“Yeah, you should,” said Carlisle. “Hey.”
Everard looked back at her. “Yeah?”
“They’ll save some for you,” she said.
“Yeah,” he said. A shadow of something that might have been doubt went across his face. It could just as easily have been a trick of the crummy light from her flashlight. “There will be plenty for everyone. There’re so many of them, Melissa.”
“It’s okay,” she said, waggling the Glock at him. “We brought a great many bullets.”
He nodded at her, once, then jogged back up the tunnel. Silent. It was crazy how quietly he could move, like a foot making a noise when you put it down was something that happened to other people.
• • •
“Okay,” said Everard. He’d appeared like a damn ghost again, but Carlisle had seen him coming this time. Two yellow points approaching from the dark, his eyes glowing that damn freaky yellow. “We need to start being careful.”
“Son,” said Rex. “Son, I’m being careful already.”
Carlisle flicked the beam of her flashlight down to the bandoleer. A stake was missing. “Trouble?”
“Not anymore,” he said, teeth white in the gloom. “But I think we’ve found the perimeter.”
“Do you want to,” said Carlisle, “stick around with us?”
“No,” he said, and jogged back into the darkness.
They walked further along the tunnel, their lights picking out something against the wall in the distance. It was at a join in the tunnel, a branch leading towards where the gunfire had come from. Probably come from. The shape resolved itself into a pale corpse, hanging away from the curve of the wall, legs dangling in the air. It was stuck to the wall with a wooden stake through the heart.
Pearce leaned forward to get a better look. “Guy looks dead,” she said.
“Really,” said Carlisle.
“No, I mean,” she said, “he looks like he’s been dead for weeks.”
She was right. Carlisle could see it now she was closer, the way the corpse’s skin was pulled in as the water left the body. Didn’t smell though, or not more than the sewer around them, but to be fair to all parties concerned Carlisle wasn’t going to lean in close enough to get a real good lungful. There was a wet tearing sound and one of the legs of the body came loose, sliding out of the pants and onto the ground. The body swayed a little on the stake then, starting slow but picking up speed, fell to the ground, the stake carving a trough through it, up the chest and out the shoulder.
“They, uh, come apart easy after they’re dead,” she said, looking at the body on the ground. It was hunched over itself, collapsing before their eyes.
“That’s because they’ve been dead for a while,” said Everard, almost giving Carlisle a heart attack. He blinked yellow eyes at her. “Stake them and it catches up. Faster above ground, but fast enough down here.”
“You know this how?” said Carlisle.
“Not my first rodeo,” he said, and was gone again on silent feet.
“That boy needs to explain things better,” said Rex after a moment’s reflection.
“I don’t need those kinds of details,” said Pearce. “What I need is to know how many there are.”
“There are too many for you to kill,” said a voice like honey and silk at Carlisle’s shoulder. She spun, but there was nothing there, the beam from her flashlight stabbing the darkness there, there, there, but nothing.
She’d have thought she’d imagined it, but Rex’s gun was pointed in the same direction. She spared a look at Pearce, and saw two things. First, Pearce was also looking towards where the voice had come from. Second, there was a pale man right fucking behind her.
Carlisle spun the Eagle and the Glock around, but the man was gone. There was a splash, a ripple in the let’s-call-it-water, and then nothing else.
“They move fast,” said Pearce.
“Not that fast,” said the voice, and all beams of light moved to catch him. One hand against the tunnel wall, one up in front of his face as he inspected his nails. Nails that were sharp, long, unnecessarily long by any standards. He was wet, like he’d just come out of the let’s-call-it-water, but looked relaxed. Calm. “Just a lot faster than you.”
Carlisle pulled the trigger on the Glock, the tiny pistol rattling in her grip, bright sparks of light lancing from the barrel to the man. To where the man was, but he was moving fast, up and over, around the ceiling of the tunnel back to the other side. Pearce’s machine gun roared, the noise making the Glock sound like a child’s pop gun. The woman had couched down to better brace the weapon, the bullets smashing brick and old slime from the walls.
