I nodded. It wasn’t a terrible idea. Alexander had a good thing going, for sure. Too bad he wanted to take over my medium-good thing. “Okay, let’s go drop the kids off at Grandma’s then go hunting in the sewers. But if I’m going down to Morlock City, I’m changing clothes first. These boots are the last ones I own that don’t have sewer on them, and I’d like to keep it that way.”
“Yeah, that has nothing to do with the smoking hot cop lady snoring away in your bed, right?” Emily teased.
“Well, I wouldn’t say nothing.” I grinned at her and went upstairs. Sure enough, Sabrina was curled up around a pillow, her clothes in a pile on the floor. She’d dragged one of my old X-Men T-shirts out to sleep in, and one gorgeous long leg peeked out from under the covers. Shoving down all my normal instincts, I covered her up and just kissed her head very lightly. She murmured something cute and incomprehensible, and I dug out the least disgusting jeans from the dirty clothes hamper, then grabbed one of the multiple pair of disgusting boots from the floor. I slipped on the jeans, then got a fresh pair of socks out of the dresser. As I closed the drawer, a glint of silver caught my eye.
Hanging on the Christine Spar Grendel statue on my dresser was the sterling silver cross my old friend Mike’s mother gave me back when I was a teenager. Mike and Greg both got them, too, and we wore them all through high school and college. I took mine off when I turned, thanks to the whole allergic to silver thing, but since Mike passed, I painted the cross with clear nail polish and wore it from time to time when I felt like I needed a little extra backup. This was definitely going to be a time for backup.
I picked up the cross on its narrow chain, and just watched it glitter in the dim light for a minute. The memories came rushing back in a flood. Me, Mike, and Greg at high school football games, mocking the cool kids and gawking at the cheerleaders. The three of us the summer before college, trying our first illegally obtained sips of Scotch. Only Mike ever developed a taste for the stuff. I still think it tastes like licking peat moss. More recent memories, of Mike in the hospital, then him asking me not to let Greg turn him, to let him go be with his God. The look of peace on his face the last time I saw him; all his pain gone, with just the tiniest hint of a smile, like he saw something on the other side that made all this life’s suffering worth it.
I put the necklace around my neck and fumbled with the clasp for a second before I got it to work. The pendant hung down below my collarbone, and I tucked it into my shirt. The metal felt cool against my skin, then warmed almost as if I still had a warm body temp. I patted it under my shirt, then leaned over to kiss Sabrina one more time. I was surprised to see her lying there watching me.
“Oh, hey,” I said.
“Hey. You still miss him?”
I touched the cross. “Mike? Every day. He was the guy I called when I didn’t know what to do. No matter what, even before he became a priest, he always had a solution. That was him—the guy with the answer. It wasn’t always right, and it was almost never what I wanted to do, but he always had something for me.”
“He was a good man.”
“The best of the three of us, that’s for damn sure.” I felt the tears well up and wiped my eyes with a sock.
“Please tell me that’s at least a clean sock.”
“Let’s settle for clean-adjacent, and be glad I can’t get an eye infection.”
“You’re impossible.”
“And you love me for it.”
“I love you, but only God knows why. Now come here and give me a real kiss before you go save the world.”
“I hope it’s just the city this time. Saving the world gets really tiring.” I sat on the bed next to her and pulled her into me. I ran my fingers through her long dark curls and kissed her with everything I had.
After several seconds, she pulled back and leaned on her arms. “That’s a kiss with a lot of promise. You’d better go kill this asshole so you can come back and live up to it.”
“You got a deal.” I kissed her again, this time much less seriously, and got up to head for the door. I stopped with my hand on the knob. “How’s Sean?”
“He’s fine. Your blood got him stable, and they gave him two pints at the hospital. He’s irritated as hell and wants to go home, but they won’t let him until they figure out why he’s healing so fast.”
