“If it’s pissed at you, it’ll be plenty distracted from me,” Norton answered, heading forward.
“Pissed at me?…” Eddie’s jaw dropped. “Oh, you bastard.”
Norton chuckled nervously as he spanned the distance to the coffin, laying his hand on the lid and taking a breath to steady his nerves as best as he could. He shifted his blade so that he had it in a reverse grip and could stab it downward. A stake of wood might be traditional, but a Masterwork blade cleaving the bitch’s heart in two should be just as effective, not to mention a lot easier to push through her rib cage.
He glanced back at the others, who were gathered all around him with their weapons held at the ready. He nodded to Masters, who nodded back, and then returned his focus to the battered old coffin and took another steadying breath.
He heaved the lid up, blade hand flashing down as soon as it swung up and over. The dagger bit down hard, sinking deep into the bottom of the coffin, and he realized with stark shock and fear that the interior was empty save for a layer of dirt at the bottom.
“It’s empty!” he snapped, jumping up and twisting around as a shadow fell from the ceiling above and landed behind Masters.
Hawk tried to turn, but he found himself wrenched from the ground by the back of his neck. His feet kicked at the air as he dropped his blade and gun, clutching at the wrist that was grasping him, desperately trying to keep his neck from being snapped.
“You’re all treading on my last nerve,” the vaguely female voice rasped from the darkness behind Masters. “But now I have you all in one place, so I thank you for that.”
Norton tensed as Masters was flung across the room, slamming bodily into the far wall with enough force to make the metal surface reverberate from the impact. He winced, but couldn’t spare a glance in his friend’s direction. He was too busy watching as the team’s rifles opened fire on the thing that had clearly seen better days.
Bullets tore through her in the darkness, spraying black gore and dried flesh into the shadows. Anything human would have long since died, but one thing every bullet made clear was that whatever this bitch was, the word human no longer described her. She charged the barrage of fire, blurring into motion as she slammed into Derek with enough force to throw the big man into a sprawling tumble on the cement form.
“Slow her down!” Norton snarled, chasing after her with his knife held high.
“How?” Eddie demanded as he whirled around, trying to get her in his sights again.
“I don’t care! Just do it!”
Eddie snarled as the shadowy figure charged the next-closest SEAL, Mack, and flung it all to the wind as he did the same. Mack tried to throw up his rifle in defense, but the steel weapon shattered under the one-armed shadow’s strike, and he found himself choking as he dropped the ruined weapon and clutched desperately at the clawed grip that was digging inexorably into his throat.
Eddie roared as he hit both of them in a flying tackle, high and hard. The blow had to have been unexpected because the brick wall he’d expected to hit didn’t materialize. Instead the three of them were driven to the ground as they all started clawing and kicking as brutally as they could.
Unfortunately for the two SEALs, when it came to kicking and clawing, they were at a decided disadvantage.
Eddie grimaced as he felt a bone in his leg snap under one of the creature’s blows, but he tried to drag the thing down. He didn’t know what Alex was planning, but he hoped he’d get to it in a hurry.
“Hold her down!” Norton screamed, throwing himself into the mix.
He planted his free hand on the vampire’s shoulder, trying to steady both himself and his target, and plunged the blade toward her. She surged under him, however, pulling Eddie into the path of his blade.
The master chief let out a bellow through clenched teeth as the razor sharp blade sliced clean into his shoulder. “Goddamn it!”
“Fuck!” Norton swore, eyes wide and shocked as he realized what he’d done.
The shock was enough to shatter his defenses, for all the good they’d likely have done him, and the creature’s kick smashed into his chest, throwing him back. Eddie was sent sprawling with the Bowie knife still sticking from his shoulder, his wound bleeding profusely onto the cement floor. Then the shadowed form rose up above Mack’s crumpled body and glared all around her.
“You think to best me? You are all fools.”
“That could be,” Perry Rand said, attracting her attention as he drew his sword from where it had rested against his back, “but fools make the world such an interesting place.”
The blade was thirty-six inches long with a deep furrow down the center, its single-handed grip wrapped in leather. The Viking longsword would not have looked out of place a thousand years earlier, but against the Kevlar body armor and pistol still resting on his hip, Rand cut an odd and rakish image.
Rick Plains drew his own blade, a similar but shorter sword, and they began to flank the vampire as they closed in on her.
The two were well accustomed to fighting, both with each other and alone, but they quickly learned that this wasn’t an enemy like any they’d ever encountered.
Perry lunged first, his blade swinging down sharply as he went in for the kill. To his shock, the female figure caught the edge of his blade on her forearm as though she were wearing armor and batted it away as she stepped in close to him, driving her hand into his chest.
It felt like his ribs were cracking, and he had to hold back the desire to puke as she breathed in his face.
“Surprised, fool?” She laughed at him. “Your pitiful excuse for a sword is no master’s blade.”
Perry jerked back as she swiped at him, his flesh burning where her clawed fingers had drawn blood across his face.
“He may not carry a master’s blade, you pale excuse for a Draugr,” a cold voice said from behind her, reverberating with power, “but he walks with comrades in blood.”
The demonic figure had begun to turn toward the voice when a flash of light blinded everyone momentarily. The weight was suddenly lifted from Perry’s chest, and he blinked his eyes, wiping the blood from them with his free hand as he hefted his sword defensively.
“This one is too strong for my skills, Per,” Hannah told him, one hand on his arm stilling his half-blind waving of the war blade. “I will need help.”
“Anytime, Hannah,” he said, “but I don’t know what I can do. She blocked me like I was a child with a foam toy.”
Hannah laid hands on his blade, and a glowing light flowed from her fingers and into the sword. “Tyr stands with you, Perry Rand. Tyr and his Ulfberht.”
Perry looked down at his blade, his vision clearing as the glow faded from the metal, leaving only a trail of glowing runes, runes that spelled out the word Ulfberht. He stared for a second, then looked at his companion in wonder.
“I didn’t know you could do this.…”
“Only in need, Perry,” she said, turning to Rick as she laid her hand on his sword as well, repeating the intonation. Rick’s blade glowed to match, then slowly dimmed to reveal the glowing runes that had formed on the funnel of his blade. “Now there is need. Stand ready; the battle is about to begin again.”
The two men formed up on her flanks, swords lifted and at the ready as the vampire rose from where Hannah had thrown her.
“Priest,” she mumbled, rubbing her face where she’d been struck.
Hannah sneered in response. “Priestess, if you please.”
“There is no difference.”
“Of course there is,” Hannah countered, her voice reverberating with barely contained power even as her eyes began to glow faintly in the darkness. “Priests are forgiving.”
The trio surged forward as their foe charged them, the unspoken signal to battle clear to them all.