by R. A. Nelson
“None of them are him. I’ve lost him.”
No time to think about that right now. The brothers were climbing the tower diagonally, circling it the way stone stairs wrap around a ziggurat, higher and higher.
Closer and closer.
The earpiece coughed.
“Hey, you there?” Sagan said.
“Here!” one of the brothers called. “I see! Look! Her Glühe!”
My glow. He’s seen my glow.
“Gotta go!” I said, and ran back to the place where the catwalk joined the tower and scrunched behind a thick support column. Gooseflesh raced over my arms. Now. It’s happening now.
The Verloren who had seen me dropped to the catwalk not twenty feet away, smiling.
“This is not a very good hiding place, Mädchen,” he said, taking a step toward me. Pointing at my tool belt. “So, are you planning on building something?”
I just looked at him.
“It’s okay if you don’t want to tell me. After I am finished with you, you will want to talk. Assuming you can still speak.”
The Verloren dropped his shoulder and sprang.
I flipped a switch on the squat yellow cube I was standing on and raised the sandblaster’s spray nozzle. The vampire’s eyes went wide with shock.
“Scheisse—!”
I squeezed the trigger. A scouring mix of sand and water hit the Verloren dead in the face from point-blank range.
He screamed and was knocked back, throwing his hands up to cover his blistered eyes. I charged after him, dragging the sandblaster bouncing and clanging, raking his face and arms mercilessly. The vampire staggered backward. I kept coming, afraid to let up for a second, hammering him with the skin-peeling spray until he was driven to the end of the catwalk.
Now he had nowhere to go unless it was over the side. The vampire gathered himself and charged again, bellowing in blind rage. I sidestepped him and squeezed the trigger. This time he got a full blast of the lethal sand right in the ear. The Verloren collapsed against the railing, holding his head and moaning, legs starting to buckle.
Something moved behind me. I swung the sprayer around—not fast enough; the second brother crashed into me, throwing me against the railing. I let out a yelp of fear and pain as my back bent over the side. The Verloren swore and drove his hands into my stomach; only my grip on the hose and the weight of the sandblaster kept me from plunging over.
I twined my legs through the catwalk and hung on, fighting to aim the sprayer, but the vampire was too close—the nozzle was pointing straight up between us, jetting harmlessly in the air.
We fought over the sandblaster nozzle, spitting and cursing. The vampire was taller than me and stronger. He leaned in hard, pushing me backward even as he pulled against the sprayer. The tools in my tool belt were cutting into my stomach, but I was afraid to let go of the sprayer to try to get to them.
Now the top half of my body was almost horizontal, hanging over nothing but fifty feet of dead space. The fall wouldn’t kill me, but the Verloren would as I lay there stunned and helpless.
I started to slip, one foot coming free.…
The vampire leered triumphantly, his face so close, I could see up his nose.
“Goodbye, Schlampe.”
Up his nose.
I stopped trying to pull back on the sprayer and instead shoved it against the vampire’s muscular chest—jammed the sandblaster’s nozzle right beneath his flaring nostrils.
Squeezed the trigger.
The Verloren’s eyes widened in horrified surprise as sand exploded up his sinuses at 6,500 pounds per square inch. For a moment it seemed as if every square inch of his face bulged; his eyes almost came out of their sockets and his skin flooded with purple.
The vampire let go of the sprayer and staggered backward, groaning. He put his hands to his face and blood gushed violently from between his fingers. I couldn’t move, just stood there against the railing watching in shock. The vampire looked at me, but I could tell he wasn’t seeing me. He trembled all over, stumbled forward a couple of steps, and fell at my feet, lying still.
I still had my hand on the trigger of the sprayer, scouring nothing but the air. I let off the trigger and heard my ragged breathing. The vampire wasn’t moving.
I swung around wildly, looking for his brother Verloren.
Nothing. He was gone.
