by Ben Zackheim
Which is one of the main reasons I’ll always owe Rebel. She was the only one with guts enough to be the bait when I was captured. She’d be the first to die to make me cough up the fortunes I walked around with.
I came out of my trance, exhausted. I’d never been so tired in my life.
“Where are we headed?” Rebel asked.
“To a safe place,” I said, coyly. I started up the car.
“And where would that be?”
I looked over at her and smiled. “Let’s go home.”
Chapter 11
The flight home was a long one. It wasn’t like we suffered. We got on the private plane that flew out of Peru’s Bum-fuc-noware Airport, a non-existent airport in the middle of a field that I hired some local guys to clear for us so my pilot could land and take off.
That probably leaves the wrong impression.
I’m not an asshole. I don’t like tearing up forest so my plane can go where it pleases. But I’ll make an exception for Excalibur. I had to get it to safety as soon as possible. Finding it and taking possession of it was only one half of the job.
Rebel and I drove home from JFK airport in my Bugatti, a good and proper car. I realized I was in a pretty dark mood. Our first big success should have been sweet. But not only had we tapped out every ounce of our energy, we also knew the fun wasn’t over. You don’t just swoop in, snag vampire treasure and think you’re all clear. Every time you did your job for Spirit you had twice the work to do just to keep the treasure safe.
“What now?” Rebel asked, doing 108mph.
“We wait,” I said. My guess is they’ll hear about our score in the next few days, if they haven’t already. Either way we’re a week out before they try anything.”
“Not if they know we’re a total mess,” Rebel shot back. “If anyone was watching from the jungle they could report that we hobbled out of there like a couple of hammered hundred year olds.”
I shrugged. “We have the twins.”
“Oh, that’s great comfort.”
“Isn’t it?” I asked.
“They’re a couple of twenty year olds, geniuses or not. They can’t even begin to comprehend how messed up it is to battle vampires.”
“So let’s teach them.”
Rebel stole a glance at me. “You mean you should teach them.”
“I’ve been saying for two years...”
“I know, Kane. You want your claws in them. But they’re scientists. They’re inventors. Total nerds. You can’t teach them to fight.”
“You underestimate them.”
“And you want them dead.”
It was my turn to be pissed. I let it sit.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Yes you did. I don’t want them dead. I want them trained. You need to stop acting like some kind of big sister. They’re not your family. They’re vampires.”
“They’re Little V’s, Kane. That’s different. It’s a big burden, and you know it.”
Little V is a name for people who get injections of vampire blood. It’s messed up stuff, but people are messed up. I think the whole world went nuts after the Paris attack. In the twins’ case, their parents injected them in the hopes of making them Ivy League geniuses. That’s the reason a lot of people go through the process. Little V’s can be brilliant at one or two things. Some people theorize this is because the history of all humanity is more potent in a vampire’s cells. Maybe having a closer connection with our ancestors makes for more wisdom, more knowledge in some way.
But, in most cases, the injection kills you. It killed the twins’ parents within seconds.
The other downside is that their social status in society is the lowest-of-the-low if the injections do nothing. On the other hand, if they display a genius of some kind, they tend to get swooped up by governments or private interests.
And by swooped up, I mean kidnapped.
Both statuses mess up their lives. They become servants. I was just trying to make the twins’ servitude serve a higher cause. I couldn’t stand being around Cassidy and Rose for more than an hour. But I did like them. Deep down. And I wanted to help them.
In the end, you know what? They didn’t care what I thought either way.
Rebel’s take on all of this was solid heart. Zero head. She hovered over them like a helicopter parent. I had a hard time figuring out why. She would do anything to keep them away from trouble. But trouble was a constant state of being for Little V’s.
“We shouldn’t have them hang back,” I said. “We lucked out this time. They got worried when we didn’t respond to them on the walkies. But you know our luck won’t last forever. We have a better chance of getting through this if we have them trained and ready.”
“They could have killed us with that cave explosion,” my partner muttered. She was trying to find reasons to keep them away from our line of work, but her tone of voice proved she wasn’t even convincing herself.
I spotted a White Castle. “Yeah, but I’m hungry because of them. The dead don’t eat. Pull over.” There was no such thing as passing a White Castle for Kane Arkwright. Especially after Kane Arkwright had been in Peru for two weeks looking for Excalibur.
Excalibur.
Now nice and snug in my portal.
❖
The next few weeks were awkward. We went through the paces of training for the imminent attack on the mansion. The vampires would realize we got out of the cave alive with the sword and come at us full-force. But after we wrapped up our work days, we’d go to our corners of the estate and ignore each other.
No one said what was on their minds. We argued over tiny things. A bit of straight-talk would have resolved everything, but we were in the mood to fight. It was as if we were preparing for a battle with the vampires by sniping at each other.
Except for one weird anomaly.
Rebel was being nice to me.
Well, not nice. She wasn’t being a douche, though. Knocking me down a few pegs was usually a hobby of hers. But as we wandered the halls of the Westchester mansion she didn’t make a peep when it came to me. She caught meI eating dinner one night in my pajamas and she thought they looked cute.
