by Ben Zackheim
We got to the bottom of the stairs and walked down one of the long aisles between tables. I tried to keep my eyes forward but the shiny objects all around me were too much to resist. I was in awe of the gems and baubles being passed around. They clicked and clacked against each other, which filled the cave with the soft din of colliding treasure.
The vampires at the sorting tables were too busy to notice us. But I paid attention to them. Some of them were small, thin creatures, pale and weak. But some of the others were viking-sized. In fact, I’d bet they were vikings once upon a time. Large and blond and long-haired, with a way of passing the treasure down the line like they were bored and would rather be fighting.
We reached the end of the room. It was lit dimly. When my eyes adjusted I noticed some vampires sitting on a stage, elevated about ten feet above everyone else. They leaned back in their chairs and monitored the workers below. One vampire observed us as we approached. An eyebrow cocked up. My guess was that she wasn’t used to speaking directly to customers.
“Who are you and what do you want?” she asked.
“I’m Cliff Franklin, a Lins lieutenant,” Fox said. “I’ve come to make a deposit and a withdrawal.”
“Who are these humans” she asked. “Lunch, I hope. For your sake.”
“I’d appreciate it if you didn’t scare them too much,” Fox said. I knew what he was talking about. Human blood can be poisoned by fear. It’s like leaving wine open for too long. A perfectly good bottle can spoil with too much time and oxygen. Blood can spoil with too much fear.
“What is your deposit?” she asked.
“Give me the pant leg,” Fox said to me with his hand reached out. I pulled it out of the waist of my pants and handed it to him. He dug into the pocket and tugged at something woven into the fabric. With a ripping sound he pulled out a thick glass vial of purple liquid. It captured the flame all around us and sparkled like a diamond. He also removed a folded up piece of paper.
The bored banker’s eyes went wide, her eyebrows raised. She sniffed the air like I do when I smell bacon in the morning.
I turned to see every vampire in the bank looking at us.
“That is a fake,” the banker said.
Fox bowed slightly and smirked. How he could keep his composure while buck naked was beyond me, but he didn’t miss a beat. “Begging your pardon, madame, but it is real. I’d like to deposit in Box number 4078-A.”
“That is not your box,” she said. “That is…”
“Correct,” Fox interrupted. He handed her the slip of paper. She read it and glanced over at us. The banker thought for a moment. Rebel shifted on her feet. She was ready to strike and, frankly, so was I. If the plan was already going south then we had to be ready for Fox to tell us to go all in.
As usual, we were ready.
A bank full of vampires on Kauai. What a way to go!
But then the vampire nodded to a couple of guards. They walked into the darkness behind the platform of bankers. Torches once again lit up and revealed two massive wooden doors looming over us. Their iron hinges groaned under the weight as they opened. The room on the other side was packed with shelves, which in turn were packed with boxes. All sorts of smells came from the safe. Mildewed paper, oil — it was a mix of every old attic and basement you’ve ever walked into. Actually, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was the smell of history.
One of the bankers saw me ogling the safe and hissed. I acted scared again.
“Come,” the banker said. All three of us began to follow.
“Only you,” she said, pointing to Fox. “They stay here.”
“I would have them come with me,” Fox said.
“Then you will have to find another bank to deposit your treasure in. No human will ever step into the safe. Being this far is a courtesy we allow just once. Do not forget that.”
Fox glanced back at us. “Stay here,” he said. “You will last longer if you don’t move.” He started to walk off and then stopped. “Not even an inch,” he finished.
I caught Rebel looking at his ass and rolled my eyes. She was in mortal danger, but she couldn’t resist an ass. Even a dead one.
I tried to keep my eyes on the ground. Every fiber of my being wanted to investigate that place. A real vampire bank. I knew from Spirit intel that the richest ones, the ones Rebel and I were trying to sabotage, stored their riches in their own vaults, with their own unique protection. I doubted the bigwigs used that bank. It was probably meant for smaller deposits by vampires of lower authority. I planned on making a return visit one day. Better-armed.
