A balcony ran along three sides of the entranceway at the second-story level. It stopped only at the four-story high glass wall covered with enormous theatre-like curtains. The balcony could be reached only by one staircase at the southwest corner. Clement had wisely placed the marksmen there. They had seen Helman don the cloak of their brother. Their arrows stung down upon him. The fabric of his cloak held them after they had stopped against the Kevlar. Bristling with arrows he dived down the staircase which descended from the main level.
Into the basement, he thought. It was like a warning.
The helicopters touched down in a deafening throbbing roar in the middle of the courtyard. The last thirty men and women of the Nevada Project moved quickly. Two helicopters stayed down while crates of equipment were unloaded. The other was emptied of its human cargo and immediately soared up again. It would circle until the word came that St. Clair was ready to be taken away.
Weston deployed his agents as they had planned. The windows of the building had all long ago been covered over to protect the yber from the sunlight. Two squads of five people each began blasting the windows with gyrojet rockets. Some windows collapsed easily. Others, including the ones looking into the entrance half, were armoured and resisted the explosions.
The rest of the team assembled three giant banks of floodlights. Generators were started. The floodlights glowed an eerie violet colour as the courtyard and the rooms behind the shattered windows were bathed in ultra-violet light.
The first yber was taken.
He appeared screaming in the ruin of a broken window, wearing the white robe of an emissary of the Father. He screamed piercingly as the light ate at him; blistering and blackening him as the humans in the courtyard watched, fascinated and chilled.
The creature fell from the second-story window. Only his white smock survived the fall to the ground. There was no body within it. All that remained was the white sludge of the blood of life.
Two of Weston’s people immediately ran for the remains of the yber. They carried a metal case holding sterile sample jars. Quickly they scraped as much of the white fluid into the containers as they could. Weston called the helicopter down to retrieve the precious substance. He knew it would only last about an hour outside the body of an yber. But he hoped that one way or another, the operation would be over before that hour was up.
The lights formed an impassable barricade for the yber. Weston’s team in the courtyard would be safe until the signal came that Adrienne was to be brought out. That last thirty seconds when the lights would be cut and Adrienne would be transported to the helicopter would be their most vulnerable.
The helicopter ascended again. Weston gathered the first assault team.
He led them in.
Diego knew that the Jesuits weren’t clever enough to be responsible for the painful blue glow that washed across the Father’s estate. The Americans had become involved.
But Diego had seldom been surprised in the past centuries. He was not surprised now.
He said the words ‘warrior suits’ to the yber who waited for his command, and they knew what they were to do.
The yber of the Western Meeting placed protective enclosures of dark mirrored plastic over their heads. Thick hand coverings that ended in vicious spring-loaded steel hooks to replace their hidden claws were attached to the sleeves of their jumpsuits.
The yber were now impervious to the deadly radiation.
Adrienne St. Clair had begun a deep fascination for technology and science within Diego. He regretted that he would never be able to thank her adequately.
The carnage in the courtyard was awesome.
The yber were like cutting machines, whirling their metal claws too fast for the humans to see. The Nevada team remaining in the courtyard was sliced and gutted and scattered like hay before a scythe. Most never even saw the dark glittering shapes that burst from the shadows like eruptions of black lava. It was over in seconds.
Sparks flying from their blood-drenched steel claws, the yber ripped at the generator’s cables. The hateful lights died. Far above the hovering helicopter tried to raise the ground crew on the radio. There was no response. Knowing the people on the ground would be at the mercy of the yber while the lights were off, the pilot did the only thing she could do. She went down to rescue her friends.
She realised her mistake only when the helicopter loading doors swung open after she landed and the yber swarmed in, engulfing her.
This time, without the killing lights, they needed no steel implements to replace their own.
With a final desperate push before the fangs and claws descended, the pilot jammed the rotor control forward.
The helicopter bucked wildly and flew sideways into the other parked copters. The fireball returned the red glow of the setting sun to the courtyard.
The concussion collapsed part of the south wing. More windows were blown out.
In the small town of Nacimiento, the explosion rolled through the streets like thunder. Some of the residents refused to go to their windows to watch. Many had known something like this would happen when ‘the people’ had first moved in. Others tried to phone the State Police, the fire department, even the army. But the last command of Nevada was in place. None of the townspeople knew that there were codewords to be said before any arm of the government could move into Nacimiento.
The orders which had created those conditions were being traced hurriedly by nervous bureaucrats who were afraid to act against them. And undoubtedly there would be an inquiry into just what had happened that night.
But by then, it would be far too late.
The first basement level had been designed for entertaining. It was elaborately finished and opulently panelled. But now the sections of wooden panelling had been ripped from the walls by the frantic Jesuits. Behind some of the damaged wall sections there had been hidden alcoves. Helman could guess what had once been in the alcoves because now, after the Jesuits, each alcove contained only a wooden stake driven through an empty kaftan stained with a thick mixture of white syrup and the dust of yber.
