by Phil Tucker
Locos stood up from where they had been hiding behind their vehicles. The soldiers’ heavy-duty rifles had demolished their rides, riddling them with what looked like a million holes, puncturing tires and shattering windows. Locos lay dead on the road, blood pooled on the asphalt and reflecting the fires. A handful yet stood, unsure of what to do next.
“Armando is dead. So are the soldiers. I am free.” Selah’s voice rolled out over them with the power and resonance of a great bronze bell. “Selah?” Chico. He moved to the fore, a large handgun in one hand. His face was smudged with smoke, one eye squeezed closed by a vicious bruise. “That you?”
“It is.” Selah jumped down lightly. She walked over to him and stopped as Cloud emerged from behind another car, blood smeared across his face.
“Selah.” His voice was little more than a rasp, and he approached her with a rough limp. He stopped next to Chico, a good four yards from her.
“You made it. Fernanda freed you.” She fought for a sense of happiness. Relief. All she could muster was an afterglow of such feelings, a faint echo.
“Yeah. We called Chico. Told them about what had happened.”
There were questions she had wanted to ask. About him, about them, about why he had left her. What he had believed, at that time, she was capable of. Such questions seemed foolish now, with dozens of dead men behind her, with bullets lodged in her body, with her fangs growing. She realized she didn’t care, not any longer. She didn’t blame him for leaving her. Didn’t blame him at all. Instead, she turned to Chico, hands on her hips. “Why did you come for me?”
Chico looked past her at the remains of the flaming convoy. “It was Armando who insisted. He didn’t explain himself. After we were driven out, we had nowhere to go. Cloud and Fernanda got in touch. They told us what happened. That the Treaty’s getting broken. That you had been handed to the military. Armando decided to come help. He said—he said it was the right thing, the only thing left to do. Said you could lead us against the vampires.”
“Armando? He said that?”
“Yeah.” Chico shook his head. “After you left, we spoke. He got real quiet. I just stood there. He demanded I leave, that I get the hell out, but I wouldn’t go. He threatened to shoot me again, but when I called his bluff, it’s like something inside him just broke. He just sat there shaking his head. He said a bunch of things. We were getting reports at that point that we had lost. Too many men had quit. We knew we had to leave. Maybe if you’d stayed and helped? Maybe not.” Chico rubbed at his face with one hand, and then sighed. “It’s almost as if he had to lose everything to realize how badly he wanted to change things.”
“But—how?” She looked behind her at the flaming wrecks. “How did you do this?”
Chico grinned sourly. “Cloud tailed you guys from the Observatory. And the good Padrino Machado lent us his chopper.”
“Lent it?”
Chico snorted, “We took it. We got a call from a kid called Ramonito. He gave us the heads-up. Said he was your friend, and told us where we could find his chopper. So we took it.”
“And Ramonito?”
“Kid wanted us to bring him along. Wanted to come help. Armando told him no, and we left him behind.”
Selah turned to Cloud. He was studying her, face a mask, eyes narrowed. She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, the hard set to his jaw. “This is it,” she said. “My last night.”
“Yeah. I can tell.”
“Thanks for saving me. Thanks for—everything. No matter what happens, I’ll never forget everything you did for me. What you meant to me.”
He took a shuddering breath and looked away. Chico coughed, and stepped back. Cloud nodded, lips pressed so tightly together they were but a line. “So this is it? You go off now to be a vampire?”
Selah laughed. “No. I’m not going off to be a vampire. I’m going to go kill Arachne. I’m going to find out what she’s planning, and then fuck up every single plan of hers.”
Cloud searched her face, and then nodded. “You still care?”
How could she explain? The sound of the Humvees burning behind her was a constant crackle, and the air smelled of burned rubber and blood. None of it bothered her. It was as if her conscience had simply faded way. There was a sense of right and wrong, but it was abstract. What guided her now was principle—that Arachne had wronged her. That Arachne should not get away with what she was planning. That she deserved to be stopped, for having thought herself so superior, for having hurt Selah and those she had once cared about.
