Calico started after him, but the last MMA vampire came toward her. There was no choice but to face him. Lieutenant Ever’s blood ran down the vampire’s face and soaked the entire front of his t-shirt and shorts.
The vampire approached more cautiously than his dead nest mates. He adopted a rocking motion, fists raised, looking like he was in an MMA cage. She used the same basic stance, keeping her weight forward on the balls of her feet, except that her fists were surrounded by paws that glowed a deep royal purple.
He jabbed at her, she bobbed out of the way, but let her hands drop lower, giving him a target she hoped he couldn’t refuse. She didn’t want him jabbing, she wanted him to punch with power. Commit his body to it. She crept closer, giving herself up without trying to look like she was giving herself up.
He took the bait, bringing a straight punch from his shoulder, his weight shifting forward, hitting her just below her left eye. She rocked back and he pursued, punching again. She sank her claws into his forward wrist and fell backward.
Hers was a controlled fall, unlike his as he stumbled forward on top of her. She hit the floor with her ass and rolled, pulling her knees in tight and embedding her back claws into him just below his chest. His full weight fell onto them as she continued to roll backward.
Instead of kicking up and flipping him over her, she dragged her claws down his body, opening the vampire’s abdomen. As his insides covered her, she rolled sideways out from under him.
Retracting her front claws, she jumped to her feet as he desperately tried to stop what little remained inside him from sliding out. She slipped a rowan stake from her left calf. It was easy to pin him on his back and jam the stake through his heart.
Whirling, she ran across the floor to the far stairwell door. Myron called after her, but she ignored him, she had to catch up with Lorcán, Ciarán, and most importantly, the daemón.
Throwing the door open, she hesitated on the landing just outside. Which way? Up or down? Up. Lorcán would have his sanctum on the top floor—and neither vampire could leave without first putting on his sun gear. She took the stairs quietly, imagining herself on padded cat feet.
On the third step, she heard and felt through her foot the slightest click.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Before she recognized what whipped sideways at her, Calico leaped straight up, surprising herself by jumping a dozen feet in the air. She twisted to the side and grabbed the railing of the upper flight of stairs.
A thick metal arm attached to the wall swung out sideways. At the end of the arm was a mace the size of a softball covered in spikes. If she hadn’t reacted so quickly, the mace would have smashed her in the back of the head.
“Holy shit,” she whispered.
Lorcán had the place booby-trapped. She held onto the outside of the railing and looked more closely at the stairs below leading to the fourth floor. Were there any other traps? She didn’t see anything, but the third-step trigger had looked normal.
She climbed over the railing, didn’t set her feet on the steps, and shimmied down the railing to the fourth-floor landing. She’d have to stand on the landing, however, to open the old metal door to the fourth floor. On the wall next to the door was a rusted sign that told her that roof access was the final stop above. The fourth floor had to be the vampire’s lair.
Getting a stupid idea, she coiled herself and jumped outward. Barely touching one foot down on the landing, she immediately leaped toward the far wall, kicking off it with her other foot and coming to rest four steps up the stairs next to the railing she’d just used. She blinked in amazement at her parkour skills.
She crouched on the step and waited a few frantic heartbeats, but nothing happened. She went back down the stairs and eased herself onto the landing, every muscle tense, staying on the balls of her feet, her legs bent and ready to jump in every direction at the same time. Nothing happened. She tiptoed to the door.
Carefully, slowly, she took hold of the brass doorknob and turned it. She didn’t know how many volts of electricity went through her, but it caused her entire body to spasm and she couldn’t let go as she smelled smoke and ozone. Bracing a foot against the door, she jumped backward. That tore her hand free and sent her sprawling into the wall behind her, nearly knocking herself unconscious, or maybe the electricity had done that.
She lay on the ground panting. Her hand throbbed. It was burned and smelled of cooked flesh. Her body still sang with the shock and she remained still until her mind cleared.
