Half Past Hell

by Jaye Roycraft

  He shook his head to clear it. “Detective Duvall, Chi-No Police! I want to see the girl!” he shouted.

  “First step into the middle of the room so we can tell who you are,” echoed the reply from somewhere to his right.

  He slipped the Glock back into his pocket. If the hostage takers saw it, they’d probably demand he drop it before showing him Veronica. Better to be nearby in his pocket than to lose it altogether.

  “I’m moving into the room. They want a look at me,” he whispered.

  “Jesus, Duvall,” came Kilpatrick’s voice in his ear.

  “I know. If they want my head, they’ll have it. But until Veronica’s safe, I have to play it their way.” It was one of the biggest risks with his life he’d ever taken. He had no doubt the captors were crack shots, and even though it was dark, he was sure they had night-vision goggles, laser sights, or both. The pair of small vertical creases between his brows would make a fine target, and one impossible to miss. His reflexes and speed were fine and fast, but he doubted he was faster than a bullet. He felt his sweat begin to crawl inside the jumpsuit, cold and clammy. He moved along the wall to his right, not wanting to expose himself before he had to.

  When he reached the elbow of the wall, he stopped and took a peek. He sensed Veronica and one man straight across the room, a second man a little to the right, and a third up above—a second floor balcony overlooking the factory floor, or perhaps a catwalk. He turned the corner and took one step away from the wall. It wasn’t exactly “the middle of the room,” but he’d see what he could get away with. “I want to see the girl,” he yelled.

  A flashlight beam struck his face, nearly blinding him. He felt naked and vulnerable, like he had at Fort William Henry, when the Indians had stripped him of his clothes and weapon.

  He waited to die, knowing they could shoot him any time they wanted to, and that there was little he could do. He ticked the seconds of life off in his head, one by one, waiting. He wasn’t alive, but what he did have was, for him, life, and it had been hard fought and hard won.

  Perhaps it was the knowledge that they had him. Perhaps they wanted him to suffer before he died. But whatever the reason, no Claw was forthcoming.

  “That’s him,” Veronica said from across the maw of the factory.

  Her voice was low, barely more than whisper, but in the emptiness of the room sound carried, not that it mattered. His acute hearing would pick up a rat scurrying across the floor. From the flat tone of her voice, said rat would welcome his presence more than she did.

  He sighed. “You’ve seen me. Now show me the girl.” He kept his voice as monotone as hers had been, just to acknowledge that he was here because it was his job, not because he hoped to revive a dead relationship.

  The beam continued to pin him, but his eyes had adjusted, and he could see beyond the light. A captor brought her out, holding her against him like a shield. His other hand held a TEC-9, its jutting magazine stroking the side of Veronica’s head like some metal cock.

  “Don’t even think about being a hero, Duvall. This weapon’s on her, but there are two more on your head. We promised a trade, and so long as you behave, she’ll remain unharmed.”

  “Oh, don’t worry, I’m no hero. Ask the girl.”

  They were almost abreast of him now. Veronica’s face was streaked and her hair tangled, but she had that cold, unyielding look of defiance he’d seen on TV on the faces of hostages taken in war. It was a hard thing to do—not showing fear—especially for a woman, and he admired her for it. She glared at him as she passed him. There was certainly no look of love, no thank-you glance thrown his way, nothing that indicated she was the least little bit appreciative that he was poised to sacrifice his life for her. But in truth he expected nothing else. Not after their last meeting. She most likely shared her father’s feeling—that she wouldn’t even be in this mess if not for him.

  Her captor was tall, broad, bald, and wore night-vision goggles. They covered too much of his face for Vall to see if the man was one of the Brothers whose mugshots he had studied in Chicago the night before.

  Had it only been one night ago that he’d been hunting on Chicago’s north side with Cade? One night ago that he’d so casually taken his pleasure, as if the future held so many more such nights of delight that there was no need for this one to be special? And yet the night with Desiree had been special, even in all its ugliness, for it very well could be his last. Just like my last sunset. Ugly as it had been, it had been the last, and that alone set it apart from every truly beautiful sunset that had preceded it.

