The Security Tech gaped at him. “But, sir, they’re still experimental!”
“Now, damn it!” Daxus nearly screamed. “I am going to level that bitch!”
TWENTY-FIVE
Without so much as blinking, Violet left a path of blood and destruction behind her, and with the sunrise at her back she slammed through the double doors and into the corridor not far behind Daxus. He was so close—her heightened vampire senses made her able to literally smell him, the cloying scent of too much expensive aftershave and the more earthly, sweaty fear that was spilling from his pores as he ran like the coward he was. When the doors banged shut behind her, Violet jerked up short and faced the waiting security forces, line after line of densely packed soldiers, and every one of them with a gun aimed directly at her. She stared at them for a long moment, and they stared back . . .
Then fired.
But she’d known it was coming—the anticipation was in the air, just like Daxus’s terror. She dived right at them the instant before the front-line men squeezed their triggers, and the arc of her body took her down and made her roll into their legs, where she cut a blood-soaked swath through flesh and bone using a pair of swords pulled from the flat-space sheaths hanging on her hip belt. She swung and cut, swung and cut, and she lost track of time as she fought her way through the crush of bodies, beneath them, using the men’s own fear of friendly fire to her own advantage.
Sometime later—a few minutes or perhaps a lifetime—Violet burst into the ArchMinistry Library, a two-story circular room lined with black and silver volumes, the culmination of centuries of the so-called wisdom that had resulted in the segregation and genocide of millions of other people just like her. She felt like she was living the same quarter hour over and over—charge into an area, find it full of soldiers, kill anything and everyone in sight, then do it all over again. Her hands were burning from the gunfire, nerves tingling and trembling from the never-ceasing firing from her left side, the constant back and forth sweep of her right. Draw, fire until empty, toss away, draw again. Draw, fire until empty, toss away, draw again. It became a litany running through her mind, undercutting the basic autopilot that kept her alive, moving her constantly forward and ahead of the soldiers’ bullets, making sure she wove back and forth in patterns too random for any one person to follow.
And finally, it was just her, standing in the midst of a sea of carnage and stench and death.
Violet lifted her chin and looked around the room, careful to keep up the appearance of strength and fearlessness, determined not to show how tired she was. A room like this, Violet knew, would have a half-dozen cameras hidden away, just to make sure no one filched any of the nearly priceless books. Daxus was probably watching her on a bank of computer screens, planning his next move, thinking he was going to kill her all over again. Or maybe he wasn’t doing that at all. Maybe he was sweating instead, trembling. She hoped so—she hoped his skin was gray with panic, that his hands were clammy and cold and shaking, his voice hoarse with anxiety as he ordered his men around.
While none of that seemed too far-fetched, it was more likely that he was conferring with his assistants and security managers, wondering how much she had left in the way of weapons and ammunition. Violet grinned as she recalled the expressions on the faces of the scanner techs back at the entrance, at the pure shock on their faces when their scanners revealed the practically bottomless flat-space arsenal she’d brought to help defend herself. If his security leaders had an ounce of courage in them, they’d be telling Daxus about those scans right now, as well as reminding him that everything they’d thrown at her so far had been virtually useless.
But there was no more time to dwell on her accomplishments, real or imagined. Violet scrambled over the corpses and made her way across the library, aiming for the exit on the other side of the room. Pushing through it, ready for another battle, she found herself entering instead an internal corridor. She was surprised to find it empty, silent, and well lit. That told her it was clearly a private exit meant for only the most precious among the ArchMinistry’s inner circle. It was a good guess that Daxus was following it, and since she could see a dead end at the far side, that also meant he’d had only one route to take.
Up.
She leaned against the wall, panting and betting that there were no hidden cameras in this private corridor. She could feel her body tiring, wanting to give out, but she mustn’t let the physical side of herself take control right now. There were more important things in the world than herself—Six, for instance. She knew the boy was alive, just as she knew Daxus had come through this corridor. She would find Daxus, and when she did, she would find Six.
Violet wiped at her face, then realized her hand was wet—she was covered in blood. Was it hers? Or that of the men she had killed? She had no idea. She hurt in dozens of places, everything from beestinglike annoyances to bone-deep aches, but she honestly didn’t know if she had any openly bleeding wounds. She didn’t feel anything major and right now, she didn’t have time to be concerned about it.
She took a deep breath, tuned out the pain, and began to climb the stairwell at the end of the corridor.
He was sweating.
Daxus pulled an expensive silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket and pressed it under his chin, trying to look unaffected in front of the elite Sentinel soldiers waiting for his orders. He wished he could see their faces, but their dark visors hid everything. Were they laughing at his fear? If they were, they were fools—they should be just as afraid. His gaze darted across them, searching for holes, searching for weakness, anything that Violet might find and exploit. He saw nothing, but then he’d believed that about the literally hundreds of men before these, all of whom had fallen before the blade of her swords and the blaze of her guns.
