Joseph raised an eyebrow at me again, but only nodded.
Without waiting, he walked over to the hole in the wall.
Copying what he’d seen Black do, he leaned forward, balancing against the rock before finding a foothold in one of the cuts in the wall. Turning the light on my own phone, I shone it down on his path as he climbed and he looked up, nodding a thanks.
He climbed surprisingly fast.
Easton, Frank, Dog and the quiet one Black called Devin followed him, one by one, clinging to the wall with the hand and footholds as soon as the one before them had climbed down far enough for them to attach themselves to the wall.
I focused on keeping the light on them as they climbed.
The rest of their family and friends climbed after them, most of them with rifles slung over their shoulders and backs. One of them even had a couple of machetes strapped to his back, not dissimilar to Black’s swords.
It struck me to wonder again that they were all so accepting of the idea that we were in a cave under Ship Rock, hunting for vampires.
I didn’t think about it for long, though.
We needed them, so I was nothing but grateful.
Manny went down the hole next. I was a little worried when I saw him lean against the slab of volcanic rock, but he jammed his foot into the toe hold just as firmly as Joseph had, or any of the others in Joseph’s family. I kept the light on him as he climbed steadily down the rock face.
Then Cowboy and Angel stood by me. For the first time, I noticed Cowboy wore two swords on his back too, with the same kind of scabbard Black wore.
“You go next, Miri,” he said to me. “I can hold the light on Angel after you.”
I frowned though, shaking my head.
“I’m seer,” I said. “I’ll go last. You two go ahead.”
Cowboy frowned. I saw him exchange looks with Angel.
When neither of them spoke or moved, I rolled my eyes.
“Just go. Seriously. I’ll be right behind you.”
After the barest pause, Cowboy nodded. He glanced at Angel. “Go ahead, love. I’ll be right behind you.”
Angel leaned over the rock wall like the others, fitting her boots into the holes in the rock. Cowboy climbed on after her once her head descended below our floor.
“Come right after me, Miri,” Cowboy said. “We’ll be okay without the light.”
Again, I rolled my eyes. “You’re human,” I said. “I can hold the light. Just tell Black not to leave without me.”
Cowboy exhaled in obvious exasperation, but in the end, he only nodded, once, then began to climb down after Angel.
He was about two thirds of the way down when Black’s mind rose in mine.
Last? He sounded annoyed. Really, Miri?
I wanted to make sure we didn’t lose anyone. Anyway, I don’t need light to climb. Like you said, we shouldn’t make humans go first or last, not in here.
I heard him clicking in my mind.
Get on that fucking wall, he sent, his mind verging on angry. I’ll have some of the others shine lights on you, Cowboy and Angel from below.
Nodding, mostly to myself that time, I stuck my phone in my shirt, keeping the light focused on the wall so I could find the first handhold easier.
Leaning against the rock with my palms, I stuck my boot in the lowest hole in the wall I could reach. Testing my weight as Black had done, I jammed my right foot in a hole next. Finding handholds with both hands next, I began to climb down.
After a few seconds, I found myself getting the hang of it, and began climbing more quickly. Luckily, all of the hand and foot holes were spaced the exact same distance apart, which made them easy to find without looking down.
I was about halfway to the bottom when a rumbling sound had me looking up.
Under my hands and feet, the wall vibrated, then shook.
It was mild, but I froze, staring up at the darkness.
Miri! Black snapped. Climb! Now!
Looking down, still breathing hard, I started to climb. My arms and legs were trembling now, making it slower and more clumsy to find the holes cut in the rock.
Was that another earthquake? I asked him.
Get the fuck down here. Now.
I fought to do as he said, not arguing the point that maybe climbing down, deeper under the ground, wasn’t the best move if that really had been an earthquake.
Ironically maybe, since I’m from San Francisco, earthquakes scare the hell out of me. I’d been in a few good-sized ones in my life, but I’d never managed to cultivate the blasé attitude about them shared by a lot of West Coasters.
Black, I sent, panting. Is this a good idea? We have no idea how stable these caves are. Seismic activity often happens in clusters. Maybe we should––
The wall jerked––hard that time.
I gasped, fighting to dig my fingers into the holes in the wall.
That time, the jerks were too hard. They threw me from side to side, then up and down.
I felt my grip slip––
Then I was falling.
My back slammed into rock, my head snapping back. I let out a cry, moving my arms to protect my head. I fell through space, in a silence that terrified me––
Then muscular arms caught me, and I let out my breath in a startled gasp.
Whoever had me pulled me out from under the hole, gripping me tightly.
The ground was still shaking and rumbling around us, like thunder from deep inside the Earth. I knew now that Black was holding me, his thick arms wrapped around me as he felt over my body, face and head, scanning me with his light, making sure I was okay.
The rock beneath my feet slowly stopped shaking.
Panting, I leaned against Black, who was still checking me for broken bones.
I heard and felt the last echoes and tremors reverberate through the rock, rippling out like rings from a rock thrown in a pond.
Then Black cursed, his hand coming away from the back of my head.
As it did, some of my hair stuck to his fingers.
