by Steve Niles
Bloodsuckers turned away from the bars, leaving behind glasses of rich, fresh blood, and came to join the ones who had brought him here. They emerged from shadowed alcoves and hidden nooks, growling and cursing him. They spat at him; gobs of hot, thick, pink-tinted spittle slapped his face, his chest, his neck. He couldn’t block it or fight back. He tried to wrench his arms free, but his captors snarled and tugged back, almost dislocating his left shoulder.
He heard a meaningless snarl, then someone tore at his neck, ripping away a chunk of flesh. Eben remembered what Lilith looked like, bleeding from a hundred wounds, just through the doorway that he could see but not reach.
He didn’t want the same to happen to him.
He planted his feet, twisting at the waist, bending a little, putting all his strength into swiveling his shoulders. The motion threw the vampires holding his right side off balance. He could now move his right arm and leg.
He slashed out with his right fist, trying to press his momentary advantage. It slammed into a couple of bloodsuckers, knocking them into their fellows. The vampires gripping him on the left held on all the harder, but with one side free, he twisted again, bringing his fist around and driving it into the ugly face of the nearest. Fangs ripped his knuckles but the blow loosened some, and the vampire released him, spitting blood and teeth on the floor.
Eben lashed out with his right foot next, the boot splintering bone and opening a slightly wider space around him.
Now he had room to move, room to fight.
He widened his stance, ready to take on whoever came at him, tasting the sweet flavor of freedom. “Ha!” he shouted in challenge.
But they didn’t come one at a time. They swarmed him, like a tide swamping a sand castle. One second he had space to draw a breath, and the next, powerful arms crushed his ribs, hands clamped onto his shoulders and arms, drawing him down, his legs were immobilized.
That didn’t last long, he thought. The promise of release had turned, seconds later, into bondage even more hopeless than before. Eben struggled, mouth open, raging against his enemies. But they weighted him down as surely as if they had cast chains over his shoulders and anchored them to the ground. Again, they tore at him—a piece of flesh from his ribs, another from his cheek.
They were trying to take him apart, bit by bit.
As another hand ripped a chunk out of his back, he was afraid they would succeed.
Prepare yourself, Eben Olemaun.
Lilith’s voice, in his head again. Maybe thinking about her had signaled her in some way. Maybe he had come near enough to her room. For what? he tried to project toward her.
If she answered, he didn’t receive it.
But they did.
The vampires around him cried out, staggered back, as if he had suddenly become white-hot to the touch. Fierce eyes glowered at Eben, but they couldn’t put their hands on him. He didn’t know how Lilith had done it, but no other explanation made any sense.
He also didn’t know how long it would last, or if it would be any more useful than the momentary break he had made for himself before. Standing here wouldn’t help, though. He lunged toward a couple of the bloodsuckers, both cringing in fear, and when they dodged—as he had hoped—he snatched up the wooden chair standing behind them.
Holding it by two legs, he swung it against the skulls of the two nearest him. Wood splintered, vampires cried out in pain. Eben was left with a sharp-ended chair leg in each fist. He waded into the thickest of them, stabbing with the legs, using them as wooden stakes. He drove them into hearts and heads, pushed them through unyielding flesh and brittle bone and fibrous muscle. Vampires howled, fell to the ground clutching their wounds, trampled one another trying to back away.
Spurred on by the fury pulsing inside him, Eben pursued.
Whatever Lilith had done had given him another chance to survive, and he meant to take it. But he didn’t plan to leave here without Dane. He needed to get through the swarming vampires and find his only ally. If that meant spilling enough blood to coat the floor layers deep, then so be it.
Lilith’s spell was wearing off. Eben knew it because without warning, the vampires started coming at him again, grabbing and tearing. He fought back with the chair legs, bloodied now, bits of pinkish gray brain matter clinging to the sides. One caught him from behind and Eben spun, driving the leg in his right hand through the monster’s throat. Gore spewed onto his already drenched arms. He sensed another closing in on his left, whirled, swinging a chair leg in an arc that smashed it into the bloodsucker’s temples. Ducking slashing claws, he stabbed up into his attacker’s groin.
