The spear pierced him with a sickening slurp, and though Jerusa wanted to drop her weapon, grab the children, and run, she continued to drive him backward. Jerusa hoisted Kole into the air and pinned him against the wall. The spearhead passed through his body and lodged in the wall.
Kole howled and thrashed, destroying the wall behind him. The tiny girls screamed, which seemed to focus his attention. Kole grasped the spear handle and slid his body a foot closer. His blood oozed toward her hands, but thankfully, didn’t make contact with her skin. Kole swiped at Jerusa’s face, his fingers passing a mere fraction of an inch from her eyes.
Sounds erupted from deeper within the house. Moments later, the bedroom door exploded open and in burst a man holding a side-by-side double barrel 12-gauge shotgun. The girls screamed, “Daddy!” His wild eyes scanned the dark room, blinking away the sweat dripping from his forehead. He brought the barrel of the gun up and aimed straight at Jerusa.
The gun erupted with thunder and light. Jerusa sidestepped the full blast, but the buckshot still pierced her arm and back in a couple of dozen spots. The pain was enough to steal her grip on the spear and the thunderous report rocked her off balance. The bright flash from the twin barrels, however, sent Kole into a shrieking rage.
Kole shielded his eyes with his hands as he spun uncontrollably around the room. The handle of the spear, which was still sticking out of Kole’s stomach, came around and caught Jerusa in the face, knocking her to the floor. Kole broke the handle where it entered his body then reached back and pulled the metal spearhead the rest of the way through. It clanked on the floor, spattering his tarlike blood on the carpet and walls, which evaporated into a fine black mist and dissipated almost immediately.
Kole turned his festering eyes upon the father. The man was overtaken with a fit of shakes as he struggled in vain to break open the shotgun to reload. Kole closed the distance in a brisk and awkward stride. He reached out, clawing for the man’s throat as his daughters wept in the corner.
Jerusa caught Kole in the ribs, her arms wrapped tight around his waist. She slammed into him with as much speed as she could muster in the tiny room, lifting him off of his feet and crashing straight through the wall.
Jerusa and Kole rolled across the lawn and out into the infant cornfield, tumbling over and over, each struggling to get the upper hand. Jerusa was mildly aware that the others had caught up and were following the rolling tussle, but anything farther than Kole’s venomous teeth was a lifetime’s journey away. They came to a stop with Kole on top, his knees pinning Jerusa’s arms to the ground.
Alicia was there suddenly, glowing like a child forged of moonlight.
And Kole saw her.
The savage looked up with a hiss, shielding his eyes from this resplendent intruder. Alicia mesmerized him as she circled around in front of him. She drew close, perhaps hoping to chase him away, but her luminous form wasn’t bright enough to force him into retreat. After a moment, Kole decided the glowing girl was no danger to him and turned his attention back to Jerusa.
Kole lunged for her face. He came close enough that his rancid breath washed over her cheek. But just before his teeth pierced her flesh, Taos’s axe opened Kole’s throat.
Jerusa turned her head to the side, just missing a mouthful of Kole’s deadly blood. Instead, the thick poison spattered onto her cheek and neck. She thrashed violently to free her hands so that she could wipe Kole’s blood away, fearing that it would absorb into her skin as her own blood did.
Taos had attacked on the run and so his momentum carried him past Kole and Jerusa. But Foster, with Thad still on his back, was hot on his heels. Foster leapt into the air, kicked Kole square in the chest and sent the savage tumbling backward. Free of Kole’s crushing weight, Jerusa turned over in the corn, scooped up handfuls of dirt, and began to scrub her face and neck. Spatters of Kole’s blood lined her forearms, and though they didn’t seem to be absorbing into her skin as her own blood had, she nevertheless scoured them from her flesh. Satisfied that she was clean — relatively speaking — Jerusa turned toward the scuffle behind her.
Kole had regained his feet and he and Foster were now each attempting to throttle the other. Thad held onto Foster’s back like a frightened child on a bucking stallion, but soon, the battle was too much for him and he went tumbling through the air.
