Baker offered Jerome the half-empty champagne bottle.
He waved it away.
“Eyes open,” he growled. “Let’s move.”
Without another word, he marched to the suite’s front door and shouldered aside the couch they had used to barricade it.
He placed his fingers lightly on the door handle and held his other hand up in front of Bravo’s faces, three fingers extended.
Three.
Two.
One.
Jerome yanked the door open.
And flinched backward as a man in a Bellagio bellhop uniform swung a fire axe directly at his head.
He hit the deck as the axe lodged deep into the wooden door frame, and Watts opened fire, shredding the attacker’s body. The bellhop fell away in a haze of blood and bullets, leaving the axe still buried in the spot where Jerome’s face had been moments earlier.
He stared up at it a moment, his nerves dancing wildly.
“Okay,” he said in a faltering tone. “Now let’s move.”
He stood, ducking under the axe’s handle, and twisted out into the gloomy corridor. For now, the Bellagio’s emergency backup power was still operational, but it did no more than illuminate small squares of the carpet at regular intervals, like runway lights. It was enough to pick out movement, but not much else.
And there was movement.
Up ahead.
Streaking toward Jerome.
He dropped to one knee, taking aim, and rattled off a three-round burst, catching the incoming figure in the upper-chest region and punching them backward. They landed with a gurgle, and went still.
Jerome’s mind asked him a question he didn’t want to think about.
Got enough ammo for this?
He grimaced, pausing a moment to haul the fire axe from the doorway. The weight of the weapon in his hand felt good.
“Save your ammo if you can,” he hissed over his shoulder. “You’re gonna need it.”
With that, he took off at a controlled jog, heading for the green exit sign that glowed softly at the end of the hallway.
21
“Are you sure it will still be there? I mean, what if it’s been attacked?”
Mancini didn’t respond to the question at first. He kept his eyes on the road ahead, weaving through the sparse traffic, rocketing along State Highway 115 at a steady speed of more than a hundred miles per hour. The engine of the ancient jeep that they had taken from the ranch’s surprisingly expansive motor pool shrieked in protest, the body of the vehicle rattling alarmingly, as though the velocity was going to shake something vital loose at any moment.
“It’ll be there. If anywhere is still operational, it’ll be this place.”
Mancini’s eyes didn’t leave the road as he growled the answer to a question that Herb had already asked more than once. The American’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were slowly turning purple.
This, Herb thought, probably wasn’t the time to fire off more questions.
He glanced at the rear view mirror. Dan sat in the back seat, with his eyes closed. He hadn’t spoken since they had set off. Herb wondered if he was trying to search for answers in his own head; trying to commune with the black river, perhaps. Either that, or exhaustion had pulled him into a deep sleep. Herb somehow doubted that: he couldn’t imagine anyone sleeping in their current situation.
Couldn’t imagine himself sleeping ever again.
No, if he had to guess, Dan was going over his own mistakes. All the poor guesses and bad fortune that had led him here. Maybe he, too, was trying to figure out if the black river really existed.
Herb decided to let him be. He slumped back into his shuddering seat, staring out at the horizon. They had been driving at reckless speed for thirty minutes. He hadn’t heard a thing from Conny in that time; she hadn’t responded on either of the two occasions that he had tried to contact her. He hoped that meant she was safely sealed inside the bunker in the foothills of the Rockies. Mancini confirmed that it was likely she was deep enough underground that the radio wouldn’t work, and as the jeep put miles between the three men and the bloody ranch they had left behind, they had probably moved out of range anyway.
Conny was sharp. Brave. And she had Remy. Herb would just have to hope that she would be fine, but some deep part of his brain wondered if he would ever see her again.
He turned his thoughts back to their destination. He, Mancini and Dan were heading to a different bunker buried in the Colorado ground, one that Mancini claimed would be among the last bastions of strength of the US military: the Cheyenne Mountain complex near the town of Colorado Springs.
According to Mancini, Cheyenne Mountain was built to withstand a nuclear blast at close range; it was one of the few places in America that could take an electromagnetic pulse on the chin and keep on ticking. A headquarters for NORAD; a gigantic series of self-sufficient tunnels large enough to hold many thousands of personnel; attached to the nearby Peterson Air Force Base.
When Mancini had reeled off facts about the place, Herb could definitely see how it might be one of the locations where the military could regroup in safety and begin to think about fighting back, but it also felt alarmingly like a bolt hole.
There was something unsettling about the idea that Conny, Logan and Remy had been forced underground, and now Herb, Dan and Mancini were heading for a bunker, too. The vampires were taking the surface of the planet, it seemed, and the parts of humanity that might survive were those who moved in the opposite direction. Down into the earth; into hiding.
“He asleep?”
Mancini broke Herb’s train of thought. The American nodded toward the back seat. Herb half-turned, glancing back over his shoulder.
“Looks like it. Why? Want me to drive so you can go back there and spoon?”
Mancini eased up on the throttle.
The speedometer dropped, the needle holding steady at seventy-five.
“He’s gonna get us killed, Rennick.”
Herb pondered that for a moment.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Maybe.”
“Ain’t no maybe about it.”
