The Art Institute loomed around her, a sad place with a thousand faces staring from prisons of antique oil. The storm added to her feeling of despair, muddling the daylight in some places, blocking it entirely in others as she went from gallery to gallery armed with a flashlight and a heavy knife taken from one of the weapon displays in Gunsaulus Hall, randomly checking doors, windows, and closets she hadn't thought about in months. It was impossible to check everything before nightfall and every corner held a shadow that made her jump, every stair a creak that made her glance over her shoulder. She found a sprinkling of dust by one of the elevator doors and pried at them experimentally but they wouldn't budge; the dirt had probably sifted from a slowly growing ceiling crack in front of the elevator.
Back in the auditorium, Deb was beginning to believe that she'd been wrong about the whole stupid thing. Clinging to Alex last night, the memory of his hard body moving so smoothly with hers, seemed like a sweet, faraway dream. If only they'd found each other a year ago! He was probably thinking the worst, and tomorrow morning when she let him in she'd have to explain her crazy behavior as only the hermitlike mistrust and paranoia of the last year overwhelming her. She grinned and started to sit on the side of her cot, then realized that her pillbox, a trinket from her long-dead grandmother, was gone. Just …
Gone.
There was no doubt. This wasn't a house full of kids, where Dad always lost his keys and Mom could never find her purse. This was a backstage alcove with at best a half-dozen precious personal items within easy reach. For a time Deb simply stood, letting the fear consume her in one great, hungry tide; then, when she could walk without stumbling, she went upstairs and stared blankly out the window for a while, where huge clouds tumbled their load of frigid entrapment upon the city The world had already shifted to dusky gray, the buildings along Michigan Avenue fading into a mass of swirling whiteness. The sidewalks to the east would be indistinguishable from the lawns of Grant Park, the landscape nothing more than a white sea of frozen death. Fleeing was not an option, nor was suicide or surrender. Deb knew in her soul that she'd be found, no matter where she buried herself in this massive building. Her fingers folded into tight fists. Better to fight; the nightside of this world would not claim her without a fight.
She returned to the auditorium along the quickest route, this time discovering the two broken chains. Although she had no hope of them holding, she carefully relocked them. All these closed doors with their concealed locks—nothing more than a meticulously maintained camouflage that ultimately had not hidden her at all. Yet, if she had made it this long, didn't it stand to reason that others had, too? Alex insisted he'd seen someone else the morning they'd met, and of course, there'd been John last fall. As for Alex himself, surely he'd be smart enough to move his sleeping place when he discovered her gone. And one way or another, she was sure she would be.
But she wouldn't go alone.
Deb tossed the knife under the cot with the Winchester, then felt behind the thick curtain in back of her cot. Her hand closed around the best weapon she'd ever found and she pulled it from beneath a carefully placed pile of scrap carpeting. She had no idea if her hunters numbered one or ten, but this would handle more than a few of them, though it was unlikely they'd resemble the starving creatures hidden in the subways. Alex had told her about those and how they sometimes clawed at the doorways he'd welded shut in the corridors beneath the Daley Center. Her visitors last night were crafty, leaving no trace of their presence other than the foolishly stolen pillbox.
Her Grandfather Kendrick had been a crusty old Irishman who'd loved to hunt and had taught his tomboy granddaughter how to shoot despite his daughter-in-law's objections. Deb had worshiped him in the years before his death and still missed him deeply. What would he have thought of the weapon she now lifted? Its weight tested the slender muscles in her arms, and she was sure Grandfather Kendrick would have been horrified.
But then, a lot of things now would have horrified him.
The Streetsweeper.
