by Rob Cornell
Nausea wormed in her stomach. The floor felt as if it were tipping. She kicked the cube under the bed, out of her sight, out of her damned life. Then she gripped Jessie by both shoulders and shook her, shook her so hard the bed springs creaked underneath her. She pressed her hands against Jessie’s cold cheeks.
“Come on, baby. Wake up. Please. Wake up.”
Jessie’s eyes snapped open.
Kate dropped to her knees beside the bed. She took Jessie’s hand in both of hers and pressed Jessie’s fingers to her lips. “Oh, thank God.” Jess’s hand felt as cold as her face, but she had opened her eyes. She was alive. She was okay.
Then she pulled back, realizing her daughter hadn’t moved since opening her eyes. “Jess?”
Jessie lay on her back, eyes wide and staring at the ceiling.
Kate squeezed Jessie’s hand. “Sweetheart, do you hear me?”
Jess’s lips parted, her mouth opened until it looked like she was yawning. A hitching breath came from deep in her throat. All the while, her eyes remained wide and staring. Staring at nothing. Or something only Jessie could see.
All over Kate’s body her skin rippled with chills. Her heart turned to ice. “Please, Jess. Talk to me.”
Slowly, Jessie closed her mouth. She turned her head, but her eyes stared through Kate as if Kate were no more substantial than a breeze. “This is how it starts.”
A chill shook Kate as hard as Kate had shook Jessie to wake her. The words sounded so familiar. But she couldn’t place where she’d heard them.
“This is how it starts.” A vacant smirk curled Jessie’s lips, but never touched her eyes. “But the end will be so much worse.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Dawn broke and colored the sky a vibrant pink. Lockman dug sleep out of his eyes and tried to blink away the tired blur in his vision. He sat in the back seat of Marty’s Lincoln Town Car, tinted windows all around like his SUV back in Detroit. Marty and Teresa sat up front. All three of them watched the squat commercial building across the street. Not abandoned or derelict. Brand new from the looks of it, built post-Katrina.
According to Marty and Teresa, vampires filled the place.
“What did you say this was supposed to be again?”
“A factory.” Marty’s voice sounded like crushed gravel.
“What kind of factory?”
“You’ll see.”
The few windows in the building were painted black. “They run during the day?”
“They run all the time.”
Teresa remained quiet, hadn’t said a word since the café. Lockman recognized the look in her eyes as she stared through the tinted glass. Attack mode. That same dead expression had always come over her right before an operation, the only sign of life in her searching eyes. The look used to disturb Lockman. But then he figured he probably had some strange expression on his face before an op, too. You entered a different zone.
Lockman hadn’t found that zone, though. He didn’t know if this was supposed to be simply recon or infiltration. Neither of his companions had told him much since setting out.
“What are we doing here?”
“Showing you the stakes,” Marty said.
“Can you get more specific?”
“No.”
Lockman shook his head. They wanted to play this cryptic. He expected that kind of thing from Marty. Not Teresa. He reached over the seat to touch Teresa’s shoulder. “What’s the plan?”
Without moving her gaze from the factory, she said, “We’re going in.”
Lockman glanced at Marty. “This is crazy. You say they operate day and night. That means no sleeping vamps waiting to get staked.”
“They won’t see us,” Marty said.
“You have a cloak of invisibility or something?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“That was sarcasm, Marty. Aren’t ogres ever sarcastic?”
Teresa held up and hand and hushed them. It was enough to get both of their attention focused back on the building. A dirty yellow school bus pulled into the building’s lot. All of the back windows on the bus had been painted black. The driver’s cab had tinted windows so dark they might as well have been painted black as well. Damn supernaturals must have been good business for window tinting companies.
The bus door opened and about a dozen cloaked figures filed out of the bus. Hoods completely covered their heads, which they bowed to keep their faces from the light. They looked like a troop of Grim Reapers.
As the cloaked group from the bus entered the building, another team of similarly clad figures exited the building and climbed into the bus. The bus door closed, and the bus drove away.
“What the hell was that?”
Marty growled low in his throat. “Shift change.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Wish I were, brother. Wish I were.”
Teresa turned away from her window. “That’s it. We can go in now.”
“Hold up.” Lockman held a hand out to halt them. “Infiltrating this place is suicide. Can’t you two just tell me what’s inside?”
Marty shook his head. “Words won’t do it justice. You have to see it for yourself.”
“He’s right,” Teresa said. “Besides, we’ve found a way in. We can slip in, have our look, and slip out without them ever knowing.”
“You’ve done this before?”
“Several times.”
“Why?”
“Because the more we know about what they’re doing here, the better equipped we’ll be to stop it.”
Lockman wanted to ask, Stop what?, but knew he wouldn’t get a straight answer. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
Teresa smiled, though it looked forced. “Don’t I always?”
Marty stayed with the car. Teresa led Lockman around the east side of the building, staying low, but otherwise not taking much care to avoid being seen. They came to the east wall and crouched with their shoulders against the brick.
“We’re heading to the back,” Teresa said.
“This is a little too easy so far.”
