by Andrew Dudek
At that moment the air was rent by a rapid cracka-cracka-cracka-crack and the noise of broken glass and people screaming. It took me a moment to place the sound, because up till now I’d only ever heard it from the speakers of televisions or movie theaters.
Nate and Guinness flung themselves to the ground, the sorcerer grabbing the waitress. I followed a moment later, feeling sluggish and stupid.
“What the hell was that?” I screamed, my ears ringing, my brain rattling like it was full of screws.”
Guinness grimaced. “That, David, is the sound of an assault rifle.”
The windows in front of the restaurant were broken, there were bullet holes in the ovens, and the chef’s shoulder was bleeding. Three men in business suits, a mother with a toddler, and an elderly couple were crouched behind the counter.
Guinness crept to the front of the store, a long, thin piece of wood appearing in his hand. Nate hopped over the counter and went to work on the injured chef with the restaurant’s first aid kit. I stood in the hall, feeling useless and unsure.
Guinness rejoined the group behind the counter and said, “Six shooters. All with what look like AR-15s.”
“What do they want?” the chef asked through gritted teeth as Nate rubbed an alcohol pad against the injured shoulder. It was a long, narrow cut—not a bullet wound—and I guessed it had come from a broken shard of flying glass. “We don’t have much money.”
“I don’t expect they’re after your money,” Guinness said. “I suppose they’re looking for me or my friends. The Art knows I’ve made my share of enemies, but something tells me that they didn’t pick now to make their move. Means they’re after you.” He was looking at Nate, sizing him up, curious to see what he’d do.
Nate didn’t look away from the bandage he was wrapping around the chef’s arm. “Is there a back door?”
The waitress said, “Yeah. It’s in the dining room.”
Guinness shook his head. “They’ll be covering it.”
“Dave,” Nate said, “I need you to check it. You okay with that?”
I swallowed. It was amazing—I’d faced down the razor-mouths of vampires, but I was paralyzed by the sound of gunfire.
“I know you’re scared,” Nate said. “So am I.”
“Me, too,” the chef said helpfully.
“And me,” Guinness added, “and this is far from my first violent entanglement.”
“But I think Mister Guinness is right,” Nate continued. “These guys are after us. That means it’s kinda our fault that these people are in danger. We need to protect them.”
I took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah. Okay. You’re right.”
And I headed towards the back door. It was concealed behind a large print of a house on the shore of a lake, right next to the aquarium. I pulled the painting off the wall and opened the door. I pushed it open a hair.
Bang!
That sound I’d heard before—a single gunshot, and a hole appeared, splintered and broken, in the plaster of the wall behind and above me. If I’d gone any farther, my head would have gotten in the bullet’s way. I slammed the door shut and moved the fish tank in front. It was heavy. Hopefully it would at least slow them down.
I missed my ax.
“Yeah,” I said, fighting to keep my voice steady, when I’d rejoined the others. “They’re out back, too.”
Nate and Guinness were squatting in front of the windows, inches away from getting blown away. I belly-crawled to them. Outside, I could see our assailants.
Six men, sure enough, stood in a half-circle in the middle of the street. All of them held mean looking rifles. Occasionally, one of them would lift his gun in the air and pump it up and down like he was shooting celebratory fire.
“The cops will be here soon,” I said.
Guinness shook his head. I could the lines in his forehead and around his eyes now, which he’d managed to keep hidden. “See the way the air shimmers?” He pointed at a spot a few doors down from Legendary Bobby’s. The air was shaking and waving, the way it does rising off blacktop on a hot day. The shimmering was an ugly green-brown, like a toad. “It’s a sound bubble. Nobody outside will be able to hear anything happening inside. And, yeah, that includes phone lines. We can’t get a message out. There’s no help coming.”
“How’d they set up something like that?” Nate asked.
“Hard to say. There are a number of foci that could do the trick. Or they could have a warlock on the payroll. Hang on.”
