by Amie Gibbons
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll watch the door from the front desk. No reason for anyone coming in to be susp-” I followed Carvi’s smirk down to my outfit.
Right.
I was wearing lightweight Kevlar with a few grenades and an AR strapped to my back.
“Never mind,” I said. “I’m not thinkin’. I’ve got to do something.”
“Leave the armor and AR here and conceal the pistol, or stay hidden,” Carvi said.
There was who knew what goin’ on, not a snowball’s chance in an ‘Bama summer I was gonna leave my AR.
“I can leave the Kevlar,” I said. “If anyone comes in or asks questions, I’ll just say I’m headin’ to the range.”
He huffed something under his breath I was pretty sure wasn’t English and zoomed up the stairs.
Considering how fast he’d be able to grab Grant and get back here, I probably didn’t need to worry about disarming or making a plan till he got back.
It’d be less than a minute.
Something tickled my mind and I half focused on it before snapping out. Couldn’t risk going into a vision.
But what if I didn’t go in far? What if I focused on letting go so I could go into it, but staying sorta on the surface?
It was possible based on what I’d learned from Carvi so far.
Was it worth the risk though?
Yeah, yeah it was.
I closed my eyes.
What’s their plan? What am I up against?
Flash.
“… all of them?”
“Yes.”
“What about Carvi’s people?”
That first voice was male and the second definitely female. I couldn’t see anything and the vision felt weak, like it knew I couldn’t go too far in.
What if they sensed me and grabbed me in here?
“It’s unfortunate we had to take him out,” the female said. “Couldn’t be helped. We will have to improvise. If we can’t get his people, we will still get the others. The,” she said something that sounded like sand ‘em magic, “should do it if you implement it properly.”
“And the psychic?”
“Bring her alive. I don’t want another screw up like the shooting.”
“That was-”
“I know who it was,” she snapped. “That’s why you’re in charge now instead of that moronic hothead. I want the psychic alive. Carvi didn’t even know what she was. Do you know what we could do with her,” she said a word that hurt my ears and sounded vaguely like chakra.
Maybe it was chakra.
That strange word clinched it.
That woman was our Fae.
And the guy’s voice was definitely familiar. I couldn’t place it. Considering how good I was with voices, that suggested I met him once or so, and not for long.
But it was definitely somebody I’d met.
“Yes, ma’am,” the guy said. “We’ll start around three. They won’t know what hit them.”
“Quick and quiet,” she said. “None of them should be up during the day, and even if they are, any human they send out the front door will hit the portal.”
Portal?
“What if we meet resistance?” the man asked.
“That’s what the contingency is for,” she said. “You run into any human who tries to stop you, you pull the trigger and just clean up afterwards. You run into an awake vampire, use the potion.”
The vision snapped off and I breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t a present time one, and was, er, light enough? Sure, light enough worked. It was light enough that they didn’t sense me.
As far as I could tell anyway.
Their people? They were talkin’ about the vampires here and their people. What did that mean?
Noise above made me gasp and adrenaline spiked through me as my stomach clenched. I pulled up my gun just in time to point it at Carvi as he put Grant’s feet on the ground.
“Carvi!” I huffed, lowering my gun.
I told them what I’d heard.
“Our people?” Carvi said. “That’s what she said?”
“Yes,” I said. “And sounded like they’d lose yours since they killed you. I don’t know. You tell me. Oh yeah, she said something about the sand magic. Like the sand magic should do it. And there’s a portal to catch anyone trying to leave out the front door. So probably a good thing we used the emergency one in the stairs. Hey, shouldn’t that have set off some alarm or something cuz usually-”
“Ariana,” Carvi said, slashing a hand down to cut me off, “this is important. Can you remember exactly what she said? She probably named the spell.”
“Ummmm.” I wrinkled my forehead and closed my eyes, pulling the sound back up like it was an iPod on repeat “Sang uniem magic,” I said, eyes snapping open.
I knew the second he figured it out because his face snapped into a look I’d never seen on there before.
Terror.
“Sanguinem magicae,” he whispered. “No.” He looked between me and Grant. “We have to stop them. Now.”
“Yeah, got that,” I said. “What is it?”
“They’re going to do a blood sap spell,” he said, the words holding horror I didn’t understand.
“What does it do?” Grant asked.
“It…” Carvi licked his lips. “It takes a tremendous amount of power to do to even one vampire, but if you can pull it off…” he shook his head. “You know how I was taking power from my people to rebuild myself?”
“Yeah,” I said, a pit forming in my stomach.
“It does that. You cast it on the master, and he sucks power out of the vampires and humans tied to him, until they’re drained. It sucks them dry in mere hours, and the master doesn’t even know he’s being used as a conduit if he doesn’t know what to look for.”
“Or if they’re asleep,” I said. “How hard is this to pull off?”
“It’s extremely delicate and takes so much power, I can’t even say.”
“Like a few hundred dead gangsters?” I said.
