by Evan Currie
“Cut her heart out,” Norton said, hefting his Bowie. “That’s all I’ve got.”
“First fire, now ritual sacrifice?” Masters snorted as he got ready to throw himself back into the battle. “You’re such a cheery bastard today.”
“Must be Monday,” Norton said, joining his friend as they began to limp toward the fight.
* * *
I need to learn how to fight.
Hannah had done a great many things in her short life — she’d survived trials that would have killed grown women; she’d learned secrets of the universe hidden to all but a piddling fraction of living souls — but despite her allegiance to the gods of Valhalla, fighting had never been her strong suit.
Case in point, she thought sourly as she barely dodged a claw strike. The three of us are getting our arses handed to us by a one-armed woman. Though, admittedly, “woman” is stretching the term a bit freely.
Spotting an opening, Hannah lunged in and delivered a blow to the vampire’s guts with surprising force. The vampire grunted from the blow, but was barely fazed as she crushed her elbow down into Hannah’s back, driving the smaller woman to the ground.
Rick and Perry charged in, covering Hannah as she gasped on the ground, their swords forcing the vampire back as the burns sizzled in the cool air. A couple of shots rang out, and bullets tore through their foe’s face and throat — the hits would have been lethal to anything human, but they were little more than an annoyance for the creature before them.
The bullets served their purpose, though, letting the two soldiers bodily pick Hannah up and pull her back from the fight as she gasped for air.
Mack, Derek, and Judith closed with their HK417 rifles roaring, intent only on buying time and space for their comrades, but in a flash the vampire was on them with a claw strike that sliced Derek’s throat open in an instant. The SEAL went down, his rifle falling to hang on its strap as he clutched at his ravaged flesh.
“Derek!” Mack screamed, eyes blazing.
Together, the two had faced down sights that would chill other men to the core, and that was before they’d crossed the veil. Since then, they’d both realized that their days were numbered, but at the same time, the reality of it had never really sunk in in some ways. He and Derek had stood shoulder to shoulder for so long that he couldn’t remember a time without the other man.
“You bitch!” Mack lost his cool, charging in and hammering into her with the butt of the rifle.
For all the good it did, he may as well have struck her with a child’s toy.
The vampire shrugged him off easily, then backhanded him across the room with a single blow. He hadn’t even landed when she turned her focus to the third of their little trio, eyes fierce as she bore down on Captain Andrews, showing as little respect for her blazing 417 as one might give a child armed with a pea shooter.
Judith fired her mag dry as the thing approached, freezing when her rifle slide locked open on the empty chamber. The face she was looking at was leathery and dry, pockmarked with holes and torn flaps of flesh from her team’s bullets, but despite that and despite the glassy dead look in its eyes, the thing would just not return to the grave.
Her rifle was torn from her hand, swung away in a backhanded motion that casually hammered Robbie Keyz to the ground as he too tried to charge their adversary. The thing, the vampire, didn’t even looked back at the fallen EOD man.
“You are all beginning to try my patience,” the walking horror said to her, the smell of decomposition making Judith gag as she fell back. “Have you not learned yet? I am beyond you!”
Judith cringed as the vampire swung the rifle again, smashing it into a thousand pieces against the cement floor. She used that moment, clawing at her service pistol as she took a step back. Training took over — it was the only way to explain how smoothly the motions went.
Step back, clear the distance to the enemy, she thought as she drew her weapon. Front site, center mass. Squeeze smoothly. Repeat.
The Browning nine-millimeter she carried barked as she fired as fast as she could pull the trigger, her target not even bothering to dodge. In three seconds the slide locked back on another empty chamber. She didn’t have time to even flinch at the knowledge that she was out of ammo before the monster gripped her hand, gun and all, with a crushing force.
Judith screamed as the bones in her hand cracked and broke, caught between the irresistible force of the vampire’s grip and the unmovable steel of her own weapon.
And then the pain was gone, like a switch being turned, and she fell to her knees as a chaotic flurry of action erupted around her.
* * *
Hitting the bitch was like a spear tackling a brick wall.
All right, that wasn’t entirely true, Masters had to admit. Despite her strength and refusal to break, the vampire didn’t have the mass of a wall, so she moved when he hit her. The problem was that she also recovered inhumanly fast, as the fist to his spine quickly showed.
He was wearing body armor, however, and it spread out the impact enough that he didn’t lose his breath…or have his back snapped like a twig. The force still pushed him down to one knee, but Masters took that as an opportunity to slash his target’s legs out from under her.
The kukri bit deep, spattering the concrete with black ichor that used to be blood, chopping into her leg at the knee.
She dropped, screaming, though he had to admit that she sounded far more pissed than hurt. Still kneeling, Masters straightened up to look into her disfigured face, and he managed a sneer through the pain he was feeling.
“You’re one ugly bitch.”
He almost shut his eyes when he saw the look on her face, knowing that he was going to pay for that little comment. He didn’t so much as blink, though, when the blow landed on the side of his head — he just rolled with it to reduce the impact as best he could. He still saw stars, however, and black spots danced across his vision.