Her left hand was still black from touching the daemón and the other was now burned, skin bubbled and peeling. She brought her claws back out, hoping the magic might ease some of the pain, but it didn’t. Tears streamed as she tried to block out the excruciating pain.
She huffed a few times and, with her head clearing, stood. Managing with only her left hand, she unclasped and shrugged out of her empty weapon’s vest. She used the nylon fabric as insulation, she hoped, and tapped fearfully at the doorknob. Not feeling anything, she grabbed it as best she could with the vest, her hand aching and weak from touching the daemón.
Still, she got the knob turned and eased the door open, standing as far back as her arm would allow. The other side was a small narrow hallway, maybe ten feet long with a single door at the end.
“Shit.” No way there wasn’t something bad in there.
She stuffed the vest under the door to prop it. Then the stairwell door on the floor below banged opened, causing her to jerk with surprise. Myron blinded her with a flashlight. She covered her eyes until he turned it to the side.
“What the hell’s that?” he said, shining light on the mace.
“Booby trap. Stay down there, no telling if I’ve set them all off or not.”
She turned back toward the short hallway.
“Jesus,” said Myron. “This is all real, isn’t it? Vampires and, hell, I don’t even know what Detrick is.”
She didn’t answer him and frowned at the hallway. After a few moments she said, “I need a dead vampire.”
Her shoulders sagged, that meant using the stairs with its possible traps. She decided to go down like pulling a Band-aid: Fast. She made sure to use each step, so she’d feel confident there weren’t any more booby traps when she came back up.
“Get back inside and close the door.”
Myron looked confused but did as she asked. Pressing her lips together tight, she scurried down the stairs so fast, she bounced off the wall at the bottom, but she was alive and no more traps had sprung at her.
She opened the third-floor door and walked past Myron, the cop following. Jerry was across the room kneeling next to their fallen lieutenant. He looked up but didn’t seem to see her. He was in shock. Couldn’t blame him.
Calico went to the closest vampire, the one she’d eviscerated before staking him, and grabbed his arms. Her burned hand exploded with pain and she let go, grimacing. Unsheathing her front claws, she sunk them into his chest, which didn’t require her own hands making a complete fist, just curling them enough to get out of the way. She dragged him toward the stairs, his entrails slithering over the floor.
Myron hurried over, grimacing. “Can I help?”
She started to shake her head, then motioned toward the bloody stakes Lorcán had removed from his chest and dropped on the floor. “Grab those, will you?”
Myron picked them up without hesitation, despite being coated in blood. “Yeah?”
She didn’t want to remove her claws, so she said, “Put them in his gut.”
“What?”
“Hurry.”
He frowned. “I’ll just carry them and follow you up.”
She shook her head. “You can’t. You get hit by a booby trap and you’re dead.”
She thought he wasn’t going to do it, but then he said slowly, “Uh, why the hell aren’t you dead? And those claws—and your eyes. I mean, Jesus, what are you?”
“You want explanations now? Just put the stakes in the guy.”
/> He looked disappointed, but he gamely jammed them into the vampire’s open abdomen so they wouldn’t fall out.
“And don’t remove the stake from the other vampire’s chest or he’ll wake up.”
“Seriously?”
Calico didn’t answer him and pulled the body across the floor. Myron jumped past her and held the door open. She thought getting the corpse up the stairs would be difficult, but with her new strength, it was fairly easy. At the fourth-floor landing, she laid the vampire out flat on his back, removing the stakes and tossing them to the side with a loud clatter.
Continuing to use her claws, she grabbed him at the shoulder and the waist and marveled at how she could pick him up with Cait Sidhe’s help.
Calico and the vampire looked like macabre dance partners. She positioned him with his back to the doorway, retracted her claws, shoved, and jumped to the back side of the landing.
