by Faith Hunter
A dark form sped in through the door. Faster than any human. Rick, his eyes glowing greenish. I cursed into my mic and the Kid said, “Sorry,” into my earpiece. Rick was beside me in an instant, his cat musk strong in the air. There wasn’t time to argue, and arguing with a big-cat is a waste of time anyway.
Eli looked up from the equipment he was readying. “I called him. We needed manpower.”
I snarled and told Rick, “Put in your music spell.”
Rick snarled back but put the earpieces in. He didn’t have a helmet and wouldn’t be able to hear the com channel, but if I kept him close, it shouldn’t matter. I dropped the CNB—the communications nexus box—at the top of the stairs and aligned it, pointing it down. The tactical radio system being run by the Kid was designed to work in places where physical or electromechanical interference was high. When we went through the doors and lost direct radio signal, the Kid would switch to the UCU—underground com units. It wasn’t the way I had envisioned using the set, but it was a handy thing to own when fighting vamps.
“Ready?” I asked Eli and the Kid.
“On your mark,” Eli said.
“We are in the house’s intercom,” Alex said.
I nodded to Bruiser. He pushed a button on his mic mouthpiece and said, “Attention, all Mithrans.” The sound of his voice rang through the house, echoing through the intercom and sound system. “I am the Enforcer of the Master of the City of New Orleans, here for the Naturaleza, the breakers of law, the drainers of blood, the takers of lives. Leo Pellissier has the pledge of Hieronymus. Leo Pellissier has the right of might and of law and of the Vampira Carta. We have your lair. Give us your hands, and no one will die. Fight us, and all will suffer. I have spoken.” He switched off the mic and nodded to me.
I handed the M32 to Rick and said, “Rubber bullets.” It took a moment for understanding to enter his eyes, but he nodded once, a downward jut of his chin, his eyes going darker and more human. He took the weapon and checked it for firing. Braced it against his shoulder. I pushed open the door to the stairs leading down to the lairs. Rick fired three shots, hitting three humans, one with each shot. Cat reflexes, one; blood-servant reflexes, zero.
The gas-masked blood-servants fell. Semiautomatic weapon fire chattered off the stairway walls, a ricochet going wild. Rick caught a servant who fell forward and over the railing, hauling the man up by an arm. We raced down the stairs, Rick at my side, the M32 at the ready, followed by Bruiser and Eli, working together on our weapon. I just hoped that Big H hadn’t equipped all his blood-servants with masks.
The hallway branched at the bottom of the stairs. “Which way?” I asked into my mic.
“Left,” Bodat said. Behind us came the sound of running feet, the squeak of rubber, and the sliding of heavy synthetic fibers. I looked back and nodded to Eli.
There were three rooms. Bruiser held a PIR device to the door and said, “No vamps. Passive infrared shows humans. Two, both prone.”
I opened the door to show the expected humans, asleep. “I love technology,” I said.
Using the PIR device, we cleared each room. All were full of sleeping humans, zonked in the middle of daytime activities by the sleepy-time gas. “Hallway is clear,” I said.
“Go to your right now,” Bodat said. “After that we are blind. There are no more security cameras, and we have no idea of the layout.”
More humans slept in the rooms on the right. “Floor is clear,” I said. “Heading down one flight.” I dropped a second CNB and angled it down. It was the last one we had. Fortunately, the stairway ended in a foyer with three more closed doors.
Bruiser held the PIR up to each door and motioned at each one. There were two vamps in one room, four in another, and more than six in the last one. That made my stomach clench. If this didn’t work, we were in trouble. We had no backup.
Scenting my reaction to that thought, Rick snarled. He pulled two handguns, semiautomatics. “Silver,” he growled, his voice low, speaking of the ammo he carried. “Purest ever refined.”
I pointed to the room with two vamps in it and Bruiser nodded. I snapped two vials of holy water off my weapon harness, unscrewed the tops, and nodded to him. He stood to the side, out of my way, and met my eyes in warning. “We have no firsthand confirmation that holy water works on vamps,” he whispered, his words no more than breaths, “and our best experts say it’s unreliable.” He was talking about the Kid and Reach, who hadn’t been able to offer proof positive that holy water worked against vamps. The historical record was iffy at best, perhaps being a matter of the quality of the water itself, as if maybe it went bad after a time, like sour tea or old eggs. But this stuff was fresh, the preacher was outside praying over it, and I was willing to try it.
