“A stake? You think you can kill me with a fucking stake?” the vampire bellowed in rage and bewilderment.
“Oye culo, how about a bullet then?” a woman’s voice asked, followed by the crack of a gunshot.
The vampire’s throat slashed open, blood spurting forth and striking him with hot steaming fluid that made him yelp with fear. The creature’s eyes were wide with disbelief, the shock of the moment seizing his consciousness as his lifeforce erupted from his exposed veins. It looked like he was trying to say something, but Ezio cut him off as the gigantic maul clamped onto the demon’s head and ripped it free of its body, leaving the gushing corpse free to fall to the floor and breathe it’s last after a century of terror; finally come to an end.
Ezio fell to all fours once more, breathing heavy and whining as his bloodied shoulder seeped onto the floor.
“Do not change back,” Naomi grunted at the man, then fell to one knee, her arm gripping the door jamb to keep herself upright. “Renny,” she muttered, her eyelids drooping.
He rushed forward and fell to a knee in front of her, forgetting for a second his arm was broken and wincing as it swiftly reminded him of that fact. “Are you okay?” he croaked.
Her eyes rolled towards him, “how stupid are you? I’ve got at least three broken ribs, a gash on my thigh, and a pierced abdomen, and you ask if I’m okay? Sí, estupido, I am fine. Need to go check on Renny.”
Ezio groaned once more and laid down, his breathing labored as his eyes watched their interaction. He looked winded and hurt, but in better shape than either of them, at least to his untrained eye. He glanced into Naomi’s eyes and nodded his head, “we’ll check on him together. Give me your arm.”
“Why? So you can dump me on the floor? ¿Que estúpido crees que soy?” she moaned, her arm lifting high enough for him to lift over his shoulder, her smile creeping back up at the corners of her mouth.
“Stupid enough to think I speak Spanish. I’m a nothing but a dumb ass gringo, remember?” he snarked, using his thighs to push them upward and back into a standing position.
“You survived an encounter with a master vampire, you’re still on your feet and moving, maybe you’re not so stupid after all,” Naomi ventured, then coughed up a bit of blood and spat it on the floor. “Gonna be quite the mess for the cleanup crew.”
He pushed them into the hallway, nearly tripping on bits of wood left from the shattered door, and grinned wider. “Better a cleanup than a body bag and a drop off at the morgue.”
Naomi chuckled then groaned, “don’t make me laugh. It fucking hurts.”
“Stop tossing me into the awaiting arms of vampires like chum to a shark and I will,” he laughed back.
She groaned and spat up even more blood, her chest heaving as she tried to keep from laughing. “You’re a real asshole, you know that?”
“Then I’ll fit right in.”
Her eyes met his and this time her smile was genuine. “That you will.”
Red and blue lights began flashing on the windows overhead and he heard the sound of sirens through the thick brick walls. Someone had noticed the racket they were making and had called in the cavalry. “That’s going to complicate things.”
He no more than finished saying that as the front door of the church slammed open and a flurry of cops burst through, weapons up and ready to fire.
III
He didn’t know what had become of Ezio, but he hadn’t mentioned the fallen werewolf to the detectives nearby and no sign of him had yet to be found. Hopefully that was a sign that the man was okay; if so, he had gotten off lucky.
Even though his arm was in a sling, they had cuffed him to the gurney holding a barely conscious Naomi, their weapons drawn as if he might go crazy and attack them at any second. Another ambulance had been parked nearby and he had seen a paramedic straddling Renny and performing CPR as they passed by only minutes before; it had not looked good.
Two suits stood at the open doorway of the ambulance, glaring up at him like he was a freaking serial killer. He had just killed a vampire, the true monster in this situation, who had slaughtered who knew how many innocents since the death of his wife and children. Couldn’t they cut him any slack? They were male and female FBI agents, but Scully and Mulder they were not.
“Do you mind telling us again, how it is that you got caught up in all of this Mr. Crawford?” the male Fed asked. Agent Racker or something.
