“Everything always is.” He stepped back, beckoning us through the door. “I thought immortality would teach people patience. Instead, you end up with vampires rushing about at superhuman speeds, even more stressed out than before they died.” Somewhere in the house, a little boy started crying, the sound swiftly climbing to an ear-piercing scream. Kyle gave me an apologetic smile. “I’ll be right back.”
Lena gave me a skeptical look as we followed him inside. I patted my pocket. “Love magnet, courtesy of L. Frank Baum. Its magic will burn out eventually, but it should make things go a little faster.”
Lena pulled me close. “I get that you like to show off, but next time, a heads-up about your plan would be appreciated, okay?”
“Sorry.” At first glance, the daycare center appeared completely normal. The ceiling tiles had all been painted, resulting in a chaotic mix of colors and scribbling. Posters about safety and respect and manners hung from the walls. The linoleum floor smelled like lemon cleaner, and I picked up the salty aroma of stale Play-Doh as well.
I also counted three security cameras, not including the one we had passed beneath the eaves on the porch.
I peeked into one room with a battered upright piano in the corner and toy instruments stuffed onto bright red-and-blue shelves. Another room was full of folded blankets, with plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the walls and ceiling.
The children were in what I assumed was the main playroom, judging from the number of toys scattered over the floor. A man and woman—more vampires, presumably—were herding nine kids who looked to range from about two to twelve years of age. A large sheepdog was “helping,” circling to and fro and eliciting giggles from a pair of young girls while Kyle talked quietly to a red-faced boy in the corner. The boy nodded, then smiled as Kyle reached out to tickle his neck.
“I’ll be in the office,” Kyle announced, shooing the boy back toward the others. “Don’t forget Jenny’s inhaler at seven, and make sure Tamika keeps her shoes on if you go outside.”
Several things happened as he turned to join us. One of the children pointed to Smudge and yelled, “Hey, he’s got a spider!” The sheepdog looked at me and snarled. And Smudge burst into red flame.
“Cool!” whispered the kid who had spotted Smudge.
Kyle frowned. “Mister Puddles, stay!”
The dog ignored him. The woman reached for the dog’s collar.
“Mister Puddles?” I repeated.
“The kids named him,” said Kyle. “He’s not usually like this with strangers.”
And he definitely shouldn’t have been like this with me. The love magnet should have had them all eager to help in whatever way they could.
Mister Puddles growled and snapped at the woman. She yanked her hand away, moving far quicker than any human, but none of the children appeared to notice. Her eyes were wide, and she stared at the dog as if she didn’t recognize it. Before anyone else could react, Mister Puddles was bounding straight at me.
For such a big animal, he moved fast, bowling Kyle aside and jumping onto my chest. The two of us slammed to the floor. I tried to shove his jaw away from my throat, but it was like trying to stop a bus with my bare hands. White teeth snapped at my throat, ripping my shirt away to expose the silver crucifix I had donned. The dog yelped and drew back, then gagged as Lena caught him by the collar.
The children shrieked in protest. “Don’t you hurt Mister Puddles!” A wooden duck flew through the air, striking Lena in the shoulder.
“Get them outside now,” Kyle shouted.
Mister Puddles kicked and flailed until the collar broke away. He twisted around and clamped his teeth into Lena’s calf. She drew one of her bokken and smashed the butt on the top of the dog’s head. The blow stunned him for a moment. His eyes glowed faintly red through the mop of hair flopped over his face. He staggered back, nails clicking on the linoleum. Lena pulled her second sword and moved to stand between me and the dog. I could see her weapons responding to her magic, the edges growing razor sharp.
“Mister Puddles, that’s enough!” Kyle was in full vamp mode now, his face turned monstrous, his fangs bared. He seized the dog by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into the air.
Mister Puddles shifted form, changing from an enormous shaggy dog into an enormous hairy man, naked and growling. His nails were long and blackened. Before I could react, his hand slashed out, and blood sprayed from Kyle’s throat.
