Relic: Mask (A Kane Arkwright Supernatural Thriller) (Relics Book 7)

by Ben Zackheim

  “It’s probably the emperor,” he said, with a sour face.

  “The Emperor of Vampires is dead,” I said.

  “Now who’s being a rookie?” Tim asked. “The emperor is never dead. He always comes back.”

  Rebel and I looked at each other. We needed to check in to see if we were on the same page. We were.

  Tim threw his hands in the air. “Oh, come on, you two! How many times have you heard about, or witnessed or caused his ‘death?’ I’ve only been at this for a few weeks and he’s already come back twice.”

  “How does he manage to do that?”

  “That’s what we’d all like to know. Imagine. Your own actions cannot lead to dire personal consequences, no matter what you do. The emperor knows he can survive anything. That’s how he keeps his power intact, even after long absences. Everyone wants to follow a man who has something they want.”

  The battle around us was getting louder, and closer and, from the sounds of it, bloodier.

  “Thanks for the information, Tim,” I said. “We have to kill you now.”

  I aimed my Glock at his heart. I had the Holy Water round lined up.

  I had to admit, I felt a little bad about this kill, but that didn’t stop me from pulling the trigger.

  The bullet hit the ground between his legs. It happened so fast, I couldn’t comprehend how I could have missed.

  My Glock hit the ground a few yards away. That’s when I realized someone had smacked the handgun out of my hand.

  A dozen Blues were on us before we could say our appropriate fucks.

  Rebel was scooped up by a couple of them and carried into some nearby trees. They dropped her out of sight and descended on her.

  I had one Glock, fully loaded, and five Blues circling me.

  I knew better than to go for kills. Vamps are hard to stop permanently. It’s better to take out their jaws so they can’t bite.

  I wasted four valuable Holy Water rounds on jaw shots. My only consolation was that one of the bullets managed to take two of them out of commission.

  The final Blue stood in front of me, hands up, as he realized I had him dead to rights.

  “It’s me!” Tim said.

  “That’s nice,” I said, and shot anyway.

  But I didn’t hit Tim. I hit the shin of a giant leg that crushed Tim under its heel.

  I didn’t know where the thing dropped from, but it was fifteen feet tall, at least. Its flesh appeared to be shiny stone that bent at the limbs in a smooth arch, like soft marble. It wore a mask of thick glass that distorted the face underneath. A single sash wrapped across one shoulder, and tied at the waist. It would have been naked if it had anything to bare. But its body was sculpted without a sex.

  I had no idea what it was, but I knew enough to turn tail and get my ass out of there. I glanced over my shoulder to see what the creature would do. But it just stood there, and watched me run.

  Good. The more immediate problem was Rebel.

  I ran toward the sounds of her fight.

  It was usually easy to find her with those grunts she released with every blow. No, she wasn’t subtle, but she was effective. Sometimes she would remember to keep the volume down, but she was still simple to track.

  I’d just listen for the loudest screams. Her victims always screamed. Rebel didn’t just slash away until her undead targets were re-dead. She’d hit them where it hurt. She’d make sure the poor, doomed victim struggled all the way to his own eternal darkness.

  I couldn’t remember much, but I did recall once asking her why she had such a gore-on for vampires. I mean it made sense, generally speaking. They wanted to control us, torture us, eat us. All that. But she put an extra something in her job when it came to them. Something personal. I worried that maybe she had answered my question at some point in our partnership. Maybe I’d just forgotten what she’d told me.

  I tripped over what was left of Rebel’s latest game. It looked like a spine, but it was hard to tell. She’d moved on. But where?

  “Can’t find you, partner,” I said through the comm.

  “Don’t need you, partner,” she shot back.

  “You see any other supers out here?”

  “Just vamps, why?”

  “Keep an eye out for fifteen foot… things.”

  “Whatever you say, Arkwright.”

