Amazing they can retain some ambulatory capability after so much damage…
Rough hands jerked him up. Ellenshaw cried out again and swung at the figure towering over him. The blow was stopped cold by a deft forearm block, and then Ellenshaw was spun around to face his opponent.
It was Acheson. The containment team leader’s face was battered and bloody from his encounter with Stahl, and his eyes had a peculiar gleam to them. They looked dead to Ellenshaw, as dead as a vampire’s. His jaw was set, and his split lips were compressed into a thin line as he stared at Ellenshaw.
“Are you hurt?” Acheson asked before Ellenshaw could say anything.
Ellenshaw shook his head, still a bit dazed. “No…” He saw something move past Acheson’s shoulder. The vampire he had staked but not killed darted toward them, fangs bared, eyes narrowed into furious slits. It no longer laughed, no longer toyed with its prey. It had been hurt, and it wanted to strike back… and then feed.
Ellenshaw managed only a strangled croak as a warning. Acheson pivoted with more speed and grace than Ellenshaw had thought possible, given the gear he carried and the beating he had suffered. Acheson’s right hand lashed out as he grabbed the smaller vampire by the neck. In one fluid movement, he hurled the creature into the flaming, twisted wreckage of the Excursion. The vampire howled as it was impaled upon warped, blackened metal. The flames consumed it instantly, brightening as they devoured the Undead’s putrid flesh. Acheson ended its screams with a single shot from the AA-12; the vampire’s head exploded into wet fragments.
“Your gear’s smoldering!” Acheson pushed Ellenshaw away from the fire, and Ellenshaw stumbled when he stepped on the first vampire’s severed arm. It bent at the elbow, its fingers clutching at him. Acheson grabbed the appendage and tossed it into the fire, along with the rest of the vampire’s tattered, trembling corpse. He dragged Ellenshaw deeper into the house, staring into the smoke ahead. Water from the sprinkler system washed over them.
“Ellenshaw, recharge your weapon. How many others are there on this floor?”
Ellenshaw’s hands trembled as he shoved a fresh magazine into the empty M-4. “Several. The rest of the team is—”
“I know where they are. Stay close.” Acheson hefted the AA-12. It wasn’t difficult to know where to go, even though the thick smoke made visibility haphazard more than three feet ahead. The gunfire was unmistakable, and since the overhead sprinklers were now getting a handle on the flames, they could move more freely. A bullet cracked past Ellenshaw’s left ear. He didn’t know which threat to be more mindful of—the vampires or catching a stray round in the face.
The smoke parted, revealing a vampire creeping along the floor. One of its legs was cocked at an odd angle, courtesy of a gunshot. Half its lank hair was singed off its head, but as Ellenshaw and Acheson watched, it grew back. The leg straightened as well, snapping into place with a loud pop. As it healed, the vampire became aware of the men behind it. It whirled while springing to its feet, almost spinning like a top, its demonic eyes glaring at them.
“Want to play a game?” Its voice was rough and ragged, courtesy of a neck wound still in the process of healing.
Acheson blasted it with a burst from his AA-12. The vampire collapsed to the ground in a shuddering heap, its head rolling clear of its body. Acheson blasted it into fragments, and bone and teeth scattered across the floor. Ellenshaw pulled another stake from his knapsack and sunk it into the mutilated body’s thorax. It quivered once, then fell still.
Shapes appeared in the smoke. Ellenshaw drew back, lifting his M-4 as the rest of the vampires charged toward them.
“Team, hit the deck!” Acheson shouted over his microphone. He nudged Ellenshaw out of the way and lifted the AA-12’s barrel. The weapon roared, and he screamed as he went to guns on the remaining vamps, letting off controlled bursts. He shot each vampire in the center of its mass, and the minigrenades did their work, blasting meat off fractured bone. The vamps howled but still tried to attack, save for one that scuttled off into the smoky darkness.
“Team! Master vamp headed your way!” Acheson reported as he fired a single round into each vamp’s head, taking them out for the count.
“Got it,” Julia responded, and a moment later her MP-5 coughed in the distance.