One by one, he took the bloodsuckers down.
They were gathering again, though, aware that whatever had protected him briefly had faded. He had weapons now, but they wouldn’t let him hold off the masses indefinitely. Too many had swarmed in, the bulk of them between Eben and the staircase. Somewhere down below, Dane waited, quite probably fighting for his own survival.
Eben looked at the throng of vampires between him and his goal. Calibrated his chances. Approximately zero. He could take a few out with him, but he couldn’t beat them all.
There might, however, be another way down.
Eben already knew he was stronger than most vampires, when the rage lived inside him as it did at this moment. How strong had not been tested.
Maybe it was time.
He whirled in a circle, his twin weapons clearing a swath around him. For the moment—brief, he had no doubt—his way was open.
Not through the bloodsuckers.
Down.
Eben raised his right leg, knee high, and stamped down on the floorboards. They creaked and groaned. He repeated the action. The third time he jumped into the air, bending his knees, then straightened them as he landed. This time he heard cracking noises.
The vampires gaped at him as if he had completely lost his mind. Maybe they were right.
He dropped to his knees, hammering on the floorboards with his fists. Splinters drove into his flesh. He pounded again. The boards gave a satisfying moan and sagged beneath his pummeling. He picked what seemed to be a weak spot and focused his efforts there.
Vampires made tentative moves toward him. Each time, he snatched up his weapons, snarled and glared and they edged back, not wanting to get too close to the crazy man. Finally the boards gave way. He thrust his hand through the opening he had made, grasping for purchase on the underside, then yanked up on them, enlarging the hole.
The bloodsuckers seemed to understand that they didn’t want him to get away with whatever he was doing. They surged forward. Eben hurled chunks of floorboard at them and dug for more, making the hole bigger each time. Now he could see below, where a network of pipes snaked between this floor and the ceiling of the next level. Vampires screeched out what sounded like warnings or commands. He ignored them. In another few seconds the hole was large enough to pass through.
The gathered, realizing that he was leaving, scrambled to catch him.
Eben dropped down the hole, dodging the pipes and conduits, finding his footing on one of the heavy support beams. Stepping off that, he stomped down on the ceiling panel, just a single layer of pinewood. It cracked under his weight. With vampires clawing at him from above, Eben fell through, bouncing off a steel pipe, gripping it to slow him down, breaking it (blood gushing out, into the narrow crawl space between ceiling and floor) but landing on hands and feet on the floor below.
Above, he could see them gathered around the hole, staring down. Blood from the broken pipe waterfalled toward him. He sidestepped it, allowing himself a quick grin at his escape.
Partial escape, anyway. He still didn’t know where Dane was, and this was a big place.
He had started toward the staircase when Enok suddenly came from that direction, sweeping toward him as if his feet barely touched the floor.
“Well done!” He clapped his slender hands together. “Bravo.”
“You didn’t come here just to congrat
ulate me,” Eben said.
“Of course not. Since apparently my followers cannot destroy you, I came to do it myself.”
“You can try,” Eben said, still confident of his strength.
Enok chuckled dryly. “That’s right, the rage makes you stronger. Do you imagine that you’ll become strong enough to threaten me?” He tapped his own chest. “Remember who I am, Eben. Remember how little experience you have with all of this. If I were you—” Enok smiled now, friendly, encouraging. “—if I were you, I would drop to my knees right now and beg forgiveness.”
Forgiveness. Eben figured Enok only knew about that through rumors he had heard, but had little or no personal experience with the concept. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”
36
THEY SLUGGED DANE over the head with something heavy and he sank like a boulder in a fishpond.