Herb checked the rear view mirror again. If Dan was listening, he was doing a good job of not reacting.
“Ain’t just the vampires,” Mancini continued. “Though Christ knows he’s gonna bring them right down on top of us sooner or later. It’s him. He’s…”
The American trailed off, apparently unable to find the words he needed.
“Unstable,” Herb offered.
Mancini nodded.
“More with each passing hour. I could feel him, you know. In my head.”
Herb blinked. He and Mancini had barely ever spoken about anything. They dealt in quips and caustic attacks, not heartfelt emotion. Not discussion.
“It didn’t feel like he was alone in there. Felt like there was something following him. Like a shadow.”
For a moment, Herb twisted his neck to stare at Mancini. The older man kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead.
“He thinks it’s the vampire god. Or their queen,” Herb said. “Something like that. I don’t think he knows for sure.”
“And what do you think?”
Herb frowned, unsure at first how to answer.
“I don’t know. Could be all in his head...uh, no pun intended. He was...damaged before all this started. I think, maybe more damaged than he is letting on. But he believes what he is saying, I’m sure of it. He thinks the vampires have a ruler. Something he can track down and kill. If he’s right, it could be a way to stop them. Or at least slow them down long enough for us to fight back.”
“Hmm. And if he’s wrong? If he’s just some lunatic who happens to have this special blood in his veins?”
“Then we’re on a wild goose chase. But we’re still alive.”
“Maybe we got lucky.”
Herb chuckled. “Do you feel lucky?”
Mancini grimaced. “Luckier than Jennifer Craven.
Or just about anybody else Bellamy has come into contact with.”
Herb’s grin faded.
“If he is getting worse each time he takes a mind,” Mancini said, “he’s not gonna last much longer. And he’s gonna get dangerous. When you think about it, he ain’t so different to the vampires.”
“He isn’t killing people for fun. Or for food.”
Mancini grunted.
“I get that you’re in this to be the hero, Rennick. You want to make amends, right? Make up for all the shit your family is responsible for, maybe even stick it to Daddy’s ghost.”
Herb’s cheeks burned.
“But I don’t get the feeling Bellamy is in this to be a hero, do you?”
Herb had no answer.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought.”
Mancini gave another grunt, and stepped on the accelerator once more. The needle jolted up, nudging past a hundred.
Herb returned his gaze to the rear view mirror, and his stomach did a long, slow barrel roll. Dan’s eyes weren’t shut anymore; he definitely wasn’t sleeping.
It didn’t look like he was listening, either.
The thin artist’s eyes were painfully wide, the pupils rolled back into his skull so far that they were barely visible anymore.
Blood was leaking from his nose.
*
In the dream, Dan wasn’t always Dan.
He was sometimes Leon Mancini; sometimes the cleric, whose name he had never been told, but now knew like it was his own. The young man he had walked to his death back at the ranch had been called Peter Everett. A bland name; one that nobody other than Dan would remember.
Sometimes, when he wasn’t himself, peering tearfully at memories of Elaine—alive and well or dying in screaming agony—he wasn’t either of those other men, either. Sometimes, he wasn’t a man at all.
He was something else.
Something that didn’t have a name.
Yet the glimpses of the vampire mind were fleeting and slippery. Like trying to remember the details of a half-heard lecture on a subject he didn’t understand. The vampire’s memories ebbed close, and then fell away when he tried to look at them.
He sifted through the echoes of the minds he had taken.
There were bitter memories of desert combat that belonged to Mancini, along with equally bitter memories of the ranch: most notably the fiery arguments with Jennifer Craven that had dominated Mancini’s life over the past few years. Memories of crossing the Atlantic with her last words to him ringing in his ears: stay in the light.
In Everett’s memories, there were only fractured images: a woman that Everett himself had barely remembered, her face vague, like one of those artist’s sketches of criminals that sometimes popped up on the evening news. The only solid detail that Everett remembered was that the woman had been crying.
A jerky slideshow of Everett running to pull himself aboard one of those seemingly endless trains that hauled cargo across the vastness of America at little more than walking pace.
A single snapshot of life on the streets in a city that Dan didn’t recognise. Everett had been starving; freezing and desperate. Considering taking the only way out that had seemed viable.
Dan cast the memories aside for the useless detritus that they were. If he wanted memories of human suffering, he had more than enough of his own to reflect upon. He refocused, searching inward, peering into the shadows that lurked at the fringes of his understanding.
And sought out the mind of the monster.
The chaos.
The river.
22
“What about the air conditioning? You said the air in here is filtered?”
“Yes,” Andrew Lloyd nodded, fielding yet another of Conny’s questions with weary patience. “We draw in and filter the air from the outside, but I’ve seen the vents. None look any more than six inches in diameter. Big enough for roaches to get in, but not vampires.”
Conny grunted.
She had taken in her initial tour of the bunker’s first few rooms with interest, but had insisted that Andrew should lead her in the general direction of the archives, where the Grand Cleric said that Craven’s researcher would be.