* * *
I looked up. Above me was a small metal door with a platform about ten feet over my head. The door was closed, but I had already battered the lock. I threw down the sprayer nozzle and leapt up to the platform and hauled myself inside, slamming the door behind me. I jammed an iron bar we had placed there across the door and sank to my knees, still breathing hard and trying not to cry.
“No. No. No.”
I waited for the shaking to stop, terrified something was going to crash against the door. I was in a hallway that stretched from one side of the tower to the other. The hallway was choked with fallen ductwork, wires, assorted hoses, old electrical panels.
I could stay here. This was a place we had thought of to use as a last resort for emergencies. I sat there staring straight ahead. Some amount of time had passed. I didn’t know how much. Seconds? Minutes? Sagan had said …
I suddenly realized he had been talking in my ear the whole time.
“Emma! What happened! Are you okay!”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m … I’m okay!” I fought to keep from crying.
“Where are you!” Sagan said. “I saw someone fall! I’ve been calling and calling! Are you okay? Are you hurt!”
Hearing his voice was like taking a long drink of cool, clear water. I was sobbing hard now. “I said I’m okay, all right? I’m at position eight with the doors barred.”
“Are you safe there? What happened!”
“I got … I got two of them with the sandblaster. The young guys who looked like brothers.”
“Are they … are they dead?” I could hear the quiver in Sagan’s throat.
“I don’t know. I don’t know! I blinded one and … I think he jumped over the side. The other … he … I … I think maybe he’s … Oh my God, Sagan …”
“Emma … are you really okay? Are you hurt?”
I touched my side and stretched painfully. “I’m all right. Where are the others?”
“Two are on top of the tower, just looking around. The stocky guy, Bastien. And the big guy … the giant.”
“Any sign of Wirtz? Or Lilli?” I wanted to keep asking questions to stop thinking about what I had just done.
“Nothing,” Sagan said. “I saw the girl on the north face a little while ago, but she’s disappeared. Then I heard something nearby. I don’t know what it was.…”
I swore. “And you’re talking to me? They’ll hear you!”
“It’s okay. There’s nobody here that I can see. I’m so stupid. I should have …” His voice trailed away.
“What?”
“I don’t know. I should have come up with something better. Some other way to keep you safe. I should be up there helping.…”
“You are helping. Just keep watching, keep me ahead of them.…”
“Emma … this is too much. Sneak down and let me out. We’ll make a run for it to my Jeep.”
“Where? Where can we go?”
“I don’t know! Anywhere away from here.”
“Sagan … they’ll find us. Worse. They’ll find our families sooner or later even if they don’t find us. We have to stop them. We don’t have any choice. I’m going to move again.”
I brushed at my eyes and made my way toward the other end of the hall, dodging around the debris. I put my ear to the metal door. Nothing. I lifted the bar as quietly as I could and held it like a weapon while I slowly pulled the door open.
No one there. I was looking out onto another small platform with stairs leading down to the right and left. I waited, listening, then stuck my head out farther to where I could see the entire west wall of the tower. Nothing in any d
irection. And then—
“Emma! Look out!”
Sagan didn’t have to tell me. The baby-faced vampire had dropped out of the sky right in front of me. At first I thought he was floating. Then I saw it—he was holding on to a sagging loop of old black hosing that was stretched practically to the breaking point under his weight. He smiled.
I threw my body back into the hall and barred the door shut, scrambling away from it. There was a massive crash and the door buckled and the bar bent. I ran toward the other end of the hall. There was a crash against that door and it buckled too.
Bastien?
I didn’t wait to see. I stood in the center of the hall and kicked off the floor, flinging my body straight up through the tile ceiling. Flakes of asbestos and rust rained down around me. I was immediately tangled in a jumble of wires and piping. I swam through it, pushing and pulling things out of my way. I was moving horizontally, doing my best not to step on the fragile ceiling tiles just beneath me.
Something smashed through one of the tiles and an iron fist locked itself around my right calf. I caught a glimpse of the giant vampire’s face. I aimed a brutal kick at his massive jaw and planted my shoe in his fat cheek instead. The force of the kick would have separated a normal human being’s skull from his shoulders, but the tall vampire only lost his grip momentarily; I threw my body forward and kept moving.
