Her voice brightened nominally with feigned cheer but real hopefulness. “I hope so.”
“Alright, see you soon.” I fiddled with the phone for a moment before it hung up, and sighed. The sigh turned into a full-on yawn, and I figured I needed to get as much sleep as I needed. I looked at the pile of gear I managed to scrape together, and it wasn’t something anyone should scoff at. I thought, despite Becky not being able to bring the vanilla hunters, that I might have a chance. I yawned again, and stretched as high spirits began to grip me in spite of recent travails.
Satisfied, finally, I hung my jacket on the back of a chair and sat leaning over a table with my head resting on my arms, and fell asleep instantly.
*****
I woke up to the sound of the phone vibrating next to my face, and blearily reached over and stifled it after fumbling with it for a moment. I looked over at Lily as the haze cleared from my vision and noted that she was still asleep. Good, I thought. It was time to get a move on, and I really hoped she didn’t wake up. I put on my jacket, which was uncomfortable and almost bulging in front, and then placed the flamethrower in a dusty spare duffle bag and hoisted it over my shoulder along with my longsword. I chanced a stretch and several of my joints popped loudly, and I winced at the noise; Lily remained peacefully asleep.
I walked to the door and sighed; opening it was a surefire way to wake her up, but no matter. She couldn’t follow. I had earlier promised Cassie that I would take care of Lily, but the truth was I never intended to bring her with me on this fight. I appreciated what she had done for me, and she would have been a powerful ally to have, but I couldn’t risk her life on this. Even if whatever plans Thanatos had made involved taking my uncle and I alive, that didn’t grant her the same security. For the last couple of days I had mulled over the thought of leaving Lily behind, even paralyzing her with a crossbow bolt if necessary, in order to keep her out of the fight. I hoped that my current plan would work better.
I pocketed her cellphone which had directions to the sewer entrance, and grabbed the lock with the keys still dangling from it and opened the door.
“Hmm?” Lily opened her eyes and smiled at me.
“Go back to sleep, it’s still day out. Gonna go grab a few things.” I said, smiling back. I was relieved when she gave me a tired nod and closed her eyes again. I slid the door shut as gently as I could and then slipped the padlock into place. I ran out of the building and made my way to the car—seeing that I had already lost valuable minutes of sunlight—and threw my gear into the passenger’s seat of the Charger. The engine roared as I cut it on and then I was off towards the coast, following the map on Lily’s cell.
The drive took longer than expected, and I found myself waiting at stoplights with the windows rolled down. I liked the feeling of the wind blowing through the car; the smell of the city itself seemed like something to savor before I delved into a dank sewer. I hoped that the vampires whose nest I would be infiltrating would be asleep long after I had arrived, but each minute that flicked by on the Charger’s digital clock heralded a minor spike of panic. I shouldn’t have waited so long, and that was a thought that ran through my head, over and over until eventually I pulled up to the parking lot closest to the outlet and lugged my baggage out of the car, discarding the cellphone within and hiding the keys under the bumper. No sense in losing them in a sewer.
The trek itself didn’t take long, just a short walk to an exposed outlet pipe that was big enough to crouch and shuffle through. No waste poured from it, and it was a good several feet above the highest point in the tide. In fact, it was about fifteen or twenty feet from the present waterline, where gentle Pacific waves slapped against the sand, diminished somewhat by the natural shelter of Point Loma. I was honestly surprised since I had envisioned a teeming cesspit, ripe with all kinds of filth and debris on top of the vampire menace, but this seemed to be more of a storm drain than I had previously thought—and the weather had been almost bone dry since I had arrived in San Diego. The approaching storm clouds, accompanied by the distant rumble of thunder, promised to change that.
