The Junkyard Druid Box Set 2

by M. D. Massey

  24

  When I said I was calling in the cavalry, I meant it. And when I called, everybody came. While I couldn’t tell them just how high the stakes were for this mission, they all wanted a piece of the wizard, as well as the New Orleans coven.

  Every faction had lost someone in the high-rise collapse—except for the druids, of course. After all was said and done, the death toll stood at 849 humans, five vamps, two fae, and one local Pack member. Moreover, the Coven had lost several of their closest human allies, people who lived in the tower that had voluntarily fed Coven members.

  The price for my failure had been steep. I would not fail again.

  When we rolled into Glen Rose, the assault team was more like an assault platoon. Luther had insisted on making a personal appearance, and with him came several of his enforcers—Sophia Doroshenko and, of course, Saint Germain. Samson had brought along Sledge, Trina, and Fallyn, along with a half-dozen of his best brawlers. Maeve sent her favorite assassin team, Lucindras and Eliandres, along with a healer and a squad of eight fae hunters. Bells came with Crowley as her wingman, both of them apparently repping for the human faction.

  As for the druids, Maureen and I were it. She wasn’t officially a druid, but she definitely had honorary status. I was glad to have her watching my back, along with Hemi of course, who had declared himself Team Druid by default. I might also have brought along some trolls, because Guts was itching for a fight. But I thought the chance of them getting killed by a stray beam from my sunlight spell was too risky, since a single ray of sunlight could turn a troll to stone. After much grumbling, they’d agreed to sit this one out.

  Once we arrived, we set up shop about a half-mile south of the place and downwind, in a metal building near some tennis courts and a baseball diamond that I was pretty sure was owned by the power plant. It was across a lake inlet and through the woods, well-hidden from prying eyes that might be on lookout at the facility. We weren’t certain what we’d be facing during the assault, so we decided to reconnoiter the place rather than charge in blind.

  Luther was our natural choice for scouting the place out. While Lucindras and Eliandres had wanted to do the honors, once Luther did his Nightcrawler routine they relented and let him do his thing. He disappeared in a cloud of black fog that dissipated almost instantly, returning five minutes later with an unconscious vamp over his shoulder.

  “Found a young one on perimeter duty. Figured I could interrogate him and compel him to divulge what he knows about their plans.”

  The vamp he’d abducted was young, maybe mid-twenties, and male, of average height with olive skin, a military haircut, and a muscular build.

  I nodded. “Have at it, then.”

  Things had been tense between us. Luther had sensed my “sudden” resentment toward vampires, but he couldn’t figure out why. He had no idea what had happened to me, so for all he knew I was blaming all vampire-kind for what Remy and his chuckleheads were up to. Plus, I’d killed some of his friends’ offspring back at Germain’s mansion, so that wasn’t helping matters.

  “We are going to talk later, you and I,” he whispered as he passed me carrying the abductee.

  “Mission first. The girl-talk can wait until after I kill a wizard,” I replied. He gave me a look that could peel paint, so I raised my hands in supplication. “Just making a joke, Luther. I’m trying to relieve some of this tension, is all.”

  “Can cut with knife,” Sophia Doroshenko said. “Is good you use humor, chudovishche. We must have minds on mission, not on feelings.”

  Luther turned that look on Sophia, and she wisely said no more. Then, he laid the vampire on the floor and knelt beside him, whispering in his ear.

  “Wake, and be still.”

  The vamp’s eyes popped open, but the rest of him remained stiff as a board.

  “Have you ever been under the thrall of a master vampire, young one?” Luther asked, in the creepiest damn voice I’d ever heard him use. “Ah—from the fear in your eyes, I can see you have. When you were turned, yes? I can smell his scent on you, and from that I know he was one of mine. I turned Gerard in the spring of ’76. That’s 1876, in case you’re wondering. Yes, he’s old compared to some in your coven. But I made him, and he made you. That means I can control you, if I so choose. And I do.”