The vampire fell into the hallway. When he hit the floor, the ceiling exploded. A spike-covered metal plate swung down, disintegrating the drywall ceiling. It slammed shut against the stairwell’s doorframe, shaking the landing and filling it with drywall dust. The vampire had been mostly out of the way of the swinging plate, but it amputated his feet, which skittered across the landing toward Calico.
Myron called from below. “What was that? You okay?”
“It was nothing,” she said, stepping forward.
She carefully tapped the medieval-looking steel plate. No electricity. She pushed against it with her daemón hand. It didn’t give. She knelt and carefully placed a shoulder between spikes and tried to lift it, grunting with the effort, but there was no movement. It was locked in place.
“Goddammit,” she muttered, standing up. She looked up the stairs to a gray door at the top with a sign: Roof Access Only. Collecting the two stakes, she kept to the outside of the steps and went up them on tiptoes, willing herself to be as light as air. There were no clicks, no booby traps.
She kicked the locked door and it snapped open into blinding daylight. She’d forgotten the sun could be that bright. The roof was flat and covered in tar and small gravel. She ran to the back of the building, to a three-foot high retaining wall along the edge. Leaning over, she examined the wall. There were windows on the fourth floor. She assumed, that like the third floor, there would be an interior wall keeping out the sunlight.
She stuck the stakes into the Velcro strips around her calves then took a deep breath. Quite a drop. She kept waiting to feel a bit of vertigo or fear, but she felt calm. This would have scared the crap out of her days ago—hell, an hour ago. Unsheathing all four sets of claws, she climbed over the wall.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Calico held onto the inside edge of the retaining wall with her front claws and reached down with her back claws, feeling for small crevices between brick and mortar. Finding it with both feet, she eased her weight onto them. They didn’t slip.
She moved an arm down, seating those claws into a gap between bricks. Bringing her other hand down, she surprised herself by not plummeting to the ground. Calico slowly made her way down the outside of the building.
The first of the police cavalry screeched to a halt in the alley below. She didn’t look, concentrating on her brick climbing. It wasn’t all that far to the fourth-floor windows, but she wasn’t about to rush it or get distracted.
Officers yelled for her to go back up and other nonsense. Her world was restricted to getting one set of claws into a gap, then moving another set. It seemed like she was moving by centimeters, making almost no progress, but then her back claws came even with the top edge of a window alcove.
Her arms and legs felt a bit of a burn by this time, but not that bad. She could get used to her new strength, to say nothing about the claws. Those should be every woman’s accessory.
Before she knew it, her feet were even with the bottom of the window. It was tricky transferring her weight over to the ledge, retracting her back claws and balancing on the ball of one foot while maintaining a purchase with the other claws.
Calico almost smiled as she pressed herself entirely within the brick alcove, pushing her non-burned hand against the top of the alcove. Even with her diminutive size it took some contortion and wishful thinking to fit because the window was only three feet high and the alcove a few inches deep.
The window had crosshatch metal strips every foot. On the inside was the back of a wall. Two-by-four wood studs were exposed and fronted with drywall that faced onto the fourth floor.
With a quick elbow jab, Calico cracked the glass and nearly sent herself tumbling over the edge.
“Heh,” she grunted, looking down at the cops arrayed below. There were now half a dozen cop cars and bigger utility vehicles and lots of flashing lights and general commotion, people still yelling at her.
In the middle of them all was Myron, gesticulating wildly, probably still amped on adrenaline, and hopefully letting them know about the booby traps so they wouldn’t come blundering up to their deaths—or worse, interfere with her search for Tabby.
Steadying herself, Calico leaned back into the window and repeated the elbow jab, breaking out a small section of the window between the metal crossbars. Using the claws on her burned hand, she awkwardly broke out and cleared the glass down to a metal bar. The bar flexed outward with little tugs. She popped her elbow against several sections to crack the glass and weaken its integrity.
“Okay,” she muttered, “let’s keep from going splat below.”
