The Crucible: A Lawson Vampire Novel (The Lawson Vampire Series)

by Jon F. Merz

  The doorknob looked simple enough. I tried it and it turned in my hand. Unlocked? I frowned. Things were never this easy.

  But I wasn’t going to complain. Talya and I stacked outside the door under the Cloak and I eased the door open. We slid through with overlapping fields of fire.

  We were in another corridor. This one was empty and dark. I could see down to the end where another door stood. Next to me, Talya whispered in my ear.

  “I can’t see a damned thing.”

  “Another door at the far end. That’s it.”

  “Guards,” she said simply.

  We dragged the two dead guards inside the corridor and propped them up against the door in case anyone tried to follow us in. When we’d got them just so, we moved down to the far end of the hall with Talya keeping one hand on my shoulder and the barrel of her gun on my right side.

  Halfway down, the corridor lit up.

  We froze.

  Underneath the Cloak, we couldn’t be seen, but I knew we must have somehow tripped something in order to light the corridor. I looked down and saw the colored tiles of the flooring. Talya frowned, too. Pressure plates.

  The door at the far end of the hallway opened and before I could bring my gun up, Talya’s barked twice, dropping the two guards coming through with pistols drawn. Captivity obviously hadn’t blunted her marksmanship skills, but then again, Talya was one of the best shooters in the world.

  We rushed the door before more guards could join their brethren. On the other side, we spilled into some sort of control room and stopped. There were no other guards. Just a computer monitor showing the corridor we’d just exited. Behind the desk, another door led out of this room. I shook my head.

  “This place has tentacles into every part of this mountain.”

  We cracked the door and saw two more doors on either side of a lit hallway. Both had slits at eye level with bars on them. Xuan Xiang had to be in one of them.

  I checked the left side and Talya took the right. Mine was empty.

  “Lawson.”

  She pointed at the cell. I peered in and saw Xuan Xiang passed out on the metal shelf that served as his bunk. I looked around the door and saw the numeric keypad. It would take a coded sequence to open the door.

  The hell with that. I cracked the panel using the rifle butt and grabbed the two wires feeding juice to the locking mechanism. I felt a small jolt of electricty but shrugged it off, zapped the locking circuit, and then heard the door click open.

  Talya grabbed the door and yanked it open.

  Inside, I rousted Xuan Xiang. “Wake the fuck up.”

  His eyes fluttered open but it was obvious he was still groggy as hell. “What happened?”

  “I cracked you on the side of the neck,” said Talya. “You’re lucky you’re a vampire. That shot would have broken the neck of a human.”

  Xuan Xiang sat up and rubbed the deep blue welt on the side of his neck. “Impressive shot, though.”

  “We don’t have time for idle chitchat,” I said. “Jack was wounded during the shootout with the soldiers.”

  “Was he now?” asked Xuan Xiang. “How curious.”

  I grabbed Xuan Xiang and shook him hard. “What the hell did they shoot him with? Ordinary bullets don’t affect us. You know that.”

  “Seems to me I remember falling to the ground far below and no one came to rescue me.”

  Talya shook her head. “This is getting us nowhere fast.” She put the barrel of her gun to the side of Xuan Xiang’s head. “Wanna bet that the bullets in this gun are the same as those that wounded Jack? That would mean you’d die if I shot you right now, wouldn’t it?”

  Xuan Xiang said nothing but the look on his face told me plenty.

  “What the hell did you do for the Chinese? You sold us out, didn’t you?”

  “They promised me the world,” said Xuan Xiang. “All I had to do was help them create a new bullet.”

  “How did they know? How did they know about us?”

  Xuan Xiang spread his arms. “They had me already. It doesn’t take a team of rocket scientists to figure out where there is one, there are others.”

  I frowned. “How much did you tell them?”

  “Oh, I don’t even know.”

  “How many? How many know?”

  Xuan Xiang shook his head. “I don’t know truthfully. There might be several or there could be dozens.”

  “And the bullet? What’s its composition? Wood?”

  Xuan Xiang sniffed. “Please. Wood. That’s so…pedestrian.”

  “I don’t give a shit what it is, it works. But this doesn’t act like wood. So what is it? What’s poisoning him?”

  “A chemical distillate from a tree that grows here in China. We weren’t sure if it would work at first. But the results were far better than even I imagined. It took down our test subjects with very little difficulty. And the distillate is embedded in the round itself. Like the old dum dum rounds with the mercury in the tip? This one’s even better.” His eyes narrowed. “Did the bullet penetrate the Invoker?”