“Yeah,” she finally said. No sense in going deeper. “Enough.”
He nodded again. “I’ll come. I’ll help.”
That got through to her. The vulnerability on his face. The conflict between his harsh attempt at self-mastery and his need for – what? She couldn’t tell. She felt a pang go through her, and wanted to reach out and touch his face, to caress his cheek. Sadness, that was what his offer had summoned. Sadness that their love was gone.
“I’m sorry. You wouldn’t be able to keep up.”
Cloud looked away. “Yeah. You’re probably right.”
They stood in silence, and Chico stepped back up. She looked at them both. “Chico, we won’t be seeing each other again. Thank you, for everything. Take care of yourself.” Selah looked around at the men who stood back at a respectful distance. Only six or so remained. Of all that Armando had built, his dreams, his new and legal empire, this was it. She raised a hand to them in parting, in thanks, and they stood still, eyes reflecting the hellish flames that danced behind her.
She turned to walk away but Cloud reached out and pulled her into his arms. She looked up at him, and then he kissed her, with all the anguish and desire and love that he had been fighting to suppress. He held her tight, and she kissed him back, breathed him in along with the smoke from the wreckage, and closed her eyes. For a moment she allowed herself to melt into him, to seek that spark, that old passion that had burned so brightly within her heart. But it was gone. Selah opened her eyes, and pulled away.
Chapter Twenty Two
Selah decided to take the direct approach. She took one of the Locos’ cars, a beat-up Mustang with no Omni-cradle or navigation, and drove right back the way she’d come. She felt nothing but a sense of inevitability guiding her back. The city passed by her, but she didn’t see it. Six bullets were nestled in her body. That thought echoed dully over and over within her mind. Six bullets. She tongued her fangs. Had they grown? They seemed to be the same size, but they had grown lethally sharp. Each time she licked them her tongue was slit as if by a paper cut, but each time it healed almost immediately.
She put her fingers to her throat. She still had a heartbeat, if barely. She tried to measure her pulse. The beat came infrequently. Once every five seconds or so. Her skin felt cool to the touch. She was dying. Selah tried to evoke images of Mama B, of her father. She thought of the sun, of the dawn she would never see. She fought to provoke some sense of loss, summon some element of remorse, but couldn’t. There was nothing there. It was like poking an ashen fire with a stick, looking for coals that had all died out. All she wanted now was revenge. She wanted to pay Arachne back, and destroy her plans.
She thought of Theo. She’d last seen him going down to one knee as the Blood Dust enveloped him, immolating him in its distillation of vampiric power. She’d save him. She owed him that much. Was this how she would operate now? Along theoretical feelings of obligation and debt? Was there going to be no greater impulse in her life? She thought then of Armando’s blood, and how it had sent such a current of desire through her body that for a delirious moment, nothing else had been real.
Of course. Now there would be blood. Now and forever more, the desire to feed. To drink. To hunt.
Selah shuddered and lowered her chin. No. Not yet. If there was an eternity before her in which to indulge that passion, then she could hold it off a little while longer.
Selah drove. The Mustang was powerful, its engine ro
aring as she accelerated into the curves. Through Hollywood, and right toward the hills, guided by an instinct she couldn’t fathom. The Observatory itself beckoned her on, the only illuminated jewel on the mountain slopes, a beacon of white purity and light. She took the direct route. There was no longer a need for stealth.
Up into the hills, clearly marked signs guiding her around and around and up to the parking lot. A handful of cars were parked there, beyond which stretched a grassy lawn toward the Observatory, a great obelisk of white stone flanked by four statues in its center. Selah drove slowly across the grass, ignoring the parking lot. A couple of vampires were seated on the hood of a car, and they leaped down as she rumbled past, gaping at her with open astonishment.
Selah drove right up to the steps and got out. The vampires followed, and then slowed and stopped as she turned to face them.
