by Justin Sloan
Robin hadn’t even taken her first step when a second command came, someone from the front shouting, “Hold!”
They all craned their necks to see what was happening, a low murmur arising from her fellow vampires. Squinting her eyes, Robin saw it—a lone pod approaching. The third CEO, right? So why were they holding? She supposed it could be that he was bringing news, that he had intercepted the vampire and already taken care of her.
Robin certainly hoped that was the case.
But as it drew closer, one of the doors opened, something flashed, and then the sound carried over with a crack. Everyone looked around, confused, until a vampire next to Robin stumbled back. Robin cringed at the sight of blood trickling down his face from a little hole in his forehead.
CRACK! CRACK!
Two more vampires hit, and then they started to realize what was happening.
“Get to cover!” she shouted as she made for HQ with her team on her heels.
“Fall back,” Giuseppe shouted, darting past her. “Defensive positions!”
She couldn’t believe this. Was Chicago making a move on them? She paused briefly at the gates to the old arena, but looking back all she saw was the singular pod, now spinning to a stop not far off, a lone figure leaping from it to take on several vampires who had charged to meet the danger head-on.
The pod turned back and made its retreat, while the lone figure, a woman, Robin now saw, cut her way through these vampires with ease. She held a large sword in one hand, a pistol in the other, and now ran at a new group of attackers, shooting two before dicing them up.
Robin had never seen anything like it, the way this woman moved with grace and destruction, every stab a precise hit and killing blow. The special gear was doing nothing against this onslaught, the silver blades useless, as they weren’t able to hit their mark.
She had to get out of there before it was her at the end of that sword, so she ran in retreat, shoving other vampires aside in her mad dash to find a defensive position within the fortress.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Black Plague HQ
Valerie was damn glad she’d finished off that vial of blood in the car, but that left her with only one to go. Still, she imagined that getting through this would be fine. It was after that she had to worry about.
For now, she continued the charge.
While she had planned to simply extract the CEOs, she hadn’t realized the extent of this assassin training academy, or that they had such grand ambitions. Make a move on Chicago, and eventually even to New York?
Hell to the no!
She had to admit, they were good. She smiled
She was better.
A knife flashed before her eyes and she ducked low, following it up with a slice of her sword up and through the vampire, splitting him in half. Another came from behind, so she pushed with her fear to give herself some room and then rolled, removing his feet before coming up for the head.
A command sounded and those nearby collapsed as weapons clicked—BRRRTTT!
Bullets hit the ground nearby, several even connecting with Valerie, and she grunted in pain as she threw herself to the ground and rolled to the other vampires to take cover beneath those she had already felled.
A sniper rifle shot sounded, and her right thigh exploded in pain. Shit, silver! She dug it out and then took another shot to the side, though this one wasn’t silver.
She needed to get inside, so pushed with fear again, harder, so that those nearby fell to their knees. They shielded their faces and one screamed as she charged. Heads rolled, blood flowed, and she didn’t care one bit that she was shot multiple times. First they would die, then she would allow herself the time to wallow in pain and self-pity.
No, forget that. She’d kill them all then dance on their corpses for what they were planning to do, and for supporting the CEOs and what they had done.
As far as she was concerned, they were all supporting the blood trade against their own kind—in a way, that was like selling out your cousins to be eaten by your neighbors.
If she didn’t have time for self-pity because she was going to do a jig in their blood.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
Picking up two bodies at once, she charged forward, barely registering the plethora of bullets ripping the bodies to shreds and the tiny dings as bullets ricocheted off of the armor and hit their own.
Stone rose above and she knew she had reached the gate, so she tossed the bodies at two oncoming vampires, then turned to draw her sword and take down another that had almost caught her from behind.
This time there was no warning their own, but two grenades hit the ground and everyone froze—everyone except Valarie, that is, because she had seen these before. Commander Strake had used similar grenades on her when she had attacked his fortress.
No way in hell was she letting that silver shrapnel hit her again.
With a push of energy, she ran and pushed with a kick off of the nearest vampire, gaining momentum to land on the next vampire over, connecting feet to his chest, and using that to push herself into a backward flip up and over a wall of stunned vampires.
KA-BOOM!
The grenades went off just as Valerie was landing and, although her bullet wounds tore and hurt like crazy, the silver shrapnel was completely absorbed by the wall of vampires. Many of them dropped, shouting in pain, and more screamed and turned in confusion, shooting or hacking at anything nearby.
Valerie almost laughed at the chaotic sight. These jackoffs were doing the work for her.
While she wanted to grab a bag of grapes and sit back to enjoy the show, she had some vampire-hunting big wigs to execute.
No one even seemed to notice as she ducked out of there and ran at vampire speed across the courtyard.
Stairs waited at the far end, seemingly undefended, until the first step sent two walls of silver-lined spikes closing in on her. Her speed was barely enough to escape it, though one of the spikes scraped her heel and tore her shoe.
