The gargant was facing the other way, but its strong sense of smell caused it to notice the oil quickly, just as Jelena had anticipated. It turned as the barrel rolled down the street, sniffing the air and edging towards it.
“Now,” she hissed.
Kevin's aim was dead on, which was good since he only had the one shot. There was a slight ding as the rounds hit the metal barrel, then the dull whumph of the explosion. She dived out of the way. While they were far enough so that they didn't even feel the heat, she had completely forgotten about the explosion. Shrapnel flew by, and a piece even clipped her shoulder.
Luckily, the others were fine, though there was one large piece of red-hot metal embedded in the wall behind Lizzy. It was probably a miracle she was still alive.
While Jelena was looking around, making sure everyone was okay, Adam was all business. Her prediction had proven correct. The blind-rammer was rearing up on its hind legs, its instinctive response to a loud noise exposing its unprotected underbelly. Adam didn't waste any time. He went down on one knee, aimed, and fired.
The missile sped off with a small boom, leaving a cloud of foul-smelling exhaust behind Adam. He didn't lower the launcher, but watched as the projectile crawled a path through the air towards the beast.
And, just as the gargant began to bring itself down from its precarious position, the missile hit.
The explosion was very strange, but Jelena should have expected that. She didn't know what Veda did to it, but instead of exploding in fire, it burst into a cloud of a dark blue gas that seemed to freeze the gargant's scales where it touched. Not that it mattered. The force of the missile itself had torn open a huge hole in the beast's flesh, and now blood and guts were beginning to spill.
The blind-rammer began to wobble, clearly in pain but unable to scream in torment. It smashed sideways into the nearest building, causing the 'scraper to groan, then smashed into the opposite side of the street, leaving massive puddles of gore underneath it. It tried to smash the other side again, perhaps in an attempt to shake off whatever it thought was damaging it, but at this point it had lost too much blood.
The gargant fell to the ground, shaking the entire street so much that Jelena almost lost her footing. It shuddered once, and died with a wet gurgle.
Just as she thought everything was going to work out, there was a great roar from behind her. She turned to see that the iron-lord had finally given up on their friends in the clothing shop. It seemed like it had decided that they were the more important targets. Was this the fey's doing? She had no idea how much control they had over their beasts.
Adam cursed and dodged behind the building where Lizzy was cowering, dropping the launcher in the process. But the gargant just smashed a fist into the building, raining down some glass and plaster but otherwise leaving them unharmed.
Everyone was scattered, in no position to fight back. But Jelena... she hadn't moved. She had stayed rooted to the spot for reasons she couldn't comprehend. Despite her terror, she was only a few feet away from the bulky missile launcher.
She couldn't possibly... could she?
She found herself running towards the weapon, as if something else was controlling her limbs. Then it was in her hands.
She didn't know how to use a missile launcher. She had never used anything more complicated than a revolver. But her hands flew across the metal tube as if possessed, flipping switches, reconnecting wires, and checking valves. The gargant was still roaring, and the falling glass was slicing into her skin, but she didn't rush. She could do this. She knew she could do this.
In just a few moments, she was done. The weapon began to hum as whatever power source Veda had added began to work again. Something had been knocked loose when Adam dropped it, but Jelena had fixed it. How, though? She didn't know anything about fixing anything, much less a jury-rigged missile launcher built out of what looked like an old air conditioner.
But while her mind was still asking questions, her body was moving like a well-oiled machine. She went down on one knee, just like Adam had earlier, ignoring the glass pebbles getting embedded in her leg. She raised the weapon, sighted through the large, bulky scope, and...
Waited. The gargant was at a bad angle. She couldn't hit its legs from this position. She didn't have enough shots—she needed to get the knees. She briefly considered repositioning herself, but then the iron-lord took a few steps forward, exposing its weak points perfectly.
She fired.
Even as the missile flew through the air, she was already aiming at the second knee, checking that the launcher was still working through nothing but touch. Without removing it from her shoulder, she was able to confirm that everything was still in place.
The missile hit, exploding once again into a cloud of blue gas. The iron-lord bellowed in pain as it tried to move and its knee shattered, bringing it thudding to the street in a lopsided position. It struggled to grab hold of the nearby buildings and prop itself up, but it ended up just clawing off more glass and plaster. Jelena didn't give it a chance to find a better hold.
She fired again. The second shot was also dead-on, and the beast fell flat on its face without any leg to stand on.
But it wasn't dead, not yet. The “blood” used by the creature was more like oil than anything else, and it would take too long to let it bleed out. It was moaning now, a deep and dejected song that made her teeth shiver. It was like it was begging for death.
She checked the launcher one last time, this time taking it off her shoulder and inspecting it visually. Despite her unfamiliarity with weapons, she knew to be very careful. Jury-rigged weapons had a tendency to explode if something came loose at the wrong moment, so she didn't rush.
Finally, she was as certain as she could be that it wouldn't kill her on the next shot. She raised the launcher to her shoulder again, took aim, and waited. Slowly, the gargant raised its head and looked at her, as if intentionally giving her exactly the opportunity she had been waiting for.