The vampire was still moving, coming at them, and Rex pulled the trigger on his shotgun, fire and smoke blasting out with each round.
They stopped shooting, smoke and dust surrounding them. Carlisle could smell cordite above the stench of the sewer.
“We hit nothing but air,” said Pearce.
“I think I got him,” said Rex.
“No,” said the vampire’s voice, from behind them. They all spun. There the fucker was, back up the tunnel. Still wet, otherwise not a scratch on him. “I’ll let you line me up this time. It’s only fair.” There was a glint of fangs. “For each round that gets me, I’ll let one of you live. How does that sound?”
“You got it,” said Carlisle. Never look a gift horse, or vampire, in the mouth. Think. Fucker can dodge bullets, but has to obey laws of inertia and motion. Probably has to obey those laws. She held the Eagle in one hand, lining up the Glock right on those smiling fangs with the other, and squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The vampire dodged, of course, a flash of mirrored eyes and then it was moving, right down the tunnel at them. Fast, fast, goddamn it was fast, but that’s what she was counting on. Her right hand twitched, the Eagle’s beam ahead, and she pulled the trigger. The Eagle roared, all defiance as it bucked once, twice, three times. The vampire was moving away from the Glock’s rounds, into the Eagle’s. It tried to dodge, but was already moving, its feet skidding on something on the ground, and a round from the Eagle caught it dead center, right in the heart.
It stumbled, and Carlisle fired again. Blooms of red broke out on it, two more dead center and the last one in the head, the back of the thing’s skull blowing out across the let’s-call-it-water. The body stumbled, but was still standing.
“How is it still alive?” said Pearce. She hefted her machine gun and fired, the roar of the weapon thundering through the tunnel. The vampire’s body shook and stuttered, jerked ten, twenty times as bullets riddled it. Bone and flesh sprayed out the back as explosive rounds tore into it, its arm falling away, a piece of skull blasted into the dark.
Her weapon jammed, and she worked the action to clear it.
Carlisle played her light over the remains. From a distance, of course. Fuck me, but it was still alive. Not much in the way of a head left, but she swore what was left of the mouth was smiling. And pulling itself back together, like she’d seen Everard do. Except not like Everard. Everard healed, like a normal person, or wolf, or whatever the hell he was, just a lot faster. This thing was pulling pieces of itself back together, blood and chunks of flesh crawling across the ground back towards the body.
She fired the Eagle again, not that she had much hope after the failure of Pearce’s weapon. Where the fuck was Everard, anyway?
There was a fireball, an explosion of light and heat and something bigger than noise. A pressure wave hit her, picked her up, threw her back against Rex, who fell back into the let’s-call-it-water. Carlisle fell on the floor, saw Pearce thrown against the opposite tunnel wall.
Carlisle’s head was ringing, and she couldn’t hear anything, couldn’t see anything. Fire and smoke billowed from down the tunnel where the vampire had been. She clawed around her, found the Eagle. Slapped the flashlight once, twice, before the beam flickered on. She played the light about, picked out Rex pulling himself from the let’s-call-it-water, Pearce propping herself up
on an elbow. Carlisle’s ears were ringing, and she banged her free hand — where the fuck was the Glock? Where was it? — against her ear. Hollow thud, not a lot else.
You can die later. Get to your feet, Carlisle.
She reached for the tunnel wall, pulled herself to her feet. Pointed the light back at where Rex was. He was mostly out of the let’s-call-it-water, grenade launcher still in one hand. Ah. Carlisle pointed her light back at where the vampire had been, bits of flesh and wall slime burning with low flames. Her hearing was coming back, the first thing she heard was the patter and slap of bits of vampire raining falling from the tunnel and down.
“I…” she said.
“Rex,” said Pearce, then louder, “Rex!”
“I’m okay,” he said. “Everyone? I’m okay.”
