Hannah huffed with irritation as she stood between them.
“This is pointless,” she mumbled, eyes flitting upward. “Our target is above us.”
“Unlike Alex,” Masters growled, “I can’t jump thirty feet into the air, and these things are clogging up the stairs. So while I agree with you in theory, there are practical limitations on what I can do about it. Stay between us, and we’ll cover you.”
He didn’t notice, but the two big Asatru exchanged glances and surreptitiously put a little more distance between themselves and the slim woman.
“I believe that you will find,” she said in a voice as cold as ice, “that I have no need of being…covered, by you or anyone.”
Masters glanced back over his shoulder, a retort on his lips, only to feel a chill he recognized from some of his earlier encounters with Norton and those who played far too much on the wrong side of the proverbial tracks. Hannah’s eyes had turned from a chocolaty brown to an ice blue that was far too pure and brilliant to be natural, her expression so cold that he honestly worried that if it were directed at him he might get frostbite.
She wasn’t looking at him, however, no matter what her words might indicate — she was looking past him to the encroaching wave of inhumanity. Hannah reached up and placed her index and middle finger to her forehead before extending them out in front of her.
Perry grabbed Masters by the shoulder and pulled him out of the way just as she spoke.
“Freeze.”
The air seemed to literally congeal into a thick fog, lancing out from her fingers in a cone that intercepted the lead shambling figures. Masters stared, shocked into near immobility as the fog settled, slowly dispersing as flakes of frost drifted to the ground along the path Hannah had carved out. In the distance no less than four of the vampires, zombies, or whatever the hell they were slowed to a stop as a tinkling sound rose up over the ambient noise.
A sharp crack was next, and then the affected figures began to fall apart as they overbalanced and their legs were snapped off from the force. They hit the ground like glass statuettes, sending frozen shards scattering across the floor.
“Holy shi—” Rankin looked between the girl and the zombie shards, eyes wide as he seemed to reconsider where he should be aiming his rifle.
“Later,” Masters growled. “Stay focused.”
Rankin nodded, lifting his M4 to his shoulder as he drew a sight line on the closest figure. “Right. At least you didn’t tell me to stay frosty.”
Masters laughed as he looked through the optics of his AA-12 and stroked the trigger to send a Remington rifled slug down range, blowing bone and decomposing brain matter across the room. “Well, it’s a target-rich environment! Take ’em down!”
This sucks.
Alexander Norton was not having what one might call a good day. Actually, the more he thought on it, the more he was convinced that this whole week had sucked, and it was probably not an auspicious start to the winter season.
He was a sight more than passing fair with a blade; in fact, he could quite comfortably claim to a be a master. The creature he was facing at the moment, however, was fast enough and strong enough that he was far from certain that skill would win the day. Not skill with a blade at least.
Nursing bruised ribs, Alexander picked himself up off the roof of the enclosure where he’d been thrown. Leaping away from the strike had prevented him from suffering broken ribs, but he’d barely been able to nick the vampire in return.
Even as he got up, she was smirking at him with a grin as infuriating as it was disturbing.
“Poor little Arcanus. Can’t quite get your power…up?” she asked, her voice laced with innuendo.
Alex shuddered. “If you don’t mind, could we just get on with the killing-each-other part? Sexual jokes from a walking corpse that smells like the ass end of hell really creep me out.”
The vampiress snarled, her expression changing from mildly taunting to horrifically twisted in an instant before she charged again.
Norton sidestepped, slashing his blade across her arm. It drew a line of black fluid across her outstretched limb, but she spun into the strike, and a blindingly fast backhand came in toward him.
He stepped into the blow, driving the cross into her shoulder with his off hand to soften it, but when the hit landed, it still sent sparkles of light through his vision. She hissed in pain, roaring as she slammed her arms down on the base of his neck in an ax-handle blow that drove him to the ground so hard that he bounced.
She stood over him, snarling as he lay there, then idly kicked away the cross and the knife before bending down and picking him up by the back of his neck with one hand.
“Arcanus. You were not meant to fight like gutter trash,” she hissed into his slumped face. “Why, I wonder, would you forsake the power you so obviously hold?”
Norton shook slightly, his laughter rising up over the sound of the generators. He slowly lifted his head and looked at her, causing her to hiss in surprise when she saw that his eyes were black within black.
“I don’t forsake my power, bitch,” he growled, his voice reverberating with barely constrained power. “I just know that power has a cost, but since you asked so nicely, here’s a taste of what I hold.”
Before she could react, he slammed his hands into her in a double-palm strike, and she was lifted clear off the ground. Her hands were torn from his clothes, and she was flung over fifty feet away, tumbling along the roof of the next generator enclosure. She scrambled to her feet as quickly as she could, but Norton was already on the move. He sprinted to the edge and leapt across the gap with arms outstretched, like a raptor diving.
He landed within a few feet of her, having cleared the twenty-foot gap with ease and then some before his feet touched down. She lifted her arms to defend herself against him, but was slammed into the ground by a single fist that drove her to the ground.
Norton followed up with a stomp to break her skull, but she rolled clear just before his boot cracked the cement. He chased after her, kicking out again and again, but she rolled clear each time. Norton found himself growing irritated, his anger rising with each missed strike, when his target suddenly rolled to a stop on her back and caught his boot as he brought it down.
Norton tried to wrench loose, but the vampire held on, grinning at him from her back.
“Impressive, Arcanus.” She laughed. “But you’re still fighting like gutter trash.”
She growled, twisting his foot hard and shoving it upward. To prevent his ankle from being ground into powder, Alex rolled with the power and was thrown up and around. He landed about forty feet away, near the edge, and shoulder-rolled back to his feet.
“Why are you here?” Norton demanded as he squared off against her again. “I expected you to be a fresh rising, but you’re too powerful, and you know the old words. You did not rise here.”
She snarled, baring her teeth. He could see her shriveled gums had long since pulled back, making the teeth look large and protruding.
“I woke here four nights past, I think,” she growled. “With no sun, I cannot be sure.”
Norton’s mind reeled. On the one hand, the answer made sense, but it created new questions rather than resolving anything. He felt his control slipping, the power in his voice breaking as he frowned, genuinely puzzled.
“Then you don’t know how you got here?”
“No,” she growled, flashing forward, “and it hardly matters. It is time for you to die.”
Norton barely had time to curse before she was on him. He got an arm block up against the first hit, but was out of position and took the full brunt of the strike. It lifted him off the ground and threw him back several feet, barely leaving him standing as he struggled to get his guard back up.