“What do you think is in the vial?” Rebel whispered.
Our eyes stayed low but we meekly glanced at each other. “The way they were sniffing at the air? Probably blood of some kind. Something they hunger for.”
Speaking of hunger. I noticed some vamps studying our necks. Being covered in blood while standing in the middle of dozens of banker vampires was like being a piece of fresh meat in a shark tank. They were doing their jobs, I suppose, but they were doing them with us at the center of their attention. If any of them had the slightest sense that another vampire was going to strike first, they’d be sure to be the second in line.
I made the mistake of standing up straight for a moment. The room shook with the small change. Just from that one move they were ready to feast.
Now I knew what Fox meant by not moving at all.
But before I could slump back over, I heard the most terrifying sound of all.
“Hey! Kane!” a man called to me from somewhere above, loud enough for the whole room to hear.
I knew that voice.
Now I found myself in the last place on earth I wanted to be…
In the last situation I wanted to be in…
With the last person I wanted to be with.
Chapter 29
Skyler.
My ex-teacher, our ex-teacher, was in the enemy’s territory.
And he was walking around like he belonged there.
“Kane!” he yelled. “What the hell happened to you?” His cane tapped the stone floor with each step.
I turned my head far enough to watch the small, old man hobble down the stairs, as if he were feeble. Skyler was not feeble. He was one of the most dangerous men alive. He was decked out in his tacky red monk’s robe. He wore it when he wanted to feel important. His wild white hair was the same mess I remembered. The sparkly golden spectacles sat on his big nose. As usual, he watched the world with his silver eyes peeking over the rims.
“Pet?” he yelled at Rebel. Pet was one of his many nicknames for his favorite student. “You’re covered in blood, sweetie!”
“What are you doing here?” I whispered, as he hugged Rebel. He only came up to her breasts but he didn’t mind that at all.
“I’m indulging in a pretty lady,” he said with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.
Rebel gave me a look that screamed settle down. She knew that things could escalate fast when Skyler and I were in the same room. But the fact that he was just wandering into a vampire bank verified to me that he’d gone turncoat.
“These your vampire friends?” I asked, sticking a finger in his wrinkly face. He didn’t flinch. He just kept smiling. He could really push my buttons.
“Would you two please shut up?” Rebel whispered.
“What's going on out here?” Fox asked, exiting the safe. The stern-looking banker was right behind him. I saw her gesture to a couple of guards to get ready for a fight.
“Fox!” Skyler yelled. He stretched out his arms for a hug and hobbled toward the vampire. I glanced over at Rebel. She cocked an eyebrow.
It looks like Fox and Skyler knew each other better than Fox let on.
“Hello Skyler,” Fox said, taking Skyler’s hand and shaking it before the old man could wrap his arms around him.
Skyler turned to me. “To answer your question, Kane. I come here all the time! Good atmosphere.”
“Why would vampires let you into their
bank?” I asked.
“This place?” he said. He walked to a table and checked out a few of the gems. The closest vamp jerked as if he wanted to stop him, but he didn’t. “This place is small potatoes! These are the working joe vamps. Some of my best drinking buds, right Greta?” He winked at Fox’s escort. The banker looked annoyed. “Yeah, I’m their sworn enemy, dedicated to keeping the vampires down, but I hang with them all the time. They know better than to mess with me.”
“He never starts a fight, but he always wins them,” Greta said in a droning voice as her eyes rolled.
I cut in with a whisper. “You betrayed us in L.A., asshole.” I knew it was likely the vamps could hear me, but the whole scene was so ridiculous that I had to sniff for a way to get a leg-up. “Ah, that,” he whispered back. “Sorry, but my home was overrun by the ugly fucks, boy. I didn’t welcome them. I portaled the hell out of there when I counted twenty sniffing around my cacti.”
“One of the Blues had a Wad,” I said, a little softer.
“Shit. Really? I hope they didn’t find my supply.”