Rose kept asking me what was wrong with Rebel because she wasn’t on my case. “It’s boring around here,” Rose concluded. I guess my torment had become a kind of entertainment.
“I can’t get over how cool that eye looks,” Rebel said one night as I sat by the fireplace.
“Yeah, so you’ve said. A dozen times. Today.”
“We need to talk to Skyler,” Rebel said after she plopped down in the leather chair across from me and stared blankly over my head for a full minute. I didn’t respond. Maybe she’d go away if I pretended she wasn’t there.
“You can’t ignore me.” She rolled a shiny stone in her fingers. But I stared at the fire. It was captivating. The fireplace was alive with flame, its heat sliced from the massive hearth. It was my kind of show.
Yeah, I was a pyro on top of everything else.
“I would ignore you, if you’d let me ignore you,” I said.
“Come on, Kane,” she said, exasperated. “Skyler will know what to do.” She kicked her legs over the armchair. “At least he could let us know if there’s any buzz out there about the sword.”
I didn’t want to visit Skyler. I didn’t want to have anything to do with the old man. He was like a bowl of empty pistachio shells — once awesome, now empty. But Rebel thought he could move planets and do the laundry at the same time. He was her guru. If she didn’t have a reputation to uphold she’d probably clean that filthy house of his in L.A.
“We can find out in other ways,” I said. “We have enough ears to the ground. We’ll hear if something is up.”
“Hey guys,” Cassidy yelled from down the hall. “You’d better come here. Something’s up.”
I sighed.
“After you,” Rebel said.
Chapter 12
My folks had been
wealthy.
I’d given up on feeling bad about it. Most other people have much less. Instead of feeling guilty, I decided to make the world a better place. Sure, that’s relative. But I know good when I see it, just like I know porn when I see it. Hard to define, but hits you right in the whatever when it pops up.
Part of being wealthier than the Fed is having a big house. I did have one, but it used to be bigger. It had burned down when I first got into this business. Long story. Maybe I’ll tell it one day. But instead of rebuilding it I decided to just rebuild the parts I liked.
The kitchen.
Four bedrooms.
Two baths.
The gym. Doesn’t sound like much of a mansion, I guess. But there’s one more room that pushes it into mansion territory.
My favorite place in the world.
The library.
It’s at the center of the house, pulling people into its core or, at the very least, keeping us in its orbit. I cook to the smell of books. I sleep with one million stories as company just down the hall. It’s the heart of the home which is why I also built a stone hearth the size of a house right in the middle of it. It’s surrounded by leather chairs, even a hidden recliner or two when I really need to escape. The bronze and wood details compete for attention with a deep shine that lines the staircases and the three stories of volumes, spines out, meticulously organized by my librarian, Lucas.
The mansion sat on top of a hill surrounded by a mile of hills in every direction. Rolling green seemed to go on forever in some places, only ending at the faint line on the horizon. I called it Darkwood Forest, originally named by my dad.
With all of that land surrounding my home, it was easy to see if someone was approaching. If you were listening you could even hear a car five minutes before it arrived.
“There,” Cassidy pointed. All four of us stood on the roof over the control center. It was night so he handed me the infrared binoculars.
I spotted a lone figure strolling toward the house. His long strides showed me he was confident. I didn’t know what his intentions were but my guess was they weren’t good. He wore a long coat over an armored chest plate. He had a rifle in his back holster that rose a few feet above his head. It looked like a musket. One-badass looking thing.
“He’s on your property,” Rebel said, getting pissed. She had a talent for talking herself into a tizzy.
“Settle down,” I said. “I’ll go check it out.”
“Not without me, you won’t,” Rebel said, following me down the stairs to the garage.
We hopped on our Honda RC213V-S bikes and revved the engines too loud. Rebel shook her head and hollered at me. I couldn’t hear her over the din, but I knew she wanted me to take it easy. She knew I wasn’t at 100%. Fair enough. But I still floored it, race or not. I needed to feel some speed.
I shot out ahead. It felt incredible. I’d been cooped up inside for too long, recovering from my Peruvian wounds. I felt like I could handle anything at that moment. Fresh air and g-forces can do that to a guy. But I didn’t know the half of it.
I’m still surprised I made it through the next five minutes alive.
As we approached our armed guest, I started to get a bad feeling. Like maybe I should turn back and think things through for bit. That itchy thought started to bubble up. I pushed it down. It was paranoid. But as the stranger came into view under the bike’s brights I noticed he wasn’t alone anymore.
Now he was walking with a giant. The guy was ten feet tall. Each step he took was equal to four of mine.
“No way,” Rebel shouted over the engine noise.
I hit the brakes. She pulled in next to me.
“Demon?” she asked.
“I think the spikes on his head and the three eyes are the best clue.”
His head was a helmet of fleshy spears that slithered around his head.