“I can see you’re okay,” said Pearce. “I’m wondering if I should kill you myself.”
“Hey,” he said. “We had a situation. I … it worked out, didn’t it?”
“You do not,” said Pearce, “fire an explosive device in a contained space.”
“Okay, Jessie, okay,” he said. “It’s just…”
“What?” she said.
“Well, what if there are vampires?” he said. “The rules need to be different.”
“No,” said Jessie, “because the rules aren’t for the vampires. They’re for us. There is nothing friendly about friendly fire.”
Everard skidded around a bend, came running back to them. He slowed as he past the ring of burning remains and broken brick that was the vampire. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” said Carlisle. She found the Glock, checked the weapon, fed it a new magazine. Slipped another magazine into the Eagle, the sidearm hungry for it as always. She looked at Rex, at the grenade launcher, and then back at the remains of the vampire. Back to Rex. “Kill-stealing motherfucker,” she said.
CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO
Liselle looked at the broken machine, smoke coming from within, doors torn open. The Night hadn’t done all of this — the damage to the machine from the crash was clear, paint and damaged metal. But something else had come along afterward, something strong and hungry, to tear the doors off, to find the meat within. And finding nothing — because there was no blood — they had damaged the machine beyond repair. There would be no escape using it.
Like all of their kind, humans gave machines like this cheerful names. This was an APC, something that rolled off the tongue like children singing their ABCs. It meant Armored Personnel Carrier, and was designed for taking humans safely to places where they would then die or kill other humans. Humans were always killing. She looked back out through the hole the APC had punched through, saw the police cordon set up outside. Saw soldiers of a type right for this time and place — Josef would have called them the National Guard — collecting there as well, with other APCs, and helicopters buzzing overhead. A woman was shouting at them through some kind of loudspeaker, but her words were wearisome. Words like surrender and come out with your hands up and just let the hostages go. There were no hostages to let go, and Liselle never surrendered. The concept of coming out with her hands raised to the stars above was comical. So she ignored them, turning to Josef.
“That’s not going anywhere soon,” said Josef. He was standing with his arms crossed, a look of contemplation on his face as he examined the APC.
“We must help them, Josef,” she said. She didn’t say or they will all die. She wanted to. She wasn’t talking about the messy collection of police and national guard outside. She was talking about the Night, and their Pack.
“Yeah,” he said, uncrossing his arms, flexing his fingers, like his was preparing to lift something heavy. “If we don’t, they’re all going to die.”
She laughed. “You know what I’m thinking. Always.”
“I’d be a poor brother if I didn’t,” he said. Josef looked around the inside of the building, took a breath, let it out. “What we really need to do is go inside, and kill every fucking vampire we see.”
“We aren’t permitted,” she said. “It’s Kaylan’s house.”
“Yeah,” he said again. “I’m still pissed that she sent a PMC after me. Me. My own, against me.”
“Your ‘children?’” Liselle shook her head. “They’re just humans.”
“You’re telling me that?” He laughed, the sound trailing off to silence. “I just … wish.”
She knew what he wished. For a family, a real one, and children of his own. Of all the Father’s gifts, that was one they could never have. A joy denied to them. Except Kaylan, Kaylan and Maynor had found a way. A perversion of the Father’s will. They’d seeded His Eden with unholy monsters that ate and bred and hid in the dark like roaches. Liselle didn’t say any of that. What she said instead was, “Me too.”
“Still,” said Josef. “At least you’ve found one to call your own.”
“John Miles,” said Liselle.
“John Miles,” agreed Josef. He faced her, his face serious. “You can’t have him, sister.”
“I can have whom I want,” she said. She felt a hot stab of anger.
“I didn’t mean it that way,” said Josef. He looked at his hands, like they were unfamiliar to him. “We’re not these shells. We’re the End of the World. We are forever, until we Ride. And the end that follows … that will be forever as well. Anyway. John Miles is a man, and he will be dust in a moment of our time. He will leave you, because he will die, and that will hurt. After the hurt, you will be empty. And alone.”
