by Adrian Cross
Long, dark hair hung down, screening the woman’s face. Clay felt a trickle of relief. Bern had dark hair, but it wasn’t so long or her body so tall. But then Clay noticed blonde strands curling around the woman’s neck. The dark hair was from matted blood and dirt, not pigment.
His heart lurched. “Karen?”
Even as panic seized him, a shadow dropped from the ceiling. A blur of steel lashed out at him.
Clay was rolling before he even consciously registered the threat. His black pistol leaped to his hand. A blow caught him on the shoulder, the dagger’s blade shearing off the coat’s scales. It threw off his shot slightly, but not enough to matter. The acid ball still sank into a pale cheek. The creature burbled and fell back, skin bubbling. Clay’s shoulder ached, the blow a disturbing echo over where he’d been impaled. The Spartan vampires were fast.
He pulled the trigger twice more, both shots to the face.
The Spartan staggered forward, but the acid dissolved infected flesh and bone, hollowing out his skull. Even a vampire couldn’t survive that. He flopped to the floor.
Clay leaped over the vampire’s body, grabbed the head of the woman’s corpse, and gently tilted it up.
Relief flooded him. Not Karen. His chest loosened. Thank God.
Metal clunked behind him, and he turned to see the Spartan’s head rolling away from his body. Raol stood over the corpse, the veins in his red-stained sword swelling obscenely. “You can’t be too sure,” he said.
He strode past Clay. The skin of Clay’s neck crawled. His entire being was repulsed by that sword.
As they moved deeper into the building, Clay’s gaze drifted regularly up to the beams of the ceiling, expecting another attack. But nothing else dropped.
Near the back, in a dark room with its windows boarded up, they found a mound of turned earth filling the corner, floorboards chopped and peeled away. A pit dropped into the shadows below, deeply below. A frayed rope ladder dangled at least twenty feet down before being swallowed by blackness.
Raol leaned over the pit, nostrils expanding. “They must have dug this to escape the daylight. I can smell blood, but I don’t know how old.”
Clay looked down again, unease rising in his chest. The hole was utterly black, with no source of light. He was no coward, but he also knew better than to think he was unbeatable. It was always better to have the battlefield conditions in your favor. And descending into a tight, lightless pit, where neither Clay’s speed nor reflexes would do him much good, didn’t seem like a great idea. In fact, it felt like sticking a hand in a rattler’s hole and wiggling his fingers to see what would happen. But the hole was where the girls were. And if he didn’t go down, no one else would.
Clay reached out and gripped the ladder. The rough rope bit his palms. He drew a deep breath and swung down, ankles trying to get purchase on the rope. He felt the strain in his arms and shoulders.
A cold breeze seeped up from the pit below and crawled up his back. Clay shivered, from cold and fear, but forced himself to climb down, hand over hand.
Above him, he could hear a scrape as Raol followed. It occurred to Clay that he should have suggested the vampire go first. But it was too late.
The darkness deepened, until Clay could barely make out his fists around the rope. But he kept thinking he saw a blue spectral glow out of the corner of his eye. He twisted and realized light was leaking from the edge of his coat. Ah yes, how could he have forgotten?
He pulled out Resh’s dagger. It glowed fiercely, spilling light over the walls above and below.
Raol grunted in pain and scrambled a few feet upward. “Is that necessary?”
As Clay had noticed before, the blade looked like a cross, and apparently the light wasn’t pleasant for vampires. Clay’s determination to hold the blade doubled.
“Yes, it is.”
“Fine.” Something flashed past Clay in a dark blur, hurtling downward. Raol. Clay heard a thump and saw a gleam as the vampire drew his sword. “Hurry up then.”
Able to see the ground, Clay slid down more quickly and dropped the last few feet to join Raol. A hard-packed tunnel sloped away into darkness. The light of the dagger didn’t penetrate far.
Clay drew his pistol. No points for waiting to draw at the last second. Down here, it was only about survival.
The two warriors crept along, Clay slightly ahead, a curve of blue light preceding him. His breath was loud in his ears. They were far under the earth.
