by ST Branton
“It’s blood,” Rocco said. “Don’t ask me whose. I don’t know. As far as this shit is concerned, I’m low on the totem pole—forgive my political incorrectness.” He passed me a dickish smile before continuing. “I don’t get told too much. I just get the cases from the big guy, who gets ‘em from the bigger guy.”
“Who’s the big guy?” I hazarded a guess. “Delano?”
“Figured your friend mighta told you about him.” Rocco reached into his inside pocket and withdrew a capped syringe containing an unmistakable red liquid. “Yeah. So, he brings it to us, and we put it into these things. Then…” He mimed a jabbing motion into the side of his neck. “Needle straight into the carotid, you know? Starts working inside of thirty seconds. We toss ‘em in the pit because the initial injection drives them crazy. Gotta be careful though, give them too much, and it really fucks them up. Takes a few days for them to come back to their senses.” He paused. “Delano said it took me two.” He said this with a hint of pride, as if it was proof of his higher breeding or superior intelligence.
“You’re a vampire?!” Honestly, I had no idea why I felt even an iota of surprise. I’d suspected it anyway, hadn’t I? So many triple curve balls had already been thrown my way that I should have been prepared for one more.
“You asked about the deal with the gunshots,” he answered. “That’s it. I heal like that these days.” He snapped his fingers. “Useful. You should try it.”
“Yeah, no thanks.” I directed my gaze back toward the pit and the furious melee that I knew was churning under that cover. “What happens to them after that?”
I was horrified but also fascinated. This was so far beyond the already expanded limits of my imagination. If Marcus had told me about it from the start, I might have been way more on board with hunting this guy down.
Or I would have left him on the street. That was more likely.
“If they survive the party, then they’ll be more or less back to their normal selves,” Rocco said. “They can get all of that insane shit under control mostly. But they’re stronger than they’d ever dreamed of being, and they’re big-time hungry. They wanna eat all the time, you know? Kinda like having kids, but these ones eat other people.” He leered at me. “They like young girls the best. Around your age.”
I made sure he could feel the warmth of the blade at his back. “So, the cage on the first floor?”
Rocco nodded. “That was supposed to be our food supply for the next while.” He signaled for the pit to be uncovered, and every muscle in my body tensed. I prepared to run him through if he tried anything untoward.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned. “You’ll be dead before you hit the ground.”
“No, no,” he said quickly. “Not you. I just said that because I like to see that look on your face. No, we’ve got someone else lined up. He’s all ready to go.” Another hand signal. Louie opened a gate in the wall and extracted a hunched over form bound in chains. I recognized the sturdy build and the tunic that was still draped over his torso.
My stomach knotted. “Don’t you dare.”
Louie dragged Marcus to the edge of the pit and looked up, waiting for Rocco to tell him it was time. I wanted to run over there and kill Louie, but I knew it was a fool’s errand. As soon as the pressure of the sword was off him, Rocco would find a way to screw me over. He’d always been maddeningly good at that.
And then we’d both be dead.
Marcus glanced at me and shook his head. I knew what it meant. He was telling me to leave him. To let him go. To walk away.
Like hell.
“I see you understand the situation.” Rocco preened, pleased with himself. “I’d apologize for making you watch, but the truth is, I’m not sorry.” Busting up into waves of hearty guffaws, Rocco motioned across to Louie.
I watched in horror as Marcus tipped over the lip of the pit and disappeared into the seething mass of bodies.
“No!”
I stopped thinking about anything except Marcus in that moment. Rocco Durant, the other goons, the fact that I was in a slaughterhouse turned vampire production facility—it all disappeared. The only things that were real in my mind were Marcus and the pit. I had to get him out of there, no matter the consequences.
I had saved him once. I could save him again.
Jerking the sword away from Rocco, I leaned forward, springing with all my might toward shrieking oblivion. At the height of my jump, the pit looked to be a thousand feet deep.