Mister Puddles spun back toward me, but Lena struck his elbow with one of her bokken. He grabbed the wooden blade, so she stepped closer and drove her knee into his crotch. She lowered her stance, gripped her weapon, and pulled. The wooden blade nearly cut off the vampire’s fingers. She spun in a tight circle, bringing the second sword around to slice the side of his neck.
The vampire’s lips pulled back. “Hello again, Isaac.”
The intonation was identical to the vampire I had faced at MSU, as was the anger and hatred in his voice, as if the same mind was taunting me through another body. I reached into my pocket, grabbing a small pistol I had prepared from a Simon Green book. “Who are you?”
He only laughed and lunged again. Lena ducked low, striking him in the knee. Her blades cut parallel gashes into his thigh, and he staggered into the wall.
“His name is Rupert Loyola.” Kyle held a hand to his throat. The wound had already begun to heal, though blood soaked the front of his shirt. He sounded like someone had run a cheese grater over his larynx.
I studied Loyola, trying to make out the shape of his eyes through the long black bangs that hung to his nose. The red glow was just enough to illuminate the same cross-shaped pupils I had seen on the vampire in the steam tunnels. I pointed the gun at his chest. I wasn’t sure what species he was, but frozen darts of holy water should deter most vampires. “How do you know who I am?”
Loyola’s body arched backward, and he fell to his knees. His eyes began to burn.
“Don’t let him ignite!” I raced into the next room, grabbed an abandoned cup, and twisted off the top. As Loyola flopped onto his back, I splashed the contents into his face. Grape juice trickled down his beard, but the eyes merely burned brighter.
“Fire extinguisher,” Lena shouted. Kyle vanished into the kitchen.
Loyola’s good leg snapped out, sweeping Lena’s feet and knocking her to the floor. He jumped up and reached for me, bloody fingers spread like claws. I fired two darts into his stomach, but he didn’t react at all. He grabbed my throat, slammed me against the wall, and bared his fangs.
I rammed the barrel of my gun into his mouth and pulled the trigger. At the same time, both of Lena’s bokken punched through the center of his chest. The sharpened tips jabbed my breastbone hard enough to bruise, but neither one pierced my skin.
Loyola wrenched free and crashed through the door, eyes ablaze. He made it halfway down the walk before falling face-first into the grass. He disintegrated on impact.
Chapter 10
FURIOUS AS I WAS AT LOSING ANOTHER LEAD, it was the dark blood soaking into Lena’s torn jeans that turned my insides cold. I dropped to my knees, clamping a hand over the bite to try to slow the bleeding.
“A single bite won’t harm her,” Kyle reassured us. He had taken a handful of paper towels and was doing his best to clean the blood from his now-healed throat. “Rupert can’t turn anyone unless they drink his blood after he bites them.”
Lena hissed through her teeth as she pushed my hand aside and pulled up her pants leg. I wasn’t taking any chances. I popped the magazine out of my pistol and removed the individual darts. One by one, I pressed the frozen slivers of holy water onto the gashes in Lena’s lower leg. Her skin was tough as oak, but the dog had left four nasty puncture wounds.
I tried not to imagine what it would have done to me.
“I killed him.” Her words were quiet, but ha
rd. She stared out the door.
“He didn’t give you a choice,” I said.
Kyle nodded. “This was an obvious act of self-defense. You’ve broken no law.”
“I saw him grab you,” she said. “I didn’t think.”
I took her hand. “This wasn’t your fault. It’s the fault of whoever was controlling him.”
She shook herself. “Then he was a victim twice over. Trapped by whatever magic turned him into a vampire, then enslaved.”
“Not just a slave.” I thought back to the other murders. “I think whoever’s controlling them can see through their eyes, share their experiences. And he knows me.”
“Are you all right, Isaac?” Kyle sounded genuinely concerned, which meant the love magnet was working fine. But it hadn’t stopped Mister Puddles. Whatever magic had controlled him was far stronger than mine. “Your throat is red where he grabbed you.”
