I wake up at 2:12 p.m., the earliest my eyes have opened in months.
Apparently, enough stress can affect a vampire’s circadian rhythm, or whatever it’s called for us. To calm myself a bit, I think about the notes questioning what the hell Fuzzydoom is. I haven’t told Sophia about the picture marked ‘dangerous’ or the comment about her nightmare monster. She’d be terrified if she knew someone took her picture from afar, and mentioning the giant pom-pom of annihilation might tempt her to try summoning it to get rid of Anselme. Considering most of her attempts to use magic end up going awry, her summoning Fuzzydoom into the real world would set off a chain of events likely to destroy the entire planet. Not worth risking.
Yeah, I’m nervous, but having the bomb in the house makes me way more nervous than what I’m expected to do with it. Despite it being ‘early’ for me to be awake, I spring out of bed and throw on some black leggings left over from a former waitress job, a black T-shirt, black hoodie, and my darkest brown hiking sneakers. The only black shoes I have are ‘starter’ high heels. They’re a bit formal for a bombing, I think.
The leggings are a bit iffy, too. If I’m going to end up doing crazy stuff like this, maybe I should get some baggy military style pants in black. Skin tight isn’t really practical. Whatever. Don’t have the time to worry about it now. This bomb needs to be out of the house ASAP. I rig the katana on a cord across by back, add a pair of sunglasses, pick up the suitcase, and head upstairs. Kitchen’s a little warm, but I’m too nervous to care.
“Dad?” I call.
“Yo!” comes from his computer room.
“Ready to do this?”
“Sure am.” He hurries out of the small room. The white polo and khakis are totally secret agent level gear. “Wow… you look like an urban commando.”
“Yeah. I know. Pretty silly, right? It’s bright out and I look like a hole in space. Even underground, black won’t help. If they wake up, I’m going to be easy to spot.”
He grins. “Well, don’t wake them up.”
“Yeah. That’s the plan.”
We go outside together to the Sentra. It’s seriously warm, but I don’t feel like someone stuck me in the microwave. No smoke either. Unfortunately, the brightness still messes with my eyes. Despite sunglasses, the world is way too intense for me to drive safely. According to my phone, it’s going to take us three hours and eighteen minutes to reach Astoria. We’ll probably get there around 5:30 p.m. If it takes me ten minutes—ha, I should be so lucky—to drop off Wolent’s present, it’ll be around nine before we get home. Expected sunset time is 8:01 p.m. If I leap out of the moving car and fly, I could potentially make it to class a little over an hour late. Staying in the car all the way home would make me miss two thirds of the class, so no point bothering.
Dad encourages me to grab my books so I can depart a moving vehicle. He even offers to pull over to let me out. Sweet of him, right? Okay, fine. He thinks school is important, and I did miss Professor Heath’s class last week.
Can’t help but remember the Peters brothers firing a flare into the basement of a funeral home full of kill-feeder vampires. The Universe sure does have a weird sense of synchronicity. This is a bit more extreme, but Anselme and his buttheads started it. Heck, maybe me telling Wolent about blowing up the funeral home gave him this idea. Or maybe bombs are the best practical solution for a vampiric problem.
We talk about random stuff like we usually do on long car rides. I sit scrunched down in the seat, wearing sunglasses, but otherwise, I’m not too uncomfortable. Dad eventually starts cracking jokes about how goofy those animated corpses looked. We geek out—obviously since my father is involved—and make jokes about inept necromancers rolling poorly on their ‘summon undead’ skill check. It’s funny until I randomly think about those corpses being someone’s relatives. It’s not like Anselme killed them, but still feels wrong to laugh at real zombies. In a movie, video game, or D&D campaign, they’re generic ‘dead people.’
“… like something right out of Shaun of the Dead.” Dad whistles. “Wonder what the point of it was.”
“Dunno. I couldn’t figure it out. I mean, you killed them with the weed-eater. This scary Old World vampire couldn’t possibly have meant them as a serious threat. Or they’re underestimating us big time.”
“Hmm. Hon?” Dad glances over at me. “Think some other entity out there is trying to send all the vampires of Seattle after this Anselme guy?”
