Graveyard Shift

by Michael F. Haspil

  Zagesi laughed. He pounded his fist on the table and threatened to overturn the decanter. His laugh climbed in register until it was inaudible, but still his body shook with it. Finally, he was able to squeeze words out between fits of laughter.

  “Romans. You’re so legalistic. Quibbling. About degrees of rape.” He forced himself to regain his composure. “Really, Marcus. You’re too much. I’d forgotten.”

  Zagesi tilted the goblet back to drain its contents, and time froze. Marcus leapt across the room.

  The goblet spun out of Zagesi’s hand as Marcus snatched at his throat and smashed him into the splintering wooden shelves.

  Zagesi, caught by surprise, tried to scramble back, his feet springing into the disintegrating shelves and pushing toward the opposite wall. His hands clawed into Marcus’s.

  Marcus nearly lost his grip when he smashed into the wall. His head snapped back and he saw flashes of red. And then Zagesi was prying his fingers from his throat. How had he gotten so strong?

  The blood. The blood was the life.

  Men charged into the room.

  “Alive! I need him alive!” Zagesi rasped.

  Marcus released him, spun away, smashed into one of the men and caught him unawares. He struck out with full force and the vampire crumpled, his chest a bloody ruin.

  They hit him with something and his legs went into spasms.

  A Taser, or a cattle prod, something like that.

  Constance was screaming.

  There were hands all over him. He couldn’t move. Outside, he heard automatic weapons fire. Menkaure was coming.

  Then they stuck something into him. His blood began to boil.

  Academically, strangely disconnected from the situation, his mind identified the substance as silver.

  Then his eyes felt as if they were burning in his skull.

  41

  Alex turned onto the main drive leading up to the gate, then floored it. Rhuna would catch up or escape as she saw fit. After seeing how she handled herself, he hoped she would catch up.

  Within seconds, they were well inside the compound. Up ahead and to the left, the massive Haley House mansion loomed, its outer lights bright white-green in the night vision. He made the slight turn around the house and saw the outbuilding that was their target. One side door was open and there was a figure nearby doing something. Alex couldn’t make it out.

  Roeland called from the back. “There are heat signatures in the winery!”

  Humans. Of course. There was no way they’d let vampires work on that meth blood. If there was some kind of accident, they’d have a blood frenzy on their hands. Good. Humans were easier to kill than vampires.

  “I’m gonna pull up past the building,” Alex shouted. “Get ready!”

  He turned the truck. He fought the wheel and the mass of the vehicle and forced it over. Out of nowhere, he saw two figures standing right in front of him with weapons slung over their shoulders. They dived out of the way, faster than he would have thought possible.

  His hand smashed at switches over his head. He heard the muffled pops of gas canisters as they deployed. He mentally chided himself for a brief second. If he’d foreseen the presence of humans, these could have been tear gas. Instead, it was just concentrated garlic. Too late. The second switch turned on the four banks of UV lights placed around the top of the truck. He slammed on the brakes.

  “Go! Go! Go!”

  Alex grabbed the shotgun, opened the driver’s door, and was out into the night. One of the figures he’d almost hit was getting to his feet. Alex fired a slug into him. That knocked the figure back to the ground. Alex couldn’t tell if it was human or vampire. The UV lights were playing hell with the night vision. He reached up to yank off the goggles. He had them halfway off and heard something behind him. He spun, but was momentarily blind, as his vision and cognizance switched from the night-vision view to the normal night strangely lit by UV.

  He saw the source of the noise a second too late. He brought up the shotgun but his attacker swatted it out of his hands. Then he was fending off a vampire guard with his hands. He fell back on his old training. He grabbed the vampire, and briefly the two were locked in a struggle of pure strength. Alex surged and knocked the vampire back. He could see the look of shock on the creature’s face. But then Alex had his machete out and swinging.

  The weapon made a satisfying ching sound as it sliced through flesh and vertebrae. By the time the vampire’s head hit the ground, Alex had already rounded on his companion. That vampire was still on the ground, writhing in pain from the shotgun slug that had blown out half its guts. Alex brought down the machete like a cleaver.

