Chapter Twenty-One: Storming the Castle
After finding the bodies at the station, Mitchell located another abandoned house, set up a brief camp, and ordered his men to sleep until sunrise. In the dark, when his mind wasn’t picturing Harold biting through Normson’s skull, or Peterson’s corpse under a trail of blood, or what remained of Thompson’s body after Richard had finished eating it, Mitchell formed a new plan.
The Archians believed this prophecy, so killing any of the Browns should stop further attacks. Mitchell wanted to stay far away from Harold, and Richard had disappeared, but they knew where to find Thomas…
So he let his men sleep, because he sure as hell wasn’t attacking the vampires until after sunrise.
Then, as the sun warmed up for the day, McGregor radioed that Paddington was currently at the headquarters. Mitchell roused the troops, shoved them in the van, and sped over.
“Where is he?” Mitchell dropped his L85 onto McGregor’s overflowing table, dislodging the careful layers of paper.
McGregor was too bright for someone who’d been up all night; he must have brewed more wake-up juice. “He left five minutes ago,” McGregor said.
“How’d he escape the werewolves?”
McGregor stifled a yawn. “Didn’t say, but he thought the Browns might be more powerful than the other creatures.”
Mitchell snatched his gun from the table and bit back the urge to scream at McGregor. “We’re going to the duke’s.”
McGregor’s eyes lit up. “Really? I’ve always wanted to see a vampire!”
“Oh?” Mitchell asked, pointing his rifle at the paper-covered table. “I assumed you’d want to stay here and read your book, maybe grind another rainforest to make your notes, but if you want to help us attack a vampire nest grab your gun and let’s be off.”
McGregor rubbed his bulbous head. “Ah, no.”
“Just remembered how big the duke’s family is?”
“Ah, yes.”
“Keep translating; you’re running out of time,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to kill Thomas Brown.”
“Kill?”
“Kill,” Mitchell said. “We knock him off and all that’s left is this one happy demon pissing all over their prophecy. Found anything else to help me do that?”
“Uh, not personally.” McGregor waved a hand dismissively at his notes. “Just the same stuff about the Three Ends – fire, head, and heart – but I still don’t know which goes with which creature since staking, decapitation, and burning all appear in vampire tales. But!” He scrambled through the papers. “Paddington said that plants were key… Here we are!” He offered Mitchell a sheet of paper.
Mitchell stared. He’d had less than two fitful hours of sleep and he was being offered… what? “You want me to fight vampires,” he said, “with flower power?”
“He was insistent. Especially about, uh, Nepeta Dynatos.”
Mitchell looked over to Skylar. She sneered when she saw that the men wanted her input. “Oh, I don’t have a cock, so I must know about all manner of pretty things, right sir?” She snorted in a very unladylike way. “Did you want a hand with your quilting next sir? I’ve got a lovely sewing callus on this finger.”
Before Mitchell could order her to run laps of the block until her P.M.S. had passed, McGregor shouted, “He brought some,” and ran into the kitchen. A moment later he returned with a thick-stemmed plant that had a cluster of heart-shaped flowers.
Mitchell didn’t glorifying this with speech. This island and its detective were beyond stupid.
“He said to use it as a last resort,” McGregor said. “Just break it and drop it.”
“That’s it?” Mitchell asked. He’d hated the prophecy for being vague, but Paddington had taken vague to a whole new level. “We’re marching into battle low on ammunition, with no intel on our enemy… and armed with our young friend’s best guesses and a pretty purple flower?”
“This is the best plan ever,” Clarkson said from the sofa. Mitchell kicked him up.
“Paddington’s not that young,” Truman said. “About your age, probably, sir.”
“Then he should know better,” Mitchell said.
Five minutes later Mitchell, Clarkson, Truman, and Skylar each left the hideout with a clump of Nepeta Dynatos bulging in their cargo pants. Another ten minutes brought them to the manor’s gates. Another second brought them through them. The impact shattered the windscreen and the van coughed, spluttered, and chugged to the front entrance. On the way, they passed deer and sheep and elk and something that looked like a big cow or ox with long curling horns.
