The Last Vampire
Page 17
35
She moved so fast I didn’t even see it.
In the blink of an eye she’d stripped the staff from me and tossed it aside as easily as if it hadn’t even been there. Then she threw me across the room. I crashed into the wall and bounced off of it, rolling as I did so. Thankfully, I’d remembered to tuck my chin so the back of my head didn’t split wide open when I hit the wall. Otherwise, things would have been over pretty goddamn fast.
As it was, I was dazed when I got up off the ground. I drew my pistol and fired but the shots went wide. They wouldn’t have affected her anyway, but I was looking to only pause her attack so I could regroup.
The rounds ricocheted off the walls and I actually had to duck to avoid one of them that came too close. I tossed the gun out of the opening toward the steps I’d come up. I didn’t need Isella grabbing it and shooting me.
She flew at me and I caught her around the armpits as we grappled. Her forward momentum sent us both spilling to the ground with her on top of me, her mouth full of razor teeth snapping at me. I dropped my hand and elbowed her in the side of her head. It snapped her back for a moment but then she raked a claw across my face and drew blood. I barely had time to snap my eyes shut or I would have lost an eyeball to the fingernails.
I used my hips to try to buck her off of me but she clamped down with her legs and stayed exactly where she was. She snapped down at my neck again, trying to rip my throat out. I dodged the attack and sent another elbow into her midsection. She grunted and rolled free.
I got to my feet, blood spilling down my face. I wiped it clear so I could see. Isella stood before me, legs bent and arms spread as if she wanted to catch me up in a deadly embrace.
And here I thought she wanted me for some ritual.
She seemed to have abandoned that in favor of just kicking my ass and killing me.
My staff lay across the room and it was out of reach. In order to get my hands on it, I was going to have to change my position. I started to circle around, but Isella was too smart to let me do that. She simply moved to cut off my route and then attacked again.
This time, as we collided, I felt her bare feet come up and they turned into claws as well, raking at my midsection as if she was going to disembowel me. I’d never fought a sucker like this, one as powerful as she was. And I wasn’t fully rested. I’d come in from Diablo after a hard slog.
Isella was primed for combat.
I was running on fumes.
I kicked out, trying to keep her claws away from me by jamming my own foot into her hip socket and driving her back and away. She wheeled out of the move and then backswiped at my head. I ducked and her arm went overhead. I came up and kicked again, scoring a hit on her thigh that buckled her leg.
She cried out but recovered far too quickly for my liking. She slashed at my head with her right claw and I felt it cut across the top of my forehead, scoring deep lines through my flesh. More blood ran down into my eyes. I couldn’t see.
I dove away from her, coming up wiping my sleeve across my face. The air was stained with the stench of blood - mine - and Isella seemed to derive all sorts of glee from it. She shrieked across the room, leapt into the air and came down on top of me again.
I could smell her breath and it was foul, stomach-churning stuff. She must have fed recently and I thought that Ares had probably given her an extra bunch of energy.
I was breathing hard, trying my best to suck in any and all the air I could. I knew I had to keep moving or else she’d kill me in no time. I tried to recall all the lessons I’d ever learned from being in combat, but they all went out the window. Easy to forget shit when you’ve got someone on top of you intent on tearing your very soul out of your body.
Isella suddenly reared back and I punched up into the underside of her jaw, snapping her head back. I saw one of her fangs break off and spill from her mouth along with a gout of bright red blood.
For the first time I felt like I’d scored a decent hit on her.
She jumped off of me and ran her tongue over her lips. “It’ll grow back.”
Wonderful. I didn’t waste any time talking. I didn’t have the strength to do so anyway. I was feeling light-headed and the combination of all sorts of stress made me want to vomit and shit myself at the same time.
Isella closed with me again and then tossed me into another wall. I saw stars now and crashed into the floor, my arms splaying apart and slapping the hard stone floor. I’d have bruises everywhere when this was over.
My hand came down on the staff and I grabbed at it, but Isella must have seen where she’d thrown me and come across to kick it away from me.
It clattered away. Useless.
