“Here we go,” Mason said with a heavy breath, wrapping magic around the cluster of explosives and sending it floating down the hallway, moving faster and faster as it shot around the corner and launched toward the vampire position.
Tsimote had his eyes closed, his mind and magic somewhere else as he followed the collection of grenades, and an unpleasant smile on his face. Gunfire echoed down the hallway, but the small Japanese man ignored the sound as he focused on his task.
“And…now,” he murmured.
Twenty grenades went off simultaneously, an ear-shattering cacophony, and David charged in the aftermath.
The others followed him, gunfire and magical strikes flickering past him as he closed with the vampires. Most of those in the chokepoint security area were down, some dead, some only shocked. Others saw him coming and opening fire.
He twisted around bullets, grunted as his armor absorbed a lightning strike, conducting it away from him into the ground, and then cut the attacking vampire Mage in half with Memoria. The demon-forged blade flashed in the dim light, reflecting magic away from him as he carved through the defensive position.
Stone’s machine gun echoed around him, heavy silver rounds smashing the vampires who tried to attack him to the ground as David fought. More magical fire flickered, and then suddenly no one in the room was moving.
The passage toward the collapsed exit from the Silo was empty, and there were moans around him—but the surviving vampires were staying still on the ground, raising their hands above their heads in surrender.
“Bind them, move them out of the way,” David snapped. There had been a lot of death tonight. He wasn’t going to refuse surrenders, not at this point.
Mason and Samuels quickly set to work, leaving Tsimote and Stone to watch the passageway with David. Keeping Tsimote away from surrendered vampires clearly struck everyone as a good idea.
“Parlay!” a voice shouted out of the tunnel. “Parlay. I would speak with you, Commander White.”
36
“Cover me,” David ordered his people, then stepped forward.
“All right, if you want to talk, come where I can see you,” he shouted back.
A tall, fair-haired man dressed in an eighteenth-century frock coat over a very modern bulletproof vest walked along the tunnel until he could be seen. He wore a large pistol of some kind on one hip and a dueling sword on the other, but his hands were well clear of the weapons and he was smiling.
Whatever the joke was, David wasn’t getting it.
“Who are you and what do you want?”
“I am Joseph Reginald,” the vampire said, his voice perfectly calm as he identified himself as one of the first men to take on the task of defending the United States from the supernatural. “I did your job once, Commander, a long time ago when the job—and the world—was simpler!”
“I know who you were,” David replied. “And how many of our problems did you create, Master Reginald?”
The vampire chuckled.
“A few,” he admitted. “I tried to fix some, too, but I won’t pretend the USA started our little war, Commander. If you were expecting me to reveal some dark secret, some purge of the vampires alongside the Natives, there isn’t one.
“There was no compromise that could be reached between us. Blood will tell, we had to feed—and men like you and I had to protect the people. Violence was the only end.”
“And so here we are.”
“Here we are,” Reginald agreed. “Buried under a mountain by the nuclear weapon you chose to detonate on your own head. How far-reaching will the consequences of that be, Commander?”
“One way or another, the Familias ends tonight,” David told him. “Dresden has surrendered. The Arbiter has surrendered. You are all that remains. It’s over.”
“Do you even know what ‘it’ is?” Reginald asked. “You know so little of what drives the vampires who live in your country. So little of how we are organized. Did you even know the Arbiter existed before he came to you?
“Before he betrayed us?”
“We didn’t,” David admitted. “I don’t know if I’d call his actions betrayal, though. His oaths, according to him, are to preserve the species. He did not believe this was a war you could win.”
“Given that we are now standing underneath a nuclear blast crater in one of our country’s greatest natural treasures, it appears he may have been right,” the old vampire replied. “But I, too, have oaths.”
“There’s no way out,” David told him. “Every entrance is collapsed. We’re only getting out of here when Omicron comes to dig us out. Even if you could kill us all, you could not escape.”
Reginald was silent for several seconds.
“I wish I could believe you were lying,” he said conversationally. “But I still do not have it in me to kneel again, Commander White. I have not walked the shadows for two hundred years to bow once more to lesser men.”
“You could tell us so much, you know,” David replied quietly. “You knew the Founding Fathers. You’re a historian’s walking wet dream!”
The ex-Judge laughed.
“I don’t think most of America wants to hear my opinions of your ‘Founding Fathers,’” he noted. “I knew them as men, after all, not legends. And they were far from perfect men.”
“And perhaps that’s what we need to know,” the younger supernatural told him. “The truth. It’s worth more than dead men, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. But my oaths do not permit to yield the Familias Reginald without a fight, Commander. I did not forge a new Familias from nothing to surrender.
“I have a proposal, Commander. A simple one, even a logical one for a man of my time,” Reginald told him, the grin at a joke no one else heard returning to his face.
“You and I duel. If I win, your people let mine go. What’s a hundred vampires on the loose when the rest have surrendered? We’ll disappear; there aren’t enough of us left for the Familias to continue as it has.
“If you win, my people will surrender. This war ends forever. My children live, bound by the Arbiter’s Truce.”
“We’ve already won,” David pointed out. “Why would I fight you?”
