Air of Darkness

by Rose O'Brien

  “What was that?”

  “A ward. A little extra layer of magickal protection should anyone try to mess with the car.”

  The rest of the team was bailing out of the van. All except Burdock. Alayna had ordered him to stay with the van in case they needed a pick up or back up. He was the ace in the hole, but he was pissed as hell about being left as the rear guard.

  Dumeril was dressed much the same as Alex, black fatigue pants, long sleeve shirt and combat boots, but Lu looked like she was heading to the gym. She had an oversized black racer-back tank top and stretchy knee-length exercise pants. It allowed free range of movement and could accommodate sudden growth.

  Ellie was a silent shadow that moved in behind them as they approached the bar. Her cloak was an odd material that shifted color in the light, black to blue to gray. It covered her from head to toe and the hood completely hid her face. Combined with her height, it was pretty easy to miss her.

  Alex didn’t want to know what kind of weaponry bristled under that cloak.

  Alayna was in the lead as the group hit the front door. Dumeril and Alex were right behind her. Lu and Ellie hung back a few steps.

  As the windowless metal door opened, Alex saw a small, dark outer room with a couple of very mean looking bouncers. Their recognition was plain when they saw Alayna. Their already pale faces got a shade whiter. She didn’t have to say a word, but gave them a look. The bigger of the two stepped aside to let them pass.

  The first thing that struck Alex as they entered the main room of the bar was the speed at which silence descended. It was like a mute button had been pushed.

  Rough didn’t begin to describe this place. The floors were a splintering hardwood and a gigantic bar dominated the left-hand side of the long room. The walls were covered in yet more rough wood planking. The tables and chairs scattered around the room were battered and scarred. The primary decoration and source of illumination was neon.

  There wasn’t a metal surface to be found anywhere. Alex could see why Alayna had left Burdock in the van. The big fire mage would have been a dangerous addition to this environment.

  Every eye in the place was locked on them. Some of the people at the bar had more than two. There were a couple of hulking trolls in the corner sipping from stone mugs that could have easily held five gallons. Many of the things at the bar hid beneath cloaks and hoods, but a few were pulled back to reveal green scales, slimy black skin or raw bony ridges. More than a few had frightening red eyes.

  This place made the Dusty Trail look like Disneyland.

  There was a group of bruisers in leather jackets huddled around a couple of tables, their jackets sporting the same patches declaring them “Los Lobos.”

  “Shifter biker gang,” Dumeril whispered to him.

  The vampires were easy enough to spot. Tall, slender, and all of them painfully beautiful. They grouped together like they were too good to mix with the rest of the riff raff. While they looked tough enough in their own right, they were significantly more polished than the other creatures around them, done up in leather and silk. Slumming it.

  Alayna met the stares, glares, and gazes without saying a word. Slowly the gazes slid away and conversations began to resume, but more softly than before.

  Alayna signaled the bartender, a big well-muscled vampire, and he met her at the end of the bar.

  “I run a clean operation here, Commander,” the bartender began. “No drugs. And all my licenses are in order.”

  His eyes flickered over her shoulder to where several customers sitting near the door were making their way outside.

  “I’m not here to check up on you,” she said, cutting him off. “I just need to talk to a vampire named James. Heard he’s here tonight. Then I’ll get out of your hair.”

  She leaned over the bar and shook the bartender’s hand, slipping a small roll of hundred dollar bills into his palm.

  “What’s this for?” he whispered.

  “Why don’t you decide that when I leave?” she said, an enigmatic smile touching her lips.

  “He’s in the back room,” the bartender said. “And he’s not alone.”

  “Thanks,” she said as she turned to rejoin the group.

  There was a black door on swinging hinges on the far side of the big room. Alayna nodded toward it and the team fell into formation behind her.

  She hit it with both hands and breezed into the back room like she was making an entrance to the VIP room at a nightclub. She was all smiles.

  “Heya, fellas,” she said to the seven men sitting in the room. “I need to talk to James.”