Daxus paced in front of them like an Army Drill Sergeant, trying to mask his nervousness behind a commanding, merciless demeanor. Did it show anyway? Of course it did, in every bead of perspiration that rolled down his neck and soaked into his collar, and he wasn’t stupid enough to think that any one of these men would miss something like that. They were too highly trained and there was nothing to be done to hide it. If they silently ridiculed him because of it, that was fine—Daxus was willing to bet that every man in this room would start sweating just like him once they faced off with Violet in the flesh.
“Excellent work,” he said, because he had to say something, he couldn’t just keep walking silently back and forth. “Everyone’s doing excellent work. Keep it up.” The words sounded inane even to his own ears, but he couldn’t seem to think of anything better. Finally, he just turned his back and ducked inside the door to the Mortal Sciences Lab.
In here, he felt a bit—but only that—safer. The men waiting inside the lab were the very best the ArchMinistry had to offer in the way of protection . . . no, the best of the best. They were the Praetorian Guard, named after the soldiers who had once helped rule ancient Rome. But were they going to be good enough? God, he hoped so.
They looked at him expectantly and he said, “Everything’s good,” automatically. “Everything’s under control. We’re just going to . . .” He glanced toward the closed door and was helpless to stop himself from visibly swallowing. “Wait here for a little while.”
It didn’t take long for Violet to reach the rooftop, and if she had previously been surprised about the emptiness of the path in front of her, this situation fell right into the realm of her expectations—the place was crawling with Security Commandos, a miniature army clearly positioned between her and her goal. That would never do, and she waded into them like the blade of a lawnmower, moving with precision and speed, with every move calculated to expend the least amount of energy necessary. She was past the point of feeling pain or exhaustion, of feeling anything but the need to keep going. If she’d been a regular person, or a human soldier, she might have been proud of herself when she reduced the assault force to nothing more than moaning puddles of destroyed flesh, but s
he wasn’t a regular person, and she was dying on top of that. She was just . . .
Tired.
At the end of the battle, she slumped against the entrance to the skybridge on the far side—toward which she had been struggling the entire time—and let herself rest, but only for a moment. There was something odd about her sword hand, something . . . cold, and when she glanced down at it, her eyes widened at the double spurt of blood—too much to lose. Two fingers and part of the hand were just . . . gone, shot off by one of the Commando’s bullets. She hadn’t even felt it.
Violet clamped her other hand over it to slow the bleeding and her face twisted. She was losing steam, losing blood, losing herself—could she even do this? She wasn’t afraid of dying—she’d done that once and wanted to do it a hundred times more—but she was afraid of failing, of being killed and losing Six forever, leaving him in the hands of a cold and heartless man whose only goals in life were power and greed.
No, damn it—she would not fail, she would not! Violet let go of her wound and wiped her sodden hand on the side of her coat, then spun her machine pistol around to face the roof’s surface and fired it. Two seconds later, without even hesitating, she swung the gun over and pressed the stubs of her missing fingers against the red-hot barrel, searing the wound—most of it, anyway—shut. Even for her, this time there was no suppressing a scream.
It took a precious half minute for the grayness to clear from her vision, then Violet pushed off from the wall and steadied herself. Her hand was still oozing blood but at least it wasn’t pouring out of her anymore—she’d bought herself a little more time, although at this rate her time left was going to be shortened considerably. If she was going to find Six and get him to safety, she needed to get on with it.
Straightening her shoulders, Violet stepped onto the skybridge that led to the Mortal Sciences Lab. That’s where Daxus would have Six, she was sure of it. Heading toward her from the other end were more soldiers, and more after that, but she would not be stopped.
She would not.
Violet was coming.
Only a fool would miss the signs, or misread them and stupidly believe in the wrong outcome. Daxus could hear the screams and shouting of men, a barrage of seemingly never-ending gunfire—even a few small explosions as various pieces of equipment got in the way of the ammunitions fire meant for human flesh. If he’d been a man with a conscience, the screaming would have weighed heavily on him, but he hadn’t the time to be concerned about the lost lives of others. He was the most important thing here, and he could only be concerned about that. This woman, this vampire, was like a juggernaut, a huge, unstoppable force that was going to crush everything in its hunger to get to him . . .
Fine.
He still had a few surprises for her.
Daxus found the gaze of the head of his Praetorian Guard and nodded curtly at him. “Why don’t you and your men go out there and see what’s going on,” he suggested. His voice was mild but the man was smart enough to read between the lines. Daxus was pleased to see that just below the line of the leader’s diamond-black helmet, a cruel smile flashed briefly across the craggy face. Without making a sound, the leader made a series of sharp gestures in the air; his men snapped to action—no doubt each hand movement meant something well beyond Daxus’s understanding. They moved together like a precision machine, streaming out the door in eerie, deadly silence and leaving Daxus alone in the lab.
Well, not quite.
There was the body of the boy.
With one ear following the sounds outside, Daxus moved over to stand next to the cold granite slab and stared down at Six’s corpse. All this fuss, and for what? A cadaver. What the hell did Violet plan to do with the kid’s body when—if—she got it, anyway? The antigen served no purpose for her, and she had to realize that whatever was in the child could be recultured. It might take time, but there was no deadline.
No limitations, either.
Daxus smiled as he heard the whine of small machinery on the other side of the lab door. Experimental? Oh, no . . . the Gravity Shifters had been operational for months.
