Emboldened ghouls and newborns scrabbled at his feet, trying to trip him up. The blood from his wounds began to pour into his eyes, coloring everything red.
Fuck. This is it, I guess.
The leering visage of the female Damned hovered into view as he tried to blink the blood out of his eyes. He lost almost all sense of direction and perspective. Suddenly he felt a blast of warm, fetid air in his face. The Damned’s hands clamped down on his shoulders. The blood disappeared from his eyes for an instant as he felt an icy slug of a tongue lick the blood away.
The female Damned pressed its forehead to his.
You’re going to suffer for what you did to The Seer.
Who are you?
I had a name once. Now I’m just an Executioner.
You’re in my head.
Yes. I’m going to tear your mind apart like tissue paper. And then all these lesser rabble can have your body.
If you’re in my head, can you see what I see?
A psychic shriek filled Price’s ears (brain?) as their mind-link broke. The Hunter of the Dead had wrapped his gauntleted fingers around The Executioner’s head and peeled her away from Price. The Damned struggled, shrieking in his grip. Price didn’t hesitate. He thrust the machete into her throat, cut left, then swiped back right, severing the ligaments that bound her head to her body even as they healed.
Price dropped down on the other side of the roulette table, making sure that it was between him and The Hunter. He glanced around to see the ghouls and newborns scrambling away from The Hunter’s wrath, like cockroaches when the kitchen light comes on. The last of The Damned was scampering away with them, scaling the walls like Spider-Man and disappearing through a skylight that had not been a part of the building’s original design.
Price watched as the roulette table rose up in the air as though possessed. It seemed to hover there for a moment, before it came crashing down. The Hunter held only a jagged wooden table leg from the table he had just smashed to matchsticks. Price scrambled backwards, crabwalking until he ran into another table leg.
“These things are bolted down,” he muttered.
Then he felt the table leg jab into his ribcage. He reached out and grabbed it, trying to push it away from his heart. Had The Hunter mistaken him for a vampire? Could he no longer tell the difference? Is that why he killed humans and vampires indiscriminately?
Price stopped struggling when he realized that The Hunter had pressed the flat edge of the table leg into his chest. Price was breathing heavily, his body glistening with sweat. He looked up into The Hunter’s inexpressive mask.
The Hunter peeled off his chestplate, revealing a scorched and seared chest which quickly healed and turned to the ordinary pallor of vampiric skin as soon as the metal was gone. He removed his helmet, his face a ghastly charred skeleton. As the seconds passed, the seared flesh flaked off, eyes, tongue, and ears regrew, and the Hunter’s face slowly materialized. Though pale and vampiric, he clearly resembled the caricature of the White Bishop from Kasprzak’s book.
“What are you…what do you want?”
The Hunter made no response. Instead he pressed the jagged edge of the wooden beam Price was now bracing into his breast and collapsed.
“God damn it!” Price howled as the massive weight of the armored man came down against him, all concentrated on his bruised and now cracking ribs.
Price struggled as the Hunter, now dead, continued to sink down, centimeter by centimeter on the wooden stake. Price groaned in pain, sweat dripping from his brow and blood continuing to flow into his eyes from his wounds. The Hunter’s corpse had nearly reached him. When it came the full way down the stake he would be pinned and unable to move at best, and would have his intestines crushed at worst.
Price began laughing. Partly it was the pain, but partly it was the madness of it all.
I can’t believe I survived all that and now I’m going to die from being crushed to death by this fat fuck.
Eleven
Nico climbed out of the sewer, panting, and heaved himself onto the street. He wanted to just lay there and sleep but the sounds of slavering ghouls below made him grab the manhole cover and replace it. He struggled to his feet. The Aztec wasn’t far off.
He cracked his bat on the ground, pleased at the jolt it gave him.
“Still alive, motherfuckers! Still alive.”
He hurried towards the entrance to the Aztec, his weapon poised over his shoulder. A mob of salivating ghouls and newborn vampires were fleeing in all directions from the place. He even thought he spotted the sallow grey flesh of one of the monsters that had attacked the Fill-Up.
“Batter up!” Nico roared, swinging away at what had formerly been a tourist in a zoot suit.
The man’s head flew away in an arc that would’ve made Babe Ruth proud. Nico swung again and again and connected a few more times but to his surprise the beasties were hardly paying him any attention. He stopped and stood still in a tide of vampires as though he were a rock in the middle of a creek. None of them stopped to attack him.
They’re scared shitless.
He glanced at the entrance to the Aztec.
Maybe I should be, too.
Nico had to smash the glass to get through the entrance doors. Only emergency lighting kept the casino aglow. The place had been torn to shreds. Holes gaped in the ceiling, tables and slot machines were overturned, gory blood and viscera coated every surface. And yet the place was so silent he could’ve heard a mouse break wind.
In the false pyramid in the center of the casino, he saw the remains of the Hunter’s handiwork. By his count, eleven Damned. Plus the one that had attacked the Fill-Up made twelve. That left only one unaccounted for. Maybe he had seen one running away after all.
