Straight Outta Fangton

by C. T. Phipps

  Nice to know I was the Jan Brady to Fatimah's Marcia. “I thought you couldn't be killed as an Old One.”

  “If I'm blown up and buried under however many tons of rocks, I might eventually regenerate after a few centuries, but I won’t necessarily be myself anymore. More likely it'll be a monster akin to a draugr, only a hundred times more powerful.”

  “You are always just a ray of sunshine,” I said. “By which I mean a guy who burns my ass.”

  “It's also possible Renaud may be down there,” Thoth said, loading his weapon before heading to the door, passing by Melissa without acknowledgement. Once both of us left, she'd be effectively trapped up here until someone came up to get her. I could also probably order her to stay.

  “What happens then?” I asked, following him. “Assuming Tall, Dark, and Crazy is down there.”

  “We die.”

  Screw Thoth being a ray of sunshine. He was the whole frigging sun. “I'll bear that in mind.”

  Thoth summoned the elevator. “Thank you for doing this, Peter.”

  “Don't mention it,” I said. “I mean that.”

  “I want to help,” Melissa suddenly piped up.

  I almost laughed. “Lady, you must be out of your damned mind if you think we're going to let you anywhere near the group downstairs.”

  “I can fight,” Melissa said. “Probably better than you.”

  “Tell that to Uday Hussein and his werejackal bodyguards,” I said. “Besides, why do you want to kill these people? They're your crew.”

  “They're not my crew,” Melissa said, her voice lowering and becoming almost a hiss. “They sacrificed anything resembling the moral high ground when they decided to involve innocents in this.”

  “Versus vampires,” I said, not intending to let her off the hook for being a hunter.

  “I'm revaluating some of my beliefs,” Melissa said, not caring about how she was coming off. “Even so, I'd already come to believe only most vampires were evil while alive.”

  “Most vampires?” I asked.

  “Most,” Melissa repeated, unrepentant.

  The problem with what she was saying was, well, it was true. We were a race of complete assholes. That was the difference, I suppose, between bigotry against the undead and bigotry against most minority groups.

  We were getting better, though.

  “Thoth?” I turned to him as the elevator doors opened in front of us. I didn't actually want her with us, but it occurred to me it was better to keep her close. Maybe it would cause the other bastards to hesitate, and I didn't want her left alone here with all of these weapons and figuring a way out of the penthouse.

  “She's your responsibility now,” Thoth said. “If she misbehaves, just order her to kill herself.”

  “Ha ha,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You go get a weapon off the rack then, Melissa. Quickly. If you're willing to kill these anti-bloodsucker terrorists, then more power to you.”

  I added a little oomph to my words to make them a subtle command. I was getting the hang of this mind-control crap.

  “Thank you.” Melissa grabbed a katana off the wall then zipped across the room into the elevator ahead of us. She took up residence in the back and the two of us were forced to get in front of her with our backs to her.

  Point to her.

  The three of us waited inside the cramped confines of the elevator as the doors shut and it started to head down toward the parking garage.

  “Nice job with the speed,” I said. “You hit the superpower jackpot, it seems.”

  “I can't do much,” Melissa said. “What I've done just came naturally.”

  “Super-speed, super-hearing, and an immunity to holy stuff,” I said, looking at the doors. “That's more than I could do for months. Hell, I'm still just the undead Doctor Doolittle and floaty guy. I may be able to kick a little more ass than usual, but some vamps have all the luck.”

  “I can sense you have not come into your full potential and whatever latent gifts you still possess will be exceptional when they manifest.” Thoth surprised me by taking a reassuring tone. “Assuming you survive long enough for them to.”

  “Ah, that’s the Thoth I know. Encouraging yet condescending.”

  “I try,” Thoth said.

