by Ben Zackheim
Or maybe that was Rebel.
I lifted a boulder from the ground and threw it at the rush of Vampires. It crushed a few of them and slowed the ones behind them.
I had to look straight up to see the top of the Leviathan now. It was 100 yards away. The thing was so huge it felt like it had its own center of gravity tugging at me. I had no idea how we’d jack the thing.
Turns out Cassidy was the Wendigo with the plan.
Rip. Tear. Destroy.
Good plan.
He attacked the 12 foot high tires of the Leviathan one at a time. There were dozens of them supporting the massive monstrosity.
Rebel’s eyes met mine.
“Babysit Cassidy, please,” I said.
She ran after him. When she caught up she did the last thing I expected her to do. She jumped on Cassidy’s back. He was running on two legs, though his hands touched the ground when he was looking for more speed. His hind legs got knocked to the side under the impact of Rebel’s leap but he kept his balance, growled, and kept running.
Three leaping steps later and he was arching toward the top of another wheel. He clawed at it until it burst and then leaped straight up to grab onto the hydraulics above him.
Rebel swung off his back and started climbing straight up the Leviathan too.
I ducked under two swords, grabbed my attackers’ helmets and smashed them together a little too hard. Their heads burst like melons and covered me with Vampire.
I wiped my eyes clean in time to see Rose floating above me like an angel, picking off Vikings with a barrage of fire arrows. No other way to explain them. They were slashes of fire that stayed pointed until impact. Then they burst, covering the target in flame like he’d been covered in oil and then lit up. That would slow them down, but I knew that burnt flesh just got Vamps riled up.
It bought me a few seconds.
“Rose!” I yelled. “Go! Take out the Leviathan. See if you can make it fall this way. Toward me!”
She hesitated. I wasn’t sure how to read her expression. It wasn’t her face anymore. Worried? Maybe. It was more like she felt sorry for me.
I watched her fly up, looping around one of the giant killer’s mechanical legs.
Then I turned to face the hordes. They’d found the courage to regroup after their brief encounter with Cassidy.
“Come on then,” I said in the eerie silence.
Five of them rushed at me. I jumped straight up and they missed.
I forgot how high I could jump on the serum. I liked the feeling.
So I kept jumping.
Rock to rock. Vamp to Vamp. I had them chasing me in circles while I took out the easy targets. They hit me with a couple of spears, one in the shoulder and one in the leg, but I felt the serum shove the pain aside. Even when I yanked the spears out.
I heard three explosions in rapid succession. The sound came from above.
The top of the Leviathan cracked open, spitting fire and metal. Chunks of who-knows-what arced through the air.
My team had done it.
My pride turned into terror as the dead Leviathan bits fell toward me.
I’d been expecting it so I had a slight advantage over the Vamps. I punched my way through a small crack in the wall of undead and sprinted through it.
The sad howl of bending metal cried from above.
We all ran. The Vamps chose to run in the same direction as the falling debris. But I ran at a right angle to the toppling columns. I figured it would be the quickest escape from a quarter mile high machine.
Chunks of metal fell all around me. Rubber and armor and weapons and bodies slapped the rocks. Gas fell on my back.
I spotted a hill in the lifting mist and ran for it.
I looked over my shoulder right when the bulk of the Leviathan crashed to the ground.
The explosion was blinding, deafening, terrifying.
I covered my eyes with my forearm and forced my legs to run blind up, up, up.
The violent sounds around me began to fade.
After a few seconds, all I could hear was the sound of burning, a few distant cries and the calm wind.
I dropped to my knees, exhausted, and opened my eyes. There was a big spot in the middle of my view from the big explosions, but I could see.
As the spot faded from my eyes I studied the bedlam. One thousand tons of war machine had been taken out by three of my team. I was proud.
Then I was horrified.
Through the billowing smoke I spotted Rose being carried from the wreckage.
By Viking Vamps.
Chapter 50
I hid.
I found a spot behind a boulder on the hill and waited for my vision to come back as I scoped out the area. But I heard a lot of noise coming from one direction. Shouts. A search party. They were coming from the south.
I heard the voices of the search party getting closer. The mist and smoke mixed to make a wall that even Vamps would have a hard time seeing or smelling through.
“Over there!” a male voice yelled. “He’s got to be in this area.”
“Unless he kept running,” another low voice said.
“Then the Leviathan will spot him. Be careful. He could be listening to us right now.”
I was tempted say something. Maybe take a shot to throw them off. But I heard Rebel in my head, telling me to put it back in my pants.
I hoped she was okay.
I laid low until I was sure they’d passed. Then I walked in the direction they’d come from.
I could see stars again. The sky was purple with the pink sun peeking over the horizon. It wouldn’t come up completely. Not for another month or so.
It was total chance that I looked down. Good thing, too.
I was on a cliff. About fifty feet up.
Below me, a small army of Vikings stood in a circle around one man.
Hakkar. Bonehead.
My team floated a few inches off the ground and circled him like a wheel spinning at forty miles an hour. They were using my friends as a shield.
Then I saw him. The emperor walked from behind one of his larger Vikings. He circled Hakkar until his back was to me.
