“Dual control?” Lucien asked.
“Doubtful. I’d go with a combination lock. We can drill through the panels to get to the locking mechanism if you want to stay unnoticed for as long as possible.”
“How long will that take?”
“Not quick enough to make you happy.”
“Use the thermal lance. I don’t care about the noise it will make.”
“And the wards?”
“We brought artifacts. Use them.”
A pair of Lucien’s vampires carried over a heavy-looking crate and deposited it near Irena. Between the three of them, they rapidly put together the tool Irena would need to cut through the vault door. She donned a protective suit and helmet that could withstand high heat from the backpack she had carried into the tunnel and got to work.
Patrick left them to it, retreating to the tunnel entrance, artifact in hand and sweat sliding down his spine. A loud yip drew his attention to where Áłtsé Hashké pawed at the wall of the tunnel, magic sparking like miniature Vesuvius flames in Patrick’s NVGs with every scrape of his paw.
“If you say so,” Patrick said with a shrug.
Áłtsé Hashké moved out of the way, and Patrick knelt in front of the curved brick wall. He moved his goggles onto the top of his hard helmet, the sudden change to darkness making him blink rapidly to adjust his eyesight. Magic burned bright, and modern technology couldn’t always block it out.
He pressed a gloved hand against the brick, watching as the damaged wards flared into existence at his touch. Patrick studied the way they linked together, running his hand over the wall, tracing out the power that had warped the magic into something ugly and dangerous—a hole for all the hells to walk through.
Áłtsé Hashké yipped again, sounding impatient. Patrick rolled his eyes. “Defensive magic isn’t my affinity, and I can’t tap a ley line.”
Another yip.
“Yeah, well, fuck you, too.”
Patrick pressed the tip of the quartz crystal against the brick, the artifact warming rapidly. He could feel the heat of borrowed magic through his glove, pricking at his own shields. Áłtsé Hashké watched with eerie yellow eyes as Patrick reached with his magic for the command buried within the artifact. A nonmagic user would’ve been given a set of spell words to speak, but Patrick didn’t need those in order to access the magic held inside the artifact.
Power poured out of the crystal, the barrier ward etched in its depth set by a mage of considerable strength. Patrick carefully wrote out a series of linked sigils that Nadine had given him. Then he used his entire body weight to force the quartz crystal into the brick wall, magic easing the way.
The barrier ward spiderwebbed away from the artifact, bright lines overwriting the wards in the tunnel in a different pattern, one meant to contain the damage. It was a stop-gap measure Patrick only hoped would last long enough until SOA agents could get down here and find a permanent fix.
Áłtsé Hashké gape-grinned at Patrick, then trotted off back into the depths of the abandoned station. Patrick rose to his feet and pulled his NVGs down over his eyes once more before following after the immortal. He pushed his way to the front of the crowd, taking in the scene.
The vault door had been sliced through in segments, though the entire thing was still standing as Irena cut the last line to the final corner. The heat was intense from the thermal lance, and there was a good amount of space between her and everyone else. When she finished, she disassembled the thermal lance and put it back into storage.
Lucien approached the vault door and studied it for a few seconds before he pressed both hands against the segmented pieces and pushed. The sections that Irena had cut through toppled over with a crash that reverberated through the ground.
“They’ll have heard that,” Carmen said.
Lucien flashed her a smile that was all fangs from beneath his balaclava. “Good.”
Patrick clicked the safety off his weapon and conjured up a mageglobe, letting his magic hover near his left shoulder. “Plan Let’s Get Ready To Invade These Assholes is a go.”
Lucien ducked through the hole, and the rest of them could only follow the master vampire into the unknown.
19
The roar of gunfire nearly deafened Patrick.
He ducked his head, shielding his face from pieces of the cement wall that bullets tore up across the way. The T-intersection of the corridor he and a handful of others were hunkered down in was looking more and more like a corner with no way out. Patrick ejected the empty magazine in his M4A1 carbine and slammed in a new one, feeling it lock into place.