“Bruised, but I’ll live.” In addition to the battering Loyola had given me, Smudge’s panic had blackened my pants and jacket both. I was lucky he hadn’t set me on fire. Red sparks continued to glow along his back. “Where does Mister— Where does Rupert go when he’s not playing sheepdog?”
“Nowhere,” said Kyle. “He sleeps here. He rarely takes human shape. He’s the best security we have.” His fist shot out, punching through drywall and splintering a wall stud. His face never changed, betraying nothing of his anger or frustration. “I had no idea anything was wrong. You’ve seen this before? Do you know who’s doing this to our people?”
“Not yet.” I dissolved the gun back into its book long enough to re-form and reload it, then tucked both book and weapon into my pocket.
One of the other vampires hurried through the playroom. “What’s going on in here?”
“Keep the kids outside,” Kyle snapped.
The vampire glared at us. At Lena, mostly. The love magnet deflected any anger and suspicion from me, but it didn’t do anything to help her. “What did they do to—”
“Marisha!” Kyle hunched his shoulders and hissed, a sound that made me think of an angry jaguar preparing to pounce. The other vampire drew back as if struck. She bowed her head and retreated.
“We need you to take us underground,” I said quietly.
“What about the children?” asked Lena. “Are we just going to leave them here?”
“Their babysitters know the rules.” I glanced at Kyle, who once again appeared fully human, albeit bloody. “Kyle knows exactly what will happen if they hurt or turn even one of these children. They’re smarter than that.”
“No slayings, and no turnings without the human’s consent.” He raised a hand. “To forestall your next question, according to our laws, no human can give consent to be turned before age seventeen. These children are safer here than they are at home.”
“You expect us to believe that?” Lena asked.
“The worst they get is the occasional mental nudge to keep them in line, but I’ve been trying to cut back on that. I don’t like messing with their heads, especially at that age. I’ve been making the staff watch old episodes of Supernanny, trying to adapt her reward system to the daycare. It’s . . . not taking off as well as I’d hoped.”
A shout from outside preceded quick footsteps as several of the kids raced into the playroom, apparently having evaded their vampire babysitters. “Where’s Mister Puddles?”
“My staff are strong enough to fight a bear, but they can’t keep kids out of a house.” Kyle sounded more amused than annoyed as he grabbed a jacket out of the closet and threw it on, hastily zipping it up to hide the blood on his shirt. “Mister Puddles was sick. These people are going to take him to the vet.”
“Is it rabies?”
“Did that spider bite Mister Puddles?”
“Is the doctor going to casterbate him?”
Marisha raised her voice. “Why don’t we do music time next? Everyone into the music room, please!”
Her words jabbed the base of my skull. The children obeyed at once, turning away from us and marching silently to grab instruments from the shelves.
I stepped closer to Kyle, pitching my words for him alone. “If I hear of even one child gone sick or missing from this place, I will burn it—and you—to the ground.”
He nodded.
“Good.” I brushed myself off. “In that case, I think it’s time you take us to your leader.”
A heavy padlock protected the door to the basement stairs. Kyle unlocked the door and led us down wooden steps into an unfinished basement, well-stocked with cans of food, powdered juice mix, diapers, baby food jars, and more, all neatly arranged on the steel shelves that lined every wall. A broken tricycle and other old toys were stacked up in the corner.
Kyle ducked into the furnace room and pressed one of the cinder blocks near the top of the wall, which swiveled in place to reveal a small keypad and a glass plate. He typed in a six-digit code, then pressed his hand to the plate.
“Fingerprint scanner?” I guessed.
Kyle grinned. “I could tell you all of our secrets, but the powers-that-be get twitchy when humans know too much. You’re safer not knowing.”
That was one of the limits of the love magnet. If Kyle thought certain information would endanger me, he would go out of his way to keep those secrets in order to protect me.
He pushed the cinder block back into place with a click. At the same time, the wall behind the furnace slid open to reveal a stone staircase which descended three steps to an open elevator car. If the elevator made a sound, the humming of the furnace fans kept human ears from detecting it.