“Dammit!” she spat out. Good shoes weren’t easy to find, and she certainly didn’t want to walk all the way back to Old Manhattan with a torn shoe.
She was about to start cursing a bit more about it, when she noticed she was out of the stairwell, but two doors were closing on each side of her, a green gas blowing in from tubes on either side. Something told her she didn’t want to be trapped in here with that gas, no matter how powerful a vampire she was.
Images of herself on a table being drained for blood flashed through her mind, and she ran for the closing door to her left. It was too low to slide under, so she grabbed hold to see if she could lift it.
A jolt of pain through her body told her the door had just electrocuted her.
Seeing no other way out, she gritted her teeth and grabbed hold again, with only several inches of a gap.
The shocks of electricity sent her teeth chattering, but it was only pain, after all. Instead of pulling back this time, she used the pain to fuel her strength, and soon had the door moving the other way. She screamed out in frustration, pulling until the door was at waist level, breathing in that horrible gas that smelled like rotten apples, and then ducked and threw herself forward through the gap.
The door slammed shut behind her, with the gas on the other side. Several stairways before her, Valerie took the one on the left—stick to the left or the right, you’ll eventually find your way, while going down the middle, she figured, could lead to endless circles.
The former arena had been converted with much rebuilding. It looked like at times there had been various rooms built here, possibly to house different communities over the years, or possibly used as a prison.
Judging by the old bloodstains on the walls, it had either ended badly or had not been a pleasant place. She went up another flight of stairs and saw something move ahead, then a door closing, so she sprinted and slammed into the door, knocking it off its hinges, and falling inward.
The vampire backpedaled away from her, jo
ining a room of vampires, who all turned to face her. To Valerie’s surprise, a young female vampire was on the far side of the room, backing up and cursing. She couldn’t have been older than nineteen, in looks anyway.
With vampires, it could be hard to tell.
“You all really want to die today?” Valerie said, smoke rising from her burnt hands and blood dripping from her bullet wounds, even though they were already starting to slowly heal. “I’d really rather save my energy for your bosses, but if this is how it has to be…”
The first charged her, so Valerie, hands stinging with the grip of it, pulled out her sword and ran it through his chest, up into his skull, and then pulled it out so that he was split in two.
“What’d I say?” She pointed the sword to the room. “Can we all just agree that you’ll lie down, pretend to be dead, and I’ll progress upward?”
A couple of them seemed to be considering this, but then charged. With a sigh, she took a defensive stance and then took these ones down too.
“Listen, you’re skilled. I see that.” She pulled out her pistol. “But you are all going to be dead by morning at this rate. Any of you that aren’t, I’ll drag into the sunlight and leave you there to die. Clear?”
To Valerie’s disappointment. The rest charged then. But as she commenced with shooting and cutting them down, she noticed the female vampire in the corner, watching with curiosity. Petite, with shortly cropped, light-brown hair, with a bit of a pout to her lips.
Interesting, she thought as she removed another head. She’d have to ask that one what was going through her head before she removed it from the torso.
***
Robin stood in the center of the large room, her fellow vampire assassins charging this demon, this angel of death, and meeting their demise.
Each and every damned one of them.
And as she watched, she realized she felt nothing for these vampires. They fell one after the other, sometimes two at a time, but it failed to move her in the least.
In fact, she wasn’t one of them at all. Why should she be helping them? Why should she fight this woman vampire who had come to kill them all? If anything, she should be helping her.
“Ahhh!” Robin shouted as she turned on her own teammates, vampires who she knew had helped capture her, helped sell her family into slavery, and would do so much worse if left alive. She tore through the nearest two, then ran at the next one over, and pulled back just in time to see a long, silver-lined sword cleave his head off.
She stood there in front of the woman, staring, chest heaving, and the two couldn’t separate their gaze.
A vampire charged, causing Robin to finally look away. She jabbed both knives into the vampire’s chest, but then the woman stepped forward and slashed with the sword, ripping the vampire’s head from its body.
“They’ll heal from everything else,” Valerie said, giving her a nod. “We, I mean.”
Robin nodded, hesitating.
“You’re on my side?” Valerie asked.
“If you mean to kill these bastards and let me free to find my family, then yes.”
“Then great, welcome to team Valerie. That’s me by the way. If I had the time, I’d get you a shirt.” She nodded, "Check your rear.”
Robin spun just in time to see a vampire come at her with his own knives, but she ducked, fast, and came up into his sternum with one of her own. But Valerie had said that the head needs to come off. God, that was sick.
She pushed off, then jammed her second blade into his throat. With her first free now, she stabbed it into the other side of this throat, then pulled on both and twisted, like a crazy pair of scissors, and the vampire’s head flew off.
Valerie had been taking care of someone else, but paused to nod her approval. “Keep it up, and you might just get out of here alive.”
“I intend to,” Robin said, then threw one of the knives to hit a vampire right behind Valerie. He staggered back and fell down the stairs.
She ran past Valerie and yelled, “I’m starting to like that knife.”