He drew in a sharp breath. “Yeah. And they have the magic in here and past my wards, and probably have something ready to go to stop anyone who interferes. If anyone even notices something amiss.”
“How bad?” I asked.
He met my eyes. “They aren’t planning on killing a hundred odd leaders in the U.S. and leaving us crippled until they’re replaced. They’re planning on killing those leaders, and thousands tied to them.”
My mouth went dry and I opened it and gulped, trying to get enough in to talk.
“How many?” Grant asked.
“Without my people?” Carvi asked. “With every leader here, and assuming they’re connected to all in their inner circles and the vampires they’ve made, including-”
“Carvi!” I grabbed his arm and chin and pulled it down to make him look at me again. “How many?”
“Three to five hundred for each, easy,” he said.
Grant sucked in a sharp breath.
Thirty to fifty thousand vampires and humans across the U.S.
At least.
Chapter nineteen
“We find them and stop them,” Grant said. “Any reason to think the spell will carry on once they’re taken out?”
“It’s coming from the Fae,” Carvi said. “We stop them fast so they can’t get more vamps, but to cut off the spell if they already put it in vamps, we’ll have to take out the Fae.”
Grant nodded. “Weapons here?”
“Cache in the basement.”
“Anyone else we can recruit for help?” I asked.
“Security,” Carvi said.
“Trustworthy?” Grant asked.
“If they aren’t, then none of my people are.”
“They still think Carvi’s dead,” I said. “But they know someone small and female is onto them.”
“Nice call with the shoes,” Carvi said.
“Thank you, but it did tip them off. Grant and I should go after these guys while you round up r
einforcements from people who can be trusted, and start waking vamps.”
“Too much explanation,” Carvi said. “We’ll spend too much time on how I’m alive. You should wake them.”
“Most don’t trust me after last night,” I said. “Can’t say I blame them, but I was on scene when you were killed then threw my weight around.”
We both looked at Grant.
He cursed under his breath and nodded.
“If you can’t wake them with a few shakes, they’re too young and you need to move on,” Carvi said. “And you’ll need to back up fast. Some of us wake up hungry or cranky, and not all are as respectful of humans as I.”
“What?” I yelped. “No.”
“I’ll be fine,” Grant said. “I’ll get security to go with me. Coms only if necessary. You get them, tell me, and I’ll say where I am in code. Ryder, you remember Dan’s code?”
“Dan’s code… oh, you gotta be kiddin’ me, sir!”
“I’m not.”
“What?” Carvi asked.
“Dan rates women from one to twenty and has an animal word for each, like a twenty is a unicorn, and a one is a blob fish.”
“I’ll say the animal of the floor number, then one for the room number,” Grant said. “If the room number’s over twenty, I’ll say the animals for each digit.”
“I’d laugh if this wasn’t so serious,” Carvi said. “I know the vision you did earlier worked, and I don’t know if we should risk one now, but we need to know where these men are.”
“Oh, right, me,” I said, taking a shaky breath. “Okay. I can do this.”
But the last one was knockin’ on my brain. I wasn’t sure how to chase one down and still keep it a light touch so I wasn’t too far in.
“Carvi,” I said, “what if they catch me in there?”
“Not worth the risk. Security cameras?” Grant said.
“Would they still be up?” I asked. “I mean, if they cut off phones and elevators…”
“Good point,” Grant said. “Carvi, how long would it take to put this spell in the vampires?”
Carvi shook his head. “Once it’s made? Not long.”
“So we really don’t know what floor let alone what room,” I said, taking a deep breath. “Okay, I got this. I can do this.”
I closed my eyes, focusing on the men.
Just need a flash. Something fast. Nothing fancy. Just tell me a room number.
Nothin’.
I opened my eyes and shook my head.
“They might be blocking you now,” Carvi said. “Meaning… shit!”
“Meaning?” I asked.
“They sensed your last vision and put up a spell to guard against it. So we go door to door up top. I run, you ride shotgun on my back, and I do mean you have the gun up and ready.”
“It’ll hurt your ears,” I said.
“They’ll heal,” he said. “Grant.” He reached out and they clamped hands in that manly way guys do, both squeezing hard.
“You protect her,” Grant said.
“Until my soul is locked behind the pearly gates,” Carvi said.
Huh?
That was a weird way to put it.
And what in the blazes made him think he was goin’ to heaven anyway?
Grant marched away, apparently planning on hitting the first floor and working his way up.
And we’d start with the top floor and go down.
“You ready, lea?” Carvi asked.
“Yeah,” I said, putting my pistol back in its holster and pulling my AR out around to my front. I switched off the safety and chambered a round.
“Let’s do this.”
###
“How many is that?” I whispered as we crept onto the eighteenth floor.
Carvi had zoomed us back up to the top and seemed a little beat after that, and we checked the rooms on twentieth and nineteenth.
My nerves couldn’t take much more of this.
“About twenty,” Carvi said, body language as relaxed as a cobra on vacation.
“Hey, just in case we have people watching us, shouldn’t you have turned into a snake so they didn’t know you were still here?”