  Dumeril had caught the door as Alayna entered, letting the rest of the team through and releasing it to swing shut.

  The five guys were clustered around a rough looking table, cards in hand. Alex instantly recognized them as vampires. He was learning pretty quickly how to spot them, mostly in the way they moved.

  There was cash, a few gold chains, a watch and a couple of bags of blood on table. They’d clearly interrupted a poker game.

  A couple of the guys had on expensive suits and flashy jewelry. Alex would bet dollars to donuts that the drug dealer cars in the lot belonged to them. Two others were dressed like bikers. One had a face full of piercings and a shaved head.

  Alex quickly noted two guys seated on either side of the door, tight T-shirts stretched across bulging pecs and biceps. Shifters, if he had to guess. The muscle.

  One of the leather-clad vamps stood. He looked young, maybe early twenties, with close cropped sandy hair. He had a lean face and his dark eyes had a dangerous look. He was a dead ringer for the vampire they’d seen in Llorona’s vision. The rotting bastard who’d dumped Blanca’s body like she was garbage.

  Alex’s vision went red around the edges, and he had to hold himself back from lunging across the room at the guy.

  “Blackwell,” the big vampire said, his voice deep, with a mocking tone. A secret smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth.

  “James, I presume,” she said.

  His silence was his answer.

  “Need to ask you a few questions,” Alayna said. “We can do this here or back at the station.”

  “What if I say no?”

  Alex wanted to wipe the stupid mocking grin off his face.

  “It’s really up to you how this goes down,” Alayna said quietly, her hands raising nonchalantly from her hips.

  “Is this the part where you tell me we can do this the easy way or the hard way?”

  Alayna took several slow, swaying steps toward the tall vampire until she was close enough to touch him. In those boots, she didn’t even have to look up to meet his eyes. Alex suppressed a laugh. This guy didn’t know what he was in for.

  “I honestly don’t care what you do,” she said quietly. “We both know there’s no easy way here. I know a fucking set up when I smell one.”

  The other four guys at the table were on their feet in a split second, eyes bleeding to red. Alex heard a popping sound next to him and looked down to see that the hands of the shifter next to him were elongating and growing some very sharp looking claws.

  Lu let out a warning growl, and Alex heard a rustling sound in her direction. Dumeril had his hands behind his back, ready to draw his blades. Alex’s hand went to his .45 and he made eye contact with one of the suited vamps across the table. The ridiculously huge diamond rings on those big hands could take off half his face. Those weren’t rings; they were carefully disguised knuckle dusters.

  The tension in the room was stretched to the breaking point.

  “Just tell me one thing, one professional to another,” Alayna said. “Who hired you to kill me?”

  “Who said anything about killing you, sweetheart?” He purred. “My client wants you alive.”

  With that, he lunged at her throat, fangs stretching past his taut lips.

  Alayna dropped low, sweeping a boot out and knocking the legs out from under James. Her silver knife was in her hand in a flash and
caught the punked-out vampire in the gut as he made a move toward her from behind.

  Dumeril leapt into the fray, his two deadly kurkis emerging from the sheaths on his back, carefully hidden beneath his shirt. James was attempting to rise when Dumeril met him with a flurry of strikes from the curved knives, drawing bleeding lines across the vampire’s eyes and face.

  James screamed and fell to the floor as Dumeril stepped past him and delivered a kick to his chin that knocked him out cold.

  As the big vampire fell, a shot rang out, the sound bouncing off the wood paneling in the small room and making Alex’s ears ring. Blood was splattered across the rough wood floor and a chunk of James’s skull was missing. One of the suited vamps was holding a smoking chrome-plated .40.

  Guess whoever hired this crew didn’t want James talking about his body dumping activities.

  Alex didn’t want to risk pulling his own gun with this many friendlies in the room. Instead, he drew the handle of his asp from his belt and snapped the retractable baton to its full length. With his right hand, he drew his Ka-bar, the black-bladed knife a promise of violence he intended to make good on.