The hub that Conny had seen near the front door did indeed open out into much larger spaces. Large enough to take her breath away. While no single room that she had so far encountered was in itself particularly huge, the general size of the bunker was astonishing: room after room connected by a web of tunnels that seemed to go on forever. The largest rooms, Andrew claimed were buried much farther down: a couple of vast supply caverns filled with tinned and dried food, and the archives. That, he said, was the largest single space in the bunker: a state of the art research lab, library and museum, all rolled into one.
The rest of the bunker was mostly dedicated to storage and living areas, though only a handful that Conny saw boasted much in the way of furniture. The place hadn’t been fitted out to receive hundreds of clerics, and so many would have to sit and sleep on the floor until they improvised better living conditions.
“Water supply?” Conny asked.
“An aquifer, several hundred feet below us. Fresh water is piped up from there, but again, there is no way in for anything larger than a small rat. If anything, given the amount of people here, we will probably wish that the pipes were bigger. It’ll get hot in here with all these bodies, and water won’t be delivered to us as quick as we’d like.”
“Small price to pay,” Conny muttered. “Trust me.”
“I don’t doubt it, but you can stop worrying. The only way they can get in, is with an invitation.”
Andrew smiled broadly, apparently pleased with his little joke.
Conny gave him a baleful glare in return, and Andrew’s smile withered. Now that he considered himself safe, Andrew’s demeanour was changing swiftly. He was becoming petulant, arrogant. Irritating. It wouldn’t be long, she thought, before he decided that he didn’t much need to answer the questions of a woman he didn’t know.
She could see why Mancini had expressed doubts about his ability to take charge of the kids at the ranch. Conny decided Andrew Lloyd would make just about the worst sort of leader she could imagine.
More than once, she had caught his gaze dropping to the rifle she carried, his expression thoughtful. Conny knew what he was thinking: down here, with all the frightened children who already worshipped the idea of him, he had a shot at being a king, and Conny and her weapon stood in the way of that.
He would have to pry the gun from her cold dead fingers, she thought, but even if she hadn’t been carrying firearms, she would remain too powerful for a man like Lloyd. Andrew wasn’t even aware of the most dangerous weapon in her arsenal.
Remy.
Minutes earlier, the robed man had actually leaned over Remy, holding out a hand and mumbling good doggy. Conny had marvelled at Remy’s restraint: the German Shepherd had sniffed disdainfully in Andrew’s direction, and then turned away, paying the Grand Cleric exactly the amount of attention that he deserved. Andrew hadn’t taken the rejection well; he didn’t seem to realise that he was lucky to still own that hand.
Good doggy, Conny thought, and smiled to herself. Remy was a good dog, the best she had ever known, but you had to earn the right to pet him.
They exited a tunnel into a wide, flat room lined with benches and tables, and the smell of soup hit Conny’s nose, making her stomach growl. Dozens of the younger kids were sitting at the tables, cradling mugs and waiting for food. Most had stunned looks on their faces, and she doubted that many of them had much of an appetite, but at least someone among the clerics had the wherewithal to give them something to occupy their minds. To start to make the place feel like a community.
The dining room was mostly silent, with a few murmurs here and there. Nobody much wanted to talk. She didn’t blame them.
“You want some food, Lo?”
Logan had been walking just behind her quietly, listening to her conversation with Andrew. He lo
oked at her like he thought it might be a trick question.
“Uh, sure?” he said, framing his answer as an uncertain question.
“Go on,” Conny said. “Relax. Talk to some people your own age. I won’t be long.”
“You’re leaving me alone?”
“Sure, you’re a big boy, right?” Conny grinned, swallowing back the anxiety she felt at leaving Logan. It was the right thing to do. The way to win his trust. “Just keep that gun close.”
Logan nodded, his expression suddenly serious, and moved away. He would be okay.
Conny turned to Andrew Lloyd, dropping her voice.
“Which way?”
“To the archives?” Andrew waved an arm down a long, curved tunnel. “Down there. Quite a way to go, yet. Jennifer kept the archives as separate from the rest of the facility as she could. She’d be mortified if she knew there were initiates in here, pawing over her family’s treasure.”
Conny waited until she was far enough away from the dining area to respond.
“You’re going to cut that shit out, Andrew,” she said, keeping her tone even.
Andrew blinked.
“It’s like I said back at the ranch, you’re not the Grand Cleric anymore. You’re a middle-aged guy wearing a dress. I didn’t bring you here—I didn’t save your life—so that you could just start abusing these kids again.”
“Abusing? I wouldn’t touch—”
“There’s more than one kind of abuse,” Conny interrupted, cutting through his indignant bluster. “I’ve only seen a handful of people over the age of twenty since I arrived in this nuthouse you call a life. I don’t know what you and Craven did with the other adults, and I don’t want to know, but I do know that you didn’t accumulate all these kids by putting out invitations on Facebook. These are vulnerable children, and they ended up in a place worse than they could have anticipated, and probably worse than most of them even realised. But things have changed, and we’re all in this together. Equally. No more Grand Clerics. No more clerics at all. No more initiates. Just a bunch of people hiding out in a mountain trying to survive. Nobody is going to bow to you in here, Andrew. Not as long as I’m around.”
Adrift (Book 3): Rising Page 20
