Graveyard Shift

by Michael F. Haspil

  “A chance to go down swinging at least,” Alex said. “Look, I’m not going to BS you about our chances of walking out of there. It’s not about that anymore. It’s about stopping them.”

  “What is to stop them from trying it somewhere else?” Roeland asked.

  “Nothing,” Alex said. “But we’ve left messages for friends of ours who watch. With any luck, they’ll be more vigilant than we’ve been. Now that we know what we’re looking for.”

  “The random blood-frenzy attacks have only happened in this city,” Marcus said. “This is probably a trial run. It explains a great deal. It definitely accounts for Lugal Zagesi exposing himself prematurely. At this early stage, he needed to oversee the details of the plan personally. We caught him at his wrap party, remember?”

  Rhuna laughed, surprising everyone. “I’m in.”

  “What?” John yelled.

  “Bloody hell!” Arthur threw up his hands.

  “Why, Rhuna?” John asked.

  “You smell that coming off them?” Rhuna said. “It’s explosive residue. They’re not lying. They set off the bomb at that club tonight. Any cause that makes an Ancient like Marcus abandon his lifestyle and turn terrorist is good enough for me.”

  Alex was shocked. “You can smell that?”

  “Of course.”

  “She’s a thrope, Alex,” Marcus said matter-of-factly, as if Alex should have known from the start. That did explain a lot, except that most therianthropes didn’t keep any of their animalistic abilities when in human form.

  “She hides it well. I was not able to pick up her scent until very recently,” Marcus said. “Tell me, how are you able to do that?”

  Alex backed away from her.

  “Oh, you wouldn’t want all the unpleasant details. I assure you, changing one’s scent is a simple matter to one who knows how.”

  “How close are you to the change? Are you under control?” Alex asked. He was glad she was still in cuffs. If she changed, it might buy him a few seconds.

  “I am under full control. You don’t have to worry about that.”

  “Rhuna is unique, she’s our ace.” John spoke proudly, as if she was his, somehow. “That scent trick of hers, that’s a fantastic distraction.”

  Alex guessed what she was. She was one of the Pack. Well, the enemy of my enemy …

  “You’re Luperci?” Alex asked.

  Rhuna looked almost insulted. “Please.” She shivered in mock disgust at the thought; then she smiled. “You have bigger problems to worry about than me. Like maybe your partner controlling his blood lust.”

  Marcus’s eyes had taken on that bloodshot stare, and he looked as if he were going to blood-frenzy again. His fangs were extended and he slurred a little when he spoke. “Whatever you’re doing. Stop it.”

  It looked as if that took him tremendous effort. He pried his gaze away from her and got out of the truck. Rhuna laughed and smiled a little too widely.

  She was still handcuffed and deliberately baiting Marcus? She had to be on the wrong side of sane. That, or confident she could take on an Ancient with her hands literally tied behind her back. Alex favored the former.

  “It would be a lot easier to plan if we were free,” Roeland added.

  Alex shrugged. At this point, it hardly mattered. If he and Marcus couldn’t handle these four, they’d have no business trying to storm Haley House anyway.

  Alex fetched a set of cuff keys and released everyone. He did Rhuna last. She smiled that weird smile at him the whole time. The one that said he was probably on borrowed time if she had her way. He had a feeling she was enjoying making him uncomfortable.

  “You two can be off anytime you want,” he told John and Arthur. “We’ve got plans to make.”

  John shrugged. “Rhuna’s not going anywhere without me. I guess I’m in.”

  “Damn it all.” Arthur was in a fix.

  “We could use your help, Arthur, but there are no hard feelings,” Roeland said.

  For a moment, Alex thought he was going to leave.

  “I was never one to stand up to peer pressure,” he said at last.

  “Great. You know, your Light Brigade comment isn’t too far off. Except hopefully we do more ‘doing’ than ‘dying,’” Alex said.

  “Agreed.”

  “Here are our assets. We have this lovely truck and all its amazing toys, an Ancient who has had better days, a therianthrope with exceptional control over her body, and three of the most notorious vampire killers in recent reckoning, and just maybe, the element of surprise. Not the best, but certainly not the worst possible scenario.”