“Good luck with that,” I said. Modern medicine was not going to have any reasonable explanation for why Sean Fitzpatrick didn’t die of his wounds. Modern medicine did not take into account vampires with magical swords.
“Hey,”
I turned around, and my shirt was on the floor, with Sabrina standing beside my bed. My mouth dropped open.
“Just wanted to remind you why you really, really want to live through this fight. You’ve got this to come back to.”
It took every ounce of my willpower to turn and walk out that door, but I had a whole lot of asshole to kill.
Chapter 36
“OKAY, SO HERE’S the plan. We go down to the Morlock tunnels, stash you guys with whoever’s in charge since . . . well, since Rabbit died; then we go punch this Ian dude’s ticket once and for all.” Greg finished explaining the plan to the vamplets just about the time I got to the bottom of the stairs.
I froze. It’s often hard to know what to expect from Greg Knightwood. Sometimes he’s decked out in spandex with a utility belt, looking like Batman—if Batman ate the Penguin with a side of Robin. Sometimes he looks like a normal gamer nerd in sweatpants and a T-shirt that says something about an otaku or a Saiyan. Then there are the times he goes deep and manages to surprise me.
This was one of those times. I walked onto the set of SWAT Barbie’s Big Vampire Adventure, with Greg playing all the pivotal roles. He wore a Kevlar vest with a big Velcro patch on the front that said “VAMPIRE” in white block letters, black tactical pants, black combat boots, a black long-sleeve mock turtleneck, and a balaclava. He had a pistol strapped to his right thigh, a dagger on his left hip, and a bandolier with half a dozen stakes running across his chest. The cherry on top was the riot helmet with full face shield that he had tucked under one arm.
I walked into the room and was happy to see that no one else looked like they were trying to invade a sovereign nation under cover of darkness. The vamplets, Emily included, all had on random clean clothes—jeans, shirts, and sneakers or hiking boots. William and Abby looked ready to go into the sewers in jeans and hoodies, an odd look for William, but his suits were expensive, so I didn’t blame him for getting all Casual Friday on us. William stood by the computer table, while Abby sat in one of the rolling chairs. Emily and the other baby vamps all stood at something approximating attention while Greg paced in front of them by the door to the tunnels.
“Um, Greg?” I said as I came into the room. “What are you doing, buddy?”
“Inspecting the troops,” he said, without a single ounce of irony in his voice. Most days I don’t think Greg has an ounce of irony in his body, and that encompasses a fair number of ounces.
“Dude, they’re not troops. They’re the civilians we’re trying to protect, remember?” I said. I looked, but was relieved to see that he wasn’t slapping a riding crop against his leg. It also lowered my stress a little when I noticed that none of the newborns were armed. I didn’t mind if they had a stake, but the last thing I wanted running around with me underground was a fistful of baby vampires with semiautomatic weapons.
Greg deflated a little when he saw that I hadn’t even bothered with one piece of tactical garb. I did start gearing up, though. I made sure my Glock was loaded with vamp-killers and my backup piece with silver hollowpoints. My KA-BAR went on my belt on my right hip, and I strapped my sword belt with Excalibur around my waist outside my belt loops. It looked funny, but let the sword ride a little lower and kept it at the right height to draw.
I wrapped a Velcro h
olster around my right ankle with my Ruger in it, then shrugged into my shoulder rig. The Glock nestled under my left arm, with two spare magazines under my right. Two more spare magazines went into my back pocket, then I shoved a pair of silver-tipped stakes into loops on my belt. My new stakes were nice, six inches of silver with three inches of steel before the rubber grips. They weren’t balanced for throwing, but I’ve never been very fond of throwing away my weapons.
I pulled the duster out of the closet and slipped it on, then grabbed a Mossberg pistol-grip shotgun off the floor of the closet. I slung the twelve-gauge over my shoulders and turned to the others. The vamplets were staring at me with their mouths hanging open, and Greg had his arms folded, grinning at me.
“What?” I asked.