Mitchell slammed the handbrake and leapt out in front of the manor. It loomed over them, far too tall for only two storeys, its shadow stretching away to his left. Shaking off vertigo, Mitchell eyed his three soldiers. Clarkson would do as he was told, complaining every step of the way. Skylar would obey quietly unless he told her to do anything she could construe as sexist. And Truman would do whatever he was told, up to and including suicide. He was useful like that.
“Room by room sweep.” Mitchell grabbed a shotgun off Clarkson. Their L85s were nearly dry and Archi didn’t carry 5.56 millimetre rounds, so they were saving the big guns for Thomas. “Watch the entrances.” Mitchell headed for the front door.
Which flew open to reveal a neatly-dressed bald man.
“Can I help you, sirs?” he asked, raising a minigun.
Its barrels spun and Mitchell dived behind the door. Skylar posted up on the other side, ready to duck into the manor as soon as the butler stopped firing. Clarkson and Truman took refuge behind the van, which was being redecorated with long rows of holes.
Mitchell swung his shotgun around the door and fired blindly into the hall. The minigun’s barrels whined as they stopped spinning.
Skylar and Mitchell rounded the corner and faced the dark entranceway. The minigun lay in the middle of it. The butler was nowhere to be seen, hopefully because he’d run off scared or injured and not because he was waiting in ambush.
Mitchell felt a tap on the shoulder and moved into the sitting room, shotgun swinging from artwork to couch to sofa. The next room was a dining room with a long table. Apart from their boots on the exquisite carpet, there was no noise: no ominous ticking clocks, no breathing. Nothing.
“Where’d he go?” Truman asked. He’d lost his trademark cowboy hat outside the Bleeding Heck and his blond hair was swept forward. His accent seemed less pronounced, too, now that he’d lost that confident American swagger. But he had picked up the minigun.
They continued, dark room by candlelit room, throwing back the heavy curtains to let the sun retake the house. Having cleared the ground floor, they found themselves in the main entranceway with its long, wide staircase. “Sir, wouldn’t it be best to leave now?” Clarkson asked.
Annoyingly, he was right: better to exit without loss than walk into a trap, but what about Thomas Brown? What about contacting London? The satellite dish was their only hope of the reinforcements needed to eradicate the zombie horde. Prophecy or not, what they needed was up there.
“Move,” Mitchell said, pointing his shotgun up the staircase. It was a strategic nightmare: they were like slow-moving ducks on a shooting range. Mitchell watched the doors, ready to scramble for the cover of the banisters, but they made it to the top unharmed.
“Where are they all?” Truman asked.
“Probably asleep in their coffins,” Skylar said.
“What coffins?” Clarkson asked. “There was no crypt downstairs. These are the shittiest vampires ever.”
“Clean sweep,” Mitchell said. “Room by room.”
The unit moved into a hallway. Behind its first door were a bedroom and a vampire, clearly identifiable by her cat-like eyes and teeth, wearing a light off-the-shoulder number which swayed elegantly as she kicked the minigun out of Truman’s grip.
Mitchell fired his shotgun, but the vampire leapt onto the far wall. Before Mitchell could chamber the next shell, she’d bou
nded up and out of sight.
Which was when Mitchell realised that the walls weren’t connected to the ceiling; there was a crawlspace up there.
Truman threw wide the windows, left the minigun on the floor, and they moved on. Three dank, musty-smelling rooms along, they met the next vampire. She, too, was dressed lightly – largely because she was asleep in bed – but she woke at the sound of the door opening and screamed. For a moment, Mitchell thought they’d walked in on innocent bystander. Then she leapt out of bed and, still airborne, tore the shotgun from Mitchell’s hands.
