by Ian Hall
“Tomorrow,” Reynolds said, “we get the hire car sorted out, get our stuff from the old hotel, and we become invisible.”
I didn’t like this one bit: crawling on our bellies, begging the Helsings for mercy. Pretty damn soon, those bastards would be begging me…
But, I played it cool. For now at least I was part of the team. Figured once Mary-Christine made her call to daddy, the rest of them would end up seeing things my way anyhow.
She’d been putting it off; maybe she was afraid of finding out just how deep the shit she’d fallen into actually went.
Mary-Christine and Lyman were still circling each other; it was like watching a cockfight but without the pecking. Just a very silent round and round. It wasn’t helping Lyman’s mood any; he was budgeting his meds again and getting edgy.
By the time we got ourselves settled in the new hotel, I was just glad to get some space away from the two of them. Not a lot of space; it was one room with two queen beds and four people. Just enough keep from crawling on top of each other.
Pretty much as soon as we got there, Mary-Christine threw herself on our bed while Lyman and Reynolds immediately crashed on theirs. Humans were such fragile creatures.
Even I hadn’t gotten back to the old Mandy. Though I’d finally metabolized the knockout serum the Helsings had given me, the energy was a bit low. A soft shell was forming over my fingertips and that was a good sign. But, so far there was no sign of new fangs coming in; that part was troubling. Unless Reynolds could continuously finagle the pre-pumped stuff for me, eventually I could starve.
As they slept, I sank into a hot bath and tried to use the quiet time to my advantage. My thoughts wandered back to the Helsing torture chamber, my mood darkening as the memory took shape. Miranda - thick, blue eye shadow. Sherry - black ponytail. Lansing…just a prick. I kept running their voices through my mind on a continuous loop. Any detail I could think of. I was determined not to forget.
The water had just started to turn cold when Lyman rudely barged through the bathroom door. He stopped dead in his tracks as I yanked the curtain closed.
“Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
Next thing I heard was the toilet lid being lifted, and then it sounded like Lyman was pouring about a two-liter into the toilet.
“You’re sick!”
“Sorry…emergency…couldn’t wait.”
I drained the tub, pulled my towel down from the bar, and made no apologies as I slid past the still-peeing Lyman. The door opened before I could get to it. Mary-Christine’s eyes grew to the size of hubcaps.
Of course Lyman was still hanging all out there. I wondered if she’d ever seen it before.
“I was just leaving,” I said, gliding past her. “Thanks, Lyman. That was awesome.”
Ha!
Reynolds was still zoned, so I got dressed without an audience while Mary-Christine’s muffled voice drifted through the door. The toilet flushed and Lyman came bounding out into the room.
“It was an accident. Get the hell over it!”
The outburst stirred Reynolds. He and I both got a front row seat as Lyman stormed across the room and kicked over a club chair.
“Chill out!” I snapped, putting myself right between Lyman’s crosshairs.
“And you!”
Oh crud…
“You thought you were being cute with that clever little remark?” His accusing finger nearly stabbed me in the eye. “We don’t have time for that kind of shit!”
Mary-Christine came out of the bathroom. Obviously she’d been bawling again.
Lyman made like his hands were scratching at each other in midair. “Mandy said this…well Mary-Christine looked at me sideways…I’m tired of bitch central here! It’s never fucking ending!”
Reynolds piped up once Lyman’s rant went up an octave, “Bring it down a notch, son. We don’t need any of the other guests complaining about us getting disruptive.”
To my amazement, Lyman even turned on him. “That’s right - we don’t! Because unless nobody else here has noticed, we’ve got ENOUGH PROBLEMS!”
“Not the least of them being that you need more meds,” I cut in.
Lyman combed jittery fingers through his hair. He sat down hard on the bed but popped back up again like it was scalding hot. Then, he began to pace. The cool-headed Lyman Bracks looked like a rehab patient going through withdrawal.
“She’s right,” Mary-Christine said then went for her phone with a look of utter determination on her face.
I think all breathing in the room stopped the second she started dialing.
