by Murray, Dean
Time seemed to slow down slightly with multiple heartbeats between each step, and then the second man was even with Dom and she was sailing through the air. Something about the change took Dom's normally tiny frame of a hundred and fifteen pounds and turned it into a monstrous two hundred and thirty pounds. She hit the vampire with the impact of a professional linebacker and drove him to the ground as her jaws closed around his neck.
The leader had spun towards Dom as she leapt, but I darted towards him, causing him to whirl back towards me. There was a moment of decision. I could feel the vampire weigh his options. The girl was too far away to make it back in time, even assuming he was willing to call her back. He could try to save the shorter man, but Dom was definitely on top and the struggles were already starting to abate slightly.
Even assuming he could drive Dom off, there would be a period of time before the other man was back on his feet and fighting, and during that brief window, the taller man would have to face both Dom and me at once.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the vampire moved towards me, sword flickering out. I slipped to one side, narrowly dodging the strike. He was faster than I expected, and he was pressing forward without hesitation now that he was committed.
We circled, but it was readily apparent that I was outclassed, and his sword was getting closer and closer to slicing into me.
The sounds of fighting were closer now, but I didn't have much time. Out of the corner of one eye I saw Dom release her prey and head my direction. The shorter vampire wasn't dead. He was still moving, but not very quickly, so Dom and I had at least a few seconds to double-team my opponent.
One of my dodges wasn't quite fast enough and a blaze of fire kindled across my left side as the dark, lifeless steel sliced into me. Dom picked that moment to spring at the vampire, but he was faster than she expected, and she missed his neck.
I darted in, trying to get my teeth on something, but while he was retreating now, he was doing a masterful job of using the terrain to his advantage. The sword seemed almost everywhere at once, perfectly complementing the dumpsters, walls, and other bits of industrial waste he was using to help keep us at bay.
The shorter vampire barreled into Dom from nowhere. She'd apparently kept a better eye on our surroundings than I had, mostly twisting out of the way, but one of the axes still managed to connect with a glancing blow to her shoulder.
The taller vampire took a quick step towards Dom, intent on finishing off the greater threat, and I saw my opportunity. His head was protected by a mostly-collapsed roofing strut, but that wasn't my target.
I latched onto the meaty part of his sword arm and whipped him around, slamming him into a metal post before he could respond, but I didn't manage to keep him off balance. No human frame should have had the strength to jerk me around the way he was, but he was apparently old enough that the normal limits didn't apply.
I whipped my neck back and forth, trying to break his arm before letting go, but it refused to break, and I felt a mounting sense of desperation. I was fully committed, but he still had a hand free, and only the violence of my movements was keeping him from bringing it into play.
The fighting was even closer now. I caught glimpses of the action as the tall vampire and I circled. Jasmin clinching with a skeletally thin woman, James and Alec circling with a cloaked figure who impossibly seemed to be holding them at bay, Isaac squared off against two more vampires.
We were all within a couple dozen yards of each other now, but all too wrapped up with our own opponents to help each other out. I whipped my head back to the left again, and it happened. My right foreleg slipped and I failed to pull the vampire off balance.
Jasmin or Dom would have let go right then and there and sprung away, but I hesitated and the vampire pulled a knife from somewhere. I tried to correct my error, tried to get away, but he was too quick.
The feel of the knife sliding into my side brought a new meaning to the concept of terror. I thrashed around, trying to escape, but the roles had now been reversed. The vampire had me by the throat with an iron grip while his right hand dug the knife around.
I kept expecting it to pierce my heart, but ultimately it didn't matter one way or the other. I was already getting weaker. Shape shifters didn't bleed out quickly, but it was only a matter of time.
The vampire pulled the knife out, bringing his arm back so he could stab it down with more force, and then suddenly Isaac was there. The vampire tried to whirl around, but Isaac was too fast for him, sinking razor-sharp claws into the vampire's chest at the same time that he immobilized the hand holding the knife.
The realization that I was going to live occurred at roughly the same time that I finally took in the damage to Isaac's huge hybrid body. He was covered with slashes, but the most fearsome wound was created by a sword that was still sunk into his body all of the way to the hilt. On a human it would have gone through the kidneys before exiting his back, but I didn't have any idea if that was true for a hybrid as well.
Isaac looked down at me for the shortest of seconds before turning back towards the melee. By the time I pulled myself back to my feet, it was all but over. Jasmin had been finishing off her opponent at the same time that Isaac had been saving me.