I said loudly, “So let’s try out our new secret weapon.” Sometimes fear is better than a blade, and the idea of a secret weapon might give us the advantage. Especially if it worked, and the vamps in the other rooms had no idea what was happening until it had already happened to these two.
He nodded once and pointed to the direction of the cool bodies in the room. I would have a single instant to decide if the vamps were surrendering, shooting, or fighting. And then react accordingly. That put me on defense. In a fight, the one on offense always has the advantage.
Beast leaped into the forefront of my mind. Hunt! She thought at me. Her power flooded into me, and the world went sharp and stark. Energy so intense it heated my skin and each breath felt as if it contained the power of the universe, a black star of might at my core. I knew my eyes were glowing gold.
I nodded at Bruiser. He tried the knob, expecting the door to be locked. It opened.
I had a single glimpse. Two vamps, both male, vamped out, were in midair. Leaping at me. I tossed the opened vials of baptismal water, and Bruiser slammed the door. On the other side, heavy thumps sounded—vamps hitting the door. And then the horrible screams that vamps make when they are dying. Or think they are. Beast hacked with delight. By the screams, they were heading away, probably to the nearest showers.
Bruiser caught my gaze, taking in the gold glow. He looked at Rick and the greenish-glow of the cop’s eyes. Whatever was in the men’s eyes, I ignored.
Preacher Hosenfeld would be pleased that the baptismal water from his church worked against vamps as well as some old myths suggested that water blessed by a priest would.
Bruiser held up the PIR and smiled grimly. Loudly enough to be heard clearly through the other two doors, he said, “That heated them up a bit.”
Rick chuckled, the chuffs of a cat. Beast turned to him and hacked with delight.
Bruiser looked at neither of us and moved to the next room, holding up four fingers to remind us of the numbers of vamps inside. I nodded and stepped back. Four was too many for me to handle alone. Eli dragged the heavy nozzle behind him. I had no idea where he’d gotten the fire hose, but this particular one would allow us to pump up to 210 gallons per minute through a special nozzle he’d gotten from a plant nursery—one that allowed a wide spray rather than the usual concentrated, unidirectional spray used for fighting fires. The tank it was attached to held a thousand gallons of baptismal water. And now we knew it would work against vamps.
I pulled two more vials, just in case. Eli braced himself, met Bruiser’s eyes, and nodded. Bruiser tried the door. This one was locked, which was going to make our job harder, but we had planned for vamps with brains and good security personnel.
The former Ranger quickly placed charges of plastic explosives at the sites of the hinges and the lock. While he worked, we all backed into the relative safety of the stairwell. I had to hand it to him: the guy was fast, unwinding the det cord behind himself as fast as he could shuffle. I didn’t know what we would be facing, so I screwed the tops back on the vial and pulled a blade and an ash stake. The last two vamps had been normal vamps. The old methods of vamp fighting should work.
Protected by the wall, he looked at us until he had our attention and counted down
silently, mouth moving: One, two, three. He hit a switch. The door blew. The world went into slow motion, the kind where I could see everything in harsh layers of action, overlapping and intense.
Bruiser hit the holy water switch. I could see his fingers move. He was too late. A fraction of a fraction of a second too late.
Two vamps moved at us so fast, there would have been a pop of air had any of us been able to hear it. Vamped out. Deadly, I thought, even as their bodies catapulted over the spray of water. One landed on me. Her claws dug into my shoulder, catching on the plastic armor. The claws of her other hand swiped at my face. Normal vamps. Her legs swept up to wrap around me.
In my peripheral vision, I saw holy water shooting out of the nozzle like a hundred tiny jets. And Rick, with his mouth on a vamp’s neck. A spray of blood flew into the air from his jaws.
Beast-fast, I stabbed up with an ash stake, hitting my attacker in the abdomen. She fell, the wood taking her in the central artery leading down to her legs. Immobilizing her. Her blood cascaded over my right leg. I dropped her, holding the stake in place as she fell.
