The Crucible: A Lawson Vampire Novel (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  “Neither did I, really,” said the Silencer. “Needless to say, I’m pretty impressed.”

  “Great, my life is now complete,” I said. “I’ve won the admiration of two people I couldn’t give a shit less about.”

  Wei placed a hand over his heart. “There’s no need to be nasty.”

  “You’re holding a buddy of mine captive. I’d say that’s plenty of reason to get nasty.” I was still holding the gun and I thought pretty hard about bringing it up and shooting Wei in the head.

  But he knew I wouldn’t. “You’re not going to insult yourself by thinking about doing that, Lawson. I wouldn’t show you my cards if I wasn’t extremely confident that I have complete control in this situation. Now put it down and let’s have a nice talk.”

  “Is he really alive?” I asked nodding at Jack inside the aquarium.

  “We gave him the antidote as soon as we discovered his body,” said the Silencer. “He’s alive. But that liquid keeps him in a state of limbo. If the liquid isn’t primed with more life force energy then he dies.”

  “Blood that I control,” said Wei. “Shoot me and he dies.”

  “Bring him out of the suspended state,” I said. “Ask him yourself if he’ll agree to your plans.”

  Wei shook his head. “I doubt very much he would agree if I ask him. But perhaps if you ask him, then he’ll be willing.”

  “Why would I ask him?”

  “Because if you don’t, then Talya dies.”

  Talya frowned. “Last I checked, I was still holding a gun here people.”

  Wei shrugged. “So what? You kill her? Then Jack dies.”

  “Maybe I don’t care about Jack,” said Talya.

  Wei laughed. “Of course you do. You care about him because you care about Lawson. And you know that if you did anything to harm Jack, it would crush Lawson utterly. You won’t risk that. Not even for a moment.”

  I glanced at Talya and she grinned at me. “You know, my life’s gotten a helluva lot more complicated since we started this thing. I should have fallen in love with a financial analyst.”

  “Get a house in the suburbs? Raise two kids? Yeah, that’d work well for you.” I smiled back at her. “Not exactly the poster child for domestic bliss, babe.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Talya looked back at Wei. “All right, you may have a point. But I’m not giving up the gun.”

  Wei sighed. “You either put it down or I kill Jack right here and now.”

  “Then what happens to your plans?” asked Talya. “He’s no good to you dead.”

  Wei shrugged. “I’d find another way. That’s what I do. That’s why I’ve survived for as long as I have. You don’t get to be where I am unless you have the ability to adapt and overcome problems. You think you’re the first stubborn individuals I’ve had to deal with? You’re not by a long shot. And I’ve always endured. And been successful. Now, put it down.”

  I sighed.

  Talya and I put the guns down.

  32

  The Silencer immediately backhanded Talya across the face. Talya’s head whipped around, but she didn’t fall. Instead she looked back at the Silencer and smiled.

  “You hit like an old man. But that’s not really surprising considering how long you’ve been around.”

  The Silencer chuckled. “I am so going to enjoy killing you.” She picked up the pistol and leveled it on Talya’s head. “Any last words?”

  “Stop,” said Wei.

  The Silencer looked over her shoulder at him. “There’s no way I am going to let this one live another moment. She had a gun on me and didn’t finish the job. She won’t make that mistake again.”

  “Damned right,” said Talya.

  But Wei shook his head. “You know the deal.”

  “You broke the deal,” said the Silencer. “And why would I listen to you after that?”

  “Because you owe me,” said Wei. “If it wasn’t for me, you would have lost everything. You know that. Now, do as I say and lower the weapon. I have a use for these two still. And I need them both alive to make everything work the way I want it to.”

  “And when you’re done? What then?”

  “You can do whatever you want with them,” said Wei. “Their usefulness will be at an end.”

  The Silencer glared at Talya for another long minute, but finally lowered the gun. I breathed a sigh of relief. There was no doubt she hated Talya. I wondered what had happened when they’d come across each other in the past. If we made it out of this thing alive, I’d have to find out.