And then, after a few minutes of shuffling and uncomfortable crouching through the entrance tunnel—which was, of course, liberally decorated with graffiti—I emerged into a widening area with barely enough room to stand. A hundred yards in, and the pipe had turned into a series of old tunnels linking mostly dry cisterns, passable over each by corroded iron grating. I set my bag down for a moment and widened the beam of my flashlight, and listened carefully for any signs of activity in this dank, dark artificial cavern. Satisfied, I sighed in relief and said to nobody in particular, “Well, time to get down to business.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The flamethrower was not padded at all, but somehow my coat protected me from the uncomfortable rough metal that tried to dig into my spine and shoulders. The catacombs smelled strongly of mold with a hint of fishy, stagnant water mingled with the spent butane from the pilot light of my flamethrower burning above the long, improvised bayonet; not at all like the raw fecal stench that I was expecting. There was the faint hint of rotting flesh underneath the more potent odors, and I followed it thinking that where there was meat, there were scavengers. The smell did get stronger as I worked my way in, but the catacombs were like a maze with loops heading around and back into the main line. I dug in my pockets for the grave dust that Hazel had given me, and couldn’t find it. Had I left it at the storage unit? I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t matter; I was struck by another idea from Lily’s story, and now I had a plan that might work.
I called up my power. I hadn’t wanted to call it up too soon, but now I had no other choice. I focused the new strength into my legs and stomped twice. The aging concrete beneath my feet crumbled and cracked under each stomp, but soon I had my response: a rumbling report, a single hard impact from the direction I was facing. I knew my uncle had heard stomping, but that meant that the vampires guarding him probably did also, Thanatos included. Time was likely to be short. Seeing no sense in keeping my power suppressed, I dashed forward as quickly as I dared, occasionally kicking the ground hard to make another concussion which was answered, with varying times of delay, by one or two impacts from further ahead.
Then as I ran, the shit suddenly and violently hit the fan.
A swarm of vampires came out of nowhere—vampires I hadn’t noticed because I had been focusing less on my sight and more on feeling and sound to navigate. I grinned as they rapidly closed in, and let the nearest one have a single shot from the flamethrower. The projectile looked like a flaming Ping-Pong ball and it smacked wetly into the chest of the hideous creature running at me from maybe twenty feet away. The ball itself splashed into ribbon-thin tendrils of fire that wrapped around the vampire, like yards of brilliant golden thread. The vampire shrieked and tore at its own chest trying to clear the burning adhesive from his chest, but the more he clawed at it the more it spread until with a sudden rush the vampire’s very skin caught flame and burned brilliantly like a red magnesium flare.
The vampire shrieked and thrashed into the two vampires nearest him, the tendrils of burning matter clinging to them as well as they panicked and clawed at their own skin and ultimately met the same fate. In less than fifteen seconds, three vampires lay bubbling and writhing as their bodies turned to ash with their compatriots looking on in horror. With one squeeze of the trigger I had achieved the desired effect: intimidation. But this flamethrower seemed to be a double-edged sword, the substance would likely cling to me just as it had them, and was not a useful close range weapon. The vampire that had stealthily flanked me apparently thought the same, and leaped at me with a berserk howl echoing from its open fang-filled mouth.
I swung my flamethrower towards him but took my finger off the trigger. The vampire noticed this as he sailed through the air and started to grin before the bayonet pierced through his upper chest and the point erupted out the back of his lower neck. He gagged and his body sagged limply while I held him alof
t, spitted on the end of my weapon. I drew my Bowie while straining to hold the vampire aloft with one arm, power coursing through my biceps and back, and then swung at the vampire’s exposed neck. The first chop cleaved to the bone, and the second sent the head tumbling as both it and the body began disintegrating into ash.
The rest of the vampires that had attacked me had retreated as I handled the vampire that had ambushed me, and I augmented my vision just to be sure. I saw the faint auras of vampires as they ran through the blackened tunnels, and I was surprised by how numerous they really were. At a glance I determined there to be at least thirty vampires running away from me, maybe more. It made me wonder why they hadn’t simply tried to overwhelm me, but I had to guess that I owed that to Thanatos likely wanting to take me alive. The vampires I had torched and the flamethrower fuel on them had burned themselves out in half a minute and I rushed recklessly down the tunnel towards my uncle and the sound of skittering claws on concrete, my speed amplified by the lineage power surging through my body. It’s no wonder then that I ran directly into the next trap in the next cistern.