  Veronica and her escort left through the door from which Vall had entered. “Veronica should be out the front door in a minute or two. She’s in one piece.”

  “10-4. And you?”

  “Just let me know the minute she’s safe.”

  “10-4 on that.”

  Vall swept his gaze around the room, searching for anything he could use as cover. As soon as he got the word from Kilpatrick, he was going to start playing his way. A couple of wooden crates were piled against a far wall. They wouldn’t provide cover, for they wouldn’t stop a bullet, but they’d give him concealment, and for him, one was as good as the other.

  But right now he was as overexposed as a Hollywood bad boy. He was still lit up like a Christmas tree, still vulnerable, and the seconds still ticked away in his head. Come on, meatball. Comeon comeon comeon.

  Kilpatrick obliged. “Duvall, we got her. She’s safe. Repeat, the girl is safe.”

  He ran for the crates, diving the last dozen or so feet. Shots rang out, one for every step he took, but the shooter was always one step behind with his aim, and Vall hit the floor behind the crates unscathed. Why the Brother shot now instead of before was a mystery. Maybe it was just more fun to blast away at a moving target. In any case, it was music, sweet music. They had just given him the right to defend himself. Hello, Brother. Meet Big Daddy. He pulled the Glock from his pocket.

  “10-4, partner. It’s open season. And for the record, those shots you just heard were the bad guys trying to Claw yours truly.”

  He’d have to be judicious with his rounds, though. Nine shots wouldn’t go far.

  The Brother who had escorted Veronica out reentered the room, and this time he was the one without cover.

  Too easy. Vall aimed for the man’s Adam’s apple and squeezed off a round, ignoring the cries of alarm from the other two. The shot rang out like Big Ben, drowning out their voices, and the man dropped like a trophy animal. The Claw not only hit the jugular, it practically decapitated him. The head twisted 180 degrees upon hitting the floor, so that the dual goggle tubes, like alien eyestalks, protruded to the rear.

  “There isn’t a soul on earth who cares if I walk or die,” Vall barked, “but your deaths are going to please me more than you know.”

  “You’re wrong, maggot. Someone wants you badly, and they’re going to get you,” echoed the reply from across the room.

  It looked like a small windowed office held the assailant on the ground floor. A barrage of shots rang out, splintering the crates apart faster than if Paul Bunyan had taken his axe to them. A Claw plowed into his right arm and another into the meat of his thigh, but he couldn’t take the time to survey the damage. His concealment was quickly becoming a pile of kindling. He sized up the possibilities the room offered, and they weren’t good. Trash and a dead body.

  He looked up. The factory had a high ceiling. There were no windows on the ground level, but large glass panes at the second story level.

  “One Brother is down, and I’m hit!” he screamed into the mic to be heard above the shots. “See if the Tac boys can lob some tear gas through the second floor windows on the east side of the building. They should land on the factory floor. The Brothers opted for night vision goggles over gas masks.”

  “10-4.”

&n
bsp; Vall dropped his gaze. The tear gas would take time, and its effectiveness in such an open area was questionable. He needed to do something now. The crates were being whittled down to nothing. He stared at the TEC-9, some twenty feet away. In lieu of cover, he needed more firepower, and the TEC’s long mag held fifty rounds.

  A light caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head to see a flame arc through the air only to land at his feet with a splash of breaking glass.

  Fuck!

  What was left of the crates ignited in a flash of white flame. He sprinted for the TEC, sliding headfirst on the concrete floor as he pumped rounds from the Glock toward the office. Leave it to the Brothers of the Sun to use a Molotov cocktail. It was a simple weapon, but nastier than anything else the BOS could throw at him—a glass bottle, filled with flammable liquid and stuffed with a rag wick.

