by Lily Luchesi
“Good idea,” Sean said. “I’ll take the lead up the stairs and wound them as I’ve been. Do you think they got anything but vamps in here?”
“I don’t think shifters would side with them, and witches would never. So we should be facing only vampires and maybe a few suicidal humans,” Angelica replied. She followed Sean up the stairs, Danny bringing up the rear. She was glad none of them were human: they’d never have been able to climb a hundred flights of stairs while fighting the Undead if they had been.
Angelica could smell fresh blood, and she knew Danny could, too. There were others in the stairwell, but where? How far? Distance was skewed in here, where the metal staircase wound higher and higher. The landings could barely fit the three of them comfortably, so if the vamps wanted to surprise them they’d need to use projectiles from the flights above. There was nowhere else to hide.
“I suddenly feel like I’m in a first-person shooter RPG,” Sean said.
“In English?” Danny asked.
“A video game,” Angelica hissed. “Now quiet.” There was rustling, and then a metallic clink of a lock engaging before two vampires leapt onto the landing above them, snarling and feral like the first two.
Sean was on it, shooting them and causing them to fall off the landing. Angelica caught one midair, her sword slicing clean through its neck. The corpse landed below them, and didn’t decay.
The second one landed behind Danny, who took care of it. This one, also, didn’t decay.
“This guy has on a uniform for the restaurant here,” Danny said, always the seasoned detective. “These aren’t our vampires, Angie. Vincent and Daniel are turning them from the humans in the building. I bet there are no mortals left here. He got to them all.”
“Which means we’re basically dealing with animals, because if he turned them and left them to rise overnight, they haven’t gotten their bearings.” She turned to Sean and said, “Freshly turned vamps who are left to rise on their own start out like animals and need someone to help them return to their human minds. That’s partly how my father went evil to begin with, and why most vampires lose their human emotions.”
“So we could be facing thousands?” Sean asked.
“Maybe. Conserve your ammo and start using your blades where you can,” she told him. “Let’s keep moving.”
The stairwell had always been stifling hot, and Angelica felt sweat bead her brow by the time they had reached the tenth floor. Just as she was wondering if it would keep rising, even in February, doors above them began to bang, and five vamps jumped down, surrounding them on all sides. Two were feral, but the other three were older. Angelica recognized them as former employees.
“Time’s up, Empress,” one said, her smile one of triumph.
“You picked the wrong side, fuckface,” she replied without missing a beat, taking her gun into her free hand and firing off two shots, one hitting her in the shoulder, and the other hitting the feral one behind her right in the forehead.
Danny was fighting the two behind him, and she turned to give him some assistance with her gun, while he finished them off with his blade. Sean was right, this did feel a bit like a video game, but the stakes were their souls.
Sean took his dagger out and decapitated the feral vamp with the bullet wound, but the woman who had taunted Angelica flashed her claws and sliced his shoulder, the ripping of fabric and flesh echoing in the small hall.
He cried in pain and fell back into the wall, leaving room for Angelica to move in. She cut the vamp’s hand off and then her head; she heard it bounce all the way down to the ground floor. One left.
She turned toward the last vamp, who now looked less confident since he was standing alone. Mustering up his courage, he ran right at her, but she was ready. Using as much of her speed as she could in so small a spot, she leapt over him, hanging onto the railing of the flight above them. She dropped back down and cut his head off from behind, and he decayed almost instantly.
“You okay?” she asked Sean.
He nodded. “It’ll heal itself in a minute or two.”
“Next group, we need to feed,” she told Danny.
Daniel watched the goings on from the security cameras in Angelica’s office, frowning. “Isn’t this a bit too easy for them?” he asked.
“Not at all. They will tire, even if they feed from the vampires,” Vincent said. “And besides, I have a plan to weaken their only real defense: the fact that they work together so smoothly.”
Daniel looked over at his sire and said, “Want to fill me in?”
Vincent smirked, looking eerily like his daughter, and said, “No need. You will need to save your strength for Angelica. Let me worry about the siren and that bloody detective.”
Five more flights passed without incident. Angelica even had time to stop and wipe her sword off on the clothes the vamps had been wearing.
She felt a little more confident, but tamped it down. It was not the time to get cocky, because then she was just as bad as her enemies. They were always certain they could beat her, and that was their downfall.
There was a chance they could lose this battle, and she couldn’t start to forget that the odds here were greater than any she had ever faced before.
“Hang on,” Danny called as she was about to keep walking. “This guy has weapons. We might need them.”
Angelica went back and bent down to help them. Her hand brushed Danny’s as they both reached for his firearm at the same time, and she felt a wrenching pull in her gut and realized that this was how Danny must feel when he got a vision. Because she was touching him, she could feel it, too, and now was about to witness whatever he was.
Vincent was in the library, standing before this vamp, whose name was Carlos. “You’re the current PID librarian, are you not?”
Carlos nodded.
“And rumor has it you discovered a key piece of information regarding vampires, didn’t you?” Vincent asked.
