by S. L. Eaves
He trips over Deacon’s body as he backs from the stairwell, his attention on the sky. Shots ring out from the inside. Striden drops to the ground, having turned to see what he’d stumbled over and made the gruesome discovery.
1:36.
Crouching, I scamper around the stairwell in time to see Striden meet eyes with his dead brother. Crina appears in the doorway, taking advantage of his shocked state, edging slowly toward him, her gun leveled at his head.
“This is where it ends, Striden. Too long has Dominique’s death gone unanswered.”
More gunfire.
The helicopter circles overhead, a ladder dropping from its hull. Shots land inches from Crina. One strikes her leg. She doesn’t retreat. Instead she squeezes the trigger. Nothing.
I sprint over and pull her down as bullets zip past. At least one lands in my shoulder. I drag her to a nearby vent.
“You trying to get dusted?”
“Worth it if he goes, too. Besides, they’re just bullets.”
She fumbles with the empty chamber of her gun. “Nice work eliminating Deacon. The look on Striden’s face was priceless.”
We peer around the air duct. A recovered Striden is jogging over to where the chopper hovers just yards away. Pinned down, we are well within its line of fire.
Crina checks her pockets for a full clip. “I’m out of ammo. You armed?”
I slide my gun from its ankle holster. “Yeah, but there’s a bomb—”
Striden mounts the ladder as the chopper passes across the roof.
“We can’t let him escape.” She edges out from behind the duct.
“Jiro! Time?”
“You’ve got less than thirty seconds. Get out of there!”
“Plenty of time.” Crina is only half joking as she takes my gun and jumps onto the slotted grates that top the vent.
“Hey Striden!”
He is halfway up the ladder. The chopper is suspended over the bomb at the far end of the roof. He looks in our direction.
She fires.
Her shot hits right on target. Striden’s wide-eyed gaze meets the bomb just as the bullet strikes it. The explosion blows that arrogant smirk clean off, setting him and the helicopter ablaze.
Or so I imagine.
The blast blows us into the gardens of the neighboring building.
We land in a prickly bed of roses.
More explosions. Flames shoot out of the windows overhead. Either Deacon was right and one triggered the others, or the burning chopper had struck the side of a building and caused more explosions.
Either way, the end result is not pretty.
“The others are inside,” I realize.
Has Jiro evacuated them in time?
“Come on, we gotta make sure everyone is out.” Crina dashes inside. I run after her.
In minutes the shiny new building had transformed into a warzone.
My ears are ringing from the blast, my sense of balance is off, and I struggle to stay afoot. Through the smoke I spot Crina across the room, hunched over a body.
It is Xan. He is out cold, his entire head covered in blood. We struggle to lift a large rafter off his lower body.
“Is he—?”
“I don’t think so.”
I’ve never seen a dead vampire that wasn’t a pile of dust, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. More explosions send shards of glass and drywall in our direction.
“We have to go. Now!” Crina yells.
I look for signs of the others, but for all my abilities that most I manage to detect is smoke and debris. The ground shakes, rumblings growing steadily stronger. Crina draws Xan up over her shoulders and we make our escape.
Chapter 36
“Drive faster.”
80…85…90. The pedal vibrates under my foot.
“I’m pushing a hundred. These winding roads make it hard.”
Crina climbs over the front seat and settles into shotgun. She’d been taking care of Xan, who is unconscious in the back.
“How’s he doing?”
“He took one hell of a blow to the head, but he’ll be okay.”
I turn up the radio to drown out the sound of the police sirens behind us. My eyes keep darting to the rearview.
There are two of them back there. At least.
They’d caught our trail while we were tearing through the city. You could say we had a police escort out of Los Angeles.
“How far till Mexico?” Crina wipes blood off her hands.
“Far. Dunno. At this rate we’re not gonna make it.”
“Where the hell are we anyway?”
“Somewhere mountainous,” I respond dryly.