  Talya folded her arms. “Don’t look so upset, sweetheart. You’ll get your chance.”

  “Enough,” said Wei. “We have things to accomplish.” He eyed me. “Now, we are going to bring Jack out of his suspended animation and you are going to convince him to do what I need him to do. Is that understood?”

  I shrugged. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because Talya dies if you don’t.”

  I frowned. “You just confirmed that she’s going to die anyway. What difference does a few more minutes make?”

  Wei stared at me. “If you don’t do as I say, Talya’s not the only one that will die. I will kill everyone you hold dear in your life, Lawson. Starting with these two and working my way back through your entire family.”

  “My family - if you can even call it that - is pretty much what you see in this room. My father died ages ago and after that, the rest of my family fell apart.”

  Wei shook his head. “Again, you underestimate my ability to find out everything about you. I know that you have relatives in other parts of the United States. And in Germany.”

  “You’re going to kill them all?”

  “Absolutely.”

  I sighed. “You’ve got too much time on your hands.” I nodded at Jack in the tank. “Bring him out of it and I’ll see what I can do.”

  Wei gestured for a soldier to flip some buttons on the side of the tank that were hooked up to a series of tubes and computers. The soldier flipped them in sequences and the green liquid inside the tank started to churn and bubble. After several minutes, I saw Jack’s eyes blink and then open under the special mask he wore. He tried to get his arms free, but they were restrained by straps.

  “You’d better help him,” I told Wei. “He’s not going to be very cooperative if you keep him in there.”

  It was true. I could see the look of terror on Jack’s face as he realized he was floating in thick green slime. Wei nodded at his soldiers and they ran a ladder to the top of the tank and unstrapped Jack. Then they helped him out and down, before giving him a towel to wrap around himself.

  Chunks of green stuff still clung to his head and skin and he looked like he’d been dyed in some sort of leprechaun paint. His eyes lit up when he saw me, though, and it warmed my heart.

  “Hey,” he said around a cough.

  “Hey yourself. How you doing?”

  Jack frowned. “What the hell happened to me?”

  I pointed at the Silencer. “This one shot you.”

  Jack eyed her. “You tried to kill me?”

  The Silencer waved him away. “I saved your life, boy. A lesser skilled sniper would have put that round into you rather than graze you with it. You owe me thanks not derision.”

  Jack spat a wad of snot on the floor. “Yeah, I’ll get right on that thank-you note. Bitch.”

  Wei laughed. “I see he gets his sense of humor from you, Lawson. You must be so proud.”

  “Never prouder,” I said. “It’s going to be great when you realize this plan of yours isn’t going to work.”

  “What plan?” asked Jack.

  “Nutball there wants to embed the spirit of a vampire - a dead vampire - into one of his spider mole creatures.”

  Jack looked confused. “Wait - what? Spider what?”

  “Spider mole,” said Wei. “That’s what Lawson apparently calls them. It fits, I suppose. They’re subterranean creatures that we unearthed several months back at anot
her dig site when we were trying to bring another plan to fruition. That plan failed, but this one has the potential to go the distance.”

  Jack used the towel to wipe his face and then dig into his ears. He wrapped the towel back around himself and eyed me. “What the hell is he talking about?”

  “Long story, pal. But he needs you to help him with the vampire spirit part of his crazy plan.”

  Jack turned to Wei. “You’re not one of us, are you?”

  Wei shrugged. “Does it matter? I know what I want.”

  Jack sniffed. I couldn’t tell if it was derision of just another wad of green snot he needed to clear. “It doesn’t matter if you know what you want. Vampire spirits aren’t just going to line up and agree to help you. It doesn’t work that way and you’d be foolish to try it.”

  “That,” said the Silencer, “is what I told him.”

  “Who the hell are you?” asked Jack. “I mean aside from the crazy bitch who tried to kill me.”

  The Silencer sighed. “Boy, if I had tried to kill you, you would be dead. I guarantee it.”