He turned and looked right at me.
His army did too.
“I knew we could count on your arrival, Arkwright!” he yelled up at me. His voice echoed around the chasm. The unmistakable sound of flying Vamps from above made me throw my hands up. Yeah, I could have put up a fight. I had some juice left. But they had my team.
The flying Vamps lifted me from under my arms and pulled me up in the air.
They dropped me at the emperor’s feet. I fell to my knees, which pleased him. A Vamp pulled up my charred shirt to check for guns.
I looked at Bonehead, who waited patiently behind my zinging friends. The twins had reverted back to human, or whatever they were. They were moving too fast for me to see whether they were conscious or not.
“What are you waiting for?” I asked the emperor.
“We were waiting for you,” Tabitha said. I had no idea where she came from but I wasn’t surprised to see her. I expected it. Now that I knew she was as much an asshole as the rest of them, she was predictable.
“Let my friends off of your fucking ride. You have me.”
“You think so much of yourself,” the emperor said.
“Been hanging out with you clowns for too long. It’s rubbing off.”
“Maybe I keep them up there to amuse myself,” he said.
“Maybe you keep them up there because you’re afraid I’ll find a way to take your lapdog down.”
His smile faded. A passed out Rebel, Rose and Cassidy suddenly skid across the dirt. Cassidy’s naked body was covered in cuts and burns. If he was alive he’d wish he wasn’t soon enough. Rebel landed near me. I went to help her but the emperor stepped between us.
“Now you can watch what happens next,” the emperor said.
“Listen, emperor,” I said, trying not to sound too snarky. “I don’t t
hink you’ve thought this one through. If you break continents off of continents then the whole world gets hit hard. No one survives, including your kind.”
“We’re prepared for the floods,” he said. “Quakes, fires, inactive volcanoes finally able to spew their seed again after a billion dormant years.” He turned to his small army. “We look forward to it!”
“And what will you eat with no humans around?”
“Enough of you will survive.”
“Be careful, my dear,” Tabitha said.
“Thank you for your concern, my queen,” he said, coldly. Then he turned back to me. “And those who do survive will have a home. Well, a place to live.”
“You mean a slaughterhouse,” I said.
“Not quite. You’ll have your government. You’ll be productive. You’ll have opportunities for advancement. Under supervision.”
“Sounds like a boring job for a Vampire,” I said.
“Us? No. We don’t care. There are others who want to see how humanity does if it gets a chance to start over. And you’re right. It does sound boring.”
“My king,” Tabitha said softly. “You’ve said too much.”
“I can handle this without your fake concern!” he shouted.
“As you wish,” Tabitha said. She backed off, bowing her head. Guy had a temper. My read was that he was an immortal spoiled brat. Even more than your normal Vamp.
“Arkwrights always lose in the end,” he said. The smile on his face was filled with secrets. I braced for anything.
Except what he said next.
“I should be thankful, really. It was your father who woke the vampires after all.” He glanced at his wife. “Some would have had us sleep another thousand years. Or forever!”
He faced Tabitha now.
She met his glare with her own. She was not playing the submissive queen role anymore. Good. It didn’t suit her.
He was the one who blinked first. He turned away from her to face me. He thought I’d be an easier target.
“Bullshit,” I said, not believing it was actually bullshit. A part of me knew my family was caught up in the Vamp mess.
“Partly, I suppose,” the emperor said. “He didn’t do the actual awakening. He just told other people where we were and they took care of the rest.”
“Where is he? Where is my mother?”
“Oh, they’re around,” he said, breaking into laughter before he finished the sentence. “They’re all around.” Other Vamps joined in on the fun fest. I noticed that Tabitha didn’t. She just looked at me with an unreadable Vamp face. I hated her most of all at that moment. Whatever I’d felt for her before had flipped. I wanted to take them all down. All of them and their secrets and stupid plans that made no sense.
“Ooooo, look at Kane,” the emperor cooed. “He’s getting angry!”
“I don’t care what secrets you have,” I said. “I don’t care what your plans are, so spare me the bad guy speech, asshole. Just let my friends go and let us try to survive this Armageddon you have on the calendar.”
He stopped and wore his best impressed face. “That’s actually an interesting idea,” he said. “I suspect a lot of the fun will go out of finding food starting in, oh, about three minutes. But if I kept you alive there would always be a wild card.”
He paced for a full minute, enjoying the tension in the air.
“Nah,” he said. “UP, MY CHILDREN! UP!”
The Vamps floated straight up, looking at me like I was a roach about to get sprayed.
“What’s going on?” Rebel said from the ground. “We win yet?” Her face was a mess of bruises. Her left eye was swollen shut. She flicked her hair out of her face with her fingers and slashed herself on the cheek. “Ouch,” she gasped softly.
“No, we’re about to lose,” I said.
The Vampires were floating high enough to avoid whatever fireworks were about to happen. Some Viking Vamps stood in a circle around Hakkar.
“Nice going, asshole!” I yelled at him, angling to get in his field of vision. He could have been asleep under that fucking mask though. “Quite a legacy you’re leaving behind.”