Helman ran frantically through the hallways. Stopping at each ruined sanctuary to see if Adrienne’s clothes were lying amidst the horror of an yber death. Panic rose in him. Where was she?
Footsteps clattered behind him. He spun, crossbow hiding the reloaded gyrojet in his hand.
A scholastic shouted to him.
“They’re all taken care of down there. We’ve got to find the Father. The sun has set!”
Helman nodded and ran with them. If they hadn’t found the father yet, perhaps Adrienne was with him. There might still be a chance.
The rounded a corner. Another Jesuit stared incredulously into Helman’s face.
“It’s him!”
Helman fired the rocket into the man’s chest. His head and limbs flew off as his torso burst in the explosion.
One of the scholastics fired his crossbow. The arrow’s impact knocked Helman back a foot. It hung limply in his robe.
The scholastic yelled “Aim for his face” to the other who raised his crossbow.
Helman swung up his arm and rolled into the Jesuit. The bolt tore through his upraised forearm. He bellowed in pain.
With his good arm, Helman smashed the Jesuit’s head against the floor with a sickening wet pop. He unsheathed the special barbed bayonet tied to his leg and thrust up at the other Jesuit who was attacking.
Helman misjudged and his wounded arm slipped out from him on the blood that had sprayed from the Jesuit shot by the rocket gun. Helman rolled away. Trying to get himself out of reach of the Jesuit who now held a crossbow bolt in his hand like a stake.
The Jesuit charged.
Helman held the bayonet before him in a useless guarding action.
A black shape lunged out of nowhere and the Jesuit flew through the air. His neck crunched as he smashed against the hallway wall.
The shape solidified before Helman. It had fangs that dripped with blood.
A black clad leg snaked out invisibly fast and Helman’s bayonet clattered down the hallway.
The yber grabbed at him.
“Diego has something special planned for you, human. We are all eager to watch,” it snarled at him.
The mention of Diego enflamed Helman. As the vampire dragged him up from the floor, Helman reached down and grabbed the crucifix from the fallen Jesuit he had smashed to the ground.
Helman swung the crucifix up against the yber’s face.
The result was instantaneous.
There was a sizzling sound of burning flesh. The yber screamed and twisted away, releasing his grip. His hands clutched at the cross-shaped burn that blazed across his face. One eye was close by a ballooning blister.
“Diego said you didn’t believe,” the yber spat, warily cowering before the outstretched crucifix in Helman’s hand.
“But you do, don’t you?” said Helman as he rushed at the vampire, driving the long end of the crucifix up through the soft tissue under the jaw. There was little resistance. It sank rapidly into the brain.
The yber twisted and writhed on the floor. His arms shook like they were palsied as he desperately tried to control them enough to take the burning cross from his skull.
Helman retrieved his bayonet.
The yber pulled the crucifix from out of his flesh and threw it to the side. He snarled in pain and rage. The skin beneath his neck was blackened and his hands were swollen globes of red.
Helman leapt upon him, driving the bayonet through the creature’s chest.
The scream as Helman lay upon the writhing thing nearly deafened him. Then it ceased as if a loudspeaker had shut off. Helman felt himself sink to the floor.
The bayonet had found its mark. The yber had dissolved.
Helman stood up, shaking.
His Jesuit’s robe was covered in the white ooze that ran from the empty black jumpsuit on the floor. He ripped the robe off and threw it away.
He picked up the gyrojet, reloaded, and ran off in the direction that the Jesuits had been heading in to search for the Father.
He had to beat Diego to Adrienne.
Weston stared helplessly at the burning ruins of the helicopters in the courtyard. Even if St. Clair were located, he had no idea how they would get her away to safety. Unless his agents could somehow eliminate all the Jesuits and yber who swarmed through the Father’s estate.
The Jesuits would be easy. As long as they persisted in aiming their crossbows at his people’s midsections, the Kevlar would protect them. And the Jesuits, who somehow thought that God was protecting them, made very little effort to hide or protect themselves on their own.
The yber were a far more dangerous matter. The white-robed yber who served as emissaries of the Father were not a concern. They had been, it seemed, completely wiped out in the Jesuit’s pre-sunset raid.
The black-clad yber were devastating. They fell in the ripping explosions of the gyrojets, but only two of the guns remained with the first assault squad. The rest had been lost when the yber who had armoured themselves against the UV floodlights had swarmed through the courtyard.
At least a third of them had been scorched to the Final Death in the helicopter explosions. Surrounded by flames, the yber could not resist the massive moisture loss for long. But others had entered the building from other entrances. Everyone was engaged in a frantic search for the woman. Weston had no choice but to join in it. He gathered the eight of his people who survived and led them deeper into the Father’s house.
Helman found a passage to the sub-basement. Two Jesuits lay dead at the foot of the staircase. Their throats had been ripped out. He walked through the darkness slowly. One hand carried the gyrojet. The other carried a cross.
