The harpoon missed Quincy, but when Eric Westenra lunged for him, Bloodshot was ready. Eric soared through the air, but Bloodshot brought up a boot and caught the vampire in the throat. Westenra described an almost perfect flip and landed on his knees. Bloodshot wanted to kill the bastard right then, but something gave Westenra a reprieve.
At the first sign of renewed fighting, Malcolm had gamely attempted to charge the female vampire. Maybe, Bloodshot figured, Malcolm assumed since he’d murdered one female vampire that he’d be able to repeat the trick. But she was ready for him. Malcolm had no sooner taken a swing at her than she’d feinted left and then brought both hands interlaced together down on the base of Malcolm’s skull. He fell bonelessly and lay without moving.
That was bad, Bloodshot decided. He didn’t think Malcolm had been killed, nor did he think the injury was one Malcolm couldn’t walk away from. But Malcolm wouldn’t be walking away from anything tonight, not after the knock he’d just taken. Malcolm would be lucky to be awake by dawn, judging from the force of the wallop the female vampire had delivered. And that would make their escape much more difficult.
Maybe I was wrong about Quincy Morris being the strongest vampire, Bloodshot reflected. But the thought vanished the moment they converged on him.
This time Bloodshot was better prepared for the onslaught. Rather than allowing the first arriving vampire to knock him backward and take away his balance, he met the assault head-on. The first one there this time was Westenra, apparently recovered from their skirmish of a few moments earlier. Bloodshot jabbed at Westenra and got the vampire in the chest. He expected Westenra to go down, but this time the red-haired vampire kept his feet. Bloodshot swung again, missed, and Westenra kicked him in the gut. A powerful object rammed Bloodshot from the left—Quincy Morris, he realized—and the two went down hard. Somehow Bloodshot ended up atop Morris, and before Morris could react, Bloodshot grabbed his head and wrenched it sideways as hard as he could. There was a sickening pop, and then Morris’s tongue was lolling out like a beleaguered old hound on a sweltering summer’s day. The vampire wasn’t dead, but his neck was certainly broken. Remembering his vampire lore, Bloodshot clutched the spear and plunged it into Morris’s chest. The big vampire’s limbs splayed out, a long, hoarse exhalation blowing out of Morris’s mouth.
Bloodshot prepared to jerk the spear loose, but before he even got a decent grip on it, the female vampire launched herself at him like some sort of bestial rocket. She knocked Bloodshot backward, the two of them skidding toward the edge of the stage. Bloodshot’s head poked over the edge, and he was immediately beset by clawing hands and snapping jaws. He’d somehow forgotten all about the crowd of vampires, so intent had he been on battling the chosen ones. They’d shredded the top of his scalp within seconds and put a good many bloody grooves in his neck and shoulders. Shocked by the sudden attack, he sat up hard, the female vampire on his chest embracing him like a lover. Her arms encircled him and set to shredding the back of the trench coat and his skin beneath, but at least he’d avoided being torn to pieces by the vampire horde. Why they didn’t swarm onto the stage and join in the assault he had no idea. Could it be their observance of the vampire caste system? Would it be offensive to the chosen ones for the lower-class vampires to participate in the onstage battle?
Whatever the case, he was deeply thankful they hadn’t because he literally had his hands full with the snarling, scratching female vampire. With an effort, he pushed her far enough away that they were staring at each other. Then, hoping his skull was harder than hers, he rammed her in the nose as hard as he could with his forehead.
It worked. She went tumbling backward, shouting and frothing blood. But then Westenra went after him. At the feel of Westenra’s teeth on his neck, something within Bloodshot snapped. He was sick of being treated like a chew toy, sick of these soulless bloodsuckers coming at him in waves. It was time to end things once and for all.
Summoning all the strength he had, he swung his right arm up into Westenra’s midsection and exulted in the way the vampire’s feet rose off the ground. Completely caught off-guard, Westenra’s knees buckled. All semblance of fairness gone from Bloodshot’s mind, he brought a boot up and stomped Westenra on the back of the head. Westenra emitted a strangled yelping sound and rolled over onto his back. Bloodshot leaped on him, sitting on his chest and squeezing Westenra’s neck. Bloodshot’s face turned red from the effort, but not as red as Westenra’s was.
