“Yes, I did.” The Viking gave a glowering Ian one last warning look then walked over to a tarp and moved it to retrieve two bulging hide bags. “Look.” He handed one bag to Jerry and the other one to me.
It was heavy. When I opened mine I saw the glitter of gold and silver. Ancient coins. “Wow. These are solid gold and silver?” Ian peered over my shoulder and took a coin out of the bag.
“Plunder from your peace missions no doubt.” Ian’s sneer made Gunnar move closer.
“Put the coin back.” Gunnar held out his hand.
Ian took his time, even going so far as to bite into the coin. “Real gold.” He looked it over. “And rare these days.” He tossed it back to Gunnar, who snatched it out of the air. “You have any idea how much each one of these might be worth, Viking?”
Gunnar took the pouch when I handed it back to him. “Enough for me to take this woman away from here, I hope. Enough for me to get the kind of weapons that will kill her miserable husband and make her free. That is all I care about.”
“Yes. It will get you enough for that and more.” Ian looked at Richard then Jerry. “But you’ll give away your position if you take any of these to a local coin dealer to cash them out.”
“That’s true, Gunnar. And I can’t use my credit cards, of course. Fredrick will be watching for the activity. That’s why I tossed the cards overboard in my purse.” Gretchen took the other bag from Jerry. “We will have to wait to deal with this treasure. That is obvious.”
“Flo, she tossed a Birkin bag overboard. Bordeaux crocodile. Can you believe it?” I couldn’t help myself. I was still in mourning for a bag that could bring up to six figures on the secondary market.
“Dio mio! Are you crazy?” Flo stared at Gretchen like she’d lost her mind.
“It wasn’t easy but you don’t know my husband. He could have put a tracker in it.” Gretchen gave Gunnar the bag of coins. “These are desperate times.”
“I understand.” Flo slipped her arm around Richard’s waist. “A purse can be replaced. A special man? Never.”
“We can sell the coins for you in Texas. I know some private collectors who will jump on these. No questions asked.” Richard nodded toward the pouches. Apparently his interest in history and ancient coins had helped him forget his tangle with Gunnar. “When this is over you might be able to come back with us. Though that’s up to Ian, of course. It’s his plane at the airport.”
“What is Texas?” Gunnar was clearly suspicious of everyone but me and Jerry.
“It’s a place, far from here.” I was afraid just jumping on a plane for Texas wasn’t going to be good enough to get Fredrick off their tails. I smiled at Richard, glad he’d decided to be reasonable, but I could see Ian might be a problem. He’d put his gun away but he kept staring at Gunnar like he was the snake in the Garden of Eden. Hmm.
“Texas is where Jerry and I live. But don’t worry about that now. We need to get moving. Gretchen, do you have Fredrick’s weapon? Ian and Richard are dying to have a look at it. They are both familiar with modern technology.”
“Yes, we are.” Richard stepped forward. “Of course we don’t have any equipment here. We really need a lab if we’re going to figure anything out about it.”
“Yes, it’s here.” Gretchen glanced at the stack of crates against the wall.
“We’d like to take it apart and look at it first.” Ian and Richard exchanged glances. “See how it works. Hand it over.”
“No. Now that you’ve seen my treasure this could be a trick. Who’s to say you won’t paralyze us all and then take off with my fortune?” Gunnar was really very smart to think of that.
Jerry stepped forward. “Gunnar, you can trust these men.”
“The man who held a gun to my head? Or the man who is claiming I may have raided his lands and left, what? Bastards there?” Gunnar spit on the floor. “No. You hold it, Jeremiah. And Glory, of course.” Gunnar nodded at Gretchen. “We know the Eliminator can’t hurt her.”
“Really? Glory? How can that be?” Gretchen walked over to a crate and pulled it open.
“It’s that long story again, Gretchen. I have a special blood and let’s leave it at that. Okay?” I shook my head when I could see Flo wanted to speak up about my demi-goddess thing. Bragging. She’d decided I was like royalty now and being my best friend gave her a certain caché. As if she needed anything to make her more special. I was surprised Gunnar hadn’t told Gretchen about my Olympus connection. But then they’d been busy running for their lives. And I wasn’t sure Gunnar had really believed me anyway.