Taos circled around, came at Kole low and from behind. He made a broad one-handed swing with his axe and lopped Kole’s right leg off at the knee. Taos spun in place, bringing the axe up over his head for a downward strike, but Kole pitched himself to the side and the axe stuck into the soft dirt.
Having half a leg didn’t hinder Kole very much. He rushed across the open land on hands, foot and stub, looking very much like a giant spider before vanishing once more into the woods.
They all stood panting, staring off in the direction of Kole’s escape, when Foster suddenly turned as if he were zapped by lightning.
“Taos, the leg,” he said, pointing at Kole’s severed limb. “Hurry, get rid of it.”
The tall vampire’s face flinched with panicked understanding. He abandoned his axe still lodged in the earth and rushed over to the lower half of Kole’s leg. He snatched it up by the shoe and the remaining pant leg fell down around the ankle. The top of the calf, where the cut had been made, was now crusted over with a black scab and the flesh was starting to darken and swell.
Taos ran at full speed across the field, covering fifty yards in a matter of seconds, then tossed the leg as though he were throwing a football. The leg made a high arch through the air, traveling another hundred yards before exploding with an audible pop. The shoe and shred of pant leg dropped unceremoniously to the ground as a thick black miasma swirled in the breeze before dispersing.
Taos returned to the group. “That was close,” he said, wrenching the axe from the ground.
“If it had exploded on the ground near us, then — ” Jerusa asked.
“We would all have had a sudden craving for brains,” Taos answered.
“All of us,” Thad said. “Just from his leg?”
“The savage spores are incredibly invasive,” Foster said. “Imagine the damage Kole’s whole body could do, especially in a crowded area. That’s why it’s imperative that we only disable him, instead of killing him. At least until we can set him on fire.”
“What if the wind would have carried the spores back toward us, or into the house with those little girls?” Jerusa asked. “Why didn’t you burn the leg, Taos?”
“It slipped my mind,” Taos said with a tiny curl of his lip. He hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “Besides, I dropped the gas can back there.”
The sound of approaching sirens drifted through the night. The man inside the house had called the police. They were still a good ways off but closing in fast. Taos retrieved the gas can before rejoining the group at the edge of the woods where Kole had vanished.
“He’s still headed into town,” Jerusa said.
Foster nodded. “He’ll be on the hunt for a new leg, I suspect.”
“I wonder how Shufah is doing.”
He touched her shoulder and smiled. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She’s been handling Suhail for longer than most civilizations have endured. But we can’t count on her catching up to us. The sun will be rising in a few hours. We need to hurry. Have Alicia lead us on.”
With Alicia’s help, they caught up to Kole within a few minutes. The savage had taken to the trees again, leaping from branch to branch, but the forest was giving way to the city and soon Kole was forced to take to the ground once more.
The closer they drew to the city, the more Jerusa caught the smells and sounds of the living. And it was clear that Kole caught them, as well. He pressed on with focused determination, hardly acknowledging his pursuers. Suhail had said that savages preferred vampires over humans, but so far, that seemed false with Kole. He would gladly feast on vampiric flesh if given the chance, Jerusa was sure about that, but he was injured and
for the time being, seemed to be hunting the meeker prey. There were bodies up ahead, flesh and blood that would restore his lost limb, brains that would sharpen his dulled consciousness. When he was whole again, then he would turn the hunt on them.
The forest fell away. The outskirts of town, old and forgotten buildings, loomed in the darkness like sleeping giants.
“Don’t let him get to the buildings,” Jerusa shouted. If Kole made it into town proper, he could very easily lose them in the labyrinth of alleys, rooftops, and endless rooms in which to hide. If he was permitted to fall into a crowd enduring the blackout —
She wouldn’t allow herself to finish that thought.
Taos, who was keeping pace with Jerusa, suddenly dug in his heels, skidding to a stop. He pulled his axe back in a two-handed grip, the flat hammer side of the head banging against the back of his knees. He chucked the axe overhead with a loud war cry.