I could see Marcus bound on the floor. They hadn’t gotten to him yet.
I still had time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
I rolled on the landing, narrowly avoiding a savage kick to the face from someone in the full thrall of vampire madness. Down here, the noise was even worse. All the agonized voices weaved together into a tapestry of torment.
Rocco Durant, you are so dead, I vowed silently. After I found Marcus, freed him, and figured out a way to get the hell out of here alive.
In my head, it sounded like madness. Out loud, it would also have sounded like madness, but I refused to leave Marcus to die like this. I had already made my choice in a pretty irreversible way.
Good thing I still had the sword.
The blade took its first casualty as it flamed into existence, cleaving someone behind me in half. I only knew this because I felt the telltale sizzle of its cutting, and I heard the thump of the corpse falling among its brethren. The smell of fresh blood sparked a frenzy around me, but since I had none on me by virtue of the sword, the vampires-to-be didn’t seem too interested in me.
I was thankful for that, though there was no time to dwell on it. I aimed myself in my best approximation of the direction Marcus was in and started swinging in wide, looping arcs that took as much advantage of momentum as possible. The masses began to drop like flies, and the wailing built to a fever pitch. I could feel it in my teeth. I thought my head was going to split apart or shatter.
I didn’t look, but I had no doubt Rocco was watching. That made me all the more determined to succeed. Someone had to show him how deranged this all was. Someone had to make him pay.
I was happy to volunteer myself.
With the sword in front of me, I shouldered aggressively through the crowd. It was some kind of horrible, grisly mosh pit where instead of dancing like bulldozers, the participants ripped and devoured each other. They didn’t seem to like the fiery nature of the sword, which worked to my advantage, but I discovered real fast that some of them didn’t care.
A pair of terrifyingly strong hands gripped my shoulders. I yelped in pain as they twisted me around to face their owner, a gaunt, impossibly pale woman whose budding fangs had torn through her lower lip. She stared at me for a long second, her clouded eyes blank. Then she dove in for my neck.
I ran her through without questioning the action, without even feeling the heft of the sword in my arm. She died, her hot breath on my skin. So close. I had come so close to the most excruciating kind of death I had ever seen.
My hand shook so badly I nearly dropped the sword. I took a deep breath, held it tighter, and pressed on.
All I cared about was getting out of the hell Rocco Durant had created. And then I was resolved to send him to it.
***
As I thought I got closer to where Marcus might be, I started calling his name over the unbearable din so that if he was still alive, he’d know I was coming to get him.
“Marcus!”
Other than alerting my friend to my presence, the one word became a mantra for me to keep some of my sanity.
“Marcus!”
As long as I could call him and know who I was calling, I was still myself. That helped so much. It also helped that eventually, I heard a response.
“Vic!”
My heart leapt. “Marcus! I’m almost there!”
Two creatures wrestled violently in front of me, bashing into others and blocking my path. With a frustrated roar, I drew back and cut them al
l down together. They fell in a jumble of bony limbs, and I shoved my way around them.
A hand grabbed my ankle. I liberated it from its grasp. Some guy turned around and screeched in my face, so I put a hole through to the back of his skull.
Objectively, on some far-removed plane, I knew it was all horrific, and these memories would have to be suppressed or else I’d run the risk of losing my mind when it was all over. But in the moment, I was so oversaturated with images of death and gore that it hardly seemed to register after the first few minutes. It was like I put myself in a box, armored by the necessity of my mission, and that box protected me from all else.
Sort of like the way I’d been steamrolling my way through life for half a decade.
I did a lot more slashing, more swearing, and more indiscriminate shoving. The sword whistled and hummed around me as it helped me do the worst work I’d ever done. I had commanded my brain not to think about the fact that these had been people at one point, not long in the past. Real people, with families, and homes, and pets.
All gone now. These creatures were no longer human. Because of Rocco Durant and that shitkicker Delano. He’d have to be dealt with, too, ultimately.
