by ST Branton
But whoever it was, they were in my way. I dropped into a crouch and crept a little closer as I strained to see what lay ahead. Two humanoid shapes moved purposefully across the snow, obviously patrolling the perimeter. I didn’t recall encountering anyone out there on the way in. Maybe Delano still tried to stomp me out while he knew he still had the chance. Like the coward he was, I thought acidly.
But instead of the Gladius Solis on my hip, what I had was a busted leg and clothes that had now almost frozen to my body. Even I wasn’t crazy enough to try this fight. I turned with every intention to avoid this particular encounter. My shitty balance on that wounded leg, however, had other plans. Before I really had a chance to comprehend what had happened, I was on my face atop a rough pillow of ice crystals. The patrolmen were on me by the time I managed to roll over.
They were standard-issue vamps and their greyish skin held a washed-out look against the winter landscape. Each grabbed hold of an arm and shoved me deeper into the snow.
“Look at that,” one of them said and grinned until his fangs caught the watery moonlight. “It’s been a long time since we found a little snack wandering around these parts.”
The other one chuckled. He leered into my face. “It’s about damn time. I’m starving.” He lifted a skinny hand and brushed the crystallizing strands of hair out of my face. “I bet a pretty thing like you has some sweet blood running through those veins.”
I spat at him. Although valiant, it was a weak effort and he simply laughed again. His buddy suddenly grabbed him by the shoulder. “Hey, wait! I know you.” His eyes burned with pure, vicious greed. “You’re the one Delano is looking for!”
“Well, maybe he should’ve killed me on the first try,” I answered.
They yanked me to my feet. As soon as I had some range of motion back, I twisted away from their grip and lashed out with my fists. The vamps were quick, but even in my current condition, I managed to be faster. The knuckles on my right hand connected solidly with a jawbone. The guy’s head snapped back.
He growled. “When I’m done with you, bitch, you’re gonna wish we were allowed to kill you.” His narrow, bony shoulder jammed into my stomach and briefly knocked the wind out of me. I kicked as hard as I could. The toe of my boot struck bone, and I immediately kicked out again.
The first vamp cursed. “You damn devil woman! Be a good girl now and come with us.” He struck me across the face so hard I saw stars and the color leaked out of my vision for a second. I felt all my limbs go slack. He hitched me forward and prepared to throw me over his shoulder. As he lifted me by the waist, I rammed my knee up into his chest and he buckled. I might’ve followed suit, but his buddy caught me by the back of the jacket.
“It looks like someone ought to teach you a lesson,” he sneered. His fist landed under my left eye, but instead of recoiling like he expected, I seized his wrist and broke it. He released a howl of pain. I held on to his arm even as he tore at me with the claws on his good hand and raked trails of blood down my cheek. Finally, I planted my foot into his ribs and he careened backward to drop into the snow. The broken wrist flapped uselessly at his side.
I now stood over him, my boot poised to crush his chest. For a couple of seconds, his bloodshot eyes registered the uncertainty and the fear to which I’d become accustomed. But his expression flipped instantly. Without warning, he grabbed my leg with all the strength he could muster and anchored me in place.
“What the—” Caught by surprise, I wavered. The joint of my knee twisted and a searing pain blazed through the cap. “You son of a bitch!”
I lunged forward to throw my weight down on his heart, but the other goon leapt onto my back from behind. We both toppled forward. A crack was quickly followed by a weird, raspy groan and I found myself face to face with a brand-new corpse.
The vampire under my boot had gotten his chest reshaped after all.
I rolled onto the ground and thrashed furiously to escape the second vamp. He was a tenacious bastard and had driven his claws into the backs of my shoulders like meat hooks. Fortunately, at this point, I was practically frozen solid from my trip down the river and I couldn’t feel much of anything—even the momentary agony in my knee had numbed—until a clammy hand wound around my throat and tightened its grip.
