Conquering A Bloodthirsty Earth (Book 3): Vampire Lord 3

by Jacobs, Logan

  “One seafoam green Honda Civic, coming right up,” I said with a smirk. “And remember, once we get out there-- if I tell you to do something, it’s for your own protection, so you better do it.”

  “Got it,” Neko said, and the other girl nodded along with her.

  I opened the library doors as quietly as I could, ushered both girls outside, and then gently eased the doors shut again. One step down, and only what felt like a hundred more to go.

  The three of us hurried along the edge of the South Lawn, and by the time we passed Furnald Hall on our right, I started to think that we might be in the clear.

  I should have known better.

  Every time I thought that things were starting to look up, something went wrong. Sometimes, that took the form of human party favors at a bonfire in New Jersey, and sometimes, that looked like the vamp that had tried to sneak up and surprise me on the fifth floor of the library.

  But right now, it took the form of three campus security cops who came out the side door of Furnald Hall. They laughed like they had just shared some great big joke together, and just as we had started to walk across Broadway together, I heard them, and immediately, I knew--

  They were one hundred percent vamps.

  Chapter 15

  “Into the median, now!” I hissed.

  There was still a chance that the campus security vamps hadn’t seen us, but I knew that chance was about to evaporate if I didn’t get the girls behind some cover.

  To their credit, both Brianna and Neko flung themselves headlong into the bushes in the median right down the middle of Broadway.

  I jumped down beside them, but while the girls both laid down with their stomachs flat against the dirt, I crouched down behind the bushes and peered through the leaves to see if the security cops were headed in this direction.

  They had stopped on the sidewalk outside Furnald Hall, and they all had their noses raised up into the air like bloodhounds. They sniffed, glanced around, and then sniffed the air again, while I reached one hand toward my Mark 23 in case they started to move toward us.

  I had managed to avoid shooting either of my guns so far, and even though I wanted to keep it that way, I didn’t want to go up against three bloodsuckers at the same time, especially not when I had to keep my eye on Neko and Brianna. So as much as I didn’t want to, I was prepared to use my firearms if I absolutely needed to.

  But when the campus cops sniffed the air a third time, they started to move in the direction of the library instead of the street, and I relaxed my fingers at my side. They had caught the girls’ scent, but they must have thought that they had moved toward the library, so they had gone to follow them there.

  Still, I waited until all three of them were out of sight before I finally stood up again, and then I reached down to help the girls to their feet. I didn’t even risk speaking since we were still so out in the open. Instead, I just held my finger to my lips and gestured for them to follow me again.

  As soon as we finished crossing Broadway, Brianna pointed to a seafoam-green Honda Civic parked on the side of the road up ahead. It was a good spot, and I found myself wondering if maybe there was something to the blonde’s superstitions. After all, this good of a parking spot would have been hard to come by on any college campus, let alone one in the middle of New York City.

  We moved forward half-crouched down, but we made it to the side of the seafoam-green car and then hid behind it. Brianna started to reach into her pocket to grab the keys, but I stopped her again. I knew that she would be careful, but I thought that I might be able to do a better job of making sure that the keys didn’t make any noise on their way out of her pocket.

  After another quick glance up and down the street to make sure we were still alone, I placed one hand on her shoulder for reassurance, and then I slipped my other hand inside the front pocket of the blonde’s shorts.

  I had expected there to be a whole key ring, but I guessed that I shouldn’t have been surprised that there were only two keys in her pocket. After all, a whole key ring would have jingled all the way here from the library.

  Still, I was careful as I wrapped my hands around both keys and gently pulled them out. I separated them without a sound, slid the car key into the door lock, turned it, and then opened the driver’s door as quietly as I could.

  As soon as I had opened the backseat, I gestured for both girls to get in and then closed the door behind them. The car door made a little more noise than I would have liked, but I still didn’t see anyone around us, so I hoped that it wouldn’t matter. Once I was secure in the driver’s seat, I adjusted all the mirrors and took a deep breath.

  “Lay down across the seat, okay?” I directed the girls. “If we drive by any vamps, they’ll just see me, so there’s a chance they might not stop us.”

  “But what if they do stop you?” Brianna asked.

  “Then we’ll deal with that when we get there,” I replied with a shrug.

  Once the girls had laid down across the backseat, I finally slid the key into the ignition. The moment I turned the car key, I knew that I might make us a target, but I also knew that it would be the safest way to get back to the pier. I would just have to drive fast before anyone could pinpoint the sound of the car engine on the otherwise silent streets of Manhattan.

  “Keep those fingers crossed, Brianna,” I said as I slid the car into drive, “and it wouldn’t hurt if you did the same thing, Neko.”

  “Oh, mine have been crossed since we were face-down in the dirt in the median back there,” Neko said.

  “Well, maybe if they’d been crossed since we left the library like mine were, we wouldn’t have run into those campus cops,” Brianna said, but I could tell from her smile that she just wanted to tease the other girl.

  I pulled out onto Broadway and almost had to remind myself how to drive a normal car. I hadn’t had Rhino very long at all, but the armored truck already felt so much like my own that it almost felt like a goddamn betrayal to drive anything else.