Not yet. Don’t think too far ahead. Find Marcus.
I’d gotten far enough that Marcus was easily findable. He’d worked himself into a kneeling position, and whenever a hungry creature got too close, he’d clobber it with the heavy shackles on his wrists. I had to admire his ingenuity. He was bloody, but his wits had kept him alive so far.
When he saw me push through the last layer of the once-human blockade, his whole face lit up. He was looking older again, his hair fine and almost completely gray. The lines around his mouth and eyes had never looked so deep.
It scared me, but he brought me out of it by holding out his arms so that I could see the irons. “Cut them off, Vic, quickly! Then we fight our way out!” His tone was jarringly jovial.
I sliced through the manacles, and then I did the same for the cuffs on his ankles. He stood up immediately, shaking the blood back into his extremities. “Are you looking forward to this?” I shouted. “Because I’m not!”
“My thanks!” he answered back. “Fear not, Vic! In battle is the most noble way for men—and women—to die!”
That did not help. It did help to have my friend back, though. His naturally buoyant spirit lifted me up from the slag heap of human misery that was threatening to consume us both. I glanced at the sword in my hand. Should I have given it back? Marcus hadn’t asked, and I was getting used to the feel of the thing. Plus, I had no other weapon.
There were much fewer vampire prototypes in the pit now, thanks to my rampaging quest to find Marcus, but the remaining creatures still looked like a lot, and with less of the others to occupy them, they focused their intensity on us.
“Stay close to me!” Marcus called over his shoulder. “If we separate, we cannot help each other!”
I backed up until my shoulders were almost touching his, and I brandished the sword. The horde surged toward us, drooling and glaring with their clawed hands outstretched. Their teeth gleamed with a ghastly, hellish glow when they got in range of my sword’s light. I sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and willed my mind to stabilize.
My eyes closed for a moment, and when I opened them, I felt like a renewed person.
“Let’s do this.”
The sword burned through the air, drawing designs with the afterglow of its strikes. The embers from burning remains danced around us, smoldering when they hit the ground, erupting into flames when they came in contact with hair, clothes, or, occasionally, papery skin. I became slowly but surely inured to the constant droning screams of the damned, to the point where I either didn’t hear it anymore or I’d gone deaf.
It wouldn’t have made a difference either way. My only purpose in life had become to escape the pit. I could think about everything else when it became relevant again.
On my right, Marcus moved like a well-oiled machine, demonstrating the techniques he had been trying to teach me in flawless fashion. Although he was fighting without the blessed weapon of a god, he cut down his shrieking foes in equal, if not greater numbers. The corpses were starting to pile up around us, like horrid snowdrifts. Many of them were beginning to crumble away, but not all. It was helpful, in a way. It kept the living from approaching in any direction other than straight on.
They fell without much effort on my part. Kronin’s blade made short work of them. I had never seen so many shining examples of a humanoid body reduced to its parts, nor had I imagined myself becoming so accustomed to it. The tricky part was when they decided to swarm, which seemed to be happening with greater and greater regularity. Then, I had to pull out the fancy maneuvers, less reliable than my good old slash-and-hack method.
I whipped the sword over my head, bringing it down in a crazy spin. Biological shrapnel scattered in every direction, pelting the next wave of proto-vamps as they began their assault. It was grim as hell, but it got results. I felt myself deadening inside.
“Good, Vic!” Marcus bellowed over the din of his own attacks. “You are much improving!”
I glanced toward him just in time to see him fell three of the vamplets in quick succession. The guy was in beast mode.
I had been in beast mode, but my stamina was beginning to falter. All my sword slinging muscles burned. I couldn’t believe the thing was so damn heavy. Exhaustion threatened to overcome the limited reserves of adrenaline still struggling to supply my body with the energy I needed to keep going. The sword seemed to gain a pound with every swing.
How much longer could I keep it up?
