by Kevin Hearne
“Gods, Leif, no. You are incapable of blending in.”
“But still I labor, like Sisyphus.”
“Why are you so confident about this?”
“A straight narrow space offers nowhere to hide. Vampires are confident they will win any confrontation face-to-face.”
“Okay. Be still and let me see what I can see.”
There is a small stretch of turf nearby, a sad attempt at a greenbelt, and I kick off my sandals to communicate with the earth. With the elemental’s help I seek underground for the edges of Glowa’s bunker, and it indeed sprawls for blocks underneath us, far too much space for a single person, and judging by the stark straits leading to and from, it also features more escape routes than the two that the sisters identified. Leif was right: The staircases angle down from the surface houses to the secret complex.
“There are four more bolt-holes,” I tell him, and he gives a low whistle.
“Can you identify which houses?”
“Yes.”
“Let us investigate them and see how they are guarded.” We walk along the streets as if we had some club to visit or some coffee to inhale at a hip café.
I nod at each house as we pass, and they appear not to be guarded at all. Or at least not guarded by thralls.
“These houses contain no humans,” Leif says in low tones, after staring at each in turn. “Their defenses are either automatic or undead. That is useful information. Let us move out of the vicinity to discuss it further.”
“All right. Back to Stary Port?”
The vampire winces. “If we must. Though I find the atmosphere jarring, it should certainly provide us ample privacy.”
The earlier collection of jocund fellows has been replaced by another set, but they are no less loud and proud of their singing voices. I order a couple of grogs, and once they arrive, Leif leans over to plot with me.
“I think the compound is too big for us to handle alone. We cannot possibly cover six exits, to begin with.”
“Agreed.”
“So I suggest that I call in some mercenaries to clean out the nest during daylight hours.”
“Yewmen?” Though expensive, Atticus had used them to great effect.
“No, human mercenaries. I’ve employed them before and they are used to this work. They know what’s involved. Expendable and therefore perfect.”
“If this is during the day, where will you be?”
“Sleeping somewhere else.”
“While I will be expendable and perfect?”
“No. We send in the mercenaries through all the entrances but one. That will be their escape route. You wait for them to emerge. Thralls will either bring Kacper out, where you can dispatch them all, or he will die down there.”
“Unless he and his defenses mow down the mercenaries and run over their bodies to exit one of the other five ways.”
“Yes, unless that happens. But perhaps we can instruct the mercenaries to seal the exits behind them. Everyone must come out the one exit we wish or not at all.”
“That might work. Can you get the mercenaries here in the morning?”
Leif pulls out his cell phone. “If not, then certainly by the afternoon. This can be Kacper’s last moonrise.”
“All right. Let’s do it.”
I listen to him coldly arrange the arrival of a significant paramilitary strike force and then call Switzerland, rattling off bank-account numbers to pay for it all and get them mobilized. He has the kind of resources that Atticus used to have. We’re finished by midnight.
Twelve hours later I’m meeting the mercenaries at Stary Port with maps and objectives and warnings to look for booby traps and make sure no one gets out the way they came in.
“This ain’t the first nest we’ve cleared,” one guy says, probably the only American in the bunch. He bulges and glistens like an eighties’ steroid movie; all he’s missing is the stogie in his mouth, chewed up and tapered like a fresh dachshund turd. The rest of the mercenaries are square-jawed Euro lads who speak to one another in accented English.
“Fine. But it’s probably the biggest. Each squad leader has his breach address. You go in hot at thirteen hundred hours and either terminate all hostiles or push them to the single exit. Questions?”
There are none. They really have done it before, and they act like the paid professionals they are. They move out to their appointed positions and gear up. I get a nifty Bluetooth headset thingie so that I can hear what’s happening with Squad A. I just stroll into the front yard of the one house we’re leaving open, trigger the invisibility binding on Scáthmhaide, and hunker down near the door, out of sight of any windows. The silver reservoir of my staff is all filled up with energy, and the front lawn will provide all I need in real time.