Again, a nod. Blood-sweat beaded on his forehead. “It was an accident. There was a book here and I was reading. Bored. And that’s when I came across a more recent prophecy, from a woman named Fiorina in England. She gave the prophecy in the early twenty-first century.”
“Read it to me.” Vincent’s tone brooked no arguments. And while his voice was calm and pleasant, there was a hard edge underneath that could instill fear in the most stallworth warrior. Just like Angelica’s voice could do. The similarities between the two were never extremely apparent to the casual observer, but with the two of them both on Earth now, they were hard to miss.
Carlos went to the shelves and pulled out a leather-bound book. “Um, it’s here. … Got it.
“‘In order for the vampiric Empire to remain, they must protect their bloodline. For if none of the original line remain, the vampires shall fall, never to rise again’. I think it means —”
“I know what it means, you vile little imbecile,” Vincent snapped. “It means if Angelica, Detective Mancini, and young Daniel all were to die, then every vampire would cease to exist.”
Just as fast as they had been sucked in, Danny and Angelica were ejected from the memory. They both stared at each other, unable to speak at the moment.
“What happened?” Sean called, worry edging his voice.
“Was that true, do you think?” Danny asked, his voice hushed.
“I knew Fiorina,” Angelica said. “She was almost as revered as Firenze was, and was an advisor to the UK Coven Kings Edelstone and Sinclair. It’s true.” She stood up shakily. “We need to tread even more carefully. Protect our necks … literally.” A shiver went down her spine. The last three vampiric royals were now under one roof, and three well-timed blows could end the entire species.
“Like we needed anything else on our heads,” Danny said. He stood up without taking any of the weapons with him. Angelica didn’t blame him.
“What new Hell are we in for?” Sean asked.
“Basically if the two of us die, and then you are all t
hat’s left to take out Daniel … that means all vampires die. Every last one of them,” Angelica said.
“What?” Sean cried, and then clapped a hand over his mouth. “You’re joking!”
“Yes, because that’s what I love to do when my ass is on the line: lie about genocide,” Angelica snapped. “Come on. We have to keep moving.” She took the lead this time, sword in one hand and gun in the other. She listened at each stairwell, but she knew that the next few floors were apartments. There was a good chance that these would be “dead” floors, until they hit the PID labs on level sixty. The PID occupied levels sixty to one hundred, and any of those could spill forth a number of vampiric enemies.
God help us.
11
Around level eighty, Angelica’s suspicions were rising, as well as the heat. She wished she’d been able to drink from the last vamps, but that had been sixty floors ago and it was far too late to turn back.
Why was Vincent being so silent? If this was her, she’d send a few vamps every couple floors, tire out her enemies to have them either surrender or be easy to defeat in a battle. That was what he had taught her when she was eighteen and he was still a mortal. Why change his own tactics now? Because she’d anticipate them?
“I can hear voices. Hushed, but many,” Danny said. He was still in the rear, and had his ear pressed to the door on the level below Angelica’s. Sean was standing closer to Danny than Angelica, and she realized she must have been walking too fast out of nerves.
“Open it?” Sean asked Angelica.
“No. If they’re not attacking, don’t —” She was cut off as a keening sound hit her ears above her, and then another started below.
“The doors are gonna blow!” Sean cried. “Everybody duck!”
Sean and Danny hit the floor, and Angelica ducked below the railing as the doors on the levels above and below them exploded, sending shrapnel flying everywhere. A few pieces cut Angelica’s face, and she didn’t care about healing them. She needed her strength saved for bigger wounds. Six vampires began to enter the stairwell from the level above Angelica, and eight came through where Danny and Sean were standing.
So this was his plan, Angelica thought. Crowd us in and smoke us out. She swung her falchion every which way, not caring what she was chopping as long as it had fangs and claws.
“You two okay?” she called.
Danny grunted and called back, “Barely.”
Gunfire sounded, and she was certain that was Sean, but her view was obscured.
“Try to get up a level,” she said. “I’m down to three here.” One of the three began to run away, looking back over its shoulder to see if the others were following. Neither did.
“No you don’t,” she muttered, shooting it in both knees while nearly cutting one of the other vamps in half. The vampire fell, and the other one still upright was decapitated with a quick turn.
She glanced down to see that Danny and Sean were down to the last two vampires and then ran to get the one that thought it could actually escape her.
Its knees were healing and it was starting to run. Angelica stepped on the wound, digging her silver-tipped heel into it. The vampire screeched and she cut its head off there, silencing it permanently.
She ran to the next level, and the heavy footsteps below indicated that Danny and Sean were following, so being one level ahead should be no problem to prevent that from happening to them again.
The door above her opened and she leapt up, pulling herself up easily by the railing. The vampires looked startled at her sudden appearance, and that was just what she wanted.
Though she’d never taken lessons, she pirouetted like a ballerina and got their heads off in one smooth arc and then there was a loud banging below. She looked down over the railing to see ten more vampires had come through the landing door on the floor between where she stood, and where the guys stood.
“Fuck!” she cried. The staircase was too cramped to get down by them, and vampires were running up to fight her, too.