“This was a shitty idea!” Patrick shouted.
Across the distance separating them, Lucien pulled the release on a flashbang grenade with his teeth and tossed it around the corner. “No one asked you.”
Patrick squeezed his eyes shut, his NVGs shoved up onto his hard helmet since Tremaine hadn’t yet cut the lights down where they were. The grenade blew—sound, light, and smoke exploding in the adjacent corridor. Patrick moved, using those few precious moments of distraction to shoot around the corner.
The recoil against his shoulder was easy to resist. Patrick went for maximum damage over clean shots, cutting through bodies before they could retaliate. His spelled bullets made a dent in the handful of vampires trying to hold them off, but the too-human members of the Omacatl Cartel suffered more.
Patrick didn’t care.
He pulled back, finger lifting off the trigger, and Lucien blurred into the fray, leaving Sergio to guard his old spot. Patrick looked over his shoulder at where Wade crouched behind him, Sage’s huge orange and black striped head hooked over the teen’s shoulder in a protective manner. She’d changed forms the second they’d crossed the vault door and had stuck close to Wade.
“How are you holding up?” Patrick asked.
Wade blinked at him, slow and measured. Dried blood that wasn’t his was spattered over one cheek, but he didn’t seem to notice. “I can’t believe you do this for a living.”
“Technically, I don’t do this anymore.”
“What? Mass murder?”
A meaty smack drew Patrick’s attention. He turned around, watching as a severed head bounced off the wall before rolling to a stop.
Patrick didn’t know how to tell Wade that there were things he thought he’d never have to do. That there were lines he thought he’d never have to cross. Patrick used to believe that once, but he learned the hard way—a long, long time ago—that never was just another word for until.
“Off-the-record missions.” Patrick chanced a look around the corner, saw that it was clear, and ducked into the corridor, weapon raised. “We’re going to need some witnesses.”
Lucien dropped the head he’d twisted clean off a body. It landed with a dull thump by his feet. “I have no use for the garbage that bows to Tremaine.”
He licked blood off his fingers as the rest of the group moved into the narrow corridor. The tunnels that made up the Manhattan Night Court were more extensive than Patrick remembered. Wade knew the way and had been leading them to the underground stairwell Patrick knew would bring them directly to the club with unfailing accuracy.
Patrick looked over his shoulder at Wade. “How much farther?”
“Two more turns, then the main corridor,” Wade replied, keeping his eyes averted from Lucien. “The other groups should reach it soon.
The tunnels, while tightly packed, were spread out beneath the city block. They went as deep as the subways, if not deeper in some areas they bypassed. They’d posted sentries at those intersections, one or two vampires or cartel members at each post to keep watch. The fringe of the veil was a strange place without protective wards, and they needed a rearguard to watch their six.
“They’ll be waiting for us at the stairwell. It’s a chokehold there,” Carmen said.
Unlike Patrick, she wasn’t wearing a helmet and her horns were on full display. Her dark red pupils seemed to burn in the bright haloge
n lights lining the ceiling as she strode through the mess Lucien had made.
Patrick flexed his fingers against the grip of his weapon. “I’ve got a spell or two that will clear them out.”
They’d been at this for twenty minutes now, pushing forward into uncharted territory. Up until now, they’d gone for stealth over announcing their presence but it seemed Lucien was done with fucking around.
The smell of blood hung heavy and thick in the air as they advanced down the long corridor. Patrick’s boots squelched through blood and bits he opted not to think about. He didn’t have time to dwell on the dead or undead.
It was the living who mattered.
They made it to a cross-corridor intersection that branched off into four separate directions. Irena and Einar were already there, pinned down by suppressive fire that rang loudly in Patrick’s ears. He didn’t know if Tremaine’s people were getting desperate or finally figuring out they had a problem because their defense this time around was more like an offense.
Bullets bit off chunks of concrete at the corner, forcing them to remain farther back from the cross-section than they liked. Ricochets were a dangerous problem that Patrick dealt with by raising a shield between their position and the only way out.
