Too late to do it any good. I jerked the stake upwards, bellowing, my weight and momentum carrying me forward. Crashing into the vampire was like hitting a brick wall. I pushed the stake with all of my might, coming under the rib cage and stabbing into the pulsing black heart. The vampire shrieked so painfully loud that my hearing protection momentarily shorted out. It grasped my hand, trying to pull out the stake. Its jaws opened wide enough to fit my head inside the maw. I continued to push the sharpened wood deeper into the creature's black heart.
A stake through the heart would kill any living thing. It would instantly paralyze any regular vampire. On a Master, it seemed to merely weaken it. At its normal strength, the creature would have been able to break me in half, now it was almost as if I were fighting someone only twice as strong as a normal person.
The creature swatted me across the chest. I flew back, airborne for what seemed an impossible time, landing hard on the hood of one of the SUVs, shattering the windshield, and sliding down until I fell on my hands and knees onto the pavement. The vampire struggled to pull the stake free. Trip and Lee barreled into the creature, hacking wildly at it with their blades, trying desperately to take its head off. The monster shoved them away, but not before Trip fiercely planted his tomahawk into the base of its skull.
With a wrenching squeal, the stake was torn free. The creature roared in triumph, but only for a moment. Its eyes widened as the grill of a Suburban smashed into it at thirty miles an hour. The tires bumped as Holly gunned it over the fallen vampire, crushing it beneath. She slammed it into park, with the thing still trapped, opened the door and hopped out.
"Keys were in it!" she shouted as she turned and pulled a grenade from her armor. "Run!" She pulled the pin, the spoon popped off with a clang, and she tossed it into the front seat of the vehicle. I pushed myself up and ran for my life, trying to get as far away as I could before the five-second fuse went off. If that vehicle had been as loaded down with munitions as ours had been, this wasn't going to be pretty. The vampire bench-pressed the SUV off of itself and rolled the vehicle onto its side. It stood, broken bones quickly knitting, looking for prey.
I dove behind one of the vans and tried to get as low to the ground as possible. The initial detonation of the grenade was relatively mild. The pressurized napalm tank it ignited was not. The crate of 81mm mortar rounds that went off next was downright amazing. The van I was using as a shield rocked up onto two wheels and every window shattered under the pressure.
Once the thunder had died, I slowly lifted my head. I peered around the edge of my scorched cover. The Suburban was reduced to a burning pile of distorted scrap lying sideways in a freshly dug crater. A chunk of metal landed in the grass a few feet away. I realized that it was a door. A burning tire rolled past.
"Wow" was the most articulate thing that I could think of to say.
"Think we got it?" Holly shouted from under the warg trailer.
"I hope so." I lifted the rifle and approached the wreckage. "Trip! Lee! You guys okay?" In the distance the mortars continued to fire.
"Pitt! Status?" Harbinger's voice sounded in my ear.
"I think we got the vampire. I can't find two of my guys."
"This is Mayorga. One of them has broken through. It's in the trees on the left. Puta got Abe."
"This is Cody. Got one on the right too."
"Earl," I said into the radio. I kept my gun up, pointed toward the burning vehicle. "There's only one left in the valley. And it's badly hurt. It can't regenerate until it gets blood." Holly extricated herself from under the trailer, and I tossed her rifle back.
"How do you know?" he asked. "Shit, never mind. VanZant, stop the barrage. Edward, clean up in the center. Phillips, roll right. Paxton, reinforce left. Now they're up close, but we've hurt them, so they're gonna be weaker and slower. We can take them. Pitt, my team is coming your way."
I did not respond. I scanned the surroundings. No sign of the vampire. No sign of Lee or Trip either. "Hey guys? Anybody hear me?" I shouted.
"I'm okay," answered Lee. He approached from the other side of the wreckage. His armor was smoking. He struggled with the FN MAG in his hands. It was almost as big as he was, and the exposed belt of ammo hung to the ground. "That was one big-ass fireball."
"Have you seen Trip?" He shook his head in the negative.
"Oh no…" Holly trailed off. "I killed him."
"You don't know that!" I shouted. "Trip! Can you hear me!"
Nothing.