He raised the shield over his head.
He yelled a battle cry that pierced the stone around us.
Wait.
He raised the shield over his head?
He brought it down on the hammer laying flat at his feet.
I jumped on top of Rebel to protect her.
I never thought I’d hear a sound that could kill a man. But this one was deadly.
The last time Iceland saw an explosion like that was millions of years ago. But this wasn’t an explosion of fire. It was an explosion of noise. Like the pent up scream of a thousand gods. Like the rage of a planet given voice.
Nothing touched my body. The explosion did nothing to the air except fill it with a furious wail.
And above it all I could hear a man’s voice screaming. When the light faded I opened my eyes to see who it was.
The emperor floated above us, a purple glow surrounded him and his eyes burned red with a power as primal as the one we’d just felt.
“TRAITOR!” he yelled.
Hakkar stood over the shattered pieces of Mjölnir. The shield in his hand was intact
Boneface had destroyed the hammer. Hakkar had saved the world.
Chapter 51
“Give me the shield,” I said to him, instead of saying thank you even though I was very, very thankful. “I’ll keep it safe.”
His creepy mask faced me. “Not as safe as I can, Arkwright.”
I heard a rumbling in the distance but I didn’t have time to look for the source because the emperor slammed into the ground behind me. So hard that some of us lost our balance.
I wasn’t his target this time. Hakkar was.
And it was my turn to spring some surprises.
“Rebel?” I said.
“I’m good.”
“Flame Spell.”
“You got it. Come on, Kane,” Rebel said, running ahead of me. “Pick up the pace.”
I wasn’t sure how she could be standing much less conjuring a Flame Spell. But as she ran, her fists glowed that familiar blue and then orange and then white. She opened her fingers and two fireballs boomed all over the emperor.
It barely slowed him down.
In fact, I could swear he was growing in front of my eyes. By the time he reached Bonehead there was no question about it. The Vampire could grow into a big motherfucking Vampire.
Drama queens.
I mean, really. Why? Why have a ten foot tall vampire? Where does that fit into the unnatural order of things?
I heard the sound of a jet nearby. Maybe it was help?
The emperor brought a huge fist down on Hakkar but our new ally blocked it with his shield. The Vamp’s fist bounced off and he wailed in pain.
Suddenly, a jet pack dropped from the sky, fire flaring out of its ass-side. Hakkar slipped into it. He zipped straight up into the night sky and drew a streak of light between the stars.
We heard his sonic boom five seconds later.
Half the Vampire army flew after him.
The other half looked down at me and my team, one half of whom was still dreaming about butter houses or super-powered pencils or one of those ridiculous dreams I always had to hear about when I was unlucky enough to be in the kitchen at midnight to witness a disheveled twin stumble in to drink the milk from the fucking carton and call me by the wrong name.
I was elated.
I’d never felt so lucky.
Or excited to be alive.
The remaining Vamps floating above us be damned. It was time to carpe diem.
Rebel and I stood over the twins, ready to fight. The serum’s effect was almost gone and I didn’t have anything but my fists to work with but I’d do my best until the end. Besides, Rebel could probably take them all, even in her present condition.
The floating Vamps touched the ground.
“You sure you guys are a
ll cleared to kill us?” Rebel asked.
“Good point,” I said. “She makes a good point guys. Things may have changed with all that betrayal stuff.”
They growled.
Rebel click-clacked her fingernails together. Made me cringe.
“Then let’s live La Vida Loca!” Rebel yelled. Music started to play all around us.
She’d cast the Soundtrack Spell. An annoying thing of her own making. It played music all around us. I hated that thing but it usually did do a good job of distracting the enemy for a second.
We ran at the Vamps full speed.
“Really? All the songs in the world and you choose this one. Did you hit your fucking head?” I asked her as I leaped over the rocky terrain.
“Sorry, yeah, I guess.”
But we never got to swing to the music.
The Vampire’s heads dropped from their bodies before I even heard the slashing sound. The lineup of bloodsuckers dropped to their knees without their noggins and the sandy chasm floor went black with their blood.
Tabitha and several other Vamps stood behind their fallen brethren. They each held a sword. Some were medieval shortswords, some katana, and even an Egyptian khopesh.
“Go,” Tabitha said. “Take your children and get as far from here as you can. He will be back and we must all be far away.”
“Fuck you,” I said, as I got ready to do exactly what she’d just told me to do.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Kane,” she said, slowly rising over my head. “I warned you. There must be balance.”
“Stick around and I’ll show you balance,” I said.
She tossed something to the ground and then flew off. Her posse followed.
It was the Trolls Cross. I pocketed it.
“What the hell kind of comeback was that?” Rebel asked. She was kneeling over the twins. “You’ll show her balance? What does that even mean?”
“No idea. How are they?”
“They’ll live. Strong auras.”
I took a look around at the devastation. Piles of bodies, stray pieces of the fallen Leviathan, fires. Against the purple sky it looked like Armageddon had come around after all.
I sat on a boulder and put my head in my hands. I could fall asleep right there.
With the fighting done, all I could think about was Coleslaw.