“Shut up, you big goof. I got this part. You go save the city.” She gave me a quick kiss, and I stepped back and shut the door. The big SUV laid rubber as she pulled out onto Central, headed for Presbyterian Hospital.
I turned to William and Abby. “Okay, here’s the deal. We have a passel of newborn vampires running around the baseball stadium. They’re blood-mad and killing people, so they need to be put down. Sabrina thinks that about eight of them got past us, and there was at least one who escaped earlier. What’s wrong?” The two of them were just staring at me like they’d seen a ghost.
“I don’t really know how to say it, but . . . dude, you look like you’re starring in a remake of Carrie,” Abby said.
“Huh?”
“Sir, you are covered head to toe in blood. Literally covered,” William said.
“Shit. I forgot about that. Sorry. I got in a little scrap underground chasing the guy who killed Rabbit.”
“WHAT?!?!?” Abby asked, her voice rising a full octave in one syllable.
“Yeah.” I nodded solemnly. “Rabbit’s dead. Some asshole vamp in the sewers ripped his heart out. I chased him, but he had a couple dozen baby vamps in cages under the city in an abandoned subway station. He turned them loose, and there was a fight. We killed most of them, but some got loose, Sean got hurt, and now I’m covered in blood.”
Abby just stood there, eyes wide, for a long second. “There are subways in Charlotte? Where the hell have I been?”
“The project was abandoned in the sixties,” William said. “We must make haste, but I do fear that your appearance will inspire more terror than calm.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right. Gimme a second.” I dropped my jacket to the ground and ripped my T-shirt off without bothering to take off my shoulder holster. There was a decent-sized patch of clean fabric on the back, so I used that to wipe off as much blood as I could, then ran the soaked fabric down my arms, which really did more smearing of the blood than removing. I pulled my duster back on and looked at Abby. “Better?”
“Not much, but a little. I guess now you look like a cross between a butcher and Firefly cosplay.”
“I’ll take it,” I said. “When we get to the stadium, William, you find Bobby. He’ll have a spare EMS jacket for you. Work with him on bagging up the dead. Make sure none of them wake up in a few hours.”
The trim vampire gave a grim nod. “I can do that. Breaking the necks of the corpses should be simple enough, and will still leave a body for the family to bury.”
“Good deal. Abby and I are on baby retrieval duty. Most of these vamps are batshit crazy, so don’t pull your punches.”
“Jimmy, baby, when have I ever pulled a punch?” Abby asked.
She had a point, so I just nodded, then we all blurred into motion as we sprinted up the hill on Elizabeth, hauling ass toward the baseball stadium.
We zipped through the stopped traffic downtown and made it to the stadium in about three minutes to see a scene of abject chaos unfolding before us. Emergency vehicles ringed BB&T Ballpark and the adjacent Romare Bearden park, their red and blue lights cutting through the white street light. Men and women rushed in every direction, and half a dozen cops tried to restore order to thousands of panicked civilians.
William veered off toward a line of ambulances, while Abby and I ran for a cop car stationed right outside the main entrance to the stadium. Lieutenant McDaniel stood beside the car, his service weapon trained on the doors. A dozen cops concentrated here, several with AR-15s aimed toward the stadium.
“What’s up, L.T.?” I asked as we got to his side. “Are they still in there?”
“Took you long enough,” he growled. “Where’s Law and Fitz?”
“Sean’s hurt, so Sabrina took him to the hospital.” I held up both hands as he spun around to face me. “He’ll be fine, but no use in this scrap. Sabrina’s going to get him some antibiotics and a couple pints of blood, and he’ll be good as new. What’s going on in there?” I gestured toward the stadium, a classy facade of brick and greenery hiding the interior from view.
“A bunch of vampires came up out of the sewer tunnels over on Graham, and they climbed the outfield wall to get into the stadium. Most of the crowd got out, but we think there might still be a couple hundred hidden inside. I don’t have enough men to set up any real kind of perimeter. So far I’ve been able to keep them pinned down with snipers from the adjacent parking decks, but I don’t know how long it’ll take them to just rush the front doors and get out into the city.”
