Blood Drawn: A novel of The Demon Accords

by John Conroe

  “Searching for that vehicle and license plate, I find multiple camera shots all around this physical address. He filled the tank yesterday afternoon at Scotty’s Truck Stop in Tiptonville, Tennessee. He is on camera paying a cash toll on I-66 entering Washington, D.C. forty-nine minutes ago.”

  “Washington?” I asked.

  “He’s moved out of here if the bomb is going to slice the country in half,” Tanya said. “Park himself in D.C. and be ready for the next strike.”

  “I have located the vehicle via street cameras. It is parked on the street outside an apartment complex on Rodman Street in Northwest Washington. I have drones en route.”

  “Speaking of en route, let’s go,” Tanya suggested.

  We piled back into the transport and were over D.C. in a bit over fifteen minutes. Below us, the black sports car was parked just as Omega had said.

  “Any idea of where in that building this guy is?” I asked Omega.

  “There are forty-two dwelling units in this building. Thirty-eight register signs of life. None are registered to Simon Steans. There are, however, four units leased by an organization listed as the Tungsten Group, which is turn owned by an offshore holding company titled Questing Acquisitions. That company’s origin is cloudy, but I have tracked the money trail to the National Human Alliance, which, as you all know, is a fairly radical human extremist group.”

  “The outspoken ones who sue Demidova Corp weekly,” Tanya said.

  “Same.”

  “How many of those four are occupied?” I asked.

  “All four. Two contain one individual each, one has three people, and the last holds two.”

  “Can you tell which are male and which are female?” Nika asked.

  “The two individual occupants are both female. The three-person group consist of one male and two females. They are engaged in coitus. The last two are a male and female. They are not talking or using electronic forms of entertainment, nor are they sexually occupied as far as I can tell. I do detect energy waves consistent with the Philadelphia shipyard situation.”

  “That’s the one,” I said. “Caeco reported humans modified with Vorsook tech. Able to recover from complete dismemberment but not fire.”

  “Thermal liquidation by Draco was effective. The skull and spine had been replaced by Vorsook technology that provided great strength, speed, and complete regeneration of most physical damage.”

  “As long as they aren’t those damned Black Frost bastards,” Tanya said. “Although I have some of that Fairie juice to melt them if they are.”

  “Tests on the remains of the Philadelphia suspects indicated the plant-based compound you refer to as Fairie juice to be ineffective against this form of technology.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, sheathing my arms in aura. “I think we can manage.”

  Chapter 28

  Tanya and I entered from the roof, Arkady and Nika covering the ground, front and back.

  The four units were all on the first floor, accessed from a central hallway that bisected the building. All four were on the west side of the building, with the one we were interested in being third from last.

  We moved as stealthy as a vampire and a whatever-the-hell-I-am could, which is pretty stealthy, lining up outside the door. Two Omega orbs were hovering shoulder-high behind us.

  Grim’s control of my senses revealed slow heartbeats and equally slow breathing, but no other sound. My vampire and I exchanged a look, then we pushed through the locked door. The steel barrier had been installed into a steel frame which was, in turn, bolted to the concrete foundation. Grim just pushed until it gave. Posting my body to the floor proved to be stronger than steel bolts and concrete walls. The door bent in the middle until it was so far out of true that the lock bolts just slipped free.

  Inside, two individuals waited, a dark-haired man and a red-haired woman, each pointing an odd handgun similar to what Nika packs, each firing as soon as they saw us.

  Tanya screamed at them at exactly the same time as they fired. The opposing bursts of sonic energy cancelled each other out and then I was on them.

  I sliced both of their weapons free by the simple act of cutting off their arms. Without hesitation, each threw a punch at me with their remaining arms. Grim cut those arms free as well, then cut them each in half. Not a word was said besides Tanya’s initial scream. Having followed me inside the apartment, she shoved the bent door back into place as well as it would fit, just as other doors opened in the hallway, puzzled voices calling out to each other about the scream.