  “Four,” Arthur said.

  “Hmmm?”

  “Four of the most notorious vampire killers in recent reckoning. You’ve gone and left yourself out.”

  Alex smiled. The irony was not lost on him. Even though they didn’t know who he really was, he’d killed more vampires than the “Nocturn Killer” the second he set off the Rubicon device. And that didn’t even take into account his UMBRA days.

  “So I did.”

  40

  Friday, August 13, 3:46 A.M.

  The hunter truck was parked about two hundred yards from the Haley estate. As far as placement went, it was far from optimal. Inside, Alex, John, Arthur, and Roeland sat waiting for the signal.

  To complicate matters, they’d had to forgo the use of radios. With this many vampires in the Haley compound, Alex didn’t want to chance one of them hearing a squawk. He’d had a bad experience with that before. A burst of static at an inopportune time was such an artificial sound that even an inattentive vampire would be able to pick it out, and home in on it.

  Menkaure had wanted to let his ka slip free, but he was simply too weak. The lack of direct sunlight through the day, followed by what was shaping up to be one of the longest nights of his life, was beginning to tell. He was running on fumes.

  He stared at the screen showing the feed from the infrared camera on the truck’s roof. Given their angle, the IR was better than night vision. They could only see one corner of the main house, the entrance gate, and the gatehouse. He hoped it would be enough. Occasionally they could see one of the guards, and as far as he could tell, none of them were human. They only showed up on the infrared because of the negative space they made when they crossed in front of the walls or windows.

  Marcus was out there somewhere. He was circling around so that he could hit the house from the rear. It would take him ten to fifteen minutes to get into position. He wouldn’t be able to move fast and maintain stealth. But Marcus was an Ancient, and Alex knew from ops in UMBRA that he would get there, true to his word. He would wait to strike until the frontal assault was well under way.

  The rest of them would have to go in through the front door. Which sucked as far as a plan went, but the hunter truck would be providing ultraviolet spotlights and spewing canisters of garlic-laced gas, and Alex hoped that would create enough surprise and chaos for them to make it to the house.

  Their main target was a side building where the winery and distillery had been. That was undoubtedly where any contaminated blood product would be. Once they were inside, it would take more than a few UV flash-bangs to subdue any defenders.

  They had a handful of incendiary flares normally used to set up perimeters or create fire barriers. As a general rule, thropes didn’t care too much for fire. Alex didn’t either, for that matter, but he didn’t let on about that. The idea was that you could somehow corral a thrope by starting and controlling fires with these flares. Alex had never heard of it actually working against thropes. That didn’t matter now. Those flares started fires. That’s exactly what they needed them to do.

  As far as the entrance went, there was no telling what kind of security they had. Alex doubted it was just a gate. There were probably tire traps at the very least. He knew there would be if he had set up the security. He wanted someone in the gatehouse before they came through with the truck. Rhuna volunteered.

  She as
sured him she could make it to the front gate and get it opened. The others testified to her skills. She boasted that only she or Marcus could have made it anyway. She was probably right.

  The upside was that she did show up on the infrared camera and they could monitor her progress or come to her aid if needed.

  “They’ll smell you coming,” Alex had warned.

  She laughed lightly and retorted, “I’m counting on it.”

  When he handed her a gun, she handed it back with a look of disgust on her face. After Alex pressed her, she chose to take only a machete.

  The plan, in a nutshell, was simple. Get in, sow as much death and destruction as they could, fire the building, get back to the damn truck, and hopefully ride off into infamy having accomplished the impossible.

  Easy-peasy.

  It had been set into motion ten minutes ago when Marcus headed out. Five minutes later, Rhuna departed. Now the four of them crowded around the screen waiting to see her form enter the frame.

  In the meantime, Alex showed the group how to use the ultraviolet-flash vests, in case they were caught. They armed themselves with shotguns, all loaded with slugs.