“Daytime, they can’t patrol outside. Guess they figure it’s safe enough since no one is supposed to know about their operation.”
“Yeah, they didn’t have their nest at the community center heavily guarded, even inside.”
“Their numbers have made them overconfident. With good reason.” She jerked her head toward the back. “Let’s go.”
Once around back, Teresa moved away from the wall and stood straight. Lockman followed her lead. She pointed at a pair of trash bins pushed up against the back wall. “Up on those. Then grab that ventilation grill. Use that to pull yourself up and get to the roof.”
Lockman studied the path she had laid out. Like a mini obstacle course. The vent in the wall looked easy enough to get hold of. Climbing the Dumpsters would be a cinch. Too damn easy.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Teresa said. “Don’t worry. Once we’re inside, that’s when it gets dicey.”
Lockman gestured for Teresa to take the lead. She strode over to the Dumpsters, climbed up with practiced ease, had to hop to reach the vent, but gripped it on her first try. She scrabbled her feet against the brick while she scaled the vent, the muscles in her back rippling beneath her tight T-Shirt. Still damn fit, and still had that firm ass even after all these years. Watching her brought back memories. Memories that made him feel a little guilty reliving now that he was with Kate.
He was glad when Teresa finally pulled herself over the top edge of the building and rolled out of sight onto the roof. A second later she stood up into view and waved for Lockman to come up.
He copied her path, though he didn’t have to jump to reach the vent. Ten seconds later he stood beside her on the roof.
She pointed to a trap door. “Roof access takes us to an empty storage closet. From there we sneak around a hall that leads to the main factory floor. They’ve got patrols inside, so we have to time it rig
ht.”
“How many vamps inside total? Just the fifteen that came in on the bus, plus some guards?”
Teresa huffed. “Closer to seventy-five, plus patrols.”
Lockman’s stomach dropped. “Seventy-five? But what about the shift change? I counted only fifteen.”
“Upper management. The elders. Originals. The workforce is comprised of human turns. Worked like slaves, twenty-four seven.”
“Human slaves.” The mere thought made Lockman want to throw up—then start staking as many vamps as he could get his hands on.
“Former humans. They’re all vamps now.”
The storage closet wasn’t empty as Teresa had promised. Though it was clean. The floor swept, the tiles waxed. Metal barrels, like beer kegs, lined the walls, stacked three high and as many deep. Each one had frosty condensation on the outside as if they were individually refrigerated. The cold barrels brought the temp in the room down a good fifteen degrees.
“Aw, hell,” Teresa said as she turned in a circle, taking in the room.
“You know what’s in them?”
She nodded. Her face had lost some color.
“What?”
Her hand balled into a fist and she bounced it against her leg. “You’ll see.” She drew her pistol from her shoulder holster, racked the slide, thumbed off the safety. “Let’s get this over with.”
Lockman followed suit, drawing his .45 out of his waistband while wishing he had stuck with the Uzi, no matter how imprecise a weapon it was. There was comfort value in a fully automatic. He tagged along close to Teresa as she opened the closet door and peeked into the hallway outside.
“We wait for the patrol to pass,” she whispered. “Then we move.”
Lockman nodded, even though she couldn’t see him behind her.
She eased the door closed, leaving only a sliver of space open to peer through. In their silent wait, Lockman could hear distant sounds, hard to make out. A low key murmur of activity.
After a handful of minutes, Teresa stepped back and gently closed the door. “They’re coming.”
“They aren’t going to check in here?”
“They never have before.”
“Not when this room was empty. But now?”
“Shit.” She crept back from the door, pushing Lockman with her. “If they check in here, we’ll have to take them.”
Lockman glanced at the roof access.
Teresa caught the look. “You need to see this. It’s important.”
“Important enough to get us killed?”
She looked at him, face as straight as a poker shark. “Yes.”
He didn’t know what to make of that. What could possibly have Teresa and Marty so spooked? So obsessed? “I can’t die, Tree. I have people I promised I’d get back to.”
“We take them.” She holstered her pistol and drew a pair of stakes from a hip pocket in her cargo pants. She handed him one of the stakes. “Just like old times.”
They each took a position by the door. According to Teresa, the patrol was only a pair of unarmed vamps. Another example of their certainty that their numbers made them invulnerable. They obviously had no idea someone like Lockman would come down to New Orleans for a visit.
Now the waiting.
Lockman cocked his stake arm, ready to swing the point into a vamp’s heart. His own heart raced. The adrenaline released into his bloodstream sharpened his senses. He could hear the noises from the factory floor better. Thumps and shouts. The occasional clang of metal against metal. Were they building something? That didn’t explain the mystery barrels, though. He pushed the speculations out of his mind. Like Teresa had said, he would see soon enough. Right now he had to keep a clear head.
Only one thing distracted him. A smell. A cold tang to the air. Like a butcher shop.
Before he could ask Teresa about it, footsteps sounded on the other side of the closet door. Lockman adjusted his grip on his stake, visualized the smooth arc he would swing it in to stab the vamp square.
Teresa shifted her stance, arms and legs tense and ready to spring.