It’s like a strange version of Déjà vu. Didn’t I just go through this this morning?
The one benefit of being stripped down to his underwear; he wasn’t as armored as the rest of his companions and looked to be a helpless bystander. Still, he’d been found assisting a woman in body armor wielding an automatic weapon, so he’d earned steel bracelets honestly. “I was on my way to the Treebeard next door when this guy comes out of nowhere and grabs me, forces me into the church. After stripping me naked and breaking my arm, he left me sobbing in that room over there while he went back into the church. I heard screaming, both male and female, and if it hadn’t been for these folks showing up, I’d probably be just as dead as the priest you just wheeled out of there.”
“Hey!” the woman snapped, slapping the door of the ambulance. “Are you getting smart with us? Two good men and three endearing women just died in a horrific fashion, and you think we’re stupid enough to think the one unarmed man with no head is responsible rather than the three-armed perps in body armor? Is that what you expect us to believe? Either you’re protecting these people out of misguided ignorance or you’re in on it.”
“I don’t care what you believe, it’s the truth,” he spat back in defiance. “My arm is broken, I’ve been tortured by a madman, nearly had my throat ripped out for good measure, and you’re standing there preventing me from getting medical treatment and accusing me of what, an act of terrorism? Pardon my French, but you can blow it out your ass.”
The woman made as if to climb into the ambulance to get at him and the male Fed had to quickly intervene, seizing her shoulders and holding her back. “You know what I think? I think you’re all a bunch of nutjobs who came here to shoot up a church full of innocent people. You just happened to luck out finding a patsy to throw all this on, as a fugitive fleeing police custody unknowingly crashed your party. Not like we can ask him any questions, not only is he dead, but his head is missing to boot.”
It’s missing? Did Ezio eat it? Now, that would be cool.
The male Fed pushed her further away, holding her at bay as he turned to look up at him. “Well, that seems to have sparked some interest. Not so innocent after all. You know, the three of you match the descriptions of fugitives that escaped police custody this morning. You will be taken to the nearby hospital and treated for your wounds, then be called to answer for the crimes you have committed today. You have wracked up a good amount of bodies in your short reign of terror, and I will personally make sure you get the chair.”
“Just as long as it’s better than that last one, damn thing fell apart when I fell over in it,” he snarked back, unable to believe the lines of shit blurting from his mouth. He should be terrified, whimpering in the face of two-armed government officials threatening to put him in the electric chair, but somehow surviving after having his veins opened up by a vampire and being saved by a werewolf had given him a set of nerves he never realized he was capable of.
A new voice spoke up from the corner of the ambulance, just out of sight. “I need to get them over to Houston General. The female is barely conscious, her pulse thready, and I believe she’s on the verge of suffering a tension pneumothorax. If we don’t get her into surgery soon, you won’t have to put her in a chair, she’ll die on a table.”
“Well, we don’t want that,” the male Fed replied sarcastically, turning to his partner. “We will catch up to them at the hospital, they’re not going anywhere.”
The incensed woman looked like she wanted to argue, but after a look from her partner, snorted and turned away.
“I want armed guards on them twenty-four seven. No one talks to them until we arrive. No one,” the man told the unseen paramedic.
“Yes Sir,” the female voice answered, the door on the ambulance shutting. The Fed shut the other and for a brief second, he was alone with Naomi and cut off from the chaos surrounding them.
“I’m doing the best I can here, but you need to wake up,” he said, putting his hand on the rail and leaning over so she could hear. His arm hurt like the devil, the pain pills he’d been given barely holding it at bare. Still, he felt good and none of it even really bothered him; the monster that had killed his wife was dead and now they had a whole new situation bearing down upon them.
“I never fell asleep,” Naomi replied softly, her face turning to look at him. The makeup was smeared, her cheeks moist from tears, but there was a sparkle that was very hard to mistake; one of joy.
“What do you have to be so happy about? We’re about to go to prison for murder,” he stated, aghast.