She thought about that, wrestling with her anger like it was a living beast. After a moment, she said, “We are already alone, Josef. I … I have never loved before. Not like this. There are so many things in the Father’s Eden we have seen but never felt. There are so many kinds of love, and … we have watched. We have sat in their windows as families died, lovers left, friends stood back to back and fought to their last. As betrayal and long years and fierce pride and petty jealousy took them, and took them, and took them back to dust. And now—” here, she laughed, the sound sharp, bitter to her own ears “—I finally feel it. I feel it, Josef. It’s so wrong to take them. And if I lose him—”
“It’s wrong to take them,” said Josef, “or take him?”
“They are the same thing,” she said.
“They are not,” he said.
Liselle realized her teeth were bared, her fists clenched. She relaxed, letting her breath out. “You’re not wrong,” she said. “But you’re not right either.”
“Maybe not,” he said. He seemed to brighten. “Either way, we get to kill a lot of vampires today.”
“There are many good things in this world,” she said.
• • •
She tried to go down into the dark, of course. As she walked lower, the air felt thicker, heavier, and then it was solid. Not something visible, but immovable all the same, a point at which she couldn’t go past. It was a tie shop, celebrating the chains binding men to their work with yokes of fabric they’d wear around their necks. Liselle couldn’t go past the entrance, a simple doorway that was impossible to move past. Kaylan’s House.
Liselle walked back up to where the broken APC sat. It wasn’t smoking anymore, but that didn’t make it any less dead. Josef was sitting on the roof of the machine, legs crossed, eyes closed. She cleared her throat. “What are you doing?”
“Meditating,” he said.
She laughed. “I’ve never seen a fish climb a tree, but I’ve seen Josef Hackett meditate. I would have thought the first more likely.”
“I got bored,” he said, “because there are no vampires here.”
“We just need to keep the path clear,” said Liselle. “The APC might be broken, but there is still sunlight. If they can get through here, they can make it into the Father’s sight and be safe.”
“How,” said a voice, “are you going to do that with all of us?”
Liselle turned towards the voice. There were tens, perhaps a hundred of them,
mirrored eyes staring out of hungry faces. So quiet, and so fast. “I’m going to do it the way I always have,” she said, unsure which one had spoken. It doesn’t matter. “By the sword.”
“We saw what you did last time,” said one of them, stepping forward. A man, in a torn business suit. Stained, dirty, brown splotches on a white shirt. Hungry, hungry eyes. “We’ve watched. We’ve learned.”
Josef stood up on the APC. “What have you learned, vermin?”
“You are strong,” the vampire said. “But not very fast.” The vampires were spreading out in a ring around Josef and Liselle, so many of them. So many hungry eyes, polished to a mirror finish. They didn’t fear the Father’s sight as much as they should because the sun was right overhead, no stray beam finding its way inside. Liselle looked outside to the collection of police and national guard and — of course — reporters.
Her eyes came back to the vampire that had spoken. “We are fast enough.”
The creature smiled, gleaming fangs somehow odd against the dirt and grime of its torn suit. “I don’t think so.”
Liselle saw some of them had crossbows, bigger than you might expect a crossbow to be. Ropes looped to bolts, bolts ready to fly. She had a moment’s thought — they mean to tether us to the Earth — before one fired. She moved aside, the bolt skimming past her face, rope hissing and slithering in its wake. Like a snake.
She grabbed at the end of the rope as it flew, felt the braiding of the material — false, fake, plastic — as it sped through her fingers. It slowed as it ran out of line, the end of the bolt embedding in a wall. Liselle hooked her fingers closed, yanked, and pulled the line, crossbow, and vampire holding it across the room. To her. She lifted the creature up by the throat, hefted, and threw. It tumbled through the air, out through the glass, and into the Father’s light, where it burst into a thousand beautiful motes of fire, before it became ash on the wind.
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