A couple of vampires grabbed him by the wrists and dragged him from the throne room. He woke up before they even reached the door, but he feigned unconsciousness. They took him to an elevator, the existence of which he had theorized but which he had not seen (and still barely saw, only risking opening his eyes to narrow slits), and then they were moving down, down, then doors slid open and he was half carried, half dragged, arms gripping under his arms, smashing his ribs, and then (for this part he opened his eyes) he was hurled over a low fence. Still pretending, he managed to throw his hands down but couldn’t completely break his fall, not without giving away his wakeful state. Whoever had thrown him, or someone near that one, shouted something in Norwegian when he landed.
Judging from the reaction, the shouted phrase had been something like “Eat him up!” Dane heard a rapid scuffling noise and opened his eyes again just in time to see dozens of bug eaters rushing toward him across the bare wood floor.
Watching them come, Dane felt a vague sense of comfort slip over him like an old familiar sweater. The unease he had been living with for weeks vanished, all at once, and without analyzing it he knew it was because he was no detective, no Sherlock Holmes, no James Bond. He was a fighter. He hadn’t always been, not in life—then he had been a pacifist but that was a luxury a vampire could ill afford, and in undeath the one trait he had that set him apart from the others was that he was good in a brawl.
And this—this, goddammit—would be one for the ages.
He made it to his feet just before they reached him.
Compared to vampires, bug eaters were weak. They were creatures in transition, not completely comfortable in their own skins. Within a few days, maybe a week, two in extreme cases, they would be nosferatu, their strength magnified, senses sharpened.
Until then, they were nothing. Individually, anyway. But there were a lot of them here.
The first one in range got Dane’s fist against his mouth with enough force—from his own momentum and the power of Dane’s punch—to knock his head from his shoulders, sending it spiraling back into the bug-eater ranks.
Then they were on him, swarming like maggots on a days-old corpse. Dane threw kicks and punches, then yanked one female’s arm off at the shoulder and used it as a club on the others until it disintegrated in his hand, flesh and muscle peeling off the bone. Teeth snapped at him, some tearing his clothes and nipping his skin. He didn’t hold anything back, though, and dozens of bug eaters fell before his crushing blows.
The stink was horrendous: unwashed dead bodies whose diet consisted solely of insects and the few rodents that had managed to tunnel into Enok’s base, spilled blood, all the other attendant smells that came from hundreds of recently deceased individuals living together in a confined space. Being on this level with them was bad enough—having them teeming around him with bits of flesh and blood and brain landing on him as he tore through them made it that much worse.
Their bodies piled up thick and high around him. Dane started to have trouble moving his legs, trying to force his way through them. His feet slipped on the viscous muck beneath. They’d need a crane to clear the room, he figured—not that anyone could get a crane all these floors down beneath the sawmill. Anyway, from what he had seen of Enok’s management, they’d be more likely to just leave the corpses here to rot.
Still they came, seemingly summoned from other rooms he couldn’t see.
And now he realized that the bug eaters were being joined by some vampires. Whether they were the ones he had spotted here before, keeping an eye on the bug eaters, or others sent by Enok, he couldn’t tell.
He dispatched two bug eaters with quick blows to the head. The moment gave the first of the vampires time to reach him, and she came in fast and hard, smashing into Dane’s ribs. His feet lost purchase on the slippery planks. He went down on the stack of bodies surrounding him (some still moving in their near death, clawing weakly at him), with the vampire on top.
She stabbed toward him with a dagger, its blade nine inches long and sharp. He twisted to avoid it; the blade buried in the face of the bug eater beneath him. He shot the butt of his palm up and into the vampire’s chin, snapping her head backward. At the same time he caught the wrist that held the knife and broke it. She let out a scream, glared at him, her eyes fiery with hatred. Her other hand grabbed his ear, tugged on it, trying to rip it from his head. Dane still had a grip on her broken arm, though. Turning it toward her, he closed his fist around her hand and slit her throat with her own weapon. Hot blood showered him, but she went slack and he shoved her off.
Two more vampires closed on him, accompanied by another dozen or so bug eaters. Snatching the knife from the dead vampire’s ruined hand, Dane waited until one charged and caught his head in his left hand, driving the dagger through the vampire’s right temple and into his brain. Still holding the bloodsucker by the head and the knife’s handle, he spun the body around, blocking the next one’s attack with it.