“Excuse me…” the banker broke in.
“You keep a supply of Wads?” Rebel asked, horrified. And loudly.
Skyler threw his arms up. “I have some ready to go at all times. Never know when a student will earn one.”
“That’s dangerous, Skyler,” Rebel said, dumbfounded. “What if they get a hold of them?”
“Excuse me!” the banker yelled.
“I hid them in the toilet bowl!” Skyler said with a shrug. “Who the hell would look there?
“Enough!” the banker screamed. A couple of the viking-sized vamps growled and took a few steps toward us.
Skyler grabbed Fox’s hand and tugged. “Fox! What say we head to the back room and all of us talk?” My ex-teacher winked at me.
“Who are these humans you’ve brought with you?” Greta the banker asked Fox. Her tone was low and dangerous.
Fox waved his arm over the table of jewels nearby. “I’d rather not get into it in front of everyone.”
“What you would rather do, or not do is of no concern to me,” she said. Some nasty-faced vamps moved in on us from the shadows.
“Now hold on one second,” Skyler said. He wobbled up to her, making his cane look especially shaky. The banker looked down on him, eyes half-mast.
“You called them your students old man,” she said. “We all know that makes them a danger to us.”
“They are not vampire hunters,” Skyler said loud enough for everyone to hear. “You have my word, Greta.”
“I'm not sure how valuable your word is, Skyler,” she said.
“You wound me” he said, lower lip trembling. “I will make your cooperation worth it.”
“There's nothing you have that I want,” Greta said.
“We'll see if you feel the same way after you find out what this party of three is carrying.”
The chatter rose amongst the vampires in the bank. He had just tickled their fancy which is not something you want to do with vampires, especially when you're outnumbered one hundred to four.
“We just deposited what they carried,” Greta said.
Slyer laughed. “That crap? That’s nothing!”
“What do they carry?” Greta asked, her half-mast eyes opened a bit.
Skyler dropped the meek act and strode past the vampires, toward the shadows near the stage. “I think it would be best if we took this to the back room.”
Every vampire in the cave waited for Greta’s orders.
“Someone get him some clothes,” she said, pointing to Fox. “Follow me.”
We followed her to the back of the cave. She gestured for us to enter a long thin room with a long thin table surrounded by tall thin chairs. Vampires like thin. The vampires who sat at the table were shooed away.
“Now what is it they carry, Skyler?” Greta asked.
“They carry a treasure that has been sought for millennia, Greta. They carry...”
“Shut up old man,” I said.
“Skyler, what are you doing?” Rebel asked. There was a pleading tone to her voice that I had never heard from her before.
“I'm telling the truth,” Skyler said.
“You have no right,” I said, coldly.
“Oh, I disagree. I have every right. It was my treasure from the start. It's been mine for years.”
“What are you talking about?” Rebel asked.
“You know what I'm talking about, Rebel.”
“Here we go,” I said. “He always has to draw these things out. Maybe you should do your Soundtrack Spell, Rebel. Do you have a melodramatic drum roll?”
“I'm talking about Excalibur, Rebel,” Skyler said. “You two stole it from me.”
Chapter 30
It took me a moment to understand what the old man was saying.
Rebel frowned. “What do you mean the sword is yours, Skyler?”
Fox decided this was the right time to get dressed in the black suit someone had draped over a chair for him.
Skyler’s eyebrow shot up in that way it would when he was annoyed. “I mean exactly what I said, girl. I took that sword from a cave in Dorusduain, Scotland myself back in 1964.”
Rebel shook her head, trying to take it all in. “Scotland? Then what was it doing in Peru?”
“And why did we have to go get it, and not you?”
His eyebrow shot up again. “Because it was dangerous!”
“And it didn't occur to you to give us some clues about how we might get past the traps?” I asked.
He gave me a blank look. “Actually, no.” After a few seconds he awoke from his mini-trance and waved the idea away like an annoying bug. “I wouldn't have been able to help you anyway. I don't remember what the traps were.”
