The Vampires Of Livix Twin Pack (Volumes #2 & #3)

by Smith, J Gordon

  -:- -:- -:-

  “Doctor Aravant?”

  “Yes?” he turned to face the security guard holding a small phone toward him showing a video of the rear door opening and three figures slipping through the shadows. One trespasser in particular shed a warmer thermal gradient, clearly a human protected by two vampires. He wondered about the rain effects of their wet bodies passing the camera but apparently, the camera technology seemed sound. “Looks like the vampires you wanted have entered the building.”

  “The one is not a vampire. Interesting. Send Jaina and her team.”

  The security guard nodded and withdrew.

  -:- -:- -:-

  “Look what we have here.” Garin brushed his eyes over the tanks.

  “Isn’t this the system Reginald helped us load into the shipping containers?”

  “That’s what I thought.” Branoc recognized a few scrapes he gouged through the paint when the wrench slipped undoing some couplings.

  “So they have a molding process here along with the pilot plant growing system. What else do you think we’ll find?”

  “Let’s keep going and watch for anything. You too Anna. See anything and get our attention.”

  I nodded.

  We crept around stacks of empty tubs piled high by fork trucks but waited empty for finished goods to fill them. I saw our fuzzy bearded researcher ambling along. I pulled at Branoc’s sleeve and we slunk back wedging between the tub stacks. The researcher strode passed us oblivious to anything other than some problem he wrestled with. I watched him as we left our hiding spot and moved among the tub stacks. We came to another side alley that could better conceal ourselves as we explored. I watched the researcher clear into the light where the thrumming machine banged together two massive blocks of tool steel until hoses wiggled under hydraulic pressure like Medusa’s head. Fuzzy beard paused, looked to one side and nodded, before continuing around to the machine’s output bin to snatch a water bottle. He lifted it to inspect for defects against the overhead lights. Satisfied the product looked sound, he tossed it back in the bin and turned toward what we thought might be the front offices.

  We moved deeper into the facility. Half the equipment appeared shoved together like play blocks waiting for my nieces and nephews to arrange them into something. Shredded cables dangled off the machines matching the wiring in plants they yanked the equipment from. A warm glow emanated from somewhere ahead. As we approached, we saw a large plastic bubble-like enclosure built inside the plant. Fancy airlock doors welded to a metal frame that held the plastic aloft. Fans pressurized the bubble after passing the air through a highly complex and noisy cyclone filtering system. We walked toward the plastic bubble and six jumpsuit assassins appeared in front of us holding their swords ready.

  “You are not authorized for admittance,” the nearest vampire said.

  Another said, “Branoc and Garin, nice to meet you face to face.” She tipped her sword up in a slight salute and the six vampires slipped into smoothly practiced fighting stances.

  -:- Seventeen -:-

  “We can’t fly in this weather. Too much of a storm.”

  “Are you sure?” Something pulled at Brett. They needed to get to this place and he didn’t understand why. The plane jerked from side to side and up and down and in great yawns. A leaf swirling in the winds. “Can we get higher than the storm clouds?”

  “Not this aircraft. It’s a hobby plane and doesn’t have the ability to go that high. Storm clouds are tall skyscrapers compared to other clouds in the sky and we’d have to get above them. Not a solution. We’ll have to land and wait out the weather on the ground.” Uncle Tremper didn’t add that the landing would pose a huge problem and then if they successfully parked the plan a wicked wind could gust and easily flip the parked craft over.

  Brett complained, “Can you see any good places to land? The wiper is going like mad on the window but I can’t see anything.”

  Uncle Tremper said, “A vampire’s sight sometimes comes in handy. I can see enough to get us down.” Maybe not in one piece but he would get them down. After that, they would have to see.

  -:- Eighteen -:-

  The first of the assassins ran and leaped into the air with her sword swinging at Garin. He turned, bringing both hands to the grip of his sword, his eyes narrowing. Their blades struck against each other with a crack of lightning outside that radiated through the building. The assassin smiled as she spun her sword in another arc toward me.