A new wave of panicked adrenaline surged through me. I threw myself back against the rock-solid dirt in an attempt to bash his head in or snap his neck, whichever happened first. After a few unsuccessful attempts, I grew impatient and simply smashed the back of my head into his nose as hard as I could.
The hand on my neck finally loosened and he sprawled backward onto the snow. I sat up, gasped, then turned and pinned him down.
“You’ll never get away,” he slurred through the torrent of blood from his broken nose. “Delano has his whole army looking for you. They’ll smoke you out like—”
I snapped his neck mid-sentence, struggled to my feet, and stumbled away into the darkness. The brief rush of energy I’d felt in the fight ebbed fast. Drops of blood scattered behind me. My eyelids felt heavy and I knew I was at the end of my rope.
Press on, Victoria. You do not have far to go. Marcus spoke his encouragement calmly but there was an urgent undertone. He knew as well as I did that there was no way I’d be able to take Delano on in this condition. I’d had my shot and I failed. I blew it. The only place left for me to go was back to the truck. All the reinforcements in the world couldn’t help me now.
The one thing Delano wasn’t able to take away from me was the nectar in my veins. By the time I finally saw the trucks still parked where we’d left them, the worst of the bleeding had more or less abated. The cold still dragged my every movement and the cut from the Gladius Solis continued to throb, but the rest of me at least hurt a little less. I climbed numbly into the driver’s seat and fumbled for the key. I didn’t expect to find it, but there it was, tucked deep in my pocket. I frowned at it for a moment and wondered how the hell it had stayed put, especially during my little raft trip downstream.
After a few bemused moments, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth and shoved the key into the ignition. The engine grumbled for a moment or two but it turned over reluctantly.
What is your next course of action? Marcus asked. He sounded like he didn’t think there was much left to do but tactfully left those thoughts unspoken.
“What else?” I pulled the smoking man’s tablet out of my coat. The screen blinked on, still set to the map he’d shown me. “I’m going to the fucking Himalayas.”
Chapter Seventeen
The drone of the tiny airplane’s propeller filled my head as I sat in the back and made every effort not to look out the window. Strong winds buffeted the craft from every side. The sky was nothing more than an ocean of grey mist and huge, heavy raindrops spattered against the glass. Once or twice, I swore I caught a glimpse of a far-off flash of lightning.
The seat restraints were tight across my lap and chest, but I still pitched and rolled with every gust. My stomach constantly threatened to auto-eject out my nose. I hadn’t eaten at all that morning, and for once, I was glad. I was also relieved that there were no other passengers besides me—not that there was much room. The only empty seat was right beside me, squeezed in alongside the opposite window. It was hard to imagine that the plane could carry the weight of another person.
The aircraft dipped to the side and almost knocked me horizontal. I clutched the seat straps for dear life and shut my eyes tightly. Up front, the pilot and co-pilot chatted back and forth in a language I didn’t even recognize. The glow of the cockpit dials provided the only light, and that wasn’t much. I tried to pretend that they sounded confident, like everything would be fine and they’d done this crap a million times, but there was no way to disguise their agitation. Brief periods of silence were shattered by bursts of nervous talk, and switches flipped intermittently.
None of it reassured me at all.
We nose-dived a little. My stomach jerked a
nd went into freefall for two seconds. In the privacy of my own head, I pictured Namiko’s face and half-jokingly cursed her. Without her strategic networking, I wouldn’t be flying toward Tibet, inching ever closer to the mythical mountain range where I was headed. But I also had her to thank for this shaky spin in a tin can with two guys afraid of mountain weather. She’d had to promise them extra payment to get them to agree to the trip at all.
That should have been my first red flag.
I continue to be astounded by the miracle of human flight, Marcus said, his voice full of wonder.
The plane bucked on a vicious air current. One of the pilots uttered something that sounded a hell of a lot like a curse. I swallowed the newest wave of nausea.
“That makes one of us,” I muttered. “At least you’re having fun.”
I have found that many potentially lethal experiences are much more enjoyable after death has already occurred, he said cheerfully.