  I nudged Jack. “That is true, unfortunately.”

  “All right,” said Jack. “But how would you know about what an Invoker does.”

  “Because I’m one, too,” said the Silencer.

  “Bull shit.”

  She sighed. “Do we really have to go through this?” She closed her eyes and the temperature in the room instantly fell at least twenty degrees.

  Jack closed his eyes, too and for a moment, I was worried that we were going to have some sort of ghost contest or something. I hate magic and I hate dealing with spirits. I don’t always have a choice, though. I just hoped this wasn’t going to take too long. The temperature eased back up to normal after a minute or two.

  Jack opened his eyes a moment later and stared at the Silencer. “Yavugah n’jak dawar.”

  She smiled. “Ashulgun fadar.”

  Jack nodded and looked at me. “She’s legit.”

  “Spectacular. So that means she’s not only a professional killer, but she can also use spirits at will?”

  “Something like that.”

  “A double threat,” I said. No wonder we’d had such a hard time keeping tabs on her over the years. She could vanish at will and probably knew a ton of places that she could conceal herself. With the help of the vampire spirits she could conjure, she could go to ground and stay gone for years. Decades even.

  Jack looked at me. “So what’s the deal?”

  “Wei there wants you to conjure a spirit and trap it in the body of a spider mole.”

  Jack frowned. “How come she didn’t help him with that?”

  “Because,” said the Silencer. “I know what happens if the process goes wrong. The spirit would take me over instead and I would be cast aside into a permanent state of purgatory. I would need another Invoker to bring me back and even if that was successful, there’s no guarantee I could return to my body.”

  Jack nodded. “Normally you’d have to reanimate a corpse.”

  I looked at Wei. “This whole thing sounds like one bad idea. Even with two Invokers at your disposal, neither one thinks it makes any sense.”

  Wei shook his head. “I don’t need them to agree with the idea. I just need them to make it happen.”

  Jack stared at me hard. “I can’t be sure this whole place wouldn’t be destroyed in the process. If the spirit I attempt to trap in that creature figures it out ahead of time, then he could conceivably call upon other spirits to come to his aid and help him. They could end up obliterating this entire facility.” Jack turned to Wei. “Are you comfortable with that level of risk?”

  Wei looked at the Silencer. “Is he telling the truth?”

  “Never having attempted such a foolish thing before, I don’t know,” said the Silencer. “But I don’t doubt his veracity. Neither one of us wants to do this. I simply want them all dead. My way is guaranteed. Your way is foolish.”

  “Your way,” said Wei, “is immediate and short-sighted. My plan tackles the future and ensures a legacy of greatness. Nothing great ever came without great risk.”

  “Suicide, though,” said the Silencer. “I didn’t sign up for such a thing.”

  “You’re here now,” said Wei. “And you won’t be leaving until this is all done and over with. I need someone, after all, who can keep the young Invoker under control.”

  The Silencer sighed. “That’s not how it works.”

  Wei waved his hand. “Then put a gun to his heart and if he shows signs of trying to turn the tables on us, kill him.”

  Jack shook his head. “I don’t work well with a gun pointed at my heart. Especially when the person behind the trigger has made it abundantly clear that she wants to kill all of us.”

  I grinned at Wei. “Looks like your plan here is on shaky ground.”

  “My plan,” said Wei, “is perfectly fine. You all simply lack the vision to see it through.” He pointed at Jack. “Young man, you will do as I command you. If you attempt anything foolish, you will die.”

  “So, that’s a no on the embedding the vampire spirit into the body of that creature? Cuz that’s pretty damned foolish.”

  I saw a tiny grin flash across the Silencer’s face before she managed to conceal it again. She held the pistol on Jack, but she didn’t seem particularly focused on it. I hoped Talya had noticed, but then I knew that she had. Talya was a pro; she didn’t miss anything.