The blade stuck with a loud, wet smack in the small of Kole’s back.
Kole shrieked, lost his balance and went skidding across the ground on his face. He righted himself quickly though, and continued on with the axe handle wagging behind him like a tail.
He leapt onto the wall of the first building he came to. It was a square hulking mass skinned in dark brick with three rows of windows, the first of which were boarded up. Kole scaled the wall with hardly a slip and slid through a broken second story window.
Jerusa recognized the building. In the 80’s it had housed a factory that built industrial air conditioners. In the early 2000’s the owner had closed the factory and moved its operation south of the border, where labor would allow him to pocket a little more profit. No other businesses had ever taken up residence in the old building. It was mostly a hangout for hobos and thrill-seeking teens looking for a dangerous place to get drunk.
Jerusa prayed silently that the building was empty tonight.
They each scaled the wall in turn and slipped through the same window Kole had used. They spilled out onto a hallway almost too dark for even Jerusa’s eyes to see.
Kole was nowhere to be seen, but Taos’s axe rested on a patch of blood-soaked carpet. A crimson trail, stained black by the night, led away, down the hall, out a door, and into the belly of the building.
Chapter Twenty-Three
They gave the bloodstain a wide berth, none of them willing to touch it with even the bottoms of their shoes. The blood was already dissipating, evaporating into the air in threadlike black tendrils. Foster assured them that a blood spill posed little danger — it was the savage’s flesh that spread the spores — but they passed by quickly, nonetheless.
Taos considered the axe on the floor for a moment, but there was a fair amount of Kole’s blood still covering it, so he decided to leave it where it lay. They were in sore need of weapons — all that was left was Foster’s garden shears and Thad’s flashlight — but Jerusa didn’t blame him for not retrieving it. Though you couldn’t absorb the blood through your skin, as Jerusa was unfortunate enough to have discovered firsthand, it was too risky a gamble to take. She had wiped Kole’s blood from her face right away. Prolonged exposure could be a whole different story, and the blood wasn’t dissipating fast enough for them to wait around.
Jerusa looked around for Alicia, but the ghost was gone. Perhaps she was combing the building for Kole, or maybe she had expended too much energy and could no longer maintain a visible presence. Whichever the case, they would have to track Kole on their own.
They followed the blood trail down the hall. Moonlight drifted in from the broken windows, but provided very little illumination. The building was crowded with shadows, and the old frame shifted in the slightest breeze, bringing on phantom creaks and pops that echoed through the air vents and empty water pipes.
They moved along in a near huddle, wincing at every squeak of the floor. Thad pawed his flashlight compulsively. It must have been a terrible temptation for him. Out of all of them, he was the most blind, the most deaf; still he resisted the urge to chase away the darkness, knowing that it would hinder their battle more than help. Thad held tight to Foster’s shoulder, moving only when he moved.
The blood trail led them through a series of connecting offices, each littered with forgotten paperwork, rotted furniture, and garbage left from various hobo camps. But the trail, which was thin to begin with, quickly tapered off to just a few drops here and there. Before they turned the corner of the square building, the trail was gone altogether.
“What do we do now?” Taos whispered.
“Does Alicia have any idea where Kole’s at?” Foster asked Jerusa.
Their faces fell when Jerusa explained Alicia’s absence. She felt a rumble of dark laughter stir within her, but held it at bay. Foster had always believed her concerning Alicia, probably because of his experience with Shufah and her tales of being a medium during her mortal years. But Taos and Thad had both denied Alicia’s existence in the beginning. And now look at them. What a difference a day makes.
“Maybe we should let Thad turn on his flashlight,” Jerusa said. “Let Kole know we’re here. Let him come to us.” None of them were too happy with that plan, especially Thad, but none could think of a better one.
Thad switched on the flashlight and stood bouncing the beam off of the walls. His hands shook so bad that Jerusa thought he might drop the light, but Thad refused to allow anyone to take it from him. Even Taos didn’t press the issue. The others at least had their strength and speed to rely upon. The light was Thad’s only weapon against Kole. No one would deny him that.
