“All right, I’m calling the police,” he said to me, and then turned to his group, shouting for them to hold up. I took advantage of the commotion and sprang…okay, hobbled through the crowd, pushing past the volunteer and into the cemetery proper—that’s where I found the first of the bodies. And by found, I of course mean that I tripped over it in the dark and banged my knee on a half-buried gravestone. Pain shot up my leg, and I cursed loudly enough that the little boy back at the gate asked his mom what a son of a witch was. I shined my phone’s light on the dead man. His brown hair was cropped close to his skull, his skin was tanned from time spent in the sun, and his body was lean, but not skinny: a pretty typical specimen of hired thug. Except for his head being attached by only a couple of strands of gristle. That was less typical. I looked down at myself—I was covered head to toe in his blood. That surely wouldn’t become a problem in a graveyard full of sleeping vampires, right?
I turned off the light to avoid making myself an obvious target and made my way slowly up the path. Strange lights flashed toward the top of the hill, and I aimed myself in their direction. I passed three more bodies, two ripped to shreds and one exsanguinated and decapitated. Gerald had lost control, making the situation even more dangerous. All of the dead men had been heavily armed with crossbows and stakes (all broken), and none of them had managed to get off a shot. I’d known intellectually that Cooper was extremely dangerous, but this was like the difference between knowing that fire could hurt and getting third-degree burns. I was glad that the vampire was pointed at Sloane. A voice in the back of my head warned me that normal people would be running away at this point. I firmly told it to shut up.
I continued trudging up the hill, weaving in and out of concealment on the edges of the path. I kept low, worried that Cooper hadn’t taken out all of Sloane’s triggermen, but twitchy about the time that I’d already wasted. My dreams had shown a mausoleum as the focal point for the vampire and the monster hunter’s clash, and I had to get there in time to change the outcome.
I had only seen the inside of the mausoleum in my dreams, and I’d checked maps online, but I wasn’t quite sure where it was in the real world. I guess I shouldn’t have worried—the lightning-like bursts of light coming from the top of the hill were fairly conspicuous. That was just fine because, attempts at stealth aside, I was pretty conspicuous myself. I’ve been called hard-to-kill, I’ve been called clever, I’ve been called annoying (often), but one thing I’ve never been called is stealthy.
I blundered through the last couple hundred yards, six feet two of gangly limbs and pale skin topped off by a thatch of red hair. Even in the dark, Sloane would have known I was coming—if he hadn’t been fighting for his life against a master vampire. Whatever Cooper was doing, it was making a hell of a lot of noise, because the sound of masonry and stone breaking covered my approach. As I trotted forward, massive, blunt columns reared up in front of me, framing the entrance to what appeared to be an honest-to-God Egyptian temple, the mouth yawing black and imposing in the London night. As if a graveyard at night wasn’t creepy enough, the Victorians had to add an Egyptian temple? Those petticoat-wearing assholes.
Tempus fugit, and terrifying tomb or not, I was minded to charge through the tunnel, but instincts, honed by dodging ten thousand lurking nightmares, made me slow down. I pressed myself to one of the columns and glanced into the entrance. It was pitch black, but just as I was ready to charge forward, another flash of sorcerous power lit the night—revealing a man aiming an AK-47 at the entrance. Clearly Cooper hadn’t gotten all of them. The clock was ticking, I needed to get through, and I was unarmed. Unarmed, that was, except for my wits. Okay, that and the ability to summon pretty much anything I could imagine into existence—once. So I decided to try to use that whole “wits” thing instead.
“Your mates are all dead. I killed them!” I bellowed, mimicking the master vampire. The bang, bang, bang of gunfire cut the night, and chips of stone flew off of a pillar, pattering against my trench coat.
“Your shots can’t hurt me! The dead feel no pain.” More gunshots, wilder, and this time a splinter cut my cheek, making me jerk back. I picked up a chunk of rock from the ground.
I know terror; I see it every night when I close my eyes. I know terror; it’s the emotion that freezes the heart and liquefies the stomach. I know terror; it’s the creeping, insidious worm at the back of your mind that says, “You’re not special. There’s no reason that bad things can’t happen to you.” I know terror—and I gambled my life on the notion that a lone man, in a graveyard, at night, lit only by flashes of mysterious energy, and filled with the knowledge that monsters were real, could be terrorized.
