His foot comes up and kicks me in the chest, slamming my back against the wall. I grunt in pain as his sword pierces my right shoulder. He raises his pistol and points it between my eyes. Trinh’s meteor hammer hisses through the air and wraps around his wrist. She jerks the cord, pulling his arm away just as he squeezes the trigger.
His look of surprise followed by overwhelming fury is priceless. I lift a leg and kick him for a goal between two rusting shipping containers. Trinh is already firing before he hits the ground. Jack’s angry cries indicate that at least some of the rounds hit home.
Jack lands and rolls around the corner of the shipping container out of Trinh’s view—but not mine. I bring Shalonda’s sights to bear down on him. Jack wraps the cord attached to his wrist around a protruding piece of metal and shears through the tough material with his sword. He jumps, narrowly avoiding my shot, and scrambles away into the fog.
“You managed to surprise me. I did not expect you to bring your bitch.”
“Woof woof!” Trinh shouts into the darkness.
Carol’s voice breaks over the radio. “He did not just call my bitch a bitch! Tag that bloodsucker so I can poke a hole in him.”
“I’m working on it,” Trinh replies.
“Work faster, Grandma.”
“Do you two want to keep down the chatter while we’re fighting the blood-crazed lunatic?” I snarl.
“What’d he say?” Carol asks. “Is Malone talking shit?”
“He said he would appreciate it if you didn’t talk so much,” Trinh replies.
“Tell him I would appreciate it if he ate a breath mint.”
“Remind her that I can hear her.”
“Remind him who’s three blocks away with a high-powered rifle.”
Now I remember why I prefer to work alone. I motion for Trinh to go around the left side of the building while I circle right. I’m halfway down the side when Trinh calls out. I leap onto the roof and sprint to the other side. Jack has her pressed against the wall. She triggers her halo and Jack curses. He backpedals and raises his pistol. Trinh rolls to her right, letting the wall take the bullet instead of her.
I drop down from the roof and try to split Jack down the middle lengthwise, but he steps aside with uncanny awareness. His leg comes up and blasts me in the gut, lifting me halfway back to the roof. I fall to the ground and land on my hands and knees. The report from his gun is deafening and the bullet’s impact drives me to the ground.
Jack raises his sword to strike at my exposed neck, but Trinh barrels into his back. He stumbles forward, catches his balance, and spins around. Trinh leans back, narrowly avoiding the sword slicing at her neck. Jack’s gun hand rises and fires off a shot. The bullet clips Trinh’s left shoulder, but she ignores the hit and charges forward.
“I tagged him,” she says into her headset, “now you bag him.”
The thermal tag lodged into Jack’s upper back is like a beacon to my eyes—just like it is to Carol’s rifle scope. I can only hear the suppressed shot over the city’s background noise in my earpiece, but I witness the effect firsthand. The round strikes with a meaty slap, and Jack stumbles beneath the impact. Blood spatters Trinh’s face as it exits his chest.
“Kill Mode, bitch,” Carol crows triumphantly.
I’m in mid-pounce when Jack curses and begins alternating his fire between me and Trinh. We both have to leap and dodge to avoid the wild fusillade Jack lays down as he retreats. The gun spews its last round and Jack sprints into the darkness before Trinh and I can get our feet beneath us. I hear the muffled shots and the bullets striking the pavement as Carol sends rounds after him.
“Carol, can you see him?” Trinh asks.
“I got him. He’s hauling ass to the north. Wait. He ducked behind another building about three hundred yards ahead of you and hasn’t come back out. There’s nowhere for him to go without me seeing him.”
“He took a good hit and is probably stopping to focus on healing his wounds,” I tell Trinh.
“Let’s not give him the time.”
We lope after him, quick but not without a measure of caution. Even at a jog, I’m impressed with her ability to match my pace without effort. I would really like to know how she has attained her unusual strength and ability. Maybe when this is over, and if she chooses not to kill me, I can find out.
“Carol, do you see him yet?” Trinh asks.