The floor was covered with a thin film of water for the last several stretches of tunnel and cisterns as I ran, so I was caught completely by surprise and fell straight to the bottom of a water-filled pit dug in the center of the area. The flashlight I had was waterproof, but the pilot light on my flamethrower let out a steady stream of tiny butane bubbles as I sank to the roughly twelve foot deep bottom. I kicked my feet off the muddy floor and rose rapidly to the surface of the water, taking in a deep breath and clinging to the side to haul myself up. As I climbed I noticed that the thirty vampires that had previously been fleeing were filing back into this cistern, each wearing a sadistic, toothy grin. I tried the automatic starter for my flamethrower, but the spark-producing element was too wet to function. Disappointed and beginning to feel the beginnings of panic, I shrugged off the flamethrower and drew the Desert Eagle and my stake. This was not, I thought, the way to begin a one-man siege on a nest of angry vampires.
The hand cannon I fired made my ears ring unbearably when I fired the first shot into the neck of the nearest vampire. His head flew free—the bullet had completely obliterated the bones in his neck and shredded the surrounding flesh—and landed at his own feet, looking up as his own body fell upon his face. The smiles faded from every vampire face instantly as the corpse began to burn, and as one they surged at me. I felt a light thud on my chest and looked down to see a chunk of concrete fall to my feet.
“Really?” I asked, as if unimpressed. In reality that piece of cement probably would have shattered a rib or two if my jacket hadn’t been recently ensorcelled. I called my power up into my eyes and arms, using my enhanced perception to try and place pinpoint shots on the vampires, but they had been rocked out of their overconfident stupor and moved rapidly. My next three shots flew wide, but the last two blew apart the chest of a female vampire as she leapt at me from the ceiling, her body crumbling completely as she fell at my feet. I didn’t have enough time to reload and so holstered my gun as an enormous vampire with the body of a professional football player—albeit corrupted by the Thanatic transition—scrambled up next to me and pulled back his fist, determination burning in his yellow-on-black eyes.
In a flash I called up the full force of my power to my first limit—the natural level that I could comfortably use my power without suffering ill effects—through my whole body and dodged the fist that cleaved the air an inch from my face. I reached up and grabbed his arm before he could pull it back, and then plunged the stake in my left hand into his chest three times in rapid succession. The vampire let out a roar which ended in a strangled gasp as he fell back and thrashed while his body burned away. Three vampires more lithe in build rushed at me next, and with my vision fully augmented I saw that all the vampires around me were relatively weak, but the next wave I fought would be around fifteen in number and they would surely overwhelm me. Inspiration from Hollywood struck me then, and I fell onto back under the onslaught of the three who had charged me.
They clawed at my chest and bit at my arms, but my jacket turned their attacks into light almost pleasant caresses as I dispatched the one on my left with a single thrust through the chest, and I grabbed the one on the right around the head with my other arm and plunged the stake down through his skull, rendering him into dust. The female vampire who had taken the middle and still lay on top of me snarled as she realized my jacket was impenetrable and instead sank her fangs into the flesh that was covered only by my shirt because I hadn’t closed my jacket when holstering my handgun. It was fortunate, perhaps, because this gave me the opportunity while she worried at my chest to enact my plan for crowd control. I reached under her, feeling her hard yet somehow spongy flesh pressed against my hand, and pulled out a grenade.
In her frenzy she hadn’t noticed, and the pain in my chest was minor enough to suggest that she hadn’t cut deep into the muscle, but still I needed to hurry. Just because the pain was minor compared to what I had felt lately didn’t mean that she wasn’t chowing down hard on my pectoral muscle. I grabbed her by the hair and wrenched back, but the hair pulled free as it were merely glued on, leaving a dangling trail of slime behind as a layer of scalp peeled away and she remained oblivious in her chewing. I wrapped the fingers of my right hand around her throat and heaved upwards from that awkward position. She clawed at me furiously, shrieking with feral abandon as she struggled to get back to the blood on my chest—the wound was already healing rapidly.