The group moved through a door headed toward the center of the building. The room opened onto a wide catwalk made of steel grate flooring that circled the building and allowed one to look down on the factory floor below. The catwalk was cluttered with stacks of boxes, some twelve feet high, and discarded machinery, rusty and dry, whose purpose had long ago been forgotten. Below, the factory floor was much the same. When the business had relocated, they had taken anything of value and left the rest for scrap. Here and there, along the floor, were large open pits where machines, now missing, had been recessed into the ground. Up above them, there was another grated catwalk, and in the ceiling were a series of skylights that allowed what little moonlight there was to glitter off of the refuse scattered about.
Thad swung the light side to side, probing the blackened crevices between stacks of boxes or behind the hulking machines. They moved at a slow but steady pace, as though they were traversing an active mine field. It took a great act of concentration for Jerusa to filter out the noise of beating hearts and shallow breaths, especially Thad’s, which seemed so much more erratic.
Something darted in front of them, spilling out from behind a pile of collapsed boxes. The group tensed, flinching in unison, but the perpetrator turned out to be a couple of rats chasing each other across the catwalk. With a collective sigh, the group moved on.
Dust motes danced in the moonlight. The breeze from the broken windows tickled cobwebs as big as mountain lions. An inch of grime covered everything. Whatever fresh air seeped in seemed to be hiding on the third floor. The building stank of engine grease, burnt electrical wiring, and the memory of a thousand hobo fires.
A loud bang echoed across the open space from the other end of the building. The tinkling of glass shards slipping through the steel grating lingered for a moment, like the tittering of an insolent child. They all turned with a start. Thad sent the flashlight beam leaping over the void, but it was not strong enough to reach the other catwalk.
Taos grabbed Thad’s arm and pointed the flashlight to the floor below.
“What is it?” Fosters asked.
“I thought I saw something moving around down there.” Taos directed the flashlight, still in Thad’s hand, back and forth, but nothing stirred on the first floor. “I’m sure there’s someone down there. I think we should go have a look.”
“All right,” Foster said. He looked up and down the catwalk. “There’s probably some stairs
or a ladder around here somewhere.”
Without a word, Taos let go of Thad’s arm, took hold of the metal railing, and leapt over the side. Jerusa, caught up in the moment and perhaps spurred by Taos’s advice to act instead of think, cleared the railing like a practiced hurdler and followed him down to the dusty first floor. Foster cursed under his breath and Jerusa couldn’t help but smile. It felt good to be mischievous and throw caution to the wind. Moments later, Foster followed them down with Thad clinging to his back.
It didn’t take long for the exhilaration to wear off. From up above, they had a sniper’s view of the factory floor. But now that they were in among the rusted hulks of discarded machinery, the shadows seemed tangible and the dust a blinding smog.
They stayed close to one another as they maneuvered the maze of extinct machines, piles of trash and tangles of twisted pipes and fallen air ducts. Taos took point, Jerusa and Thad followed close behind, and Foster brought up the rear. If Kole was still in the building there was no way he didn’t know their position. He remained hidden, perhaps stalking them from the deep shadows or lying in wait for them to blunder by.
It occurred to Jerusa that perhaps savage vampires weren’t as mindless as she had been led to believe. If she understood it right, the Hunters were a well-trained, highly organized troop of vampires, possessing above-average skills in pyro- and telekinesis. Warriors like that weren’t needed to dispatch the dimwitted flesh-eaters of the movies. Kole was more dangerous than any of them were giving him credit for.
The path through the refuse narrowed and they were forced to move single file between the rotting corpse of a massive assembly line and one of the large pits set in the concrete floor. The pit was filled almost to the brim with rain water from the storm the previous night. The water was as black as ink, making it impossible to know the depth. The water ebbed and flowed in tiny waves stirred by the tread of their feet and the slight breeze of their passing.
Heart of the Dead: Vampire Superheroes (Perpetual Creatures Book 1) Page 23