Instantly, his attention was wrenched away from his back-napkin arithmetic by a gurgling cry of pain from his mentor, broken and dying.
“Price!”
Nico hurried over, sliding to Carter’s side. The Hunter of the Dead, his helmet and breastplate missing, was lying, impaled on a solid stick of wood, and crushing Price’s legs and hips.
“Carter! Carter!”
Nico didn’t want to believe it but he felt the tears flowing from his eyes.
“Fuck! Fuck!”
Nico swung around in a circle and threw his bat as far as he could.
“Jesus, kid,” Price said, awakening with a cough, “did your puppy get cancer?”
Nico tried to swipe away the tears from his face as best he could and dropped down to Price’s side.
“Carter! What the fuck happened here?”
Price glanced around at the blasted battlefield.
“Ah, not much. I seem to recall challenging The Hunter of the Dead to a game of backgammon, but he wasn’t really up for it.”
Nico put his shoulder into The Hunter, trying to dislodge him from Price’s body. Price slapped him in the ear.
“Ah, quit it, kid. My hips have been pinched clean through. That body is the only thing keeping me alive. As soon as you lift it my guts are going to come pouring out.”
“Don’t say that, Carter, you’ll be fine as soon as…”
“As soon as they find a cure for being sliced in half? Look, kid, it’s a medical curiosity I’m alive. Or. You know.”
“A miracle?”
“Yeah. Something like that. Reach in my jacket over there and grab my phone.”
Nico grabbed a tassel on the deerskin jacket and pulled it over. He fished out Price’s cell phone.
“Call Bonaparte. Tell her you’re here.”
Nico flipped open the phone. He prepared to scroll through the “B” section of Price’s address book, but there was no need. He only had one number on the whole phone. Nico pressed it.
“What is it, Price?” a man’s voice answered.
“Uh, this is Nico Salazar. I’m inside the Aztec.”
“Understood. Wait where you are. We’ll send you a pickup. Does this mean Price is not coming?”
&nb
sp; “He’s…no, I don’t think so.”
Nico snapped the phone closed and stuck it in his pocket.
“There’s something else for you. Check the inside pocket. It’s not, you know, done, but…well, I guess it’s time.”
Nico reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a small wooden stake, one of the ones from Price’s bandolier. Price had started to carve something into it. Four letters. N-E-K-O.
“That’s not how you spell my name.”
Price glanced at the stake, then at the nametag Nico still wore.
“Ah, shit. Well, you get the point.”
Nico laughed and cried at the same time. It was a strange sensation. He put his hand on Price’s stubbly cheek.
“Carter, I just want to say…”
“Forget it. Really. Just…kill some fucking nightcrawlers. And don’t turn into Bonaparte.”
Nico reached down and took his mentor’s hand.
“I’ll keep the Price dream alive and well.”
The whir of a helicopter approaching sounded overhead. Nico glanced up through one of the holes that had recently been busted in the ceiling by fleeing monsters and saw the Inquisition helicopter. A light shone down and spotted him, followed by a rope ladder. Nico looked back down at Price but the older man’s hand had already gone limp. Nico grabbed the ladder and started to climb.
The helicopter took off towards the outskirts of the city. There seemed to be a running battle on every block between newborn vampires and police, National Guardsmen, and Inquisitors. From up high all the people looked like…well, not ants, just like small people. Finally they reached the edge of the city which Nico saw was being quarantined with bales of concertina wire and military checkpoints.
The helicopter set down and the pilot pointed toward a tent marked with the symbol of the Inquisition. Nico took off, ducking to stay below the still whirring blades as the helicopter took off again. He entered the tent to see a map affixed to a standing corkboard and whiteboards recording various statistics: The Battle of Las Vegas playing out in real time. Bonaparte stood there with a military commander and what was probably the chief of police for Las Vegas.
“Crossbows have proven more effective than we initially thought,” the police chief was saying.
“Of course,” Bonaparte agreed. “We’re dealing with newborns. They won’t have had time to cover their hearts.”
“I just wish we had more.”
“My people will get you more. We stockpile crossbows but we rarely use them.”
She snapped her fingers at a nearby Inquisitor who nodded and hurried off.
“Are you going to need some on the barriers, General Harris?”
The Guardsman shook his head.
“It’s not exactly ‘one shot, one kill,’ but we’ve got enough firepower to take them on. The men have been improvising Molotov cocktails and other explosives to destroy them. But even our small arms have enough stopping power to slow them down and turn them back from the barriers.”
Bonaparte folded her arms.
“So the city’s bottled up tight?”
“None of those bastards are getting through.”
Bonaparte nodded.
“Soon it will be sunrise and then things will go much easier for our hunter units. We’ll have to go down into the tunnels and the sewers, and conduct door-to-door searches.”
“That’ll be a cakewalk after tonight,” the policeman said. “My real concern is the source of the outbreak, these super-vampires.”
The policeman knocked on a blurry picture of one of The Damned which had been Scotch taped to one of the whiteboards.
“How many of these are left?”
“One,” Nico said.
All three heads turned towards him.
“Who are you?” Harris asked.
“He’s one of mine,” Bonaparte said.