Bloodshot could feel Westenra’s windpipe crushing within his grip. Despite his incredible quickness and power, the vampire was no match for him. He was about to crush Eric Westenra’s throat when he became aware of someone watching him. Not the vampire horde—they were still congregated around the stage, spectating with their avid orange eyes—but someone else.
Bloodshot turned, saw the woman
(Love, her name is Love)
sitting up on an elbow, touching her bleeding nose and inspecting the red slickness on her fingertips. But despite her injury, Love
(why do I keep thinking that?)
wore an expression hideously similar to Eric Westenra’s. Not fear of Bloodshot, and certainly not defeat. No, whatever he beheld in Love’s face
(she’s the Master’s Love, she’s only known by that name)
was the antithesis of fear and defeat. Her expression was cagey, it was vicious, and it was exultant. Oh, and one more thing, he realized, this one most of all.
Eric Westenra and Love looked expectant. As if everything that had transpired had gone precisely as they’d planned.
Still clutching Westenra’s throat, Bloodshot turned to the one called Love. “You wanted all this to happen?”
“Of course,” she said, still rubbing her throat. “Why else would we have taken your beloved Jillian?”
“She’s not my beloved,” Bloodshot said, an edge to his voice, “and that’s not what I meant.”
Eric Westenra bucked suddenly, but Bloodshot controlled him by sitting down hard on his belly and squeezing his throat.
Bloodshot said, “You didn’t just want to kill me, did you?”
For the first time, a hint of uncertainty tinged Love’s face. She quickly replaced it with her cool, aloof expression, but Bloodshot was certain he’d seen it, and what was more, the alarm bells that sometimes sounded in his brain were tolling louder than they ever had before. Something was seriously amiss here, something beyond the malign events that had already taken place.
Bloodshot stared at the female vampire, thinking hard as he spoke. “He calls you Love, doesn’t he? Because you’re the one he cares about.”
A look forged half of defiance, half of pride suffused her once-pretty face. “He will destroy you.”
“If it were that easy, he would’ve done it already.”
Her vampiric features twisted in contempt. “You have no concept of power. You’re a pathetic robot. A creation of man, the lowliest creature of all. He skulks along in the sunlight, oblivious of what lies beneath him.” She grinned. “The creatures who will soon inherit his kingdom.”
Bloodshot felt his face go slack. Something she had said … something had triggered a revelation … it was—
“Your master needs me, doesn’t he? He needs to ingest the nanites.”
Again that unconvincing aloof look permeated her features. “He doesn’t need anything from—”
“He can’t go aboveground, can he?” Bloodshot said. “Even in the night. He’s so light-sensitive that what light there is aboveground will kill him.” Bloodshot looked around. “That’s why he’s not here. He’s below us, isn’t he?”
Bloodshot didn’t need an answer, could see it confirmed in her face. He glanced down at Eric Westenra, who still struggled in his grip, and there, etched in Eric’s features as well, was the confirmation of Bloodshot’s theory.
Bloodshot said, “You know what’s happened to those who’ve tried the nanite transfusion, don’t you? They’ve died, and died horribly.”
; “You survived,” Love said.
“Only by some miracle.”
“He will survive too,” she declared. “He is superior to you already, he just needs—”
“He’s a worm,” Bloodshot said, smiling cruelly. “He’s the filth on a worm’s belly.”
It acted on her like a galvanic shock. She sprang for him recklessly, eyes shuttered open in outrage and loathing.
He let go of Westenra and stood. Love arced toward him, snarling.
Bloodshot merely had to extend the harpoon into the air.
Love landed on it like a moth fixed on a pin.
She gazed at him in mute shock. Her arms hung limp at her sides. Bloodshot set her down on legs that wobbled. Then she tumbled backward and lay without moving.