  The young vamp’s eyes darted all over the place, taking in the scenery. He was surrounded by a sea of unfriendly faces—vampire, ’thrope, fae, and human alike. Many of us bristled with weapons, while others bristled with rage. Combine that with Luther’s calm, creepy voice and the fact that he was completely under the Austin coven leader’s control, and it was a sure bet the kid would’ve been pissing his pants if he could still urinate.

  Luther ran a razor-sharp fingernail down the young vamp’s chest, drawing a thin line of dark, almost black blood from his skin. “Now, young one, you’re going to tell me everything you know about what your coven leader and the Circle wizard have planned. And, you’re going to tell me what kind of resistance we can expect when we enter. I want to know every last detail—numbers, race or species, locations, fortifications, everything. If you lie, I’ll know, and it will not go well for you. Blink if you understand.”

  The kid blinked twice.

  Luther nodded. “You may begin.”

  I almost felt sorry for the kid as he spilled the beans. Almost.

  The young vamp was very cooperative. He told us that my mystery nemesis was holed up in the main facility along with most of the New Orleans coven’s leadership, including Remy, Cornelius, and Gaius. Just as Maki had speculated, they intended to use the reactors to fuel some sort of dimensional portal through the Veil. That would allow them to bring in a bunch of heavy-hitters from the other side—primary vampire spirits, for the most part.

  Primaries were immortal entities that couldn’t die. Oh, you could kill their physical body here on Earth, but they’d just come back in a few hundred or few thousand years good as new and ready to go another round. All the gods and some demigods were primaries, as were the progenitors of every supernatural race. Dracula? Primary. The Beast of Gévaudan? Also a primary, as was the Caoranach.

  Primaries were bad news, because they were the strongest of the strong, with god-like abilities compared to their offspring. Oh, that’s right—primaries could make more of themselves, either by infecting humans as with vampirism and therianthropy, or via standard reproductive methods, which was how the Caoranach shat out litters of demons by the bushel.

  I guess that explains why there were so many vamps after the apocalypse went down.

  Primaries could turn out their own kind by the score, and the ones they turned tended to be hellions in their own right—secondaries, we called them. From what I’d gathered, Luther was a secondary, as was Samson—a clear indication of the benefits of getting the vyrus from the source.

  For that reason alone, we simply could not allow the wizard and Remy to open that gate. No way, no how.

  The young vamp went on to explain how they’d hired a cadre of heavily armed therianthrope mercenaries for security, and those fuckers were pulling sentry duty at all points in the inner cordon. Remy figured we’d show eventually, so he’d sent his cannon fodder out on perimeter duty, leaving the pros to do the heavy lifting. That was how the sorry little turd had found himself on the wrong end of Luther’s compulsion. And did he ever. The kid talked a mile a minute, giving us sentry locations, patrol timetables, body counts… the works.

  “Is there anything else we should know?” Luther asked.

  “Corpses,” the young vamp eagerly offered. “We brought corpses in by the truckload. Plus, there are dead bodies everywhere. We killed all the staff when we took the place over, all except for a couple of engineers who understand how the reactors function.”

  Dead bodies—interesting.

  “Very good, young one. You’ve done well.” Luther’s hand moved quicker than a cobra striking, snapping the kid’s neck. He stood and gave me an inscrutable look. �
�Now that we know what we’re up against—what’s your plan?”

  “Okay, here goes.” I looked around the room to make sure I had everyone’s attention. “Lucindras, Eliandres, Germain, Luther, and the rest of the vamp crew will be responsible for taking out the flunkies before we attack. I want a timed, concerted effort so they all go down at once. Then, you’ll go after the mercenaries, taking out as many as you can without causing a ruckus. I want maximum time to get in before the wizard knows we’re hitting them. Bells, Hemi, Crowley, and the ’thropes will follow, along with the rest of the fae.

  “At some point, the leaders will figure out they’re under attack. By then, I plan to be right in the wizard’s lap. Which is why sometime during the assault, I’ll break off and sneak past the cordon into the reactor control room.