“Because if we fight, you will lose more people, Commander White,” Reginald replied bluntly. “How many Elfin Warriors and Omicron Agents burned with the vampires on those slopes? How much bloodshed has this night seen, Commander? Would you add to it when it can just be you and I to end this whole affair?”
David considered it in silence, studying the young-looking ancient facing him.
“Don’t do it,” Mason told him over the radio. “They can’t take us; it’s already over.”
“But they can kill more of us,” David replied, subvocalizing into his microphone. “We could lose any of us.”
He could lose Kate Mason, which he wasn’t prepared to consider after making it this far.
“We can end this,” he continued to his fellow Commander and lover. “I can end this.”
He glanced back at her and saw her sigh—and nod.
Commander David White turned back to Joseph Reginald and smiled grimly.
“All right, ‘Your Honor,’” he told the vampire. “Let’s do it your way.”
REGINALD’S SMILE broadened and he gracefully shed the old frock coat, gesturing a minion forward to take the garment and leaving him clad in a white dress shirt and an armored vest.
“You heard the deal with Commander White, Cody,” the vampire Patriarch told the man taking his coat. “If I fall, you all surrender. You understand?”
“Yes, milord,” Cody replied.
“And take my gun as well,” Reginald told the younger vampire, unstrapping the big automatic and passing it over. “This isn’t going to be walk ten paces and turn, is it, Commander?”
“No,” David replied. He gestured Mason to him and passed over his own gun. “You heard my own promise,” he told her softly.
“I’m not sure you have the authority to let
them go,” she pointed out.
“I probably don’t. But you’ll do it anyway.”
She sighed.
“Yes. Don’t make it necessary,” she warned him. “I might let him go today, but if he kills you…”
Mason’s tone suggested all kinds of retribution for any vampire foolish enough to cause David permanent harm, and he chuckled at her, meeting her eyes with a smile that was momentarily warmer.
There were words they couldn’t say. Not while they were being recorded, and everything they said on duty was recorded. From Kate’s eyes, though, he knew they both knew what they were.
“I don’t plan on dying today,” he said firmly, then he bowed slightly to his lover and drew Memoria, stepping out to face the vampire Patriarch.
“Shall we, Lord Reginald?”
“Call me Joseph, Commander,” the old Justice told him as he drew his own sword and approached into full view of both groups of supernaturals. “You and I, we understand each other better than most.”
“Do we?” David asked softly, extending his sword towards Reginald. “We aren’t friends. We aren’t even on the same side.”
“No. But we both understand duty. Honor. Oaths. I spent a long time after I was Turned trying to honor both who I had been and what I had become.”
“You seem to have reconciled yourself to this,” David replied, waiting for the vampire to make the first move.
“Now, perhaps. I tried differently once—but then Oscar Nelson tried to kill me,” Reginald said softly. “You would have liked him, Commander. He was a man without give, without flexibility. And unlike you, he never learned any better.
“Not once he tried to kill me and left me no choice but to forswear who I had once been.”
The vampire moved, his limbs and blade a blur of speed as he crossed the space between them in a fraction of a moment, his sword driving for David’s neck even as it lit up with the turquoise glow of the vampire’s power.
David was moving in the same instant, Memoria flashing through the air to intercept the blue-green blade. The glow of the two blades’ power flickered in the dim light of the underground tunnel as they clashed, Reginald’s sword thrown aside into the wall.
The vampire leapt backward as David tried to turn the moment of imbalance to his advantage, the dueling sword flickering out to trap the ONSET Commander’s leaf-bladed sword and deflect it. Glowing with magic, the tip flickered across the space between them a dozen times in as many seconds, each strike driving toward another vulnerable point on David’s body.
And each strike met Memoria, David blurring from parry to parry as he smoothly met every blow the vampire launched. A parry turned into a riposte and the vampire bent backward, folding nearly in half to allow the blade to whistle harmlessly above him.
Reginald sprang back upright, the momentum propelling his blade forward in a thrust that no human strength could have deflected. David saw it coming and…wasn’t there, sidestepping in a blur and then grabbing the blade with his free hand.
Magic crackled up his fingers, lightning shocking him with pain as he closed his grip around the narrow blade and yanked. Reginald came stumbling toward him and David brought Memoria flashing around in a one-handed blow that should have taken off the vampire’s head.
The vampire released his sword, sliding backward and throwing up his arm to block David’s strike with his forearm. The crash of the impact echoed in the corridor as the demon-forged blade hammered into the armored bracer Reginald wore under his shirt.
Turquoise magic flared in the tunnel, flinging both men away from each other. Even David’s Empowered strength barely managed to retain his grip on Memoria, and the glowing dueling sword slammed point-first into the concrete wall, embedding itself six inches deep.
The vampire Patriarch smiled at David again and ripped off the torn sleeve of his dress shirt. A green-enameled bracer covered his entire right forearm, glittering in the underground complex’s dim light. A gesture from Reginald lit up the hilt of his dueling sword with power and flicked the weapon back into his hand.