The moment Love fell, there came a sound from under the theatre, a hellish roar that arose from the depths below him.
Eric Westenra coughed blood, grinned at him with red teeth. “Prepare to meet the Master.”
Bloodshot began to backpedal.
Westenra got unsteadily to his feet. His movements were sluggish, drunken. “I shall enjoy watching Him drink your blood.”
Bloodshot paused. “You’re not watching anything.” And without giving Westenra a chance to recover from his lethargy, Bloodshot pumped the harpoon at him, heard the chain whicker through the air, and watched it impale Westenra straight through the heart. Bloodshot jerked the spear, catching the vampire’s heart on the jagged barbs. Bloodshot reeled the chain in, peeled the heart off the end of the spear, and chucked it aside.
Looking grimly down at Eric Westenra, who’d sunk to his knees and was spending his dying moments gaping stupidly at the hole in his chest, Bloodshot said, “When you get to hell, say hello to your sister for me.”
But no sooner had the words escaped his lips than he heard the hellish roar sound from the depths once more. Only this time it was closer.
The Master was on his way.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
* * *
Ten minutes before Bloodshot impaled first Love then Eric Westenra, Jillian Alcott spied a dim pinkish glow from where she huddled in the body pit.
Since seeing Frankie Canelli turned into a smorgasbord by the quartet of vampires, Jillian had lived in mortal terror of being dispatched in the same gruesome manner. She assumed the vampires could see in the dark, and she was fairly certain their other senses were acute too. So her movements were cautious, halting, and her progress through the vast body field was therefore maddeningly slow. But because she was so afraid of being spotted by their superior eyes, she took to crawling through the pit. This brought her into contact with all manner of repugnant objects—dead bodies, insects, and even, on several spine-tingling occasions, massive subterranean rats. And though this was horrid beyond her worst nightmares, it was preferable to walking upright and exposing herself to the prowling vampires. On the ground as she was, she felt fairly sure she wouldn’t be seen.
Even so, she was certain at every moment that the creatures would hear her or smell her. Jillian could hear the commotion from within the theatre, and though she worried for Bloodshot’s safety, the noise did accomplish two things for her. For one, it told her Bloodshot was still alive. If he weren’t, the vampires would’ve already teemed out of the theatre tunnel and joined the hunt for her. Secondly—and this was only a hope—she thought the clamor from the theatre would conceal her own clumsy movements through the field of bodies.
Or maybe it’s concealing the noises of the vampires hunting you.
The thought made her nauseous with terror. But once it had arisen, she couldn’t unthink it. She paused, instantly aware of every minute sound. She could hear scuttling rats, the scrape and buzz of insects. The flies, especially, seemed to have taken a liking to the body pit. The thought made her shudder.
Something sounded behind her.
Jillian froze. She listened, her whole body a knot of tension. Sweat ran down her temples. Something slithered over her hand. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it had been the long, hairless tail of a rat. A wave of revulsion rippled through her, threatened to undo what composure still remained.
The sound behind her was repeated. A furtive shuffling. The huff of eager breathing.
Jillian wanted to crawl forward then, to put distance between her and whatever monstrous creature was about to descend on her, but she found she couldn’t. So great was her terror of the vampires and so strong was her revulsion at being down here among corpses, and rats, and flies that a kind of exhausted paralysis had grabbed hold of her. She imagined long, nasty claws groping toward her, a quartet of eager white faces emerging from the darkness and bathing her in the infernal glow of their mad orange eyes. Jillian closed her own eyes, certain death was upon her.
When she opened them again, she discovered a pink glow about fifty feet ahead.
The light was strong enough that she could see what lay around her. Bodies, of course, but to her left was the chute that had delivered her here. She’d missed it by a good twenty yards, but she realized now how little the chute mattered. The chances were poor anyway she’d be able to climb up the entire length of the chute to return to the network of tunnels that had brought her here. Furthermore, she had no flashlight and stood no chance at all of navigating the tunnels on her own.
But the flare … Bloodshot had told her to look out for the flares. Who wielded the flare she had no idea, but if she didn’t move now the person might abandon her.