“Stake it, stake it!” Cecil shouted over the radio. Something shrieked loud and long in the smoldering darkness. The cry went on for much longer than human lungs could sustain before it trailed off.
“Is everything all right?” Ellenshaw asked as he slid stakes into the vampires Acheson had dropped.
“Vamp down.” Julia’s voice was thin and weary. “The vamps to our rear have broken contact and disappeared, over.”
“Roger that,” Acheson replied. Through the thinning smoke he could make out the long hallway the team had been caught in. Julia stood over the decomposing corpse of the master vamp she and Nacho had staked. Cecil and Licht oriented their weapons toward the hallway’s rear.
Ellenshaw staked the last of the vamps and rose to his feet. He removed one gauntlet and rubbed his eyes.
“Done here.”
“Team, move toward us. Maintain a perimeter down here as well as you can—there’s a lot of territory to cover, but the bastards won’t be able to sneak up on you.”
“Roger that,” Julia said, and she led the others toward the entry hall. One of Nacho’s dogs led the way, its muzzle wrinkling as it snarled. The animal was trembling. Acheson suddenly felt the same way as a bolt of fear and revulsion shot through his entrails.
“Robert… do you—”
“I feel it too, Mark.” Ellenshaw’s face was ashen. The skin beneath his right eye convulsed, overcome by a nervous tic. He looked toward the sweeping staircase, where the left stairway rose to the mansion’s second floor.
“Whatever it is, it’s happening up there.”
Acheson nodded. He reloaded the AA-12 with a fresh barrel of minigrenades. Julia approached him. Her eyes looked glazed. Acheson nodded to her.
“I want you and Cecil to get that second FAE ready,” he told her. “The first one didn’t fuck up this place like it should have, and we’re basically out of time.”
“Can you feel it, too?” she asked. “The… fear?”
“Yeah.”
“So I’m not just freaking out. What’s the plan?”
Acheson headed for the stairs without answering.
“Mark!”
Ellenshaw grabbed Julia’s arm and stopped her from following Acheson. “Mark and I will handle this part. The rest of you set the FAE and get clear. If we can follow you, we will. If we can’t, then there’s nothing to be done for us anyway.”
“You can’t face Osric alone!”
Nacho’s dogs bayed madly, then ran off into the storm-torn night. Nacho shouted after them, but they did not heel.
“You feel it? Osric’s threat is growing, so the sooner we face him, the better. Follow Mark’s orders.” Ellenshaw bolted up the steps two at a time until he caught up to Acheson. The two men stood abreast as they advanced up the remaining stairs.
26
The mirror thrummed with a power so potent that Osric felt a thousand times more powerful. The total evil emanating from the device bathed him with malice and discontent, passing through every cell of his Undead body. It was the closest he had felt to being alive in centuries.
A part of Osric’s consciousness—one small part that refused to succumb to the rapture that presaged the Ancient One’s arrival—continued to take a psychic inventory of his surroundings. The human slaves that had formed a perimeter around the room were also affected by the cascading wickedness, but on a much lower level. Mankind’s ability to discern pure evil had eroded with time and evolution, leaving them almost blind and deaf to it. However, they were fidgety and on edge, as was the Hara woman. The portion of Osric that stood sentry duty found it curious that Claudia Nero was, in an unusual counterpoint, almost ethereally calm. Was she resigned to her fate, or had she
also been seduced by the evil? Even though she lay naked on the floor at his feet, Osric could no longer read her. Just minutes ago, Osric would have been able to anticipate her every move. Now, all he felt from her was a blinding lust that overpowered everything else.
The clutch of vampires that had returned to the large, candlelit room stirred, also caught up in the thrall of the moment as Osric continued to speak in the Ancient’s tongue, bidding him forth. As he spoke, Osric lit a series of candles. The second story’s fire suppression system hadn’t been triggered, which was fortunate. A great deal of the invocation ceremony depended on certain atmospheric details remaining constant, and a deluge of water would have altered things considerably.