“Whoa. Inception level stuff.” I purse my lips. “It’s hurting my brain to even think about it. Maybe I shouldn’t blow him up if it’s an elaborate misdirect. I do so hate becoming a pawn in someone’s Machiavellian schemes.”
Dad snickers. “Happens to everyone as soon as we take our first day job. Good point though.”
I mull over the idea for an hour.
“Nah. Don’t think anyone’s doing that. The storm of derp zombies didn’t have any effect on Wolent deciding to send a gift. Also, some other party trying to turn the Seattle Elders into assassins to get rid of Anselme would have had no way to know Sophia would bork a scrying ritual and catapult Sierra into the middle of their staging ground so she could overhear them. The only reason Sierra ended up there is she decided to open the closet. No one could’ve predicted it.” I hold a hand up when Dad opens his mouth. “And before you Inception level three me by saying someone somehow managed to arrange all of it on purpose, making sure Sierra landed there to overhear everything, it doesn’t explain why the people in the warehouse tried to kill us. And they definitely did. Coralie warned me about Sierra.”
Dad’s quiet for a while.
Yeah, hearing Sierra had a brush with death upsets him.
“Unless Coralie is in on it,” mutters Dad. “Or being compelled.”
“Are you joking?”
“Not sure. Weird random ideas. Probably taking conspiracy theory nonsense to new heights.”
“Just a bit. Coralie doesn’t have the ability to mess with Sophia’s stuff and fling them across the void. I also feel quite strongly she wouldn’t lie about imminent harm to Sierra.”
Dad squeezes the wheel hard. Yeah, he’s angry someone almost hurt Sierra. “Place the bomb well, sweetie. Make sure none of them crawl out of that hole.”
“You got it, Dad.”
Things I never expected my father to say for $800, Alex.
Another twenty minutes later, the gloom’s lifted and Dad starts humming Mission Impossible music. Yeah, I’m the world’s dorkiest secret agent. Gotta get a ride from my parents to the scene of the mission. We pull up outside Cathedral Tree Cemetery three hours and twenty-six minutes after leaving home. Got caught in a little traffic and needed gas.
“Well, here it is, hon.” Dad chokes up a bit exactly like he did when I started kindergarten. “Your first day at bombing places.”
Heh. He’s totally acting.
“Thanks for the ride, Dad.” I hug him. “If I’m not back in twenty minutes, don’t come after me. Wait for dark and find Glim.”
Dad grabs my arm. “Don’t make me worry so much.”
“Not planning on it.” I pull the red headband he got me for Christmas out of the hoodie pocket and put it on.
“You remembered!” Dad beams.
“Yeah.” I smile. “Back as soon as I can.”
“You’re getting good at this.”
“Umm, this is the first time I’ve done anything like this.”
“No, I mean the daylight thing. It’s pretty bright out and you’re not even smoking.”
“Wow. Yeah.” I look at my hands. “Maybe I leveled up after spending a whole day tied to a tree.”
Dad makes a suspicious face at me. “The master of this grand misdirection planned it on purpose to prepare you for this moment.”
“Ugh. Dad. No. This is not a setup. No Illuminati.”
I bite my lip, thinking about Aurélie. Perhaps ‘illuminaughty.’ Someone like her could scheme this whole thing to get rid of Anselme if he’d somehow wronged her years ago
. But, nah. She’s way more direct. Right? Besides, she has no way to mess with a scrying spell Sophia used. Who knows what kinds of information all of her haunted dolls might be providing, but it still wouldn’t let her tweak magic. And there’s no reason whatsoever for her to send zombies to our house.
No, Sophia’s power is so weird and unpredictable, there’s no damn way anyone could possibly have engineered it to specifically throw Sierra into that warehouse and shove Sophia headfirst into a giant void tentacle beast’s body cavity. I’m totally confident in her horrible luck to entertain any doubts Anselme is responsible.
Unfortunately, in broad daylight, I can’t make myself stronger and I don’t even have the benefit of the ‘always on’ strength boost. Lugging a metal suitcase with thirty pounds of bomb in it is a chore. Heavy and ungainly big. Grumbling, I trudge into the cemetery, looking around for the mausoleum marked ‘Barnaby.’
Gargoyles, not angels. Gargoyles not Angels.