“You need to stop teaching your children bad habits. They don’t need to grow up to be like you,” Patrick said to Lucien.
Lucien calmly reloaded his M4A1 carbine. “Get us a way through.”
Patrick conjured up a mageglobe, the washed-out blue sphere spinning in the air at shoulder level. He filled it with raw magic, going with brutal force over a targeted attack. Military grade spells weren’t supposed to be used in civilian areas, not to mention they had an entire building above them that Patrick didn’t want toppling down. He had no desire to be buried alive. That meant tailoring the blast to something less powerful but which would give them room to maneuver.
Patrick sent the mageglobe spinning around the corner. He counted to three before igniting it. The resulting explosion ripped through the air, followed by screams that rang in Patrick’s ears. Across the way, Irena and Einar blurred into the fight, followed by other vampires and cartel members. The screams ahead were loud, but it was the faint cry that came from the rear that had Wade grabbing onto Patrick’s arm with too-strong fingers.
“They keep the fighters on this level,” Wade said.
Carmen tilted her head to the side. “They’re getting rid of the evidence.”
Before Patrick could open his mouth and respond, Wade took off on fast feet. Sage twisted around to follow him. Patrick dropped his shield and scrambled after them. “Wait!”
Too late—Wade and Sage both disappeared around the far corner. Patrick swore and double-timed it down the corridor and past the sentries they’d posted. He veered right, seeing a flash of orange and black turn left at the next cross-section up ahead.
Patrick followed because he refused to lose track of either of them. Seconds later Sage’s snarl reached Patrick’s ears, the rage in it impossible to ignore.
Evidence, Patrick thought bleakly as he followed them to a room whose door had been shattered upon impact.
Inside was a gruesome scene, one which Patrick wouldn’t be able to scrub out of his mind anytime soon. His combat boots, even with their gripping tread, slipped on a floor coated in blood. He got his balance back in time to put two spelled bullets in the chest of the vampire that came at him. When that didn’t stop the creature, Patrick yanked his dagger free of its sheath and stabbed it into the vampire’s skull.
The vampire shuddered, going limp and hanging off his dagger for half a second before sliding free of the blade. Patrick stepped over the body, swallowing reflexively against the churning in his stomach.
His mind didn’t want to process what had happened in that room. Not right away.
Where Tremaine and Tezcatlipoca had sacrificed people to Santa Muerte on that altar through rape and exsanguination, the fights to the death had been the money draw. Now, they seemed to be cutting their losses by killing the werecreatures they had trafficked to entertain the rich.
Eight people were chained to the walls of the room by way of silver manacles. All but two were dead. One body’s head had been torn off completely, the skull crushed like a melon before getting tossed aside. Every corpse was naked and missing limbs, the amputated appendages sewn closed with barbed wire. Silver collars encircled their necks, ensuring they couldn’t change form. Their bodies were covered in bite wounds, chunks ripped out from a feeding frenzy that could have happened today or yesterday or a week ago.
The two who were still alive had a look in their eyes Patrick had seen in Kennedy’s—little sanity, and only enough awareness left to understand that dying would be better than living like this.
Patrick readjusted his grip on the dagger right as a vampire slammed him to the ground, its teeth biting down on his neck. Only his personal shields saved him from getting his throat torn out. Patrick grunted, sliding in the tacky blood on the floor, and drove his dagger into the vampire’s back.
The vampire screamed around his throat, the sound ear-piercing. Patrick winced as he shoved the twitching body off of him. Unlike conventional blades, his dagger provided a true death vampires couldn’t come back from. Tearing out their hearts and cutting off their heads weren’t required.
Patrick got to his feet in time to see Sage eviscerate a pair of vampires she’d backed into a corner. They would be hard-pressed to heal from those wounds before dawn, so Patrick put them out of their misery by cutting off their heads. The double-edged blade was sharp enough to saw through bone with little effort. The gods-forged weapon came in handy for situations like this.