Deb hefted it and tested its feel, trying to calculate the recoil on the twelve-gauge semiautomatic shotgun that she'd pilfered from the evidence room at the Twelfth and State police station. She hadn't followed the gun magazines like her Grandfather had, but she did remember the controversy surrounding this weapon; originally army-commissioned, the evidence tag noted that this one had been confiscated in a south side drug raid. She had lugged it back and cleaned it, nose burning from the heavy smell of gunpowder on its barrel. Its round magazine was reminiscent of the old Thompson submachine gun and held an incredible twenty-four rounds, and she thought she recalled a write-up saying the Streetsweeper could fire four to six slugs per pump. Deb loaded it with eight-pellet buckshot instead of slugs, opting for the wide firing spread. The powerful shotgun would probably do a real job on the muscles of her shoulders, but that didn’t matter anyway. What would they look like, these creatures coming for her? She thought of her family, her mom and dad and younger brother and sister, all disappeared in the course of a two-day period. Which of them had been the first to change, or the first to return for the others? Or had they all "died" at once? Had she lived at home, she would have perished with them.
Her weapon ready, there was nothing left to do but wait. Her belly gave a painful twist and Deb clutched the semiautomatic closer, seeking scant comfort from the cold, oily-smelling metal. This machine held the deadly power that might, might, keep her alive tonight, if that was her destiny.
God help her—somehow she didn't think it was.
7
REVELATION 14:15
Thrust in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come …
for the harvest of the earth is ripe.
"That's a nice girl. You just stay there, nice and quiet, and Howie’ll get you another blanket." Howard gave Giselle—the woman he'd beaten so badly the other night and whose name he'd learned by eavesdropping on Vic—a false smile, but all she did was look at him with a sick, miserable expression. He pushed his bulky body up and zipped his pants with exaggerated carefulness, though he would've liked to give her a kick just for fun. Hell, this was no better than jacking off—he missed slapping the babes around, he needed it. For a while he'd thought he wasn't going to be able to come, and only his favorite fantasy, a dark little dream featuring selected girls from his seventh-grade class, had finally taken him over the brink.
Howard sighed and went to get another blanket, then grabbed a couple of saltines for the woman as an afterthought. He'd been trying to take better care of the women just in case more of them turned out to be knocked up. He hadn't neglected the men either—maybe they'd start finding the bitches attractive. There was plenty of meat to go around and Howard's pulse quickened when he thought of the possible free shows. What the hell, he could even help.
Giselle was shivering under her blanket and Howard tossed her a heavier one and the crackers, then plodded away, thinking only of his room and sleep. All this extra exercise was exhausting, running around in the morning trying to find where Rita and Vic slept—yet neither had even glanced at him before they'd left on their hunting expedition. Maybe he'd simply overblown their hostility.
Vic was probably safe enough, but Rita? Then again, she was perpetually pissed at the world. Hell, he'd had to coexist before with people who didn't like him. Why should now be any different? He couldn't let this morning nonsense fuck up his performance. Look at that guy Stephen, the one Anyelet had singled out. The man was a mess—wasting away, crying and praying all the time, yet all those wailed promises collapsed every time the she-bitch stepped into his room. Howard's position was pretty good, considering the options. He glanced at his watch and wondered where Anyelet's little "army" was right now. He knew they'd gone to the Art Institute last night on Hugh's tip—and wasn't that one crazy as clown shit!—and found evidence of someone living in the building, though no one had been found at the time. Odds were if they found anyone tonight, he or she would end up in Howard's care by daw
n.
Howard unlocked the door to his room, then relocked it behind him. Lowering his heavy body to the sleeping bag with a relieved grunt, he reached beneath a pile of extra blankets and slid out the little Uzi he'd found in the bottom drawer of a desk in the rear office of the lobby currency exchange. Thumbing through a Soldier of Fortune had shown a loading diagram, though Howard hadn't really understood it. But the Uzi was already fully loaded, and if he ever had to put in the extra clip, he'd figure it out. This little toy was to keep the Mart secure in the daytime rather than protect himself from the vampires, who knew nothing about it. For that, it probably wouldn't do a damned bit of good. He turned the dusty Uzi over in his hands for a while before returning it to its place under the blankets. Bored, he drummed his fingers on the floor and let his mind drift back to the hunting trip, wondering who they'd be bringing back. His tongue flicked over his lips.
