Unturned- The Complete Series

by Rob Cornell

  “Shit, oh, shit, shit on a stick,” Odi went on.

  As expected, we had lost speed from both the turn and jumping the curb. Plowing over the vampires had dragged our momentum down even further. I kept the pedal down, and the speedometer inched up past forty again.

  Automatic rifle fire chittered over the volume of the straining engine. My side window blasted to pieces. Something grazed my forehead. I felt the warm blood gush over my eyebrow before I felt the pain. Flying toward a building at forty-five MPH with machine guns shooting at you makes pain an easy thing to ignore.

  The boarded up entrance rocketed toward us faster than I’d expected. The howling engine and the tin can rattle of gunfire had nothing on the crack and clash of glass and wood as we plowed through the front. The metal doorframes dragged on the car as they twisted and bent. They nearly kept us from making it all the way through. But enough of them gave way and we careened into a wide hallway that looked like a perfect place to park.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I slammed my heel against the brake pedal, and if I hadn’t been wearing my belt, I would have sailed out the windshield and across the hood like a penguin on ice. My shoulder strap cut so hard across my chest I’d probably find a bruise there when I changed shirts.

  Assuming I’d make it out of this still able to dress myself.

  I held my hand out to Odi. “Gun.”

  He uncurled from under the dash and held out my pistol. I snatched it from him and threw open my door. “Go, go, go.”

  Odi became a blur. The passenger side door seemed to open itself, and a second later he stood outside.

  I smiled. Adrenaline had his vampire abilities on full alert. He had yet to grow into them to have much control. Now would be a perfect time for him to come into his own.

  I turned in the direction of the destroyed entrance. Splinters of wood and slices of glass lay everywhere. The smell of exhaust and hot motor oil hung thick. The vampires outside had given up the shadows and hurried towards us. One of them, I was a little shocked to notice, wore a suit with a red tie—the uniform Goulet’s lackeys had worn. Seemed some of them had remained loyal to their overdressed leader after his death. But this guy’s suit looked ratty. The seam of one shoulder had split. Dirt had turned his white dress shirt a pale brown. His tie hung loose around his neck.

  But the most notable accessory to his ensemble was the AK-47 he toted.

  As he came forward, he sprayed bullets left and right like someone watering their lawn with a garden hose. None of the rounds came all that close to us. But it might not take long for a lucky ricochet to hit one of us.

  Two more vamps in casual attire approached as well. They carried handguns like the pair I had run over. They took more measured shots, and once they closed range, their better aim would give us serious trouble.

  By this point, Mom had come out the back of the car on my side. She grabbed me by the arm and pulled me deeper into the hall.

  “A suit,” I said over the gunfire.

  “I know.”

  The three of us gathered at the front of the car. Black smoke oozed out the sides of the crumpled hood and smelled like burnt oil. The bumper hung askew. One headlight was dead, but the other cast a solid shaft of light into the darkness beyond. We had smashed into a lobby, and the headlight illuminated a flag-sized plaque on the far wall that read, “Healthtech,” in tall, blocky lettering.

  Healthtech. Zinctech. I guess it didn’t matter what industry you served, in this park the suffix -tech apparently had a certain cachet.

  We crouched low.

  The suited vamp emptied his rifle. The following silence seemed as thick as the smoke from my car. The vamps with the handguns had also stopped shooting. Possibly reloading, or waiting for us to pop up into view.

  I tucked my gun into my waistband at the small of my back and decided to oblige them. I drew from my power. Flame engulfed my hand. Then I shot up like a Jack in the Box and threw my fire toward the vamp with the suit. His buddies had burned down my house. I wanted to return the favor.

  He was occupied with reloading his rifle, fumbling with it, clearly an amateur when it came to assault weapons. He didn’t see the flame coming, didn’t even know it was on the way until it hit him in the face.

  The force of the blast snapped his head back as if getting punched by an ogre. The rifle flung from his hands. He went down screaming as the fire consumed him from the neck up.