Another set of fingers blasted through one of the tiles and caught my ankle. I kicked again, this time stomping the Verloren’s wrist with all my might. The giant vampire wouldn’t let go. He started to haul me back down as I clung furiously to the thickest pipe I could reach.
Please please please!
I kicked crazily, only one hand on the pipe now. Then I remembered—I had a utility knife in my tool belt. I didn’t have time to think about what I was doing. I drew the knife out by the handle and brought the curved blade slashing down. The knife struck the giant vampire’s thick fingers, lopping off the tips of two of them and gashing a third to the bone.
The big Verloren shrieked, wrenching my leg hard as his enormous hand jerked away. I almost fell and the utility blade skittered out of my fist, clattering on the hallway below.
I kept moving. More hands burst through the tiles, punching holes of light on either side of me as I desperately twisted and turned my body to keep away. I came to a white bucket and could go no farther. A whole tile exploded behind me and four massive arms grabbed the metal frame holding up the ceiling and started to rip it down.
A long section of ceiling collapsed into the hallway. I clung to the piping, feeling horribly exposed. I could see them now, Bastien and the giant Verloren, looking up at me angrily, crouching to spring. They flung themselves at me, tearing through the last of the ceiling.
I got my fingers on the rim of the white bucket and tipped it.
Five gallons of industrial-strength swimming pool chlorine fell in a snowdrift of chemical pain directly on the Verloren’s faces, making a big flumph sound. A cloud of the stuff curled up, searing my nostrils and stinging my eyes. I shut my mouth and sprang blindly toward the long opening in the ceiling the vampires had made.
I slammed against the metal floor and the wind rushed out of me in one huge grunt. I opened my watering eyes and staggered to my feet and ran, lungs screaming for air, not daring to breathe until I got outside. At the last moment I turned to see both Verloren on their knees, clawing miserably at their faces and making gagging and choking sounds.
I burst through the partly open door onto the platform and took in huge gobbling inhales of the night air. I could hear furious shouts behind me.
Climb, I thought. Climb.
I kicked off, propelling my body to the side of the test stand structure. I landed as lightly as a cat, then nearly fell, the way a cat sometimes does when something is more difficult to cling to than expected.
The rusty hide of the tower was studded with huge hexagonal bolts the size of dinner plates, and that’s what I was hanging on to. Only the bolts didn’t protrude as far as I thought, so there wasn’t a lot to grab.
The hallway door slammed open below me and Bastien roared out onto the little platform, face dusted white with chlorine, puckered eyes blazing red.
“Töten Sie Sie, töten Sie Sie, töten Sie Sie!”
I frantically scaled the sheer cliff face of the tower, lunging from handhold to handhold on the bolts, Bastien right behind, snorting like an enraged animal.
Sagan was yelling something into my earpiece, but all I could think about was getting away from the monster on my heels. At any moment he was going to grab me by the ankle and fling me off the side of the tower.
I slipped on one of the bolts and Bastien’s huge hand clutched at my leg, but he didn’t get a firm hold and I pulled free. I got my balance again and shoved off with the tips of my toes, praying it would give me enough momentum to make the next catwalk.
I soared upward, hands banging the bottom of the metal walkway, fingers grasping to hold on as I twisted up over the railing and landed, feet already moving.
I ran down the catwalk, searching for a particular beam.… When I was moving this fast, one beam looked pretty much like another. The catwalk ran out into a flat wall of raw steel.
Bastien thumped onto the catwalk behind me.
“Komm, sie ist hier!” he yelled over the side. No translation needed: “She is here!”
The Verloren barreled toward me. I reached over the edge of the beam above me, fumbled, then grabbed it—the nail gun hidden there.
I gripped the gun with both hands and fired a burst of sixteen-penny nails straight into the vampire’s chest. Bastien grunted as the nails slammed deep into his body, but he kept coming. Now I aimed dead at his face and unloaded sixteens as fast as the gun would let me. Pop pop pop.