I wrapped my legs around her waist and rolled over on top of her and in one smooth motion I drew my Bowie knife and slashed open her stomach and then sheathed it. She shrieked in pain and clawed frantically, scoring only on the leather of my jacket when I pulled the pin of the grenade with my teeth and plunged the vaguely pineapple-shaped explosive into her stomach. Her eyes widened in terror as she realized what I’d done, but I grabbed her arms and rolled back over, keeping her on top of me, and then drew my legs up and kicked her as hard as I could in the chest. She flew into the crowd of vampires who now were mere feet away—they had been taking their time as I struggled with the female who had been apparently winning her fight with me. Five of the vampires caught her and struggled under the force of the impact as the others stopped in their tracks. Her shrieks rose in pitch until my eardrums felt like they’d rupture from the keening note she struck as I rolled over and attempted to cover my face with my jacket.
I was reminded in the instant before the grenade detonated of something my old gunnery sergeant had told me when I was just a private fresh out of basic. “The thing about grenades that a lot of people don’t understand is that it’s not really the explosion that gets you. Oh, sure, the explosion sucks, but with those old pineapple grenades it’s the fragments that get you. No little tiny pieces from these modern frags, but big chunks of metal spraying in every direction, each one just as bad as a bullet. Lyin’ flat ain’t gonna save you either, especially indoors. Yep, those old Mark Two relics were responsible for more friendly fire incidents than errant rounds and airstrikes. If one lands next to you, your only hope is to get behind some damned cover.” I winced inwardly; I was fresh out of cover.
The grenade detonated violently, tearing through the bodies of the vampires closest to the explosion. Gore transmuted to ash as it flew through the air and even the vampires not terribly close to the explosion caught enough fragments to make them either lose limbs or be otherwise severely injured. I caught a surprise as well when a single fragment found its way under my jacket and bounced up and through my right cheek where it rebounded off my left molars. The fragment rolled hotly in my mouth for an instant before I spat it out, clapping my left hand to my face. The pain was intense beyond what I would have imagined, like getting punched in the jaw by a red-hot pickaxe, and for a few moments after I literally saw stars as tears clouded my vision. Those vampires who had been standing when the grenade went off were not as lucky.
A dozen vampires wri
thed in pain as those able to flee did so. The healing ability of the Thanatic breed was no match for semi-modern explosives, and many of those writhing simply sighed and turned to ash as I began dispatching others with discrete swings of my sword. When I was done cleaning up and my face was healed I released my power so I wouldn’t become overtired too soon. I still held enough to augment my vision and strides, a relatively little amount compared to what I had just used. I picked up my sodden flamethrower and struck the sparker over and over until finally the butane torch flickered to life. My clothes were even more sodden, but it couldn’t be helped. I shouldered the flamethrower again and proceeded deeper into sewer by the illumination of my flashlight which now had a cracked lens.
The vampires had left several more rudimentary traps in my way, but I proceeded cautiously and avoided them all—there was even an old-school bear trap in one particularly narrow passage. Suddenly, at the end of one particularly long tunnel I found myself standing in a substantially older part of the sewers; the true catacombs. The ancient walls were covered with black mold and water stains, each stone seemed fragile enough to break apart at the lightest touch. I no longer needed my augmented sight or flashlight to navigate now, for wall sconces lit the area fairly well, and the path had become fairly linear. I kept both up anyway though; I’d seen enough movies to know that a sudden draft would throw me into absolute darkness if I grew careless. In addition, though, the smell of rotting meat grew substantially more potent as I entered into the stonework halls, making my path disgustingly obvious.
I followed my nose, as it were, and cautiously made my way deeper into the sanctum still wary of traps. Vampires retreated just out of natural sight, though their auras shown like distant red miasma. They made no pretense at traps now, and almost beckoned me forward. My heart pounded in my chest because I knew exactly what they were leading me to. I was certain Thanatos would be eager to have his own go at me. Eventually I came to a large wooden door, the ancient timber somehow holding its shape in the cavern—the vampires I had been following had completely disappeared, leaving only stench in their wake. I placed one hand against the door and pushed hard, and the door slowly swung inward into a room completely filled with oppressive darkness that neither my sight nor flashlight could penetrate. I stepped in and smiled wickedly.
The Chronicles of a Vampire Hunter (Book 1): Red Ashes Page 25