I took a deep breath to steady my nerves. “There’s a sentence I never expected to hear.”
It was hard to focus on Marcus’s lighthearted banter. Every creak from the airplane’s metal body made me think of nuts and bolts raining down into the clouds while our structural integrity decreased by the minute. The thought that I might soon plummet to earth only heightened my urge to puke. I was fairly sure there’d be no river to cushion the impact this time, and no creepy smoking man to reorient me.
Namiko was most generous to procure passage into the mountains. Marcus blithely held up his end of the conversation, ignorant to the fact that we hurtled through a storm, probably surrounded by mountains, and that if we veered even slightly off course, we’d die in a fiery crash on the side of some lonely peak, never to be found.
“I wouldn’t call it generous,” I said, my teeth clenched. “I mean, okay, I would. In the sense that she didn’t have to do it. But this wasn’t what I had in mind when I asked.”
The plane—which had listed at a sickening angle for at least five minutes—finally righted itself, and my whole body went limp from the release of massive tension. I flopped my head back on the headrest, my eyes still shut, and breathed a little easier.
Namiko had done her best in a bad situation. I knew that. I had arrived at her resistance base in the Bay Area after a few harrowing days of dodging Delano’s minions as I worked my way west. I scrounged food wherever I could find it but otherwise, never left the truck. To stop driving meant to think about the situation in granular detail, so I only slept when I couldn’t force my eyes to stay open any longer.
On some level, I couldn’t afford to worry about what was going on at the temple or how long it would take me to get back. I simply didn’t have the energy or the emotional fortitude to consider any of that, especially not Deacon.
I told myself over and over that he was fine, that they’d thrown him in some shitty jail cell so they could kill me in front of him later. It was still not the best reassurance but way better than the glaring alternative. The farther I drove, the more convinced I became that I was doing the right thing after all. I could either believe in my choices or fall into despair.
My self-distraction techniques worked well enough to carry me to the west coast without going insane, but not well enough to keep me from looking like shit warmed over on Namiko’s doorstep. She’d opened the door, taken one look at me, and said, “Vic, come in before you die out there.” She fed me a meal, gave me a room, and slowly coaxed the whole story out and unraveled the tangled threads of my narrative with the patience of a saint.
At the end of it all, she’d said, “Listen, I think Delano’s beyond our capabilities here, but I’ll see if we can’t dispatch some people to the Midwest to keep the weaker minions out of your way. And I can get you to South Asia. I think.”
“You’re my fucking hero,” I had said to her—before she booked my flights. The plane shuddered yet again, and I managed a strained laugh.
I thought you were not having fun, Marcus said.
“Does it look like I’m having fun?” I shook my head. “It’s merely funny that I’ve spent months fighting a shitload of gods, narrowly escaped by the skin of my damn teeth, and now I’m about to die in the mountains. And it won’t even be my own fault.”
You will be fine, Marcus told me. You have proven that it will take much more than inclement weather and a vehicle of dubious endurance to remove you from the earth.
I chuckled. “I guess that’s true. But wouldn’t it be the ultimate burn on Delano if I survived his beating, only to be killed in a stupid plane crash? He’d be so mad.”
He would indeed be furious. Marcus acknowledged. The price for such a hollow victory, however—
“I know, I know. I’m not hoping for it. I merely hate that guy so much.”
Evidence indicates that the feeling is mutual.
The airplane continued to fight through the storm, and I continued to wish there was a barf bag somewhere nearby. Finally, the ride smoothed out a little and a wave of blinding light washed over us as we burst through the edge of the clouds. The pilots broke into a cheer of thankful relief. They signaled to me and pointed down toward a rocky, snowy landscape that gave way to broad fields before they spoke on their radios and we began our descent.
The narrow airstrip materialized out of what looked like a brown smudge in the field and I held my breath on the approach. It was nothing more than well-packed soil, and it looked slick. The landing gear dropped. The earth rushed up to meet us. I didn’t breathe again until the aircraft touched down and jostled me against my seatbelt one last time.