“You shouldn’t be driving. You lost a lot of blood.”
“Well right now that’s the least of our problems.”
I’d hotwired an old 90s roadster while Crina was hoisting an unconscious Xan through the hatchback. An easy steal, but the old beast of a transmission is fighting me on every turn. It was a miracle we’d made it out of the city at all.
Headlights glimpse the guardrail. We hit a sharp curve, catch some stones in the tires and skid through the gravel for a spell. I grip the wheel tightly, downshifting. Crina claws the dash. Xan remains sprawled across the backseat. We fishtail, then straighten out.
I shift gears and keep my focus on the road ahead.
The speedometer climbs back over 80 mph. Crina shoots me a nervous glance.
“Just keeping the cops on their toes.”
“They’ll be sending out backup and lots of it…likely include a chopper. We aren’t going to make it much farther in this car. We gotta bail.”
“Yeah…”
I hate when she’s right.
Crina rolls down her window.
“We should’ve stolen a convertible.”
I grin. “Next time.”
“There’s a ravine nearby. I smell water.”
There is a valley down to our left, a fitting host for water. And our escape.
“Something to aim for. What about Xan?”
An over-confident Crina is halfway out the window; she ducks back in.
“Can’t toss him. Gotta pull him from the wreckage.”
My stomach churns. Not what I wanted to hear. Cops are still in tight pursuit. They will not be relenting anytime soon. Someone blew apart several blocks of downtown LA, and we presently carry the titles of Suspect One, Two, and Three.
Our options are limited at best. There is a tight bend up ahead.
“Get ready to bail.”
My foot slams the accelerator. Crina climbs most of the way out the window, bracing her feet on the door handle.
“See you at the bottom,” I promise Xan under my breath.
The road curves sharply to the right.
We do not.
The car runs out of road and we eject mid dive over the rocky and tree-filled terrain. The car clips the tops of a few trees before nosediving into the jagged landscape below. Its short-lived plummet is followed by a dramatic landing as it bounces into tree trunks, flips over laterally and eventually rolls to a stop.
I have similar luck.
My feet strike the ground, but I don’t stick the landing. Hurling forward over some rocks, I bounce along the mountainside until a tree brings me to an abrupt halt. Still conscious, I lie at its trunk watching the world spin.
Ouch.
Stumbling, I force my feet to keep me vertical. My head is spinning. I stagger toward the light supplied by flames now emanating from the pile of metal and gasoline that used to be a car. My eyes start to focus as I near the overturned vehicle.
“Xan?” I cough up blood, clutching my rib cage.
Had that fall not jolted him awake? Lucky bastard.
I look around. No sign of Crina.
Hastily, I pry back the driver’s side door and am relieved to see Xan inside, still intact. The fall had tossed him onto the footwell of the back, but he seems no worse for wear.
Folding the driver’s
seat forward, I climb in and slip my arms under his shoulders. Grasping his underarms, I slide him out from the burning car. Crina catches me as I fall backwards under his deadweight. She pulls us both to safety, beating out my pant leg, which had caught fire in the process.
We take shelter in some dense underbrush. From there we can see the police cars up the hillside. They are parked, headlights beaming out across the night sky, illuminating the treetops. I spot the silhouette of an officer as he crosses the front of a car. He's the only one I see. None of the rest appear to be making their way downhill. Perhaps they are waiting for a fire truck or a medical unit.
“How are you doing?” I turn to Crina.
“Okay. Caught ahold of a tree branch mid-flight. Made for an easy descent. You?”
I press gently on my sides, which are covered in blood. Some of the earlier wounds have healed, but the fresh ones still carry some sting.
“Had a kinda rough landing. Cracked a few ribs.”
Xan begins to stir.
“Xan!” we both exclaim.
“What happened?” His voice is hoarse and weak. I bend down to hug him.
“Lori!” He wraps his arms around me. They remain clenched as I straighten up. I grimace at his weight on my half-eaten shoulder. Crina takes his arms from my neck and helps him to his feet.