I flung my rock and screamed, a primal, throat-tearing roar of rage, charging helter-skelter around the corner. I braced to feel the tug of bullets, followed by agony, but I forced myself to bull forward, and I saw the shooter’s eyes get big and he flinched, taking a step back. That was all the time I needed. I lowered my shoulder and slammed into the other man, knocking him to the ground and causing him to fire off the rest of his rounds harmlessly into the ceiling, making dust and plaster rain down. I cursed, and my dodgy shoulder sent lances of agony into my brain that made me see stars, but I did my best to ignore the pain and landed a kick to the side of the man’s head that hurt my foot but left him unmoving on the ground. I checked the gun and swore again. Empty. I didn’t bother to check the gunman.
I scrambled through the rest of the faux-Egyptian temple and jogged around the vault-lined circle of Lebanon, the presence of a real vampire making the eerie tombs pale in comparison. I heard the sound of smashing stone, and actinic light flared in front of me, illuminating a flight of stairs—leading to a fifty-foot-tall mausoleum. A mausoleum that was familiar from my visions.
I knew what was coming. I’d seen the outcome in my dreams. Gerald Cooper was going to die. I’d led him here, and he was going to die, horribly. I wouldn’t be the one doing it, but I’d led him here like a sheep to the slaughter. I could warn him. But I wouldn’t. I’d seen him die, but I’d also seen enough to know that we’d gotten the Sigilum back, so I wasn’t going to do anything to jeopardize that. I plastered a grim look on my face and trudged up the steps.
As I emerged from the stairs, I saw what the vampire was doing—he couldn’t get close to Sloane without the monster hunter sapping his strength, so Gerald Cooper was staying well away from the mausoleum. All of which explained the two-hundred-pound granite tombstone that was tumbling through the air at my head.
I threw myself to the ground, and the bulk of the monumental missile crashed into the iron gate of the mausoleum with a flash of supernatural energy, causing Sloane to duck flying shards. A few splinters of stone stung my face, and I felt a trickle of blood running down my forehead. Shit. That probably isn’t good with a vampire only a couple dozen feet away.
“Why the hell don’t you just shoot him?” I shouted to the vampire as I dusted myself off and tried to cover up the blood.
Gerald stared at me for a moment, entranced by the crimson leaking between my fingers and splattered on my clothes, but then tore his gaze away. “Oh, gee. I never thought of that. Oh wait, yes I did because I’m not a fucking idiot. I don’t use guns because they don’t work for me. The gunpowder just won’t ignite. Besides that, he has one of the Escapees in there to keep up some kind of force field, and he’s bleeding her. If I get close, I’ll lose control, but if I stay back here, I can’t break through!” Cooper snarled at me, showing plenty of fang as I put my back against a wide, solid tombstone for insurance against any crossbow fire from Sloane.
Ahh…if only it had been crossbow bolts. Sloane chose that moment to take a breather from his mystical preparations. And by “take a breather,” I mean he opened fire with a suppressed AK-47. A hail of rounds spanged and thwacked off of the tombstones, and I saw Cooper jerk to the side from a few hits, but he stayed upright. There was a scream from inside the mausoleum, and I recalled the pool of blood I’d
seen in my dream.
“Are you going to let Sloane win? After he took your family, your life away from you!” I shouted, not projecting at all.
“I don’t want to die!” Cooper yelled.
“I thought you wanted revenge!” I screamed, and pointed at the mausoleum.
Cooper breathed in deeply several times, paced back and forth, and threw his arms in the air. Suddenly, he blurred forward, yanked a three-foot-tall stone cross out of the ground with a crunch, and charged the front of the mausoleum. Sloane snapped off a few more shots, but some unknowable calculus caused him to return to his mystical preparations.
“You only have an hour to finish the ritual before they wake up. If you don’t, then they’ll be mine!” Cooper yelled, and swung his makeshift battering ram into the iron gate with a dull clang. Okay—so maybe not an unknowable calculus, I thought as I glanced down at my watch and saw that Cooper had exaggerated; the time was a quarter to eleven. We needed to get the Sigilum back soon—even if Dana had all the preparations ready, we’d still need to drive eight miles across London and carry out the ritual before midnight.