  I moved to the windows and opened one. Nika dove through with a smooth judo roll, followed by the much bigger form of Arkady.

  “Your speed at finding us is surprising and yet ultimately futile,” the man who I recognized as Simon Steans said, his voice even and pain-free even as his armless torso sat in a pile of his own intestines. There was very little blood and neither of them seemed to be bleeding. In fact, I could see the arms were moving on their own, squirming like they were trying to get back to the main bodies.

  “How much time is left?” I asked.

  “Seven minutes and twenty-two seconds. You will not be able to find and defuse the two weapons in that time,” Simons said without any emotion.

  “Where are the bombs?” Tanya asked. Neither one answered.

  “This body, Simon Steans’s, how long have you controlled it?” Tanya asked.

  “Seven months and four days. The previous owner was both correctly employed in the target area as well as philosophically opposed to the current political apparatus. He was easily recruited.”

  “Nika?” I asked.

  “I got a mental image of terrain that I think is in the state park we just left. Nothing on the San Andreas bomb.”

  “Describe to me what you saw in as much detail as possible,” Omega said to her. She moved back near the windows and began to talk to the floating orb that followed her.

  “What are we going to do about the California bomb?” Tanya asked.

  “I have found a match for Nika’s image. Father is on his way. But he cannot be in both places at once, so I have activated the state earthquake early warning system and notified emergency responders.”

  “We are over the Midwestern bomb,” Declan’s voice said from the floating orb. “I think we can mitigate most of it. All I can do for the other one is put as many elementals as possible on watch over the five pressure points that Omega has identified.” He sounded tense, you know, like he was supposed to save the country or something.

  “Let’s figure out a way to secure these two,” I said to Tanya and Arkady.

  My wife frowned in thought but Arkady just grunted, walked over to the two armless torsos, and then blurred forward, vampire fast. His massive hands, fingernails glittering, plunged into their backs. With two powerful yanks, he lifted them from the ground, spattering blood everywhere as he shook the bodies back and forth. His motions reached a frenzied level until first the female’s and then, a moment later, the male’s torso tore free, leaving his hands filled with two bloody spines complete with heads. Silver shone through gore on the too-smooth spinal columns and the faces still moved on the attached heads.

  “Put them in a box or something,” Arkady grumbled. “No bodies to regrow.”

  “The remaining flesh should be incinerated completely, as there seem to be foreign particles within the tissue,” Omega said. “Seventy-two seconds until detonation.”

  Immediately, the orange-sized drone began to play a blue laser-like beam of light over the squirming body parts, the foul smell of burning flesh filling the room. Nika came into the living room from the kitchen, a red plastic cooler in her hands, a roll of duct tape sitting on the white lid. “This should work,” she said.

  The bombs went off before they finished taping the lid shut, right on Omega’s countdown.

  “Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…I have detected dual detonations… and resulting seismic activity. There are two small quakes
in Missouri and Tennessee, both below magnitude one-point-six. There are four quakes in and around the Los Angeles basin, a seven-point-two, a five-point-three, a two-point-one, and a one-point-three.”

  “How much damage, Omega?” Declan’s voice projected from the orb that was still industriously burning alien henchpeople. His voice was tight with worry.

  “The largest two have resulted in significant damage. Multiple structural failures in downtown LA, landslides blocking roads, and currently power is out in widespread areas.”

  “Take us there please,” the witch said in clipped tones.

  Chapter 29

  We packed our cooler of gruesome henchpeople parts into the transport and followed the witch and werewolf to the western coast.

  “So the damage in the Midwest was light?” Tanya asked. Omega had connected with the Oval Office, from where President Polner was now participating in the conversation.