But the vampires—and the humans they owned—served as a tenuous conduit to the physical world. Through their unease, he sensed all was not well. Even while he was immersed beneath waves of pure, delightful malice, he could ferret out the thread of worry that moved from human to vampire and back again. A worry that had nothing to do with the coming of the Ancient One. Osric reached out with his mind and was surprised to find that all of his subordinate masters were gone—Stahl, Vanessa, Orlat, even Rodrigo. All that remained were several newlings who were held at bay only by Helena.
How can this be? Osric asked himself. He dared to pull himself away from the evil that bathed him, for just an instant. It was long enough for him to get a taste of what had transpired, and who was urging events forward.
Acheson. Ellenshaw.
There were several momentary pauses in the ceremony. When Osric transitioned into one of those pauses, he moved away from the euphoric evil that washed over him like a narcotic. Just long enough to fix his gaze on Helena.
Just long enough to tell her what to do.
***
The smoke was thicker upstairs than it had been below, and was slower to dissipate. Acheson panned his weapon to the right side of the landing, while Ellenshaw kept watch to the left. Debris from the exploded Excursion crunched underfoot, and a body lay along the wall—a dead human lying atop an assault rifle. Acheson fired a single explosive round into the corpse’s head. He was taking no chances.
“Oh no,” Ellenshaw moaned.
Advancing through the dissipating smoke, her white ballroom dress incongruously clean and bright, Helena Rubenstein drifted toward them. Her strawberry-blonde hair was well-styled, and though her eyes hadn’t held life in well over a year, she still looked very much like a porcelain doll. When she smiled, her fangs gleamed.
She spread her arms wide as she looked at Ellenshaw. “Hello, Robert,” she cooed. “Give me a kiss?”
Acheson swung the AA-12 toward her. Helena frowned and Ellenshaw slapped the weapon’s barrel aside. Ellenshaw faced her, ignoring Acheson. He made no attempt to train his M-4 on Helena.
Another door at the opposite end of the hallway opened, and two men appeared with assault rifles. They opened fire, and Acheson spun toward them as he fell to his knees—there was nothing he could do for Ellenshaw now. The attackers’ aim was atrocious—the first volley missed Acheson and Ellenshaw by a wide margin, and the bullets blasted deep divots into the plaster walls. Acheson’s return fire was not as random. One of the men collapsed into a bloody heap as three rounds struck his chest in a neat group, decimating lungs and heart and liver after shattering his sternum. The second man yelped and ducked back into the room, but Acheson raked the doorway with full automatic bursts. The minigrenades ripped apart the doorframe and blasted through the wall and the man on the other side. His ragged corpse slumped to the floor in two pieces.
Before Acheson could take further actions, several vampires surged out of the room, leaping over the bloodied corpses. Their eyes were wild, and they shrieked like demented cats, fangs exposed, tongues flicking at the air like those of a serpent. They charged toward Acheson at full speed, some on all fours on the floor, others sidling up the wall and onto the ceiling, where they advanced like gigantic cockroaches.
“Ellenshaw!” Acheson fired into the vampires even as they dispersed. He blasted one in two and chopped the leg off another. A third launched itself from the ceiling, flying toward him like a missile. Acheson backpedaled while pumping a stream of fire into it, splitting it almost in half from head to crotch. The vampire—they were all ghouls, he saw—thrashed and flailed about on the polished floor, spurting black ichor across the long Persian rug that ran the length of the landing.
“Ellenshaw!” Acheson risked a glance over one shoulder and saw the older man slowly follow Helena Rubenstein as she faded back into the doorway she had emerged from, beckoning to him with long, clawed fingers. Her eyes blazed, and she grinned like a mischievous child.
Ellenshaw had looked at her eyes and followed her without hesitation, giving no sign he was even aware of Acheson’s plight.
Something tugged at one of Acheson’s boots, and he tore his eyes away from Ellenshaw’s retreating back. The ghoul he had almost split in two had crawled the last few feet toward him and was clutching the toe of his boot with one gnarled hand. Acheson yanked his foot free and fired a burst into the creature’s head. Foul-smelling ichor spurted all over Acheson’s legs. He continued backpedaling as the rest of the vampires closed on him, despite their injuries. He pulled back the trigger on the AA-12, rewarding them with withering, lethal weapon fire. Limbs were disintegrated, torsos were blasted open so wide that coils of dead intestines boiled forth—but still, the vampires advanced, howling in pain and rage and hunger.