He hoped it was a woman.
8
REVELATION 11:7
The beast that ascendeth out of the
bottomless pit shall make war against them… .
It had stopped snowing an hour ago, and now they stood at the stairs descending to the entrance they had used last night. Behind the group of nightwalkers the snow was like a freshly laid carpet of purity marred only by the measured dips of their footprints.
"Why can't we use the door by the auditorium, or the front entrance?" Rita complained. "Why get all filthy again?"
"She may be a human but she still has ears," Gregory said disdainfully. Rita resisted the urge to slap him, knowing Anyelet watched them both.
"This way is safer," Anyelet said quietly.
Gabriel stepped forward. "Let's go." After dribbling a little lubricant on the hinges, he and Vic removed the already-loosened metal door and set it aside, then motioned for the others to enter the dank storage room. It was easier than Rita had anticipated; she hadn't been pleased with the oil and grime caked on her hands the previous evening and would have preferred to leave the trip entirely to the others. On the other hand, they all stood to benefit from the capture of another human, and survival made sharp motivation. But something about their unseen prey still spooked her; if the woman left that kind of firepower behind, what did she carry with her?
The light in the storage room was as poor as before, though retracing their route through the jagged, shrouded piles was easy, the elevator doors heavy but not as difficult. When they reached the double glass doors leading to a long room filled with the moldering remains of ancient clothes and weapons, Rita finally voiced her doubts. "How do we know she's even here?" she demanded as she looked distastefully at her hands, once more covered in dirt and oil from the elevator cables.
"I can smell her," Gabriel said promptly.
"That's what you said last night," Rita snapped.
Gabriel smiled, unperturbed. "Yes, but look here." He pointed at the doors. "They've been relocked."
"It's a better job this time. It's going to make some noise getting through," Vic commented. He looked at Anyelet. "Faster to just break the glass."
"Do it."
Vic nodded and without further warning punched one panel with a lightning-fast thrust; the glass exploded and even Rita could admire the muscular vampire's strength and speed. They climbed through the frame, ignoring the fragments of glass that tugged at their clothes and tinkled to the floor, then they were in the midst of an array of medieval armor and weapons, swords, maces, other things with straps and chains like nothing Rita had ever seen. She paused as an idea occurred to her. "Why don't we take some weapons?" she proposed. "We know she has a gun." Gregory nodded in agreement.
Anyelet's glance was withering. "We shouldn't need weapons against a human, Rita. Must you always be so pampered?" She waved her hand. "There are five of us to one woman—isn't that enough of a challenge? None of you have the faintest idea of what it's like to hunt for yourselves or die." She scowled. "It's time you learned." The Mistress moved on and Rita looked to Gabriel pleadingly, but he only shrugged and kept going.
Another firmly locked door waited at the far end, more noise that Rita was convinced would warn the woman of their presence. Surely she had left by now—who in their right mind would stay? Even with Gabriel's so-called "nose" it would take hours to search just one wing of this monstrous building—unless they walked into an ambush first. Another room like the weapons gallery, filled with more of humanity's faded history: objets d'art from the Far East, the Orient and Islam, exotic figures with elongated eyes and brilliant colors. Rita barely glanced at them; they depicted nothing but more subcultures of a species that was already passing into extinction. They slid silently around the last display case and followed Gabriel to the left; he turned one hundred and eighty degrees at the final wall separating them from the Arthur Rubloff Auditorium and Rita immediately sensed the difference in the darkness as they crept to the closed doors that were the final barrier. It took only an instant to figure it out: beneath the line of the metal doors, a laser-thin light showed. Sudden nerves prickled at the base of Rita’s neck.
"What's that smell?" Vic whispered.
"Candle flame," came Gabriel's reply. "I don't like this."
"Let's do it," Gregory hissed eagerly. "I'll go first."
