“Well, she’s going to need to recruit a few more.”
“I don’t think that will be a problem for her,” Megan said with a frown.
“Nor do I,” Galahad said. “We must strike quickly before she has a chance to create more soldiers. Vincent, are you ready?”
“Of course,” I said, getting to my feet. “When do we leave?”
“No time like the—” Galahad began, then cut off as Jake stomped toward us. Gears had repaired most of the damage to him, but the big security guard still looked like he’d been hit by a bus, then dropped off a cliff, then had the bus dropped atop him from the cliff. Jake signed something at Galahad. He wasn’t wearing the Gizmatronic helmet anymore, probably because he was right, it did look like an electronic dunce cap. I don’t know sign language, but Jake’s meaning was plain enough—I’m coming with you.
“Jake,” Galahad began, “you have been through a tremendous ordeal. It is wonderful that Cynthia was able to create Breath for you, but it may be best for you to—”
Jake waved a hand, a look of frustration on his face. He began signing furiously, then abruptly put his hands at his sides. Jake walked to the far wall and pulled Sir Deathblow’s axe from the wall and heaved it over his shoulder, then stomped back to us. He jerked his thumb at his chest. “I am coming,” he whispered.
And that was that.
Mrs. Rita walked into the room and raised an eyebrow at Jake. He just nodded, and she turned to Galahad. “I will remain behind should one of you be injured. With luck, Vincent can portal you back to me.”
Mrs. Rita looked and sounded a lot better, but she wasn’t fully recovered, certainly not enough to go with us into battle. I looked at Galahad. “Any chance Leslie can come with us? Her magic would certainly even the odds.”
“Leslie can’t take sides in mortal affairs,” Galahad said. “Let’s be off, Vincent. Kindly open a portal.”
“All right, boss, give me a sec.” I concentrated, creating a portal to the spot where the probe was showing an image of a tunnel mouth. The extradimensional energy sizzled around me, and we stepped through into the dusty tunnel. After the initial moment of my companions’ disorientation had passed, we started down the tunnel. Gearstripper had a Gizmatron probe drifting ahead of us, alert for unexpected sentries. “Are you doing anything about the rats?” I asked.
“Hmm, good thinking. I’ll need a different hypersonic frequency for that,” the gremlin replied. “Hang on while I put Billy on autopilot so I can run some searches on Google.”
“We must be quick,” Galahad said. “Once you do that, it won’t take Carmilla long to wonder why her pets aren’t carrying out her commands.”
We encountered a pair of vampires just a few minutes later, sooner than we’d anticipated. They were etching fresh runes into the walls with chisels. One of them launched forward, claws outstretched. In a flash, Galahad’s sword appeared in his hand and sliced through the vamp, undead ash spraying all around us as the body disintegrated. The second vampire leapt backward and stuck to the wall like a spider. He scrambled away, out of the radius of Galahad’s holy light. I sent a couple of kobold fireballs at the vamp, who skittered along the ceiling.
And then I heard the chittering. I glanced down a side passage and saw a swarm of rats charging toward us. There must’ve been five or six dozen of them. Normally, I’d just make a portal along the ground, dump the little buggers out in the river and be done with it. But with the fresh runes negating my portals, I’d have to burn them, like I’d done a few months back in the sewers.
Or at least, that was the plan until someone shot me in the back.
I screamed and flopped face down on the tunnel floor. The rats swarmed over me, biting my exposed hands and gnawing at my jacket. I had my hands over my face and could feel them tearing the flesh from my fingers. I surrounded myself in an aura of kobold flame, incinerating rats and buying myself enough time to stand up and heal. I winced as the bullet forced its way out of my back, and watched as the flesh of my fingers reformed. I turned my attention back to the fight, and my blood went cold as a howling sounded through the tunnel. I sought out the source, and my shoulders slumped.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I said. A pack of wolves was charging down the tunnels, no doubt spurred on by an unseen strigoi mort mistress. Jake shot forward, swinging the massive serrated axe as if he’d been using it forever, and swept the wolves aside in great bloody arcs. Galahad was dueling an upyr who was armed with a rapier, and though the upyr’s body was smoldering from the holy light emitted by Galahad’s blade, this only seemed to drive the creature on, and it attacked in desperation.