“Out,” Raol hissed.
Clay immediately sheathed his dagger, extinguishing the light. For a moment, he was blind, until his eyes adjusted and he saw what Raol had seen. A pale light glimmered ahead.
They crept forward.
The light grew stronger, revealing a large, ragged hole in a brick wall. It looked like someone had dug the tunnel until it hit another building’s basement wall and then broken through it by force. On the other side, a soft light.
Clay paused, listening. Nothing. The light flickered. A candle or torch, which meant someone had been there recently.
Clay took another long, silent step. Through the hole, he could see a square room with a cheap wooden table in its center. A guttering candle rested on the table in an old iron pan, and dark shadows stretched from the two chairs: one upright and the other overturned, as if someone had left in a hurry. The room looked empty.
Clay relaxed and stepped through. He heard the smallest of rustles above his head.
Ice flooded his body. Vampires could attack from any direction, as he’d just learned. Including above.
He dove forward.
Something crashed into the scales over his shoulder, scraping along them. Hot sparks flew, followed by pain. A blade aimed for his skull had glanced off his shoulder instead. Hard.
Strength leeched from his arm. The air blew out of his lungs, and he bounced off the floor and tumbled. Momentum carried him into the overturned chair and crushed it against the wall, splintering. He lay stunned, coat thrown wide open. His chest rose up and down, unprotected. He looked at his shoulder. No blood, but feeling was tingling back slowly. The Spartan had been incredibly strong.
The attacker padded toward Clay. The man was short and wide, much like Mendonia. But this man’s width had distorted his body to the point that he’d had to discard his armor. He was pelted with hair, and his jaw hung half-open. He looked more animal than human.
He stared down at Clay, saliva beading in a stringy beard. The Spartan’s sword slid out of his fingers, dark satisfaction pulling his lips wider. With a flicker of speed, he jumped up and slammed down on Clay, driving a knee into his stomach. Bending toward his neck, the Spartan’s jaw swung wide.
Pain shot through Clay’s abdomen, shredding the numbness that had cloaked him and spurring him to throw up his left arm, managing to wedge a scale-wrapped arm between the gaping teeth.
The Spartan clamped on it reflexively, tearing and shaking at Clay’s arm like a dog. Clay felt his torso jerked from side to side, only the Spartan’s knee pinning Clay in one place. He was yanked forward and then slammed back against the wall, so hard a piece of broken chair jammed into his back, painful even through the scales of his coat.
Somehow he still gripped his pistol. Clay managed to twist the muzzle around and pull the trigger.
Acid shot out, once, twice, straight into the Spartan’s chest. So close that a reflected drop burned against Clay’s neck like a hot needle.
The Spartan roared, but his chest was slabbed with muscle and he didn’t die as quickly as the other one had. Instead, he drove his shoulder forward, spinning the pistol out of Clay’s hand. Panic flared. That was bad.
A momentary pause, as if the Spartan were reassessing his approach. Instead of shoving forward, he yanked his weight back, mouth opening. Clay’s arm slid away.
The Spartan reared over Clay, a shallow crater spreading in his chest, but nowhere near finished. He swung a heavy arm up, fist clenched to smash down on Clay’s skull.
Clay tw
isted and grabbed the hunk of chair that had poked into his back. In a single convulsive move, he uncoiled, marshaling every ounce of strength he had left.
The stake drove into the Spartan’s chest, straight into the bubbling hole left by the acid. Clay’s arm was jarred as it sank deep into flesh. Possibly into the thing’s heart.
The Spartan’s eyes widened. Rage filled them. He opened his mouth, lifted his arm higher, and then collapsed backward.
Clay grabbed his pistol and aimed at his attacker.
The Spartan’s eyes were wide and unseeing. He was dead. The acid continued to sizzle and hiss as it burned.
It was only at that point that the sounds of a second battle filtered through. Which explained why Raol hadn’t intervened.
He was backed into the opposite corner of the room by a Spartan who looked to be as monstrous, powerful, and fast as the one on the floor. Metal clashed as the Spartan rained down blows.