  I couldn't say I wasn't nervous. It had been a long time since I'd been involved in one of these little blood feuds. I'd busted a lot of heads in my service to Thoth, and that had been only the tip of the iceberg. It seemed every single vampire who wasn't getting part of the New Detroit project had a chip on his shoulder about Thoth, and all of them seemed to want to take it out on me. In a way I was glad to have been banished from New Detroit after the incident with Eaton. I just wish it hadn't been quite so far.

  I paused, remembering an early part of my conversation with Baron. “Wait a damn minute. You can order me to kill myself?”

  “No, of course not,” Thoth said. “Your will is much too powerful.”

  I looked at him intently. “Are you just saying that?”

  “Would it make a difference if I said my master could have done the same thing to me?”

  “And where's he?” I asked.

  “Dead,” Thoth said.

  “Then no.”

  “The price of immortality, Peter,” Thoth said, staring intently at the doors. It was his “I'm going to murder some fuckers” face, and I'd seen him put it on only a few times before. Usually before, well, the aforementioned murdering some fuckers.

  “Yeah, but that's the thing about vampire immortality. You have to be dead to get it.”

  “Funny,” Melissa said from behind us.

  I actually wasn't joking, as it seemed like every poor bastard I'd seen made in the past four years was more likely to get killed in their first few years than to go on to become an Old One. Vampires would overwhelm the world if they didn't live lives of constant violence. Thoth wanted to make it so vampires could live in peace, dislike or distaste for humanity aside, but I wasn't sure the opposition was wrong. We were monsters. It was better there were only a few of us.

  A few seconds later, the doors of the elevator opened to the parking garage. It was the bottom level and there were only a few cars down there, most of which belonging to the Blood and Wine delivery service. The elevator to the penthouse was disguised so it shouldn't have tipped off the hunters. Instead, though, they were waiting for us.

  Roughly half the hunters were dressed in white delivery personal attire but not doing a very good job of hiding their military bearing and body armor underneath. The others didn’t even do that much, with attire resembling Eaton’s Matrix thugs.

  They had assault rifles, grenade launchers, a couple of flame-throwers, and a few silver machetes. The latter confused me until I realized this group probably killed shapeshifters too. That wasn’t always a given with hunters and some of them actually were werecreatures of various sorts.

  One of them was holding an Alcotán-100 anti-tank rocket launcher, which he was pointing right at us. He’d been waiting for us or, at least, had been prepared to shoot at anyone who came through the disguised elevator.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Right before the hunter fired a rocket at us.

  Chapter Eight

  They say your life flashes before you when you're about to die, and in this case, it was literally true. Time seemed to slow down, and as the Alcotán-100's rocket came toward me at a glacial place, I remembered the moment that had led me to this place.

  My banishment.

  I was huddled in the corner in the corner of the burnt-out building I'd been living in for the past week. It was in Old Detroit, one of the many places condemned for the final stage of the New Detroit project. There was a dead cat beside me and a bunch of rats, but I was still starving for blood. Starving but repulsed by it. Imagine that, a vampire repulsed by blood. All it took was a little girl dying.

  “I'm sorry about what happened,” Thoth said, standing over me in a trench coat covering an expensive green b
usiness suit with an ankh on his lapel. He stood out like a diamond among coal in this hellhole, but I wished he'd go away. He hadn't done anything to help me when I'd needed him and as far as I was concerned, he was just another selfish egotistical Old One out for himself.

  “Screw you,” I said, feeling the shakes.

  The Need was upon me.

  “You can't live off animal blood, Peter,” Thoth said, looking like he was trying to be sympathetic but literally having forgotten how. “You'll eventually starve to death, go mad, and become a draugr. Then whatever you're feeling now will only be magnified by whatever you do until you're satisfied.”

  “I'm not drinking from people again,” I said, feeling less than confident in my lie. Last night, desperate to have the taste of human blood again, I'd started feeding on the homeless around the building. As if they didn't have enough problems.

  Thoth, thankfully, didn't call me on it. “They're hunting for you now. The other vampires of the city, I mean. The only reason I got to you first is because one of the knights had a considerable number of markers at the Apophis.”