Patrick wiped the blade clean on his pants, then shoved it back into its sheath. He approached where Wade had his arms wrapped around one of the survivors. The teenager was snarling in a way that made the hair on the back of Patrick’s neck stand on end. Small patches of iridescent red scales had broken out along his hairline and neck. Wade’s aura burned like a halo around his body, so bright Patrick had to cover his eyes.
“Pull yourself together, Wade. You can’t shift down here. You’ll bring everything down around us,” Patrick said.
Patrick peered through his fingers as he knelt between the two survivors. Wade seemed to get control over himself, the brightness of his aura fading, but not completely. The scales on his face and neck mostly faded, but Patrick could see the shadow of them. He didn’t have time to think about Wade’s tenuous control. They needed to get out of that hellhole and back to the main group.
Patrick used his dagger to cut through the collars that kept the werecreatures connected to the walls. The silver-coated collars, etched with a binding ward, broke apart beneath Patrick’s dagger. Beneath the metal were open wounds and burns on their necks. Suddenly being free didn’t snap the pair back to reality. Both victims remained where they were.
“Sage, get over here. You’ll have to carry them topside,” Patrick said.
There was no way either survivor could walk, even with the binding ward broken and their ability to change forms returned to them. The woman was missing a leg up to the knee, and both of the man’s feet had been chewed to ragged bits up to the ankles. The barbed wire dipped in aconite embedded in their skin to close up the wounds would need to be removed by a medical professional. Patrick hoped they survived long enough to reach a hospital.
They were werecreatures, capable of regenerating missing limbs and flesh, but he knew what gangrene looked and smelled like. Patrick wasn’t sure if either of them would ever fully recover from this torture.
Sage crouched beside him, nose twitching from her heightened sense of smell. Patrick and Wade carefully deposited the two survivors onto her back. Patrick cast a binding ward around them, ropes of magic securing the pair to Sage’s body.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here,” Patrick said, taking point and heading for the door. Sighting down his rifle, half a dozen tiny mageglobes floating near
his shoulders, Patrick eased into the corridor. “Clear.”
Sage carefully maneuvered through the door, with Wade following after her. They hadn’t gone more than a handful of steps when an animalistic roar echoed in the air. Patrick didn’t freeze—he started running.
“Sounds like Tezcatlipoca hit the field,” Patrick tossed over his shoulder. “Move.”
They moved, as quickly as they could, which wasn’t as fast as Patrick would’ve liked. Sage and Wade were both trying to make sure their charges weren’t hurt in the process but when they were all trying to outrun a pissed-off god, pain was unavoidable.
Patrick retraced their steps back to the main corridor. Lucien’s sentries were still alive, but most of the group had gone up the circular stairs that led aboveground. Einar stood by the entrance, weapon in hand and impatiently waiting for them.
“Áłtsé Hashké cleared a path after you ran from your duty,” Einar said.
Patrick flipped him off. “Oh, fuck you. I wasn’t leaving anyone behind.”
“The police will have evidence whether it is alive or dead. The animals aren’t worth the trouble.”
“Get the fuck out of my way before I stab you and tell Lucien my hand slipped.”
Einar was unimpressed with Patrick’s attitude, but whatever he wanted to say was drowned out by the thrumming of a dozen heavy feet against the flooring. Screams—distant and garbled—echoed underneath the noise. Shadows blurred at the peripheral of Patrick’s vision as the vampires Lucien had stationed in the corridors behind them rallied to the only way out.
“Jaguars,” a vampire got out as he stumbled into view, hanging off the shoulders of his dark-haired partner while trying to keep his intestines inside his body. “They came from behind.”
Einar ducked through the doorway. “Get topside.”
The vampires moved quick, blurring out of Patrick’s sight. He swore, gesturing for Sage and Wade to go first. “I’ll cover your six.”
All Souls Near & Nigh (Soulbound Book 2) Page 27
