“You’re the one we’re looking for,” the bloodsucker growled, his voice low and sticky.
“No, I’m the one for whom you are looking,” I replied.
“Huh?”
I squeezed the trigger of my AK-47 and proceeded to brutally split the vampire’s head open worse than the infinitive in this sentence. And Sloane called me an ignoramus.
I grimaced at seeing even more of Gerald’s sacrifice wasted and then swore when I realized that I had an even more distasteful task to complete. I walked up to the dead passenger, drew my gladius, and pulled my arm back to take his head off…but I just couldn’t do it. So I flipped out the AK-47 and put one silver bullet through his skull, which had roughly the same decapitating effect, but didn’t require me to hack through the unfortunate man’s vertebrae. I made a point of not looking at his face. Just because I couldn’t have nightmares didn’t mean that I could easily forget my failures.
“I got the CCTV on the bus too, but you’d better get out of here.” Vir roused me from my pity party, speaking from the action of my gun but sounding weaker than ever.
I didn’t understand what my colleague meant for a moment, but then I looked at the rest of the people in the bus. The ones who weren’t injured were staring at me in soundless horror, and I realized that I was heavily armed and covered in gore. It would only be so long before someone would think to take my picture.
I headed for the exit—the door was crushed and wasn’t going to open, but there was a hole in the side that I had no trouble clambering through. Looking back, I heard a groan behind me, and I saw a woman cradling her arm, as well as an older man with a cut on his forehead. The roads were empty. I didn’t know how long it would be before someone else could report this. Shit. I whipped out my phone and dialed 999. It took thirty eternal seconds to give the woman on the other end of the phone the relevant details, and then I was off, feeling guilty as hell about leaving those people behind and nervous as hell about turning my phone back on.
With my rifle slung over my shoulder, I pumped my arms and pistoned my legs as I thundered down the pavement, pausing only a moment to reload. I was just three hundred yards from the gates to Kensington and Chelsea Cemetery, and all of the hints, all of the complications, all of the difficult decisions were meaningless unless I could deal with the vampire. I had to get to the cemetery, find Sloane, and destroy him.
In the end, Sloane and two of his cronies beat me to the gates by less than a minute. I knew exactly when they hit the gate, because that’s when two of Badger’s Antiquities officers opened up on the vampires with the ubiquitous MP5 automatic carbine. The sound of the guns was like a giant ripping phone books in half, and I put on a burst of speed that I didn’t know I had in me, splashing through growing puddles on the pavement. I was still too late.
I watched from across the road as bullets stitched across the three vampires, knocking the two flanking Sloane into the wet grass, but Sloane was made of sterner stuff and weathered the hail of fire. Sloane blurred, striking the man on the right and pouncing on the officer on the left.
The policeman went down under the monster’s weight. “NO! No! no…” he screamed in denial as Sloane pinned his hips, the vampire’s mouth locking on to the officer’s femoral artery. The other policeman lay in a boneless heap, his neck at an unnatural angle. Sloane’s back was in tatters where bullets had hit him, but he seemed about as discomfited as I would be from a mosquito bite. I pulled up my AK-47 and, without any warning, fired.
I’ve said before that vampires are fast. In case I haven’t done that fact justice yet, let me describe how Sloane avoided my fusillade: I pulled the trigger smoothly. Pulling the trigger of an AK-47 causes a firing pin to drop, impacting the primer on a 7.62x39 cartridge. Within hundredths of a second, the primer ignites, setting off the main load of cordite, and the bullet travels the length of the barrel, picking up spin as it traverses the rifling. The bullet exits the muzzle at 2,350 feet per second. In an automatic rifle, like the one I was carrying, that bullet will be joined by nine more of its friends within a second, and all thirty rounds in the magazine will be expended after a total of three seconds. Sloane was only ninety feet away—a trivial shot, even in the rain, for a rifle that is effective to over ten times that distance. All of those numbers add up to Sloane, whose back was turned toward me, having less than 1/20 of a second to react.