“You give me crap about my gear, then you come down here and load up like The Rock in an action movie montage. You’re such a dork, Jimmy Black,” Greg said.
“The difference, my friend, is that I make all this look good.” I walked over to the door and looked back into the room. “Y’all coming?”
I opened the door into the passage that connected our house to the basement of my office downtown, and we stepped through. William took a position at my left elbow, with the passel of kids behind him in a single-file line. Abby followed them, with Greg bringing up the rear.
The door slid back into the wall, and darkness engulfed us. I heard a sharp intake of breath behind me, and said, “Yeah, by the way, Emily, you can see in the dark now.”
“This is weird,” she whispered.
“You get used to it,” Abby said. “You think this is wild, wait until the first time you go swimming and remember that you never need to come up for air. I tell you, walking across the bottom of the pool is neat. Don’t do that in public, though. Freaks people out.” That sounded like the voice of experience.
We walked unmolested through the passage for a few minutes, then came to the hidden door in the wall that led to the Morlock tunnels. I turned to the newborns. “Look,” I said. “I’m not one hundred percent sure what we’re getting into here. The last two leaders of the Morlocks have been friends of mine, but I don’t know who’s running the show now. They might be cool, or they might not be.”
“In which case there will be corrective measures required,” William said. I really like that guy. He can say, “I’ll have to beat somebody’s head in” with the nicest diction and proper vocabulary.
The kids nodded, so I opened the door and we stepped through.
“Oh, shit!” Quinn said as the smell hit him. He leaned against the wall, retching. The Morlock tunnels were cleaner than the normal sewers, but they were still pretty fragrant, and there were still some unpleasant things lying around, and running down the walls.
“I wouldn’t touch the wall if I were you,” I said. Quinn jerked his hand away, then spun around, looking for something that wasn’t him to wipe the slime off his hand with.
William reached into his pocket and handed Quinn a handkerchief. “Here. Please don’t feel the need to return it.”
I chuckled, then turned my focus back to the task at hand. “Keep an eye on them,” I muttered to William.
“Of course,” he replied.
We were in Morlock territory as soon as we stepped through the secret door, but it took a few more minutes of walking to get to Morlock City proper. I was a little surprised that no guards challenged us, especially with how security-conscious they were on our last visit, but once we got to the edges of the “town,” it made more sense. The place was a ghost town. All the hustle and bustle Greg and I noticed on our last visit was gone. The LED Christmas lights were still there, but no people. Just lean-tos and empty buildings.
We heard them before we saw them. Just a couple yards inside the boundaries of the sewer junction that made up Morlock City, I heard the low buzz of a lot of voices, some of them louder and angrier than others. “Something’s going on up ahead,” I said.
“Can you hear anything?” Greg asked. We’ve all got things we’re better at than others. I’ve got exceptional hearing, where Greg is crazy strong. Nobody has ever been able to explain to me why that happens, but it does.
“Nothing specific,” I said. “Sounds like a lot of people arguing and talking over one another.”
“Perhaps they are trying to determine a new leader now that Rabbit is deceased,” William mused.
“You mulling over a run for that office, buddy?” I teased.
“I would rather die again,” he said with a speed that left no doubt to his sincerity. I chuckled at the mental image of the usually perfectly- pressed vampire living in the sewers, even if they were abandoned. His first act as Morlock chief would be to make everyone clean the tunnels. That might also be his last act as Morlock chief.
We moved through the creepily deserted collection of ramshackle, knocked-together buildings until we came to a clear space near what used to be Rabbit’s “office.” The fifty or so remaining Morlocks stood in a clump around a platform made out of a discarded conference table. A familiar Asian woman stood on the table addressing the Morlocks, with a couple dozen very clean and very armed vampires standing behind her. Standing beside her was a mountain of vampirism that I recognized from my last visit with Rabbit.
“Well, I guess I won’t have to send her that message,” Greg muttered.
“Is that the chick you talked about? The one who worked with that cult leader vamp you killed?” Abby asked.
