by N. R. Walker
Alec laughed and put the other blood bags next to the first. “And we showered and everything.”
Cronin put a protective hand on Alec’s back. He was fighting a smile. “Alec feels much better.”
“I bet he does,” Jodis said. She rolled her eyes and grinned at Cronin. “And those are the blood pouches?”
“Yep. Little juice boxes for vampires,” Alec answered. “Four of them with half a pint each.”
Eiji laughed at his joke. No one else did. “Alec,” Jacques said. “That’s a lot of blood loss.”
“Not to mention what Cronin had,” Alec said with a laugh. “And I’ve never felt better.”
“This is all very concerning,” Jodis murmured. Alec wasn’t sure if he was supposed to hear it, but he could hear everything.
Cronin nodded. “It’s not typical human behavior, no.”
“It’s not even human anatomy,” Jodis replied. “He should be dead.”
“I feel great,” Alec repeated. “I feel amazing actually.”
No one spoke for a long time, so Alec studied the whiteboard. There’d been a few more points added, a few research details but nothing major. Eiji stood beside him and, trying not to be observing him too obviously, said, “So now you’re feeling so well, did you want to do some research?”
Alec shrugged non-committedly.
Eiji rocked back on his heels, going for nonchalance. “When we went to Egypt, you were all about researching hieroglyphs and background information, being prepared and learning everything you could.”
Alec hummed. “Yes, but this one feels different.”
Cronin was quick to question. “How so?”
“I don’t know exactly. Like something is not what it seems.”
This time Jodis asked, “Alec, what do you mean?”
“Something’s not right,” he said again, more adamant this time. “Like Genghis Khan and his Terracotta Army are a ruse.”
“You’ve seen Terracotta Soldiers move in front of you,” Eiji said. “Do you doubt their existence?”
“No, no,” Alec answered quickly. “They’re real alright. I just think there’s more to it than just Genghis Khan. I just feel that all along we’ve been asking the wrong questions. I want to know why Genghis Khan hasn’t called for me yet? If he needs me so badly, why is he waiting? How does he know I’ll even turn up? But more importantly, I want to know who’s behind it. Who brought Genghis Khan back from the dead? That’s who we need to find. I think we need to go back and see Jorge again.”
Eleanor came running into the room with Kole. “Something just changed!” she said. Then she spun around to the far wall. “Incoming!”
And then, as though right on cue, another Chinese warrior appeared in their living room. Though he was dressed for battle, this one bore no weapons. Only a smile. He held out his hand and disappeared, leaving whatever it was he was holding to fall to the floor.
Cronin had his arms around Alec, ready to leap, when Eiji went over and picked up what the uninvited leaper had dropped. He held out his hand and showed them.
Alec recognized it immediately. “It’s my old watch. I gave it to Jorge.”
“You wanted to know how Genghis will lure you there, and now you now,” Eleanor said. “They have the vampire child. And they know you will come for him.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“We don’t know enough,” Cronin argued. “Alec, I can’t just leap you there without knowing what will be waiting for us.”
Alec put the backpack on and picked up the night vision goggles he’d used in Egypt and put them with one of the sledgehammers Eiji had bought. “What will welcome us is about five thousand terracotta vampires. I assume Genghis Khan will have guards with talents that more than likely include some kind of masonry skills, given this is all about clay and stone. I would also expect Genghis to have some kind of skill of influence. He wants me to complete some circle of power, for world domination or to control the elements or what-the-fuck-ever. It doesn’t matter.”
“How does it not matter?” Cronin cried. Everyone else stood in silence and watched them bicker.
“Because he’s not the one behind this,” Alec argued. “I don’t know how I know that, I just do. He’s just a pawn in this.”
Cronin shook his head. “Even so, a humble pawn can checkmate a king, Alec. Do not underestimate an ancient vampire with a thirst for revenge.”
“Who do you think is orchestrating this?” Jodis asked.