Bug eaters came at him around the body, so he threw it toward the vampire, preserving the knife, and turned to them. These he could destroy with a few blows from his left hand (the one attached by Dr. Levin so long ago—guy did good work) and some slashes with the knife. When they were down, this new vampire had a clear shot at him, and took it. Dane threw his legs apart for stability and tried to knife the vamp as he approached, but his foe dodged it, catching Dane’s wrist to immobilize it. At the same time, he crashed into Dane, teeth snapping at his throat.
The two grappled, Dane having a harder time beating this one than he had his earlier opponents. This vampire was huge and strong and fought with a deadly ferocity Dane had not encountered in here before. His right fist slammed into Dane’s ribs; Dane, already weary from the long struggle and the events of the day, absorbed the punishment only with difficulty.
The bloodsucker kept pummeling him. Dane decided to try a feint, and he relaxed all his muscles at once, slumping forward and releasing the dagger. The vampire yanked him forward, letting Dane’s right wrist go and wrapping his hands around Dane’s throat. Dane leaned against his opponent for an instant, gathering his strength, and then jabbed a thumb into the vampire’s eye. The vampire shrieked and tried to back away but Dane held on, hooking his thumb in his skull, behind the eye socket. The vampire twitched and cried out, fists flailing uselessly against Dane.
In another minute it was over.
The bug eaters had backed off, perhaps preferring to limit their violence to insects who couldn’t fight back. No more vampires presented themselves, either, which Dane took as an indication that the ones he had fought were the ones who guarded this floor. The others must have remained on the upper floors.
Where Eben was.
He’d wasted more than enough time here. If Eben had survived this long, they needed to reunite and get the hell out of here, while they still could.
Or was that if they still could?
Eben swallowed his fear, like trying to choke down a softball, and braced himself for Enok’s attack.
He wished he had brought his old service weapon—a .45 slug in the brainpan would put a quick end to Enok. He
wouldn’t have been able to get it through airport security, though, and acquiring a firearm in Tromsø, without speaking the language, would have been tough.
Which meant that when he clashed with Enok, he would be armed only with his own wild strength. It took about a microsecond to know that would not be enough.
Enok approached him almost casually, literally strolling across the floor. When they were within striking distance, he stopped. Eben wasn’t sure if his intention was conversation or combat, but then, faster than Eben’s eye could follow, he lashed out. One of his fists plowed into Eben’s gut, doubling him over. A second smashed into Eben’s jaw with the force of a screaming 747. Before Eben knew the fight had been joined, he was on the floor, blood streaming from his nose and mouth, and Enok gloated over him, arms folded loosely over his chest, a rakish smile on his face.
“Was that what you had in mind?” Enok asked. “Or since you are already down there, perhaps you’d like to reconsider begging on your knees.”
“Eat shit and bark at the moon, motherfucker,” Eben replied.
Enok’s reaction was to aim a kick toward Eben’s head. This time Eben was ready for it. He grabbed Enok’s boot in both hands and threw his weight backward, jerking and twisting at the same time. Enok hopped on his other foot but couldn’t maintain his balance. He toppled back, catching himself on his hands and tugging his foot free.
“Clever,” he said, scooting back out of Eben’s reach. “I suppose you are entitled to one last clever move before you cease to exist.”
“You’re on your ass on the floor, same as me,” Eben said. “Maybe you’re not as tough as you think.”
“Oh, have no worries on that count, Sheriff Olemaun,” Enok said. He pushed himself to his feet. Eben did the same. Enok rushed him.
And Eben dodged, as he had back in his high school quarterback days, sliding past Enok’s outthrust hands and breaking for the distant staircase. By the time Enok reversed course and gave chase, Eben had hit the stairs, slowing himself by grabbing the banister. His speed snapped the balustrades off their moorings. Eben yanked them off and hurled them at Enok one by one as he descended, heading into the depths of the structure with Enok close behind.