Isaac's second opponent had jumped into the fray with Alec and James, pressing them quite sorely for several seconds, but Isaac had killed Dom's opponent just seconds after killing mine. Once the odds were four on two, it was only a matter of time until the vampires would be pulled down.
I watched numbly as Alec darted in and broke the master vampire's neck. I wasn't quite sure when I'd resumed human form. I absently registered the bloody state of my feet, but was in too much shock to care much.
I made it over to the rest of the pack a few steps behind Dom. Alec shrank down to his human form and shook his head as he walked over to Isaac.
"You're lucky it wasn't a couple of inches higher or you'd have bled out before you even made it to her."
Isaac's voice came out low and rough from his hybrid throat. "It was a calculated risk. On several levels."
"Calculated risk nothing. It was the kind of crazy, thoughtless thing I usually expect out of James, not you."
Isaac opened his mouth to respond, but Alec took advantage of the distraction to pull the sword free. The rush of blood nearly made me physically ill, but it was Isaac's scream that pulled most brutally at me. For a second I thought Isaac would go berserk, but instead he collapsed down onto all fours and then melted back into human form.
Alec ripped two chunks of cloth from one of the dead vampires' attire and then pulled me over to Isaac's unconscious, barely-breathing form.
"Hold this and this here and here. If we can staunch the bleeding slightly he'll be okay. Shifting forms will have repaired any really major vascular damage."
Once Alec was satisfied that I was going to keep pressure on the wounds he sent the rest of the pack forward to get Rachel and the vehicles. When James protested the order for Dom, who was obviously limping, to accompany the rest of them, Alec backhanded him into a building without even bothering to change forms.
"This is not a democracy. Dom will be fine. Just go."
Alec waited a couple of minutes after everyone else had left and then turned back to Isaac and me.
"I know you're having a hard time, Jess. It's hard on Isaac too; he just doesn't show it as much. Once upon a time you understood that. I get that things have changed, that we're all just strangers to you. Believe it or not, Isaac gets it as well."
I opened my mouth, not sure what I was going to say, but Alec shook his head and kept talking.
"There are things however that haven't changed. The most important one where you're concerned is that Isaac is still willing to run crazy risks to try and protect you. It's easy for people to say all kinds of things, but that's not Isaac. If you watch what he does, that speaks volumes and has since the two of you were little."
--The Story continues in Trapped--
I hope you've enjoyed Intrusion, hopefully you read Broken, Torn and Splintered before you got here. Please don't forget to check out Scent of Tears (Reflections, short story),Handoff (Dark Reflections, short story) and Frozen Prospects (The Guadel Chronicles) if you haven't already. I've included an excerpt of Handoff below for your enjoyment.
Acknowledgments:
As always, thanks needs to go out to everyone that continues to provide support in dozens of different ways. When an author chooses to go the indie route, it means they absolutely rely on their fans to get the word out, and I'm very appreciative everyone that blogs, reviews, or otherwise helps put these stories and novels on the map.
Additional thanks need expressed to Obsidian Dawn, www.obsidiandawn.com, for brushes used in the creation of the cover for Intrusion.
As always, none of this would be possible without my wife Katie, who puts up with long hours from me while she does heroic work on the editing and covers.
About the Author:
Dean started reading seriously in the second grade due to a competition, and has spent most of the subsequent three decades lost in other people's worlds. After reading several local libraries more or less dry of sci-fi and fantasy, he started spending more time wandering around worlds of his own creation to avoid the boredom of the 'real' world.
Things worsened, or improved depending on your point of view, when he first started experimenting with writing while finishing up his accounting degree. These days Dean has a wonderful wife and daughter to keep him rather more grounded, but the idea of bringing others along with him as he meets interesting new people in universes nobody else has ever seen tends to drag him back to his computer on a fairly regular basis.
Keep up to speed on Dean's latest projects at deanwrites.blogspot.com or follow him on Twitter @Writer_Dean
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Handoff Excerpt
"If this goes on much longer, I'm going to have to kill someone just so we can see some real action."
Pitch looked like he wanted to cuff Mouth, but even Pitch had to think twice before getting physical with Mouth. It wasn't Mouth's appearance. Compared to some of the mercs that routinely worked for the Lieutenant, Mouth was practically a choir boy. Blond hair, blue eyes and a square jaw that had been known to lure in girls who really should have known better.