"Look." Lee gestured with the machine gun barrel. I turned quickly, hoping to see my friend. Instead I saw that the flickering rift into the cavern was still open. It floated a few feet above the ground, a door out of nothing, but I could clearly see that there was something on the other side. I lifted Abomination warily, clicked on the flashlight and shined it into the shimmering gap. The powerful light pierced the darkness and illuminated a rock wall.
"Grant!" I exclaimed. Grant Jefferson was lying bound and gagged on the cavern floor, seemingly only forty feet away. "Earl! Earl! We found Grant. We've got a back door into the cavern!"
"On the way," he responded.
"We better hurry before it closes," Lee said.
"How do we know it isn't a trap?" Holly asked. "What if it closes while we're halfway through?"
"I don't know." Wild gunfire crackled through the forest as the other Hunters battled the two Masters. "We've got to try." I reached into a pocket and pulled out a handful of glow sticks. "I'm going in. I'll try to grab him and bring him out. Cover me." I cracked the sticks, shook them, and tossed them through the rift. They landed and scattered across the cavern floor, providing a soft green glow. I couldn't see anything else moving.
"Good luck," Holly said, "you big brave idiot."
I ran toward the rift, no use screwing around. I closed my eyes right before I hit it, only to open them to find myself barreling into the cavern. I had not felt a thing. I gulped in the moist cave air. I turned around, and the rift was still there, only now it showed the valley and the ominous green storm clouds overhead. My remaining teammates were waiting for me.
"Hurry up!" Holly shouted.
That was good advice. I swung my shotgun around, letting the light shine on the damp walls and the slick stalagmites. I did not see any threats. I shined the light on Grant. He moaned softly when the brilliant light hit him.
"Come on, buddy, let's get out of here." I knelt at his side and pulled the gag away.
"Pitt?" he gasped. I heard something shuffle in the darkness. I spun the light around. Wights. Lots of them.
"Yeah. Time to boogie." I grabbed him by the straps of his armor and, with a grunt, hoisted him over my shoulder. I sprinted for the rift, ignoring the two hundred pounds of extra weight. The wights began to scramble over the rocks toward me. One stepped into my path, only to be nearly decapitated by a burst of Lee's machine-gun fire. Apparently bullets went through the rift just fine. I passed the falling creature and jumped through the portal.
I was back outside.
And the wights were right behind. Lee ripped off the rest of the belt into the portal. Holly stood at his side, blasting any undead that came too close.
"We could use a hand, chief!" Lee said as he dropped the huge gun, pulled his pistol and fired at an approaching wight.
I roughly tossed Grant on the ground, tugged a pair of grenades off of my webbing, pulled the pins and chucked them through the portal. "Off to the side!" The others responded, moving out of the path of the shrapnel. They exploded at the feet of the wights, blasting them into bits of pulsing tissue. A cloud of gravel fell from the cavern ceiling.
"Owen!" Julie called. Her team and several other Hunters were approaching quickly. "I don't believe it. You found Grant!"
Harbinger nodded in approval. "Sam, Milo, cover that rift."
"My pleasure," Milo answered, pushing past Lee, and shooting a rising wight through the spine with his AR10 carbine. "Wow, cool magic portal thingy!"
I drew m
y knife and cut the cords binding Grant's wrists. His eyes looked wild and frightened. "It's okay, dude. We got you. You're safe."
"Die!" Grant screamed. He grabbed me by the throat, trying to crush my windpipe. I grabbed his hands and tried to pry them away.
"Grant! What are you doing?" Julie cried. "Stop that!"
"Acckkkkk…" I said, trying in vain to get some oxygen.
"Die, interloper!" Grant shouted, crazed eyes bulging, spraying spittle into my face. Either he knew that I had moved in on Julie or he was insane. Either way, it totally hurt.
"He's enthralled," Holly said simply. "Susan must have bitten him."
Julie stood over him, calmly raised the butt of her M14 and cracked him sharply alongside his head. He was out like a light. "Grant, honey… I think we need to start seeing other people."
I rubbed my throat. "Damn, that hurt." On the bright side, it was strangely satisfying to not only rescue my competition, but have the woman we were competing for give him a concussion.