“Drop your guard,” Megan called, and the upyr’s eyes glazed over as Megan’s flared white. The rapier’s tip dipped to the ground, giving Galahad time to decapitate it. Without warning, the remaining wolves and rats barked and whined and ran away from us. The upyr still on the ceiling fell from the height and landed on his back. Instead of clutching his spine, which I’m sure was the source of the sickening crack I’d just heard, he was covering his ears.
“Finally got the right frequency,” Gears said, a small pair of speakers having popped up from Billy’s shoulders. “That should keep them away.”
“Good work,” Galahad said. “Megan, can you interrogate this upyr?”
Megan moved over to the fallen upyr, her eyes glowing white, when his head suddenly burst into flames. A moment later, a headless corpse sat before us.
“What happened?” I asked.
Megan picked up a small piece of ceramic from the ground. “He had a fake tooth,” she said. “I’m guessing it was filled with holy water.”
“Like the cyanide capsules spies use,” Gears said. “Wow, these guys are hard core.”
“Let’s keep moving,” Galahad said. “Which way, Gearstripper?”
Billy’s hand pointed down a left-hand passage, and we started forward. We’d gone about fifteen feet when Gears said, “Hang on.” We stopped, and he scooted forward, Billy’s eyes flickering with static. “There are holes in the wall just ahead; three vertical lines of them.”
“A trap?” Megan asked.
“Raiders of the Lost Ark intro style, if my guess is right,” Gears said.
“Spear trap,” I said, noting Galahad’s expression.
“Can you bypass it?” Galahad asked.
“Sure thing, Galahad,” Gears said as the mech crouched down a few feet from the holes. “Let me just roll a d20 and add my Disable Device modifier.”
Galahad looked at me blankly.
“He’s working on it,” I said.
Galahad shook his head and smiled as the mech placed its hand on the ground. Gears explained, “My sensors say that the spears are tipped with steel. That makes this easier. I put one of Gizmatron’s electromagnetic wave generators into Billy. The power draw from this thing is immense, but I should be able to prevent the spears from popping out for a few seconds, giving us time to get past.”
“Let’s not waste any time then,” I said, walking past the holes. Something brushed against my back, and there was a chuk sound followed by a yelp of surprise from my companions. I spun to see the spears had extended across the hallway, three or four layers of them, each at least an inch thick. Thankfully, It didn’t look like anyone had been caught in them. I was about to call out to everyone when something grabbed me from behind and hurled me down the tunnel.
Chapter 17
I slammed against the tunnel wall, smacking my head against the hard stone. My ears rang, and stars flared in my vision as something grabbed me by the back of the neck and slammed my face into the wall once, twice, three times. Then there was a feeling of flight as my body was hurled through the air, before slamming against the floor. There was the whuff of an explosion and the sound of rocks falling.
I groaned as I t
ried to pull myself up. It was dark. I was underground, on my way to the lair of one of the most deadly undead in history. I didn’t bother with kobold night vision; I just summoned an aura of holy light. The purple luminescence showed me an abandoned pump station, pipes as thick as my torso bending into the walls, and an old-style generator with rusted levers and dials. The entrance to the room was filled with collapsed rock, and dust hung in the air, shimmering purple motes in my holy light.
Carmilla sat perched atop the pump mechanism, grinning at me. She’d changed outfits, and was now dressed in a white shirt and dark pants, and she wore a pair of leather, thigh-high boots. She ran a hand through her hair as she gave me a little wave and a wink.