It wasn't ever the surface that tipped people off about Mouth, it was all the stuff just under the skin. Adam was pretty sure Mouth was ex-military, but if so he'd never made it through his tour to be honorably discharged. Anyone who'd spent time at the front knew you could get away with a lot when it was just you and your unit stuck in the middle of some forsaken bit of swamp, but Adam had never been in any unit that would have let Mouth pursue his more exotic vices, and Mouth wasn't known for his self-restraint.
Pitch, an ex-sergeant from the Marines, apparently decided he couldn't let the comment pass without a least making motions to rein Mouth in.
"Quiet. You're supposed to be pretending to be a hole in the night."
"Whatever, Pitchy. This is just another milk run. I signed on to get stuck in, not babysit abandoned train yards."
"I don't care what you signed on for, you signed on. That means until the Lieutenant says otherwise, you'll babysit whatever I tell you to babysit, or you'll be out on your ass again looking for work."
For a second it looked like Mouth was going to respond, but he settled for flipping Pitch off and rolling back over onto his stomach. It'd probably been that last bit that had pulled him up short. Even a sniper as good as Mouth couldn't count on a steady stream of jobs if he was stupid enough to piss of the few merc's with the kind of contacts to put real work together.
Mouth likely had warrants out in every state on the west coast. When you had money little things like the police being after you weren't necessarily show stoppers, but Mouth spent it faster than even he could bring it in. If he pissed off Pitch enough for the wiry, black ex-Seal to convince the Lieutenant to drop him, he'd have to turn to wetwork to pay the bills, and he wasn't smart enough to get away with that for long.
Satisfied that he wasn't going to have to worry about putting a round into Mouth's back, Adam rested his cheek back against the stock of his L115A3. The night sight currently letting him pierce the darkness, had cost the better part of five grand, and still was a fraction of the cost of the rifle it was mounted on.
It rankled more than a little that the Lieutenant had brought Mouth in on this job. If someone else had asked Adam along on a stateside mission he would have told them no. There was just too much risk of getting tangled up with law enforcement. The Lieutenant had told Adam more than once that mercs made their living on the fringes of civilization, and smart ones chose the fringes not in North America.
The call asking Adam along on this particular foray into lawlessness hadn't included an explanation as to the reason the Lieutenant was breaking his own rules, but Adam hadn't pressed. The Lieutenant had saved Adam's life six years ago when there hadn't been an upside and Adam had been his man ever since. He'd served as overwatch on the last half-dozen missions he'd been asked to join, and he'd saved the team's ass more than once.
.338 rounds were more than capable of ripping through light vehicles at the appropriate ranges. Bringing along Mouth and his .50 Barrett was both overkill and stupid. Adam just couldn't see any scenario where they were going to run into full-blown armored vehicles this go around. Even the up-armored SUV's some of the drug cartels used in this part of Arizona didn't justify dealing with Mouth's attitude, not on a mission Adam hadn't wanted to be on in the first place.
A burst of static signaled orders from the Lieutenant. "Our principle will be arriving shortly. Some kind of handoff occurring. Our orders are to keep him from being disturbed."
"Right. Like I said, a milk run. Thermals aren't picking anything up, and there's nothing but desert for miles. What in the hell was Union P thinking putting a yard all the way out here?"
"I'm serious, Mouth. Can it. We've got movement coming from this direction."
Adam resisted the temptation to take his attention off of his slice of the horizon and rubberneck. Pitch would let him know what he needed to know. The old man had served as a spotter for nearly two decades on more continents than most people could name without looking in an encyclopedia.
Instead Adam reviewed the layout of the rail yard. A single two story building with some kind of metal awning over the door stood just to the west of a central open compound. The snipers and Pitch had set up on the building since it gave them the most commanding vantage despite the blind spots created by the scattering of smaller structures surrounding it. The rest of the team was spread out to cover gaps between buildings and help provide eyes on the dead spots that the overwatch team couldn't see.
"Two vehicles inbound. Looks like SUV's of some kind. They're running dark."
Pitch's voice had dropped into the smooth cant of someone used to pointing out targets without startling his men enough to make them miss shots.
"Damn, everything's all happening at once. I've got a pair of semi's that just came around the hill. They part of the plan or do I get to do something about them?"
"They're expected. The handoff is supposedly container sized."
Something flickered across Adam's scope. Too fast to be anything land bound but bigger than any bird he'd ever seen.
Table of Contents
Intrusion
Handoff Excerpt
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