Not one of the thirty bullets struck their target. The first several impacted the unfortunate officer in his hands, who he thrust forward as a meat shield. The next handful were slipped between like he was Barry Sanders dodging Chicago Bears linebackers. He batted a final stray bullet out of the air, and then he flung the policeman’s corpse at me. “You had your chance to give me the Sigilum, and you chose to be obstinate. And you had the gall to shoot me. Your wife is forfeit. And the babe too. In fact, I think I’ll make sure that this graveyard only contains dead people when I leave. As it should,” Sloane shouted, flashing me a gore-drenched smile. I reached down to grab my last clip, but before it cleared the ammo pouch, the former monster hunter had disappeared, bounding into the cemetery. I fired two dozen rounds after him, but I didn’t think any connected.
Of course, that still left two other vampires between me and my wife. The police had put several dozen rounds into the creatures, but they weren’t silver bullets, and the vampires were recovering quickly. One, a tall Asian man in a leather jacket, levered himself up and bared his fangs at me. His eyes were glowing, and he snarled, blood dripping down his chin. I think I was supposed to be afraid. Nope. I pulled down, took aim with my rifle, and shot him right between the eyes. And in the heart. And both legs. Vampires are tough, but the nonmasters weren’t fast enough to dodge my bullets. My gun clicked empty.
Gunshots sounded from inside the cemetery, and I heard a bullet whiz past my head like an angry, giant wasp, making me duck. The remaining vampire, an older-looking white man, glanced at his downed comrade. Maybe the man had been a police officer in another life, but after forty years of forced, sleeping starvation he was nothing but a beast. He leapt onto the spurting corpse of his former colleague, lapping at the crimson flowing from its neck. My stomach turned at the sight, and I had to fight down the urge to retch. I clomped forward, reminding myself that this, too, was on Sloane’s account, drew my gladius, and this time my arm flashed down without hesitation. The sword strike was true, and another life was ended. I didn’t stop feeling sick, but my wife was in danger, and I didn’t have time to dwell on what I’d done. Suddenly, my phone rang, which was odd because I’d switched it off after calling 999.
I held it up and accepted the call, not slowing down. I put the call on speakerphone based on the logic that placing a potentially cursed device to my ear might be a bad idea. “Julian, they’re coming for me. They’re just in the next room,” Vir whispered, on the verge of hyperventilating. “I need to be back in my body in case they move it, but I wanted to warn you, I was scouting ahead and there are two vampires waiting—” The call cut off.
“Shit!” I yelled, and flung my empty rifle into the night in frustration. A flurry of shots rang out from inside the cemetery, chewing into ground and masonry indiscriminately, and I was forced to duck behind a granite gatepost. As I shivered there, the rain pounded down, soaking me to the bone, and I trembled—in part from the precipitation and in part from the adrenaline flooding my system. The next ten minutes were going to determine whether or not I could stop Sloane and put the vampires to sleep before they ran amok. I could feel the weight of the backpack containing the Sigilum digging into my shoulders, and I considered the dual nature of the artifact: It had originally been made as part of a concerted effort to systematize the universe at a time when disease and chaos had reigned. Now Sloane’s scheme was using it to sow strife and pain in a time of order and plenty. There seemed to be a lot of things at the moment that could be seen as good or evil based on where you were standing at the moment…
The fusillade cut off abruptly, and I ju
mped to my feet. I had to hope that Badger and his remaining police could slow Sloane down and distract him. The time had come for me to make use of them to get in the best punch that I could. But why hadn’t Sloane rushed me just now? He almost certainly could have done it with his two flunkies. Did he fear me that much? But if he did, then I’d have thought he’d have an easier time attacking me with his flunkies than he would on his own when I’d be the one with help to hand. He’d claimed that he was going after Dana to punish me, but I didn’t buy it. There had to be some other reason for him to keep me alive. I didn’t have enough time, however, to figure out what that reason was. Both my friend and my wife would be near the chapel, so that was where I needed to be.
I sprinted through the gates, jumping over the cooling corpses. My trench coat flapped as I pounded up the asphalt path, but before I made it two hundred yards, someone started shooting again. Ping, ping, ping. I knew that only one person in this graveyard would be carrying a weapon that made that kind of noise: Detective Chief Inspector Badger. The man had a foot-long hard-on for small-caliber pistols—damn the fact that they never accomplished anything against the kind of monsters that we usually ended up facing.