Most of the mausoleums here have little angel statues. The one I’m looking for has gargoyles and looks older. One good thing, I still can’t get tired despite being offline. It takes me a little while, but I eventually reach the deepest part of the cemetery where the bulk of the mausoleums cluster together. This area is steeped in eeriness. Graveyards don’t usually make me feel weird, even post-vampire. I’m sure this is an aftereffect of continuous strange rituals taking place nearby.
Darren Anderson’s lodge also felt odd, but not gloomy. Combine magic with whatever nastiness Anselme is up to—going to call it necromancy, even though the term’s from a game. He made the dead walk. To anyone who’s ever played D&D or any sort of fantasy-based computer game, he’s a necromancer. Same logic might make Sophia a wild mage. Heh. Or the child apprentice who keeps misreading scrolls.
Ugh. Focus, Sarah. Gotta be serious for now.
Upon spotting the ‘Barnaby’ mausoleum, I drag myself over to it as fast as I can lug this huge suitcase. Admittedly, it’s not abnormally huge. I’m not exactly big. Dad could carry this easy, and he’s a nerd.
It’s a bit of a project to get the door open, primarily due to me being kinda on the noodly side and not too strong at the moment. Turns out it’s a trick latch and not a case of the mausoleum door being sealed. Obviously, the vamps who live here come and go all the time. It wouldn’t be bolted or welded shut. Once I find the little button to push, the lock releases. Whew. As soon as I shuffle into the crypt, the air goes cool. I push the door shut, trying to be quiet.
Online.
For a second, it’s as if the suitcase disappeared. I have to look to make sure it’s still in my hands. It went from burdensome to insignificant in an instant. Yeah, it’s good to be an undead.
Eight concrete boxes surround me, four on either side. They’re big enough to hold two coffins apiece, stacked. Most have two plaques, but two are single-occupant. All the names end in Barnaby. Giant stone slabs seal each one. Other than saying I had to move a stone too heavy for a mortal to lift, Wolent didn’t give me a lot of detail about where the slab would be.
Either he erred, didn’t know, or figured it would be so obvious he didn’t need to mention it.
Option three. Vampire eyes are really sharp. A trail of wear in the stone floor goes past all eight burial vaults to a big square hunk of rock by the rear wall, directly opposite the door in. Two metal rings embedded in the front corners show signs of frequent use as well. Yeah, this is definitely intended as a ‘door’ only vampires can open.
I set the suitcase down, grab the loops, and pull.
The stone is not light, even to my vampiric strength. Grunting, I heft it up a few inches and shuffle backward, dragging it enough to open a gap big enough for the suitcase. No need to pull it all the way. As quietly as it’s possible to do, I ease it down, cringing as the big slab teeters, balanced on the edge of the hole. No one comes flying up from underground to kick my ass, so I’m probably in the clear.
Good idea to listen for a bit.
I crawl around to the opening and peer in.
A shaft leads straight down four-ish stories to a concrete floor. The wall closest to the crypt exit has a ladder, presently blocked off by the hatch cover sticking a bit more than halfway over the hole. Fortunately, I don’t need the ladder.
Suitcase in hand, I fly up, squeeze past the stone slab, and glide down to the bottom, entering a chamber the size of a small room. It’s empty, smells like dirt, and has one way out: a corridor going straight ahead maybe a hundred feet to a larger room.
It’s utterly silent. Quiet as a tomb. Thanks, Dad. Ugh. Puns are in my blood. Good thing I can hold my breath forever. It would be loud in here. I ponder the oddity of being a vampire who has to consciously think about holding her breath. Most vampires are the reverse. If they don’t think about breathing, they don’t breathe. Such a small thing, but it’s neat to me.
To remain as ninja-like as possible, I float up off the ground and glide down the hallway. As an extra precaution, I keep my legs bent up at the knee in case they have trip wires or laser beams. Sure, I’m not playing D&D right now with a tricky game master who puts ten traps in thirty feet of corridor. This is the real world. Well, as ‘real’ as vampires, mystics, and imps can be.
The ‘room’ at the end turns out to be a round chamber from which seven other corridors span like the spokes of a wheel. An assortment of old, battered chairs, two sofas, a couple tables, and dozens of mismatched rugs fill the area. Definitely looks like a vampire ‘hang out’ spot. Sorta. It’s kinda boring, really. No computers, television, or anything to do. Maybe they have the fun stuff down one of the other hallways. Probably hard to pick up a decent WiFi signal forty feet underground.