“Are we?” she asked, the door of the ambulance opening and the vehicle shaking slightly as the driver hopped in. “Tension pneumothorax? Really? They are bruised, maybe slightly broken, but my lungs are fine.”
An Asian face turned back to look at them, Kayumi’s smile wide and welcoming, “had to think on my feet. It’s the only thing I could remember off those medical shows you watch. Sex and surgery, not my cup of tea.”
Startled, he looked down at the chuckling woman lying on the gurney before him. “You watch Grey’s Anatomy?”
“You saw what we deal with on a daily basis, are you really going to begrudge me one guilty pleasure?” Naomi grinned back, then looked once more towards the front of the ambulance. “You get Rudy ready to receive us? Called ahead to know how bad of a shape we are in?”
The engine roared to life and he watched as a thin hand whipped out and shifted the ambulance into drive. “Yeah, I got ahold of him, but I can’t raise Speedy. Communications with the safehouse is down. I’ll go check it out with Ayana once I’m sure you guys are safe. She won’t leave her husband’s side until then anyhow.”
“He is still alive then?” Naomi groaned as the ambulance made a quick right and the gurney slid into the left side of the bay, yanking him forward.
“So far. Benji was not as lucky,” Kayumi’s voice replied softly.
His breath caught.
No!
Benji had seemed like such a pure and gentle soul, he couldn’t be gone. He was half vampire, they had to be mistaken. His wife was thought to be dead as well and she had still risen from the grave. He could just be resting. He remembered Renny telling him that vampires were living beings, not undead. That they had a higher metabolism and superhuman abilities, but that they were flesh and blood nonetheless; his heart plummeted through his chest.
Naomi’s haunted eyes told him that she was experiencing the same sorrow, and together they let a tear slip for their fallen comrade.
Epilogue
Placing his cast against the doorjamb, he leaned over the garbage can at his feet and threw up, emptying the contents of his stomach in a violent heaving motion that he just couldn’t stop.
A day had passed since the encounter at the church, and Naomi had insisted that they leave the house in the suburbs they’d been holding up in and return to the safehouse to ascertain what had happened to their silent Irish hacker. Leaving Renny in the care of Dr. Berholdt, or Rudy for short, they had taken a rental car Kayumi had acquired and driven to the Super 8 where they’d left him days before.
Naomi’s chest was wrapped, she was hopped up on pain meds, there were stitches in her abdomen and left thigh, but otherwise she turned out okay and seemed to be on the mend. She was certainly well enough to get in the passenger seat of the car and bark orders at them to take the lead out and hit the road.
He’d suffered a mild concussion and had a cast for his efforts, but overall, had done well in comparison to his teammates. He’d been given an injection immediately after arriving at the doctor’s house, the virus the vampire had introduced into his system already hard at work converting him into a monster. He had been told that the medicine they’d given his wife should help him arrest the process and prevent it from transgressing even further. In their opinion, it was a coin toss if it would work or not, as each person was unique in how the virus affected them. But he’d yet to suffer a hunger for human blood and still liked his steak well done, so maybe there was some hope to be had that he would live another day.
If not, then he knew for certain that Naomi would be the one to end him. She’d made sure to tell him that at least four times since waking up eating breakfast that morning.
Renny was still in a coma, having not woken since the battle ended, and the doctor had worked through the night to save the man’s life. Other nurses and a doctor had been called in, the basement turned into a surgical bay, and they had worked tirelessly and at length until finally calling it good, letting the man rest in the wee hours of the morning. They had relieved the pressure build-up in the man’s skull, had fixed the brain bleed that had been killing him, but now there was nothing to do but sit back and see if he came back to the world of the living.
Ayana hadn’t left his side, and no one dared ask her to come along.
Now, he was glad that she hadn’t. She didn’t need to see this.