  “It grazed him.”

  Xuan Xiang nodded. “Well, he’s got a bit of luck to him, doesn’t he? Take my word for it: if that round had penetrated him, he’d already be dead. But he’s not dead yet is he?”

  “He wasn’t when we left him.”

  “Mmmm,” said Xuan Xiang. “But you can bet that distillate will be doing its job. Rather a wonderful little chemical. It actually leeches the life force energy out of our bloodstream. Isn’t that incredible?”

  “What’s the cure for it?”

  “Cure?” Xuan Xiang looked incredulous. “My dear Lawson, the bullet - like all bullets - is designed to kill. It’s not some alchemist trick that you can whip up a potion and throw some dice to save the poor bastard who gets it in his body.”

  “I don’t believe that for a moment.”

  Xuan Xiang smiled. “Well, there might be a little something you could do for him. But what’s in it for me?”

  “Talya doesn’t put five rounds into that sad excuse for a brain you have sitting atop your shoulders.”

  Xuan Xiang looked at her. Talya took her safety off with an audible click.

  “Yes, that would be rather nice.”

  “What do we need to do to save him?”

  Xuan Xiang sighed. “This isn’t going quite how I expected it to, let me tell you.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I’m running out of patience, Xuan Xiang.”

  “Fine, fine, fine. Honestly. You Fixers are such pragmatic people. Never able to enjoy a little repartee.”

  “I’ll give you plenty of repartee after I get the remedy for Jack and make sure he’s okay.”

  “There’s an injectable that you need to deliver at the sight of the wound. Insert the hypodermic and if he’s not too far gone, it should reverse the leeching process and restore whatever life energy was robbed from him by the distillate.”

  I nodded. “Good. Now tell me where the remedy is.”

  Xuan Xiang held up his hands. “Help me get out of here first and I will be more than happy to deliver the remedy to you. But I’m not going to just give it to you. Your girlfriend there will drop me dead as soon as I do.”

  I sighed. “Fine. Get under the damned Cloak and show us where the cure is. You pull any fun business and I will kill you myself and take my chances finding the cure alone.”

  Xuan Xiang laughed. “I don’t believe that for a minute. You wouldn’t risk that poor boy’s life on a gut reaction. He means too much to you.”

  I glared at him. “You’d be surprised what I’m capable of.”

  “I know everything that you’re capable of, Lawson. You’re not a heartless killer. As much as you try to pretend to be, you’ve got too much of that damned thing known as honor. You care too much.”

  “I care about the people who deserve to be cared about,” I said. “You have never been on that list.”

  “But I am right now. You’ve got to keep me safe in
order to get your Invoker back to snuff, don’t you?”

  Talya sighed. “We’re wasting time again.”

  I thumbed to Xuan Xiang. “Get under the Cloak.”

  But at that moment, we heard commotion in the hallway outside the prison cell.

  “Ah,” said Xuan Xiang.

  Talya braced at the edge of the door. “Shit.”

  “What is it?”

  “We’ve got company.”

  “A lot of company, I’d wager,” said Xuan Xiang.

  Talya just nodded. “And then some.”

  26

  “How many?”

  Talya lowered her rifle. “Too many to make going out there with guns blazing a viable option.”

  “The Cloak?”

  She shrugged. “We could try, but they seem to know we’re in here already. If we don’t come out when they tell us to, they’ll probably just light this place up. It’s what I would do, rather than risk us escaping again.”

  I sighed. Without the Cloak, we were completely vulnerable. Talya was right, of course. Engaging in a firefight was stalling the inevitable. And I knew of Wei’s reputation enough to know that he wouldn’t tolerate any sort of confrontation. If we went out shooting, we’d die. Plus, the realization that the Chinese were armed with a bullet that could kill me meant I had to weigh my options much more carefully than I normally did when it came to humans. Being invulnerable to the vast majority of stuff that can wipe a human out tends to make you a bit cavalier. I didn’t have that luxury any longer.

  And then there was Jack. I had to somehow stall and get the remedy to him. How I was going to do that, I had no idea.

  “All right,” I said finally. “Toss the guns.”

  Talya called out to the soldiers in Mandarin. I’d forgotten she was fluent. She got a response and tossed out her gun first. I handed mine over and it joined hers outside the room. We were still potent; Talya and I could probably shred most the soldiers out there with our unarmed combat training. But that wasn’t the point now. Playing for time to help Jack was.