I glowered at her, or tried to. My cheekbone had been shattered when she’d slammed me into the wall, and I couldn’t make expressions properly. Talking was going to be a challenge, too, at least until my accelerated healing finished its job. Leaning against the wall, I struggled to my feet as I felt something in my face pop back into place. This wouldn’t be the first time I had to take on a boss monster by myself. I doubted it would be the last. I’d handled Pendleton. I’d handled Sakave. And while Carmilla was a scary individual, she was a vampiric undead. And with holy light, no vamp could touch me. It was time to burn Carmilla out of existence.
The divine purple luminescence flared around me, engulfing Carmilla. But instead of burning her, she simply glanced around. “The color is pretty,” she said as the light flickered on her skin, “but it is nothing more than a parlor trick.” Then she shot forward, seized me by the throat, and heaved me off the ground, slamming the back of my head against the wall again before dropping me to the floor.
It happened so fast that my brain hadn’t caught up with what just happened. “How?” I wheezed. I rolled away from her, coming up on my knees, still radiating light.
Carmilla shook her head. “You are not the god I am afraid of, Corinthos. Treggen was right about you being full of yourself.” Her front teeth extended. The soul-drinking teeth. “And now, Vincent Corinthos,” she said sweetly, “I am going to kill you.”
“You’ve had chances to kill me before,” I said, glaring at her as I stood. “At the river. And your initial assassin outside the convenience store. And you haven’t. So why now?” Keep her talking, Corinthos. Buy some time for the others to arrive. Time. Forget buying time, I could just slow Carmilla down until—
As if reading my thoughts, she shot forward, faster than I could see, and slashed the arm my chronometer was attached to. Her claws sank down to the bone, and I cried out, dropping back down to my knees.
“The vampires you deal with here in Boston are mere children, Vincent Corinthos.”
“Ironic, coming from a fourteen-year-old kid,” I snapped, feeling my biceps reattach to my humerus.
Carmilla gave a predatory grin. “I like you. You are amusing. I almost regret having to kill you.”
“You still haven’t answered why.” My good hand started to creep toward the chronometer.
Carmilla flashed forward again, slashing my other arm. Christ, could she read my thoughts?
“Yes,” she said.
Shit.
“As I said, the vampires here are children. They use their mental powers to dominate those around them, but they never use their powers to listen to another’s mind. It takes decades of practice, which I have had many of. I know everything you plan to do, can hear your every thought as if it were spoken aloud. Your caul protects you from mental domination, but that doesn’t stop your mind from being an open book. You cannot hide anything from me.”
I hastily erected some mental barriers, hoping I could block her out. Carmilla’s smirk told me my mental shields weren’t working. Okay, time to change tactics. Burning holy light was draining my faith reserves; kobold night vision consumed far less power. I switched one power for another, and my eyes flicked around the room, looking for options. The extradimensional-blocking runes were everywhere, and there were no doors in here. There was a grate about three-quarters of the way up the wall, but it was barely a foot across. No good there. In short, there was no way to portal out, and nothing to Open. My holy light didn’t work. Carmilla could scent me if I turned invisible. Think, dammit, Corinthos, think.
“To your question. You are wrong. I did not have the opportunity to kill you. Not right away. I needed to see you in action, understand your motivations, understand how you would behave. My ‘assassin’ outside the store was only to test your strength. Only by understanding how you react in dangerous situations, how you think, would I be able to create a trap for you. I realized I would have to isolate you from the paladin, and keep you from your other friends. There were too many in your headquarters, that ved’ma Mrs. Rita was keeping too close an eye on me.”
My arms had healed, but I didn’t dare move yet. Unlike other bad guys, Carmilla kept her focus entirely on me as she monologued.
“Now, I do have the opportunity. And when I drain your soul, I will become more powerful than ever.”
“How do you figure?” I asked, thinking back to my conversation with Van Helsing. “So you’ll be able to dominate half-gods. Big deal. There aren’t that many of us. There’s me, and a handful of people who hang out on Mount Olympus. And I don’t think you’ll get an invitation there.”