  One of the vamps with a handgun turned to look at his fallen comrade.

  I conjured up another ball of fire to catch him while he was distracted, but Mom beat me to the magical punch. Her blast of pure green power ripped his arm from its socket. The heat from the blow instantly cauterized the stump sticking out from his shoulder. Unfortunately, she took off his left arm, and he held his gun in his right hand.

  He squeezed off a pair of wild shots even as he howled in pain from his lost limb.

  Beside me I heard a shout that cracked at the end like a boy’s voice during puberty.

  I dropped down into cover behind the car and glanced toward the sound.

  Odi had his hand pressed against his shoulder, blood oozing between his fingers. “That really hurt.”

  I didn’t see any of the signs I would from contact with silver. No steaming or the stench and crackle of burning vamp flesh.

  “They’re not using silver rounds,” I said.

  He scrunched his nose. “It still hurts!”

  But he would heal. Easily. More importantly was what the lack of a silver round suggested. Even though they had their secret handshake, these bloodsuckers weren’t expecting resistance from other vampires. They only wanted to keep their nest exclusive to club members.

  I grabbed Odi by his flannel shirt and pulled him close. “You can distract them while Mom and I head into the nest.”

  “Just me?”

  “They’re not using silver. They can’t harm you.”

  “Um…” He pulled his hand away from his shoulder. The wound had already stopped bleeding, and clotting had formed a crust around the edges. “This qualifies as harm, dude.”

  “Okay, sure. But they can’t kill you. And there’s only two of them, and one’s missing an arm.”

  Odi shook his head. “There’s six of them. The two you ran over, and another two waiting in the shadows.”

  Oops. Forgot about my bowling pins. As satisfying as plowing them down had been, Odi was right—that wouldn’t keep them out of the fight for long. And I didn’t need to question him about the two he saw shadow walking.

  But that meant I needed Odi running interference here all the more.

  I hooked my hand around the back of his neck and drew him closer, until our foreheads nearly met, and I looked at him hard in the eyes. “You’re not just a vampire. You’re a sorcerer. Remember what I’ve taught you.”

  “I can’t do most the stuff you taught me.”

  A couple more shots rang out. Nearer. They were moving into the building.

  “If we’re going to do this,” Mom said, “we need to get our fannies in gear.”

  I squeezed Odi’s uninjured shoulder. “You can do this. You have the power in you. Trust your gut. Get creative. You don’t have to worry about burning Sly’s house down now.”

  He cracked a smile, but his eyes still looked scared. “Yeah, I guess.”

  “Good man.” I turned to Mom. “Y’all ready for this?”

  She frowned. “Now that song will be stuck in my head.”

  “My work here is done.”

  We stayed low and sprinted further inward. We were looking for a basement door. When we juked down the hall to the left of the plaque, I instantly recognized our surroundings. It looked exactly like the hallway the vamp from my vision had walked through. Granted, most of the halls in this building would look the same by the very nature of its generic design. But I could feel this was the right way. Maybe my subconscious had picked up small details like the amount and pattern of the dirt streaks and han
dprints on the walls. The Reliant’s headlight spilled just enough light into the hall for me to make out some of those details.

  Didn’t matter. I knew to my bones that the metal door at the end of the hall led to the stairwell down into the nest.

  I ushered Mom along down the hall. I started recognizing the offices located off the hall, the broken down furniture crouched in shadows, the missing doors, and…there…the door with ‘Canton Summers, CFO’ on the plate.

  This was definitely the right hall.

  With that last bit of confirmation, I rushed the rest of the way to the door. I pulled my gun out of my waist band. Mom hefted the shotgun, ready to put the stock to her shoulder and sling slugs as easily as she slung spells. Down there, in the nest, with innocents held captive, throwing around magical fire and light could cause too much collateral damage. The guns would give us more precision if we needed it.

  The all-out destruction would come later, when we had the captives out.