“Yes. It’s me. Pause. We’re together. I’m fine. Pause. Nobody forced me to do anything…”
Mary-Christine froze as she listened. Her face paled and her eyes welled up.
“Lyman can’t go much longer without a new supply of meds, Daddy. Pause. No…it’s not like that! I’m not some fucking hostage here!”
Whoa.
Dave Muscat’s responding tirade could be heard a mile away. Mostly it was a lot of swearing and pointing out how shocked and disappointed he and Mrs. Muscat were. And the arrow hit his mark, too. Mary-Christine looked like she could die where she stood.
Lyman charged at the phone and wrestled it from Mary-Christine’s hand.
“Dave, this is Lyman. You don’t talk to my girlfriend that way, sir. Do you understand me?”
Mary-Christine was visibly shaking. Even I wanted to run up and hug her.
“What do I want? I want a meeting - just you and me. Face to face. We’ll sit down and discuss this as men. Pause. That’ll be up to her, Dave. Mary-Christine makes her own decisions. Pause. I’ll be there - you come alone. No more bullshit.”
Lyman clamped the phone shut and tossed it on the bed.
“I’ve got a meeting with your father in two hours,” he announced. “He said he wants you there, but I told him it’s up to you.”
Mary-Christine pulled herself together and straightened her back. “Of course I’m coming.”
“I’m coming too!” I felt like a kid waving to get picked at kickball.
“Of course you are,” Lyman said. “I need you and Reynolds to watch my back.”
End.
The Rage Wars (Vampire’s Don’t Cry: Book 3)
By Ian Hall & April L. Miller
Preface; All Out War
Chapter 1 Retreat and Consolidation
Chapter 2 Putting Our Trust in Unicorps
Chapter 3 Corporate Headquarters
Chapter 4 We Split Up; Two Investigations
Chapter 5 Getting Serious All of a Sudden
Chapter 6 The Wars Begin
Chapter 7 First Contact with Rage Gas
Chapter 8 Vampires and Zombies
Chapter 9 Enemies Close, Friends Closer
Chapter 10 Mandy’s in Trouble
Chapter 11 Reynolds lets it all Out
Chapter 12 Cold Meat on the Slab
Chapter 13 Help Comes from Unicorps
Chapter 14 You’re In The Army Now
Chapter 15 In the Thick of it All
Prologue: All-Out War
I could see uniforms all around me, all ready to attack the compound; even though I’d seen the final showdown coming for weeks, it still seemed so bizarre.
A whole Helsing army, clad in desert camouflage, surrounding Alan McCartney and his vampire horde. The tension in the air felt palpable, and I literally shook in my desert-colored, company-issue boots.
As I listened in my headset for the order to advance, I had time to consider the depth of the crap I had gotten us into. We were drafted members of the Helsing coalition; weapons, uniforms, we even had a command structure, for goodness sake. All far from the individualism I’d joined less than a few months ago.
In my head, it all felt too much, and I knew it. Lives were on the line here, and that meant mine, too. I wasn’t sure I wanted my life in jeopardy in the first place, but to be at the call of someone else’s command seemed wrong. I’d risked my lif
e in the past, sure, but it had always been at my discretion.
Through the glass of my gas mask, I could see the farmhouse, only two hundred yards away. I could see the big generator, and even the movement of some heads in the farmhouse windows.
“Forty-seven.”
The pressure cranked up some more, the adrenaline rush, simply incredible.
Frank turned to us. “Oxygen on. Whatever happens, breathe normally.”
I flipped my valve.
I can’t exactly remember when I first heard the noise, but it grew from distant humming to a dull roar. Then it almost burst my eardrums. As the first aircraft burst over my head, I knew I was suddenly at war.
My personal vendetta against Alan McCartney had turned into all-out chemical freaking warfare. As exhaust trails crisscrossed overhead, the ground became saturated with the Helsing version of WMD.
Reynolds gave the command we’d been waiting for, “Oxygen on. Whatever happens, breathe normally.”