Isella jumped on top of me again, coming down with the full force of her body weight. I heard a couple of snaps and felt the sudden needle sharp pain of my ribs breaking. Even with all my gear on, she’d still managed to take out a few of them.
I grunted and sucking air felt like breathing fire. My vision was clouding and I couldn’t see out of one eye because of the blood still running into it. I felt my clothes being torn open as her claws went to work. She resembled nothing of the female she’d been when we started. She’d reverted to something far more primal.
Animal.
Like a jungle cat, she started tearing into my midsection and I felt myself being flayed open.
I threw the elbow out of desperation and it connected with her temple. Then I saw her mouth open and in a split second of desperation, I spat into her mouth a gob of my own spit and blood.
She reeled back as if someone had just thrown acid into her mouth. I saw her desperately try to spit it out. Then she whipped her head around and eyed me as if I’d finally found a way to hurt her. Hatred boiled in her eyes and she stalked across the floor toward me on all fours like some rabid jungle cat.
I dodged her leap at me and rolled toward the far side of the room. As I came out of the roll, my hands closed around the shaft of the staff and I came up with it finally back in my hands, held across my body for protection.
Isella didn’t even hesitate; she vaulted toward me and crashed into my body. Too close to get the staff aimed at her heart, we fell back again and this time, she punched my head back into the stone floor. I saw more stars and she repeated the action, knocking my head back against the floor over and over again.
Blackness was coming. I was losing consciousness.
My hands grabbed at the floor, trying anything. I spit again, but she merely avoided it. I heard her start chanting again - she was trying the ritual on her own - then she started attacking my midsection as if she wanted to dig my heart of my chest. The pipe Ares had given me dangled on the leather string, flopping in the bloody mess of my own flesh.
I reached toward it, my hand closing around the stem. I shot an elbow at Isella, but she just kept chanting.
I felt almost like my body was separating from itself. Some portion of my world was ripping itself away from the other. Was the ritual working? Was she killing my soul even now?
My strength was ebbing but I tore the pipe free of the string.
Blackness rushed at me. Indescribable pain.
“Isella-“
She stopped her attack and chanting long enough to rise up and look down at me.
As she did so, I punched her right in the chest with the pipe stem between my fingers. It stabbed into her heart and she reeled back and away shrieking and screaming and trying desperately to tear the pipe out of her chest. But I’d buried it inside of her and even as she clawed at her own chest trying to get it out, she dropped to her knees and then fell forward, unmoving.
I heard my own screams then bubbling up from the depths of my soul as I sank back against the bloody ground and the blackness finally claimed me.
36
I don’t know how long I lay there for.
But gradually my senses returned and I regained consciousness amid the darkness. I had an urgent sense that I needed to leave this place and I didn’
t quite know why. I grabbed my staff and stood on shaky legs that only wanted to bring me back to the ground. I forced them to work and stood there surveying the scene.
There was a mass of black robes on the floor. A huge smear of blood stained the ground along with bits of dust.
Isella was gone. Or dead. Maybe both.
I frowned and turned toward the sarcophagus.
Ares was gone as well. But no blood stained the interior of what had once been her tomb.
I was left with more questions than answers. None of them comforting.
I poked at the black robes and saw that the wooden pipe I’d used to stab Isella in the heart was there. I reached down and picked it up. It was clean. As pristine as the night Ares had given it to me.
I found the leather drawstring across the room and reconnected them and slid it back on over my neck.
There was nothing else to this place.
I picked my way downstairs still not trusting my legs to support me. The pistol was on the steps. My gear was where I’d left it and the radiation detector was beeping. I checked the reading and found that it was higher than it had been when I’d come in from the outside. Whatever magic or power Isella had used to keep the radiation at bay inside of this place was gone now and the isotopes were anxious to reclaim their domain.
I didn’t know how much blood I’d lost, but my body was a mess. I had strips of flesh hanging off my chest and face and not much way of binding them unless I wanted to use Isella’s robes and I didn’t want to do that. Most of the bleeding had coagulated and I pressed the strips of flesh back into place using my shirt to bind them. I slid the mask back on my face, wanting to scream as the rubber touched the fresh wounds and sent spears of pain lancing through my skull.