“A slight oversimplification, but yeah, she was Alexander’s right- hand person, and heir apparent.”
“It certainly seems that she has decided that the Morlocks should also serve under her,” William added.
“Let’s not rush to judgment,” I said. “I’d rather not get in another fight for my title of Master unless I have to. Maybe she’s not trying to take over the Morlocks.”
“Nah, man,” Greg disagreed. “She literally just said that she’s the best-qualified person to lead the Morlocks.”
“I’m not seeing anybody step up to challenge her, either,” Abby said.
I sighed. Looked like I was going to get a warm-up fight before the main event. I unslung the shotgun from my shoulder and handed it to William. “Cover me,” I said. I turned to Abby. “Take the vamplets to cover and make sure they don’t get hurt.”
That’s when I noticed the look of abject terror on Emily’s face. “Hey, what’s wrong, Emmy? Nobody here is going to hurt you. What’s got you so freaked out?”
She pointed toward the “platform.” “That guy was there.”
“What guy?” I asked. “Who was where? I need a little more help than that.”
“The big guy,” Quinn said. “The one with the chain mail and the tattoos.”
“Yeah, his name’s Bishop. He’s the Morlock Sergeant-at-Arms. Kind of a dick—”
“Total dick,” Greg interjected.
“Okay, a total dick,” I agreed. “But what about him? Do you know him from . . . shit.” Several things fell into place at once as Emily’s description of the men that took her, Quinn, and Shelly to be killed. “He was the driver the night you were killed, wasn’t he?”
All three of them nodded.
“Son of a bitch,” Greg said, and started forward. I put a hand on his chest, and he slapped it away. “He hurt my sister, Jimmy. I’m going to rip his head off and shit down his neck.”
“I’m going to help you, dipshit,” I growled in his face. “But we need to be cool about this. We don’t need to run in there four against a hundred. Let’s hang back out of sight until we figure out who is what in this little drama club play.”
“Too late for that, boss,” Abby said. She pointed at the platform.
I turned to see Jang-Mi staring at us. “So good of you to join us, Master Black. These folks were just about to select me new leader of the Mor
lock Nation, and I want you here to ratify their decision.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a little problem with that,” Greg said. “Somewhere under this city is a psycho vamp named Ian who’s kidnapping kids to build an army of vampire slaves, and that asshole is right in the middle of it.” He pointed a finger at Bishop, who let out a bellow and charged straight at us.
So much for hanging back.
Chapter 37
SO I WAS STANDING between my best friend—who looked for all the world like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow SEAL—and the onrushing Bishop, whose muscles had muscles. We were in the Morlock tunnels under Charlotte, in the middle of fifty or sixty vampires who had lost their leadership in the past couple of days, and I had a handful of newborn vamps to protect from whatever was about to come down.
These are the days that I really wish I’d never hooked up with a woman way out of my league in the 90s, gotten killed, and woken up dead. Those are the thoughts that rushed through my head in the split second I had to react to the train wreck that was about to happen literally right on top of me.
Then I started to move. “Abby, hold Greg!” I shouted, turning to face the oncoming freight train of Bishop. “William, get the kids somewhere safe.” I saw my friends move out of the corner of my eye, then the giant vampire was on me.
Greg and I had just fought Bishop a couple of days before, with little problem. This was not the same vampire. I don’t know if he was holding back the first time, or had gotten amped up on some kind of super-blood since then, but when I tried to step out of the path of his charge this time, he made a slight adjustment and buried his shoulder in my ribcage.
He knocked me flat, but I managed to hang onto him, so we both went down instead of him taking me out of the fight and going after the vamplets. I slammed into the floor, and all the wind rushed out of me. Fortunately, I only need air to talk, and, regardless of what fifty years of Spider-Man comics implies, conversation in a fight is pretty superfluous. I had known I was going down, and I had expected the pain, been ready for it.
All Knight Long Page 24