  “Listen carefully—those dead bodies are likely meant for necromancy, and I’d bet my left nut the Dark Druid is under that wizard’s cowl. That’s why I want our vamps to stay out of the reactor control room. I don’t need to explain what would happen if a necromancer were to gain control of Luther or Germain. So, leave the control room and everyone in it to me.

  “Now, are there any questions?”

  Hemi raised his hand. “How are you going to get into the control room without being seen?”

  I smiled, faking confidence while my stomach did somersaults. “I have a few tricks up my sleeve, but they’ll only work for me. That’s why I have to go in alone.”

  Eliandres scoffed, his pretty fae mouth twisting into a sneer as he spoke. “To face a coven of vampires and a skilled necromancer alone is suicide, justiciar, even for you. You should take back-up with you, or this will all be for nothing.”

  “Trust me, I have that covered. When I make my presence known, it’ll be down to me and the wizard—er, the Fear Doirich, that is. I’m the only one who can withstand the Eye’s powers for any length of time, so let me handle it.”

  I looked around the room, making eye contact with everyone present. “Any more questions? None? Then, kit up. We roll in twenty.”

  The fae assassins and elder vamps rolled over Remy’s low-level goons like a steamroller at an Easter egg hunt. They were the Black Plague made manifest, Death itself moving like a fatal mist through the young, inexperienced vamps on the outer perimeter. Within seconds, the enemy’s first line of defense had fallen.

  And that was the last easy inch we took.

  No sooner had we hit the fence line than we started taking rounds, both from small arms and emplaced machine guns. A couple fae and one of Luther’s vamps went down under heavy automatic fire.

  “Keep your heads down!” Samson yelled. “They’re bound to have snipers on overwatch.”

  The grizzled old wolf was right. One of the fae hunters popped her head up to take a quick look at the hot zone, and she took a round right in the eye. Er, sorry about that, Maeve.

  The mercs Remy had hired were good, and they knew their stuff. They’d set up motion and heat sensors that crisscrossed every last inch of the security fence, and had kill zones in place with intersecting fire covering every single approach to the main plant. They were also shooting both silver and cold iron rounds and alternating ammunition types in their magazines to cover all their bases.

  We took cover behind parked cars and a few buildings that were adjacent to the fence. I whistled to grab everyone’s attention. “Crowley, locate those snipers. Germain—when he points them out, I want you to drop a couple of those nasty vials on them, as well as on the machine gun emplacements.”

  “Fire or acid?” he asked.

  “Does it matter? They’re ’thropes, so either one will do.”

  Crowley knelt and meditated behind a parked truck, bullets whizzing overhead. Three black spheres made of shadow appeared in front of him, then they spun out into the night. Moments later, he opened his eyes.

  “Three snipers. Water tower, two o’clock. Southwest corner of the main building. Top of the far reactor.”

  Germain was still fumbling with his vials when Bells yelled, “Got it!”

  She leaned out from behind cover, snapped off a shot from her Steyr, and leaned back before I could blink. Then, she did it again, and a third time.

  Bells yelled from her position. “Headshots, silver rounds. They won’t be getting back up. Germain can clear the emplacements now.”

  Damn, and with open sights too. Apparently, serpenthropy has been good to her.

  I wasn’t about to argue with results like that, so I signaled Germain to finish the job. The old vamp tossed three vials from behind cover without even looking. They landed on the machine gun emplacements in rapid succession, exploding and spreading liquid fire over everything within a ten-foot radius. Six humanoid figures screamed at once, each jumping out of their emplacements and sprinting toward the nearby lake.

  Belladonna dropped two with her rifle, while Eliandres and Lucindras took another two with throwing knives to their spines. The elven hunters took out the remaining pair with a few well-placed arrows in eye sockets.

  “Crowley, sit-rep!” I yelled. He was still in seiza posture, kneeling behind the car with his eyes closed.

  “About a dozen more therianthropes of various species are waiting in ambush inside the buildings. You’re clear to approach, but expect to meet heavy resistance once you enter the structures.”