Just ask Violet.
The last corridor.
The last of the soldiers . . . she hoped.
These men were . . . different, silent and clearly more cunning. They didn’t scare her, but they did make her more wary—you never knew what kinds of tricks Daxus had up his sleeve, what was next in the nastiness that might come out of that man’s brain. There were only eight of them, dressed completely in black and surrounding her without a sound, measuring her movements, assessing her strength. That was all right—others had tried the same thing and failed.
She drew her sword but the fancy spin-work of previous times was gone forever, lost with the two fingers. The wound on her hand throbbed in time to her rapid heartbeat, giving her an ugly jolt with every pulse. That was all right, too—the pain helped keep her head clear when the loss of blood might have made her sluggish or slowed her reflexes. There was nothing like a couple of bundles of raw nerve endings to make you sit up and take notice of the situation around you, to keep you aware of your own painful flesh.
They circled her warily and she let them, moving in one-half time to their steps, gaze flicking back and forth. She was ready to dive in, ready for blood, when a hand signal from the one who was apparently the commander made them all move at once—
Onto the walls and ceilings.
Gravity Shifters.
Damn it!
She crouched in the midst of them, feeling like a fly caught in the middle of a three-dimensional spiderweb filled with black widows. The soldiers scuttled over her head, around and behind her back, everywhere . . . but at least they were smart enough to know that guns were a danger here; they would end up as easily shooting one another as they would her. Swords were smarter, and so each man wielded at least one, a few others, those more proficient, had a weapon for each hand. The metal edges sparkled overhead, bouncing light back and forth and making it difficult for Violet to keep track of who was where—it was like trying to monitor the stars sparkling in a lightening sky.
Violet ground her teeth and waited. She should have anticipated this—if the Hemophages had Gravity Shifters, it stood to reason that the humans did, too. They were always a little behind in technology because they didn’t have desperation fueling them like the vampires, but they eventually caught up. Hemophages had gotten the Gravity Shifters operational months ago, so it was certainly about time. But damn it . . . it wasn’t fair. She’d had so little to her advantage—yeah, speed and strength—but she was outnumbered by the hundreds and with a shortened life span to boot. There should be something to even the damned odds. It just wasn’t fucking fair.
But it wasn’t going to make a damned bit of difference.
“You’re all going to die,” she said flatly, and went to work to prove it.
TWENTY-SIX
Daxus had heard it all.
The screams, the gunfire, the silence.
More screams, the clash of swords, the second silence.
Daxus was alone now in the Mortal Sciences Lab—well, except for the body of the kid who had started all of this. When it was finally quiet, he had some time, about twenty seconds actually, to let his imagination go to work. It was amazing how quickly the mind could function, and his brain managed to cover both ends of the spectrum; in the first circumstance, the last two or three of his brave and strong Praetorian Guard triumphantly pushed open the door, hauled Violet’s dead body into the lab, and tossed it at his feet. Daxus looked down at it and prodded it disdainfully with one foot, then lifted his chin and gave it a little dismissive wave of his hand—the signal for his soldiers to drag it away and get it out of his life for good. He went back to dissecting the boy’s body, culturing the antigen and, essentially, becoming the most important man in the entire world.
The second version, however, was not so kind to his psyche. His mind gave him the disturbing image of Violet storming through the lab doo
r and gunning him down in his tracks, before he even had a chance to say a word or defend himself. He felt each imaginary bullet rip through his skin and put liquid trails of fire into his body, felt his ribs shatter and his sternum explode, experienced the sensation of his own heartbeat stuttering and slowing until a terrifying, inescapable blackness overwhelmed him.
Neither one happened, but the second illusion was a whole lot closer to the truth.
She’d had enough surprises for one day, so Violet pushed the door to the Mortal Sciences Lab open carefully, standing off to the side and letting the metal-reinforced wall be her shield. Everything about her body was in high gear and silently screaming—her pulse was racing, her blood was singing, her nerve endings were throbbing, especially the ugly remaining nubs on her sword hand. She had so much adrenaline in her system right now that she had a constant, high-pitched whine in her ears. She still had plenty of guns in her flat-space holsters, but for now she was going to hang on to her sword—funny, but that long, sharp blade had always turned out to be the best backup that a girl had.
She snapped a quick look past the threshold and yanked herself backward again, but that glance had given Violet the comfort zone she needed. Still being cautious, she inched around the edge of the door and finally stepped into the room. Lo and behold, there was Daxus, and all by his lonesome, too. Wouldn’t you know it—he’d run out of guards. Apparently she’d worked her way through his entire inventory.
Her mouth twisted. “Is that all you’ve got, you son of a bitch?”
Daxus opened his mouth to answer, but for a long moment he couldn’t—he was literally trembling so much that his lips didn’t want to work. Finally he managed to swallow, then speak. “For God’s sake, Violet—the child’s dead.”
She could hear the desperation in his voice, the puzzlement. But Violet only sneered back at him. “You obviously don’t have a clear grasp of what ‘dead’ really is.” She took a step in his direction and pulled her lips back in a sinister smile. “Allow me to demonstrate.”
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