The AA-12’s ammunition drum ran dry. Acheson ejected the spent drum and inserted another, his hands and fingers moving in a practiced, machinelike fashion. He pulled back on the AA-12’s charging lever and fired again, just as one ghoul’s hands seized the fabric of his body armor. The AA-12’s first burst blew the creature in two while the second burst raked across the rest of the vamps, driving them to the floor. They writhed in agony as their bodies tried to repair themselves.
The vamp Acheson had blasted in half still clung to him. The nub of its spinal column whipped back and forth like some grotesque tail as strands of gray, fetid intestine poured out of it, splashing onto the floor and Acheson’s steel-toed boots. It was this that caused him to lose his balance as one foot slipped in the smelly mess, flinging him onto his back. The vampire cackled wildly, riding him all the way down. Acheson’s head struck the floor hard, and the AA-12 fell from his grasp. He flung one arm up as the vampire’s head reared back, fangs bared. It struck him like a cobra.
***
Peace, Robert…you’re at peace with me, Helena’s voice whispered in his head. With me, you will be complete. With me, you will find everlasting love at my side. With me, you will live for an eternity in perpetual bliss.
Her sudden appearance had surprised Ellenshaw before he could guard himself. In that single moment of weakness, he had faced his former love squarely, and their eyes had met. She had ensnared him, and his willpower, his entire sense of self, was crowded out of the way. He was dimly aware of the battle raging behind him as Acheson faced the rest of the vampires alone. A small core of his consciousness pleaded with him to turn and add his own firepower to the fight, but Helena filled his mind completely. Turning from her—he could never do that, not now, not ever.
He followed Helena as she retreated into another narrow hallway, at the end of which candlelight flickered, casting shimmering shadows about. Helena was silhouetted against it, and she stretched out her arms to him, beckoning for him to embrace her as she continued to drift back.
“Kiss me, Robert,” she said, this time using her real voice. “Kiss me. It’s been so long, darling, and I’ve missed you so…”
Ellenshaw advanced toward her. But as she retreated from him, the shadows grew darker, deeper, until her features disappeared entirely. For a moment, the iridescent light was caught and held by her inhuman eyes… but then, even they faded as her face dipped into impenetrable shadow.
And as her gaze faded from his view, her hold over him vanished.
&
nbsp; “Come, darling,” Helena whispered. “Come to me now.”
Ellenshaw did as she bade him, his M-4 hanging at his side. He felt her clammy, lifeless hands drift across his shoulders and draw him near. He put one hand on her hip. Beneath the fabric of the dress she wore, her body was cold, bony, inhospitable. Nothing like what it had been when she was alive. It was as if she were one of Madame Tussaud’s misplaced wax dummies. Her fetid breath wafted across his face, and he stiffened in revulsion. Helena sensed the change in him, and her grip became like iron around his neck.
“Too late for you now, Robert,” she hissed. She pulled him toward her and felt her fangs scrape his collar.
“Goodbye, Helena,” he whispered as he thrust the stake he had pulled from his knapsack deep into her chest.
Helena threw her head back and shrieked, flinging herself away from him. She slammed against the opposite wall and crawled halfway up its face, screaming, as thick ichor boiled out from around the stake. Then her scream became a choked gargle as more ichor spurted from her widespread jaws in a gurgling rush. Helena convulsed twice, then collapsed to the floor. Her eyes turned to him, dead, doll-like, their power draining away.
“Robert,” the thing croaked once, before the eyes fell back into their sockets and the skin of its face began to melt away.
Ellenshaw shook as a ragged sob forced its way out of him. Hot tears burned in his eyes as the old grief hammered home once again. Helena now lay at rest, but his heart had been flayed open and laid bare.
The gunfire outside stopped. Ellenshaw turned and looked back the way he had come. Acheson was on his back, wrestling with the torso of a vampire as it climbed up his body. Several others were scattered about, their bodies savaged by Acheson’s gunfire, but they were collecting themselves. As Ellenshaw watched, they swarmed toward Acheson, screeching like banshees.
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