  He focused on the Brother in the office and emptied the Glock, until a Claw gouged out his shoulder and reminded him of the presence of the second shooter. Vall grabbed the TEC-9 with one hand, the dead Brother with the other, and hauled the body high enough in front of him to act as a shield. He looked up and saw that the second shooter was on a mezzanine level walkway halfway between the ground floor and second story. Vall sprayed the walkway with rounds from the TEC, and they ricocheted off the brick wall in a chorus of clangs and pings.

  Answering gunfire severed the head from the body he used as a shield, splattering a layer of human blood on top of the vampire blood that already soaked his jumpsuit. The papers and cardboard littering the floor burst into flame, as well as every scrap of wood in the room, from the old timecard rack to a workbench and shelves. The shield-body was a mass of gore, bone, and viscera, and, once again, he knew he’d have to move or die. The fire intervened, helping him for a change. The shooter on the walkway was flushed from his cover by flames that climbed the wall, thanks to a bulletin board and series of old workers’ compensation posters. Vall aimed and fired, and the Brother screamed and pitched forward over the railing. The body landed on the floor with a dull thud, and Vall’s only thought was that he’d have a fresh shield, one that wasn’t so slippery with blood.

  Firing a stream of Claws at the remaining Brother, Vall dropped the headless mass of gore and stumbled to the newly deceased body. The flames were all around him now, leapfrogging from one combustible morsel to another.

  His heart pounded, and he tried to swallow the blood that his heart pumped into his mouth, his own blood, from God knew which wound. But he couldn’t swallow. He was in Chicago again, and the whole world was on fire. He saw Dorothea and le père, their bodies ablaze, locked in a moment of time, forever locked in his memory. They’d died because of him, and nothing he’d done since had changed that. Smoke blurred his vision, and somewhere, glass was breaking. Pungent fumes filled the air, and he couldn’t remember who he was trying to save.

  “Duvall! Duvall! Get out of there, now!”

  Kilpatrick. And the tear gas. The tear gas wouldn’t affect him. What was a little mucus when your nose and mouth were full of blood?

  “Duvall, respond!”

  He spit onto the floor. “Two dead. Status of the third unknown.”

  “Forget him. Save yourself.”

  No. He wasn’t finished. The shots had stopped, but he had to know if the third man was alive. If he was, he had to get him out. He was their last witness. He stood, holding the corpse in front of him, but an explosion knocked him off his feet again. Flammables, maybe—maybe a suicide bomb. He got up and staggered away from the fire toward a corridor. The cool darkness drew him and pulled him through, and he collapsed on the cold concrete floor of a room that opened from the far side of the corridor. He didn’t know where he was, but wherever he was, there were no flames.

  Any place without fire was a good place to die.

  Twenty-nine

  KILPATRICK SAT IN the Med Unit and watched the EMTs work on Duvall. When the Tac officer rescue team had dragged Duvall’s body out of the building, Kil had thought him dead. He’d never seen a body chewed up so badly. There was so much blood he couldn’t tell where the wounds were, but the EMTs counted three Claws in his legs, four in his arms and shoulders, one in his side that had found the gap between the front and back of the vest, and another thirteen embedded in the ballistic vest itself.

  In the mental fever that Kil knew accompanied the bodily trauma, Duvall babbled on about the fire. In his more lucid moments, he begged not to be taken to the hospital, but Duvall’s last run-in with a Claw had taught Kil that the bullets needed to be extracted from the vampire’s body before the flesh completely mended over them.

  “Shut up and listen to somebody else for a change,” said Kil, and Duvall conveniently slipped under again. Well, it was better than arguing with someone who always seemed to get his way. Not that Kil so much minded anymore being the number two man on the squad. Duvall had earned his position as senior partner. And immortal flesh or no immortal flesh, Kil wouldn’t have wanted to face three Claw-carrying madmen the way Duvall had tonight.