  “Alright, split into teams and move out—and I want explosives or incendiary spells tossed in every door before anyone makes entry!” I yelled.

  Samson gave me a mock salute and a wicked grin, and Fallyn slapped my ass as she ran by. I ignored them both, because my mind was on getting inside the main building. Since everyone on the assault team was a supernatural creature of some sort, they crossed the ground between the fence and buildings in seconds.

  My team approached the nearest entrance. Germain opened the door and tossed in one of his vials quicker than I could blink. We heard a loud boom! as the door flew off the hinges, then screams followed from within. Bells, Maureen, and the fae assassins were stacked up beside the door, and they entered with Belladonna’s rifle blazing and the two fae tossing blades like candy at a small-town parade.

  Once they cleared the way, I planned to sneak off and take revenge on my enemies. It was all going so very smoothly, except for having our cover blown this early in the game. Bells yelled back with the all-clear, and I was about to enter the building when the dead started to rise.

  ’Thrope undead, that was.

  Sophia Doroshenko was the first to notice the corpses getting up. “Druid, we have problem!” she yelled, catching my attention.

  When I turned, she was already locked in combat with an undead werecat. The merc had been burned to a crisp and he had an arrow sticking out of his eye, but it didn’t seem to be slowing the damned thing down. The vampire was holding her own with a Cossack saber that she spun, slashed, and stabbed in dizzying combinations. But no matter how many times she cut the undead thrope, it just kept on coming.

  Soon, my whole team was engaged with the merc ’thropes we’d just killed. Above the din, Hemi yelled from somewhere close by.

  “Hey, bro, we got trouble!”

  The big Maori had been laying into the zombie ’thropes with a massive war club that was shaped like an axe or an adze. Of course, he was just as deadly with the damned thing as he was with that whalebone spear he used to carry. He spun it in a quick circle overhead, ending his swing against an undead lizardman’s head, separating the thing’s skull from its neck and sending it sailing. After admiring his handiwork for a second, he pointed his war club toward the other side of the plant.

  I looked and nearly shat my pants. There were dozens of nosferatu running en masse from the opposite side of the compound to the north. We were about to be overrun, and I hadn’t even reached the main building.

  Shit on a motherfucking stick!

  Nos-types were normally easy to deal with, since they were dumber and slower than higher vamps. I’d only ever met one that had giv
en me fits, and it had been thousands of years old. These looked young, but they easily outnumbered us three-to-one. Combined with the undead ’thropes, we were about to be fucked in the ass without lube.

  No way was my team going down, not on my watch. I had the power to turn things around. The problem was, I only had one spell that could do it, and I’d been saving it for Remy and the rest of the NOLA coven’s leadership.

  Damn it. I stealth-shifted on the fly and spun up my sunlight spell. I’d spent plenty of time charging it up, so things were about to get interesting.

  “All vamps, take cover now!” I yelled. The vamps had heard about what I’d done at Germain’s mansion, so they knew what was coming and beat feet. “Everyone else, shield your eyes on three.”

  The remaining team members were now engaged in a running battle, since the vamps had left them to deal with the remaining handful of undead ’thropes. I watched the line of nosferatu coming for us, loping across the ground on all fours like apes—but with hairless, wrinkled gray skin, weird bat-shaped ears, long claws, and mouths full of long, sharp, crooked teeth.

  Wait for it—let them get in range.

  When they were thirty yards away, I crouched and started my countdown.

  25

  “One… two… three!” I hollered as I leapt ten feet in the air, fist extended over my head. I opened my hand and said the trigger word, shielding my own eyes with my other arm.

  Searing white light infused the entire area, turning night to day. Unholy screams of pain and terror pierced our ears as four dozen nosferatu screeched in defiance and agony. As soon as the light died, I uncovered my eyes and looked around. All that remained of the nosferatu were ashes and smoldering skeletons.

  Only necromancers I know who could control that many are the Fear Doirich, and maybe Fuamnach. I called Crowley over, and he sauntered across the courtyard, obviously not wanting to appear too eager to heed my call.