“I don’t want us to try it on anyone. Certainly I’d hate to see any of you suffer from this. Of course I’ll be suffering too, won’t I?” Gretchen handed Jerry the weapon. “Notice it has three switches. The one on the right is for mortals. Fredrick says it kills them.” She shuddered. “The one in the middle knocks out vampires. I guess that’s what he used on you three, Gunnar, Jeremiah and Glory. You don’t have to aim it for it to work. It will make any vampire in the room fall down unconscious.” Big sigh. “It is horrible.”
“What does the one on the left do?” I was afraid I’d already figured that out.
Jerry held the gun so Ian and Richard could see it.
“That one kills vampires instantly.” Gretchen clutched the little insert. “It works. I saw him do it. Fredrick killed a vampire in front of me one night. Flipped that switch, aimed it and the man went down, never to see another sunrise.”
“Mio Dio!” Flo was crossing herself again. “We should destroy it now. Smash it into a million pieces!”
“It wouldn’t do any good, Florence. The genius who made this would just make another. We need to figure this out so we can fix this to use ourselves until Fredrick is eliminated.” Richard patted Flo’s shoulder.
“Yes, Fredrick must die. I see that now. He has a twisted kind of genius and is not fit to live. The vampire he killed.” Gretchen’s breath was more of a sob. “His body. I saw it. There was a hole where his heart used to be.” She bowed her head. “I am so ashamed to carry his name.”
“Why, älskling? It is not your fault your mate is a monster.” Gunnar pulled her into his arms. “We will kill him and you will be free.”
“I guess it is the only way.” Gretchen leaned against him. “But I loved him once.” She looked around at all of us. “Can you understand?”
“Yes, of course. People change.” I sent mental messages around the group. Enough Fredrick bashing. She’d come around to our way of thinking. I held out my hand and Gretchen finally handed me the insert.
“Jeremiah, watch what you are doing. Fredrick was always careful to hold the weapon by that padded handle with one hand and to flip the switch with his other hand.” She pointed out the parts to me. “I think Glory will have to be the one to try it if you want to see how it works. But I must warn you. Everyone here will fall down unconscious once Glory hits that middle switch. Even if she doesn’t aim it at you.”
“Are you sure we should test this?” I looked at Jerry and he silently handed the weapon to me. “We have no idea how long you’ll be out.”
“It’s an experiment, Gloriana. Surely if you press the button for only a second, we will only be out for a moment or two.” Ian was clearly fascinated. “Are we all game?” No one seemed to want to admit they were afraid to go along with it. Even Gunnar merely grunted and held Gretchen’s hand.
“Wait! We fall down if this thing works on us?” Flo frowned down at the dirty concrete floor. “I have on this wonderful coat.”
“Maybe you’d all like to sit on the floor. So you won’t fall.” I studied those switches. Thank God they were color coded so I couldn’t accidentally make a mistake. It was the middle one I needed to hit anyway. No chance of an error.
“Seriously, amica?” Flo shook her head. “You won’t fall too? It will only be for a second?”
“Fredrick was upset that I didn’t react to this thing. So I swear I won’t fall. If it does make you faint,
you should come to fairly quickly.” I hoped that was true. I smiled as I watched my best friend pull a canvas off a stack and turn it over so that she sat on the clean side. She beckoned and Richard sat close to her so he could hold her hand. Everyone else just sat where they stood.
“Here goes.” I flipped the switch and watched all my friends, even Jerry standing behind me, fall over. Talk about wielding power. I immediately turned it off again. Then I waited and waited. No one stirred. What had I done?
Chapter Eleven
It seemed to take forever for them to begin to stir but was actually ten minutes according to the clock on my phone. Jerry was the first to wake up. And he’d been behind me!
“Gloriana. What the hell happened?” He sat up and looked around. “Our friends are still out. My God!”
“I know. Good luck figuring out how this thing works. Is it sound? Some kind of laser? Beats me.” I handed him the machine, eager to get rid of it. First, I’d taken the activator out of it. The thing gave me the creeps.