  God, but he was tired. He’d laid off the caffeine hours ago, relying instead on the adrenaline that the hostage setup had pumped into his body. Now that, too, was draining from him, and he wasn’t sure there was a stimulant out there strong enough to keep him going. He wanted to be home with Candy, wrapped in her arms. But he’d called her, and she’d insisted he stay with Duvall. Even if he had felt like arguing, he was too beat. Not that he’d really wanted to argue. He wanted to stay with Duvall until the doctors were through with him. He owed his partner at least that much.

  Duvall’s eyes opened, and by their focused gaze, his mind had returned to earth. “Hey.”

  “Hey, yourself. Good job back there,” said Kil.

  Duvall shook his head. “I didn’t get any of the bastards out alive.”

  “You got the girl out in one piece. That’s all anybody cares about.” That wasn’t quite the truth, but he wasn’t sure Duvall was in any shape to hear the rest.

  “But we’re no closer to solving this than before.”

  “Maybe we are. Main was pretty vague in his press statement about exactly who was behind the idea of tampering with the blood supply. I hear they’re putting some pretty hard pressure on him to talk, but he says he wants to see you first.”

  Duvall blinked and tried to sit up, but his eyes retreated to a sustained wince. His wounds had already healed over, but the doctor had said that the regenerated flesh would be sensitive for a few hours. Apparently “sensitive” was an understatement.

  “Is he here?” asked Duvall.

  “Yeah. So is Veronica, in case you’re wondering. You’re a popular guy all of a sudden. People are lined up around the block to interview you—everyone from the Department to Main to the media. It’s not just the local press, either. This thing went national real quick. Wallace and DeMora said the parking lot is filling up with news crews from all over.”

  Duvall raised his brows. “I’m surprised they let you in here.”

  Kil leaned forward in the bedside chair and massaged his temples, though it was his tongue that felt tied in knots. He wasn’t sure what to say.

  “What?” prompted Duvall.

  Kil looked up. “You asked for me. They weren’t going to let me in at first, but the doctor convinced everyone it would be best to, uh, yield to your wishes.”

  Duvall leaned his head back onto the pillow and was silent for a moment. “Well, don’t let it bother you too much, meatball. It doesn’t mean we’re engaged or anything. I obviously wasn’t in my right mind.”

  Kil tugged at his collar, but his undone shirt reminded him that he’d popped the top two buttons and loosened his tie hours ago. The thing hung limply around his neck like a dead animal. He unknotted it, yanked it off, and stuffed it in his pants pocket. “Sure.”

  “Listen, Kilpatrick, when the De
partment questions me, they’ll want to know where I got the gun.”

  “Hey, tell them you took it off one of the dead bodies. Where is my gun, by the way? You didn’t have it on you when they dragged you out.”

  “Back in the ashes. Sorry.”

  He’d miss the little Glock. It’d been a fine backup piece, but easily replaced. He knew several cops who collected guns the way Candy collected stuffed animals. Some with extensive gun collections regularly sold or traded weapons to other cops. One phone call, and he’d have the Glock replaced in an hour. But Duvall didn’t need to know that. He cleared his throat as if he were heartbroken at the loss. “You owe me.”

  Duvall nodded. “If we get out of this, I’ll buy you dinner every night from now on. Do we have a deal, meatball?”

  Kil curled his lip. “Deal.”

  SOMETHING WAS WRONG. Vall knew his partner was tired. Kilpatrick had started his shift at eight in the morning in Chicago with the BOS arrest warrants, and it was now going on four in the morning. But the nervous energy in Kilpatrick that, prior to the setup, had manifested itself in restless eyes and facial tics had now reduced the man to a wreck. His suit coat was gone, his tie was gone, and his trousers looked like they’d been slept in for a week. His black hair had broken loose of its gelled and combed perfection to droop in greasy black strands, and the bags under the blue eyes looked like a pair of catchers’ mitts.

  “So,” said Vall, “what aren’t you telling me?”