"Is he going to be okay?" Lee asked.
"The enthrallment will wear off pretty quick. But when he eventually dies, no matter how long it takes, he's going to have to get his head cut off, or he's going to come back as one of them. The undead curse is in his blood now," Holly explained. She knelt and pulled Grant's armor open at the neck. There was a ghastly wound on the top of his chest, now caked in dried blood.
"That sucks."
"Yeah, pretty much. But you get used to it," she answered.
"The rift is holding," Harbinger said. "Let's go get the CO." The gunfire continued in the distance. "Now that the vampires have closed the range, we've got a hell of a fight on our hands. Maybe if we kill him, this cloud cover will disperse."
"Roast them bastards good." Sam spat, noticed something moving in the cavern, aimed his rifle and fired. "Let's get some." He levered another mammoth shell into the action.
"Okay, I'm on point. You guys stick behind me…" He paused, his nose twitching. Harbinger began to spin, but the Master vampire rising behind him was too fast. It grabbed him by the straps of his armor and hurled him through the air at an insane velocity. Harbinger struck one of the SUVs, crumpling the frame around him as if it had been in a high-speed collision and shoving the massive vehicle several feet across the road.
Nobody could have lived through that.
"Earl!" Julie cried as the Hunters opened fire.
It was the Master from the rift, the one that Holly had blown up. It was fully healed now, and no longer encumbered by a stake in the heart. Bullets struck to no effect. It lofted something in one gray claw, and launched it toward us in a blinding flash. Lee's leg exploded in a shower of blood as Trip's tomahawk head pierced his thigh. He screamed as he toppled to the ground.
The Master moved too quickly to track, dodging and weaving toward us as silver bullets dug divots into its muscled flesh. It swooped onto Gus. One claw stabbed out and impaled the Hunter through the throat, unleashing a spray of arterial blood. The vampire held him there as it licked its lips. I aimed around Gus's twitching form and shot the vampire in the mouth. The slug exploded out the back of the creature's skull. The wound closed instantly. Enraged, the vampire pulled its bloody talon free, leaving Gus staggering, gagging and choking, hands at his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. The Master lashed out with one arm, and I instinctively dodged aside as Gus's head flew past.
The vampire had moved ten feet before the headless body had even begun to fall. It charged the next Hunter in line. Sam was struck in the arm, and the sound of bones snapping could be heard across the valley. The big cowboy roared in pain, somehow dodged under another swing and fell to the ground. He worked the action of his lever-gun with one hand, letting the weight of the barrel carry the weapon down, and then flicking the action closed with his wrist. Sam extended the muzzle and launched a silver bullet up through the vampire's head. It did not even slow the thing down.
I fired as fast as I could, putting shell after shell of silver buckshot into the thing to no avail. It kicked at Sam as he rolled away, claws tearing a hole in the pavement. Milo stabbed his now-empty rifle forward like a spear. The vampire tore it from his hands and batted him backwards through the rift into the waiting wights. Milo disappeared with a cry of panic.
I grasped for the special magazine that Milo had given me and slammed it home, dropped the bolt, and looked up in time to see the Master bearing down on me, blood-red eyes filled with rage. I pulled the trigger.
The vampire stopped, confused. Pain was an unfamiliar sensation for the ancient creature. It looked down at the hole in its chest, then opened its jaws and screamed. It tore at itself, trying to somehow pull the burning agony from out of its insides. Thrashing, screaming, falling to its knees, claws tearing into the ground. Blue flames erupted from the hole, spilling through the vampire's ribs, igniting internal gasses, spitting and crackling. The vampire let out an unearthly wail as it tried to tear open its own belly.
"Take that!" I shouted as I pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Of course. Milo had warned me that the specialty rounds would lack the power to cycle the action.
When I had woken up after Mordechai's death, I had been able to get a good look at his little carvings for the first time. They were simple little tops, or dreidels as he called them. Traditional little Jewish toys, each side carved with a Hebrew letter that I had no idea how to read. They were rather small. And fortunately for us, with a little judicious carving, Milo was able to cram them into a 12-gauge shell.