  I would have to be more careful in the Civic than I was in the armored truck, too. Rhino might be able to plow over piles of bodies, but if I hit even one corpse in the Honda, it might fuck up the whole car, and then we’d have to sprint back to the pier on foot, anyway.

  I made a U-turn as soon as I saw a clear path along one of the cross streets, and then I headed back up Broadway. It was a little bit of a risk since I had seen the cop car drive down Broadway earlier and demand that all unregistered humans turn themselves in, but I figured that since the cops had already swung down this road, they probably wouldn’t hit it again for at least a few more hours.

  And just like I had done with the library exits, I wanted to stick to the route that I was familiar with instead of taking a chance with a street that could hold anything. I knew that Broadway was pretty clear, so at least for right now, it was my best chance to get back to the pier.

  Besides, if it was as clear as I thought it was, I should be able to drive on Broadway almost right up to the boat itself. I would only have to turn at the last second.

  Theoretically, anyway.

  As I continued to drive up Broadway, I was careful to keep a good speed. I didn’t want to go too fast, or I might miss something in the road and hit it-- or worse, I might attract too much attention. But I also couldn’t just creep down the street and hope nobody noticed a moving fucking car in the middle of a silent city.

  I had this terrible feeling like we were about to be screwed either way.

  “Everybody still okay?” I murmured.

  “Yeah, why?” Brianna asked. “I mean, like, thank you for asking and everything, but it just kinda makes me nervous when you’ve been so quiet and now all of a sudden you ask us how we are, you know?”

  “Do you see something, Sam?” Neko asked.

  “Yeah,” I sighed. “Yeah, I do.”

  I wished that I could have lied to them, but there wouldn’t have been any point. They would see it sooner or later, so I mi
ght as well tell them what was in store for us.

  Somewhere on Broadway, past the huge gothic church that I had passed earlier, the whole road was blocked off with blue and red cop lights.

  It was just before dawn now, but it was still dark, so I had assumed the girls could see the police lights. But I sometimes forgot that my vision was better than a normal human’s, so even if they could see the lights, they wouldn’t be able to tell exactly where they came from.

  “What is it?” Brianna whispered.

  “Cops,” I muttered. “More goddamn vamp cops.”

  Both girls popped their heads up and squinted to try to see ahead, but Neko was the first one to spot them.

  “Oh, shit!” she said. “I mean, I can’t really see where they are, but I can see the reflections of the lights on some of the buildings.”

  “Maybe I should get some glasses,” Brianna moaned. “I can’t see anything.”

  “Is it just me,” Neko began, “or does it seem like there’s an awful lot of them?”

  “I don’t think it’s just you,” I said. “I think we might have found ourselves a little police blockade.”

  “That’s, like, really bad,” Brianna said as she tried to rub some dirt from the median off her face. “But you have a plan, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “It’s called take the next turn and then drive like hell.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Neko said and then bit her lip.

  “Well, it’s definitely better than no plan at all,” I laughed. “But, uh-- at least for right now, you should both duck your heads down again. Try to stay out of sight as much as possible.”

  “We should have gotten into the trunk,” Brianna murmured as she leaned forward to put her head between her knees.

  “I thought about that,” I said, “but it wouldn’t do anybody any good if we ran into trouble and you two were stuck in the trunk. I’d have to open it for you, and by the time I got you out--”

  “Whatever had been after us-- well, it would have already gotten us,” Neko finished from where she was hunched over in the backseat beside her friend.

  “Yeah, that was what I thought,” I replied. “At least this way, you stand a chance of running away. You won’t just be sitting bait for somebody.”

  I returned my attention to the road as we drew closer to the blockade. There hadn’t been any way for me to know that the bloodsucking cops would set up a blockade in the time that it took me to get to the library and back, but it made sense. If none of the human survivors came out and handed themselves over to the vamp police-- and really, why would they?-- then the next logical step was to restrict everybody’s movements.

  Any humans with cars would be stopped at a blockade, or they would turn and drive a different direction. Either way, the vamps would spot them and hunt them down, and the same thing was true for any civilian vampires who just wanted to get out of Manhattan.

  The NYPD bloodsuckers clearly didn’t want anyone to leave the city. They were setting up their own little empire here, and they needed subjects to use however they wanted. And that meant none of us were supposed to get out of New York.

  Well, that’s what they thought, anyway.

  There was a street coming up on the right that I should be able to take just before we reached the blockade. Of course, that would also mean that the vampires would be sure to spot our seafoam-green car as it turned, but I honestly didn’t see any other choice.

  Sure, I could have taken a left turn and then gone right to stick to the road closest to the river, but when I had first left the pier, that was the road that I’d taken, and it had been so full of crushed cars and bodies that I knew I would never be able to drive us down it.

  And if I waited much longer to take a turn, I would drive straight through the middle of the blockade. I might have taken that chance if I’d been the only one in the car, or if I’d been driving my armored truck instead of a Honda Civic, but I couldn’t do that now.