“That the best you can manage?” he slurred out. Note to self: Get checked for a concussion if you live.
She snarled, any hint of intelligence gone from what remained of her face, and he grinned despite himself. He couldn’t help it, it was a slip to be sure, but before she could make anything of it, the vampire’s eyes widened in shock as three inches of steel emerged between her breasts courtesy of Alexander Norton.
Unfortunately for both of them, the blade cleaving her heart had little more effect than the bullets had, and as she wrenched about, it was torn from Alex’s hands.
“You filthy, insignificant, pest!” she roared, batting him aside. “I’ll bleed you all! Do you hear me? I’ll bleed you all!”
Masters lunged for the handle of Norton’s knife, intent on twisting it in the wound. It was the only thing he could think of now, as they’d literally tried every other option they had, given their resources. As his hand grasped the hilt, however, she twisted again and smashed a backhand blow into his chest that lifted him from his feet and sent him flying across the room, right into the coffin that was the centerpiece.
* * *
“I am all right,” Hannah mumbled, shaking off her companions’ grip as she regained her feet and balance. The power in her voice was gone, as was the glow from her eyes, but her mind was clear, and she didn’t think anything was broken.
“Are you sure, Han?” Perry asked, concerned.
Hannah had come to the lodge at a young age, delivered through ice and sleet by…well, by an unusual sort. The lodge members, vagrants that some of them might be, had taken her in, and they’d all taken a shine to the girl. She was everyone’s younger sister, so to speak, for all her power and connection to the gods.
“I am sure,” she said, straightening as she eyed the situation.
It was far from good, clearly. The vampire was little affected by any of the weapons they had on their side, and even The Black himself hadn’t been able to do more than antagonize her. It had been the soldier, oddly, who’d done the most damage by taking her arm.
Zero-generation vampires, the originator of the curse, were monsters beyond the ken of most mortals, even those who crossed the veil with relative impunity. They were ravenous, nigh unstoppable, and only the fact that they were generally limited to extremely small areas of influence kept them from waging utter destruction on the world.
She wiped her mouth, clearing it of either blood or drool — honestly she didn’t know which — and focused on the situation at hand.
When the vampire struck Masters aside again, Hannah was granted a clear line of sight, and she refocused her mind and soul on the mission at hand. Her eyes changed to a solid icy blue, patterned like the deep ice of a glacier, and she touched two fingers to her third eye, then to her chest before extending them toward the target and incanting a command.
“Freeze.”
The air between her and the vampire roiled as condensed moisture was turned directly to ice crystals, forming a thick trail of mist that connected her to her foe. The deep-level command tore into the vampire, freezing her from the inside out as she stumbled under the assault.
Unfortunately, like everything else they’d tried, what worked on weaker members of the breed had far less impressive effects on the progenitor. The vampire twisted, glaring at Hannah from across the room, and hissed in anger.
“Haven’t learned yet, little priestess?” she asked, mocking. “You don’t have the power to stop me.”
“Perhaps not,” Hannah admitted through gritted teeth as power reverberated through her voice. “However, I will deeply enjoy trying.”
The two began to stride toward each another, only to be startled and stopped by a flash of light from one side that nearly blinded them.
“You know what, bitch? You’re really treading past the limits of my medication.” A tired voice said from one side.
* * *
Harold Masters groaned as he tried to peel himself off the coffin he’d been smashed into — every extremity of his body either ached or was worryingly numb. He rolled over, pushing himself up off the wooden box, glaring at it as though it were to blame for his current situation. Perhaps, in a bizarre way, it was.
The lid was still open from when Alex had tried ending the fight before it began, and he found himself looking down into the dirt-filled interior, eyes falling on the severed arm that was resting inside.
Crazy.
He felt like throwing up, but he suspected it had more to do with a concussion than the smell of the decomposing limb. In either case he forced himself upright and took a breath of fresher air before looking back down again. A memory flashed, something Alex had said, and he stared at the limb resting in the dirt for a long moment before a thought came to him.
He reached into his kit and drew out a flare in one arm and an incendiary in the other. It took him a few seconds to catch his breath and move, but he pulled the pin on the incendiary grenade and palmed the spoon even as he looked up to see the vampire and Hannah about to go head to head.
Masters slapped the flare down against the coffin, red flame erupting as the igniter flared, casting shadows throughout the building. With the flare in one hand and the grenade in the other, Masters glared at the vampire.
“You know what, bitch?” he asked tiredly, feeling the weight of the day’s work pressing down on him. “You’re really treading past the limits of my medication.”
The vampire turned to glare at him. “You wait your turn, pest. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
“Yeah, I think I’ll just cut the line.” Masters forced a grin, though he felt more like puking as the world spun around him. He lifted his hands, letting the spring pop the spoon on the thermite grenade.
The room went deathly silent as everyone stared at the explosive in his hand, and those who really understood what they were looking at began to fall back from him. His smile turned more genuine when he saw the two Asatru soldiers grab Hannah by the shoulders and drag her against her will.
“What do you think you’re going to accomplish?” the vampire hissed, clearly confused as Masters dropped the grenade over his shoulder, then slammed the coffin lid shut before he walked away.