  “Alex!” Roeland’s voice called.

  He snapped his gaze up and Roeland threw him one of the MP5s. Alex sprinted past Roeland and the others toward the side door.

  “Stack on me!” he yelled as he neared the door. The man standing next to it had a dumb look on his face and a cigarette in his hand. Alex threw his machete. It had scarcely left his hand before he was reaching for one of the UV flash-bangs. The machete hit home with a meaty chunk before the man fell backward.

  Someone tapped his arm twice. It had to be Roeland, using a signal for “ready” that was standard with entry teams almost everywhere. Using his pinky, Alex pulled the pin on the flash-bang and tossed it underhand into the building. He readjusted his grip on the MP5 in the seconds he waited for the grenade to go off.

  He heard the loud bang and saw the flash momentarily light up the night through the door’s opening. Then he was moving. Decades of experience took over. He moved to the left and double-tapped two men as he moved toward the corner. He swept the weapon to his right, saw more targets, and fired.

  They were fish in a barrel. Most of them were doubled over, holding their eyes or standing dazed and disoriented. Alex reached the corner of the room and turned to face the inside of the building.

  He saw that Roeland and the others had made short work of their targets.

  “Clear left!”

  Roeland called back, “Clear right!”

  Holy shit. This might actually work.

  “Light ’em up.”

  He and Roeland moved back into position to cover the door.

  Arthur and John broke open some of the flares.

  “It’s not catching!”

  Alex looked around. The floor was concrete, the building was steel, and the wine vats were steel. It looked like their old pal Murphy had tagged along for the ride.

  “Shit!”

  There were a dozen or so old wooden pallets stacked in the corners.

  “Try those.”

  John moved across the room and applied the flare to the bottom pallet. After a moment, it started to smoke.

  There was automatic weapons fire outside.

  Alex looked at the vats. He hoped they were thin enough that the MP5s would penetrate. He fired a quick burst into the nearest vat near the bottom. Instantly, blood started pouring out through the holes.

  Roeland saw what he was doing and started hitting the vats on his side.

  “It’s working here.” John stood up. Behind him the pallets were quickly roaring into a respectable fire. Then John was thrown back against them as automatic fire rippled through his body.

  Alex spun toward the main door. There was a vampire with a machine gun. Alex fired off several shots as he moved to cover. He saw the vampire fall, but there were lots more behind him.

  “Cover!” He fired another round, but then the weapon was out of ammunition. His hand moved instinctively for another magazine, and his heart leapt into his mouth when he realized there wasn’t one. He tossed the MP5 aside and drew his pistol.

  He swore the vampire was smiling as it raised its weapon. Then it fell backward as well, its head a bloody ruin.

  Alex turned to see his savior. Roeland was facing his way and changing magazines. A vampire came in through the side door. Roeland didn’t see it.

  Alex shouted a warning.

&n
bsp; Roeland tried to jump backward, but the vampire swatted him hard and he sailed across the room. Alex ran back toward him, sidearm in hand. He took aim and was ready to let fly at the vampire near the side door when a stake materialized in the vampire’s chest.

  He snapped his gaze right. Arthur dropped another into the stake gun. Then Alex was at Roeland’s side. Roeland wasn’t unconscious, but he was coughing up blood. That strike had most likely broken a rib or two. Probably punctured a lung.

  Alex grabbed the machete off Roeland’s thigh.

  “You ready to move?” he asked, and then shouted, “Get to the truck!”

  They went out the side door but he could see a lot of vampires running up to their position. Where the hell were they all coming from?

  It was dark now. The vampires had shot out the UV lights on the truck.

  He heard bullets snap past them, but he moved off to the side away from the doorway and closer to the truck. Arthur wasn’t so lucky. Rounds hit him as he came out of the door. Arthur cried out and fell.