She swallowed, knowing she had to make a run for it. If she attempted to maintain the same snail’s pace in order to evade detection …
Then it hit her. My God, how could she have been so stupid?
The vampires would’ve seen the flare too!
Jillian turned and saw the four vampires rushing toward her.
“Run!” a voice behind the flare shouted.
Jillian ran.
She’d covered perhaps half the distance to her savior when she noticed something that at first frightened, then confused her. Two more figures were converging on the person holding the flare.
They reached the flare holder a moment before she did. Behind the brilliant pink flame she made out the form of a powerful man with close-cropped hair. There was a woman with him, though Jillian couldn’t see her well.
She could see Lou Carboni and Eddie Maza well enough, however.
A muddle of voices all arose at once, but Jillian wasn’t going to join in the talk. She saw, just beyond the four speakers, an open door. She was almost to the group when the guy holding the flare gasped.
Apparently, he’d noticed what was pursuing her.
“Jesus, get in here!” he shouted.
As one, the five of them crowded through the doorway. The big man with the flare slammed home the door and slid down an iron crossbar just as the vampires rammed into it from the other side. The door seemed forged of iron as well, but the vampires banged into it so hard that it shuddered in its frame, flakes of rust sprinkling down from the low ceiling over their heads like New Year’s confetti.
“What the hell were those things?” the guy with the flare demanded.
“You know what they were,” the woman muttered.
“Yeah,” the big man said, “but did you see ’em? The way their eyes were lit up?”
Lou Carboni said, “Get that thing out of my face, Danks.”
The woman said, “You don’t seem very grateful, Louie. We just saved your life.”
“I didn’t need saving. Now let’s get out of here.”
“Who’s this?” the woman asked, eyeing Jillian.
“She’s insurance,” Carboni said. “Those things get near us again, we feed her to ’em.”
“Wait a minute,” Eddie Maza said. “How’d you two know where we were?”
The one named Danks seemed to hesitate. “It was that big guy … you know, the one they call Bloodshot?”
“What about him?” Carboni asked, his voice dangerously serene.
Danks sh
rugged. “He said you were in trouble, boss. So I came down here to help.”
“And you brought my wife.”
Danks shifted from foot to foot, like a little kid who’s just realized he’s in a lot of trouble. “The big guy said she’d be in danger back at the house. So I … so I brought her along.”
“You thought she’d be safer here.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Underground,” Carboni persisted. “With the vampires.”
“Can we please go?” the woman asked.
“Shut your stupid mouth, Gia,” Carboni said.
The woman recoiled.
The one named Danks said, “You think maybe you could lay off the mean talk, Lou?”
Lou Carboni turned his gaze slowly up to Danks. “What did you say to me?”
Danks shrugged. “I just thought maybe you could speak to her a little nicer, that’s all. She came all the way down here for you.”
Lou smiled, but there was nothing pleasant about the expression. “I just figured somethin’ out,” he said. “You two have a thing going, don’t ya? Behind my back, you been messin’ around with my wife.”
Gia Carboni said, “You’re one to talk, Louie. You spend more time with hookers than you do at home.”
Lou Carboni raised his hand to smack his wife, but before he could, Danks punched him in the face. Hard.
Carboni blundered backward and landed against the wall.
Eddie Maza pulled a gun on Danks. “You want to die?”
Danks opened and closed his fist, but he didn’t look like he was in pain. He looked like he was enjoying this. “You’re gonna side with the boss, Eddie? Why do you care what happens to him? He treats everybody like dirt.”
“Eddie knows where the money is,” Gia said. “He’s just a monkey in a suit.”
“He’s loyal’s what he is,” Lou Carboni said, straightening. “Those freaks in there told us only one of us three was gettin’ out of there alive. Frankie tried to save himself, but not Eddie here. Eddie here showed loyalty.”
Danks grinned. “You sound like a monkey to me, Eddie.”
Bloodshot: Kingdom of Shadows (Kindle Worlds) Page 15