Raol might be smaller, but he was holding his own, flowing back from each swing with liquid grace, launching back attacks when he could. Then Raol seemed to overextend, and the Spartan caught the vampire with a backhanded punch that drove the smaller man back into the wall. With a quick twist, the Spartan reached back and lifted the wooden table. He swung it at Raol, like someone trying to squat a fly.
Raol blurred as he dove up and over the table, graceful as water, rolled, and then rose up behind the Spartan, back to back. With a smooth, unhurried motion, Raol drove his red sword behind him, into the Spartan’s armpit. Clay’s ears were met with a vicious sucking sound he wished he’d never heard.
The Spartan shuddered and sagged, straining to stay upright. He didn’t have much hope, with the thirsty sword in his heart. He toppled forward.
Raol straightened, leaving his blade in the body. His clothing was torn at shoulder and knee, but the skin looked unmarred. Vampires healed fast. With deliberate care, he tightened the red scarf at his neck and then pulled his sword loose. He stared down at the blade for a moment with an unreadable expression before sheathing it.
“You ready?” the vampire asked.
Clay’s gut tightened. Were they going to be in time? Were the girls still uninfected?
He slid a fresh acid ball chamber into the pistol and then drew the blue dagger with his other hand. Its blue light bathed the room.
“I am.”
He moved to the door at the far side, Raol at his shoulder.
That fight hadn’t been quiet. But no more Spartans had shown up to bolster the defense. Surely there weren’t many defenders left at this point. He felt like the girls were close. He hoped he was in time.
The next room was much bigger, the dagger’s light unable to illuminate the sides of it. The air was cool and heavy with a sour musk. It looked like the Spartans had built a great dirt amphitheater, sloping toward the center, where shadows pooled in a circle which defied the dagger’s light. On the other side of the room, grey stripes gleamed. Cells, he guessed. Shadows draped that part of the room, but he thought he saw movement in one of them.
Something demanded his attention first. Something big.
The shadows in the center of the room slowly congealed and rose, forming a great spherical shape. Dark multi-jointed legs unfolded and stretched out, like splayed fingers, and pushed the bulbous body higher and higher, its swollen bottom segment following. Eight glistening eyes opened, dark as a Black Rider’s soul. The great spider hissed and opened its mouth—
Exposing curving bone-white fangs.
Dear God. Shock thundered through Clay. It was infected.
It took a long step toward them.
Clay backed up through the door—it couldn’t fit through there. He turned and walked away.
Raol’s face slackened. “You’re running?”
Clay marched back to the broken wall, where the timbers were exposed, and dragged loose one of the wooden supports. It splintered in a shower of black dirt, long, heavy, and pointed at one end. It was more than half Clay’s height. He set it on his shoulder and walked back to the doorway, where Raol still stood.
“Needed a bigger stake,” Clay said.
Raol’s lip twitched, the darkness in his eyes seeming to recede for a moment.
Clay looked at the amphitheater. The great spider had settled by the cells, like some dark hump of soil. The only sign it was alive was the gleam of one eye, watching.
“Can you distract it?”
Raol nodded. With no apparent trepidation, he stepped into the room. He paused, looked around, and then pulled a stone loose from the wall. He pursed his lips, tilted his head, and launched the stone at the spider, lethally fast.
The gleam of the eye disappeared as the spider ducked its head away. The stone thunked into its neck and then clattered away, with no apparent damage. But the effort had still accomplished what Clay had requested. The spider rose slowly, eyes lighting up.
“Come on, little guy,” Raol shouted. “Let’s have some fun.” He launched himself up, flashing toward the shadowed roof. Once there, he seemed to melt into the shadows, not coming back down again.
Eight eyes searched for him, unsuccessfully.
Clay slipped along the wall. He held the stake in both hands, like a spear. He kept the dagger and black pistol sheathed. Neither was really made to take on something with the sheer bulk of this monstrous spider. Even so, the cross-like hilt of the dagger could come in useful, given that the spider was infected. How useful, Clay wasn’t sure.