She didn't hesitate. She fired, the targeting circle centered on the monster's face.
Right before the missile hit, the iron-lord gargant gave one last pitiful moan.
Then the projectile exploded with a dull whumph, and the head was suddenly covered in frost.
The beast wobbled for a moment, some last signal from its frozen brain telling its arms to keep it upright, until its elbows went limp and let its face smash into the concrete. Frozen metal and shattered asphalt flew everywhere.
Jelena put the missile launcher down slowly and settled down on her rear, suddenly very, very tired. Wherever those reserves of strength had come from, they were gone now. Was this what they called an adrenaline crash?
She turned to the others, smiling a bit weakly, hoping they would be willing to help her limp back to her room and take a very long shower.
But all she saw was Seena, staring at her in horror.
Chapter 45: SANGUINE PRIMA
ARTEMIS
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO
Isaac rushed over to a corner and retched, emptying his stomach of his last meal. For once, Artemis was happy he didn't eat much.
None of his soldiers so much as blinked. Considering how much they enjoyed poking fun at Isaac, that said something all by itself. Artemis suspected they were only barely holding back their own bile. Thankfully, he was able to control his stomach.
The entire building looked like a slaughterhouse. Horrifically mutilated bodies were staked to the walls with various implements, from broken-off chair legs and crowbars to swords and spears. There were a few beds scattered around the floor, with corpses tied to the bare frames with cruel metal wire. In some cases, the victims had been carefully skinned, with strange patterns etched into their muscles or bones.
Blood was everywhere. The walls, the floors, even the ceiling, dripping slowly down like gentle rain. And the smell... the bodies hadn't been here long, so there wasn't the cloying scent of rotting meat, but the air was suffused with the sharp iron scent of
far too much fresh blood.
“General,” Artemis said calmly. Isaac was expected to be weak. He had to be strong. “Report.”
The recently-promoted General Soun, a thirty-year-old Cambodian and former car thief, nodded a little shakily. “Yes, sir. We've cordoned off the entire block. The Norwegians have started a light assault to the west, but we're holding them off well enough.”
“What about the media?”
“They're with the English, to the south. We've sent orders that they're not allowed in until they relinquish their weapons.”
Artemis sighed. “That's unlikely to happen any time soon. We'll have to issue a statement.”
“Yes sir, I thought you might say that. I have Lieutenant Fitzgerald writing up a draft as we speak.”
Fitzgerald was a relatively new addition, both to the city and to Artemis' forces. The various countries of the world still dumped their criminals on the city every few months or so. It was the main reason they were staying afloat despite their ridiculously high death rates. The irony of Fitzgerald was that he had been sentenced for plagiarism. Copying stories other people had posted on the internet for free and selling them elsewhere under a pen name and reaping the profits. Now, he was the closest thing Artemis had to a spin doctor.
Still, that wasn't important right now. “Do we know who did this? The Albanians? The Armenians? Can't be the Germans...”
The general coughed. “Ah... yes. We know exactly who did this. Perhaps you remember Stefania Dumitru?”
Artemis frowned. “Yes, that Romanian murderer who thinks she's descended from Dracula. She got a reduced sentence due to her insanity, I believe.” It still wasn't clear whether Dumitru was really off her rocker or just using a convenient famous name to garner attention. She certainly wasn't actually descended from Dracula, though. Artemis hadn't studied Romanian history in too much depth, but to the best of his knowledge Dracula hadn't had any children. And if he had, they would likely have been killed by his enemies shortly after his death.
“Yeah, that's her. The thing is...” He glanced over at Isaac.
Isaac struggled to his feet. “I can handle this, Soun, thank you.”
He looked much older than he had even a few months ago. He had been playing around with the toy maker, and had used it to add some cosmetic changes, such as wrinkles and gray hair. He probably thought it would make him look more like a scientist.
He took a deep breath before speaking. “You remember those night vision eyes I made? Not actual eyes, of course, just a virus that alters—”
“Isaac,” Artemis said.
“Yes, well... Dumitru and her gang bought them. They can all see in the dark now.”
That was... not much of a concern. An extra factor to worry about, true, but hardly worse than anything else they had. Isaac did have a tendency to panic over minor things.
But still, Soun seemed at least as worried. Artemis nodded for Isaac to continue.
“Dumitru has renamed herself Striga. There's an accent mark in there somewhere, but I'm not sure—”
“A striga is a Romanian witch,” Artemis interrupted before he had a chance to completely derail himself. “I imagine she has a reason for naming herself after an ugly old woman?”
“Well, it's a witch or a vampire. She is clearly going with the vampire interpretation.” He coughed lightly. “You see... she and hers have named themselves vampires.”
Artemis frowned again. Dumitru... Striga... seemed to have chosen an interesting way of defending herself: Fear. The Romanians had been hit hard recently. Artemis supposed if you were going to form a gang to protect your people, it made sense to choose the most well-known mythological creature of your country. If she did this right, she could terrify her enemies into making mistakes.
He took another look around the room with fresh eyes. The blood was splashed everywhere, but it wasn't random. Strange sigils and ancient Sumerian runes were etched near the bodies, and he slowly realized that every corpse had a wooden stake thrust through their heart.