“Okay,” I said. “We’ll take it from here. Can you tell your snipers not to shoot me in the head? I’m having a bad enough hair day already.” With that, I walked around the police car and started for the entrance, Abby by my side.
“What’s the plan, boss?” she asked.
“We’re going to have to play it by ear. There are a lot of innocent people in there, and we need to try and keep this as much under the radar as possible. And if we can take one or two of them alive, maybe we can find out more about this vampire who turned them, and why he was keeping them in cages. And if there was some connection between him and that Alexander guy I killed in the subway tunnels the other day.”
“Is that still bugging you? Get over it, Black. That dude challenged you; he lost, he died. That’s the deal. You don’t want to get true-dead, don’t step to the boss. Seems pretty simple to me.”
She was right, but I couldn’t let it go like that. The whole fight bothered me, mostly because I wasn’t sure how much in the right I was. Yeah, he challenged me, but for all I could tell, he might have been a better Master. I pushed those thoughts down, trying to focus on the task at hand.
We walked through the main entrance, bypassing the locked-down turnstiles and walking straight through a frame that held a plate-glass window until it met with the fleeing crowd. Streaks of blood on the floor told me that the fans might have escaped, but they didn’t get out unscathed. I stuck my head out of the front door and waved McDaniel in. He sent a six-man SWAT unit into the main lobby to secure the area and give us a safe place to send any survivors we found.
I motioned for Abby to go to the right, and I turned left, passing the luxury boxes on my right. I heard a soft whimper coming from one of the boxes and opened the door. Three young women in Charlotte Knights T-shirts huddled behind a row of seats. “It’s okay,” I said as they looked up at me in terror. “Come this way and go to the main entrance. The police are there and they’ll take care of you.”
“Are the monsters gone?” a black woman in her early twenties asked.
“The path to the front entrance is clear. I’m heading in to take out the rest of the monsters now.”
“By yourself?” asked a pale young woman with mountains of red curls and freckles on her nose. Her nametag said “Clara.” The other two women weren’t wearing nametags. I guess they got lost in the confusion.
“Yeah, Clara. By myself. I’m stronger than I look. But I have to get moving now, so please go to the police and let them help you.” I stepped back, holding the door open, then froze as the women all stood. Something wasn’t right. I turned the whole conversation over in my head, then it clicked.
I couldn’t hear any heartbeats from these women. If they were terrified and hiding from monsters, their hearts should have been going like trip-hammers, but there was nothing. Because their hearts weren’t beating at all. I stepped back in front of the door. “On second thought, ladies, I think it would be better if you stayed here until I clear the rest of the stadium.”
“Oh no, that’s fine,” the third young vampire said. Her shirt was untucked, and there was a smear of blood on her hand as she tried to reach past me to the door.
“I’m afraid I insist,” I said, dropping my fangs into place.
The girl in front of me, a blond with a short bob haircut and a bu
tton nose, stepped back and smiled. “I don’t think I’m going to listen to anything a man ‘insists’ at me ever again.” Her own fangs popped out, and she smiled at me. “Let’s kick his ass, ladies.”
She leapt at me, and I backhanded her across the room into her two friends. “That’s a terrible idea. I’d really rather not kill any more of you tonight. But if you take another step, I will stake you cold.”
“You’re the monster from the tunnels!” the redhead whispered.
“The name’s Jimmy. Sounds so much better than Monster. You’ve obviously shaken the bloodlust, so if you can control yourselves, you don’t have to die.”
“We’re already dead, you dick. We don’t have to listen to anybody ever again,” “Clara” said with a sneer.
“That depends on how long you want your ever to last,” I said. “You come at me now, and you’ll be just as dead as the newborns I killed in the tunnels. Or you behave yourselves, learn the rules, and help me catch the asshole that turned you, and you get the chance to learn just how cool it is to be a vampire. But it’s your call. I’m not in a good mood, so I’m perfectly content to do more killing.”
