as a rattlesnake, hand clutching a stake as he swung it directly for Joseph’s heart. I felt more than saw Vincent move past me, though he couldn’t get there before Joseph had already intercepted his wrist. It was incredible, the things that you saw in slow motion, but looking upon that scene I could swear that I saw Joseph’s grin of elation turn into a frown of disappointment when Vincent passed by him, shoulder impacting with the hunter’s chest and sending him flying backwards.

  Though Joseph was still gripping his wrist tightly, and even though he may have flown backwards across the length of the hallway, his arm from the elbow down did not come with him. I guess we now had an answer to what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object, but I’m pretty sure the question wasn’t normally if they were holding onto something else.

  “Vincent, darling,” Joseph scoffed, tossing the arm to the side and bouncing it off a prone hunter’s back, “I really need you to trust that I have this all under control.”

  “No.”

  “Oh alright, fair enough.” He turned back to the rest of the hunters, a number of them starting to shake off the effects and beginning to rise to their feet. “Now, what to do with all of you I wonder?”

  Vincent grinned over his shoulder, flicking his head back at us and gesturing upwards. “You can take care of the next floor, I don’t think you’ll need to stick around to see the rest of this.”

  “That sounds fine to me, let’s go Damon. I… need to take a moment anyway.”

  Stumbling as I took the first few steps, Damon caught me and sat me down up at the next corner, out of earshot of the screams and tearing sounds from downstairs. When he looked back down at me he looked nothing but concerned, though I was quick to wave it away before he could get too bad with it.

  “Don’t worry, don’t worry. Just… it’s been a while since I did anything like that, and I guess I really don’t like hurting people with my magic. It doesn’t really agree with me.”

  “Yeah, no kidding, you’re super pale right now and… don’t hit me for saying this, but you honestly look like shit right now.”

  I laughed, “Wow, what a gentleman! I just need a second, no point in staying here when we’ve got something important to take care of right?”

  “This will all be over soon, don’t worry.” He picked me up and got me on my feet, checking that I could stand properly before nodding to himself with a smile. “I swear, we’re not leaving the house for a few long weeks after this, I’m going to sleep for once and I’m going to sleep well.”

  “Please don’t talk about sleep, I’m so tired I could just collapse right here.” Stepping towards the next door and checki
ng the handle, I flicked my thumb backwards and smiled at him. “Lead the way, I don’t want to have to wait too long.”

  * * *

  The next floor was cleared without much in the way of fuss, Damon’s firepower and the blasts from my hands making short work of any resistance. It wasn’t something that either of us relished, even though we hated these men we didn’t enjoy the act of taking them out, but the necessity of it all was enough to convince us that we needed to keep moving forward. With each hunter that didn’t walk out of here that was at least one paranormal who wouldn’t be placed in the ground, and even if we came out of this only preventing one paranormal death I would consider that worth it.

  By the time that Vincent and Joseph caught back up to us we only had two more floors to go through before the top, and going by the color of their eyes and the stains on their hands they were more than having their fill tonight.

  “Remember,” I said, looking more at Joseph rather than Vincent, “We’re here to stop them from hurting everyone else, we’re not here just to kill them, ok? I think it’s important that we all remember that, I don’t want this to be just another vendetta.”

  “If you’re referring to my brother then I can tell you that this has nothing to do with him. The hunters who were involved with that are long dead, so are the ones that came after them, and the ones after them.” He grinned, showing off his bloodstained fangs in the process. “I hate these men, but I don’t hate them anymore than you would hate a mosquito. I’m going to enjoy this, but I’m not feral enough to have that be my only reason for being here, is that good enough?”

  I nodded, it was after all exactly what I needed to hear. I couldn’t expect him to not enjoy this, after everything I couldn’t expect any paranormal to not enjoy seeing them gone, but knowing for a fact that he wasn’t going to act like an animal purely for the sake of it was… comforting. I had enough worries already, I didn’t need to add a vampire friend going feral to the list as well.