  The sound of at least two vampires grunting and screaming in pain caught my attention. That was another tell-tale Rebel signal. Strike at two of them at once. I was privileged to see her get both hands stuck in the necks of two vamps in a recent skirmish. She dragged them across the ground, and parted a crowd of six undead as she went — a whole new meaning to parting the red sea.

  We’d held our ground long enough. The sky to the east lit up silver. To humans, that had always been a sign of a new day. New hope and opportunities. For vamps that sliver of light was Last Call.

  Get home now, or burn.

  The undead from both sides of the brawl became black streaks across the dawn sky. They flew low, and zig-zagged from shadow to shadow. It was a wonder to watch, even after witnessing it a few dozen times before. They had a built-in instinct that was both terrifying, and amazing.

  The sun broke the horizon. The agonized screams of the slow vamps greeted the new day.

  Filled with hope and opportunities. I hoped.

  Rebel emerged from nearby trees and shook her hands. Blood splattered all over the bright green grass.

  “There it is,” I said, pointing down the hill to the townhouse. “There’s our destination.”

  Chapter 13

  “That’s the San Francisco Spirit HQ?” Rebel asked. “Nice.”

  She pulled something out of her inside jacket pocket, and popped open a warm beer. She’d been saving it for days. It was a new habit of hers — stuff a drink somewhere, and down it when we reached a goal.

  She toasted me with her can, and chugged it down.

  I took a second look at the townhouse.

  We stood on the top of a grassy slope, once impeccably kept, but now an overgrown mess. There were no humans around to do their gardening thing anymore. The plants didn’t seem to mind.

  “Do you have a backup plan?” she asked.

  “I always have a backup plan.”

  “Care to share this one with me?” The tone in her voice told me all I needed to know about what she really meant.

  “Sure, my backup plan is to let you be you.”

  “Good plan. I still don’t see why we need Spirit all of a sudden.”

  “Spirit had the most advanced technology at their fingertips. Hell, they built some of the most advanced technology. If there’s anything left of them, we need what they have.”

  “I thought you wanted to steer clear of Spirit. We don’t work for them anymore.”

  “Changed my mind. Think about it. If we’d had their weapons in Paris we could have wrapped things up fast. Maybe even saved Dino. My stupid pride got in the way.”

  “Are we really here for their weapons and tech?” Rebel asked.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  But I realized what she was getting at the instant I finished my question.

  Fucking Rebel. She could sometimes tell what I was thinking before I could.

  “Yeah, don’t play dumb with me,” she said. “We both know the twins are still in Spirit’s custody.”

  “I guess… Yeah, maybe they could help.”

  Rebel laughed. “Maybe they could help. One of them could sniff out the scroll pieces, while the other one clears a bloody path through whoever is dumb enough to get in their way.”

  Our teammates, Cassidy and Rose, had been under Spirit’s supervision when the world went undead. I never liked the arrangement, but it’s not like I had much of a choice. Both of them drank some magicked vodka one night in Iceland, and they went from being weird, half-vampire geniuses to being a weird Wendigo and Gryphon. Cassidy was the former, and Rose the latter. Cassidy grew big enough to high-five a
troll, and hairy enough to give Skyler’s back a run for his money. Rose transformed into a winged creature of light with her face surrounded by a creepy mist, and a nose for treasure.

  The problem was that when they turned back to their human form they stretched their bodies to the limit. The last time we’d heard anything about them, they’d been put into an induced coma to keep them from shape-shifting again.

  The doctors told us that one more transformation could kill them.

  The twins’ original location was compromised when Set, god of jackasses, laid the undead smack-down on humanity. Rebel and I couldn’t be sure where they’d ended up. The San Francisco HQ was small, but secure. It was known as a state-of-the-art medical facility, with the staff to back it up. If Spirit still gave a shit about the twins, they probably moved them there.

  The entrance to the HQ was a house below us on Alamo Square. Classy place. One of those townhouses you imagine when you think of San Francisco. It had a beautiful view of downtown, and the bay. Not that anyone lived there to enjoy it. As far as official records were concerned, the place had been another feather in some Russian billionaire’s money laundering cap.