“Don’t let him keep it then!” Valerie called after her, then continued her way up the other set of stairs, with grunts of exertion as she continued to cut down vampire after vampire.
When Robin reached the bottom step and pulled her blade from the vampire’s chest, she stared into his dying eyes.
“Giuseppe, you bastard.” She laughed, and then sliced into his throat, pushing down until his head rolled aside. “You’ll never force another vampire to drink of the innocent, and you’ll damn sure never take another girl from her family, you black-hearted son of a bitch!”
As she stood, a realization hit her—Valerie had just gone up to the upper levels, where Robin and the others had never been allowed. Where the most elite of elite vampires trained and, she imagined, would likely have set up a defensive in case she made it this far.
It was entirely possible Robin was about to lose her ticket out of here.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Black Plague HQ
Valerie entered the top floor of the arena, what had once been made up of viewing boxes. Old screens lay broken across the ground, couches on their sides and pushed out of the way, so that in the middle awaited a team of six vampires, a seventh in the middle.
This seventh had long, black hair, and was thin, slightly resembling Diego, though she couldn’t quite tell his ethnicity. He held a sword in each hand and wore body armor.
“You’re the one, I failed to kill,” the man said, and then she recognized him.
“In Old Manhattan,” she said. “The plan worked then, you thought I was dead?”
“This time, I mean to be certain.”
With a flick of his hand, a boy ran forward and presented the man with a helmet that looked like it was made out of similar material as the body armor, though it had a visor of thick, clear material that covered most of his face, so that he was protected but didn’t lose much visibility.
He put on the helmet, smiled, and then closed the visor.
This one was clearly better trained than those downstairs, and Valerie had to wonder if the other six fought so well. His swords moved like flashes of light and, without the power Michael had bestowed on her, Valerie was quite certain she would never have survived this attack. Her wounds certainly didn’t help, and neither did the fact that the vampire kept aiming for her wounds as he attacked.
At one point in the attack, she had just dodged a feint when she heard a slight whistling sound and felt a prick in the back of her leg.
If they were attacking her from behind, they would have to do a lot better than that. Ignoring all pain, she hacked at the vampire and brought her sword across the vampire’s abdomen, then raised it to remove his head.
Only, the strike glanced off his helmet, and her arm fell to her side, heavy.
What was happening?
Another whistle sound and another prick.
Oh, shit. They were pumping her full of some sort of limiting agent. Sure, her body would heal it, push it out, but before they had time to tear her to pieces? She wasn’t sure she could bet on it.
She pushed on her fear, but the vampire before her merely staggered back a step before moving back into the advance.
Now she was in full defensive mode, simply throwing her sword to stop his attacks. Her mind was racing for her next move, going between clarity and sluggish annoyance as more darts hit her.
With a gamble, she swung her blade to deflect his, and then kept the momentum going so that she sliced across one of the other men, just before the next dart would’ve likely hit her.
A moment of clarity struck, and then she was taking down two more, throwing them at her attacker as she made her way around the room.
Three whistling darts came at her, but she leaped behind a fallen couch, and then thrust her sword upward as her pursuer did the same. It tore into his abdomen, spilling guts, and dropping him to the floor.
He reached out, trying to pull his intest
ines back inside so he could heal, while she advanced, breathing heavy, pissed.
“That wasn’t… very… nice.” She focused on her breathing, keeping track of the other vampires in the corners of her eyes, and as soon as one moved, she struck at him and then turned back to the one on the floor, stomped on his helmet repeatedly until it cracked, and then removed his head with her sword.
“AHHH!” one of the others screamed as he ran forward, but then a new round of bullets sprayed across him so that he fell at Valerie’s feet.
She quickly removed his head, then looked up to see the vampire girl standing at the top of the stairs.
“You came back.”
“Figured you might help me out after this, if I help you now.” The girl pursed her lips and then frowned. “Not that I have any reason to trust you, aside from what my gut’s telling me.”
“It’s a good thing to trust,” Valerie said, turning to eye the dead man and his nasty guts. “You know, as long as it’s all in one piece.”
“Let’s see that it stays that way then. The name’s Robin.”
“Valerie,” Valerie nodded to the attacker moving Robin’s way. “You want me to…?”
“If you don’t mind.”
“Not at all.”
Valerie picked up a semi-automatic from the ground and pumped the vampire full of rounds. As he fell to his knees, she walked up, adjusted her stance so the blood would fly away from Robin, and then hacked at the guy’s throat. It took three hacks because of the armor, but when the head fell off, she looked back up at Robin with a smile.
A pounding of feet on stairs behind them pulled their attention, and a moment later a young male vampire came into view.
Valerie aimed in on him, but Robin shouted, “Wait!” and lunged, knocking the rifle aside.
In an instant, Valerie had a sword to her throat, eyes darting between the newcomer and her. “Explain!”
“Not him, please,” Robin said, then took a step back, hands raised in submission. “Just not him… he—he’s like a brother to me.”