During a rare reprieve, I leaned the blade on the floor of the pit and bent over to catch my breath. That was when I noticed the blood all over my hands and arms, running down my legs, and seeping out through ragged holes in my clothing. I had no recollection of ever being hit, but it was unrealistic to expect to emerge from this encounter unscathed.
“Marcus.” I felt wobbly on my feet. “I don’t think I’m doing so good.” The lull in action had given my body time to process and expel the rest of the adrenaline. I was shaky and spent.
More were still coming. Damn it to hell. How many were there?
“Rally, Vic!” He came over and helped me straighten up. “Draw power from your wounds. When the battle is through, there will be plenty of time to rest and recover, but we have not yet broken onto the other side.” He looked up. “Not much longer. I will handle the bulk of the rest.”
I nodded. “Thank you.” My vision blurred as I labored to steady myself under the sword. I saw the fiery blade weaving back and forth. In the field of the emptying pit before me, a single vampire came into focus. She was bigger than most of the others had been, her arms and hands more developed. The points of her nails dripped with someone else’s blood.
She had battle scars.
“I don’t think you’re part of this class,” I said, mostly to myself. She wasn’t listening, even if she could hear my weak, raspy voice. Her eyes were not as cloudy and dazed as the others. She was focused right on my face.
I barely managed to track her after she jumped. My downward chop with the sword was ninety percent estimated. It found some part of her, but not before those nails had gouged their way down through the already-injured flesh of my upper chest. I looked down in shock and saw her hand, driven down to the knuckle, sticking out of my skin. The fingers twitched.
I screamed.
Much of what happened after that was a blur. I started to bleed in a serious way, and Marcus, alerted by my screaming, went into berserker overdrive. He was the one who finished off the last of the stragglers, assessed my injury, and half-hauled my ass out of there. The pit was closing as we neared the top. I remembered the rumble of the cover inching its way toward us. Marcus cut an opening in the edge with the sword.
He laid me out on the slaughterhouse floor, face up, with the hideous gashes in my flesh exposed for the world to see.
The chamber was eerily quiet. The soundproof doors must have been closed, and Rocco was nowhere to be found. He’d probably split after I jumped into the pit, thinking his job was done.
We were alone.
“Relax your breathing,” Marcus told me. “Heavy aspiration may trigger your heart to enter a state of panic, which will only increase your blood loss.” He smiled. His face was blurred over my head. “I have seen worse in my time. Everything will be all right.”
I wasn’t sure I believed him, but it was nice to hear, even if I knew that my life was flowing out of me at a steady pace. I let my eyes fall closed until I felt him leaning over me again. “Drink this,” he said and tilted his open flask into my mouth.
The liquid inside was thick and sweet, like honey mixed with flowers. At first, I could barely get it down, but then, it began to fill me with a warmth that blotted out the pain. My eyelids grew so heavy I could no longer open them, but this fact did not bother me at all. I was perfectly content to lay there as my body did… something.
Marcus’s voice floated into my consciousness on a cloud. “Be still, Vic. You are healing. You must let your body mend for a time.”
That’s fine, I wanted to say. My lips wouldn’t form the words. The warmth pulled me gently down toward deep, enveloping sleep.
Then a different force kicked in. I was immediately elevated out of dreamland, wide awake and riding a tsunami of the most incredible power I’d ever felt. I tried to call out to Marcus and ask him what was happening, but I still couldn’t speak, move, or open my eyes. It was less soothing now.
The tsunami swelled over me, crashing around and through my body. Its wild strength infused into my bones, my muscles, and my spirit.
I could feel it changing me.
I could also feel Marcus moving around. His footsteps presented visually in my mind. I traced his progress, circling me, checking the door, and looking down into the pit in case we had missed any of Rocco’s fleet of vampires. Marcus looked alarmingly weak to me, but I chalked it up to my own exhaustion. He just needed time to get back to full force. Even soldiers chosen by the gods had their limits.