“Jimmy! Are you okay?” I yelled.
“Julian? Thank God, boy. Sloane just grabbed a couple of my lads, and I could use a bit of a hand!” he shouted back through the rain, and I caught the glint of his Coke-bottle lenses in a flash of lightning. Badger had put himself and his people on the line for me, so I bolted in his direction. Unfortunately, I forgot Vir’s warning.
Two pale, rail-thin vampires pounced from the trees. One hit me full-on in the back, driving me to the ground. I let out a cry of pain and curled into a ball to protect myself, but the creature of the night punched me in the ribs with knuckle-cracking force, and I saw stars. My trench coat was made of dream-stuff, and it could have batted away bullets or shrugged off knife slices, but the brute, crushing force of the vampire’s fists pummeled me, making my insides ache. I thought I was going to be sick, and I could literally kiss my ass good-bye went through my head, proving once again that I have no survival instinct. I just couldn’t help making light of the situation…my thoughts trailed off as an idea percolated through my brain, and I picked up a nasty bruise on my kidney. Light of the situation! I dug for the loops inside my trench coat, yanked, and rolled over.
The vampire hadn’t been expecting the move, and it recoiled for an instant. I looked up, and pasted on my best shit-eating grin. “Say cheese!” I pulled the pin on the flash-bang grenade and threw it as high as I could into the air. Did I call the device a flash-bang? That might not have been the most accurate description. When I’d put my gear together in the Dreamscape, I’d known what kind of enemy I’d be facing, so I made sure that I had the appropriate loadout to blast a lot of bloodsuckers. That meant that the devices that I’d referred to as flash-bang grenades were actually heavy on the flash and light on the bang. As in, thirteen million candlepower heavy on the flash. I knew what was coming, breathed out, and covered my eyes with my arm. The grenade exploded like a miniature star going nova. I was able to see my arm bones through my closed eyelids, there was a noise like God clapping a pair of cymbals together, and I went away for a few seconds.
When I gathered my wits again, I felt blood trickling from my ears and nose. The vampire had come off much, much worse. Have you ever been barbecuing and accidentally dropped a chicken leg between the grates, and then later you’re cleaning the grill and you find a blackened, twisted thing? Yeah, the vampire was like that, if you had taken the blackened, twisted thing, drenched it in gasoline, and tossed on a match for good measure. In other words, it was dead.
Aching, I came to my feet and looked for Badger. I was relieved to see another, slightly less blackened vampire corpse thirty feet away, but the moleish Detective Chief Inspector was nowhere to be seen. “Badger!” I shouted repeatedly. There was no answer for thirty seconds. I couldn’t wait any longer, so I jogged in the direction of the chapel, but the rain intensified, coming down in sheets, and I slipped, going down hard. Luckily, I managed not to impale myself, and I planted the gladius in the ground to lever myself up.
Mud coated my trench coat and blue jeans, and I struggled back to my feet. A bolt of lightning rent the heavens, and I realized that I’d seen this scene before from a different viewpoint. I was living the last of my visions. There was nothing certain beyond these moments. A chill went down my spine, but I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath. I knew that I had to get to Dana to start the ritual, but I couldn’t just let my friend be carried off by a monster. “Sloane!” I shouted, fulfilling a prophecy and issuing a challenge. “Sloane! I have what you want. Come fight me like a man!”
“But I am more than a man, fool.” Sloane’s voice sounded from the darkness, and then a large shape slammed into me and drove me to the ground, making me curse in pain. My heart pounded as I expected to feel fangs on my throat or claws tearing into me, but the expected agony didn’t come.
“I’m—I’m sorry lad,” the heavy lump on top of me said weakly, and I realized that it was wearing an identical trench coat. Badger.
“What?” I said as I rolled out from under the downed cop.
“I promised you that I’d keep your family safe. Not once, but twice I’ve failed you. I’ve failed my oath, and now we won’t be able to finish what we started,” Badger replied. I looked down and saw Badger’s jacket fall open. It wasn’t wet with just rain. Droplets of water beaded up on his Coke-bottle lenses, he blinked once, and then his eyes closed. Shit. Shit. Shit!