  The garlic gas was providing some cover, but not enough. Alex reached the truck and left Roeland. He turned back to Arthur just in time to see him trying to get to his feet and firing another stake out of the gun. It struck an oncoming vampire low, in the stomach. The creature made a moaning, gurgling sound and went down clutching the silver spike lodged in his belly.

  “Come on!” Alex ran back toward Arthur. He had almost made it when a string of automatic weapons fire crashed into Arthur and he went down for good.

  Alex whirled in the direction of the fire and saw six more vampires moving up. Their weapons rose tactically. He heard the shotgun blast from Roeland and one of them went down, but then Alex’s left leg buckled out from under him and something hit him in the left side of his chest. He spun and went down.

  He lost the grip on his pistol and tried to scramble back to his feet.

  Everything sounded like it was underwater. Through the din, he heard Lelith shouting, “No! The master wants them alive!”

  “Even better,” Alex muttered to himself. He managed to get to his feet.

  One of the vampires appeared about two feet from him. Alex swung blindly with the machete and felt it hit something. Then it was just an insane melee.

  He swung at anything he could. Hands and faces. He felt the impact from rifle butts and didn’t know how long he could keep it up.

  They were off him. Alex couldn’t figure out why. Then he saw her.

  Rhuna was a symphony of death. She jumped from one vampire to another, rending flesh with her bare hands from faces and necks and anywhere else exposed. The look on her face, the gore, and her white-blond hair made her seem like some nightmare demon come to life.

  Alex charged in to help her. Before he could reach her, he saw a vampire smash into the back of her head with the butt of his machine gun and she went down. The vampire just kept pounding on her.

  Then they were back on Alex. He swung madly. Desperately. Limbs growing stiff as he used up his energy. The machete left his grasp and he shouted in frustration as vampires swarmed him. He pulled the rip cord on the UV vest, heard the camera-flash whine as the capacitors charged and the LEDs activated. It bought him a second. He used his remaining strength to throw them from him. Their bodies sailed through the air. But it wasn’t enough. The night had been too long and even he had his limits. They dragged him downward and something hard smashed into his head.

  42

  5:10 A.M.

  Rhuna felt someone fixing a cold collar into place around her neck. She instinctively growled and tried to strike out, but they’d bound her hands and arms together behind her back at the wrists and elbows. She opened her eyes and stared balefully at the vampire affixing the collar. She kicked out feebly with her legs, but to no avail. They offered only a limited range of motion. They’d strapped her into some kind of bondage harness where she was bent over at the waist; her wrists pulled her arms straight up behind her pointed at the ceiling. She could only imagine what they had planned. She braced herself for the worst.

  “Kitten’s awake,” the vampire said. Then he kicked her in the stomach. She gasped as he knocked the wind out of her. Tied up as she was, she could do little else.

  She heard sounds of a struggle.

  “Hold him. Damn it, hold him!”

  She looked up. Blood ran freely down one of Marcus’s cheeks and the flesh of his face hung loosely on one side where a terrible series of gashes ran down into his neck and chest. Something, someone, had clawed him horribly.

  Four vampires manhandled him into shackles on the far wall. After securing him, two of the vampires beat him until they saw him slump.

  Rhuna saw a red-haired woman enter the room through a large reinforced door. She might have been beautiful, but now it was hard to tell. She wore a bandage over one eye and the other side of her face was swollen and bruised. She spoke haltingly, her words slurred by her swollen mouth.

  “The Lich King of Admah. The Dread Sovereign Lugal Zagesi.”

  The man that entered didn’t look much better than Marcus. He had slashes and bruises over his body and he moved gingerly, obviously still in pain.

  “Thropes and vampires working together.” He said every word with disgust.

  “Marcus. You should have run, Marcus. You should have known better. Do you know how much it pains me to have to remove an Ancient from the world? I am truly sorry. There are so few of us left. But examples need to be made from time to time in order to maintain discipline.”

  Marcus lifted his head and glared at him.