“Holy shit,” I said out loud. “We made it!”
See? And you are no worse for wear.
“That’s debatable,” I said.
The aircraft taxied to a stop at the end of the strip. I undid my straps, opened the door, and almost fell out onto the side runner.
“Thank you!” I called to the pilots and waved. I had to hand it to those guys. As terrifying as that flight had been, they had pulled it off in the end.
They waved back, grinned, and shouted something in their native tongue. I retrieved the backpack I’d brought from Namiko’s base, hefted it onto my shoulders, and jumped down to blessedly solid ground.
The field sprawled in all directions around me. In summer, it was likely lush and green, perhaps repurposed farmland. At the moment, it lay dormant under a patchy cover of snow, not unlike the land surrounding Delano’s temple. The major differences were the mountains that rose up in the distance everywhere I looked.
Onward! Marcus proclaimed. To the next stage of this new adventure.
“Yeah.” I walked away from the airstrip and adjusted my stride to compensate for the lingering ache in my leg. “Do you know what the craziest thing is?”
What?
I smiled grimly. “I think that was the easy part.”
Chapter Eighteen
I walked until the sun hung low in the sky and saw no signs of life except ruts in the dirt road that headed north from the airstrip. Back at Namiko’s, I had done some research on the general area so was decently prepared for the enormous sense of isolation that weighed down on me as I traveled.
She had inspected the smoking man’s tablet, declared it insufficient for my needs, and gave me a new GPS unit, which I consulted regularly. The tablet was still tucked away in an inside pocket of my coat. I had half a mind to throw it back at him the next time I saw him.
This is a stark but beautiful country, Marcus observed. I myself have little personal experience with mountainous regions.
“You’re in luck,” I said. “Something tells me we’re about to get intimately familiar with this one.”
If nothing else, we’d be stuck there until I managed to finagle a way home, but I pushed those worries aside. There was no sense in freaking out about that when we had only arrived. There was, apparently, business to handle first. I didn’t know what that business was, but past experience had taught me that things tended to reveal themselve
s along the way. My job was to grin and bear it until that happened.
I continued along the dirt path, confident that at least the blinking indicator on my GPS led me in the right direction. The slope of the road began to climb. Most of me didn’t have a problem with that, but it wasn’t long before my bum leg put in a complaint.
“Damn that sword,” I muttered and gritted my teeth against the dull, persistent pain.
The Gladius Solis is a fearsomely effective weapon. It has served you well many a time.
“Yeah, but it’s not supposed to work against me,” I replied. “That feels like a betrayal.” I was quiet for a minute as I considered this. “I wonder if this is how Kronin felt when he died.”
Worse, perhaps. He knew that everything he had worked to build would be gone in that instant. We are fortunate to have been given another chance.
I crested the top of the hill and looked out toward the craggy horizon. The road wound down until it disappeared from view as it stretched toward the base of the distant mountains. I sighed. “It’s gonna be a long walk.”
My eye caught a cluster of shapes huddled beside the road. A few dim lights flickered around them. “Hey, that looks like a village!” I double-checked my GPS, but the settlement was so small that I wasn’t surprised it didn’t show up on maps. Reinvigorated, I hurried toward the structures which appeared to have been constructed out of not much more than mud and stone.
Incredible. From the miracle of flight to a primitive hovel in the space of an afternoon.
“I’m so glad no one else can hear you right now,” I said. “Don’t talk shit about these guys. They might be our only help.”
I was merely commenting on the condition of their civilization, Marcus replied, slightly huffy. I agree that their knowledge may be indispensable.
I rolled my eyes. “Then don’t make this weird.” I smoothed my hair and straightened my clothes as I approached the boundary of the village. Most of the buildings appeared to be residential, at least to my uneducated eye. There were significantly more of them than I had first assumed, stacked on top of and directly adjacent to each other as they climbed a hillside. Up close, they were colorful, too, although the hues had been washed out by exposure to the elements. Rainbow strings of cloth flags fluttered over the main street.