Alec shrugged. “The same person who turned Tahini Shafiq into the Egyptian vampire Queen Keket. The same person who used the dreams of my parents to give me my name. Maybe what Mikka said in the alley before he died had a double meaning. He said “it’s not one, it’s both”. Maybe he knew something we don’t. Maybe he’d clued in on something and died before he could tell any of you.”
Jacques shook his head. “I was with him that night. I didn’t see anything.”
“Maybe he did. I don’t know,” Alec countered. He put the heel of his hand against his sternum. “I just feel it, right here. There’s someone else, something else. And it ends tonight.” He held up the last remaining bulletproof vest to Cronin. He was the only one who hadn’t put one on yet. “Please put this on.”
Cronin took the vest. “And your protection is what?”
“You,” Alec answered. He held up the sledgehammer. “And this.”
“Alec,” Kole started. “Son, I….”
Alec put the hammer down and took four long strides over to his father, and hugged him. “I love you, Dad.”
“Love you too, Ailig.” Kole choked back tears and swallowed thickly. He pulled back and took a deep breath. “You’re not coming back, are you?”
Alec couldn’t lie to him. “Not human, no.”
Kole nodded quickly and tears brimmed in his eyes. “But I’ll see you again?”
“Maybe not right away, Dad,” Alec said. “But soon. I promise.”
Eiji, who had been on the phone to Kennard, clicked off the call. “They’ll meet us here,” he said, pointing at the map on the whiteboard, and more specifically he pointed to the largest hangar-like warehouse that housed the Terracotta Army. “At the top of the hour.”
Alec looked at his new watch. They had ten minutes. He pulled out his pistol and double-checked the magazine. He only had a handful of wooden bullets left from when they’d fought in Egypt. He hadn’t bothered ordering anymore, guessing they’d be useless against vampires made of terracotta. He also guessed he was about to discover a new way to kill a vampire tonight. Sure, a wooden stake or bullet to the heart worked just fine, but smashing a terracotta vampire into pulverized dust with a sledgehammer would be just as effective.
He did, however, still opt to carry wooden stakes and two pistols loaded with the last of his wooden-tipped bullets, because there was every chance non-terracotta vampires would also be there. Like Genghis Khan himself. Or the one who created him.
Alec made sure his thigh holster and quiver were securely fastened and that Cronin, Jodis, Eiji, and Jacques each had their pouch of his blood in their backpacks. That was his only contingency plan: if his blood was required to end Genghis Khan, then any one of them were armed to do it. That and the fact Cronin could transfer or at least sense the talents of other vampires, were the only two aces up their sleeves. Alec just hoped it was enough.
Alec fixed one of the fasteners on Cronin’s vest that didn’t really need fixing. He pulled the strap tight before patting it down, and when he was done, the two men stared at each other.
Alec could see a storm of emotions in Cronin’s eyes, and it hurt him to see it. Alec put his hand to Cronin’s face. “We’ll get through this.”
“Your complacency concerns me,” Cronin whispered.
“It’s not complacency,” Alec told him. “I don’t know how to describe how I feel. It’s a sense of calm. Like I know I’m about to get all the answers to every question we’ve asked.” Al
ec kissed his lips. “I am ready for this.”
Eiji, Jodis, and Jacques stood is a sort of circle in the middle of the living room, waiting for Cronin and Alec to join them in formation. But before they leapt anywhere, Alec felt the need to say a few words.
“Listen guys, I just wanted to say it’s been an honor and a privilege. While our main objective is to take out Genghis and get Jorge back, it’s not worth any of us dying. I’d like to look back in a thousand years and laugh about this with all of you.” Alec looked pointedly at Eiji. “No self-sacrificing bullshit this time, you hear? And, if Cronin’s not near me when I’m hit or injured, or whatever it is that Eleanor sees that reverses my inability to be changed into a vampire, I give permission for any of one of you to change me.” Alec turned to Cronin, ignoring his death stare and low growl. “I’d prefer to have you pissed off at me for the next few hundred years than not have any years with you at all, if you know what I mean. If I need to be bitten to be saved, then let them.”
Cronin closed his eyes slowly and gave the smallest of nods.