Bastien grimaced. I could see black dots appearing on his face—the heads of the nails—but still he came on. Now there wasn’t time to throw myself from the catwalk. I could only brace for the collision.
“Töten Sie Sie, töten Sie Sie, töten Sie Sie!”
Bastien hit me with the force of an out-of-control car, smashing my body against the metal wall at the end of the catwalk. A screw gouged a hole in my back.
The stocky vampire pressed into me, the stink of the chlorine flooding my nose. The barrel of the nail gun drove into the Verloren’s big stomach, twisting sharply in my hands until it was pointing straight down. The gun went off and a sixteen-penny nail shot through the top of my foot.
I screamed more in surprise than pain. I couldn’t feel the nail at all. All I could feel was terror now that Bastien had me in his grasp.
The nail gun fell to the deck between us and Bastien got his beefy hands around my throat. The scar on his nose turned bright red and his eyes were shiny with hate. Blood was trickling down all over his face from where the nails were embedded.
I fought to get my hands up, but the vampire’s heavy gut pressed me back, keeping my arms pinned. I couldn’t breathe. He was crushing the life out of me. Then my fingers touched something hard and metallic at my waist. The angle grinder.
I wrenched the angle grinder out of the belt but couldn’t raise it. Bastien still had his hands on my throat. My windpipe was collapsing, stripes of blackness starting to swim before my eyes. If I lost consciousness …
I flipped the switch on the angle grinder with my thumb, feeling the wheel catch and the tool start to vibrate with a screechy whine. I jammed it against the Verloren’s body with all the vampire strength I had and brought it up in a terrible arc.…
Bastien’s eyes bulged. The tool’s diamond blade dug in with a meaty gulping noise and something warm spurted over my hands. Blood. I kept driving the grinder into his body. Bastien let go of my throat and started furiously grabbing at the grinder, but the wheel was cutting his fingers to pieces.
The Verloren tried to push away, clutching desperately at my shoulders, arms, my face, coating me with his blood. I could feel his big arms losing their strength.
He took a couple of steps backward, turned, and staggered toward the far end of the catwalk. Bastien only made about three more steps before slumping to the metal grate beneath our feet. He whimpered and rolled over onto his back, body shuddering, eyes open. Then he stopped. Everything stopped. I could still see the nails in his face.
I doubled over coughing, still feeling the awful crushing pressure of Bastien’s thick fingers on my neck. I dropped the angle grinder and held my hands in front of me, painted with the Verloren’s blood.
“Emma! Emma, please!”
I realized that Sagan had been yelling into my ear for who knows how long, but for just a moment I couldn’t answer. I didn’t know how to form the words.
Pain broke me out of my shock. My back hurt from where the screw had gouged me, and my punctured foot was throbbing. I lifted my shoe dumbly and saw blood ticking from the bottom. I slipped my shoe off; the nail had torn a hole in the top of my foot just above the fleshy V between two toes and passed all the way through.
I put my shoe back on. My heart felt as if it were beating outside my chest. I couldn’t stay here. There were at least three Verloren left. Four, if the brother who had fallen had recovered. I scanned above and below frantically.… Not a single ball of lavender. Probably they were keeping out of sight and regrouping now that they knew I had weapons.
“Sagan.” My voice was so raspy, I doubted he could hear me over his own shouting. “Sagan! Shut up. Listen …”
“Emma! Thank God, thank God you’re all right! I could hear, but then … nothing! You wouldn’t say anything! I was afraid you—God, Emma, what happened!”
“He’s … dead.… Bastien is dead.”
“How?”
“Forget it. What about … what about the rest?”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m okay! Come on, help me!”
“One of them—I can’t tell who it is—he’s climbing up the side the gantry is on.”
“And the other …”
“The big guy? He still hasn’t come out from the hall,” Sagan said. “Position … um … eight. You sound … Are you hurt?”
“I’m … Just a minute.”