“I’m no Mage, Commander, but I’ve mastered a few tricks over the years,” the vampire told him. “Come. You can do better.”
“If you can’t, this isn’t going to last much longer,” David replied levelly, but he moved to the attack regardless. The vampire had carried the offensive at a speed no regular human could match…but David was actually faster.
The dueling sword was primarily a thrusting weapon. Memoria was a slashing blade, requiring more movement and arc for a proper strike, but David still unleashed a flurry of blows that pushed Reginald back, the vampire blocking with blade and bracer alike to buy himself time as he retreated,
David slipped past the vampire’s guard, the blade sliding over the bracer on Reginald’s right arm, but the Patriarch managed to flash his left arm across to smash Memoria downward, revealing a second enchanted green bracer as he tore the blade from David’s grip.
Reginald’s sword flashed out toward the Commander, but David stepped into the strike this time, twisting his torso away from the blade as he grabbed the weapon with both hands and pulled in opposite directions.
Old and enchanted or not, the weapon wasn’t strong enough for that. The blade snapped in two, and David tossed the pieces aside as he kicked Memoria back into the air. Catching the sword, he slashed at Reginald again as the vampire stared at his shattered weapon in shock for a critical fraction of a second.
The vampire dodged backward just fast enough to avoid losing the top half of his head, but not fast enough to prevent the demon-forged blade from opening up his face from cheek to cheek in a massive bloody gash.
A gash that would not easily heal, since Memoria impeded regeneration.
One hand pressed to his face, Joseph Reginald stumbled back and shoved his other hand out, palm open.
“Wait!” he snapped. “Wait, please.”
David paused, the demon-forged sword at the ready. With his hand over his eyes and blood pouring down his face, he wasn’t sure the vampire was a threat, though the duel had been implied to be to the death.
Reginald used his free hand to tear off a piece of his shirt, slowly and crudely binding the gash across his face and wiping the blood from his eyes. Once he was able to see, his hands covered in his own blood and the rough bandage already turning red, the leader of Familias Reginald faced David once more and, slowly and carefully, bowed.
“I yield,” he said simply. “I will not sacrifice immortality on a point of pride, David White. I yield and will bind the Familias Romanov to the Arbiter’s Truce.” He exhaled heavily, the pressure sending more blood pumping into the bandage.
“It is over.”
IT WAS, of course, not quite so simple.
Disarming Familias Reginald’s collection of commandos and Mages took over an hour, even with them being mostly cooperative. Then Gabriel found them halfway back to the main entrance, the Guardian looking askance at the slowly moving collection of unarmed vampires.
“I see your morning has progressed,” she told David dryly. “So has my master’s. He and my sister are busy disarming the vampires trapped in the entrance tunnel.”
“We’re going to need somewhere to keep them all,” David replied. “No offense, but I’m not letting several hundred vampires run around freely until we actually have rules in place for just what you people can and can’t do.”
Gabriel shook her head.
“You know the rules we’ve agreed to,” she pointed out. “We feed on animal blood and live by the same laws as the rest of the supernatural community.” The vampire’s mouth twisted in what might charitably have been called a smile.
“We may break the latter to enforce the former on occasion, but no one will know anything, I promise.”
“I know what you’ve offered and the oaths they’ve promised to swear,” he told her. “But until Standing Order Twenty-one is lifted, I don’t have the authority to let them go.”
She sh
ivered.
“What happens, Commander White, if the Committee refuses to change?” she asked softly. “If you are ordered to kill us all?”
“I won’t,” he assured her. “But I know that wouldn’t change much. Which is why your master and I need to talk. He and I need be ready to go to Washington.”
The Arbiter’s bodyguard sighed.
“He is…not well, Commander,” she told him. “His oaths have power, David White, and he swore to preserve the race. If this all turns out as planned, he has succeeded, but those spells only sense so many of our kind dead around him.”
“The fate of your people, Miss Gabriel, is going to rest on him,” David replied. “I can only argue so far, speak so strongly for his integrity. He must convince the Committee of Thirteen that the vampires of North America will keep their oaths and become citizens once more.”
“He will go with you,” Gabriel promised. “Jenna and I must come as well. He will need…coddling. And he will not appreciate it, but we must make certain he is strong enough to speak for us all.”
“That is for you and him to decide. The promises that I have made will see him delivered safely to the Committee of Thirteen.
“What happens there…” David shook his head. “That is where we learn if all of this was for nothing.”
37
Twenty-four hours of carefully coordinated digging, magical lifting, and demolitions later, the outer entrance of the main tunnel was finally opened up, allowing the pale light of a Rocky Mountain dawn to filter into the underground complex.
Mostly ignoring the earth-moving equipment and uniformed Anti-Paranormal troops, David walked out onto the side of Mount Scott and looked down on his handiwork.
It was horrifying.
A trail of devastation started near the main road, a half-mile-wide trail of shattered and burnt-out trees that led up the mountain until it met and merged with the utterly destroyed blast zone of the nuke. The old parking lot was gone: the concrete, the sandbagged defenses, the bodies, even the attacking vehicles vaporized when the bomb had gone off.
ONSET: Blood of the Innocent Page 26