“You sure you can stand okay?” she asks. He is looking around, a dazed expression on his face.
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere outside LA,” I mutter, bracing myself against a tree. I look over at the car a few yards up the hillside. Cops are shining flashlights around, but they don’t quite have the range. The car is now completely engulfed in flames.
“We have to keep moving,” Crina states. “I lost my comm a ways back.”
“I have mine.” I pop it out of my ear. Somehow it managed to stay in through all that. I tap the button, stick it back in. Not even static.
“Nothing.”
“Damn.”
***
We continue downhill. Crina had been right about the water. We trudge along the crooked path cut by the river, crossing when it narrows. It isn’t long before we are out of range of the sirens.
The silence manages to feel both refreshing and disconcerting.
Crina leads the way, hacking through the foliage. Xan and I stumble along behind. A good hour passes with none of us speaking. I feel dizzy, nauseous, exhausted.
Eventually we reach a clearing.
“Break time,” I proclaim, dropping flat on my back and letting the soft earth break my fall. Crina and Xan join me.
We lie there taking in the beautiful, crystal clear night sky. And a full moon, apparently, illuminating the field around us.
“Full moon tonight. With everything else going on I’d completely forgotten.”
“So had I,” Crina sighs. “Ironic now, I suppose.”
“Where are the others?” Xan asks absently.
“That’s a good question.”
I reach into Xan’s cargo pocket, fishing around.
“Feeling frisky?” he jokes. I remove my hand, displaying the cigarettes and Zippo he’d been holding for me.
“Oh, right,” he laughs as I wink at him.
I light one and briefly feel human as the smoke fills my lungs. Some vices are worth clinging to if only for the memories.
Crina reaches across and slides one from the pack. She doesn't smoke, normally. I don’t comment. Just flip open the lighter. Then give them back to Xan, who hasn’t moved since our collapse.
“And yet you still managed to start a fire.” Xan plays with my Zippo. He takes a cig from the pack, now resting on his stomach, and cranes his neck to light it.
After a moment, Crina props up onto her elbows.
“Does this mean it’s over?”
“I don’t know.” I close my eyes and picture the bomb detonating.
She arches her neck for a better glimpse of the moon.
Xan groans. “My head is splitting.”
I reach out and run my fingers through his hair.
“My head is…is full of static. The comm!”
I sit up with a jolt, hand on my earpiece.
Static followed by a faint voice. I can’t make it out. My ears are still ringing from the blast. I hand the comm to Crina.
“Thought I heard a transmission. See if you have any luck.”
Crina holds the piece to her ear, pushing the button in.
“Hello. Anyone hear me? Hello?”
I close my eyes, relaxing on the moist earth. The blades of grass prick my skin. It is a warm night. A perfect night.
It is not enough.
I had heard a voice over the comm. A voice that sounded like Catch’s.
***
Jiro is particularly proud of the GPS chips he’d injected us with. I recall this being part of my initiation, having objected at the time to being treated like a possession. Marcus flings the van door open to greet three tattered shells. Bloody, beaten, and relieved.
“Good thing too,” Jiro continues boasting. “Otherwise we’d be shit out of luck trying to find you out here.”
He wasn’t kidding; we’d finally come across a narrow gravel road and were less than an hour from sun up when we heard the sound of tires crunching gravel. What a glorious sound that was.
We pile in and Jiro throws the van into drive.
Marcus lowers himself gingerly, the wall of the van keeping his upper half vertical, face contorted in pain, arm in a makeshift sling.
“It’s good to see all of you.” His voice is barely audible. “You reek of werewolf.”
“Know the name of a good cleaner?” I frown at my blood soaked attire.
“Where’s Trent?” Crina asks as we prop ourselves against the opposite wall.
Marcus closes the one eye that had not swollen shut. He looks like he’d lost a battle with a battering ram. His clothes are shredded, skin burnt to a crisp, deep cuts on his hands and face, jagged bone and dried blood where his nose used to be.