“You are kidding me,” I said, closing my eyes. I wanted to kill him.
“How many other vampire treasures are you hiding from us?” Rebel asked.
“He’s going to say that we’re…” I started saying as Skyler interrupted…
“We're wasting time.”
I threw my arms up. “You see? Every time!” I yelled. ‘We’re wasting time’ was Skyler’s go-to phrase when he wanted to move on from a conversation he wasn't comfortable with.
“But we are wasting time,” Skyler said.
I got in his face. He didn’t flinch. “Fine. Then let’s make up for lost time. This is the plan. Fox is leading us to a place where the sword will be safe. You’re going with us. I’m the boss. You do what I say. Rebel is second in command. You do what she says. And along the way you explain every goddam thing your feeble mind can remember about what the hell is going on here. Got it?”
“Good plan!” he yelled back. He was up to something. I’m sure my face broadcast my suspicion. He smiled. “But Fox works for me.”
Rebel and I glanced at Fox. The vampire licked his finger and used it to shine the wristwatch he’d been given. When Fox saw us looking at him he said, “What? I do work for him.”
I stuck my finger in Skyler’s face again. “You hired him to take us to Tibet?”
“Yup. We need Fox there when we deliver the sword, trust me.”
“Now I'm not even sure who we’re hiding the sword from!” Rebel growled.
“We're hiding it from Cannon,” Skyler said.
Greta gasped. I’d never heard a vampire gasp.
Cannon’s reputation as a ruthless treasure hunter preceded him. He was known as the craftiest player in Supernatural-Human conflicts. He’d played many sides over the decades. No one was sure what team he played for anymore. But if he was working with vampires then he was more dangerous than ever.
“Excalibur isn't just a treasure,” Skyler said. “And it’s not just a weapon either. Excalibur is the most powerful weapon any of you have ever touched.”
“I touched a nuke once,” Rebel said.
There was a moment of awkward silence as we all tried to figure out if she was joking.
“What?
It's true.”
“Well Excalibur is more powerful than that,” Skyler said.
“Bullshit,” Rebel said.
Skyler waved her off. “Cannon is not to be trifled with. If you were to live another thousand years I doubt you would come up against a more dangerous enemy.”
“You think highly of him,” I said.
“I think lowly of him,” Skyler answered, pointing his cane at me. “And you should too. You should think lower than you've ever thought possible. Your brain should be in the gutter. Think of every possible way someone could go lower than you to defeat you. That's where Cannon’s brain is right now. You hear me? He wants the sword. We can’t let him get it.”
Skyler was more serious than I’d seen him in awhile. “I hear you,” I said.
“What’s Cannon get out of allying with vampires?” Rebel asked.
“Not much,” Skyler said as he dropped into a chair with a grunt. “But what does he get out of leading them?” Greta hissed, not happy at the implication that her kind could be led by a mere mortal.
Skyler patted her hand like a doting grandpa. “Sorry, sweetheart, but it’s true. Cannon doesn’t work for anyone. If he’s hanging with vamps then he’s probably leading the nastiest of them. The ones who live on the edges of undead society. Greta, dear, you’ll probably hear whisperings of his plans in the coming days. Please let us know what you hear.”
Greta pulled her hand away. “If what you say is true, then you know I will, Skyler.”
Everyone in the room was surprised. Greta worked for Skyler, too.
“Can she be trusted?” I asked, pointing to the hemogoblin with my thumb.
Skyler used a cane to push a chair out for Greta. She sat down gracefully. “I’m a vampire, boy. What do you think?” she said. Skyler gestured for me to approach Greta. She sighed. “Make it fast.”
I’d studied under Skyler for years. I knew what he wanted me to do to her. He wanted me to give her The Muzzle.
Now, magic is not my thing. But Skyler spent ten years teaching me The Muzzle. It was a simple spell for others. Its purpose is to make the target shut up. Human, Vampire, bird, it didn't matter. It could take the voice right out of you if you started to tell a protected secret.