“Do you know what thermite does to dirt?” he asked calmly, wondering in the back of his mind if he was going to get to a minimum safe distance. Honestly, he didn’t have a clue; as confused as his head was at the moment, he could barely keep one foot moving in front of the other.
The grenade exploded behind him, sounding more like a whooshing noise than the lethal crump he associated with antipersonnel explosives. He flinched as the heat washed over him, knowing that he was closer than he should be, but when nothing he was wearing caught fire he decided that diving to the ground would be superfluous.
“The same thing it does to everything else,” he answered his own question, noting with satisfaction the look of horrified rage on the vampire’s mangled face. “I’m sorry, did you need that?”
The unholy fire burning in her eyes was answer enough, and it wasn’t really until that moment that Masters understood just how much what was to come would hurt.
“You filthy…insignificant…,” the vampire raged, stalking toward him, clearly in no control of her emotions. “You have no idea what you’ve done.…I will kill you for that!”
“You were, what, planning on buying me a drink up until now?” Masters blurted, incredulous.
That might not have been the right thing to say…, he thought blankly when she roared in totally incomprehensible rage and blurred in his general direction.
Masters threw himself to the left, hitting the ground in a roll as the vampire flashed past him and struck the flaming coffin hard enough to cause the wood to explode into splinters. Fighting back the urge to vomit from the motion, he got back to his feet and spun in time to see her kick away the flaming shards of wood.
“Oh, hell no!” he complained. “Damn you, Alex, you said fire would kill it!”
Alexander Norton laughed painfully from where he was lying on the floor. “She’d have to stand still long enough to burn.”
“Great,” Masters grumbled, the urge to vomit fading as the adrenaline surge of his second wind began to fill him. “That’s just frigging great.”
Any further conversation was pretty much put to rest when the vampire, still roaring in incandescent rage, began stalking in his direction again.
“No fast death for you, filth,” she mumbled, pretty clearly talking to herself. “We’ll see how you enjoy losing an arm. Then perhaps I’ll burn your comrades in front of your eyes before I take your blood.”
“Hoo boy, she’s lost the track,” Masters mumbled, wide eyed as he began backing up. “You guys take care of yourselves.”
With that last comment, Masters spun and bolted for the door, blowing through the open portal at a dead sprint as though all the demons of hell were on his heels. Which, honestly, they might as well have been since the vampire tore after him, raging nearly incoherently as she ran.
* * *
Outside the air was noticeably cooler, though Masters expected that was more from the sweat sticking to his flesh than any actual change in the ambient temperature. He ran through the smoke-and-fog-filled night, knowing that he had no chance in hell of outrunning what was on his heels.
They’d tried everything they could, and none of it had worked, so he wasn’t even thinking about killing her anymore. Getting her away from his comrades would come in at a distant second place. He hated it when he had to take the consolation prize and be happy to have it.
Masters just prayed that his team had the sense to clear the hell out and get away from the area while they could. With her coffin and home soil burning, their best option was to leave her to die slowly. Hopefully. Norton’s information hadn’t exactly been five for five up until now, but all things considered, it was the best hope he had.
Too bad I won’t live to see it.
Masters spun, hefting the big curved kukri blade as he cocked his arm back and then let it fly with a snap that s
ent it spinning through the night air. The Clan blade flipped end for end, humming as it sliced the cold air, and stopped with a meaty smack as it embedded itself in his pursuer’s forehead.
The thick blade punctured bone with ease, sinking into her skull almost to the hilt, its tip exploding from the back of her skull. She just stopped in her tracks, glaring at him as she reached up and grasped the hilt, slowly drawing the blade out.
“Oh screw you!” Masters cursed. “A knife that big in the head always trumps!”
She hefted the blade for a moment, eyes never leaving him; then her hand snapped out like lightning. Masters didn’t even have a chance to flinch as a whooshing sound tore past him, followed by a deep chunk from behind him. He turned slowly, eyes falling to where the blade had bit deeply into the door of an oil-company Jeep parked behind him.
The vampire’s misshapen and ravaged face twisted into a sneer as he looked back at her. “No easy death for you, little pest. I will see you broken first.”
“Lady, you are starting to remind me of my exes.”
The two glared at one another for several long seconds; then Masters twisted and bolted for the Jeep.
* * *
Norton helped Eddie to his feet. “Are you all right?”
“Broken leg.” The master chief grimaced. “Forget me; go after Hawk.”
“And do what exactly?” Norton demanded. “We hit her with everything we had. Damn it, man, it took blessed weapons and a Masterwork to even cut that bitch. We gave it our all, man. Masters may have killed her with that grenade in the coffin, but she’ll outlive us if we don’t get the fuck out of here.”
Eddie growled. “He’s team, Black. You don’t know what that means.”
“It means that he just stepped between us and death, Eddie,” Alex snarled back. “You planning on making that count for nothing?”
Eddie shoved him away, almost collapsing in pain as his weight fell on the broken leg. “Ah. Fuck!”
“You can’t do anything.”