“What could it be then?” Jerry stood but seemed a little wobbly. When I started to go to him, he gave me a warning look. No, he didn’t want my help. A breath and a minute to get his bearings and he was good to go.
The others were stirring now too. Gunnar, then Ian. They were the biggest men so I was thinking size might help one recover from whatever the machine did. Richard wasn’t far behind. Gretchen moaned and stretched and Gunnar hurried to her side. It took my little buddy Flo the longest. So my size theory wasn’t off base. She finally sat up, Richard’s arms around her.
“Mio Dio, I was knocked completely out. How long did it last?”
I looked at my phone. She’d been out for almost thirty minutes. When I told her she showed her fangs.
“I hate that machine. We need to destroy every one of them. You know how easy it would be to stake me while I am like that?” She stood with Richard’s help. “To stake all of us?”
“Or someone could just flip the other switch and kill us all with this thing.” Jerry looked like he was seriously thinking about taking Flo’s advice and smashing the Eliminator against the concrete floor. “It takes a sick bastard to create something like this.”
“We need a place to work and tools. I want to know how this works.” Richard was still holding onto a shaky Flo.
“So do I. I have plenty of things we could use in my lab in Austin.” Ian nodded. “What the hell. All of you are welcome to come on the plane and go back there. Even you, Viking.”
“Fredrick will follow us there.” Gretchen was staying on the floor. “He wants the Eliminator back and will want to get even with me for taking off with it. Get even with us all.”
“I won’t run away like a coward. The bastard must die.” Gunnar pulled out his sword. “I will take his head if it’s the last thing I do.”
“It might be, Viking.” Ian frowned. “Your primitive weaponry doesn’t stand a chance against something as sophisticated as this.” He and Richard had placed the weapon on a table and were trying to open it. Richard produced a Swiss Army Knife with a dozen different blades including screwdrivers. “Glory, you didn’t fool with the settings, did you?”
“All I touched was the switch. On and off.” I had hated doing that. “With the activator out of it, the thing should be harmless.” But was it really? Fredrick could have said that to throw us off. “Be careful!”
“Glory’s right. Fredrick could have a booby trap in there.” Jerry had joined them.
“We’re being careful.” Ian smiled, obviously excited at the chance to examine the weapon. “We already took a hell of a chance, lying here unconscious while Fredrick and his men could arrive any minute.” He rubbed his chest. “You’re onto something though. You said your chest hurt afterwards. So does mine. It’s doing a job on our hearts. Richard, we need to think about this.”
“Oh, shit. This is a tracker. How long has this weapon been here?” Richard held up a tiny part. “Obviously Fredrick can find it now. Don’t know why he didn’t sooner.”
“I hid it here right after we left the island. But we dropped it here and left. I didn’t want us to spend the day where it’s so open. Fredrick must not have trusted his men to retrieve it for him and wanted to come personally but the sunrise stopped him.” Gretchen buried her face in her hands. “I’ve led him to us, Gunnar. I’m so sorry.”
“No, I want to meet him. To put him down like a rabid dog.” Gunnar paced the floor. “It’s possible he sent men to take us in our death sleep but, thank Freya, they didn’t find us. Now he’ll be back for his weapon at least.”
“Wait. I see it now. This tracker only comes on when the weapon is used. We activated it when we tested it. He didn’t know where the machine was until we turned it on.” Richard dropped the tracker to the floor and stomped it with his boot heel. “If we move fast, we might be able to leave before they get here.”
But we all knew we were too late when we heard thumps on the roof. Something or things were landing. And then there was the sound of a loud motor outside. A vehicle--and it wasn’t a small car either--had just driven up. We were in big trouble. Surrounded.
I held up the activator. “I say we get rid of this thing. Gretchen, you really think the Eliminator is useless without it?”
“Yes, yes! Break it or throw it in the lake outside, Glory. Then at least we can have a fair fight here.” Gretchen grabbed a loose board when Gunnar pulled out his sword. “We can’t keep running forever.”
“Min modiga kvinna.” Gunnar gave her a quick kiss. “You heard her, Glory. Get rid of that thing.”
Richard and Ian looked pained. They really wanted to know how it worked.