In the distance, Dana screamed.
Shit.
Chapter 26
0130–0212, Thursday, June 23, 2016
I was angry. Not “that asshole cut me off on the freeway” angry, or even “some jackass stole my car” angry. I was Tom Petty angry; I wasn’t going to back down. People and things had been pushing me around for over a year; even worse, they’d been pushing around my friends and family. Good, normal people who didn’t have any special way of defending themselves. The injustice of it all, Badger bleeding out, Olivia taken. It brought a blazing, righteous anger into my soul, the type of towering rage that makes you feel like a colossus, trembling with the need to smite the evil sonofabitch who inspired it. The rain striking me sizzled, and sparks jumped off of my skin as the intensity of my emotion warped the fabric of reality around me. I sprang to my feet, drew my sword, and charged, leaving a good man to die.
I sprinted the last hundred yards to the chapel, sword waving and trench coat flapping. I skidded to a stop in front of the steps to the small stone chapel. Light poured out of a gaping entrance where the doors had been ripped off the hinges. I paused. I’d been in these situations a million times in the Dreamscape. As angry as I was, only a mook rushes in unprepared. I still had my gladius, a magical wax disk, and the supernatural ability to blow the ever-loving hell out of someone—once. The wax disk would be useful, but only if I could get it to the prepared ritual circle. The gladius wasn’t going to be worth crap against a vampire, but it felt reassuring in my hand. Extradimensional energy it was, then. I just had to hope that my one punch was strong enough to take out a newly minted master vampire who had shrugged off several hundred rounds of ammunition. I ached to go in swinging, but Dana was in there too. I pushed my anger down into a glowing ball of rage and tiptoed up the stairs.
At the top, I pressed up against the side of the door and leaned, as silently as I could, around the corner. Sloane was surveying the inside of the church, and my heart leapt as I realized that he hadn’t found Dana yet. The monster hunter pulled down a wall hanging.
“Come out, Mrs. Adler. If you simply show yourself, then on my word as a gentleman, I’ll make your ending painless, ja.”
My knuckles popped on the hilt of my sword, and Sloane’s head swung in my direction. I saw a curtain twitch behind the vampire, and I knew that my moment had come.
I strode into the room, stomping on the wooden
floor. “You need me alive. Admit it. Tell me why that is. Maybe we can make a deal,” I announced to Sloane, my eyes not straying from him as I bluffed like my wife’s life depended on it.
Sloane shook his head sadly, his leonine mane of reddish-brown hair swaying. “A nice try, Mr. Adler. But I’m a gentleman, and I’m going to keep my word. Your wife and unborn child are going to be ripped to pieces in front of you, I’ll take the Sigilum from you, and then I’m going to eat you. I wonder if you’ll taste any different?” Sloane said. He then tore a pew out of the floor and flung it against the wall with a casual flick of his wrist. “Now, where has that woman hidden?” he mused.
Flame flashed and lead leapt from the barrel of a shot gun, deafeningly loud in the small, stone chapel. I ducked behind a wooden pew, and Sloane jerked as three ounces of steel shotgun pellets obliterated his face. “I’m right here, asshole,” Dana said, waddling from behind a faded red curtain that concealed a small alcove. Sloane staggered around the room drunkenly, hands clutching at the gaping wound where his eyes, mouth, and nose used to be. Dana pumped another shell into the chamber, and the gun roared again. Sloane had shrugged off a lot of rounds earlier in the night, and maybe those had worn him down, or maybe it just came down to having the right tool for the job, but Dana’s second shot put a hole the size of my fist in his chest, and I could see something slimy and black pulsing in between his ribs.
I didn’t know that Sloane was a politician, I thought, and then I rushed to Dana’s side, gladius out and extradimensional powers fizzing in my frontal cortex. Dana jacked the shotgun again, aiming at Sloane’s ruined head once more, but then she swung in my direction. “Motherfucker!” she yelled. My eyes went wide, and death blasted out of the end of the barrel. I flinched and braced to be blasted, for all the good that would have done, and was pleasantly surprised when I was still alive a moment later.
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