  If the vampires didn’t know about the secret hideout, we’d be golden. Even if the HQ wasn’t operating at 100%, and the twins weren’t there, we’d be able to pick up some supplies. We had close to a thousand survivors living in Paris. Comfortably, for the moment. But not for much longer, unless we found a way to start up a supply chain with other survivors.

  I found myself hoping for a lot as I stood at the bottom of the house’s front steps. Including a wish that there were agents around there somewhere. If we were going to win this war, we needed to share information. We needed to find allies, and fast.

  Rebel slapped my shoulder lightly. “Did you run into a new super out there?”

  “Yeah, it crushed our friend, Tim. Like a bug. Then it just stared at me like it wanted a medal.”

  “A new ally, then.”

  “Maybe. I didn’t get that vibe from him, though. He felt, I don’t know, wrong.”

  “So you felt him. Was it good for him, too?”

  “I think it was. Didn’t hang around to ask.”

  “Feel ‘em and leave ‘em, huh?”

  “It’s how I roll.”

  Rebel’s smile left her face as she glanced up at the house. “I don’t like this.”

  “You don’t like anything these days,” I whispered back, as we climbed the steps to the front door.

  “I don’t like you, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Do you sense something is off?”

  “You haven’t taken a shower in three days, so…”

  “Not with me, Rebel. With this.” I twirled my finger in the air. It was hard to imagine anything being off if you just went by appearances, because it was a stunning day. The sun was out for the first time since A-Day. The blue sky above didn’t show any signs of the darkness that had spread across the world below it.

  “Yeah, I do sense something, but I’m not sure what it is,” she said. “If I put my paranoid hat on, I’d say we’re walking into a death trap.”

  “Vampires rule the world, Rebel. Going to the bathroom is walking into a death trap.”

  “Going into the bathroom after you is definitely walking into a death trap.”

  “Stick to the plan. I’ll open the Swap Portal at the first sign of trouble, so be ready.”

  A deep, bellowing roar suddenly rolled over us like a tidal wave of sound.

  It came from inside the house.

  Rebel looked at me.

  I looked back at Rebel.

  “Okay then, the second sign of trouble,” I said.

  We ran up the stairs and I tried to open the door. It was locked. I searched for a terminal of some kind. Somewhere to put my palm, or get my eye scanned. As I looked under the welcome mat, Rebel blew the door down with a spell.

  In the drifting smoke, I stood up, and stepped aside. I swept my arm and said, “After you, gentle lady.”

  “Fuck off,” she growled as she walked past me. Rebel hated to be called a lady, which sometimes meant I loved calling her one. I smirked and followed her in, Glocks out.

  The house was laid out like a typical nouveau Victorian Bay Area house. But, besides the smoking wood that was once the door, everything appeared too neat. It felt like walking into a movie set after the lights were off, and the crew had gone home.

  We waited for a second roar, but none came. “You check the basement,” I said. “I’ll check upstairs.”

  I worked my way up the carpeted stairs. A small landing between floors was home to a statue of a woman in a billowing cloak, her face hidden by a hood. I stopped to check it out.

  It was familiar.

  I didn’t like it at all when I realized why it was familiar.

  It reminded me of the statues I’d seen in Paris. The ones in the room where the first scroll piece was hidden. The design was different. The execution was more refined. Modern, I guess. But the feeling behind it was the same.

  Ponderous, with the weight of the world on her shoulders, and hiding from human eyes.

  Buy why was the ugly thing in a Spirit HQ?

  I heard a shuffling noise from the second floor. Like paper being scraped across paper. I put my back to the stairwell wall, and leaned down.

  There it was again. The sound was getting closer.

  I ducked down to a crouch, and stepped up one more stair. Now I had leverage to get a bead on my latest victim.