“Are you sure about this?” Lena asked softly.
“Nope.” Smudge continued to emit a red glow as I followed Kyle into the elevator car. I was no more thrilled than they were. The sparklers in Copper River would have killed me if not for Lena. Vampires had turned Deb, and who knew what they had done to Nidhi Shah? A nest full of potentially hostile vampires made the traditional lion’s den look like a box of kittens.
From the furrows on Lena’s forehead, she was thinking the same thing. I grabbed her hand, eliciting a tight smile of thanks.
With my other hand, I checked my pockets, examining the items I had prepared: a UV flashlight, a thick lotion of silver and garlic, a pair of silver-tipped ash stakes, and more.
“You’ll have to turn those over before entering the nest,” Kyle said as the doors slid shut.
“Naturally.” I rubbed the lotion over my hands and neck, then offered it to Lena. I clutched the flashlight, my thumb over the button. For sun-fearing species, this would be just as good as a flamethrower.
Mister Puddles had been at the daycare center for a long time, presumably tracking who came in and out of the nest. If whoever was behind this—my mind whispered Gutenberg’s name—had another vampire waiting for us when we emerged, I wanted to be ready.
I was amused to note that even vampires obeyed the unwritten rules of elevator etiquette. Kyle kept to his own space and watched the doors as we sank deeper and deeper underground. I busied myself searching the featureless metal walls, trying to spot the cameras. I had found two hidden within the overhead light when the elevator slowed.
The air that rushed in through the doors was noticeably colder, and smelled of salt. I looked out at the inside of a steel vault that made me think of a bank safe. Three armed figures stood with machine guns pointed at us. They wore matching black Kevlar jackets, ammo magazines on their belts, and uniformly unamused expressions.
One drew back as we emerged, hissing at either my crucifix or the garlic lotion. “Hi,” I said cheerfully. Their eyes appeared normal, and none of them seemed to recognize me. “I’m Isaac Vainio of Die Zwelf Portenære.”
Nervous as I was to be surrounded by creatures directly above me on the food chain, a part of me was exci
ted to finally see the vampires in their self-made environment. They had built a fully functioning underground ecosystem, one which had survived for almost a hundred years. Reading reports was one thing, but few humans ever saw this place for themselves, and almost none of those humans emerged to share what they had seen.
The one with the garlic or crucifix allergy grabbed a radio from her belt and muttered something I couldn’t make out. She raised her gun. “Press your hands against the wall.”
Kyle had already assumed the position. I kept smiling as I joined him. They relieved Lena of her bokken, and I handed over my holy water pistol and stakes without a complaint. They took the UV flashlight and my crucifix as well, as I had expected. One grabbed my jacket.
I squeezed the pockets to prove there was nothing else. “We’re in a bit of a hurry here, if you don’t mind?”
Mister Puddles might have been able to resist the love magnet, but not these three. One of them punched a combination into the keypad beside the vault’s metal door, then yanked it open. That door was a good six inches thick, and looked to be solid steel, but she moved it like it was light as a screen door.
“Welcome to the Detroit nest,” said the largest of the trio, sounding like he was reading from a script. “By entering our territory, you acknowledge that you are leaving human law behind. Any act of aggression—”
“Can we get the short version, please?” I asked.
The woman rolled her eyes. “Behave, or we eat you.”
“Got it.”
She led us into a rectangular tunnel, thirty feet wide and twenty high. The other two guards hauled the door shut, and I heard heavy bolts clunk into place, trapping us down here. The only way out now was by the good graces of our vampire hosts.
I gawked openly as we walked. White salt crusted the rock walls, glittering in the dim, blue-tinged light from a series of LED bulbs. Bare electrical cables ran from the lights to thick metal conduits running along the ceiling. A battered pickup truck was parked against the wall to the right of the elevator. The bottom was rusted brown, and a layer of salt painted the rest white. A pair of well-maintained dirt bikes were tucked into the corner behind the truck.
Libriomancer (9781101597552) Page 15