Feeling the blood on his hand through him, I winced, then copied his movements, reaching for the back of my skull. I felt over the lump there carefully, feeling the stickiness from a cut that was bleeding on my scalp.
The cut didn’t feel too serious. Scalp wounds always bled a lot.
A psychiatrist I’d known used to joke it was God’s way of saying, “Don’t do that.”
The more clinical part of my mind worried more about how dazed I felt.
“You might have a concussion,” Black growled, still gripping me tightly in his arms, holding me against his chest. I felt worry on him. More than worry, fear and aggression warred in his light as he gripped me tighter.
You go last like that again when we’re in the middle of a fucking combat situation and I’ll handcuff you to me next time, he thought at me angrily.
I snorted, giving him a disbelieving look through the dark.
“Why shouldn’t I have gone last?” I grumbled, wincing as I touched the back of my head a second time. “I’m a vet, too. You want one of the civilians taking up the rear? One of these kids who came out here, risking their lives for you and me? Or Manny, maybe?”
I felt him think about my words, agreeing with them in frustration.
His agreement only seemed to anger him more.
“Don’t fucking do it again,” he growled, when he couldn’t think of a good argument.
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever you say, boss-man.”
Anger plumed off him in another wave, but I felt a reluctant humor there, too.
“Can you stand?” he said finally, his voice still a growl. “I want to check the corridor.”
I nodded. “I think so.”
Black turned, growling at someone else. “Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her fall. Knowing her, she’ll collapse to the fucking rock and not say a goddamned word.”
I heard a laugh in the dark, right before a phone flashlight shone my way. Then fingers
grasped my arm, holding me steady as Black released me, stepping back.
Turning, I saw Dog standing there with Easton, both of them grinning at me, each holding one of my arms.
“You okay, Miri?” Dog said.
I laughed, shaking my head. “Fine. Why do you ask?”
“You, like… fell,” he said, still grinning. “Maybe you missed that part. You fell off that rock. I thought you were a goner. I was holding the light––”
“Then Black shoved us out of the way,” Easton grinned.
“I thought he was going to chuck me across the cave––” Frank added, laughing.
“And he just, like, caught you,” Dog added. “Like you were a bundle of clothes. Or maybe a really big cat.”
“Big cat,” Frank snorted, shoving at Dog.
Snorting a laugh in spite of myself, I shook my head. “I’m fine.” When shaking my head made a pain throb behind my eyes, I winced, adding, “My head hurts, but I’m okay.”
I rolled my eyes in Black’s direction.
“…He just likes to yell at me,” I added.
“I heard that,” Black muttered, even as Dog and Easton laughed, still holding my arms.
I could see him now, with so many flashlights coming on line from phones.
I could also see the cave where we’d landed.
It was good-sized––maybe three times the size of Manny’s living room, with a ceiling twice as high. Apart from the hole in the ceiling against one wall––which was riddled with hand and footholds all the way to the bottom, I noticed––the only other entrance to the cave was the opening in the rock where Black now stood.
I watched him peer out and into the corridor, a gun in his hand.
Glancing back at the rest of us, his eyes stopped on me, right before he scowled.
“I can feel more of them now,” he said.
“Human?” I said.
“I can feel a lot of things, doc,” he growled. “Why don’t you look, too? Help me out? Since you’re completely fine after almost cracking open your skull?”
Before I could do as he suggested––or even make a sarcastic response––Joseph spoke up from next to me.
“The noise stopped,” he said. “That sick wolf sound. The howling.”
Realizing he was right, I went still, listening with my ears.
It was completely silent outside the small noises from our group, mostly clothing rubbing skin and other clothing, shoes on the rock floor, breathing, some clinking, beeping, and clicking sounds from equipment and phones.
I reached out with my light an instant later, scanning the space.
I immediately felt what Black was talking about.
I could feel a lot of people down here. Humans. Seers. Odd blank spots that had to be vampires. I felt Wolf’s people. I felt at least three of his wolves, too.
There was an odd, disjointed chaos to the lights.
I could feel a hell of a lot of humans, I realized, and too many seers.
I definitely felt more seers than Uncle Charles had brought with him here.
Turning towards Black, I frowned.
“What the hell?” I said. “Did Charles call more of his people here?”
Black frowned back at me.
He didn’t say anything, but I could feel he didn’t like it, either.
“Let’s go,” he said after a pause, motioning with the gun. “Whoever’s down here, they’re already fighting. I think we need to go now.”
Realizing he was right, that I could feel that too, I swallowed.
I glanced at Manny, thinking about his grandkids being down here. I thought about Charles, about Wolf’s Children, as confused as they were.
We couldn’t leave them down here.
Nodding, I pulled gently away from where Easton and Dog held me, reaching back for the gun I had holstered at the small of my back. Tugging it free of the nylon holster, I aimed it at the floor, my trigger finger on the barrel as I walked towards Black.
The rest of our group followed behind me, starting with Dog and the teenaged girl wearing the scarf around her head, followed by Cowboy and Angel, then Frank, Easton, Joseph, Devin, and Joseph’s wife, Geraldine.