A rush of forced air pressurized the mask and it suctioned up to my face with a “sllllurp.” It didn’t keep the toxic odor from getting through as acid rain sprayed down on us from above.
Lyman shouted, “What is it?”
I kept my head down and listened only for Reynolds’s voice. “Coagulator! In aerosol form. I can smell it - it’s strong.”
Finally the moment came: “We advance. We watch for tripwires, we carry both side arms. We shoot everything that doesn’t wear camouflage.”
The ground sloped gently towards the farm, but the stuff the Helsings were lacing my blood packs with didn’t help my coordination any. Out of the brush surrounding the bowl-shaped valley, more camouflaged figures emerged, converging on the compound in the center. The effect looked nothing less than surreal; slow-walking trees with crystalline faces and space-aged-looking weapons. And I was one of them.
Fifty yards downhill, the valley slithered with vampires, already dropped to their bellies and lungs fighting against the coagulant stiffening their muscles. They were fish in a barrel (as dad would have said), easy pickings for the Helsing militia. Too easy.
Retreat and Consolidation
Racing away from Atlanta, and any Helsing retribution from the Amos Blanche debacle, Reynolds drove south. “Heading for the sun,” he said, then after a bit we took a stop on a highway Subway. Sandwiches all around. Well, apart from Mandy.
Luckily we’d arrived at a quiet time, and the staff wasn’t interested, so we sat uninterrupted in a corner. I felt I had to ask the question. “So what now?”
I didn’t expect the abject silence that followed. So, taking the initiative, I asked questions.
“Mandy, what’s forefront in your head right now? Anything?”
Her voice sounded low and kinda slurred; she shielded her mouth with her hand, like a patient after the dentist. I mean, her fangs had been ripped out. “I want revenge. I want to rip every Helsing’s head off; no offense.”
Mary-Christine’s response was trite. “None taken.”
I could see Reynolds looking from one of us to the other. Then he burst out laughing. At first I felt offended, but his laugh proved infectious. In seconds, we were all in stitches, even talking about the execution in very irreverent terms.
Mandy stopped, pursing her lips. “Seriously, on a personal level, I’d like recognition that Jackson and I actually killed four of our own kind, saved Lyman the Helsing, and helped bring to justice the biggest vampire in the western hemisphere.”
“Wow, I mean, good luck with that one,” Reynolds said. “The Washington Post doesn’t usually follow that kind of news story.”
“Not from the newspapers,” Mandy grinned. “From the Helsings.”
I broke the silence that followed. “I think she’s got a point. I mean, at the very least, the Helsings need to give us recognition for the stuff we’ve done. Recognition for the team; the four of us.”
Mary-Christine banged the table lightly with her fist. “And an apology.”
I nodded. “More than an apology, but I know what you mean. They dismissed us from the start, totally disregarded our investigations.”
“No, you idiot,” Mary-Christine chided. “We need an apology for what they did to Mandy. That torture was way out of order.”
“You sound like a civil rights protestor.” Mandy grinned again, showing us her gaps. “But we also should do something to ensure this kind of thing doesn’t happen again. I mean, if someone had done this…” and she bared her teeth, “to a dog, without some kind of painkiller, there’d be a public outcry.”
At our inaction, she suddenly went very serious. “They also took samples from way up my, you know, down there. Front and back. And, when my legs were held apart on the stirrups, I got offered to the guy.” She looked at the mess of papers on the table. “Luckily for me, he wasn’t into vampire pussy.”
Well, that sure put a cloud on our humor, but it did bring the extent of Mandy’s trauma to the surface.
I decided to start again. “So, seriously, what do we do now?”
Surprisingly, Reynolds answered. “I know I’m not into all the details, but I can sure as heck read between the lines pretty good. I’m going at this from a very methodical point of view, but it’s helped me in the past, so bear with me. You guys chase and kill vampires - I know, I can’t really believe I said that, but regardless, that’s what you do. And from the events of the weekend, it seems that you do it well, and need little guidance from the upper echelons of Helsing-ness. So, and I now get to the point, I think you’ve got just one real question to ask yourselves: Is the job finished?”
