I clicked off the light and turned to see Bruiser finish off the two he’d been fighting. He stabbed, twisted, and slid the blade out of one. That vamp fell to his knees. Bruiser cut across a biceps of the last one, hitting bone, and caught the long sword the vamp dropped. Using the new blade, he took the vamp’s head, whirled, and took the head of the other one.
“There can be only one,” I murmured, and started laughing. Bruiser turned to me so fast I felt the air blow past my face. He swung the long sword back to attack. Beast slammed into me and I leaped away, across the room, landed, and pulled both Walthers. “Bruiser? It’s Jane.”
The room went still. Bruiser’s face was emotionless, a mask. No recognition, no warmth. He hesitated for a space of three heartbeats. He advanced on me, stepping fastfastfast.
“Don’t make me shoot you,” I said, backing away.
One of the vamps I had staked and secured kicked out at me, drawing Bruiser’s attention. That was all I needed. I dove at him, swinging, knocking his head with the butt of the gun in my right hand. Not a nice way to treat a handgun, not to mention a head. They hit together with a satisfying thud and Bruiser dropped, catching himself with his open sword hand, holding the long sword with only a finger and thumb. When he looked up, he shook his head. “Jane?”
“Yeah. We’ll talk about this later. Six vamps down. Weapons fire from upstairs.” I pointed across the room. “We need to check that.” That was the old bank vault and the specially built safe room to its side.
We moved slowly across the open space to the room. It was built from cinder block reinforced with rebar and concrete. It had its own roof, flat and smelling of tar paper, about three feet from the warehouse ceiling. My eyes had acclimated to the dimness of the windowless place, but the inside of the room was blacker than pitch. I pulled the halogen light from my belt and shined it into the room.
The room was twelve feet square, with a six-foot-across circle in the middle made of salt. There was no pentagram, no runes, no magical elements to guide a witch in a working. But there was a body. A recently dead body. She was hanging from the rafters by a rope, her big toes barely touching the floor. She was naked. With a stake in her heart. Her fangs were small, marking her as, maybe, a hundred years old.
“Sacrifice,” Bruiser said.
“Yeah. And her blood smells funny.”
“One of the sick ones.”
“I’d say so,” I said, turning for the old bank vault. I shined my light inside. The metal shelves were bare. Whatever had been planned for this room either hadn’t been finished or had been carted out already.
“Report,” Eli said into my earpieces.
The fighters upstairs started reporting in. “One old vamp DB. Two humans contained. No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon.” In the shorthand Derek used for ops, DB meant dead body, contained meant uninjured and restrained. No injuries referred to the men under Derek’s command. Not de Allyon meant the vamp wasn’t the one we were after.
“Danced with three humans, now contained. They were waking up and we had to hurt ’em some. No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon.” It sounded like Tequila Blue Voodoo, proving that Derek had brought a mixed party of his men.
“One young fanghead DB, two humans contained. We’re beat all to hell and back, but don’t need anything except beer,” Angel Tit said. “Did not sight de Allyon.”
“One vamp, age indeterminate, DB, two injuries. Medic needed for John. Not life-threatening. I need a couple of stitches,” an unfamiliar voice said. “Did not sight de Allyon.” I thought it was El Diablo, who I had last seen feeding a vamp on the field of battle.
Eli said, “One old sucker DB. I’ll be joining you for those stitches and that beer.” The men chuckled. “Cheek Sneak and I did not sight de Allyon.”
“No vamps encountered,” Rick said. “Three humans contained, no injuries, did not sight de Allyon.
Bruiser said, “Two old vamps DB.” The mics went silent for that one. Bruiser had taken down two very old vampires. Single-handedly. “Did not sight de Allyon,” he said. “But we did find one younger vamp, DB, on ice, true-dead.” He looked at me and grinned, teasing. “Legs? That leaves you.”
I frowned at him. Into my mic I said, “One human contained. Four old vamps contained.” The radio traffic went silent. “No injuries. Did not sight de Allyon,” I added, that important piece of info just hitting me.
“She buggered the rest of you and left us some vamps to chat with,” Bruiser said. “Janie wins the pool.”
There was a pool?
“This I gotta see,” one of the guys said.
“Not until we go over this place with a fine-tooth comb. Lock it down,” Eli said. “We want de Allyon.”
Bruiser and I quartered off the lower floor and went through it again. There weren’t many rooms, only one unisex toilet, and no closets or hiding places. It was fast work. “First floor clear,” I said into the mic. We started up to the second floor. Five steps in, I heard something and looked back. “Correction. Two coming this way.”
That was when we were hit with the second wave. Vamps came rushing out of the new, empty safe room and up the stairs with reptilian speed and grace, vamped out, screaming. Hungry. I could smell their hunger and their sickness. These were infected, and I had no idea where they had come from. The dang vault and cinder-block room had been empty.
I fired the shotgun, hitting the first one midcenter. Beside me, Bruiser stepped down two steps and took the head of the second one, the long sword in one hand, one of the lovely midsized swords in the other. Blood fountained up from her stump. I fired at the third vamp, knocking him back. Bruiser took the head of the two I had hit while I finished up the rounds in the M4. When all seven rounds were gone, I pulled the Walthers and started in with head shots, slowing them down, Bruiser to my side, finishing them off. Soldiers poured down the steps to back us up, and we took the fight down to the first floor, spreading out. And still the vamps came.
There was no grace, no finesse. It was just battle. Just blood and the stink of gunfire. I saw two of ours go down in the melee, and vamps fell on them to drink. Eli and Derek waded into them, stakes and blades flashing. I took a set of talons across one arm, a fist to the gut, and a roundhouse kick to the kidneys. It was three on one and I went down. Rule number one when fighting vamps. Stay on your feet.
I was still falling when the first vamp fell on me. Oofed out a breath it didn’t need and went flying, a boot in the air in front of my face. A short sword followed, taking off another vamp’s forearm with one swipe. Rick reached down and pulled me up, his fingers like steel bands on my unhurt arm. He swung me around and supported me with an arm around my waist until I was steady. Until I had drawn two vamp-killers. “Payback isn’t always a bitch,” he said.
I laughed. I’d saved his life a couple of times. Now he’d saved mine.
It went on and on. And when it was over, Bruiser and Rick were standing back to back, heaving breaths. Derek and I were against a wall, two downed soldiers at our feet, where we were protecting them. Three other of the men he had brought were still standing, but all were wounded. Two were dead. Derek hit 911 and called for medic.
Around us were fourteen vamps. Only fourteen? It seemed like hundreds. But none of them were de Allyon. Lucas de Allyon had not been in his base camp.
All the blood and fighting and death had been for nothing. Wasted. My eyes filled with tears that I blinked away. I wiped my face. Vamp blood was burning me. “Crap. Crap, crap, crap,” I whispered.
Near me, a man moaned. I opened my cell and called Leo. Fortunately, he was already on his way. He’d be here quickly and would heal the injured humans. I closed the cell and looked up to see six humans emerge from a wall. Not a doorway, but a wall, a hidden opening to a hidden room. It hadn’t been on the plans submitted to the planning commission. Vamps who broke the law. Imagine that. I almost started laughing until I got a whiff of the blood-servants. They all smelled of the vamp sickness.