She could see Danny and Sean being backed up into a corner. There were seven vamps on them, and that might be too much.
She saw Danny and Sean glance at her, and then at the doorway behind them, that hadn’t opened up at all. It hit her that they’d need to open that door to get more room to fight, and her heart leaped into her throat at the thought of being separated for even a moment.
“Hold it open,” she called to them, her sword clashing with the vampires’ claws. “Don’t let it close!”
“Right!” Sean called back as Danny kicked the door open and used the decapitated head of a vampire to keep it wedged that way.
These vampires up here weren’t feral. They were talented, PID-trained fighters, and Angelica was disgusted that her people would turn this quickly and easily. Traitors. They deserved every single wound they got.
The level between her and the guys had even more vampires spill out, and she knew that she couldn’t face them all alone. She had to run, as much as she hated it. More than anything, she didn’t want to leave Danny and Sean so far below, but at least they had gotten the vamps. Corpses littered the landing, and they’d need to walk over them to get further ahead.
“We’re coming, Angie,” Danny called, beginning to climb over the bodies.
Then everything went awry.
A vampire jumped down, dangling from the landing and kicked out at Danny, sending him flying backwards into Sean. Both men fell into the doorway, and three more vamps followed the first into the room. They kicked the severed head away from the door and it swung shut, trapping Danny and Sean behind it.
They were gone, and Angelica was on her own.
Danny felt Sean shove him away as both men scrambled to their feet. The room they were in was dark, and Danny didn’t care where it was, as long as these vamps that had come in with them were dead so they could get back to Angie.
In his rage and fear, he killed two quickly, a blade in each hand.
“Show off,” Sean said, still only able to kill one vamp at a time. Danny knew that he was much better with a gun and didn’t have Undead agility. He hoped the siren wouldn’t wind up being a liability.
When all the vamps lay dead, Danny went to exit the door, but it stuck.
“What’s wrong?” Sean asked. He wasn’t concealing his emotions and Danny could feel the worry radiating off of him like a foul odor.
“Stand back,” Danny said, rearing back and running at the door to break it open as he had during many investigations with the Chicago Police. Nothing. “What the Hell are these doors made of?”
“Reinforced steel,” Sean replied. “Angie was apparently very concerned with burglars getting in.”
“Well, we’re trying to get out, not in. Are the locks manual or automatic?” Danny asked, bending down to check them himself.
“They’re both. They can be manual, but there’s a switch in my office that will lock them all in case there was ever a lockdown situation,” Sean explained. “Vincent must have found it.”
“Think we can shoot them?” Danny asked.
“Unlikely. We’ll just wind up shooting ourselves because the bullet will ricochet,” Sean replied. He looked at Danny, and Danny had to look away. The emotions radiating from the siren were nearly overpowering. “We’re on our own, Mancini.”
“So’s Angelica,” he said, his voice nearly a whisper. “And try to put your shields up. I’m worried enough without having to take on your concern, too.”
“Sorry.” Sean actually did sound contrite. “I’ll try. For now, let’s see where we are and go from there.” He moved away, and Danny forgot that he couldn’t see in the dark.
“Light switch is three inches up and four inches over,” he told him.
Sean flicked it and Danny blinked a few times at the sudden assault on his eyes. He hadn’t looked at the room they were in at all, but now he saw that this was the hall with the apartments meant for PID agents. Dozens of doors, all possibly concealing dozens of ad
versaries.
“This wasn’t random. Vincent planned this to the letter,” Danny said. “He wanted us separated from Angelica, and he wanted us here, where he could get his new lackeys to stalk us and attack at a moment’s notice.”
“He would’ve been one formidable General if he’d been in the war,” Sean commented, checking the bullets in his gun.
“Angelica would be one formidable supervillain if she followed in her father’s footsteps,” Danny replied. “Come on. I think one floor up are the cubicles.”
“Really?” Sean scoffed. “I have been the director here for twenty-six years.”
Danny looked down the long hall and sighed. Angie, please be okay, he thought as he and Sean began to cautiously move forward.
“Wait,” Sean said, placing his hand on Danny’s arm. Thankfully, he didn't get a vision from the unwanted touch. Sean’s shields were back up. “Vincent would expect us to go higher, wouldn’t he? To get to him and Daniel?”
Danny nodded.
“Then we should take another route.”
“How do you know any doors will open?” Danny asked. “And why wouldn’t we go up? We can’t leave Angie to deal with this on her own.”
“We’re not,” Sean said. “We’re just taking an extra few minutes to circumnavigate around whatever trap the enemy set. We did it in the war all the time, and I saved many of my comrades that way.”
Danny was torn between wanting to get to Angie as fast as he could and his dislike for Sean. He knew the siren was right, but hated to give him the satisfaction of agreeing with him.
“Fine. We’ll do it your way. But anything that happens is on your head,” Danny said.
“Come on.” Sean went ahead cautiously. “The service elevator stops here from the hall below. That’s, obviously, the training levels. Not many places to hide there, and we can get straight up.”
“How?” Danny asked. “How can we without going back to the Hallway From Hell?”