The chatter of the mercenaries in my headset increases as one o’clock approaches. They copy and roger a lot of stuff and tell one another that everything’s five by five.
None of the other entry houses is in my line of sight, so I don’t see anything but a quiet working-class neighborhood, but I hear plenty through my earpiece when the breach happens. Commands to get hands up, knees down. Shouts of surprise, defiance, and a few quick bursts of gunfire, then shouts of “Clear!” as each room is inspected for hostiles.
Squad A waits for the other houses to report clear, and then they check for booby traps or security measures around the staircases—all accessed through the back of a closet in one of the bedrooms.
Once they’re satisfied, the second coordinated breach begins. They open the doors and descend those staircases, and the firefight starts early. There’s screaming and hissing and some dying going on, but I can’t tell who’s producing the death screams. I don’t know how well the other squads are doing, but the A team sounds like they are making progress.
Squad A finds at least two occupied coffins in one room and stakes the vampires sleeping inside them. They meet up with Squad C and proceed. No word on the others.
But the strategy is effective. I hear some cursing and noise from within the house. Thumps and the squeak of rubber soles on the floors, a heavy thud. Someone or perhaps many someones have come through the trapdoor. Silent and empty before, the house suddenly has loud tenants, cursing creatively in Polish and shouting at one another.
Panicked thralls. Lugging something awkward.
Clanking. The hollow rushing of hard plastic wheels on tile. “Go! Go!” someone shouts. The wheels whir toward the door, and I tighten my grip on Scáthmhaide in my left hand and draw out a throwing knife in my right.
The lock clicks, the door opens, and a gun barrel pokes out past my head. A pale human thrall steps out, quivering on adrenaline, eyes darting up and down the street but not on me, invisible behind him and to the right. I let him go. He turns and signals to the others that it’s clear.
A gurney rolls out with a damn heavy coffin resting on it and four anxious dudes guiding it with sweaty hands. They’re heading for a huge black SUV parked on the street. Behind them trails the rearguard, armed and keeping an eye on any pursuit from the mercenaries. I first throw the knife into the back of the vanguard, then attack the rearguard with my staff. A sharp whip against his wrists disarms him and maybe breaks a bone, and then I clock his jaw and he goes down with a squawk as the first fella cries out and tries in vain to reach the knife in his back.
The gurney guides whirl around, looking for who’s doing all the damage, but never see the knotted wood that smashes their noses and lays out three of them. The last guy runs and I let him, deciding to chase down the vanguard with the gun instead and make sure he doesn’t use it. I smash his elbow and his hand drops the gun as he screams, but I do pull out the knife for him before slapping the backs of his knees and putting him on the ground. He’ll be fine eventually.
That’s not the case for the slumbering occupant of the coffin. It’s a lovely clear day with full sun. I sheathe the knife and pull out my cell phone, thumbing the camera app. I open the coffin lid and snap a quic
k picture of the milk-white face before the sun starts to fry him and he wakes up to the sound of his own sizzling cheeks.
He screeches and sits up and I swing full force at him, taking him in the throat and knocking him back into the coffin. He can’t really die of a crushed larynx, but the hit does stun him for a few seconds more, letting the sun work its justice upon him. I back up, stepping over the thralls’ bodies, and block the door. The vampire vaults out a moment later and heads straight for me, visibly aflame and desperate for shelter. I think it’s going to be a simple matter of batting him away again, but he stops, picks up the gun of the rearguard, and points it right at me. He knows where I am; he can hear me or smell me if he can’t see me. And he pulls that trigger fast.
Two punches to the chest and another lower down drop me like a lunch lady’s mashed potatoes on a sad cafeteria tray. But I lever up one end of Scáthmhaide from the ground, mostly by reflex, as he keeps coming, determined to run right over me into the house.