“Arachne?” It was the foxy-looking guy. “No. You’re the other one.”
His companion was a slender Hispanic woman, half her scalp shaved, the other half a long, flowing mane that grew down past her waist. “Then let’s waste her,” she said, and began to move forward.
“Wait,” said the fox. But it was too late. The woman struck at Selah, but the blow was slow, clumsy. Selah punched the woman’s fist with her own, slamming her knuckles straight into the blow. She pulverized the vampire’s wrist, buckled the bones of her forearm, and fused her elbow. The woman went to open her mouth and scream but Selah wasn’t finished. She followed through by leaping up to slam her knee under the woman’s jaw. The impact shattered the front of her face. The woman flew back, and Selah landed lightly, turning to face the fox. All of it in the blink of an eye.
“—don’t attack … her.” The man turned from where Selah had been standing to stare at where she now stood. He hadn’t been able to track her. She’d moved too fast. “Shit.” He didn’t get to say anything else.
Selah left him behind on the grass and entered the Observatory. She hadn’t been able to examine it when she’d been dragged out, but this time she paused and looked around. Two wings extended to the right and left, each filled with scientific displays and computer screens. The central well in the middle of the room housed a great golden ball hanging from a filament of wire, and swung back and forth, its glossy surface reflecting the circle of white light illuminating the well’s base. Ahead lay the entrance to the Planetarium. Voices sounded from the depths of the building. Where was Theo?
She strode toward the Planetarium and into the small antechamber before it. A set of stairs led down, so after considering the beautiful doors that stood closed before her, she turned and descended. The voices grew louder. The reception area below was familiar. This was the floor on which she’d been held. Steps extended down a hallway, a circle of light bathing it from above. Selah ignored the other passages and doorways and descended the broad steps, following the sound of the voices.
Selah entered a large mezzanine beyond. A gallery looked out over a lower level, telescopes incongruously lined up along the railing and pointed at a wall-to-wall map of stars that covered the far side of the room. Large planets hung from invisible wires, and the floor was a glistening cherry maroon. A vampire stood with his back to Selah, gazing out over the railing at what was taking place below. He never even heard Selah approach. She stepped up next to him, and tapped him on the shoulder. It was the large vampire that had carried her out along with the fox. He straightened and as he did so she slammed the webbing of her hand into his neck with such power that she lifted him off his feet, massive as he was, and then drove him down into the ground, smashing the back of his neck into the polished concrete. His head, neck, and shoulders cratered the floor, and he went limp. Selah straightened and turned to the railing. The conversation below had cut off. She placed her hands on the rails and looked below.
It had once been filled with astronomical models and exhibits. All of these had been torn free and thrown into one corner. About fifty men and women were manacled and bolted to the wall, the iron clamps hammered deep into the fabric of the star paneling. They were held tight by the wrists, elbows, knees, and ankles, with a wide iron belt across the waist and a slender one around the neck. The restraints were necessary—all of them thrashed and strained in place, trying mindless to break free. They were naked, their bodies emaciated, bellies bloated, tubes running from their elbows and upper thighs into fat syringes that were filled with different levels of blood. Several men and women had been tending these prisoners, but were now looking up at Selah. About ten vampires stood in the center of the room, Arachne in their center.
Selah realized three things simultaneously. The first was that the fifty shackled people were vampires, their skin sallow, their lips torn, eyes guttered black holes of hatred and terror. The second was that Theo was bolted at the end of the line, his bonds heavier and reinforced, but there he stood, naked and furious, straining against his restraints. The third was that she had finally discovered where Blood Dust came from. A vampire farm.
“What are you doing here?” Arachne’s voice was strident.
Selah looked down at her. “I’ve come to kill you. All of you.”
Stunned silence, and then laughter. Arachne supported herself with one hand on the shoulder of a tall vampire beside her. “Is that so? You and what army, Miss Brown?”