Guinness pointed his wand out the window. He snarled something in Latin and a geyser of blue-white water flew towards the nearest of the gunmen. A column of fire erupted from inside a nearby parked car and intercepted the water. There was a small explosion, a smell like burning copper, and a pillar of steam rose into the air. One of the riflemen fired off a burst, but he missed, and the bullets peppered the wall of the pizzeria.
Steam hung over the scene like a mist.
Guinness settled even lower. “Definitely a warlock. And I think that big fellow’s got giant blood.” He considered. “Though his face is pretty lumpy…he could be part troll.”
“Giant?” I whispered. “Troll?”
Neither of the others heard me, or if they did, they ignored me.
“How we gonna get past them?”
Guinness drummed his fingers on his knee. “I want you to promise me something, Nathan: I want you to tell me you’ll stop this quest. I don’t care what you do, but I don’t want you to kill yourself on this quixotic mission.”
Nate’s face was surprisingly cool when he said, “You know I can’t do that, Mr. Guinness. This is my life.”
The sorcerer screwed up his face like he was preparing to argue, but he stopped. “Fine. It’s frustrating, but, gosh, it’s the best I can do, and I suppose I understand.” For a moment he stared at Nate, then clapped him on the shoulder.
Without another word, Guinness turned to look at the chef and the waitress. “Are either of you particularly attached to the fish in the aquarium?”
The waitress shook her head. The chef said, “They were my ex-wife’s idea. Said they classed the joint up.”
“And they certainly did,” Guinness said seriously, “but the time’s come for them to serve a nobler purpose.” With that, staying low and moving quickly, he went into the back dining room.
Nate and I stared out into the picket line of dangerous, passionless faces. “Are they thralls?” I asked, remembering the vampire spy that had gotten Hector and Corey killed.
“Possibly. Mercenaries, maybe. I’ve heard that happens, too—vampires paying people to do their dirty work.”
I shivered. The thought of someone choosing to work for those monsters was terrifying.
“How are we gonna get out of this one?”
Nate’s voice was toneless. “I don’t know, Dave. I really don’t.”
Behind us, in the relative safety of the serving counter, the others shifted. The baby cried. Her mother tried to calm her. The businessmen were silent. Every once in a while the waitress would let out a choked sob and the chef would growl in pain.
Guinness emerged a moment later. His jacket was gone. In its place was a strange cloth bandolier. Hanging from hooks on the belt were the bloated, dried corpses of the tropical fish. Each one had been blown up like a pufferfish until they were about the size of a softball.
Guinness didn’t explain, just looked at Nate. “You sure you won’y change your mind?”
“Sorry.”
The sorcerer smiled. “I can’t say I’m surprised—I knew your mother.” He shook his head and drew his wand. “Listen, Nathan, David: I had heard about the vampires in the Bronx. I’ve been looking into it and I know it looks random, but it’s not. They’re organized, more organized than I’ve ever seen on this side of the Atlantic. I think they have a leader, someone calling the shots. Something big is happening here.” He pulled from his pocket a piece of paper and there was writing on it, in flowing ink letters. “This is a list
of addresses that could be concealing vampire nests. Take it. Take it and find them.
“I’d go with you, but…” He looked out the window, his gaze vaguely upward. “I expect I’m going to be a bit preoccupied. It’s gonna be up to you, okay? You’ll have to stop them.”
He let out a puff of air, spun around and before anyone could say anything, he was out the door.
The waitress wailed. “Where’s he going? What’s happening?”
“Ma’am,” I said, “just stay low and follow our lead. We’ll get you out of here.” I looked at Nate to see if he felt any more confident than I did. It was hard to say, but I doubt he had much more faith.
Outside, Guinness strode across the blacktop, his hands at his sides like a gunslinger. Three of the shooters opened up. The air in front of Guinness shook, and the bullets fell, crushed, to the ground. He pulled one of the dead fish from his bandolier, squeezed it like a stress ball, and threw it.
The fish, a bright orange clownfish, landed at the feet of the biggest gunman, the one that might be a giant. The big man looked down and then back up smirking at the absurd ineffectiveness.