I adjusted the hood and the coat and checked around for anything that would might prove helpful.
There was nothing.
I wasn’t sure what I’d expected to find at Isella’s hideout here, but aside from the upstairs room with the sarcophagus, there wasn’t a thing of note. But who knew, if I’d had decent light to work with, I might have seen something else. I could always come back, I decided.
The priority right then was to get out of the nuke lands and find my way back to civilization. I needed medical attention before my wounds got infected. I wasn’t sure what sort of germs and bacteria Isella had under her fingernails, but I was sure it wasn’t anything good.
I pushed the secret button and the door came in and allowed me access back to the outside.
It was dark but a full moon shone overhead. I stepped back out into the sand and felt my legs buckle once before finding their balance again. I stood and listened as the wind howled around me, but it was still quiet.
At my feet, I saw tracks that the winds were rapidly destroying in the shifting sands. I knelt and tried to figure out whose they were. It was only one set.
One set.
There had been two women up there with me. And only one of them had left.
But which one?
The tracks led away from the mesa heading off further west. They vanished into the sand about a hundred meters further on. Blown apart by the wind and the shifting sands as if they’d been just a tease in the mind of a man who only wanted to sleep a dreamless sleep.
I needed to go back east to find the medical attention I needed. I needed to rest and recuperate from the ordeal I’d just been through. The nuke lands went on for miles. Maybe hundreds of miles. I didn’t know my way across. I didn’t know a damned thing.
But there was apparently someone walking through them.
Alive? Undead? I didn’t know.
The bark almost made me jump out of my skin. I turned and saw the Siberian husky pup striding across the sand toward me, as if he had followed me from Diablo. How he was all to tolerate the radiation, I didn’t know, but he looked well enough. He wasn’t even limping as much. I figured he must have found a place to lay low and recuperate while we conducted our business in Diablo. Not a bad plan at all. And now, he was back.
I knelt and gave him a pat. “Where you been boy?”
The dog barked again and nuzzled up against my leg.
Scout.
I’d call him Scout.
But only if he wanted to stay with me.
I glanced back east. Salvation lay behind me. The world I knew was back there.
But the tracks headed west.
I didn’t know if my gear would hold up. I didn’t know if I’d die in the sands themselves.
I didn’t know much.
Except that I, too, needed to head west.
Because a woman walked across the desert nuke lands.
And I followed.
With my dog.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jon F. Merz is the author of over 30 novels ranging from urban fantasy to espionage and sword & sorcery fantasy. Prior to becoming a full-time writer Jon served in the United States Air Force, protected a variety of Fortune 500 executives, and taught defensive tactics to government agencies like the State Department, Bureau of Prisons, and others. He is an active CrossFitter, a 5th degree black belt in Togakure-ryu Ninjutsu, enjoys doing GORUCK challenges, and in 2014 started modeling and acting in television commercials, miniseries, and films. He lives each and every day by the motto, “Who Dares Lives.” He and his wife Joyce (who runs the hugely popular food blog The Tasty Page) live with their two sons in suburban Boston.
Connect with Jon!
www.jonfmerz.net
jonfmerz@gmail.com
ALSO BY JON F. MERZ
The Fixer: A Lawson Vampire Novel
The Invoker: A Lawson Vampire Novel
The Destructor: A Lawson Vampire Novel
The Syndicate: A Lawson Vampire Novel
The Price of a Good Drink: A Lawson Vampire Story
The Courier: A Lawson Vampire Mission
The Kensei: A Lawson Vampire Novel
Enemy Mine: A Lawson Vampire Story
The Ripper: A Lawson Vampire Novel
The Crucible: A Lawson Vampire Novel
Incident at Palmyra: A Lawson Vampire Mission
The Shepherd: A Lawson Vampire Mission
Mission: Malta: A Lawson Vampire Mission
The Enchanter: A Lawson Vampire Novel
A Fog Of Fury: A Lawson Vampire Mission
The Infiltrator: A Lawson Vampire Mission
A Forced Disappearance (DARK OPS 1): A Lawson Vampire Mission
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Table of Contents
Copyright
Table of Contents
Disclaimer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
Also by Jon F. Merz
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