I cleared the malfunction, and chambered another round. I put the glowing holographic site on the vampire. "Mordechai says hi!" It was a stupid thing to say, but I'm not really eloquent at times like this.
Blue flame flashed on the vampire's head as the toy splintered across its skull. The vampire screamed again, rolling across the ground, driving its head into the mud, trying to put out the flames.
The toys seemed to hurt them, but they weren't strong enough to kill them, and I only had three left. Gradually the blue flames died, and the shaking vampire stood, snarling at me, baring its teeth. The distended mouth struggled to form English words. "You shall pay for that, mortal," it hissed as smoking tissues sealed together.
"Vampire!" someone roared. "Pick on somebody your own size!" The vampire turned, looking for the challenger. Harbinger slowly pulled himself from the wreckage of the SUV, blood streaming from dozens of cuts. He gingerly reached over his back and yanked out a blood-stained chunk of steel, which he then casually tossed to the ground with a clatter. "If you think you're tough enough." He stretched, and bones audibly cracked back into place. "Well, come on then, you stupid thing." He unfastened the armor from his torso and arms and took it off. In the flickering light of the burning Suburban, many holes and injuries could be seen on his wiry body. They gradually puckered closed. "Come on, vampire! I'm giving you a challenge!"
The vampire stopped. Flexing its long limbs. " Loup-Garou, " it hissed. "Yesss. I accept your challenge. Your kind are nothing to the vampire. "
Harbinger looked past the creature, locking eyes with me. It was the look of a desperate man. "Go! Kill the Cursed One!"
Harbinger began to change, throwing his head back as if he were in great pain, and then twisting it from side to side. He fell to his knees, hands scraping along the pavement. Bones twisted, flowed, and re-formed. His spine pushed up and out along the top of his back. Skin stretched and ripped as pale hair exploded from every pore.
The others did not wait to watch the transformation. Instead they sprang into action. Sam jumped into the rift after Milo. Holly threw a tourniquet around Lee's leg, and Julie ordered the other Hunters to drag Lee and Grant to safety. I stood transfixed like an idiot.
The transformation continued as the vampire waited, patiently readying itself for a great battle. Harbinger opened his mouth and razor-sharp teeth thrust out of his extending jaw. His pants ripped as his knees reversed direction. Claws exploded through the ends of his boots and he kicked th
e useless things away. When his eyes opened, they were a predatory gold. He fixated on the vampire, and howled, the sound echoing for miles. Harbinger surged to his feet, clawed arms thrown wide, the last vestiges of humanity disappearing to be replaced with pure animal power. The howl continued, growing in intensity and bristling rage.
If Mr. Huffman had been a normal werewolf, Harbinger had to be some sort of mutant super werewolf. I could sense the power, every ounce of his human form turned into a perfect killing machine. Coiled strength, steel masquerading as muscle. I slowly reached up and felt the scar on my face. It was the most terrifying thing I had ever seen.
Harbinger launched himself forward, leaping into the air. The Master did so as well. The two titans collided in midair with a crash like thunder, nearly twenty feet above the ground. They plummeted to earth in a spray of mud, claws and fangs flying, impossibly fast, shadows spinning and lashing out, backlit by the fire. Red blood and black ichor sprayed as they tore into each other's flesh. It was a contest of wills, immortal speed and primal strength.
"Owen!" Julie shouted. "We've got to move!" The others had already jumped through the rift. A moaning Lee was being fireman-carried back toward the National Guard. I hurried after her, turning one last time to watch the magnificent battle: Harbinger suspended in air, tearing down at the vampire, and the Master driving its claws upwards into its foe. It was an astounding display. Julie grabbed me by my armor and pulled me through the rift.
DeSoya Caverns were quiet. The last of the wights were twitching on the ground-shot, chopped or pulverized into nondangerous pieces. Sam extended his good arm and hauled Milo to his feet. Holly was splattered with Lee's blood, and there was far too much of it.
The rift closed behind us. I swore and jumped aside, just barely missing being caught as it scissored shut. I did not want to dwell on what would have happened if part of me had still been on the other side.
"Well, we're committed now," Sam grunted, holding his broken arm tenderly.
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