  From above I heard more gunfire. I hoped I hadn’t set my apprentice up for certain doom. I had told him they couldn’t kill him—which was true when it came to non-silver bullets. But if they got close enough, if Odi couldn’t keep them at bay, they would have plenty of ways to dust him.

  I’d also told him to trust his gut. I would have to trust my own, too.

  I nodded to Mom, then I shouldered my way through the metal door and into the stairwell.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Our footsteps echoed as we scrambled down the stairs. A fresh dose of adrenaline poured into my system. Sweat rolled down between my shoulder blades, and the taste of ash filled my mouth, left over from the vamp Mom had dusted while he held me.

  We reached the bottom, same as the vamp did in my vision. The door to the nest stood before us in near complete darkness. A dingy window at the top of the stairwell let in some moonlight, but we wouldn’t have even that much once we went inside.

  I pulled out the mini Maglite I had tucked in my coat pocket, pressed the rubber button with my thumb, and a clean shaft of light cast a wide glow across the nicked and filthy door. The knob had some gunk on it, like the sweat of a hundred hands left to coagulate with dust and fungus. My palm prickled at the thought of touching it. But I was ten times more nervous about turning it.

  I didn’t know what we would face in there. I was surprised we hadn’t come up against more resistance on the way down. But maybe they lay in wait for us to come through the door. How many out of the hundred or so I had seen in my vision might be in there? Ten? Twenty? Four dozen?

  Even with all the magic Mom and I possessed, there was no chance in hell we could take on that many vampires. Especially if we wanted to avoid obliterating the hostages in the process. We would either have to fall back and fight our way out through the vamps outside, or we could stand our ground and die fighting our way in.

  I worked for the Ministry now, bitch. And the Ministry didn’t back off for nothing.

  At least, that’s what I told myself as I finally got the balls to go in.

  The door made a loud clang that echoed in the large space when I threw it open. Since the vamps had torn down all the walls, only a few support columns provided any kind of cover from the entrance. And the shadows. Lots and lots of shadows.

  I held the flashlight up alongside the barrel of my pistol and swiped it back and forth, cutting those shadows like black curtains. The Maglite had great range, even for a mini. While the light diffused some at the farthest reaches of the nest, I could still see the far wall. If any shadow walking vampires were down here, the flashlight would uncover them.

  But when I made a full sweep from north wall to south, I didn’t see any glowing red eyes or bared fangs or suits with red ties. I didn’t see any movement at all.

  Except for the slight twitch from some of the people hung from the joists. I could hear the creak of their ropes as their minute struggles made them sway slightly like long, bloody pendulums.

  I couldn’t believe the vampires didn’t have anyone down here. With the sentries up top clearly ready for some kind of attack, I thought for sure a near equal force would hold the fort inside. Maybe they never expected anyone to get through. Especially at night. What fool would chance going into a vampire nest during the time all the vampires were awake?

  (Besides us, of course.)

  I was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. I moved in, swinging the flashlight and gun into the near corners I hadn’t had a good angle on from the doorway. Dust motes twirled in tiny vortexes in the beam, but the light revealed nothing else.

  The mats some of the vamps slept on remained scattered across the floor. That overwhelming stench of body odor I had smelled through my host vamp during my ride in his noggin still permeated the air, but not nearly so badly. I took shallow breaths while I grew acclimated to the stink. Barfing would have been so inconvenient right then.

  “Quiet,” Mom said.

  “Too quiet,” I said, unable to help myself.

  Outside the flashlight’s glow, I couldn’t see Mom’s expression very well, but I could feel her rolling her eyes at me.

  We spent the next few minutes moving through the room, checking behind every column, rechecking every dark corner.

  No vamps.

  A soft moan off to my left startled me. My heart seized for an instant. A hard breath lodged in my throat, I spun, gun up and ready to fire.

  One of the captives hung a half dozen feet away. Her eyes stared up at me from her upside down face. Her lips moved, but her voice was little more than a faint creak, much like the sound of the rope tied around her ankles as it turned from side-to-side less than an inch in each direction.