“Does who see him yet?” Carol responds.
“Goddammit, Kill Mode, now is not the time.”
“It’s the time it takes to utter an additional syllable, and no, he hasn’t come out from behind the building.”
I definitely prefer to work alone and Trinh’s growl says that sometimes she would like to as well. We slow to a brisk walk as we approach the building. It’s small. Perhaps twenty feet on each side. I motion for Trinh to wait as I circle around to the other side. Reaching the far end, I peer around the corner and spot the faint glow of a heat signature ebbing out from behind a stack of crates.
I step around the corner and see Trinh approaching from the other end. We’ve covered half the distance to his hiding place when I start to get a bad feeling. Trinh and I jump around the trash heap, our weapons held at the ready only to find Jack’s coat and the small, barbed blade with its heat-generating handle stuck into a stack of pallets.
“Shit!” I curse.
“Oh my God. Carol. Carol!”
“I’m sorry, Carol isn’t here right now, but if you would like to leave your name and brief message—”
“Carol, he shed his tracker! He might be coming for you.”
“Bah, I’m on one of a dozen rooftops with a clear shot of your location. What’s the odds that he—oh shit!”
Carol’s rifle cracks over the radio. I can hear the sounds of a brief struggle then an ominous silence.
“Carol!” Trinh shouts into her headset.
Jack’s cold and callous voice plays in my earpiece. “She has wounded me severely. It is only suiting that I use her blood to heal me.”
“You sonofabitch!” Trinh screams.
“If you hurry, perhaps you can save her,” Jack says.
Trinh is already moving and it is an effort for me to keep up with her. We race across the industrial park and back into the city, heedless of anyone seeing us. Trinh reaches the building where Carol set up and jumps high enough to grab onto the second-floor fire escape railing. I manage to land on the platform feet first and haul her up by the wrist.
We both dash up the creaking, clanging three flights of metal stairs to reach the roof and find Carol lying near the western edge of the building. Trinh runs to her side while I scan the roof and nearby buildings for any sign of Jack.
Trinh cradles Carol’s head and presses her hand against the deep stab wound in her chest. Seeing no sign of an ambush, I jog over to the two women. Carol is conscious but just barely. The front of her shirt is soaked in blood.
“She’s alive,” Trinh says, her voice thick with fear but laced with relief. “He must have decided to run before he could finish her.”
I shake my head. “No, he wanted her alive. You’ll have to get her to a hospital, and fast. That takes you out of the fight.”
“You can’t fight him as you are, Malone. Not by yourself.”
“You’re probably right, but you can’t stay here, and I can’t just let him get away again. You need to get her out of here.”
“I don’t plan on staying. I’m saying you can’t fight him as you are, what you have become. He’s a monster. You have to be a monster too. Like you were.”
I shake my head as bile rises into my throat. “I can’t.”
“You have to! You have to meet him on his field, but then you have to have the strength to come back. It’s the only way.”
“I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I can find the monster and I’m even less confident I can put it back in the cage once I let it loose.”
“Then I’ll deal with you, but you need to deal with hi
m—now.”
I literally shudder at the thought of it. “Go, get her out of here.”
Trinh lifts Carol in her arms as if she were an infant and runs to the rooftop access. I watch her disappear through the door and down the stairs before I drop my weapons at my feet and stare at the city around me as I contemplate setting free a monster the likes of which the city has never seen.
I shed my human trappings and let my clothes lie next to my sword and gun. I look inward and find myself standing before the door holding back the darkness buried deep inside me. It has been locked for so long I don’t even know if I have the ability to open it any longer.
My “hand” trembles as I reach for the handle. I expect it to resist me when I try to pull it open, like a cage door with hinges rusted solid with age and disuse. The moment my fingertips brush the surface, the door crashes inward and the darkness reaches out, wraps around my body, and pulls me screaming inside. My cries cut off as the door slams behind me, locking my soul away in its lightless enclosure.