Demons hadn’t been common since the 1920s. Back then, they had been summoned by other supernaturals to fight humans in Europe. The war ended with the Battle of Wolves on the grounds of Montfort-l'Amaury, just outside Paris, France. Mankind barely won but took out enough of the werewolves and demons to grab the initiative. And the demons? They had crawled back to wherever demons go.
“Stop there!” I yelled. They did. The demon let out a growl that sounded like our idling engines. “What do you want?”
The smaller guy took a step forward. I pulled my pistol and got a bead on him. The demon growled louder. One glance from his partner cut the sound short. The guy raised both hands and walked into our headlights’ glow. I could just make out a smile on his pale face. He was a vampire. “The sword,” he said simply.
“Would you like it in the chest or up your ass?” Rebel asked while pulling off her gloves,
“You can’t protect it,” the vampire said. “Vampires will have it before the end of the night.”
“You don’t know who I am then,” I said.
“You’re the guy with the portable storage unit. You die, the sword is gone forever.”
“So what chance do you have to take it from me?”
“Take it?”
And with that we heard a whistling sound over our heads. Rebel and I knew that sound too well.
“It’s a trap!” she yelled, revving her engine.
Chapter 13
The sound of a human-sized body catching air is unmistakable.
The fluttering of cloth, the low hum of air pushed aside.
They attacked from above.
One vamp managed to soar past me, removing a chunk of my jacket with its claws. The next one would have a better bead on me, so I got the hell out of there. Rebel and I tore off in the other direction, toward the house.
“Rose, activate the Perimeter Ring,” I yelled into the walkie as I hit the gas.
“Roger that, sensei.”
“Tell Cassidy to monitor the hell out of that thing,” I continued, ignoring her eternal sarcasm. “I don’t feel like blowing up the Hudson Valley today.”
“You got it, boss.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“You got it, kimosabi.”
I heard both twins laughing, so I shut the stupid ear-piece off. They knew what to do. We’d practiced it a thousand times. By now it was almost a habit to activate the property’s defense system. The Perimeter Ring was a circle of protected land and sky. It lay 100 yards away from the house and surrounded everything and everyone dear to me. If anything or anyone tried to get past it, they’d run into a hail of lead, silver, holy water, and explodey things. It was an arsenal that could take out every kind of supernatural known to man.
I pulled up to the garage just in time to see Rose running around the roof. She was checking the generator control panels to monitor the stability of our system. She spotted me and gave me a big thumbs up. Her white teeth glistened in the sun. So charming from a distance.
Rebel and I ran inside to watch the monitors.
We didn’t like what we saw on the night vision screen.
The sky was swarming with vampires.
Most of them had landed while the rest circled in the air just outside the Perimeter Ring. Our spotlights fired up and covered the area in full UV light. The monitors switched to normal view and we could see the fuckers squinting and backing up to the edge of the light. They wore the traditional vampire warrior garb — long white coats and black everything else. It was supposed to signify the battle within each vampire to contain their darkness. They never did a very good job of that.
I switched my mic to all auxiliary channels.
“Get off my land, assholes.” My voice boomed all around us.
It was a woman’s voice that responded from the darkness.“Give us the sword and we’ll let you and your loved ones live!” She stepped into the light. Her white helmet was covered in a black visor that stopped her from burning up.
“You have five seconds to get off my property,” I shot back through the mic.
She gestured for someone behind her.
Another vampire crept into view and handed her what looked like an RPG-7 missile launcher.
“We have a problem,” I said as we watched her mount it to her shoulder and fire. We heard the explosions above our heads. The monitor went dark again. She’d taken out some of the spotlights.
“We need to draw them into the ring,” I said. “Assume they have a lot more of those things, and act accordingly.” The twins and Rebel looked at me. “This is it. We fight them off now and they’ll know they can’t intimidate us.”
“We should call for backup,” Rose said.
Rebel gave me one of her annoyed looks. “Skyler,” she said. At least she sounded a little guilty saying it.
“Not yet.” I ran for the roof. Rebel followed me.
“Where the hell are you going?” she asked.
“They know about the Perimeter Ring, Rebel. They won’t walk into it until they take out our firepower.”
“How are they going to do that?”
“I don’t want to find out. So you need to start Plan B, Rebel.” If the vamps were going to attack us from outside our Perimeter Ring then we had to push them into it.
I reached the roof door and held it open for her, but she was gone. Off to execute Plan B like a pro. I knew she’d pull it off. She always made the plan work, even if she had to bust the plan wide open to do it.
I pulled out the AR-50 sniper rifle from its hiding place near a generator. It was too quiet out there. I didn’t like it. The vamps were up to something. But every second they held off attacking the house, Rebel was closer to her target. After a couple of minutes, my earpiece clicked.
“I’m there,” Rebel said.
That’s when I saw the smoke trails in the night sky. They were lit by the remaining spotlights. Whatever they’d lobbed at us they were forming perfect arches of exhaust.
And they were all coming right for us.
“Hold, Rebel,” I said. She was ready to spring, as usual. But it was too early. We needed to find out what weapons they were using against us before Plan B could work. We’d just have to take the damage we had to take, then Rebel could do her thing.