And then the fish exploded. Bright orange flames whipped into the air. It looked and felt like fire—the heat was astonishing, even from yards away—but it behaved like water. The shooter’s hair caught fire, as did his clothes. He screamed. The fire trickled along the ground. A second gunman leapt back, but not fast enough to avoid the flame. He flung his weapon to the ground and stopped, dropped, and rolled. It didn’t help. The fire consumed him, then continued to pace along the street, capturing other gunmen in its wake.
Guinness pulled another fish-grenade free and lobbed it at the car where the fire that had blocked his water had come from. This fish exploded into a huge, green bubble, which trapped the car like a mosquito in amber.
The other gunmen opened, jammed new clips into their rifles and fired madly. None of the bullets seemed to penetrate the invisible shield that hung around Guinness.
Nate shook me. “We gotta go. Now.”
We arranged the inhabitants of the pizzeria into a single-file line. Each person put one hand on the back of the shoulder in front of them, with Nate in the lead. He activated the stone on his watchband and, suddenly all eleven of us became, if not invisible, at least really difficult to notice. We walked out of the store as if we had the cover of night, and, with the sounds of gunfire and screaming behind us, retreated from the battlefield.
We passed through the ugly green bubble like it was empty air and stepped out into the humid, stifling air of late-afternoon Harlem. Immediately, I felt something crawling across my skin, scratching like the legs of some cosmic insect, only it seemed to affect every inch of my body at once, including the insides. Looking over my shoulder I saw there was hole in the sound bubble, and that it was widening. The steady, rhythmic pounding of gunfire could be heard now, punctuated with screams of pain and the occasional explosion. The air smelled like smoke, thickly and weirdly, like a candle run amok, something that I couldn’t quite place.
The itching passed.
The bubble was shrinking, retracting into the sky like someone up there was reeling in a fishing line. The weaker the bubble became, the stronger the sounds from the other side got. The battle still raged, and in a moment, we could see clearly for ourselves.
Felix Guinness stood in the middle of the street. Four cars, which had parked at the curb had been pulled away and arranged in a square around him. He crouched, using the cars as cover.
The shooters had spread out, surrounding the makeshift fort. I couldn’t imagine how Guinness would get out of this.
Occasionally, the sorcerer would poke his head out from behind a bullet-ridden fender or hood and lob another fish-grenade. But there mercenaries were pros, apparently, and they’d adapted: Guinness’s grenades had short range and as long as they stayed away from them, they could remain unburned.
The air was heavy, dripping with humidity. Thick, battleship-gray clouds were forming in the sky above the Harlem rooftops. I didn’t think too much of that—it wasn’t unusual for sudden storms to spring up in late summer.
Even from the distance I could see sweat pouring down the dies of Guinness’s face. His hair clung to his cheeks, his temples, the back of his neck. He was out of fish-bombs, and he was shooting bursts of high-pressured water from his wand. Most of these hits missed the mark, but the ones that hit didn’t seem to do much damage—each blow did little more than soak shirts or mess up hair.
“What’s he doing?” I asked. The circle of gunmen was tightening. Before long they’d have him completely in their grasp.
“He’s distracting them,” Nate said. His face was expressionless, the way he got before a raid. “Remember, the crystal only works as long as nobody’s looking for us. He’s keeping their attention on him so they don’t see us. We gotta go, Dave.”
Nate turned and began to jog. The refugees from Legendary Bobby’s hesitated, then followed. I looked over my shoulder, suddenly aware of the screwdriver in my pocket. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but maybe I could sneak up behind one of the gunmen, jab it into his neck, and take his gun. I didn’t know Guinness, but I couldn’t just let him die.
I couldn’t let him die for me.
I was all set to go when the sorcerer caught my eye. He was grinning like a madman, and he winked, then shook his head. The shooters were on him now. It was too late. Some of them squeezed between cars. Others simply vaulted over the hoods. In that moment, there were four people with assault rifles pointing at Felix Guinness. He could have reached out and touched any of them.