“Any word on the gang affiliations of the victims?” That would be the last piece of the puzzle. The Germans had been encroaching on Romanian territory most recently. They would be the most obvious target of this stunt.
Soun stepped forward again. “Well, yes and no, sir. Rather, we've determined that there was no known connection between the victims, other than the fact that they all lived in this building. Striga seems to have just killed them because it was convenient.”
Artemis cursed under his breath. “Why can't anyone in this city ever send messages written in something other than blood?”
The general winced. “Funny you should mention that, sir. There's something you should see on the thirteenth floor.”
He led Isaac and Artemis up, past twelve more floors of the same unbridled carnage. Artemis realized quickly that the blood dripping from the ceilings wasn't blood that was on the ceilings—rather, it was dripping through from the floors above.
Killing “Striga” was edging higher up his list of priorities with every floor they climbed.
The thirteenth floor, however, didn't seem any different from the others. Yes, it was horrifying. Another few dozen people staked to the walls and flayed alive. The entire room, redder than tomatoes. Isaac was retching in the corner again, though at this point he didn't have anything left to hack up.
But as the leader of Necessarius, Artemis needed to be on top of things at all times. He scanned the room, searching for whatever it was that Soun had considered so important.
Were the bodies laid out in some specific pattern? Not that he could tell. Were there more victims than the other floors? No, if anything there were less. The blood on the walls—
Ah. That was it.
He turned around and peered behind the elbow of the stairwell, the part he hadn't been able to see coming up. As he suspected, there was a message written there in the blood of the dead.
“Luna sângeros este în cer,” he read aloud. “Vampiri au crescut.”
“The bloody moon is in the sky,” Soun translated. “The vampires have risen.”
A declaration of war. Lovely. “Any information on how many of these 'vampires' we're dealing with?”
“A hundred, at least. Likely more,” Soun said reluctantly. “Considering the amount of manpower required for something like this, we could be looking at nearly a thousand.”
Artemis frowned. “Terrible as this is, I doubt it would take that many.”
Soun looked uncomfortable. “Ah, sir, you seem to have missed an important part of the message. That's my mistake, Mary Christina was the one who answered the phone, and I should have known she would just summarize—”
“General,” he growled. “Enough backstory. What am I missing?”
He swallowed and nodded. “Yes, sir... see here?” He pointed at something below the message that Artemis hadn't noticed before, mistaking them as just more bloody scribbles.
“1 din 13,” he read. He narrowed his eyes. “One out of thirteen.” He turned back to the general, who quivered a little, but didn't falter. “There are twelve more buildings like this?”
Soun just nodded.
“So all of our efforts to contain this have been meaningless.”
“So it seems,” Soun said. “I did send men to secure two other sites, but that was before we knew the full extent of the problem.”
Artemis squeezed the head of his cane tightly. They had a genocidal psychopath with a small army on their hands, and now everyone knew it. This would hurt morale.
Right now, they had more immediate concerns. “Send out scouts,” he ordered. “Find the other skyscrapers, and contain them. We need to clean these places up. Start collecting the bodies and scrub down the walls.”
Just as Soun nodded, the lights went out.
Artemis heard the Cambodian curse. “It's them.”
Of course. Now that they could see in the dark, their first move would always be to kill the lights. This gave th
em a large advantage over anyone else, especially since it was only the three Necessarians in the room—and Soun was the only dangerous one.
Artemis heard an animalistic hiss from behind him. He turned to see a dark shape in the very dim light leaking in through the windows, prowling in a crouched position. It saw him too, bared long and sharp glistening canines, and leaped towards his throat.
A rifle barked from behind him, the distinctive four-round burst of a Necessarian Saint Euphemia, and the Romanian howled as he took three bullets to the chest. The man half-limped, half fell down the stairs, whining like an injured dog.
Artemis had not promoted Soun for no reason. He was quick on his feet, both mentally and physically, and a dead shot. He'd be able to handle one or two “vampires” easily enough, even in the dark.
“Sirs, we need to move. There could be more.”
Artemis nodded, though he couldn't see him. “You're right, of course. Isaac, get up.” Artemis' fragile bones, even reinforced by the toy maker, still weren't strong enough to lift Isaac to his feet, but Artemis shook his shoulder. Isaac winced, but when he realized it wasn't an enemy, Artemis heard him shakily standing upright again.
“I need to check on my men as well,” Soun said. He cracked open a small glow-rod, illuminating us all in a soft green light. It wasn't much, but it would help. “I'll take point.”
Artemis let him lead without comment. This was his area of expertise. Artemis had no place second-guessing him.
Artemis almost expected to run into the man who had attacked them on the way down, but he seemed to know better than to try again. They didn't see anyone at all until they exited the building and walked out onto the sidewalk.
It was like a scene out of a nightmare. There were no lights other than muzzle flare as his men defended themselves. Screams tore the night, both the sharp hunting screeches of the Romanians and the terrified cries of his own men.
Soun didn't so much as flinch. He just cracked a few more glow-rods, tossed them around, and started shooting any vampires that got too close.
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