  Roeland laid out several MP5s and some magazines just in case. Alex felt that the shotgun was the weapon of choice. The shotgun’s slugs were plated with silver, but not enough to be more than a nuisance to these vampires. Each of them carried a machete. There weren’t enough stake guns or stakes to go around.

  The stake guns were really just modified paintball markers that fired the stakes with compressed air. They were simple. Shove a stake down the barrel like an old-school muzzle-loader, aim, and pull the trigger. If everything worked, you’d get a silver-plated stake flying downrange at more than six hundred feet per second. They were quiet, effective, easy to use, and faster to reload than a crossbow. Trouble was, with the air tanks they were using, they’d get maybe four shots. was if the tanks were at optimum. With these gaugeless tanks, Alex couldn’t say when someone had last charged them.

  Arthur selected one of the stake guns, and John had the other. Roeland took some extra stakes to deliver by hand. Alex doubted he’d get to use those, but he was the real “Abraham,” after all.

  Alex chose to stick to the simple machete. They had their way of killing vampires and he had his. Unfortunately for him, experience had taught him that tangling with vampires and killing them reliably meant getting closer to them than you’d ever want to.

  “There she is.” Roeland pointed at the bottom corner of the screen.

  They could all see Rhuna’s silhouette, glowing fluorescent white on the IR as she approached the front wall leading to the gatehouse.

  “She’s just going to walk up there? What the hell? I could have done that.” John chuckled in disbelief.

  They saw a form jump down from the wall, a black silhouette in front of the slightly brighter background. A vampire. There was nothing they could do for her.

  The vampire pounced, and for a moment it looked as if Rhuna were grappling with an invisible lover. Black splashes mottled her fluorescent silhouette, and she crouched for a moment, then ran up the wall. In an eyeblink, she was up and over.

  “Better get ready to move,” Roeland warned.

  Alex nodded silently. He still wasn’t sure exactly what he’d seen. Now wasn’t the time for questions. He slid into the driver’s seat and wedged the shotgun between the passenger seat and the center console where he could easily get at it. He put on a pair of night-vision goggles. He turned on the engine and put the truck into drive.

  “Go. Go,” Roeland said.

  Alex pulled the truck onto the road and started driving. Seconds later, he could see the front gate opening.

  “Okay. Here we go. Holler if you see anything.”

  Arthur quoted Tennyson from the back. “‘Boldly they rode and well, Into the jaws of Death, Into the mouth of Hell…’”

  * * *

  Marcus crept along the back of the property. In front of him, a sentry shuffled impatiently. Youngblood. Marcus killed the young vampire as easily as he had killed the eight others. Still, he had woefully underestimated the Lightbearers’ resources. They had to have marshaled every soldier at their disposal. And this had to be recent. Constance hadn’t mentioned anything about this.

  Menkaure must have rattled Zagesi terribly. But now it was going to work against them. Instead of facing an Ancient and a dozen or so oldblood bodyguards, which would have been bad enough, they were attacking a hardened compound of more than a score of oldbloods, and easily an equal number of youngbloods and humans.

  Marcus had considered going back and warning Menkaure and the others. He thought better of it. That would have accomplished nothing. They would have insisted on bringing reinforcements, which would have only meant more deaths. Already, Roeland’s people weren’t going to make it out. Marcus weighed his own odds and gave himself less than a fifty percent chance. If he killed Zagesi, it would be worth it. But then, he had Menkaure on his side, and the Lightbearers would not know, could not know, what they were up against. He added twenty percent to their odds of success.

  Marcus approached the house from beneath a second-story window and leapt, powerful vampiric fingers finding purchase where there was none for a normal human. A moment’s scant effort pried the window open, the sound of it much too loud for his taste, and like a breath of wind, he was inside.

  His feet slid along the hardwood floor as he glided forward. The wood chirped quietly as he moved his weight along it. It wasn’t a sound anyone but a vampire would hear. For an instant, he wondered if Zagesi had been so paranoid as to have installed a nightingale floor. Marcus sprung lightly upward and clung to the ceiling just in case. He made his way to the doorway and climbed over the lip into the hallway.