The holy water hit the next two vamps in midair. They screamed and did ninety-degree turns, bouncing off the walls. They raced away, screaming in agony. I looked at Rick. He was rising from under the vamp that landed on him. The vamp had an ash stake in his heart and only half of his throat left, the bones of the spinal column visible. But he was still alive, gasping. I figured he’d heal. Sooner or later.
Rick’s eyes were glowing green. He had fangs on his upper and lower jaw. Eli and Bruiser were backing slowly away from him. Rick spat and snarled, his human skin and flesh stretching like a cat’s. Gently, slowly, I lifted my arm and my hand to him. And took up an earpiece. My ears were covered by the helmet, but I could hear tinny sounds of music from it. I lifted the piece toward Rick.
He jerked his head away but kept his eyes on me. I stopped all movement and waited, barely daring to breathe. Rick’s face relaxed just a hair as the music became audible to him too. Then his mouth closed. I placed the earpiece in his ear. His eyes lost some of the glow and darkened toward his usually Frenchy-black eyes. He took the other earpiece and put it in. He chuffed out a breath. “Thanks,” he said. The word was slurred as his mouth tried to return to human. “Don’ wanna get stuck partway.” Which might happen if Rick ever changed to his big-cat, thanks to the tattoos on his shoulder.
“Pain bad?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’ll stay back here for the other door,” he said, “and cover my ears. Don’t get yourself killed.”
“Not my plan,” I said.
“You two finished playing nice-nice? Good.” Eli said, his own words a snarl, nearly as good as a big-cat’s. “Six vamps inside,” he said, “clustered at the back of the room, probably trying to get out the locked escape hatch. They’re gonna be pissed when they realize the hatch won’t open and they’re trapped. And it won’t be long before we have wet, pissed vamps, fresh outta the shower and wanting revenge. On three, people.”
In the moments we had been standing there, Eli had used the last of his C4 on the third door. He didn’t bother to count silently, and I drew a silver stake and my fourteen-inch-long vamp-killer as he counted down. “One, two, three.”
The door blew. And nothing happened. No vamps flew at us. Nothing happened. At all.
I raced past Eli and Bruiser, passing through the baptismal water, feeling it splatter on my hair and across my neck and back. Leaped through the splintered door, into the room. Landed, weapons out to either side, my body bladed, left foot forward, balanced. Ready for anything. I stopped. Water swirled into the room and around my feet.
Clustered in the back of the room were six vamps. Big H was in the middle, standing with his arms out at the sides, his fingers seeming to claw at the wall. Two vamps were on either side; one was crouched at his feet. All of them were vamped out, snarling, their bodies oddly twisted, but not like the spidey vamps. Like regular old vamps. None of them moved.
And I had no idea what to do.
I just stood there. Weapons ready. Breathing like a bellows. Inside me, Beast snarled, puzzled. Behind me, Eli turned off the water. Silence fell.
The guys moved into the room, forming a semicircle behind me.
Like the upstairs, this suite was done in white and scarlet, with a bed big enough to play touch football on, white-painted columns for bedposts, a seating area big enough to seat both teams on, tables and chairs at one end of the room, an en suite bath visible through an open door. And a pile of vamps so still they looked like statuary.
Hieronymus took a faint breath and said something I couldn’t hear. I pulled off my helmet and he repeated, “I cannot.”
I stepped closer, feeling the guys behind me keeping pace. “What can’t you do?”
His face warped, as if his skin had been pulled to the side only to resettle like soft clay or putty that, left alone, returned to its original form. Something was hinky here, not what I had expected, not even subconsciously.
I took another step and sniffed, my mouth open to take in the scent of the room, which I hadn’t done since I started down the stairs to Big H’s lair. The smell of vamp was strong and herbal: the floral of funeral flowers, the dry scent of sage. But the smell of sickness was missing, as was the acrid, dusty scent of the spidey vamps.
I walked slowly toward them, the guys on my trail, spreading out and around furniture, keeping the vamps covered. I was close enough that in Beast’s vision, I could see the necklace around Big H’s neck. And I realized that his neck was burned beneath it. It hadn’t been that way before; I was sure of that.