He runs onto Scáthmhaide instead. His fragile papery skin, already on fire and melting, allows the wood to punch right through his flesh, and his shirt is drawn into the wound, surrounding it like a prophylactic. He’s skewered underneath the ribs and stuck, and he shrieks as his strength fades and the sun’s fire consumes him all the quicker. He crumbles to ash in an orgasm of flame, and the weight is gone as he blows away, leaving only some scorched clothing behind, which is good because my strength is fading fast too. I drop Scáthmhaide and become visible as Squads A and C stomp up the stairs inside the house. They drag me out of the doorway and over to the lawn, where I can draw on the earth easily to heal; my breath comes in short gasps as I try to lock down the pain and then address the wounds. Nothing passed through. They were hollow points and had expanded, tearing up my left side underneath the collarbone but high up on my breast. The lower one on my side just missed a kidney but nicked a renal artery, which I mend first. Removing the bullets is going to suck.
The mercs start hauling the unconscious or moaning thralls inside to hopefully prevent a call from a neighbor. I’m hoping no one saw or heard much; all it takes is one curious retiree to bring the authorities.
Realizing that a bleeding woman on a lawn might also cause comment, I cast camouflage while I heal.
Once the front yard is clear, I hear more mercs coming up from the compound. The over-muscled one—the Glistening American Hulk, who is now chewing the stogie he was missing earlier—comes out the front door, looking for me.
“Hey, Red. Where are ya?”
“Name’s Granuaile,” I say, after dismissing camouflage.
He gives me a manly toss of the chin to say hello. “I’m Dirk.”
“Of course you are.”
“You gonna be all right or do we need a medic?”
“I’ll be fine. Are your men okay?”
“Mine are. But we lost two from Squad B, and somebody in C got wounded. One of the suckers was awake in the dark. So, hey, I’m supposed to ask if we got Casper.”
“You mean Kacper?”
“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?”
It wasn’t, but I suppose he didn’t hear the slight difference in pronunciation. “I don’t know if we got him. I took a picture of the one that cooked, before he disintegrated. We’ll have to check with the money man.”
Dirk grunted and shifted his nasty stogie to the other side of his mouth. “He’ll have plenty more money after this.”
“How is that?”
“We kill ’em and he takes all their stuff. That’s how it works.”
“You mean they have vaults of cash down there or something?”
“Nah. They have computers, though, and a habit of writing down their passwords where we can find them. He gives them to his circuit jockeys, and it gets him money or intel or both.”
His voice sounds awfully bored and it makes me wonder. “How many nests have you taken down now for him?”
“I think this gets us to twenty-one.”
“Twenty-one? All this year?”
“Well, in the past three or four months. Wouldn’t want to do this forever—risk is too high—but if I make it another couple of months at this rate, I can retire to an island somewhere and drown in rum.”
I frown, wondering if Atticus knows about this. Perhaps Leif was inspired by the use of yewmen to take out nests in Rome but decided to add a profit angle. He profits doubly doing it this way: Every nest of older vampires taken down increases his power as well as his wealth.
“So what are you anyway?” he asks. “Some kind of witch?”
“I’m a Druid.”
“And that means you can take some bullets and not need a medic.”
“Sometimes, yeah.”
“That’s badass. How do you become a Druid?”
“Twelve years of study in languages and martial arts and memorizing poetry until you’re magically bound to the earth in an excruciating three-month ritual.”
“Oh, shit. Fuck that, then.”
“Dirk!” a voice calls from inside. “Report.”
“Duty calls,” he says, and this time I get a full nod of respect from him rather than a mere chin toss before he clomps back into the house, sunlight gleaming on the acreage of his triceps.
I’m blissfully forgotten and left to the unpleasant task of removing the bullets. I go for the one down low first; it caused the most damage. They’re jacketed rounds, meaning they’re composed mainly of lead and copper, and I won’t have trouble binding because of iron content.
Since they mushroomed inside me, they’ll tear me up even more on the way out if I leave them as is when I bind them, so I first take the time to reshape the bullet into a smooth, thin cylinder of an even-narrower diameter than its original manufacture. That doesn’t mean I don’t feel it as I bind the back of the round to my palm, but it does mean I’m not tearing myself any new holes. After it’s out, I bind up the skin and let the tissue healing commence.