Well that got a chorus of ‘hell no’, and such, but he beat us down with raised hands.
“Okay. You’re not finished chasing and killing vampires; that brings us to the logical question. If you’re still going to chase and kill vampires, do you need the support of the Helsing organization?”
Okay, that was a more difficult one. “No,” I said, simply. “But we don’t want them against us, either.”
“Or sticking their noses in,” Mary-Christine said. “We wouldn’t want our takedowns mucked up by their uninvited investigations.”
“That could end up dangerous for us all,” Mandy said. “Look what happened the last time. We need to be more careful ourselves. We’ve got enough problems looking over our shoulders for vampires, never mind Helsings.”
Reynolds gathered us closer over the table with a big sweep of his hands. “So, we’ve got to do many things over the next few weeks, and they are all directed at the Helsings. We to negotiate a truce, that’s the first thing. We need apology, both for us and especially for Mandy. We need autonomy, to enable us to go about our own investigations, and we probably need communications between us and them, to coordinate our efforts against the common enemy.”
“Wow,” I said, and it seemed no one else wanted to chip in. “When you put it like that, it seems like we’re asking for the moon.”
Reynolds nodded. “And only you guys can decide if we’re starting it right now, or if you need some space first.”
Space? I had enough space between my teeth, thank you very much. Lyman and Mary-Christine’s demands for an apology from the Helsings was all well and good; but, I, for one, no longer believed in Santa Claus. I couldn’t be that naïve; couldn’t expect Dave Muscat to extend his hand in gratitude - let alone friendship.
I had a personal score to settle. Something I don’t think my friends could comprehend; and I know for damn sure wouldn’t accept. So, I kept it to myself. For now.
“Mandy? What’re you thinking, sweetie?”
Lyman’s voice broke through my stewing. I looked over and saw the sour expression on Mary-Christine’s face; guess he needed to cool it with the terms of endearment. Last thing I needed was another enemy.
So, I brought her into the conversation the best way I could think of - by grilling her for information about her kind.
I shoved my scabbed up fingers under her face. She nearly
gagged on her last mouthful of turkey on rye.
“Is this sort of thing typical? Do they do this to all the vampires, or should I feel special?”
Mary-Christine bought herself a second to think by taking a long draw off her Diet Coke, “Yes…and no. Part of the preparation does include…neutralizing any threat before execution as a precaution in case the vampire somehow gets free of their restraints. Clip down the nails, remove the fangs.” She shook her head adamantly. “But I’ve never known them to remove the whole nail and never had any clue they do it while the vampire is awake and can feel the whole procedure.”
“I think I killed one of them…Tucker, I think. When they opened the crate, I scratched his throat…”
“Yeah. He bled to death, Mandy,” Mary-Christine confirmed as if bearing bad news, “Fred Tucker; I didn’t know him well, but he seemed a good guy.”
I launched, “Boo-fucking-hoo, Mary-Christine! That ‘good guy’ cracked me in the head with a crowbar!”
“I only meant—”
I was on a roll. “Then his friends slowly tortured me…and they made sure I lay wide awake for it.”
That thought had just occurred to me. Miranda, the Helsing doctor, probably gave me just enough juice to keep me defenseless but make damn sure I felt everything they did to me. Well. Retribution would be a bitch; but it goes both ways.
“They even dilated my pupils and taped my eyes open so they could fry them with that fucking overhead lamp…”
Lyman cut me off, “You need to forget about it…”
“I wish I could forget it!”
That was a lie, and I knew it. I had no intention of forgetting what happened to me in that room.
Lyman edged his chair over to mine and drew me in for a long, cozy hug. I heard Mary-Christine’s chair screech away from the table, rapid footsteps toward the exit, and the bell over the door chime as she stormed out. Fuck her. That warm shoulder was the only thing between me and an all-out ape-shit tantrum.
“I’m sorry for what they did to you, Mandy,” he said. “I wish I could take it all back; but right now there’s no place to go but forward.”