“I think you talk too much,” Clara said, and sprang at me. The last thing that ran through my head before she crashed into me was, Well, that went well.
Chapter 30
THESE GIRLS WERE smart, way smarter than the baby vamps underground. Of course, they’d been able to feed before I got there, so their bloodlust was calmed, and they weren’t starved animals anymore. They also weren’t quite used to their new strength, but I couldn’t count on that to counteract the close quarters and the fact that there were three of them.
Clara came at me head-on, while the black girl shot in from the right, trying to take out my legs. I leapt straight up into the air, punched my fists through the tiles of the drop ceiling, and used the supports for the ceiling to swing forward into the more open space in the middle of the box. “More open” didn’t mean I had much room to move, but it was a little better than hemmed in by the door.
Clara spun around and leapt at me again, and this time I grabbed her by the hair and slammed her face into the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the first-base line. Her nose hit with a crunch, and blood splattered across the glass. She dropped to the floor, stunned, and I turned to the other two young women.
“Stop this bullshit now, and you don’t have to die,” I said. “I don’t go around killing every baby vamp I meet, I just need to make sure you aren’t out there turning all the humans into undead every night.”
“I think you have underestimated how little I give a damn what you or any other man has to say about what I do,” the black woman said, her lip raised in a sneer. “I might have been taken advantage of by the prick that turned us, but I guarantee that’ll be the last time it ever happens.”
“I’m not going to take advantage of you,” I said. “I’m either going to teach you the rules of being a vampire in my city, or I’m going to kill you. Those are the only options. So which one are you doing, learning or dying?”
Her eyes narrowed, and I read her decision before she moved. But instead of charging me, she held up her middle finger and turned for the door. “Screw you, I’m out of here.”
I leapt over the row of seats between me and the exit and slapped my hand on the door, slamming it shut just as she pulled it open a few inches. “I didn’t give you the option to leave.”
“I didn’t ask.”
I was tired, and cranky, and still had at least three or four more vampires to hunt down, and I still had to go back underground and chase their maker, so I was done talking. I focused my will on the girls and said, “Sleep.”
The girl nearest to me just looked at me like I was crazy, then she said, in a mocking deep voice, “Drop Dead.”
Another newborn that my compulsions didn’t work on. This was a pattern that I really didn’t enjoy or understand, but I didn’t have time to worry about that now. Right then I had to deal with the young woman trying to pull the exit door open and the two other vampires circling to get a better position to attack me.
“This is my last offer,” I said, grunting to hold the door closed. “Get away from the door and we can talk about the rules for vampires in Charlotte. Then you don’t have to die.”
“This is my last offer, asshole,” the girl at my side growled. “You piss off right now and I won’t rip your head off.”
I jammed a foot against the door and swung an elbow at the girl’s head. She did the logical thing, which was to duck. Too bad that put her chin right in the path of the uppercut I threw to follow up the elbow strike. She straightened up with the force of the punch and staggered back a couple of steps.
I resigned myself to fighting in an alcove and turned to put my back to the door, drawing my Glock as I did. All three girls froze, then Clara smiled, a slow grin that stretched across her face.
“We don’t have to be afraid of bullets anymore, you dick. We can’t die, not again.” Then she came at me, fangs down and arms outstretched.
I proved her wrong. I put a bullet in her forehead, and the silver hollowpoint shredded her brain before blasting half the back of her skull off. She dropped on her face right on the carpet at my feet, and I turned to the remaining two vampires. “These are vamp-killer rounds. They’ll turn you true-dead quicker than you can blink. Now put your hands up, and we’ll figure out what to do with you two after I clear the rest of the stadium.”