  I flipped my sword around in my hands, the scabbard still covering the steel. The assassin’s sword dug against the scabbard and split it into long slivers as her blade scraped up toward my hand guard. Garin whipped his sword around in an arc and deflected the assassin’s blade off my weapon and away from me.

  Two of the assassins engaged Branoc in a ferocious feast of blades ringing repeatedly.

  I realized how I endangered my vampires. I fell back from them. I counted only four vampires in front of us now. I thought six stood a moment ago.

  Garin worked combination strikes he had been teaching me plus others I had not advanced to yet. Slice, parry, thrust, disengage, and beat. I watched in fascination now that I knew a little more about his remise and redoublement. But so did the assassins. Their swords rang and ground against each other as they fought in the open space between the heavy machinery. A swirl of movement. Branoc lunged at the nearest assassin covering him and speared her shoulder. Then as she recovered and thrust, he brought his blade point up sweeping it across her body to block her. The second assassin dug the point of her blade at him and he rocked back and sliced through her wrist.

  I heard leather footsteps behind me and I turned, bringing my now bare sword up to defend against – what?

  -:- Nineteen -:-

  “Tighten your belt and hang onto something.” Uncle Tremper nosed the plane down toward a promising level area. A two-track truck path cut across the stubble of the harvested wheat field. The gold of the straw stalks shimmering like a boat’s foamy wake under the sweeping blinker light from the plane as they came down. Approaching closer to the ground increased the violence of the wind gusts as the toiling winds pinched between the wings and the ground and became more volatile and unexpected. Lifting the wing tips in strange gyrations and twisting one wing forward before the next. Uncle Tremper worked the foot pedals and the hand stick to get the craft under some semblance of control. Needing the quick reaction of his vampire speed he feared such rapid compensation to keep the plane righted could easily tear cables and shear connecting pins.

  Then the rumble of tires on the ground assured they came close. But the wind scooped them back into the sky only to slam them down onto the bumpy ground. Brett gripped the dash as the craft again sucked aloft. Uncle Tremper struggled with the flaps to keep the plane from flipping over. The tail rudder spun them randomly at the front edge of a twisting vortex voraciously intent on devouring the small plane. Then after a long rumble, the plane stopped.

  Only the crashing water against the windshield and the grunting rain bashing the fuselage broke the low regular bleat of the engine. Uncle Tremper eased the throttle ahead. “I’d like to get us over toward that corner of the field. There might be fewer winds in the partial shelter against the trees.”

  Brett gulped, “Sure.” He had never flown before and hoped this wasn’t a typical flight.

  Uncle Tremper shut down the engine and they sat below the flailing rain. He flicked on the cabin light to see some of the darkened dials. Then he pressed the GPS system and it rolled around searching for the satellite signal. “Too much weather interference.”

  “Expected.” Brett stared out the water covered window. The little wiper flicking off water mostly ineffectively but at the edge of the brushing black sliver he saw a shadow flit from tree to tree. “What’s that?”

  -:- Twenty -:-

  The assassin grinned wickedly before me as she bowed, her sword to the side and parallel to the abrasive concrete. Rising easily, she explod
ed into a wrenching vampire onslaught striking against my feeble sword that I clung to for protection. She expertly beat my weapon from side to side as she strode against me. I fell back. She struck my fainting sword again. Then again. Then she said, “The girl is yours, Jaina.”

  “Danke,” came a voice from close behind me, along with the whip of a sword blade through the air. I spun away – my thoughts racing: how could I survive them?

  The two vampires stalked me. Basic strikes with their swords probing my rudimentary defenses. I struck at the first vampire. Their swords came together trapping my blade and I quickly pulled it back with the skittering shriek of steel on steel. The first assassin slung her sword low and up to slice my chest. I skipped aside and her sword struck into the iron piping and rubber hoses of one of the machines squeezing us together. I pressed on her moment of inattentiveness as she pulled her weapon from the machine and I pierced her shoulder.