  “Minimal. Father’s efforts exceeded my expectations. The earth elementals he worked with sealed the explosion underground and bled off the fault slippage in multiple directions. Likewise, the San Andreas detonation would likely have been several orders of magnitude greater without the significant efforts of two big elementals. California is intact. Most of the effects were in and around LA. The nuclear detonation did project a plume of radioactive debris over a mile high, but three air elementals have already pushed it back down to the ground before it could spread. Contamination has been largely mitigated and contained. Father and Stacia have arrived in LA and begun to aid in search and recovery efforts.”

  “The early warning system alert potentially saved a lot of lives,” Polner said. “Governor Duran and his team are assessing the situation, but yes, Nevada is not the new West Coast, so that’s a victory.”

  “I am adding Governor Donald Duran to this call,” Omega said.

  “Hello, Mr. President?” a deep male voice said.

  “Don, you’re on with myself, Tatiana Demidova, Chris Gordon, and some of their people as well as some of mine,” President Polner said. “What’s your situation? What do you need?”

  “From what you told me earlier, we’re lucky to be here at all. That said, there was some pretty significant damage to downtown LA. Multiple buildings collapsed, quite a few injuries along with infrastructure damage, which will take some time to assess.”

  “How many injured, Don?” Polner asked.

  “We don’t know yet. At least fifteen dead and we know of thirty-seven casualties currently, but we have to dig out the buildings,” Governor Duran said. “I’m told your, ah, companions are making a big difference, Ms. Demidova, ah and Mr. Gordon.”

  “Declan and Stacia?” Tanya asked.

  “Ah, yeah. I’m on my way there now by helicopter, but I’m being told by my people on the ground that it’s kind of indescribable.”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “She finds them in the rubble and he removes whole buildings to get to them?”

  “That’s almost exactly what I’ve been told,” the governor said. “We’re coming overhead now so I’ll get my first… Holy shit!”

  “Don, you alright?” Polner asked.

  “Yeah, yeah, ah Mr. President. Fine, we’re fine, it’s just, um, well I can’t even describe what I’m seeing.”

  “My transport unit is arriving now, Mr. Governor,” Omega said. Inside the transport, I felt nothing, but the floor and walls went transparent and the streaking blur that was normal just suddenly stopped completely, leaving us hanging over LA. Our trip west had taken mere minutes, far, far faster than the Demidova jet could have transported us. Below, in the fading light of early evening, we could see the disaster zone, at least five big office buildings either noticeably damaged or, in several cases, almost utterly collapsed.

  A line of giant dump trucks was formed up in front of the worst buildings and I could see full trucks pulling away from the scene.

  The transport drone suddenly dropped like a stone and again came to a sudden halt and again, we felt nothing. The door opened and we stepped out onto the street, Nika pointing immediately to our two teammates.

  Stacia was jumping and leaping over the debris of a building, her attention focused on the rubble under her feet. She suddenly turned and looked at Declan, who was standing on the street next to a giant dump truck, watching her. She pointed at her feet. “There’s a woman about eight feet under me. She’s bleeding, so EMTs, stand ready,” she said in a firm voice that carried to everyone nearby. In that moment, I was suddenly struck by how quiet everything was. The watching emergency responders all stood silent and only the sound of the big trucks idling filled the night. There were some sirens in other parts of the city but here, all extra noise had been cut out.

  Stacia skipped off the pile and everything that had been under her feet instantly rose in a steady stream, like watching a transparent vacuum cleaner pull up a pile of dirt in slow motion. The debris all arced overhead and flowed down into the back of the truck that Declan was standing next to. Stacia stood a yard away, watching closely, and she suddenly waved one hand, and he cut off the magical vacuum instantly. She lightly hopped down into the newly excavated pit and then her head popped up and she waved two waiting EMTs over.

  We walked up to Declan while Stacia moved back out into the debris piles. “We can search too,” Tanya said to him.

  “Oh, good. You guys are here,” he said. “I can move lots of stuff, but we need to know where the survivors are first.”