He shook his head. “I’m not nearly as effective as a snake. It’s good for covert, you’re right, but right now we need a fighter.”
“Still, something tells me keeping you secret till whatever would be better.”
The door three down from us opened.
Two men walked out.
My heart seized and my breath caught as I pulled up my gun.
Until one turned around.
I sighed and sagged.
It was the vamp from Friday night. The black one that used to be a slave. Crap, what was his name?
He stared at us, mouth hanging open.
“Morning,” I said, smiling.
The guy didn’t say anything, just kept staring.
I looked behind us as the other guy turned.
“What?” I asked.
The other guy looked familiar too.
Wasn’t he the one the black guy got into a fight with? Did I ever hear his name?
I guess they made up.
“You’re alive!” the black one said, mouth goin’ right back to hanging open after.
Ohhhhh. Right. Carvi was supposed to be dead.
Carvi chuckled and the hairs on the back of my neck raised as energy shot through me.
What the quack was he doin’!
“He’s alive!” the black guy, Claude maybe, shouted, smacking the arm of the guy next to him and running, the shorter man right behind him.
“She’s not answering!” the shorter guy screamed.
Holy crap in a pope’s basket, that was the voice I heard in my vision.
So the floppy redhead and Claude were in on it?
Of course they were!
They were how we tracked the magic to the gangster’s place.
But they weren’t supposed to kill me according to the vision.
So maybe Claude tried to then and he wasn’t supposed to and was in trouble because of it?
“No, come on!” I said as Carvi rabbited after the fleeing men and I snapped back to the present.
We’d had them, dammit! We’d had them in our sights and thought they were victims. We didn’t even think to check them further.
Carvi threw one of the pouches on the ground and snatched the shorter one in one long motion, pulling the vamp back so fast it gave me whiplash as I jogged up to them, definitely huffing now.
I pulled my gun up and kept back far enough to shoot if needed.
“How… how?” the short one stammered as Carvi slammed him into the wall hard enough to make the wallpaper crack.
Claude hit the door and I opened my mouth to say he was gettin’ away, but he just pulled and huffed, finally pounding on the door in frustration.
That had to be Carvi’s spell, right? He was probably what cut them off from talking to their boss too.
“Not going anywhere,” Carvi said slowly. “So you may as well talk. Who’s behind this!”
“Contingency, now!” Claude snapped.
I had half a sec to wonder who he was talking to since the short guy wasn’t goin’ anywhere.
“Patrick,” Carvi said, meeting his captee’s eyes, “tell me who put you up to this. Who is she?”
Claude rushed Carvi and smacked into thin air, bouncing back.
A shield?
Wow.
Those were power suckers like no other according to Grant, and Carvi just tossed one up?
The hallway roared and I jumped.
“Carvi?” I asked.
The air ripped open in front of us, revealing something my eyes couldn’t understand, some kind of whirling world of colors and I swear I saw a horn stabbing a tentacle.
Then they started to walk through.
Slow and jerky, shaking their heads like they were just waking up.
“Carvi!” I screamed, sliding my pistol away and swinging my A
R around on its sling to my hands.
“Constructs from the astral plane,” Carvi said.
“What? How do I kill them!”
“Zombies, they’re like zombies.”
The zombies poured through the rift or whatever it was and came for us, picking up speed as they came.
I already had a bullet in the chamber, never know when you’ll have to rumble fast, and pulled the trigger with a light crack, the gun jumping up with even that little recoil.
Wasn’t a pop with the suppressor, but it was definitely quieter than it’d be without it.
I hit the first zombie high, clipping him on the shoulder, and the bullet buried itself in the wall.
Crap!
These rounds weren’t meant to be used in close quarters with walls and people around.
One of the bullets could go through the walls and get an innocent person. And there’s no safe direction when you’re in a middle floor in a hotel.
“Carvi!” I screamed again.
He was already flashing by me and was at the first line of zombies before I finished the word.
Carvi grabbed the one I’d grazed by the neck as the monster reached for him and pulled him backwards into a hug, pinning the thing’s arms.
Then ripped off its head.
Now that was impressive.
And gory.
He pulled red squishy stuff outta the zombie and let it drop, pulling another pouch from his belt and smearing the blood and stuff onto it.
The air popped, rotting meat smell spilling over me and the zombies ground to a halt, still walking but not able to move from the square between the portal and Carvi.
My stomach lurched and I doubled over.
Something grabbed me and my feet left the ground.
Claude had me by the neck, holding me against him just like Carvi had held the zombie before I even processed what’d happened.
“Carvi!” Claude yelled. “Nice move. How about I try it on her?”
Carvi tossed another zombie into the others.
Bowling for zombies.
Ha ha, that was funny.
Be a bit funnier if I wasn’t being held hostage. Then again, giggles were building up that had nothing to do with the joke so maybe it wouldn’t.
My breath caught and my heart raced as my stomach lurched, bubbling up until it turned to the giggles.