  Jaina whirled her sword in a wide swing that I caught in a grating ring but she threw me back. I fell and rolled across the dusty concrete but I kept rolling and spun my feet out to right myself. Their blades came at me licking back and forth like the tongues of serpents, tasting the air and noting the angles and the time to strike. The first assassin lunged, the point of her sword slicing at my face. I reflexively raised my hand and the finger guard of my sword pushed the tip aside. The sharpened tip of her sword shaped like a vampire fang glinted inches from my eye. I grabbed a fist of wire cabling and pulled myself between the tanks and blocks of steel that made up this piece of machinery.

  They chased me into my den like following a mole into its cavern. I wriggled through, climbed a metal ladder, ran across a small catwalk, and then slid down a thick pipe to the cement floor. Shadows blotted out the overhead light. Like a mole in the open circled by hungry hawks. Garin and Branoc could not help me. Where could I hide? Steel swords struck over the machines. I backed under an overhanging cage protecting a range of dials and valves patiently waiting their turn at installation. Swords struck against my end of the cage. I retreated, forced to crawl backward under the machine.

  “My, you can wiggle for a human.” said the assassin. She got down to her hands and knees, her sword flapping against the concrete every time she put that fist down. I held my sword up in front of me. I wedged myself between a greasy motor housing and a large transformer circuit box.

  Something clamped my ankle. I looked and in horror saw the assassin leader Jaina gripped my ankle. I hugged an electrical conduit but the metal bent until it kinked and my fingers could not hold any longer. She dragged me back through the twisty tunnel banging my head against damp and rusty pipes. Then she flipped me through the air. My body slammed against a steel bin that dimpled but retained enough spring to throw me back at the vampire. I held my sword up and she beat it aside spinning my whole body in the air. But my feet found purchase on the concrete. Then the first assassin reappeared. Her wounded shoulder now fully healed.

  A strip of steel shot toward me through Jaina’s neck. The sword retracted and the vampire’s body rolled to the ground like jelly. I struck again at the first vampire and Garin spun cutting her legs from under her. She fell back in a shriek but Garin grabbed my hand, spun me in a twirl against him so he could clutch me running like a football receiver intent on a touchdown. He battered through the door we entered the building through. Branoc trailed behind keeping the remaining four assassins occupied.

  The rain poured out of the sky in a river. I did not know how we could escape. Garin lengthened his stride leaping through the line of trees standing straight and clear surrounding the facility at the property line. A rush of wind and water and the black trunks of the trees flashed in and out of the mist. Garin rounded a dirt hummock leaning in like a motorcycle on a high speed turn. He raced up the trailing edge of the hill covered in green ferns and jumped straight into the air. He grabbed a limb, swung us to another tree, and climbed us further into the branches of another.

  He put me down on a wide limb of an elm tree where I wrapped my arms into a pair of stout branches twinning together, their green leaves prickly against my face. I peered into the mist and I could only see our little world I knew close to the top of the tree at the peak of the forest canopy. My world extended to a dozen feet until the shrouded mist and the driving rain obscured everything beyond. Somewhere a flash of light and a crack of thunder rolled across us. The wind twisted the top of our tree in a precarious wave. I’d seen what lightning could do to a tree in a storm and here we clung to the branches of one in a serious storm.

  Garin put his finger to his lips and stepped a few feet away along the branch. He reached up and tugged on the handle of his sword that I had not seen before. He must have thrown that into the tree as he jumped so he had a hand free to climb while holding me. He flicked the tip of his sword up in a salute and leaned back into the mists, falling from sight.

  Another crack of thunder and lightning together. Not far from me flashed through the darkened day. I hugged the branch waiting for the next gust of wind to buffet the tip of my tree.

  -:- Twenty-One -:-

  “What did you see?”

  “Something moving between the trees but with this wind and rain I’m not sure.”