  I moved close to her, crouched down. The smell of rotten wounds turned my stomach. I tried not to show my disgust, but I doubt I managed. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

  She blinked a few times, then her eyes rolled into the back of her head.

  The flawed logistics of my rescue plan hit me then, and I wanted to punch myself for not thinking this through better.

  “How are we going to get these people out of here?” I looked up at the ceiling. Long, hooded fluorescent lamps hung from chains at various intervals throughout the nest, but most of them didn’t have bulbs. Like the broken streetlights outside, the vamps didn’t need them. “How are we going to get them through the vamps upstairs?”

  Mom didn’t say anything. Probably because there wasn’t a good answer. I had fucked up. No wonder there weren’t any vampires down here. If someone got in, what the hell could they do?

  Not much. Except watch their mortal victims suffer.

  “Damn it,” I shouted. My voice echoed back to me. I didn’t know its angry edge. It sounded nothing like me.

  “You meant well,” Mom said.

  Cold comfort. Cold as a damn corpse.

  I ran my hands through my hair. “We’ve got to get Odi, before they chew him up. This was pointless. The whole fucking thing. Pointless. I’m not going to let the kid suffer for my stupidity.”

  I had no sooner said it when a boom erupted above us. Grenade? Missile launcher? Gods, I couldn’t fathom. But I had the sick feeling I had seen the last of Odi.

  The silence that followed hurt. It was so complete. Not even the hanging victims made a sound. Nothing made a sound except my angry breathing.

  The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

  I heard the click of Mom swallowing. “Sebastian?”

  I looked at her. I kept the beam aimed at her feet to keep from shining it in her eyes. The light cast shadows across her face that deepened her tense expression.

  “Quiet,” I whispered.

  “Too quiet.”

  I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand and pivoted toward the entrance to the nest. They had overwhelmed Odi. Probably killed him. Any moment, they would come rushing down the stairwell to finish us off. We could take on six vamps, assuming the six we knew about were the only ones coming. By this point, the
y could have called in reinforcements. They had a hundred vamps to choose from.

  Part of me felt I deserved what was coming. I would fight. I didn’t give in to vamps, no matter how pathetic I felt. But Mom didn’t deserve to die because of my crappy planning. I would fight ten times as hard to see her out of this.

  I dropped the flashlight to the floor and positioned it with my foot to aim it at the door. Then I raised my gun in my right hand and drew flame into my left. I channeled my fear, my anger, my jagged guilt over what I had brought onto my family and my apprentice…my friend. I injected those emotions into my magical energy.

  My flame turned from orange to the clean blue of a gas fire’s core.

  Let. Them. Come.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  I held my breath as I listened for their footsteps in the stairwell. I held it to the point where I had to inhale or risk my lungs bursting. My head swam as I sucked at the air. The mixed smell of sweaty socks forgotten in the back of a gym locker and the gangrenous stink of pus-filled wounds ran straight up my nose and turned my stomach inside out.

  I clenched my teeth to keep from throwing up. When I had control of my swimming guts, I glanced at Mom. She had the stock of the shotgun pressed firmly against her shoulder, the barrel pointed at the entrance.

  “Where are they?” I asked.

  She opened her mouth, but a sound on the other side of the door stopped her.

  The tension from both of us coalesced into a magical buzz that rattled my teeth. We were both charged and ready to unleash. But holding that kind of power in check for too long could wear us out faster than if we threw every ounce of that energy at an attack.

  The door handle clicked. In the indirect light from the flashlight on the floor, I could see the knob turn. I readjusted my hold on my pistol. The sweat between my hand and the grip made me feel like the gun might slip from my grasp the first time I pulled the trigger.

  The growing heat from my blue flame drew more sweat across my brow. The salt from that sweat mixed with the gash above my eyebrow that I had forgotten about until I felt the sting.