Eiji snorted. “The next thousand years with you Alec are going to be so much fun.”
Jodis put her hand up. “I’d also like to say a few words before we do this. Cronin, we will be with you, by your and Alec’s side, forever. Jacques, it is an honor to fight beside you. And Eiji, my dearest love,” she looked at him and gently touched the side of his face. “If you leave me again to go kill yourself in sunlight—if you put me through that or anything like it one more time—I will kill you myself.”
Eiji grinned at her. “And my heart belongs to you too, my love.”
Jacques gave a slow nod. “May the gods be looking upon us tonight.”
Alec put his arms around Cronin, for a long embrace. “I have no regrets.”
Cronin grabbed his face with both hands and kissed him hard. “Beatha gun aithreachas.”
Jodis smiled. “No regrets.”
Eiji gave a nod. “No regrets.”
Jacques joined in as well. “No regrets.”
So this was it, Alec thought as he slid on his night vision goggles.
They each picked up a sledgehammer, stood in a close circle facing outwards, and with a deep breath from Cronin, they were gone.
* * * *
They stood in what Alec remembered from the online pictures was the reception area were tourists gathered before going inside the first pit of Terracotta soldiers. Not one second later, Kennard and another four vampires arrived, armed and armored like them. Alec recognized one of them as Lars, the pyrokinetic guy from the bar in London.
Kennard, impish yet lethal, bowed his head in greeting. He looked at each of them and the hammers they were holding and smiled at Alec. “How very Thor of you.”
“Thank you for coming,” Alec said.
“Nice glasses,” Kennard replied.
Alec automatically touched the night vision goggles. “Human eyesight’s a bitch.”
Just then, a wild braying sound cried out from inside the warehouse, and everyone turned to the sound. “They know you’re here, Alec,” Jodis said.
Alec took a step closer to Cronin. “Then let’s not keep them waiting.”
Eiji laughed and swung the sledgehammer. “Let’s not.”
“Strategies as discussed haven’t changed?” Kennard asked, walking toward the doors with them.
“Not a thing,” Cronin replied.
Alec held the hammer in his left hand, his pistol in his right. Jodis kicked the double entrance doors open, and they burst inside to a spectacular kind of hell.
* * * *
The hangar style warehouse was exactly like all the internet pictures showed—roughly the size of a football field, with small wings off to each side—only this was in full-animated horror.
Like his blood spoke to them, Alec watched in morbid curiosity as the warehouse full of Terracotta Soldiers turned to face him. Some were still in the long pits, hopelessly trying to climb their way out. Some statues watched in horror as their hands crumbled against the dirt walls of the pits or their clay legs would snap as they tried to climb and step. Some had no heads at all, yet they still moved as though they knew where they wanted to go.
Other soldiers moved more fluidly, easier, yet still robotic and sluggish. They spoke in dusty rasps, words Alec couldn’t make out, and they took mechanical and painful steps toward him. But most frightening were the horses. Alec could only see three of them, large and hulking. They looked like horses but were still somehow terribly deformed, as though the terracotta shell they wore hid a horrific mess inside. They made strangled braying noises that were more scream than sound. They reared their heads back, whinnying in pain.
Something wasn’t right.
Alec had expected to come under attack, swinging blades, arrows, spears, something. But these statues were clumsy and unarmed.
“Well, this is disappointing,” Kennard said.
Eiji laughed, but swung his sledgehammer at one soldier, sending it flying backwards in a spray of shards and dust.
“These are just mindless drones,” Cronin said. “We need to move to the back. There must be something we’re missing.”
“Can you hear anything?” Alec asked him. “Feel anything?”
Cronin shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Let’s move to the back,” Jodis said.
“We’ll look in the side pits,” Kennard said. He broke his team into two groups and sent them into pit two and pit three.
In the main pit, where a few hundred terracotta soldiers still fought to get out, there were long, raised dirt walkways which ran the length of the pit at head height of the soldiers still confined there.