The footsteps stopped right in front of the door. A serpentine voice spoke with a hint of a lisp. “This room is near full. We’re almost beyond capacity.”
A second voice, deeper but no less inhuman, said, “We could help ourselves to some. Lighten the load.”
“You better be joking.”
“Sure. Yeah.” A pause. “But no one would notice one missing barrel.”
Something slammed against the door, shaking it in its frame. A pained grunt followed. “Stealing from our king? I should show you the light for even suggesting such a thing.”
Lockman caught Teresa’s eye and mouthed, “King?”
She shook her head and shrugged. Her expression told Lockman she was as confused as he was. He had to admit it felt nice to be on the same level of knowledge as her. She didn’t have all the answers. Once she showed him whatever she had to in this factory, they could quit playing the “I know something you don’t know” game, he would leave her and Marty to deal with this, and then he could get back to Kate and Jessie.
“I’m sorry,” the vamp with the deeper voice said. “I was out of line.”
“Do I need to check all the stores? Make sure you haven’t already stolen the king’s property?”
Lockman and Teresa exchanged another worried look.
“I haven’t. I swear.”
One of them growled. Probably the first vamp. The loyal to his “king” vamp. “I smell lies off of you.”
The doorknob turned. “Step back while I check.”
“Please, Shoric. There’s no need.”
Lockman had time enough to note the name. A native vamp name, even though most vamps pulled into this world adopted human aliases. Just what they needed—a vamp pride movement.
Then the door swung open and the one called Shoric stepped into the closet, only he was looking over his shoulder at his companion. Easy target.
Teresa took the shot, jabbing her stake like into Shoric’s chest. A solid tag.
The vamp gulped, then started his vampire melting dance, dropping to his knees and trembling as his insides turned to goo.
His counterpart gaped from the hall. He opened his mouth to call out.
Lockman lunged for him and jabbed his stake through the vamp’s throat, cutting off his voice.
The vamp gurgled, eyes bright yellow and seething. He gripped Lockman by the wrist and swung him around, tossing him away and into the wall.
The air puffed out of his lungs when Lockman collided with the painted cinderblock. He tried to keep his feet, but the swing and impact disoriented him enough to drop him to all fours.
The vamp tried to say something. Instead, blood as black as tar bubbled out of his mouth. He kicked Lockman in the face.
Lockman flipped off his hands and knees and slammed down on his back. His chest burned as his lungs tried to pull in air. He scrabbled backward, pushing with his heels against the tile and walking on his elbows.
Right before the vamp pounced, Teresa jumped on his back, wrapped her legs around his waist, and yanked the stake out of his neck. Blood rushed out of the hole like a tapped keg.
The vamp spun and ran backward, crushing Teresa between him and the wall.
She grunted, but held true. Then brought the stake down over the vamp’s shoulder and struck him in the heart.
He staggered forward, clutching at the stake in his chest.
Teresa dropped off his back and kicked him in the lower back.
The vamp stumbled and fell flat. His body began to deflate while black fluid continued to flow out his neck and mouth.
Teresa wiped sweat off her forehead and pulled back her hair. “Not quite like old times.” She threw Lockman a smile. “You getting old or something?”
Lockman coughed and laughed at the same time. The ache in his chest doubled. But he could breathe now. “I had to shut him up before he warned any of the others.”
�
�Sure, sure.”
“Way I see it, I saved our lives.”
“From the floor.” She walked over to him and offered a hand to pull him up. “Come on, old man.”
He took her hand and let her help him to his feet. “Fuck you.”
She winked. “In your dreams, babe.”
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Uh-huh. I saw you staring at my ass when I climbed up on the roof.”
He started to deny it. Why bother? He closed his mouth and grinned. “Just like old times.”
She returned the smile. Though time had put some new lines around her eyes and mouth, she still looked as beautiful as Lockman remembered. It brought him back to another time. He pulled himself back to the present, though. Nostalgia had a way of twisting memories. Better to hold on to what is rather than wonder about what was.
Teresa jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “Let’s get this done before someone finds our mess.”
“Lead the way.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
This is how it starts.
The words echoed in Kate’s mind, louder than her own thoughts. She couldn’t push away the feeling that the phrase meant something big, important, and terrible. She also knew she had heard those words somewhere before. Still couldn’t place where, though.
She had pulled a chair to Jessie’s bedside and watched over her.
Jessie lay on the bed, back to staring up at the ceiling, her breathing slow and regular. A tear ran from the corner of one eye.
Kate gasped. She wiped the tear away and stroked Jessie’s head. “What is it, baby? Come back to me. Tell me what’s wrong.”
Something rattled under the bed.
The sound made Kate jump. Her heart skipped a few beats. Jesus, what was under there? A raccoon? A rat?
The rattle came again. Louder. Now it sounded more like someone knocking on the floor.
A black dread oozed through Kate as she realized what it had to be. Impossible. Your imagination getting away from you. But she knew it wasn’t.
Thump. Thump. Thump. Like tiny footsteps.
Jessie inhaled as if pricked by a needle. She groaned, arched her back.