Her head tipped to one side, as if hearing something I couldn’t. No doubt by now, the other Caulborn would’ve gotten past the spear trap and were trying to find me. With luck, Gearstripper’s sensors would be able to detect me.
She chuckled. “You do not understand what soul draining does, do you?” Her grin was both blissful and wicked. “It means I take a piece of you into me. I gain a portion of your essence, your nature. To the rusalka, I am their chieftain, because I drained the soul of their king so long ago. To the psoglav, I am brood mother, because I drained their matriarch. I do not take on their appearances or gain their physical powers, but I share a connection with them. It’s why I can compel so many different kinds of creatures so easily. To them, I am one of them, and so my suggestions take hold faster and remain longer.
“With your soul, Vincent Corinthos, I will become a demigod. My subordinates will become my congregation. I will gain the powers of all those who follow me.”
My mind reeled from this. Carmilla was trying to ascend. “That won’t work,” I said. “You can kill me, but half-gods can’t have worshippers from their own species. You won’t gain anything from your vampires, and if you’re spiritually part rusalka and psoglav and whatever else, you won’t get anything there, either.”
I was starting to see that email thread Gears had recovered in a whole new light. If Carmilla became an undead goddess with so many different paranormals worshipping her, she’d have power beyond belief. Forget the Caulborn being able to stop her; even some of the Olympians would have a hard time doing it.
“Ah, but I believe you are wrong,” Carmilla said. “The Caulborn had special files dedicated to studying you. From their reasoning, your species limitation is a biological one, which is why you can’t have humans as followers.”
“So that wouldn’t work for you, either,” I said. “You were human, so vampires can’t worship you at…” I trailed off. Carmilla had been human, but wasn’t anymore. I’d thought of her as a vampire, as an upyr, but now I realized just how wrong that was. Carmilla was a strigoi mort. Which meant that if she did soul drain me, she could have worshippers from every race that followed her. The only thing that she couldn’t draw faith from was another strigoi mort. And if Carmilla’s compulsions were this strong to begin with, then she’d have no problem installing herself as a goddess. I’d always given my followers free will, let them choose if they wanted to worship me, but plenty of other deities out there forced people to believe in them, and drew power from their congregations by force.
Okay, can’t reach the chron
ometer. But I could manipulate tachyon hands-free when I wasn’t wearing the damned thing. I Opened the chronometer’s leather strap—
And it cinched around my arm so tightly I thought my wrist might snap. I cried out and cradled my arm as the chronometer beeped at me. I glared at the message on the screen. “Apertus Energy Override.” Before that could sink in, Carmilla was atop me, tearing my switchblade from its hidden pocket up my sleeve. Quick as a flash, she snapped the blade open and drove it through my right forearm, pinning it to the ground. Holding my other arm, she ripped open my shirt, her needle-like front teeth all my brain could focus on.
I struggled, trying to Open a portal, trying to access tachyon, trying to conjure holy light, anything. There was an explosion, and the force of it threw Carmilla off of me and slammed her against the far wall. Rock chips and dust exploded in the room, and I rolled away, toward where the explosion had come from.
There was a gunshot, and Carmilla’s head snapped back, gore spraying out behind her. The bullet, undoubtedly silver, dropped Carmilla to the ground. I yanked my switchblade from my arm and scrambled to my feet, holding the weapon before me. My own blood dripped from its tip. Megan moved into the room, her 9mms leveled at the strigoi mort. Carmilla recovered quickly, the bullet hole that Megan had put neatly between her eyes closed, and a silver slug fell to the ground. Megan hadn’t stopped firing, but Carmilla was weaving between Megan’s shots like a dancer, turning to mist and back so quickly that she was practically a ghost. Carmilla moved as if she were going to rush us.
And then the room was bathed in white holy light. Carmilla yelped as Galahad entered the room, his sword held high. The strigoi mort scrambled up the wall and went into mist form, vanishing through a grate. “Drat,” the boss said. “I thought we had her.”
Nightfall: Caulborn 5 Page 20