Mitchell swung a weak punch and felt her crumple, gasping, at the impact. She felt like old paper, dry and brittle. His pistol cleared its holster and he fired at her, but the vampire had turned her fall into a roll and was now scampering in the crawlspace above them.
“Oh, hello,” said a voice from above.
“What’s going on? Why hasn’t the human taken care of this?”
“He’s speaking with father now.”
“Nice of him to wake me.”
“You didn’t hear the shots?”
“Father knows I’m a heavy sleeper.”
Skylar opened the curtains as the rest of them zeroed in on the vampires’ positions. They raised their weapons and awaited Mitchell’s go.
And were interrupted by a male vampire standing in the doorway and screaming.
He ran off.
“What’s his problem?” Clarkson asked.
“Daylight.” Mitchell nodded at the open window. “Score one for the humans.”
The next three bedrooms were empty, but as they approached each they heard sounds of light footfalls in the ceiling. The fourth room was empty when they peered in, but full by the time they were halfway to the curtain. A dozen figures landed all around them. Judging from the women’s shocked faces, though, this hadn’t been a well-planned ambush. Maybe they’d run out of places to run.
Outmanned three to one, the Team members grabbed their L85s with their offhand. Eight weapons against twelve vampires. Mitchell wasn’t sure who’d win the fight.
“Drop them,” said the eldest man. Mitchell noticed the hint of teeth on his bottom lip, the straightness of his spine, the fine tailored suit.
“You’re unarmed,” Mitchell said. “Planning on killing us the old-fashioned way?”
“Not all of you,” said the duke. He looked about sixty, but with vampires that might mean nothing. “We might spare you, captain… Perhaps you’ll come in useful one day.”
“Trying to teach an old demon new tricks?” Mitchell asked.
Andraste didn’t reply, but some of his daughters had a malicious glee in their eyes. How long until they realised that the Team would be fun to chase?
“’Ello there,” said a new voice from the doorway.
Mitchell heard someone fire and saw the bullet chip the hallway wallpaper, which shouldn’t have been possible because of the big fat vampire in the way. He was gone now, but gone where? Why hadn’t Mitchell seen him move?
A gak behind him made Mitchell turn. The fat vampire was holding Clarkson off the ground with one long-nailed hand. It looked like a tubby Richard Brown with shining waist-length hair and dark skin. Thomas’s ears were slightly pointed and his face was rounder than his brothers’. The buttons on his fine shirt were strained and ready to pop.
Mitchell aimed his L85, but Thomas used Clarkson as a shield more effectively than his brother Harold had used Normson. At best, Mitchell might graze Thomas’s wide belly. And all the time, Thomas smiled with freckled cheeks and curled fangs. That was odd – the Andrastes’ and the mayor’s teeth came straight down, not curled – but it was a thought for later, if they survived.
Mitchell, Truman, and Skylar edged away from Clarkson and Thomas Brown, but now there were thirteen vampires against three humans.
Yep. They were dead.
Unless…
Hardly believing he was doing it, Mitchell released his L85 and reached into the pocket of his trousers. The clump of Nepeta Dynatos was still there. Would it do any good? Probably not.
Mitchell crushed the plant into a ball and tossed it onto the floor. Three vampires pounced immediately, slapping at the flowers and making a deep, happy sound like a purr. In seconds, Truman and Skylar had thrown their own bundles of Nepeta Dynatos and Mitchell yelled, “Go!”
Thomas flung Clarkson away, bumped the duke aside, and pawed at the plant with his long claws. Beside the doorway, Clarkson cradled his bleeding head and Truman tried to pull him to safety.
Mitchell was already in the hallway. He had no idea what the vampires were doing, but he wanted to be long gone before they’d finished.
Then Thomas looked at Clarkson, bared his teeth, and suddenly he was standing right there, behind Clarkson, holding him by both shoulders.
“Leave him!” Mitchell shouted.
Forget London. Forget Thomas. Forget the mission. He just wanted to live.
Bovicide, Zombie Diaries, and the Legend of the Brothers Brown Page 55