  He crawled along the ceiling toward the sound of muted voices he could not recognize. He needed to get closer.

  He avoided a light sconce and slid toward the open doorway. Lelith murmured something. Someone else. A woman. It couldn’t be. But it was. Constance’s measured tones met his ears. This would complicate things.

  “Come down from there. You look silly.”

  Marcus froze. He spun and Lugal Zagesi stood at the other end of the hallway smiling at him.

  At the sound of Zagesi’s voice, Lelith and Constance stepped out of the room. Marcus was scarcely aware of them. His focus was on Zagesi and how he’d managed to get behind him.

  “Go back, my sweets,” Zagesi said, addressing the women. Then his attention returned to Marcus. “Do get down. It is undignified for those of our station.”

  Marcus dropped from the ceiling, instincts at odds with each other. The vampire part of him wanted to flee even though his rational mind told him he wouldn’t get far. Even now, his ears confirmed half a dozen men converging on his position. The Roman part, the knight commander of the Eternal Watch part, wanted to tear out Zagesi’s throat and be done with it. He doubted he’d be fast enough.

  Zagesi slipped past with vampiric speed and stood at the room’s threshold. He held one arm outward, adopted a mock Hungarian accent, and invited Marcus in: “Enter freely, and of your own free will.”

  Keeping his eyes on Zagesi, Marcus squeezed past him, and entered a plush library with floor-to-ceiling cherrywood shelves populated with priceless volumes. On a tight reading couch no bigger than a love seat, Constance fussed over a bandage that covered half of Lelith’s face. Lelith’s arm was charred and she looked deathly pale, even for a vampire.

  Zagesi entered behind him and walked past as if Marcus offered no threat at all. Zagesi moved to a decanter and poured several goblets of blood. He brought two of the chalices to the seated women. Constance drained hers in one go, sat back, and let her legs drape lewdly over Lelith’s thighs. She closed her eyes, and her skin flushed red as the blood flooded her system.

  “I believe you know the lieutenant. I’m afraid women are always drawn to power. You have to admit, Marcus, yours has been waning.”

  “A
jab at my virility? I expected more from you, Zagesi. I am disappointed in Constance, but well, there’s no accounting for taste.”

  Constance shot him a look that could have set the books in the room alight.

  “You were only recently acquainted with Lelith. You’ll have to forgive her, she isn’t feeling well. That partner of yours is really quite singular. He gave us such a fright,” Zagesi said.

  “Did he?” Marcus said.

  “Oh yes. Such excitement as I haven’t felt in centuries. I was nearly afraid.”

  “No,” Marcus said in mock disbelief.

  Zagesi crossed the room and retrieved a goblet for himself. “Did you know he could speak Akkadian? Marvelous thing. Hadn’t heard it in millennia and then there it was. Can you believe I didn’t even understand it at first?”

  What had Menkaure done? Had he revealed himself to Zagesi? No. Even at his most bullheaded, Menkaure was not that reckless.

  “Well, he is quite the scholar,” Marcus said.

  “And yet he is dying. A pity to lose a mind such as his. Tell me, why have you not turned him?”

  Marcus didn’t answer. Let Zagesi form his own theory, damn him. Instead, he focused his attention on the goblet in Zagesi’s hand.

  Zagesi noticed.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Marcus. I’m being rude. I didn’t think to offer you any since you reacted so … poorly to the last batch.”

  Lelith and Constance laughed.

  Outside the room, men stood at the ready. There were at least six.

  “Tell me, how was that girl? Was that the first time you’d really taken one? After millennia on the prowl? Did your heart flutter at her death rattle?”

  Despite himself, Marcus thought back to that poor girl. He’d been so deeply in the throes of the blood frenzy, he didn’t remember any of it.

  “Oh. You’re thinking on it now. You’re worried that maybe you’ve gotten a taste for it, like your former lover Constance here. A killer, through and through. There’s no going back,” Zagesi said.

  “No. I am not like you. Not like her. I do not feed on the unwilling.”