“Hide it instead. It’s so little it will take a long time to find. Toss it into that pile of canvases, Gloriana.” Richard nodded to Gunnar and pulled out his gun. “Yes, Gretchen is a brave woman, but I’d rather all the women shifted out of here right now.”
“Caro, I don’t run and hide from trouble. And certamente I won’t leave you alone to fight these bastardi.” Flo picked up a board too and sat down to strip off her high heeled boots. My little buddy meant business.
“Florence, don’t.” Richard rushed to her side.
“Try to stop me, marito.” She got up and gave him a quick kiss. “Glory, toss that thing here.” I did and she stuffed it into her cleavage. “Hah! If they get this close to me, there will be hell to pay. Eh?”
Ian burst into laughter and pulled out his gun. “Pity the bastards now. Spread out. They have to come in the back door so they should be sitting ducks. Damn, but I wish we could have used the Eliminator on them. Too bad we’d just incapacitate ourselves as well.” He looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Of course Glory could use it and then go around and--”
“Stop right there. Gloriana’s not going to stake Fredrick or try to take out all of his shifters by herself. We don’t even know if the Eliminator would put his shifters out, do we?” Jerry looked at Gretchen.
“Remember how they took us when we got to the castle, Jerry?” I hadn’t forgotten how helpless we’d been. “The shifters didn’t go down and neither did Fredrick. I had to be drugged and they all carried us to the dungeon. Fredrick has something that makes him immune to the Eliminator. What, I don’t know.”
“Glory’s right. He used it on me and never would have tried that if it had made him fall down too.” Gretchen had kicked off her shoes too and looked ready to rumble.
I was glad we’d figured that out. I had no desire to be the designated killer in this group but I could use some of my Olympus powers. I grabbed a board with a nail in it.
“They will all carry those guns with the wooden bullets. I wish we had bullet proof vests.” Gretchen shook her head. “You know Fredrick wears one wherever he goes.”
“Wait. The canvases. And that looks like heavy duty steel over there. What if we make our own bullet proof vests?” I ran over to the stacks of material there. “What kind of artist used this place, Gretchen?” I glanced u
pward. The sounds had stopped. We were lucky they hadn’t attacked yet. Probably scouting the area to figure out the best approach. They hadn’t realized the back door was the only way in.
“He did metal sculpture. Huge ones that sit outdoors. Paintings too. Why?” Gretchen stood beside me. “What would we need to make such a vest?”
“Brilliant, Gloriana. You’re right. That’s industrial grade steel. The canvas can be cut to make a vest and the steel should be able to stop a bullet, especially since Gretchen’s right and Fredrick’s army will be using wooden ones, not metal.” Richard started pulling out small pieces of steel, the size of a man’s chest. “If they hit us in the head, all bets are off, so watch what you’re doing. I wish we could make a helmet of some kind but can’t see how with these materials. At least most men trained to fire at vampires automatically go for the heart.”
“A breastplate. I like it.” Gunnar held a piece of blue metal against his chest.
Ian was by his side, tossing metal into a pile. “Campbell, bring your knife. I’m sure it’s sharp enough to cut this canvas. We need arm holes and a hole to put our head through. We’ll double it so there’s a pouch to hold the metal in front.”
“You really think it will work?” I didn’t say more. The men must have thought so. They were throwing together makeshift vests at warp speed. Vampire speed actually. The women got theirs first. Chivalry from our ancient men. Then the men slapped together their own. Gunnar hadn’t seen Jerry almost die from the wooden bullet but he was used to going into battle well prepared. Soon all of us wore what looked like a canvas bag over our shoulders. They’d found twine to tie the sides together and form pouches for our metal breastplates against our chests and stomachs.
Just in time too. The back door burst open and two men dressed in black rushed inside, guns blazing. The sound was horrendous. I’d hoped to mesmerize the soldiers but realized they all wore goggles with the special lenses that would prevent that. Damn. So I ducked behind the table we’d overturned to use for cover while I thought about how to help. At least our men had guns. Jerry stayed beside me, firing back. Richard and Ian had hidden on either side of the door and jumped the first two shifters, surprising them.
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