Cooper abruptly went very still, sniffed the air, and dropped the tombstone, which shattered on the ground. Sloane continued to chant, there was another flash of light, and I opened my mouth to ask what was wrong, but before I could speak, Cooper exploded into motion, slamming himself into the grating. The vampire tried to shove his arms through the inch-thick grating and only succeeded in flensing his skin off. He shook the grate, and the metal groaned but refused to give, for all the good that would have done with the mystical barrier still in place.
Cooper continued to attack the gate, and I swore. Just as he’d feared, Gerald had lost control. I picked up a rock and flung it at the vampire; it hit the creature in the side of the head, and he spun, hissing at me. In a moment, I felt myself hoisted into the air, and I gasped for breath as eyes of crimson bored into me. Gleaming ivory glinted in the moonlight, and I realized that I might have made a mistake. I reached for my power, but Cooper shook with effort and forced his mouth shut.
I needed to get away fast, and I had an idea.
“You’ll have to toss me!” I said to Cooper, who completely missed the reference and stared at me like…well, like lunch, to be honest. It made me break out in a flop sweat. “Seriously, huck me up and through the window. Then you distract him, I’ll save the girl, and you can rip the gate apart,” I said.
“A master plan. I can’t see any drawback,” the vampire said, gulping and blinking, and before I had time to reconsider, he cocked his arm back and flung me at the window.
“Not a word!” I yelled as I hurtled through the air like a gangly, ginger comet. Arms flailing in front of me, I hit the window doing at least fifteen miles an hour; the immaculate stained glass shattered, and I cursed as a shard sliced the tops of my hands open. Before I could recover, the mesh grating over the window groaned and sagged down, and I tumbled into the mausoleum. With a nice, soft marble floor—fifteen feet below.
I reached inside of myself for the fizzy, churning spot where my connection to the Dreamscape existed, but before I could use it, I jerked to a stop. The sudden deceleration nearly yanked my arms out of their sockets, and I screamed as the wing of a decorative angel speared me in the side, sinking in deep between two ribs. The good news was that my trench coat had snagged on a chunk of masonry, stopping me from being completely skewered. The bad news was that I was dangling nine feet above the stone floor.
Sloane looked up from the opposite end of the room, where he seemed to be almost done inscribing a complex pattern on the ground. A young, dark-haired, dark-skinned woman lay in the corner, feet zip-tied together, slathered in gore, with a trickle of blood running down her forehead into a pool on the floor. “Mr. Adler. You like my newest assistant, Stacy, ja?”
“Fuck you, you old kraut bastard,” the woman said, voice dripping vitriol.
“Stacy used her extradimensional abilities to keep her boyfriend imprisoned for three months. I’m giving her the opportunity to atone for some of her sins. As long as she maintains that stasis wall”—Sloane gestured at the shimmering, almost transparent barrier running between the bars of the gate—“she will be perfectly safe from the ravening vampire outside and from my displeasure in here. And Mr. Adler, I’m very disappointed to see you here. I really thought that you might have learned your lesson after your colleague, Christian, was dealt with this morning. Mind, I was going to use my soon-to-be pet vampires to have you hunted down and killed, so really you’ve done me quite a good turn by showing up here. Of course—”
Gerald interrupted the older man’s speech by flinging a tombstone into the iron grate so hard that a chunk of metal on this side of the magic barrier broke off and skittered across the floor. Sloane kicked the chunk out of the way before it could disrupt his circle, but didn’t notice me toss, on instinct, a large, bloody shard of stained glass to Stacy where she lay on the floor. “As I was saying—of course I’ll still need to end your wife and child. You were warned, and a gentleman always keeps his—hurk,” Sloane hurked, as a jagged chunk of glass suddenly jutted from his stomach. Stacy twisted the stained glass and screamed, “Die, motherfucker!” as the weapon sliced into her hands. Sloane backhanded Stacy; still bound, she crashed to the floor. Sloane took a wobbling step forward. I glanced at the grate. Cooper’s eyes glowed red, and his fangs glinted in the moonlight.