  “They're hunting me? For tearing Eaton's throat out?” I said, unable to believe even Vampire Nation could be so cruel.

  “Yes.”

  I still remembered coming at Eaton while he'd been sitting down at a strip club to eat a roofied sixteen-year-old girl. I'd killed his two bodyguards and laid into him with my shotgun before coming at him with claws and fangs. He'd looked like Jason Voorhees had taken a machete to him a hundred times by the end.

  “Worth it. I'm glad I killed the child-killing bastard.” I spit out a bit of rat fur stuck in my teeth. Destroying Eaton helped me cope with the fact that I was his weapon for murdering a child. That I was a child-killing bastard too.

  “He's not dead,” Thoth said, his expression sour. “It might have been better if you had killed him, but he will recover from the wounds you inflicted on him.”

  “Fuck,” I muttered, disbelieving. How the hell had he survived the beating and slashing I gave him? What did it take to kill one of our kind? “He deserves to die.”

  “Yes,” Thoth said. “He does. You need to—”

  “I can still taste her!” I said, bolting from the ground and grabbing him by the shoulders. “I still remember what it felt like to drink her blood, to feel her life run down my throat, and it was wonderful! What the hell did you make me!”

  That was when Thoth broke my jaw with one blow, sending me spiraling down to the ground. “Cease this whining ‘Louis, Nick Knight, Being Human’ bullshit! You are a vampire! We do not engage in self-pity.”

  I was so dazed by the blow that it took me a second to register anything more than the fact that my creator watched Being Human. “You don't know what it's like.”

  Thoth's gaze was penetrating. “Of course I know what it's like. Every vampire knows what it's like to kill an innocent and hate yourself for it. My own creator, Doubye, made sure I was good and insane with hunger before unleashing me on my family. My crime? Maintaining contact with them post-death.”

  The full implications of that hit me. “He could have just ordered you to avoid them.”

  “Yes, he could have,” Thoth said, a guttural growl escaping his lips. “He wanted me to divorce myself from the living world in a way that was irreparable.”

  “It worked,” I said, feeling my jaw heal. It made me hungry again. “You're not remotely human.”

  “Thank you,” Thoth said, not missing a beat. “Because Doubye was right, even if I hate him to this day. We can't let ourselves become too attached to mortals. For a century after my release, I spent it hunting slavers, slave traders, and those who profited from the Peculiar Institution. I exterminated hundreds.”

  “Can't blame you there.”

  Thoth sighed. “I could have used my powers to release slaves instead, to bind politicians into working against it, or to fight those undead who were using it as a means to get free meals. I only recognized it was an excuse when I slaughtered the five-year-old daughter of someone whose sole crime was being born to wealth made by evil. That's when I decided to abandon my old name and become Thoth. To reinvent myself into the man I am today. I have shed my past.”

  I sincerely doubted that. “So that’s your advice? To forget about it? To get over it?”

  “Yes. Let go of your guilt or find a way to live with it,” Thoth said, sighing. “Don't allow yourself to become the monster humans wish to make you. Don't live down to their expectations or try to absorb their morality. They're not worth it.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Thoth closed his eyes. “Doubye's atrocities as a vampire were miniscule compared to the ones I've seen humans commit. Eaton will have his due, but only if you learn to play the game and bide your time. A vampire's vengeance is like a fine wine. It's measured in decades before it comes to maturity.”

  He was like a broken record there. “I can't do that.”

  Thoth opened his eyes and gave a sympathetic shake of his head. “I know, nor would I want you to. I embraced you because you have the stamina to make it through immortality. That you can survive and want to live despite all the horrible things you've seen and done. Because I believe in you.”

  “So you'll help me kill him? For good this time?” I looked up. It was the first real moment of hope I'd had in months.

  “No,” Thoth said, deflating me in an instant. “I need to be seen punishing you in order to separate myself during this critical juncture. I also need to deflect their desire to punish you by making it seem you're already suffering.”