The black woman did as I ordered, but the blonde sprinted to her right, then picked up a table and hurled it at the window. It bounced off the thick glass, and she turned to me, fury written in every line on her face. I saw the decision run across her eyes, and shook my head, trying to tell her it wasn’t going to end well for her, but she was never going to listen. I put one round in her chest as she ran at me, and that stopped her in her tracks. She dropped to her knees, looking at me with naked hate and fury all over her face, then her eyes went completely blank as I put a round through her heart.
The blond woman fell to her side, true-dead, and I turned to the sole survivor. “I need you to answer some questions for me, and if you’re lying, I’ll shoot you in the face. Do you understand me?”
She nodded but didn’t speak. She was obviously terrified, and I didn’t blame her. I holstered the pistol, knowing I could draw it again before she could get to me. “Did you kill any of these people?” I gestured at the ten dead humans littering the room.
“I-I don’t really know. I was kinda crazy when I got in here. I was so hungry, and all I could think about was blood. By the time I came to myself, they were all dead. The girl you just shot, she was drinking from the bartender, and the other girl, the one with the Clara nametag, had her face buried in a waitress’s neck, so I guess I probably killed one or two of them. Oh God, I . . . I killed a person!” She pulled her hands down to cover her face and sank to her knees. “God, you should kill me. I’m a murderer!”
“You weren’t responsible for your actions. You didn’t kill anybody else, did you? After you came to your senses?”
“N-no.”
“Okay, then you’re not a murderer. The asshole that turned you, he’s a murderer, and I’ll see that he answers for every death, including yours.”
“What about the other girls?” She looked at me, part afraid, part accusing.
“Their deaths are on him, but you have a decision to make, and you have to make it right now. Are you willing to play by the rules, or do I have to shoot you, too?”
“What are the rules? I’m not going to be your sex slave. If that’s what all you assholes are into, then just kill me for real. I wish the other prick had given me that choice.”
I had no idea what she was talking about, but that would have to wait until all the innocents were clear and the rest of the newborns were either dead or subdued. “I d
on’t want slaves, sexual or otherwise. The rules are simple: don’t turn humans; don’t tell anybody about the supernatural world ever; and don’t do stupid shit that will get you noticed by the humans. There are some others, but they’re all just variations on these. Don’t kill humans, and don’t do other stuff that will draw attention. If you can live with that, then you can live.”
She nodded. “I can do that. As long as the other rules don’t involve any kind of weird sex club stuff.”
“You’ve totally watched too much True Blood,” I said. “But I will need you to do one thing for me, while I go try to see who else I can save out there.”
“Okay, what’s that?” She smiled, apparently eager to prove she was a team player. Well, she was about to run out of smiles. There were a good dozen dead humans in the room. She was in for a rough next few minutes.
“First, I’m Jimmy Black. I’m the Master of the City. It’s kinda like being the chief vampire of Charlotte. And your name?”
“Shelly.”
I let out a short laugh, the sound strange amidst all the bloodshed. “Well now I’m really glad I didn’t have to kill you. Emily would have been pissed.”
“You’ve seen Emmy? Is she okay? Where is she? What did that son of a—”
“She’s fine. I’m . . . an old friend of her family, actually. So she’s safe. As soon as I get this place cleaned up, I’ll take you to see her. After you do what I need you to do.”
“Okay.”
“I need you to put a stake through the heart of every dead human in here, and break their neck when you’re done.”
“What?!?!? You just said I shouldn’t kill anybody, now you want me to murder these people?”
“They’re already dead. At least for the next few hours. But if you don’t do this, they’re going to wake up and be just as hungry as you were when you first woke up in that cage. Then I’ll have to go through this all over again, probably with more innocent people dying. So take this stake, and put it through the heart of every corpse in here. Then give their heads a sharp twist until they’re looking directly behind them. That should make sure they don’t get back up. I’ll be back here for you when I’ve cleared the stadium. Do not leave this room. If you do, I’m going to assume you’re out killing people, and our deal is off. Got it?” I handed her a silver stake and held her gaze for a long moment.
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