  Zagesi nodded his head in the direction of the wall opposite Marcus. A luxuriously thick crimson curtain covered the entire wall. One of the other vampires stepped over to it and drew the curtains back.

  It wasn’t a wall at all. It was a large bay window.

  “Strip him,” Zagesi commanded.

  The vampires ripped and tore at Marcus’s clothes. Every single tug where the clothing would not give caused him tremendous pain.

  “I told you earlier that I could have forgiven Acre. But that was before your partner destroyed my club and hundreds of my people. Some of them were actually innocent. And yet you still think you hold the moral high ground?”

  Zagesi walked to the window. “Lelith had this window specially made, by my instruction. When the sun rises, your suffering will have just begun. An Ancient like yourself, even in your weakened state, won’t perish from its rays. The pain you feel will be exquisite. Take it from one who learned exactly what it felt like, after you left me chained to the outside of the Accursed Tower. You should learn to cherish it, for it is the least of what you will experience.

  “As for you.” He turned his gaze onto Rhuna. She shrank away from the ancient vampire the little she could in the bindings.

  “You seem to have a body made for breeding, but too much spirit to make it truly pleasurable. You’ve maimed and killed many this night. You may take satisfaction in that, but it will be little consolation when I give you to their companions to use as they will.”

  He stepped back to admire them.

  “I cannot tell, Lelith. Do I sense defiance or despair from them?”

  “I do not know, Master.”

  “I think it may be defiance. Bring in their companions.”

  The other vampires left. In a few moments, they returned with Arthur’s corpse and dropped it in the middle of the room. Puckered and discolored multiple gunshot wounds marred his upper body.

  Next, they brought in John’s corpse and dumped it unceremoniously on top of Arthur’s. Despite herself, this drew a whimper from Rhuna. She could see some gunshot wounds, but John had been badly mauled afterward; the corpse was disfigured and nearly unrecognizable.

  Next they brought in Roeland. He had been eviscerated. His intestines trailed after his body, tracking in a trail of blood and gore.

  “Damned fools. Look at this mess. Lelith tried to make him eat his own intestines. She has yet to learn there is a
n art to such things.”

  Lelith looked down, ashamed.

  “Oh, it’s no trouble, my dear. You were understandably upset.”

  The last vampire brought in Alex’s body and discarded it alongside the others. It was badly bruised and beaten. Rhuna could smell death coming from him even more than the others. One of his arms was broken and twisted in a gruesome unnatural manner. Puckered gunshot wounds dotted his exposed skin.

  “And this one, he was too weak ever to have come along. I so wish he had survived, as I wanted to repay him properly for his audacity at the club.”

  Marcus laughed. One of the vampires cuffed him in the head.

  “I am glad you are amused, Marcus. We will see if your mood matches your mirth this evening. Alas, the onset of daybreak is too near for further adventures this night. Rest well, the both of you. You will have much need of your strength in the coming hours.”

  Zagesi left with Lelith and the others. The last vampire tugged the door closed behind him, but had time to direct a lustful glance at Rhuna. He waggled his tongue at her between his fangs. Then the door closed with a clang.

  A large lock snapped into place. Then there was silence and the sound of her own breathing.

  Marcus spoke to her, his voice barely audible, sounding cracked and exhausted. “Can we expect help from your people?”

  He knew more than she had thought. She shook her head.

  Marcus’s eyes swept around the room. He motioned toward the corner with his head, drawing her gaze to a small camera focused on the center of the room.

  “What happened to you?” she asked.

  “Zagesi got the better of me, I am ashamed to say. He had bodyguards, and I had just me. I sent many of them to the next world. Small consolation.”

  His head slumped down tiredly and he closed his eyes, exhaustion setting in.

  His lips moved slightly and his voice, so faint that if not for her exceptional hearing she would have missed it, said, “Whatever you see, make no sound.”

  43

  Rhuna woke to a low moan coming from Marcus. She didn’t remember falling asleep. Sunlight bathed the room, but the direct rays had yet to touch him. They would be covering him in mere moments.