Right. I need to get the serious hell out of here as fast as possible.
This room looks like the middle of the complex. It’s probably the best place to plant the bomb, being the center. Even better since I don’t need to get any closer to sleeping, dangerous vampires. I select one of the randomly placed carpets, a purple-and-gold one, and lift it aside to hide the case under it. A giant lump is going to be suspicious, but less so than a big steel suitcase. Couldn’t be any more obvious if they wrote ‘this is a bomb’ on it.
I ease the case down and open it, then look around at the various corridors leading away. Empty, quiet. Each passage has multiple doorways on either side. Can’t tell from here if they have recessed doors in them, or are merely openings. It’s kind of like being in an ancient tomb with slightly better interior decorating. The hub chamber is part Lost Boys, part hippie commune. Having random skulls placed around is a nice touch. Yeah, definitely a bunch of shiny, happy people living here.
This is going a lot easier than I expected, which means it’s going to go super wrong. Or not. It might’ve gone pear shaped if I forgot the katana. Or the headband. Guaranteed, if I didn’t bring my sword, I’d have gotten jumped already.
Right. Focus.
I insert the special key, giving it a turn fully right. Red numbers appear as 88:88 on the display screen for a second before reverting to 00:00. I hope whoever made this device isn’t an idiot and button pushes don’t beep like a microwave.
Hmm. A hundred feet of corridor to a vertical shaft. I could fly it in seconds. Maybe I could get away with setting the timer for one minute. Wolent said not to be too aggressive though. Hmm. Okay, fine. It’s super quiet down here.
I type in 3:00. Thankfully, the keys do not make beeps when pushed. I blink, open my eyes and sanity check the display. Three-zero-zero. Not thirty minutes, not thirty seconds. The number of the counting shall be three minutes. It shall neither be two minutes nor shall it be four minutes.
Ack. I shouldn’t make myself want to laugh.
Here goes. I lift the button shield and push the arm switch. A red LED by the timer comes on. You’d think a serious bomb maker would label it ‘armed’ or some such thing. No, this guy puts ‘boom boom’ by the red light. Points for being literal, I suppose.
The glowing red
numbers remain at 3:00, flickering faintly.
Slow exhale.
Gingerly, I turn the key back to the middle position and pull it out.
2:59
2:58
I close the suitcase and take full advantage of my vampiric speed to lock the two clasps and pull the rug over it for concealment.
Easy peasy. I stand, turn to face the way out—and a flying dude tackles me. We sail across the chamber until my back crashes against the wall. Dude’s holding me off the ground by two fistfuls of my hoodie. We’re eye-to-eye and my feet are dangling a little past his knees. He’s like a goth metalhead, but muscular, long black hair and a partially stoned, partially not-quite-awake fog in his eyes. Guy’s looking at me as if he can’t figure out if he should break my neck, pet me like a stray cat, or try to eat me.
Uh oh. Three minutes might not have been enough after all.
37
Calories are for Lesser Mortals
Used to be, I thought the scariest clock in the world was the one on the wall in school.
Having twelve minutes left in a test period with twenty questions remaining unanswered has nothing on a three-minute bomb timer. This is a great way to handle educational anxiety. I think every college student should be trapped in an underground chamber thirty feet away from a massive bomb while a half-awake vampire holds them down so they can’t get away.
If I get out of here, no test will ever intimidate me again.
Wolent’s voice mocks me. Yeah, I should have set the timer for like fifteen minutes.
So, yeah. Back to this giant dude pinning me to the wall. He totally looks like a real-life version of Nathan Explosion from Metalocalypse. Oh, Universe, you have an awful sense of humor. As in, there’s about to be an extremely real explosion here. Before I became a vampire, if I had an almost seven-foot-tall long-haired bodybuilder holding me off the ground, I’d probably have fainted. I’m still kinda close to having a panic attack. Two things keep me in control of my emotions.
One, I’m a vampire. Two, this guy doesn’t look like the lights are on upstairs.
Vampire Innocent | Book 11 | How To Stop A Vampire War In Six Easy Steps Page 30