"No." Anyelet stopped him. The Mistress's gaze paused on Rita and she tensed, then Anyelet motioned to Vic, the movement a blur of India ink in the near-black shadows. "Vic will take us in." The two stared at each other for perhaps ten seconds as the rest of them watched, baffled, then Vic stepped forward and wrapped his massive hands around the door handles. He tugged gently but the doors didn't move; he tried again with a little more strength, and this time they made a quiet, drawn-out sound like the groan of an old man in uneasy sleep.
"Ready?" He didn’t bother to whisper.
They all nodded. The muscles in his arms and back swelled suddenly and he ripped the doors open in a scream of tormented metal and erupting plaster.
The light from dozens of candles placed around the door blinded them momentarily, and instead of the swift entrance they'd intended, all five hesitated. The woman stood center-stage, holding a large, strange-looking weapon that was nothing like the shotgun Gabriel had discovered under her bed. "Oh, fuck!" Gabriel screamed as a harsh ratcheting filled the air and the woman yelled something Rita couldn't quite hear.
Thunder filled the night.
9
REVELATION 17:16
These shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.
Deb watched five of them flow into the auditorium, casting a pall through the warm light like silent, oiled snakes. She'd lit the candles intentionally, preferring to see those who came for her, their faces, their number, their expressions—did they still have souls? She wished she could search each pair of eyes to see if any visage of humanity remained.
And so here they were at last, her future, her fate. Two women, three men, all except for one lean and dark, all with eyes that glittered like bloodstones across the expanse of the room. The first to enter shared the same red gaze as his companions but was the only one with any kind of bulk, tall and swollen with muscles; his weight easily doubled her own. She would have little time to defend herself; startled by the flickering light, they were already splitting up, moving with frightening speed.
"Come on in," Deb called cheerfully. Beneath her deadly calm she felt the comforting pull of the shoulder strap as she hoisted the Streetsweeper into position. The noise of the shotgun pumping slugs into the magazine drowned out most of her next words.
"I've been expecting you!"
She opened fire.
She tried to swing the Streetsweeper in a semicircle but the eruption of the first five slugs hammered her off her feet and flung her backward. Only the curtained wall kept Deb from landing on her back and she lost precious seconds just sitting there, the room a throbbing fog of yellow sparkles, her ears filled with a deafening roar undercut by enraged screams. Then she was on her knees, screaming herself and grappling wi
th the cumbersome shotgun as she propelled another round into the magazine. The smell of gunpowder was choking, the weapon already fire-hot in her hands.
Something snarled from the right-hand steps and streaked toward her; she swung and squeezed the trigger. The shotgun pounded against her body again and black spots threatened to blot out her vision; she kept at it, taking the force of the semiautomatic and ignoring the faraway crack along the right side of her chest. Between the dancing screen of dots that had become her eyesight Deb saw one of the vampires, a young man with sand-colored hair, take two hits in the face. His head exploded, and in spite of the agony pouring through her chest and arms, Deb felt a momentary thrill of vindication. Someone else wailed as the vampire's body did a macabre jig and crumbled to the polished wooden floor, one outflung hand still clutching spasmodically by Deb's leg. She staggered to her feet and kicked it away.
"Come ON!" she howled, then sobbed when her own body betrayed her and sent her back to her knees as she struggled to prime the gun for the third time. Somewhere in the ocean of gray seats a woman was screeching wildly.
"Kill her! Kill her! Look what she's done to my FACE!"
Another woman shouted orders, something about going to the right, and at last Deb found the strength to cock the Streetsweeper. Nearly sprawled on the stage, Deb dragged the shotgun wearily to her left, where another young man was creeping up the side steps, inching along like a giant lizard. He dived for the floor when she sent a burst of firepower at him. She clawed at the weapon, wanting to arc it from front to rear, but she was so tired, and the Streetsweeper was so damned heavy; the tendons in her shoulders and back trembled and twisted into living things with needle fingers beneath her skin. Deb could no longer lift the gun and barely managed to slide it across the floor by its strap as she scooted backward. The same vampire jerked below stage level yet again as the barrel clattered toward him and she groped for the trigger.
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