  Wei reached forward on his desk and pushed a button. In Mandarin, he called out a series of commands and received an acknowledgement moments later. Wei switched off the intercom system and then looked at all of us. “It has been settled. We will now all adjourn to the ring where we can observe the entire process of the spirit transfer. If everything goes well, then I will soon have an entire army of spider moles at my command.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  Wei stood and smiled at me. “It is rather wonderful, isn’t it?”

  “Sure.”

  “I still have a tiny problem, however.”

  “Just one?” I asked.

  Wei nodded. “You see, in order to embed the spirit, I need to get a spider mole to make an appearance. They can be rather mercurial in their behavior from time to time. Simply summoning them doesn’t always help. They need to be properly motivated to come to the surface.”

  I knew what was coming next.

  “Lawson, how do you feel about being the thing that motivates them to put in appearance? I’m sure they’d like nothing more than to feast upon you.”

  33

  We moved en masse back to the ring overlooking the Abyss. Wei had scores of troops around all of us now and the chances seemed remote for any sort of tactical maneuver. Talya, Jack, and I all walked together, surrounded by them. The Silencer had chosen to remain behind us as well, not trusting Wei’s soldiers to be able to handle something in case we tried an escape.

  Wei, for his part, seemed remarkably at ease, even going so far as to shake hands with several technicians as he made his way toward a spot in the ring. Once there, he surveyed the depth of the Abyss and ordered that rings of lights be turned on to better illuminate the proceedings.

  “You all right?” asked Jack.

  I shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I be? I’m about to be fed to some horrifying creature in a godforsaken hole in the ground in remote China. Can’t imagine how today could have possibly gone any better.”

  “Enough with the sarcasm,” said Talya. “We’ll figure something out.”

  I smiled. “I appreciate the optimism, but I’m coming up empty on ideas.”

  “That’s because you only have one brain. Jack and I have two good ones, too, you know.”

  “Then we should probably figure something out soon,” I said. “Because I don’t think Wei wants to wait all that long.”

  On cue, Wei turned and smiled at me. “Lawson, are you ready to be served up to one of my pets?”

  “I hope you’ve got a strong antacid be
cause I’m going to fuck up that thing’s digestive tract.”

  Wei grinned. “I would expect nothing less from a Fixer.”

  I galled me to no end hearing him use that term. Xuan Xiang had sold out his entire race. For that matter, so had the Silencer. Neither one of them had any degree of loyalty to the code that was supposed to bind us all and keep our people safe. They’d thrown it away in exchange for glory, profit, or some other misguided principle. Sure, I’d had my misgivings about the Council in the past. I knew they weren’t perfect. No society is. But given how the vampire race has been able to endure and prosper in the shadows of humanity, I’d have to say they’ve done a pretty amazing job.

  But that didn’t matter to Xuan Xiang, the Silencer, or any number of other traitors I’d helped put in the ground over the years. The difference then was that the damage hadn’t been done; humans hadn’t realized that we existed. In this case, Wei and everyone in this facility knew that we did. That was unacceptable. I had no doubt that if the Council had had access to a strike force of bombers or one nuke, they would order this entire installation wiped from the map. They simply couldn’t take the chance that more humans could find out about us.

  They didn’t have a wave of bombers, though. And last I knew, we didn’t have any nukes.

  Right now, all they had was me, Jack, and Talya.

  Maybe Talya.

  She’d fight for me and Jack, but if I asked her to fight for the Council, she was likely to tell me to go get stuffed. I couldn’t blame her. She thought the Council’s prohibition on vampire/human love was barbaric and antiquated. Then again, she was a little biased. I saw it as the Council being determined that humans never find out about us and so they took whatever steps they deemed necessary to ensure the secret remained safe.

  Talya saw it for what it was in her world: another target on her back ever since the Council had told me that we’d be marked for death if we were caught.

  We’d managed to have some good times despite the possibility of discovery. We both loved the hell out of each other and accepted our crazy lives for what they were instead of trying to change ourselves to fit some weird stereotypical ideal that would rob us of all the excitement we knew we could create together.