  The vampire with the gun had his back to Alex, and he took full advantage of the blind spot. The staggering blow from his baton landed before the sound of the shot had faded. The gun clattered to the floor as the asp connected with the guy’s forearm, and Alex was pretty sure he’d heard at least one bone snap.

  The vampire rounded on him, his ruby eyes gleaming with menace.

  “The Council must be hard up if they’re dragging sapiens to the fight now,” the vampire said, adjusting those face-removing rings. He was favoring his right arm slightly.

  This vamp had gone full predator, long fangs extending over his lip, and he looked thirsty.

  Alex crouched low in a fighting stance. He knew this type. He dressed like a gangster and preferred to run his mouth before a fight. This type was thick on the ground where he’d grown up. The key was to draw them in, lull them into a false sense of security and let them overextend themselves.

  Alex smiled.

  “I’m not sure what a thapien is. It’s a little hard to understand you with that lisp, dude.”

  The vamp charged, left fist swinging to connect with Alex’s jaw. Classic.

  Alex ducked under the wild swing and stepped in close, delivering a crushing blow to the left side of the vamp’s skull with the asp. He heard the satisfying crunch of bone. He followed it up with a twisting jab to the ribs with the Ka-bar. Alex felt the knife slide in like butter and sliced across, earning a scream from the vamp and spray of blood.

  Alex slammed the asp repeatedly against the back of the vamp’s neck until he went limp.

  He turned in time to see the big hairy thing wearing Lu’s clothes tackle one of the shifters by the door. They went down in a tangle of hair, fangs and claws. A flash of movement to his right caught his eye.

  Ellie was tangling with the other shifter. The tiny gnome looked like she was clearly outmatched, with the hulking shifter towering over her, long claws reaching for her, fangs dripping like he was just waiting for a taste of her blood. He was becoming more and more feline by the second, and Ellie looked like she was about to be a kitty treat.

  Alex was going to wade in when the little gnome suddenly grabbed the edge of her cloak and flicked it in the direction of the bruiser’s eyes. Blood sprayed from his face, and he clutched his eyes. She spun, and blood spurted from the arms protecting his face. He quickly lowered his arms, clutching the deep cuts on one with the hand of the other, blood dripping on the floor.

  Ellie flew straight at the shifter and the top half of his body was lost in the flutter of her cloak.

  Alex heard a gurgling scream. Ellie threw back the edge of her cloak to reveal that she was straddling the back of the shifter’s neck. A dripping red dagger was in her hand and the shifter’s neck was open from ear to ear, blood pouring down to soak his shirt.

  That’s when Alex noticed a glimmer along the bottom edge of her cloak. The entire edge was covered in a thin, flexible silver blade. A bladed cloak? Yikes.

  As the dying shifter began to drop to the floor, Ellie jumped off his shoulders, landing silently with a gymnast worthy dismount, and disappearing into the shadows at the end of the room.

  Alex turned back to see Alayna and Dumeril rising from the other two unconscious vampires. In the corner, Alex heard a loud snap and Lu rose above the other shifter, whose neck was at an odd angle, his eyes staring emptily.

  “Crowd’s getting restless,” Ellie said from the doorway.

  “Wall’s too thick to punch through in the time we have, and it would draw too much attention,” Dumeril said.

  Alex heard Alayna curse. She touched two fingers to her earpiece and he heard her voice crackle over the channel, “Burdock, we’re going to need a pick up at the front door.”

  Alex heard his affirmative come over the line.

  “Form up and stay tight,” she snapped.

  Alayna had her knife and her whip in each hand, the whip coiled to keep it off the floor. Dumeril had his kukris, Ellie had a dagger in each hand and Lu had her blood-stained claws and teeth out. Alex drew his .45 and moved his K-Bar to his left hand, gripping it like a knife fighter, dull edge back along his forearm. The asp, he stowed on his belt.

  The group formed a rough ring, with Alayna at the front, and pushed the door open slowly.

  Alex had thought Hellraisers looked like a rough bar when they’d walked in, but he was learning the true meaning of rough now.