  “Fuck you!” I hissed.

  Thoth continued. “You're banished from New Detroit indefinitely. Do not return to me unless it is an emergency.”

  I spit a wad of bloody saliva at him, which landed on his shoes. “I'll never return to you.”

  “Your absence from the city until Eaton is completely healed will allow heads and blood to cool. It'll probably be safe to return in a year's time. I can't be seen to help you in any way and it won't be safe to go to any of the major U.S. cities. It's very likely the voivodes will want to curry favor with Ashura by sending you back to her. So either stay nearby in one of the adjoining towns or go to Europe.” Thoth turned around to leave. “Good luck.”

  I didn't say anything.

  On his way out, he pulled a blood bag from his suit's interior and placed it on the ground. AB positive. My favorite. I drank it after he left like it was the sweetest thing ever. In the end, time cooled the anger I felt toward him and I was actually glad we were going out like this.

  Reconciled.

  That was when I realized the rocket was still coming toward us and I wasn't just having a flashback, I was actually physically seeing everything moving around me in slow motion. It was some serious bullet time shit and I actually froze because it was such a surreal sight.

  “Get out of the way!” Melissa suddenly shouted, breaking me from my stasis. She grabbed me and proceeded to move me at heightened speed, even in the comparative world of slow motion around us, out of the way, while Thoth moved himself from the elevator and around the concrete blocks nearby.

  Time seemed to return to normal as the elevator behind us exploded in a ball of sound and fire that would have deafened a human. Thankfully, vampires seemed to have tougher eardrums, even if we could hear things far more easily.

  My confusion over what had happened didn't last long, as I heard the Hunters shouting to one another.

  “They're still alive!”

  “Shoot them!”

  “Get to the bomb! Detonate it before they stop it!”

  “Are you crazy? I'm not here to martyr myself! I'm a cop, not a suicide bomber!”

  Getting off the ground from where Melissa had tossed me, I lifted up my shotgun and proceeded to shoot the man who said that first. He was thrown back from the force of the magically enhanced shotgun blast, and I immediately moved behind one of the concrete pillars of the garage to avoid the resulting s
pray of gunfire.

  “Fuck the police,” I muttered, ready to kill each and every last one of these terrorist sons of bitches.

  There were a lot of hunters down here, and even the ones disguised as delivery boys pulled out Uzis and submachine guns to start firing at us. It was a blessing this place didn't have any bystanders present. In the forest of cars, stone columns, and concrete lit by fluorescent lights, this parking garage was still a battlefield that favored our enemies.

  Even so, I saw them lose one member after another thanks to Thoth shooting them with his rifle. He was hitting them with inhuman accuracy, only slowed down by the fact that he was using much of his super-speed to reload his rifle and dodge between pillars. I wasn't nearly as fast, but I had experience as a soldier and wasn't using antique weaponry either.

  “This is how we do it in the army, assholes!” Grabbing a grenade from my bandolier, I hurled it like a pro among the hunters shooting up the place, and the resulting explosion took out six of them at one time. They were so huddled together that half of them were thrown to the ground or disorientated in one go. Tossing my shotgun on the ground, I left the comfort of cover and started walking toward the group with two pistols drawn, firing one shot after another into the crowd of hunters.

  Strangely, time once more seemed to slow down around me and I got to step out of the way of one of the standing hunters firing his assault rifle at me as well as step past a grenade hurled in my direction before knocking it back in their direction. I could get used to this John Woo thing I had going here.

  I had about three seconds to enjoy my success in tearing the hunters a new one before time suddenly returned to normal and I found myself full of hot lead. Forget what the movies show you about vampires just shrugging off bullets. They frigging hurt! I had about a dozen bullet holes in my body. I fell to my knees, howling in agony while still continuing to fire.

  That had not gone like I'd thought it would.

  “The blasphemer is down!” one of the hunters shouted. “Let us fini—”