The spider’s head shifted, as if losing interest.
Raol scuttled across the roof, insect like, the movement dragging back the spider’s attention. It turned away from Clay.
Clay took a step toward the center of the room, dirt sinking under his boot. He calculated the distance and then took another step. If he was going to spear this thing, he would have to either throw it—a difficult maneuver that he wasn’t practiced in—or plant it and let the creature run up against it. Which would mean he’d have to get out of the way fast. And where the hell was a spider’s heart anyway?
Raol scuttled across the roof again.
The spider’s head snapped around. Then it shifted and looked at Clay.
Fear chilled Clay’s chest. The thing was so big and alien. It swayed closer to him. Then, as if coming to a decision, it moved toward him faster, front legs stretching out, body pulled after them.
Clay tightened his grip on the stake, heart hammering. Details sharpened around him, everything slowing slightly. The spider was almost on him.
Clay drew back the stake, tensed to move. Above, he saw a flash as Raol let go of the ceiling, dropping toward the spider’s back.
Incredibly fast, as if waiting for that moment, the spider spun. Its front legs lashed out, smashing into the vampire like a freight train. He shot backward, sword spinning away, and slammed spread-eagled into the wall. He dropped.
A gush of blood burst from one of the spider’s front legs. Raol hadn’t completely missed.
Clay sprinted forward before the spider could turn again. He shifted the stake to his left hand and pulled the blue dagger free with his right. Two long strides and he launched himself into the air. His jump brought him up to the joint of the back leg, and he buried the blue dagger deep into the leathery flesh.
Blue flame rolled out, chewing through the leathery joint like paper in a furnace.
Gravity caught Clay as the spider jerked around, pulling his hand away from the dagger and sending his body flying. The dirt slammed into his side with a wallop, his breath disappearing again. Somehow, he’d kept hold of the stake, even if he’d lost the dagger. He curled up, coughing.
A leg hit him like a battering ram, spinning him across the floor.
He slammed back first into the wall, the scales of his coat creaking.
White spots perforated his vision, but he made out the huge spider rearing up, palps waving. It roared, voice high pitched, fangs extended.
Then it jerked, stumbled.
As Clay had
seen, vampires healed fast. Raol was back in the fight, his sword having sheared through another of the spider’s legs. Three legs out of commission. But spiders had eight, and the beast wasn’t finished. Bellowing, it spun and snapped. Raol dove out of the way.
Clay struggled to his feet. He seemed to have been momentarily forgotten again. He hunted for the blue dagger and saw it glowing on the ground directly beneath the infected monster. It might as well have been on the moon. He clutched the long stake in both hands, wondering if he should try a rush forward. What should he aim for, another leg? The chest, hoping to hit the heart? The thing was just so big.
The spider feinted a lunge at Raol, making the vampire dodge back, and then turned to Clay, its eyes bright with malice. It was smarter than it had a right to be.
The spider rushed him.
Clay had nowhere to go. He turned, put a foot on the wall behind him, and leaped as high as he could, trying to dodge the rush. It almost worked.
A leg caught him in midair and slammed him back into the wall. He felt the stake sliding out of his hands and tightened his fingers convulsively.
The spider reared up, head rising until it was level with where it had pinned Clay against the rock. Its fangs stretched impossibly wide. A spatter of saliva sprayed, catching the bottom of his coat. Acid sizzled against the scales like bacon in a hot pan. Clay saw himself reflected in shining black eyes, intelligent, inhuman, and pitiless.
He heard a thunk from below. Without being able to see, Clay guessed Raol had driven his infected blade deep into the spider’s abdomen, carving into the beast.
Its head whipped around to look at the new threat. But Raol couldn’t do enough damage in time to stop the creature from ripping Clay in half, and the spider seemed to know it. It hissed and looked back at Clay.
Just in time to get the stake in its eye.
Clay put everything he had into it, fear and rage fueling his arms. He drove the wood in deep, using the wall as leverage, inelegantly grinding it in until he felt it plow to a stop in the creature’s spongy brain.