I repeat the process with the other two bullets. It takes me an hour to get them out, sweating and weakening all the while, but I feel better immediately afterward. And ridiculously thirsty. I holler at the house and convince Dirk, when he emerges, to bring me some juice or whatever’s available. He leaves and returns fifteen minutes later with an entire liter of OJ.
“What’re you doing after this?” he asks, squatting down on his haunches beside me.
“You mean after I’m done healing up?”
“Well, yeah. After this gig.”
“I’m memorizing the collected works of Wisława Szymborska. How about you?”
“Maybe some Netflix. But a documentary! Animals or something. You wanna…?”
“You’re seriously giving me the Netflix-and-chill line?”
He doesn’t look particularly embarrassed to be called out on it; a tiny shrug and a smirk are all I get by way of apology. “That’s about as subtle as I get, unfortunately.”
Hmm. Aside from the stogie, he is handsome, and I think perhaps the acronym for Glistening American Hulk—GAH!—is appropriate when considering the fun we could have. It’s not as if Atticus and I have an exclusive arrangement; the desire for variety is hardwired into our genetic code, and monogamy is a patriarchal construct anyway, so I’m inclined to disregard it. But that doesn’t mean we don’t have high standards.
“I’ll give you a chance, Dirk. Recite some poetry for me right now. And I’m not talking about a dirty limerick or something you read on the bathroom wall. I mean a poem by a real poet. Go.”
“What?”
“Ah, sorry. That’s not a poem.”
“Well, wait, I can learn some—”
“I’m sure you can, but that’s not the point. I wasn’t asking for poetry as a stepping-stone to my pants. I wanted to see if your mind was as well rounded as your biceps. Turns out it’s not.”
He bristles. “What does that have to do with sex?”
“Quite a bit. I will have poetry in my life, Dirk. Poetry and asskicking. Yo
u can have both, you know. There’s a certain poetry to violence, don’t you find?”
He shrugs and agrees in case it will get him somewhere. “I guess.”
I caught his gaze and held it. “There’s a certain violence to sex too. Penetration. Screaming. You know.”
He licks his lips, realizing that there’s a whole lot he’s been missing. “Jesus, at least let me have your phone number. I’ll work on it and get back to you.”
That earns him a laugh. “Attaboy. But you should know I have a boyfriend. He’s a Druid too. He got shot in the head once, but he’s fine now and can recite the complete works of William Shakespeare from memory. He kills gods on Saturdays.”
“Holy shit. For reals?”
“Yep.” I give him the same tiny shrug and smirk he gave me. “That’s about as far as you’re gonna get with me, unfortunately. Thanks for the juice, Dirk.”
“Yeah, no problem.” He shakes his head before he gets to his feet and mutters, “Damn.”
Leif arrives after sundown, in a sharp tailored suit, and I’m still sitting on the ground, weary but feeling as if I can move again.
“Good evening, Granuaile. I trust all went well?”
“A couple of your perfectly expendable mercenaries died, but the nest is toast.”
“Excellent.” He’s carrying a pad and pulls it out, showing me a checklist of names. Kacper Glowa is at the top. “Shall we see who we have?”
“Let’s start with this guy,” I say, pulling out my cell phone to show him the photo I took. “I gave him to the sun and he shot me.”
“Hmm. That is not Kacper, unfortunately. That’s Arkadiusz Koziol. Six hundred years old, very powerful, and on my list.” He taps his screen and a check mark appears next to the dead vampire’s name. “But not someone who would ever challenge me on his own. Let’s see who’s inside.”
He offers me a hand and I take it, wincing as I get to my feet for the first time since being shot. It’s tender in there, but my legs work just fine.
The thralls are lined up against the wall. They’ve been given first aid by the mercs, but they could use more help. Leif isn’t going to give them any. He descends upon them and charms each in turn, forcing him to reveal who else was in the nest and whatever they know about passwords or hidden intel or even the location of other nests. He checks off names, but I can hear just as well as he can: Kacper Glowa wasn’t there, though most of his thralls were.