The sorcerer dropped his wand, pushed a lock of hair out of his eyes, and smiled. He put his hands above his head in the universal gesture of surrender… and he brought his fists down with a martial artist’s speed. A peal of thunder roared like some ancient beast in the clouds and a bolt of lightning fell from the sky.
The thunderbolt hit Guinness’s outstretched hands and everything went white. When my eyes cleared and my ears stopped ringing I could see a crater where the car-fort had been.
I ran towards the spot and looked into the pit. The cars themselves were reduced to the charred leftovers of their frames. There was nothing inside but skeletons. Clothes, skin, muscle, fat, even the weapons had been burned away.
I felt, rather than heard Nate come up behind me. “He must have put all of his power into that last strike,” he said.
“Why would he do that? He didn’t even know us.”
“I don’t know,” Nate said. “Maybe he owed my mom a favor.”
There was nothing more to say.
Nate continued: “We got those people out. We saved them, kid.” When I didn’t answer, he put a hand on my shoulder. “Come on, kid—come on, Dave. Let’s go home.”
Chapter 14: The End
The winter was hard.
We spent the autumn investigating the list Felix Guinness had provided, but we found nothing. Still, there were a lot of addresses on that list. We couldn’t expect to check them all in a few months.
Starting in November, the rumors of strange disappearances slowed to a trickle. By December there were no longer reports of mysterious figures in dark cellars or attics. Maria, now working in Squirrel’s tattoo shop, reported in three times a week and told us there was no sign of vampire activity. None of us understood why, but it seemed that the vampire reign of terror was over.
Luisa ‘lifted lots of warm clothes, so I rarely felt in danger of freezing to death, but rarely isn’t never. There were nights when I was sure I’d drift off to sleep and never wake up, that my body would collapse in on itself in a desperate attempt to feel warm.
Without the threat of vampires, the Family drifted apart. A few weeks before Christmas, Hakeem decided he wanted nothing to do with us and left to find some relatives in Chicago. Over the next month, as temperatures plummeted and snow fell in steady, blanketing waves, others left the station.
I couldn’t blame them, though�
��not really. There were long, frigid nights when I considered it myself. The one thing that kept me from leaving wasn’t that I had no place to go. It was the fact that Felix Guinness had died to save me. If I left, it would be the same as saying the sorcerer’s sacrifice meant nothing, and I wasn’t ready to do that.
Life with the Family, for me at least, had begun as a game. My first few encounters with vampires hadn’t been fun, of course, and had shown me that this was war, but there was still a part of me that felt good about life, even as I buried friends and collected scars. Now, though, without the vampires, with the cold creeping in like jackals, I was beginning to wonder if it wasn’t all pointless.
Between New Year’s Day and the first of February, three members froze to death. Four more, unwilling to face frostbite and death by exposure, disappeared. I was sad, watching my brothers and sisters leave, but that was all. No anger, no bitterness. I’d already decided that I wouldn’t desert the Family, but I couldn’t begrudge those that did.
March brought with it an early thaw. The Family had been reduced to eight. Seven, really, now that Maria didn’t live in the station. We were the hardcores, the ones who’d silently agreed to give everything in battle with the vampires of the Bronx.
Because we also agreed that they’d be back. We didn’t know where they’d gone or what they were doing, but we knew we hadn’t beaten them. Sooner or later, the vampires would return, and we’d be ready.
On the last day of winter, we were proven right.
Maria came down the stairs, that bright morning (Squirrel hadn’t set foot in the station himself since we buried Corey), her lips pursed and her eyes bright with concentration.
“Guys,” she said, her eyes on Nate. “It’s happening again.”
There had been a vampire attack, the first in months. Three teenagers, who’d been hanging out and enjoying the early-onset spring in a playground on East 165th Street, had disappeared. One of Squirrel’s regular sources had spotted a strange-looking man climbing into the attic window of a house just down the block. The worst part? A family of three was supposed to live there—a mother and two children.