The basement appeared to run the full width and depth of the building above him. It was dimly lit by dull orange emergency lights. The fire in the north wing seemed to have triggered an antiquated fire control system.
As he walked deeper into the hidden recesses of the concrete-floored expanse, he could sense the air becoming damper, thicker. He could hear water dripping. He tried to recall his run through the levels of the building to determine precisely where he was standing in it. He was under the courtyard. The pumping equipment that was intended to run the pool and fountain was to his left. It was the source of the water. And the steady dripping noise that masked the other sounds of movement behind him.
A strong sense of déjá vu overtook him. He could feel that he was no longer alone. That he had been in this basement a long time ago. Or, at least, another basement like it.
Something made a rhythmic splashing sound behind him. He spun, finger tightening on the launch button of the gun. The rhythmic sound sped up, came closer. It stopped.
A dry, sibilant voice whispered at him from the darkness.
“Looking for something, little boy?”
Helman remembered that long-ago basement. The door swinging shut. The throbbing of his wounded arm carrying the crucifix disappeared as he felt the hair on the back of his neck bristle in a response to fear far older than humans. He could actually feel his skin crawl as he stared deep within the darkness and saw the things he had feared so much as a child.
“Looking for your ball? Want to play with us?”
Helman looked down. The rhythmic splashing had been a ball bouncing. How could they know?
A deeper, harsher voice whispered out at him.
“We know what you dream, human. We can make them all come true. Dreams and nightmares.”
Helman could feel the panic grow within him. They had touched something too deep within himself to resist. How?
He jerked his head backward and forward. He couldn’t remember the way back to the staircase. More sounds of movement slithered out of the black. He was surrounded. A low groan of desperation came from within him without him knowing. They were all around him.
“Someone want to play with us?” two voices chanted out.
“Come find your ball, little boy. Come play in the basement.”
Helman’s chest tightened. His breath came in gasps. The sounds were wet and all around him. All around him.
And then four tiny hands reached out and gently took his arms and he stared down into those familiar, lovely faces with such small fangs newly growing from their mouths that he could almost believe that they were still the same.
“Uncle Granger,” Steven and Campbell said together. “We’ve missed you.”
Clement crawled slowly up the main staircase that led to the balcony running on three sides of the four-story high entrance hall. He had seen Diego. He would trust his young scholastics to find and destroy the woman, but Diego was his. And Diego was waiting in the room just off the end of the balcony closest to the thick, lightproof curtains of the hung-glass wall.
Clement slipped the hand grenade from his equipment pouch and tucked it into his robe and under his shirt He left his shirt buttons undone so he could reach in for the detonator pin when the moment came.
Within the room where Diego waited, a black-clad yber sniffed at the air and motioned toward the open door.
Diego shook his head.
“Let him come. I’ve waited forty years for him to come to me. Let him come now.”
Diego smiled. He could feel the thirst rise in him. The excitement of quenching it with the blood of Clement made his fangs wet with anticipation.
Father Clement appeared in the doorway.
“Come in Clemencito. I’ve been expecting you.”
***
Sounds of fighting still rumbled through the half-destroyed building. Weston realised with a faint glimmer of hope that more of his people might have survived than the three who were now left with him. Some of the sounds he heard were the dull explosions of gyrojets. Others the bloodcurdling shrieks of the dying, human and yber alike.
The section of the mansion he was in seemed deserted now. The fighting sounded as if it had concentrated in the parts leading back to the ent
rance hall. He waved his three people to stay put and kicked open a door into a guestroom, gyrojet at the ready.
The room was empty. He checked the closet and under the bed. All the walls were solid. He went to the windows and pulled on the curtains. The track was heavily reinforced, perhaps as insurance that an earthquake wouldn’t knock it out of the wall while visiting yber stayed within the room. But with a powerful enough yank the curtains collapsed and the room was exposed to the dark eastern sky.
The night had been long and in just over an hour the sun would rise again. Not that that will solve anything, he thought.
Then he heard the snarl behind him. The yber was in the doorway, the severed head of the last of the Nevada agents within his claws. The shattered bodies of the two others lay in the hallway behind him.
It charged at Weston.
The gyrojet flared.
The creature dissolved in the explosion like a blizzard of snow. Except the whiteness was liquid and it hung like a mist in the air.
Weston got up from where the concussion had blasted him. The tightness in his chest was building again and he knew it was time for another injection. The drug would ease the pain and make it possible for him to breathe. But he knew he had crossed the limit and the strain on his body was going to make either this injection, or the next.
He wondered if Helman were still alive. He cursed himself for not telling Helman about the pocket on the weapon harness that Weston had given him; the pocket with the slip of paper in it. Even if Helman were to get out of this alive, he would probably not find the paper, and even then he might now know what to do with it.
And then Weston cursed himself again for not reloading the gyrojet as another yber sprang at him from the shadows of the hallway and dug its claws into his neck, forcing him back against the wall.
His vision was sparkling with the black dots of lack of blood but he was able to see the face of the yber was a woman’s. And it had no fangs.
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