She reached through the opening she’d made and sunk her claws into a wood stud. Calico swayed away from the building an inch or two, then pulled hard and put what momentum she could summon into getting her body to break in the window.
The cracked glass sagged inward until she and the glass rested against the studs of the inside wall far enough that she had all her weight leaning into the building, which let her freely clear away more glass with her claws until the window finally gave way.
Calico anchored her claws more firmly into the two-by-four and used her other hand to claw at the back of the drywall. Removing a small section a couple of inches across, she peeked through. It was an empty bedroom. She went back to work on the drywall and made the opening larger. Going head first, she dove through, hit the wood floor with a shoulder, and rolled to her feet.
The furniture looked antique. A huge bed with a red velvet canopy hanging heavy over the top. A heavy wood dresser and armoire. The furniture had a very Gothic feel to it, but it was also just a bedroom. No macabre decorations. No coffin sitting on a pedestal. No corpses stacked against a wall. Surprising normalcy.
She opened the door into a larger room. Lorcán stood across it next to the open metal door of the other stairwell. Calico looked for Tabby and Ciarán, but no one else was there.
It looked like a family room right out of some old Dracula movie, complete with candelabras and thick wooden furniture and ornate rugs, all of which were no doubt hundreds of years old.
And there, still wrapped up in garbage bags, were the family bandruí chronicles.
Through the open stairwell door next to Lorcán, she heard a number of people flooding the building. The vampire sighed and shut the door and pressed something to the side of it, maybe turning on the booby traps for that stairwell. He turned toward her.
He wore a black dress shirt buttoned to his neck and at his wrists, charcoal gray dress pants, and shiny black shoes. In one hand, he held a full-head ski mask, dark goggles, and gloves. He tossed them onto a small table next to the door.
“At least I will have the satisfaction of killing you and completing the destruction of your family.” He walked to a wall and removed a gleaming sword from a set of several arrayed with medieval shields. The sword had a beautiful metal guard encrusted with jewels that arced over Lorcán’s hand.
Calico adopted a defensive posture, unsheathing her claws, and the two circled one another.
“Did I miss your heart with the stake?” she asked. Th
e vampire looked completely healed. Faster than Winston had healed.
Lorcán’s eyes moved up and down her body. “And you,” he said, “what caused your transformation? I have wondered since our first encounter how you cut me. There is something inside you. Magic of some kind. And you talked of seeing the rowan tree. You have discovered something, am I right?”
She looked down at her glowing purple claws and the shimmer of purple that emanated from her body. Looking back up, she said, “Where’s my sister?”
Lorcán smiled. “Your sister is no more. Balor has consumed her.”
He held the sword confidently in his right hand. She stayed back and would wait for him to either commit to a line of attack or for an opening she couldn’t ignore. He circled to his left and used his left hand as a guide, reaching behind him, gliding his fingertips over the tops of tables and the backs of chairs to avoid tripping over them.
She moved cautiously to keep from stumbling over anything, even just the corner of a rug. She used their slow circling dance to familiarize herself with the layout.
He moved behind a squat wood cabinet dyed black, his left hand gliding over its flat top. Midway behind it, he jammed his thumb into a small recess. There was a click and thunk followed by high-pitched whistles.
With her new abilities, Calico saw the individual crossbow bolts emerge from holes in the front of the cabinet. She twisted sideways, but a moment too late. One of the shafts struck her left shoulder, pushing her backward. The bolt bit deep into the wall, pinning her.
She grunted and grabbed the shaft with her burned right hand. The pain to her hand was as excruciating as the arrow in her shoulder. As she pulled the tip of the bolt free of the wall, Lorcán rushed her, sword raised. He crossed the room in an instant, the sword slashing down, his face contorted in a snarl.
She managed to lift her left hand, though not very far because of the bolt. The sword came down in a bright blur of metal, moving almost as fast as the bolts had. She got her claws in the way.
Dark Vigil Page 20