  Even if only one vamp jumped into the car, he could kill the girls before I was able to twist around in the front seat and take him out, so it just wasn’t an option to drive straight forward. Besides, even after the police blockade, I still had to drive the rest of the way to the pier, and that would be a lot harder to do with a squad of bloodsucking cops all attached to my windshield.

  We were close enough to the blockade now that I could see the expressions on all the individual cops’ faces. There were three police cars with flashing lights, but I only saw two cops who stood just behind the cones they had erected all across the street.

  I trusted my eyesight, so I knew that the drivers of the other squad cars weren’t inside their vehicles, but I wanted to know where they were instead. Maybe they had chased after some other humans or civilian vampires, or maybe they’d gone out for coffee and donuts before they remembered that they only drank blood now.

  I briefly thought again about just plowing through the cops, but I didn’t think the Civic could crash straight through three police cars and then just keep on going. So instead, I avoided eye contact with the two cops and slowly turned to the right.

  As I started down this cross street, I let out a little sigh of relief that the road wasn’t covered with bodies or crashed cars. I had a clear drive forward, so I glanced in the rear view mirror, saw no one behind us, and then gradually started to increase our speed.

  Maybe the cops hadn’t seen or smelled the girls. We were inside a car, so that was definitely possible, but I couldn’t help but feel like they would have stopped me anyway. I could have misunderstood when I saw the two bloodsucking police officers kill the other vamp, but somehow, I doubted it. The NYPD police chief was just like Kowalsky, so if I wasn’t with him, then just by default, that meant I must be against him.

  Of course, based on what I knew about the police chief, that just so happened to be true.

  As I drove past a few tall trees and even taller buildings, I estimated that we had gone almost half a block since we first turned to avoid the blockade. The next cross street was just up ahead, so if I could just get us there, then I might have a clear shot all the way back to the pier.

  The red and blue lights had continued to flash behind us as they reflected off the dim buildings all around the blockade, but when I glanced at the rear view mirror halfway down the street, I realized the lights were a little closer.

  And then the cops turned on their sirens.

  “Fuck!” I swore. “Fucking fuck!”

  “Sam?” Brianna whispered. “What is--”

  “Not now, Bree,” Neko hissed. “Can’t you hear the fucking sirens?”

  There was only one cop car behind me, and there were only two vampires inside it, so at least the rest of the bloodsucking cops from the blockade were still missing.

  But that didn’t really help me with the fact that two of them were about to be up my goddamn tailpipes if I didn’t get a move on.

  The squad car screamed down the street behind us, so I immediately slammed on the gas and lurched forward. The Civic hummed for just a second like no one had ever tried to take it from zero to sixty before, but it revved up quickly, and then we zoomed down the rest of the street.

  We were so close to the pier that I could almost feel the wheel of the ship under my hands, but then again, the squad car was so close to us that I could damn near see the nose hairs of both cops in the rear view mirror. Only two streets really stood between me and the Summer Breeze, so if I could just outrun the vamps on the way to the pier, that would give me enough time to get the boat cranked up before they caught up to us.

  That was a pretty big fucking ‘if.’

  “Hold on to something,” I growled to the girls, and then I swung a hard left onto Amsterdam Avenue.

  The car jerked so hard into the turn that I almost spun into an accidental donut, but I corrected her before she went too far. The girls swayed in the back, and I heard Neko’s elbow slam into the door, but their seatbelts kept them both in place, and t
hey managed to keep their heads down the whole time.

  I wasn’t sure if that mattered now, but there was still a chance that the cops only knew that I was in the car, and if they didn’t know about the two human girls in the back, then I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to tell them.

  I raced down Amsterdam, but the squad car was still right behind me. The cops yelled something into their speaker system, but I didn’t even pay attention to it. It was probably just more bullshit about how if I turned myself in, everything would be fine and no one would get hurt.

  I wondered if that lie had ever convinced anyone.

  Amsterdam was still pretty clear, but there were more abandoned cars on this route. Some of them had doors flung open just in the middle of the street, but a few had wrecked into each other as they both tried to get the same parking spot.

  I would have said that parking spots didn’t matter in the apocalypse, but since Brianna’s parking spot had really come in handy, that wasn’t exactly true.

  I swerved to avoid a woman’s body right beside a black SUV, but there was a downed wire on the opposite side of the street, so I couldn’t swerve out of the way too much. As I drove past the corpse, I crunched over something that I hoped was just the woman’s cell phone.

  I was about to take another hard left onto MLK, but just as I started to turn the wheel, I looked down along the street and saw that it would be goddamn impossible to drive down. The whole damn road looked like one big bonfire, with just about every storefront in flames and with little fires that had started to spill out into the street itself.

  “Okay, let’s try another way,” I muttered as I swerved back onto Amsterdam.

  MLK would have been a straight shot back to the pier, but since that wasn’t an option, I would just have to go up to the next road and try it instead.

  The squad car was right behind me now, so every time I moved, it moved with me. I needed to slow down to try to find a good street to turn on to, but they were too close. But if I didn’t slow down soon, I wouldn’t even be able to make a turn without losing control of the car.