“No army. Just me and Sawiskera.” That silenced them. “He’s with me now. Like never before. I’ve come into his power. All of it. His strength is mine. However long your lives have been, they end here and now. Tonight.”
Her words stung the air. The vampires bared their fangs at her with a hatred born of fear. Selah leaped up lightly onto the rail, and balanced easily on it. “I will kill all of you, but you, Sethe, I will save for Theo.”
Arachne hissed, a sound that was completely inhuman. “We have work to do. Kill her.”
Selah leaped down. It was as if she were a vampire amongst humans. No matter how dangerous the human, no matter how trained and lethal, they couldn’t compare to the speed and lethality of a vampire. So it was as she danced amongst them, nine vampires that came at her with everything they had, every trick and fighting style they’d learned over the decades or centuries, and she killed them, one by one, tore them apart with the strength that was now hers, the strength of a former god.
It took but seconds. When Selah turned to Arachne, she was slick and spattered with gore, her hair heavy with blood, her lips glistening with it. Her clothing hung heavily from her body, and blood dripped from her fingers. She stood in the center of a flower of dead vampires, each body a fallen petal. Blood decorated the walls, sprayed the floor, some even on the planetoid bodies above them.
Arachne shook her head. “No.”
Selah began to walk toward her.
“No.”
“What were you planning?” Selah felt curiosity at the last. “What were you trying to do?”
Arachne laughed and shook her head. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
“Oh? Then that’s all right.” Selah took Arachne by the neck, and lifted her off the ground. Arachne didn’t even have time to try and evade her. She shrieked and struggled, lashed out against her, but Selah held her mirror double with ease. She slapped her once, hard, and then walked over to Theo and with her free hand tore each bolt of steel from the wall. When she had freed his hands, he reached down and tore the rest free himself, followed by the tubes. He staggered away from the wall and turned to Selah and Sethe.
“She’s yours,” said Selah. “Do what you wish with her.”
Theo rubbed at his neck. “Put her down.” His voice was hoarse, a raw rasp.
Selah opened her hand, and Arachne fell lightly to her feet. She straightened and faced Theo.
“Sethe,” he said. Selah expected fury from Theo, but saw that it had washed away. Two centuries ago they had loved each other more than life itself. His love for Sethe had sustained Theo through centuries of torture and darkness. Had been such a source of strength that upon meetin
g Selah in Miami, he had been compelled to help her, and in doing so ultimately bring down Sawiskera himself. Now they simply stared at each other, the seconds stretching into minutes. Selah waited.
“Go ahead,” said Arachne at last. “Let’s skip the whining and get it over with. If you’re going to kill me, don’t torture me with words first.”
“Sethe,” said Theo. He was an ebon statue, every muscle clearly delineated by tension. “I’m sorry.”
Scorn. “’Sorry.”
“I know you don’t care. Not now. But this has haunted me since Sawiskera embraced me. My not being able to protect you.”
Arachne laughed, the sound bitter, furious, rich with disdain. “You’re joking.”
Theo shook his head. “I’m sorry.”
“Two centuries, and you’ve not learned a thing. You always were weak. A pathetic fool.” Arachne stepped forward, and Theo gave way before her. “I only married you because I knew I could use you. Wrap you around my finger. Do you know how many others there were? How many men? Real men? Oh yes.” Arachne’s voice dipped with sensual pleasure at the memory. “More than I can count, and believe me, I’ve had centuries to remember.”
Theo’s hands curled into fists. “I don’t believe you. We loved each other. Nothing you can say now will change that.”
Arachne let out a shrill laugh. “Love! You fool. You wretched, pathetic fool. There is no love, there is only delusion. Haven’t you learned? Didn’t Sawiskera teach you? There is nothing to life but disappointment, pain, and despair. Nothing is pure, nothing is good. There is only strength, domination, and for a time, a joy in breaking others. But it all ends. Even for Sawiskera, there was an end.” Arachne placed her hands on her hips and smiled at Theo.
“Sawiskera was not the only one. He had a brother.”