To the female vamp at his feet, I said, “Unbutton H’s shirt.”
An expression of utter relief crossed her face and vanished. She stood gracefully, reaching long, delicate fingers to her master. They unbuttoned Big H’s white shirt, exposing his chest. Which was blistered and pitted and blackened around a shard of iron wrapped in corroded, ancient copper.
“Tag. You’re it,” I said. When the vamps didn’t react, I said, “The Naturaleza tagged you. They put that on you sometime after you hired me to come kill them off and before I got here. It’s controlling you. Isn’t it?”
The female vamp nodded once, then froze.
“If I take it off, will you die?”
Hieronymus’ face twisted again, and I realized it was with the effort to speak. Nothing came out, but his lips moved. He said, “Take it.”
Keeping the vamp-killer to the side, I sheathed the stake, dropped the helmet, and reached up a hand. I touched the copper necklace. Lifted it slowly. The iron wrapped in copper tore H’s skin as I lifted it away. Blood trickled down his chest. There was no clasp, and I wasn’t going to get close enough to lift it over his head. “This is gonna hurt,” I said.
With a single massive jerk, I broke the chain and leaped back.
The vamps collapsed to the floor in a tangle of arms and legs. The iron swung on the chain, back and forth, dangling in my fist. Power surged up from it, snaring me in its might. The entire room went black.
And I was falling.
CHAPTER 26
Mr. Prepared for Anything
I was in a dark place, empty and cool. It smelled of wet and age and eons of time. It pressed down on me, heavy and dense and dangerous. It was so dark I couldn’t tell when I closed my eyes. I reached out and the vamp-killer clanged against stone. The fist holding the necklace touched stone on the other side. My heart leaped into my throat. I was underground. I was buried.
But the stone fell away as I continued my turn. A light, faint and dim, appeared to my right. I took a step, another, moving slow and easy. Moving through the underground dark, a tunnel, cold and wet and chill, its dimensions somehow organic, widening and narrowing. A cave. I sheathed the blade and placed my feet carefully, redistributed my weight warily, expecting to find no ground beneath me at every step.
As I moved, I heard the slow plink of water. Smelled water and smoke, heard the crac
kle of fire licking at cold, dry wood. The passage opened up to reveal a large cavern in the rock, domed, with stalactites hanging down from the roof and stalagmites rising up from the floor, the walls smooth and pearlescent like a shell.
The fire burned near the back wall, its light flickering. I recognized my spirit home, the cavern of my youth, the place where I first learned to shift when I was a child of five. The place I went to in my mind when I was in danger or when I had something I needed to learn. It was a hard place, but it was mine. A place of strength and a place of dreams.
Near the fire sat an old woman, her gray hair in braids hanging down to her lap on either side. Her head was down, staring into the fire, the light showing me only the top of her head and her wrinkled forehead. I thought it was Kathyayini, but the clothes were all wrong. This woman wore no flower-sack clothing, but a cotton shirt in a vibrant yellow, a pullover shirt intended to tie at her throat. It hung open, revealing a necklace of carved and dyed bone and porcupine quills and glass beads. Her skirt was canvas, dyed blue, worn at the hem and belted with worked hide in beads to match the necklace. Tied to the belt was a series of small leather bags, pouches for herbs and minerals.
I paced slowly to the fire. When I stood there, my shadow elongated behind me, I had no idea what to say. This was a Tsalagi elder. A shaman. I should have taken off my weapons. One didn’t wear weapons into the presence of an elder of The People.
“Tsilugi, Dalonige i Digadoli, aquetsi ageyutsa.” Welcome, Golden Eyes, Golden Stone, my daughter.
My legs folded, and I sank to the ground. “Elisi?” She raised her head and the firelight moved over her wrinkled face. Her eyes were amber, like mine. “Elisi,” I whispered. My grandmother.
“Forgive me for coming into the presence of an elder with weapons.”
“You are warrior woman.” She waved away my apology, her hand gnarled and ribboned with veins. “Weapons are part of you. You are a weapon.” She shrugged. “I made you to be so.”