  Almost everyone in the place was on their feet. The vamps had gone full predator, even the bartender, long fangs gleaming in the neon and red eyes glaring in the dim light. The shifters were looking predatory themselves, most having already shifted or heading there quickly. The Lobos were living up to their name and had shifted to wolves the size of small ponies. A few customers had their heads down and were trying to ignore what was happening.

  “Commander Alayna Blackwell of the Mage Corps,” she identified herself in a voice loud enough to be heard. “I’m on Council business. We walk out of here and everyone gets to keep their skins where they are.”

  The team moved as one, roughly back to back and scanning the room. The shifters and the vampires were dangerously still, hunter’s eyes trained on the team.

  It was a good bet the guys in the back room weren’t the only ones who’d been paid to be here tonight. The shifters and vampires eyeing them now were the insurance policy to make sure Alayna was delivered.

  Alex’s grip tightened on his .45. Not happening. Not while he was still breathing.

  Suddenly, one of the wolves lunged at Alayna, and she lashed out with the knife, earning a yelp from the shifter. That was all the signal the others needed. The vampires poured from the right and the wolves from the left. Alex got a couple of shots off, striking two of the vampires in the chest, but they kept coming.

  Alayna spun, flicking the whip overhead. It grew in the space of a half second and slammed down on the floor, now easily as big around as Alex’s thigh. It was like a thunderclap going off in the small space, and it left Alex’s ears ringing. The old wood floor cracked along the path of the whip, sending planks and large splinters flying into their attackers, knocking most off their feet.

  “Run!” Alayna shouted.

  Didn’t have to tell him twice. The group split to move around the rift Alayna had created in the floor, Alayna, Dumeril and Alex to the left, Lu on the right with a cursing Ellie in her fur-covered arms.

  The panel van pulled to a screeching halt at the curb just as the team pushed past the front door, the two vampire bouncers more than happy to stay out of their way. The sliding panel was open and Lu tossed Ellie in first and followed her. Dumeril climbed into the front with amazing speed and grace.

  Alayna headed for the back bumper and Alex followed, jumping aboard and grabbing onto the small ladder in back as he sheathed his knife. The .45 was in his right hand, the left wrapped
around the ladder and Alayna pressed in next to him.

  The wolves hit the front door as Burdock hit the gas. The creatures were faster than anything Alex had seen before, and he squeezed off several shots as they closed with the back of the van, chasing them down the street. Two of the wolves yelped and went down, but four more were still hot on their heels.

  Alayna whispered several words, her right hand extended toward the wolves. Alex wished she’d hurry up because those things were getting closer and the bullets weren’t doing as much damage as he’d hoped.

  Lightning crackled from her fingertips, and one of the wolves went instantly unconscious, dropping limply to the pavement.

  “Drop us at the Mustang, Burdock, and keep going. Draw them off,” she said into the headset.

  The van slowed, and Alex hit the pavement in a roll, popping to his feet, his weapon trained on where he’d seen the wolves last. Alayna hit the ground running, her descent slowed by a gust of wind that lifted her hair.

  Two of the wolves continued after the van, but one peeled off and loped toward them.

  She tossed the keys to the Mustang through the air toward Alex and said, “You’re driving!”

  With a shout and a wave of her hand, the ward she’d drawn earlier, flashed and disappeared. Hopefully it was disabled.

  He caught the keys with his left hand and sprinted for the car, vaulting over the top of the driver’s side door and sliding into the seat, thankful Alayna had left the top down.

  Alayna did the same on the passenger side, already weaving her next spell. He jammed the key in the ignition and threw it in gear.

  “Punch it, Chewie! We gotta get outta here!” she shouted.

  He laughed at the Star Wars reference. He hadn’t felt this alive in years. A big grin was plastered on his face.

  “Grrrrawr,” he shouted in a reasonable approximation of a Wookiee growl.

  Alayna tossed him a smile over her shoulder and released her spell, sending something that looked like a blue ball of goo over the back of the Mustang. It took the wolf full in the face, spreading icy crystals over its fur and freezing it to the pavement.