  “They heard us arrive.” Uncle Tremper slammed his hand against the flight chair armrest, bending the metal out. “I should have thought of that. I should have expected deeper rings of security.” He flipped more switches and worked his feet on the flap pedals. He turned off the cabin light so only the glow of orange switches and dials shown like stars blazing in the black night.

  “You’re not taking off in this storm?” Brett sat up and pulled his seat harness tighter.

  Uncle Tremper twisted a knob and the wiper sped up. He watched through the glass at the forest. Then he glanced down, “Dammit. The wind is showing the wrong way for a clean takeoff.”

  “There’s a direction to the wind in this storm?”

  “We’ll have to slice across its edge. It will take longer to get into the air. How big is this wheat field?” He looked out the glass at the trees. “They’re there alright. Good job spotting them.” Uncle Tremper whipped the throttle forward unleashing the engine into a shrill whine tromping on the pedals to spin the little craft before the wind and the rain. “C’mon, C’mon!” the plane hopped over woodchuck dens and small stones while buffeted in the shifting winds. The wing tips sloshed up and down throwing the plane from side to side like a ship before the tempest. Then the rumbling wheels left the ground and the plane cut into the air. Uncle Tremper pulled hard on the stick. The tall tips of three Osage orange trees clawed across the underside of the wings and hooked into the landing gear. Their momentum broke the branch free after a jolt and they climbed.

  Lightning flashed around the aircraft dropping them through pockets of thin air. The plane fell hundreds of feet until the air solidified under their wings banging them hard into their seats, making the wings creak, and warning how the struts could pull free. Or the wind spun them up in columns of rapidly rising air that flung them upwards hundreds of feet at a time then tipping them off the top like a cart on a roller coaster when the bottom seemed to drop out ahead of the next dizzying plummet.

  Uncle Tremper kept growling to himself. “They’ll know the plane sound now. So when we return with the bomb they will have a mortar waiting for us.”

  “Anyone could have landed in that field during this storm.”

  “Not likely to have handled it like I did. Few pilots with vampire reflexes.”

  “Maybe they don’t. I wouldn’t know what’s possible since I’ve never flown until today.”

  Uncle Tremper looked at him with a sly grin, “So your first flight ever. This isn’t how it normally goes.”

  “If it did, not many would fly a second time.” Brett’s fingers showed white bands along his clenched tendons.

  “That’s right.” He still worried about the sentries, “They must know only a focused need brought a plane as clo
se as we did. I really thought we kept far enough away. But not far enough.” He looked at the wet blankness beyond the overworked windshield wiper and thought aloud, “That much security also tells me what we wanted to know. They’re planning their biggest work at the facility they protect.”

  “So a successful mission?”

  “Only successful if we can land this thing.” Uncle Tremper glanced at his instruments, “Get ready.”

  The plane’s blinker light reached for the ground. The gusts seemed lessened but maybe the grassy landing strip used by Uncle Tremper helped. The wing tips lifted in strange gyrations forcing quick foot work on the flap and rudder pedals and the hand stick to get the craft under some sort of control again. Then the sustained rumble of tires on the ground assured they had returned and the plane stopped.

  Water crashed against the fuselage as Uncle Tremper idled the plane about and parked it next to the buildings at the little airport. The truck stood silently waiting in the downpour to take them back to the house where the bomb nestled quietly in its wooden box with the seat belt handles.

  Uncle Tremper shut down the plane and they unhooked from their harnesses. He went to the plane’s door and unhooked the latch, pushing the portal against the rainy wind he stepped across the threshold. Then he disappeared. A growl of wind and the door slapped hard against the fuselage.

  Pistol fire and bullets zipped through the aluminum aircraft body. Brett could hear the unmistakable bark of an AK-47 on semi-automatic mode. Then the strip of a sword sliced through the tail section of the fuselage. Brett crouched before the door. His hand on the latch wondering what to do. It looked like Uncle Tremper had been yanked forcefully through the door. But had he only run fast into the rain?