“You will destroy no more families!” Cooper bellowed. He tore off another chunk of granite, as easily as I could rip a hunk of bread from a loaf, and flicked it across the room as he lost control again. Sloane, groaning, dodged, his gun slipping off of his back, and the piece of stone shattered against the wall. I shimmied out of my trench coat, leaving me in a Wisconsin Badgers T-shirt and khaki cargo shorts, and dropped to the ground. I bent my knees with the impact, and I was sure I’d feel the fall in the morning, but nothing was broken, so I stumbled forward toward the downed woman.
“Duck!” Stacy yelled, and I flopped on the ground. A crossbow bolt ruffled my hair as it went past, striking the wall with a clang. Damn, Sloane recovers quickly, I thought, and then I realized that I had a window of opportunity. The young woman was bleeding, I was bleeding, but Edward Sloane was also bleeding. For now. That meant there was at least a chance the enraged vampire would go after Sloane.
Life dribbling away down my side, I switched directions and lunged for the switch that released the countersunk anchor points for the iron grate. I heard the click of a crossbow and lurched to the side, blindly hoping to throw off the monster hunter’s aim. Cooper roared somewhere behind me, and the grate squealed as it exploded inward under the vampire’s enormous strength. I rose to one knee, my back itching as I realized that Sloane hadn’t taken the shot. I hoped that the charging vampire would distract Sloane, and with a grunt I levered myself to my feet.
“Die!” Cooper roared as I staggered to face the other men. I turned just in time to see the vampire kick the AK-47 into the graveyard and stalk toward his nemesis, who was cowering in the corner, covered in blood, his arms wrapped around the crimson-glowing Sigilum—but his hands out of sight.
“The crossbow!” I shouted, sensing a trap. Cooper, out of control and heedless of the warning, exploded toward Sloane, fangs bared. However, instead of possessing supernatural speed and grace, he hit the floor like a sack of potatoes, and his attempt to roll to his feet ended with his jaw smacking the marble floor in an explosion of teeth.
Cooper groaned and lay still. “Fool,” Sloane muttered, and the crossbow appeared in his hands and swung in the vampire’s direction—then kept swinging. Sloane trained the weapon on me and fired. The bolt split the air at over 150 feet per second, and I flinched, throwing my arms around my vitals to protect them. That saved my life. The six-inch chunk of wood impacted my left arm, burrowing between and shattering the radius and ulna, which robbed the projectile of velocity. My trench coat would have stopped it, but that was hanging a dozen feet above
me, and the head of the bolt punched between my ribs, spinning me around. I groaned and went to my knees, my broken arm pinned to my chest. I couldn’t get a breath.
I put a hand on the ground to steady myself and heard the click of Sloane reloading. Blood pounded in my temples, and my vision swam as I gritted my teeth against the agony in my chest. The crossbow went off again, and I flinched, but this time the meaty thwack of bolt biting into flesh was followed by Cooper’s groan. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I was superlatively underwhelmed by the vampire’s performance.
I lifted my head just in time to see Sloane put the toe of his boot into Cooper’s side, lifting him off the ground and causing him to sob as the bolt protruding from his back dragged along the floor. Sloane turned to the altar, on which he placed the Sigilum, which pulsed with a hungry, crimson light that made the mausoleum look truly diabolical. The monster hunter extended his hands, and a glowing red mist boiled off of the vampire, flowing into Sloane, who seemed to swell and stand straighter. The mercenary loomed over the downed vampire and ranted: “You slept for all those years, and it was for nothing. They will hunt the humans, and I will hunt them; I will live forever, and you will perish. I am 472 years old, and I have slain hundreds of your kind, drinking their essence to sustain myself, just as I’m doing now. During that time, I’ve gone by many names. Right now, I’m Edward Sloane. I’ve also been Van Helsing and Belmont. But don’t worry. I’m a monster hunter, and like any good hunter, I make sure I don’t hunt my prey to extinction. It’s been a very slim thirty years, but I think we’re going to have a bumper harvest very soon. I had thought to simply destroy the Sigilum, make sure that it couldn’t be used against your former colleagues again, but I have other plans for it now…” Sloane trailed off and aimed the reloaded crossbow at Cooper from just a couple of feet away.
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