  We didn’t waste time talking about it, just spread out, moving vampire light over the ruined buildings, using all of our senses to find any sign of living people under our feet. Arkady and I worked around the edges of the buildings, where we could move heavy construction materials off those people we found sheltering in doorways. Tanya and Nika joined Stacia up on the deepest mounds, and soon Declan was moving three streams of material at a time, filling dump trucks like it was a race. Police and firefighters moved in on each wounded survivor, stabilizing and then getting them out of the wreckage. Nika’s abilities found people buried so deep that even our senses couldn’t detect them, and Omega’s drones used alien tech to find others that even our telepath wasn’t aware of. In all, we spent something like ten or eleven hours pulling victims from the wreckage. It was only that long because Declan literally stripped the fallen buildings right down into their foundations in that time. A small number of young elementals helped, both in lending him power and in helping us find victims. In all, we pulled sixty-eight victims from the rubble, forty-five living and twenty-three dead. We were all exhausted by the end, but Declan was all in. He moved the last debris from the final building while sitting on the ground, leaning back against a US Postal mailbox, and then he promptly passed out. I carried him to the transport drone, which floated down and collected him, along with Nika and Stacia. Tanya, Arkady, and I stayed on the ground to confer with Governor Duran and his people and help him with the news conference that followed. Omega pulled the transport out of the area, no doubt surrounded by war drones.

  Meanwhile, the press had learned of the detonations, in both locations, and they were pressuring both the White House and Duran, as well as our team, for explanations.

  “God Hammer, is it true that these weapons were set by humans?” a reporter yelled out.

  “It’s just Chris,” I replied. “And yes. There appears to be a group of Vorsook sympathizers working against the rest of us.”

  “How will you track them down? You will track them down, right?” another media personality asked. “Can you track them?” a guy next to her added. “Can you root them out?”

  “Yes, we can and no, I’m not going to tell you how, as they are likely watching right now,” Tanya answered.

  We actually didn’t know for certain if we could, but Stacia felt very strongly that Declan could use the Vorsook spines and skulls in some kind of spell. Based on what he’d done with far less, Tanya and I weren’t willing to second-guess her.

  “Are more attacks
coming?” “Do they have more tactical weapons?” “What do the Russians say?” three separate journalists demanded.

  “This is the beginning of a war, so yes, there will be more attacks,” I said. “We don’t believe there are more missing nuclear weapons,” Governor Duran replied. “Omega has received solid cooperation from our allies in Russia.”

  “What are we doing to counterattack?” a leading news anchor based in LA asked pointedly. “How are we answering this attack?”

  Duran looked our way, throwing the ball into our court. Tanya stepped forward. “We’re working hard on that. Our enemy has prepared for this for decades. Earth has not. The Vorsook are a transgalactic species, which makes counterpunching problematic but not impossible.”

  “You’re saying we can’t even find them,” the anchor, Connor Forsyth, said. It wasn’t a question. “How do we win against an enemy we can’t locate?”

  “Ah, but Connor, they’re attacking us,” my vampire said. “We find them every time they take a shot at us.”

  “Fighting a defensive battle is no way to win,” he countered.

  “Really? Isn’t that exactly what Ali did against Foreman? The classic Rope-a-dope?”

  “You can’t compare galactic warfare with a boxing match,” he replied with a grimace.

  “A fight is a fight,” she said. “The enemy just took a shot, but we absorbed it. Yes, the damage was grave. People lost their lives. But it was nowhere near what the enemy intended. And they made mistakes, leaving us with opportunities to respond.”

  “In addition, Connor,” Governor Duran said, glancing at Tanya as he leaned into his mic. “The US Navy has recently brought down a Vorsook ship and the President will be giving you all details at his upcoming press conference,” he said, glancing dramatically at his wristwatch. “And that’s in less than an hour. Now, if you’ll excuse us, that’s all for now, as we have a lot to wrap up. God bless California, America, and the entire world,” he said, waving goodbye and turning away in one smooth, well-practiced motion. We followed closely.