“He didn’t make it.” He lowers his head. “He died saving me. Saving everyone.”
“Damn…” I shake my head. We all felt the sad truth behind his words. Trent wanted to die fighting, but it did not make it any easier.
We all need blood. Badly. But daylight forces us to spend the next fourteen hours huddled in the back of the van, now parked deep in the woods and, hopefully, out of sight from anyone looking.
“We head back to our plane at nightfall. It’s stocked full of blood. We can recover and head back to England,” Marcus explains.
“We can’t take off for England, not just yet.”
“Why not?”
Xan pulls crumpled papers out of the back of his jeans.
“We have to destroy the rest of the serum vials. I found this paperwork inside their offices. It’s a list of inventory being held in a warehouse by LAX. The airport. Same procedure as the east coast; they transferred everything to another location offsite for easy transport.”
Crammed in the van, we all huddle around Xan and study his discovery.
Crina grabs him and kisses him on the cheek. “This is what we need to stop distribution.”
“It was not for nothing. Well I mean besides taking out the S&D of S&D.” Jiro smiles.
“We’ll use their methods this time. Loud and brazen. Send a message to the rest of the wolves. Something that can’t be ignored.”
***
Crina is in the best shape to pull off the assignment, but I will not let her go alone. When night falls, we drop Xan and Marcus at the plane and then Jiro drives us to the shipping port just north of San Diego.
Getting explosives on short notice is next to impossible, even in spite of our vast resources. We settle for gasoline and matches. The warehouse is filled with trucks; employees are ferociously loading crate after crate.
From where we stand, there is a clear sense of urgency. They are in a panicked, frantic state and are not doing a thorough job
of guarding their precious cargo. Within minutes we have doused the rooftop in gasoline and a good portion of the unguarded perimeter.
We ignite the blaze and make our way a half mile down to where Jiro is parked and waiting. The chemicals burn so fast that the place goes up like a pack of matches. We watch until our presence becomes too risky. But we liner long enough to know that the bulk of the serum has gone down with the warehouse.
“You know, I might be a pyromaniac,” I say, grinning.
“That so?”
“Yeah, this is like the third fire I’ve set since I’ve been turned.”
“Who knew it was a side effect of vampirism,” Jiro laughs.
“Well the wolves wanted to play with fire…”
Crina watches the blaze with bloodthirsty eyes and a satisfied smile.
“You think that was all of them? The vaccines, that is?”
“I think there’s a lot of humans who are going to be very unhappy about their flu shots being destroyed when they turn on the news tomorrow.”
“If they only knew.”
“I doubt we got them all. But between this warehouse and the one back east we made a pretty good dent. The rest we may have to track down; hopefully it’ll be a manageable number.”
The sirens are getting louder. Jiro starts up the van.
“That’s our cue.”
***
The flight back to England is a long, silent one. Crina watches over Marcus, who slips in and out of consciousness. Very little mention of what took place in L.A.
The LAPD will be calling in the cavalry. What would that mean for us? Was anything caught on camera? We knew BeyondBio was dark, but the surrounding buildings. These days cameras line the streets. And what about witnesses? Could any give a sketch artist enough for an accurate rendering?
We don’t dare speculate. I am the biggest liability. If “missing” photos are still out there from a lifetime ago and if my face was captured on camera…Catch would have dismissed me as paranoid. Accurately so.
At the end of the day it doesn’t matter. We are ghosts. All that carnage and nothing to point to the work of demons. Our acts of heroism are buried under the mask of a terrorist act. The media had managed to connect BeyondBio to S&D Pharmaceuticals, but otherwise they seemed clueless as to the motive.
We enjoyed our unsung hero status, mostly because it solidified our presence among rogues and remaining wolves alike. Our kind got wind of what happened and that was all we cared about. No wolf serum was dispelled to the masses. And no evidence of either’s existence remained.