Manny approached Black from his other side, and ended up reaching him right around the same time I did. Exchanging grim looks with me, he unholstered his own gun, a Colt M1911. He followed directly behind Black, the Colt gripped in both hands.
He and I ended up flanking Black a few paces later, aiming our guns down the corridor ahead of where the three of us walked.
The tunnel was eerily quiet.
I was using my seer’s psychic sight more than my physical sight now. I could feel the commotion up ahead. I could feel the Barrier storm, even down here.
More than any of that, I could feel a throbbing, pulsing heat of light coming out of the rock. I could see it behind my eyes, whenever I let myself focus on it.
I knew without being told that that’s where we were going.
I knew without being told that it lay directly under Ship Rock.
I also knew it was the true source of the Barrier storm. There was a good chance it was the source of the earthquakes we’d felt that day, as well.
I knew it was the reason we were here.
I also knew it was the thing I’d wanted Black to stay away from, at all cost. More than anything, I knew it was the thing that could rip him away from me again, if this mountain decided he didn’t belong here, in my world.
I knew all those things, but I didn’t stop walking.
Instead that light pulled my feet toward it inexorably, like a gravity well around a black hole.
It felt somehow, like this had all happened before.
It felt somehow, like this part had already been written.
21
THE DEVIL WITHIN
THE FIRST VAMPIRE appeared out of nowhere.
I’d felt the chaos near that hole of light increasing more and more as we walked, turning into an urgent cacophony in my head, until it nearly hurt me to look too closely at it with my sight.
I felt screams in that light-filled space. I felt my uncle screaming.
The emotions were sharp, painful––so visceral, I could barely breathe. It made my steps erratic as I followed Black. It made it difficult to see the tunnel directly in front of me.
It also blunted my reflexes.
As a result, Manny got off a shot at the thing before I’d fully wrapped my mind around what I was looking at under the white glare of our flashlights. The pale face appeared like a phantom out of the wall in front of us, its crystal-like eyes washed through with dark crimson.
Those bloody irises reflected like a cat’s against the wash of flashlights. I caught sight of the vertical pupils Black mentioned, the oddness of its teeth.
It opened its mouth, hissing at us.
Manny shot it in the chest.
I saw it absorb the shot, jerked sideways where it got hit.
Then its fangs lengthened.
Hissing louder, it leapt at us, moving so fast my eyes couldn’t fully track it. Jerking back, I raised my gun, using my light to follow it––
––when Black stepped into my path.
Half-leaping to get him out of my line of fire, I moved instinctively so I could see and shoot around him if the thing leapt for one of us again. I kept the gun up but didn’t fire, aiming down the corridor, giving him the space to move in case he stepped in front of me again.
It’s a good thing I did.
I don’t think I’d ever seen him move that fast.
He moved like a ghost––like a liquid shadow. He’d holstered his gun and stepped in front of me and towards the vampire before I could make sense of what he was doing. I heard the metallic ring of the twin swords being unsheathed, but I barely saw that, too.
Then he moved, dropping to a low combat run as he darted forward.
He seemed to be running straight at the charging vampire––
––when he feinted, shift
ing his weight to twist around it, moving so fast I barely saw the flash of either sword as he swung first one, then the other, slicing sideways and sawing backwards at an angle as he leapt.
I only saw the second vampire after Black sliced through its neck.
He separated the heads from both vampire bodies, hats and all, so swiftly and neatly, I only acknowledged what the sound meant after it was already done.
I saw one head roll ahead of us down the corridor, losing its hat.
The other fell closer to Black, stopping by the volcanic rock wall.
Chest heaving, but not as much as I would have thought given the acrobatics he’d just performed, Black glanced back at us, still holding the swords, now dark with blood.
He motioned with his head for us to follow him.
Stay a little behind me, Miri, he sent. Tell Manny too.
I glanced at Manny, still holding my gun on the corridor.
“He wants us to give him some space,” I said.
Manny grunted what could only be a laugh.
His expression grew more and more incredulous as we walked forward and he stared down at the bodies of the two decapitated vampires. He didn’t lower the big Colt, and when Black made a sharp right down a side corridor––presumably the same one the vampire emerged from––Manny and I followed.
I could feel from Manny that he’d forgotten how Black moved. He’d forgotten what Black was like, back when they’d fought side by side in Vietnam. Some part of him had wondered over the years if he’d exaggerated those memories in his mind.
Behind us, I felt Joseph leading the rest of his people forward.
If he or any of the others reacted to what Black had just done, I couldn’t feel it as strongly.
I didn’t have long to care what any of them thought, anyway.
The swords rang in the corridor ahead of us, even before we’d fully turned into it.
Black had turned left down that passageway.
Seeing the corridor went two ways, Manny flipped around without my asking him to, facing behind us, in the opposite direction Black had taken. Still pacing me, Manny walked backwards with his gun aimed to cover the right side of the corridor we’d just entered.
I saw a few of Joseph’s people do the same, covering our six from the other side as the rest of them followed after Black and me.
Black To Dust_A Quentin Black Paranormal Mystery Page 30