The dried husk of the young hacker’s body was laying back in his computer chair, the corpse rank, withered, and dry like rotten jerky. His mouth was open in a scream, his sunken eyes wide, the terror of his last moments plain to any that dared look upon him. A glint of gold could be seen if you looked close enough, the remnants of a coin that had been thrust deep within his forehead and left by the fiend that had killed him; Speedy’s marker finally called in.
Shaking a bit of digested egg off his shoe, he burped in an attempt to arrest the vomiting, placing his head against the wall and moaning with despair. No one deserved to die like that.
Naomi gripped him by the shoulder and spun him around, a tendril of spit dangling from his lower lip and slapping at her face. She swatted at it angrily then shook him, her anger overriding everything as she blurted, “take a good damn look! I want you to see this! You never, never, steal gold from a fucking leprechaun! ¿Me entiendes? Do you? I want to hear you say it Derek. Tell me you understand, or I’ll leave you down here with him until you do!”
Tears were streaming from her eyes, the pain so evident that it nearly broke his heart, and he slowly nodded his head to reassure her that he got it. “I understand.”
“They always collect, always!” she nearly screamed.
Then Kayumi was there, embracing Naomi from behind and the woman broke into sobs, half-turning to hug the older woman back.
“Why didn’t he get on the fucking plane? I gave him a direct order, why didn’t he listen to me? He could have helped us from thirty-thousand feet, he didn’t need to stay here!” she cried rapidly, shaking her head.
Kayumi’s voice was soft as she said, “it was something about sockets and fiber-optic cabling, he had no choice if he wanted to help. He knew this was coming, he thought he still had time, and there was no way he was going to abandon you when you needed him the most.”
Naomi continued to sob and shake her head, “need him to what? Watch a couple of monitors? It’s not worth dying for! We could have caught up to the son of a bitch later if he’d gotten away. He didn’t need to die for this.”
“You said it yourself, we needed to end him or more innocents would suffer before we caught up to him again,” he said, trying to keep his own tears from interfering with the tone of his voice. “No matter what, you said, that bastard needed to die.”
“When it comes to us, not him!” she yelled back. “Eighteen years old! He hadn’t even really lived! He was so pure of heart, so innocent, thinking of nothing but others and never of himself. He did not deserve this. I failed him.”
“No,” he said, stepping forward and lifting Naomi�
�s chin so they could see eye to eye. “He knew the consequences of taking those gold pieces, and he chose to do it anyways. This was going to happen, whether at thirty-five-thousand feet or five, and he understood that when he chose to stay behind to watch our backs. Don’t belittle his sacrifice by taking the responsibility onto yourself. Honor it.”
Kayumi’s eyes showed something odd and he nearly shook his head in disbelief.
Was that admiration?
Naomi’s next words were interrupted by the ringing of her cellphone. Sniffing loudly, she pulled it out of her back pocket, hit accept and put it to her ear. “Yeah? No. Because there’s no way. I understand but half my team is gone or missing. Ezio is MIA. Benjamin, Wesa, and Jackson.” She rubbed her arm across her face, a bunch of snot going with it as she tried to fight back her tears and nod her head. “Okay. Yeah. Got it.”
Then she hung up and looked at them, “we’ve got a job.”
“Are you kidding me?” he blurted out, unable to help it. “With who? Doing what?”
Naomi nodded at him in understanding, “I feel the same way, but there are still monsters in the world in the need of killing, and it’s what we’ve been called upon to do all the same. These things never sleep, and neither shall we until every last one of them is dust in the wind.”
“Where?” Kayumi asked quietly, resigned to the situation and accepting of it.
“Seattle,” Naomi sniffed, straightening her shoulders. “An infestation of wolves is tearing through lower bowels of the city. The rest of the teams have been dispatched to hunt the vamps we—that Speedy uncovered by hacking that app of theirs. That’s time sensitive, as they’ll simply drop off the grid and stop using once they realize it’s been compromised. It’s an opportunity that the Home Office feels cannot be squandered. So, like it or not, we’re back on duty and expected to be in the air in three hours.”
The Legacy Series (Book 1): Legacy [Sanguis] Page 23