CHAPTER 28
I was a fool. After decades of talking to my shrink and through my own force of will, I thought I had banished the darkness, that living, breathing beast residing within me. All I had managed to achieve was to teach it to stop scratching at the door. It sat there, waiting patiently for me all these years. The moment I tried to open the door to get a peek inside, it reached out with its paw, sank its claws into me, and pulled me through, devouring me body and soul in an instant.
It is the seven mortal sins concentrated into a single concept. It is pride, avarice, lust, anger, and gluttony, but instead of envy and sloth there is fury and hatred. I gave it a body in which to act out its desires and then I set it free.
All of my senses heighten. I hadn’t realized how much of myself I had been suppressing. I can feel every hair stir with the wind, the city lights are almost blinding, and I can separate and identify a thousand sounds at once. I tilt my nose up and inhale, taking in the myriad scents, and pick out the ones carrying fresh blood.
The young woman, Carol I think her name is, I’m already forgetting, is chief amongst them. Even on the dark rooftop, I can pick out her blood staining the surface. I can also “see” the trail hanging in the air. It travels in two separate directions. One direction is entwined with the scent of another woman, the other with a man. A vampire. A rival!
The thought of another hunter in my territory infuriates me. I vaguely recall wanting to kill him for his crimes, but I no longer care about that. Everything I had been fighting for seems trivial now. All that matters is feeding and protecting my territory. I must feed. I feel as if I am starving even though part of me knows it is a hunger I cannot sate. But I’ll try.
My feet brush against something on the ground. Clothing and metal. I curl my lip in disdain for the human things. I run my hands across my bare chest, and a deep, satisfied rumbling makes my vocal cords quiver. This is how I was born. This is what I am supposed to be.
The wind is deafening in my ears as I sprint across the roof, leap from the ledge, and soar fifty, sixty feet across the gap between buildings. I strike the next rooftop with a surprisingly light step, roll, and am back on my feet in an instant, racing for the far side. I hurl myself into space once more, cling to a fire escape on the next building, and drop level by level to the street below.
Sniffing the air, I follow the blood trail down an alley. A new source of blood, fresher than the one I am following, reaches my nose. I hear voices ahead, soft and fearful. Stalking forward like a great hunting cat, I slink through the darkness, silent and deadly.
The flickering of a fire burning in a steel barrel is like a bonfire to my eyes. Near it, two men stand near a third who is laying on the ground near the barrel. His body is twisted at odd angles. He is the new source of blood, a victim of my rival. The other two vagrants, unable to detect the lingering stench of death with their pathetic senses, must have happened upon their fellow after Jack had made a meal of him.
One of them is trying to find his murderer in the darkness, but he may as well be blind for all the good his eyes do him. The other is going through the dead man’s pockets. They are pathetic creatures whose only value lies in being a food source. I pounce, my leap devouring the dozen yards separating me from my prey. I strike the wary one in the chest, sending him crashing against the wall and stunning him long enough for me to wrap the other one in my clutches. He struggles, but his efforts are futile.
My thumbnail parts the flesh and the carotid artery with the ease of a scalpel. Clamping my mouth over the jetting wound, I drink in the warm, life-giving liquid without wasting a drop. It takes only a minute before the blood flow dwindles to a trickle with my help. The other homeless man is on his feet and tries to stumble away. He is severely concussed and unable to operate his legs properly. It doesn’t matter. The man couldn’t flee if he had wings and could fly. Discarding my first meal, I leap onto his back before he is more than a few feet away.
I can feel the weight in my belly, but it isn’t enough. There can never be enough. I have more time with this one, but I am in a hurry. There is an interloper in my territory I simply cannot abide.
Satisfied for the moment, I toss my second victim aside and pick up Jack’s trail once more. He has returned to the industrial park and is expecting me. He wants to challenge my dominance. I won’t keep him waiting.