  I stood up, turned and aimed in one move.

  And got a super close-up view of the barrel of someone else’s Glock in my face.

  “Bang,” a woman’s voice said.

  I uncrossed my eyes and focused on her.

  I put my hands down.

  I should have known.

  “Hey, Ronin,” I said.

  Chapter 14

  Rebel’s sister was as beautiful, as smart, as tough, and as competitive as my partner.

  The only difference was that I really didn’t like Ronin much. She was a bureaucratic pecker.

  “You sound so disappointed,” Ronin said, with enough attitude to almost convince me she had a sense of humor. If she did have one, it was buried somewhere deep, deep (deep) down inside that stunning body.

  “Where are the twins?” I asked, as I slipped my Glocks back into their holsters.

  “Right to the point, huh? Don’t you usually do the whole insult, try-to-be-funny thing first?”

  “It looks like you’ve taken over my role. How does it feel?”

  “Like I’m overcompensating.”

  I realized I was having an actual conversation with Ronin. Not much of a conversation, sure, but more than usual. I must have looked at her funny.

  “What are you looking at, Arkwright?”

  “You’re alone in this house, aren’t you?” I asked.

  “Why the hell do you say that?”

  “Because you’re almost happy to see me. The only way you’d be happy to see me is if I was the last man on earth.”

  “God forbid. No, I’m not alone. We have a skeleton crew here. Mostly doctors. Bored doctors.”

  “Are they taking care of Cassidy and Rose?”

  She didn’t answer me. Her long pause hit me in the stomach.

  “You left them back in Colorado,” I said. I might have growled a little bit, too.

  “What? No!”

  “Don’t tell me you lost them.”

  She pursed her lips. “Okay. I won’t tell you that.”

  I threw my arms up in the air. “You lost them! How the hell did you lose them?”

  “Settle down, agent!” she yelled in her effective commander voice. But I didn’t back down this time. She had some explaining to do.

  “Tell me everything,” I said.

  “Hello, Rebel,” she said, looking past me to the ground level below. I turned to see my partner, arms crossed, frowning at us. She didn’t answer. “Polite, as usual. I s
ee that even Armageddon doesn’t cut me any slack.”

  “That depends,” Rebel shot back. “Did you cause it?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Ronin yelled.

  “A logical one,” Rebel said.

  “I’m not undead, if you didn’t notice, dear sister.”

  “Guys…” I started. The bickering was poorly timed.

  “I did everything I could to prevent this mess. Maybe if you and your partner here were better at your jobs, we could have eliminated the threat years ago.”

  “You think this shit is our fault?”

  “Girls!” I yelled.

  “Do not call me that!” they both yelled, in perfect sync.

  I threw my arms in the air. “Boys! We don’t have time for this shit. Ronin. The twins. Speak.”

  “Don’t tell me. She lost them, right?” Rebel asked.

  “They escaped,” Ronin muttered. “While we were evacuating Colorado HQ. They were being transfered by truck with a team of three agents. The semi overturned on the highway during a vampire attack. The agents and driver were killed. The twins disappeared.”

  “What’s the latest guess where they are?” I asked.

  “Are you serious?” Ronin asked me. She started to walk away. I followed.

  “Yes, I’m serious. What can we do to help find them?”

  “You think we have the resources to find them? Kane, we don’t have enough people to keep the plumbing going around here.” She reached the end of a short hallway, and shoved a door open.

  It was an elevator. Spirit loved their elevators.

  “Cassidy and Rose are special, Ronin. You know that. I left you responsible for them. Now you’re telling me you lost them and you’re not looking for them. You see where I’m going with this?”

  “You mean you’re going to cry?”

  “Fuck you.” She shot me with her .34 caliber eyes. “Sir.”

  She got into the elevator, and I followed. “I’ll give you the best intel we have on the attack where they disappeared,” she said, arms crossed. “Beyond that, you’re on your own. But, frankly, we could use your help elsewhere.”