Eiji ran first, with Jodis right on his heel, and leapt cleanly from the front of the warehouse onto the high dirt walkways. As the first of the terracotta soldiers tried to reach for their feet, Eiji swung his sledgehammer, decimating it to dust.
Alec and Cronin ran after them. Cronin made the jump easily whereas Alec, while he made the jump, didn’t land with the grace the vampires did.
He clambered to his feet, just as a soldier grabbed at his leg. Cronin swung his sledgehammer at the soldier, knocking its head off like a football. The headless soldier stood still for a second, giving Alec enough time to get away from it, then it kept trying to grab at Alec.
“Keep running,” Cronin told him.
Alec did. He took off along the narrow dirt catwalk and Cronin followed right after him. Eiji and Jodis were stopped near the end, where there were clay brick walls built in the pit and the majority of the soldiers couldn’t reach them. There were a few select soldiers and horses, but Jodis took care of them on one side and Cronin took care of the other side.
Jacques, Kennard, and his English friends came from both sides, turning any soldiers into dust on their way back to where the others stood. “Pits two and three are empty,” Kennard told them.
“Something’s really wrong,” Alec said.
“Is it a trap?” one of Kennard’s men asked.
“Listen,” Eiji said as he tapped the ground with his foot. “Can you hear that?” He tapped the dirt ground again and smiled.
Cronin answered. “It’s hollow.”
Without another word, Eiji, Jodis, and Cronin each lifted their sledgehammers above their heads and smashed them into the ground between their feet. And sure enough, a shell no thicker that a house brick fell away to reveal a secret entrance. As they removed more dirt, Alec realized he was looking at a set of stone steps leading down into the darkness. It reminded him of the small stairways in the underground tunnels beneath the Egyptian pyramids…. And it clicked. “This will lead us to the tomb of Emperor Qin,” Alec said. “The Chinese pyramid. That’s where we’re supposed to go.”
“What about Khan?” Jodis asked.
“Maybe he wants to bring back the First Emperor,” Alec suggested. “Eleanor said she couldn’t see.”
“Our s
eer couldn’t tell us either,” Kennard admitted.
“And yet you came along anyway,” Eiji said.
Kennard grinned at him. “Of course I did. Can’t let you guys have all the fun.”
“Yeah, it’s all fun and games,” Alec said with a snort, “until someone gets a stake to the heart.”
Kennard laughed, and looking at Alec’s sledgehammer, said, “May I?”
Alec handed it to him, and the small English coven leader took a few dainty steps along the dirt walkway and struck at two terracotta soldiers who were still trying to climb out of the pit. Alec laughed. “Oh, Happy Gilmore style.” One of the English guys laughed, and Alec waved his hand at him. “Oh, finally! Someone who gets my movie references!”
Cronin chuckled and attention turned back to the new hole they’d made in the walkway. Jodis looked at the descending stairs. “Well, shall we?”
Jacques volunteered to go first, then Eiji and Jodis jumped down. Cronin went in with Alec, followed by Kennard and his team.
The dirt stairs were no more than three feet wide and went down maybe fifteen feet and opened out into a wider corridor. It was dirt and looked old and cut out of the earth by hand, and if it weren’t for Alec’s night vision goggles, he wouldn’t have been able to see his hand in front of his face.
“We’re headed west,” Jacques noted as they walked forward.
“Toward the tomb,” Alec said. “Yes. The tomb lay about a mile west of the Terracotta Army.”
“Stop,” Eiji put his hand up. “Listen.”
In the eerie quiet, Alec could hear it too. “Footsteps in dirt,” he said. “Slow and shuffling.”
“You can hear that?” Kennard whispered.
“He has taken on some vampire abilities,” Cronin answered curtly. “We don’t know why.”
Alec turned to Cronin. “Can you hear anything? Can you see anything?”
“No,” he replied. “Only the talents of those around us, nothing else.”
“What?” Kennard hissed. “What do you mean you can’t see?”
“No, see the talent of others, or sense them at least,” Alec answered. “My blood gives him transfer properties when he drinks it.”