The scent trail leads me to a large, crumbling structure near the center of the sprawling complex. My instincts tell me he is inside. I scramble up the side of the forty-foot building and gaze into the dark interior. Jack is standing near the center, seemingly unconcerned. He thinks he has taken my measure and found it lacking. He has made a serious mistake.
My animal pride screams at me to destroy him, but my remaining intelligence warns me to use caution. He has earned alpha status in his own right and is a dangerous adversary. His senses are as acute as mine and his strength likely equal as well. With his sense of hearing and sight rivaling my speed and stealth, I choose to remove them both from the playing field. I drop through a busted skylight onto a rusted metal catwalk above the factory floor.
Jack spins in my direction, looking up, with his sword and pistol held at the ready. “Wonderful, you found me. Are you alone, Mr. Malone, or did you bring your little friend and let the girl die? Of course you did not let her die. You are far too civilized.” He sniffs at the air. “Oh, but you have been a naughty boy, haven’t you?”
I pick up a length of pipe and strike the catwalk. The metal on metal toll echoes through the cavernous building. Jack flinches, tensing his body for an attack that does not come. I pick up a chunk of broken cement and throw it into one of the building’s dark corners. Jack turns his head but does not shift his position. I hurl more bits of debris into the darkness, polluting the battlefield with my noise.
“Very clever, Mr. Malone. I knew I sensed something special in you. You just needed the proper motivation to bring it out.”
I jump to the ground floor, hiding behind an enormous piece of machinery. Jack turns toward the sound of my landing. I toss a chunk of metal across the room to distract him.
Jack glances at the sound but continues to face my direction. “A valiant effort, but I shan’t fall for such a clumsy ruse.”
He talks too much. I come out from behind my cover and fling a cinder block at him. He dodges the projectile, but I am coming in right behind it at nearly the same speed with only a slightly deviated trajectory. Jack snaps off a pair of shots and one catches me in the shoulder. I don’t care.
I hit him at a dead run, punching out with both fists. My twin blows catch him in the chest and send him flying several yards. I’m airborne before he strikes the ground. I land atop him and start slashing at his face with my hands, like an animal.
Jack brings his arms up to ward off my blows, gets a leg beneath me, and heaves me away. Now I’m the one in a semi-controlled flight. Bullets fly past me. A couple leave burning lines across my flesh as they skim
by. I push off the debris-littered floor the moment my feet touch the surface, lunging behind a piece of machinery to escape the barrage of bullets.
“You have given yourself fully to the blood,” Jack calls out as he seats a fresh magazine into his gun. “I imagine that is going to be a problem for you and Vincent, assuming you are triumphant here. It’s such a shame to have to put down a beloved pet. Come out, Old Yeller. It is past time to finish this.”
I sidle around the steel press to a pile of rubble and iron from where a section of the roof had caved in. I pick up a chunk of concrete with a length of rebar sticking out of it and wield it like a sledgehammer. My leap carries me over the mass of cement and iron, and I charge forth, using my momentum to swing my hammer with the power of a furious god.
Jack jumps straight into the air, high enough to allow me to go stumbling past as I try to check my wild swing. He fires, striking me in the back several times. I force the wounds to close even as I spin around with my weapon trailing behind in a lethal arc.
Jack springs back to avoid the punishing blow, but I release my grip on the handle and turn it into a projectile. The makeshift sledgehammer strikes him in the chest, burying the foot of rebar sticking out of the end into his body. The impact sends him flying backward into a stout support beam. The weapon’s inertia tears it from his body and it crashes deeper into the darkness.
I’m already moving, my hands extended, reaching for his throat. Jack has lost his gun, but he maintains his grip on his sword. He thrusts, and I nearly lose the battle. The sword punches through my chest as if it’s paper. A last-second shifting of my body saves me from a severed spine.
I slam into Jack with my full weight, driving his thrusting arm back and wrenching the sword from his hand. Grabbing the front of his jacket, I lift him up and slam him against the concrete floor several times before hurling him bodily against one of the huge motors that was once the heartbeat of the factory.
Primacy of Darkness Page 24