He glared at her.
“No, I’m not. I saw remains of eleven of The Damned. And I think I saw one of them escaping.”
The police officer turned to Bonaparte.
“You said there were twelve to start with?”
“Thirteen originally, but, yes, as of today, twelve.”
“Well, that’s good,” Harris said, “Eleven down, one to go. Almost there.”
“That needs to be our top priority,” the police chief said. “One of those plague vectors escapes and this could start all over again in another city. Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen if there isn’t anything else, I have to get back to my command center.”
“I’d better run before I turn into a pumpkin, too,” Harris agreed.
After the appropriate nods and handshakes, the two officials left the tent. Nico stared after them.
“Didn’t you have trouble convincing those starched suits that vampires were real?”
Bonaparte shook her head and gestured for him to sit in a folding chair across from her.
“Not really. They worked for one for long enough. My biggest worry was that the corruption was deep, but when it came down to brass tacks they just liked Cicatrice’s money.”
“So they stepped up when their citizens were endangered?”
“Yes. Well, endangered publicly anyway. Can’t forget that tolerating Cicatrice led to years of missing persons cases dismissed with a handwave.”
“But I suppose none of us exactly have clean hands.”
Bonaparte gave him a sidelong glance while she opened a bottle of cognac and poured two glasses.
“You’re referring to…?”
“You must’ve known this would happen if you put Cicatrice down. He was the caretaker for The Damned.”
“I knew it was a possibility.”
“That’s why you spent your life building this army.”
“Partly that. And partly because I do believe this is the way to beat them. Can I assume Carter is not going to be joining us?”
“He’s gone. The Hunter, too.”
Bonaparte seemed surprised.
“I’d been wondering if we’d flush him out. Well, all’s well that ends…well, you know what I mean, kid.”
“You were wrong, you know.”
“In which capacity?”
“You know Professor Kasprzak?”
“Yes.”
“She was one of them. Before I put her down she said she knew the name of every Inquisitor in America. Because of your system. If we’d done it Price’s way, they’d all still be safe.”
Bonaparte was silent for a moment.
“Well, good thing you put her down then, kid.”
She clinked her glass against his. Neither of them stated the obvious. Whatever Kasprzak had put together had certainly not died with her. There would be files, that likely would already be in the hands of the vampires. And their long secret war was no longer a secret.
An Inquisitor came hurrying in, holding a laptop. He had rabbity little beady eyes.
“Ma’am! Ma’am! You’re not going to believe this!”
“What?”
“There’s been a rash of attacks in New Orleans.”
Bonaparte ran her hands down her face. She corked the cognac.
“It never rains but it pours. Are they confirmed vampires?”
Rabbit Eyes shook his head.
“Werewolves,” he whispered.
“Well, shit. It’s been a while since I’ve had a good wolf hunt. Most everybody will have to remain here for the cleanup tomorrow, but we’ll have to at least send some scouts. Don’t want the trail to get cold. You know how cagey werewolves can be.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Gather up five or six volunteers and put them on a chopper.” She eyed Nico up and down. “I don’t suppose you’ll be joining us for either effort?”
“I’m not really a joiner,” Nico replied.
A thin-lipped smile quirked her face.
“How did I guess you’d say that? Too bad. You would’ve made a hell of an Inquisitor.”
“I am an Inquisitor.”
&nb
sp; He held out his ceremonial stake towards her. She tapped the spelling mistake and grunted a laugh.
“Typical Carter. Well, congrats, kid. I can give you the name of a good tattooist in New Orleans.”
“Thanks, but I think I have some business left in Vegas.”
Bonaparte nodded.
“Good luck, kid. There should never be ill will between Inquisitors.”
She stuck out her hand. Nico took it.
“Um…one last question…if you don’t mind. Do you know what happened to Idi Han?”
“None of my men have captured or killed her. I can let you know if they do.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
She gave him a sidelong glance.
“I take it you’d rather deal with her?”
“Yeah. I think maybe I owe her that.”
Bonaparte shrugged and clapped him on the back.
“All right. She’s your problem now, kid.”
Nico reached into his shirt and drew out a small metal necklace bearing her nickname: Blood Flower. He ran his finger over it.
Twelve
Earlier that night…
Suddenly The Hunter froze in mid-air.
“Hello?” Price whispered.
“Hello, Price.”
“Idi Han?”
He felt her delicate fingers run through his hair. Her other hand, disproportionately tiny, was holding up the hundreds of pounds of muscle and metal.
“Are you going to let me up? Or…is this a revenge thing?”
“Did you kill Cicatrice?”
“No.”
“Who did?”
Price wheezed. Too much pain.
“Bonaparte. Her gang.”
“How did he go?”
He turned his head as best he could to look into her eyes, which were gleaming with something like earnestness. He struggled to reach into his pocket and handed her the obsidian ring.
“It was like watching a pack of jackals take down a lion.”
She didn’t smile, but he could tell she wanted to. She was learning to hide her emotions like her master had.
“I released The Damned. I wanted to change everything.”
He coughed. He didn’t like the look of the blood spatter his hacking was leaving on the floor.
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