  Talya smiled at me. “It’s not over.”

  Xuan Xiang chuckled. “Seems to me it is.”

  I glanced at him. “You could tell me where the remedy is.”

  “Useless knowledge now, my friend. Wei will make sure you never have need of it.”

  I leaned close to him. “Don’t ever call me a friend. You haven’t earned that right.”

  Xuan Xiang shrugged and walked out the door of the prison cell. Talya gave me a quick hug and a kiss.

  “What was that for?”

  “Coming to rescue me.”

  I smiled. “Seems like I did more to screw it up.”

  She shrugged. “Day’s not over yet, lover. Keep your chin up.” She winked at me one last time and then walked out of the cell, too.

  I followed her out.

  A ring of soldiers flanked Wei as we emerged from the cell. Xuan Xiang stood next to Talya, which irked the crap out of me for some reason. If he hadn’t started this bullshit, we wouldn’t be here and Jack would still be worrying about girls and other nonsense shit instead of fighting for his life.

  I had the Cloak in my hand. I figured Wei would want it. The temptation to whip it over my body and vanish was immense, but Wei would simply threaten to kill Talya and I knew I didn’t have the power to resist that threat.

  “You must be Lawson.”

  “I am.”

  “You no doubt know who I am. I am Wei.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I know. There aren’t many Chinese generals who have a face that looks like that.”

  Wei laughed. “What do you say in your country? A face only a mother could love?”

  “That’ll work.”

  Wei sniffed. “Except it’s because of my mother that my face is like this. Imagine how terrible it is to have your face held to a burning stove top and then when the skin finally begins to heal to have that new skin shredded and torn off. She was a terrible woman. And the very first person I ever killed.”

  “That must make holidays awkward.”

  Wei smiled. “Indeed. But I don’t have any family left. I had the rest of them executed some time back for helping other treasonous types. Had they continued to live, they would have no doubt interfered with my own rise to the top. And after enduring all their ridiculousness, I did them a favor with a firing squad.”

  “Maybe you could write a self-help book on family relations. You’d probably win legions of fans with tactics like that.”

  “You can’t choose the family you’re born into, regretfully,” said Wei. “But you can do the best to make your own once you escape the boundaries of blood. Isn’t that right?”

  “So they say.”

  “Like you, for instance. I can tell that you’re a very seasoned operator. You have that hard edge. That look that goes stone dead when it’s time to do your job. Emotion vanishes. It gets replaced by a cold calculating streak that enables you to do your job. But who do you go home to? Who helps thaw that heart of yours when there’s no more killing to be done?”

  “No one. I’m an iceberg.”

  Wei laughed. “Now, come on. We both know that isn’t true. Because like all warriors, you need an outlet of some type. And as you grow old, you will inevitably mellow.”

  I nodded at him. “Old age hasn’t seemed to mellow you.”

  Wei shrugged. “Well, I like to think that I’m a unique soul. Incapable of being constrained by such human traits as pity and compassion.”

  “I wouldn’t put that on my Tinder profile if I was you. The ladies might not like that.”

  “Some of them might,” said Wei. “But I appreciate your opinion.” He sighed. “Now, where was I? Oh yes, the family you create…” He eyed me. “Do you know what I know about you, Lawson?”

  “Do I care might be the better question.”

  “I know you have a ridiculous sense of sarcasm in the face of overwhelming force. It’s how you deal with threat to help calm yourself down. Some people vomit, some people say nothing. You? You turn into a comedian. It’s rather amusing to me.”

  I shrugged. “Thanks Doctor Freud.”

  “But I also know what matters most to you.” The smile that spread across Wei’s face reminded me of some sick pedophile on a playground. In that moment, I wanted to kill him just for that look. But I couldn’t. At least not yet.

  From my left, I saw motion and turned. Two soldiers came in bearing a litter. Jack’s body lay atop it. My heart sank but I was determined not to let Wei see my reaction.

  “This one, for instance. He’s something special to you, isn’t he?”

  Wei already knew the truth, so what was the point denying it? “He does. But he doesn’t deserve to die. He’s done nothing to warrant his death.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that,” said Wei. “After all, he chose to come along with you on this mission, didn’t he?”

  “He chose to come along on a rescue mission,” I said. “He was here to help me get Talya back.”

  Wei nodded and turned to Talya. “Indeed. Your female companion. How chivalrous of you to fly halfway around the world and come to her.”

  I smirked. “You make it sound far easier than it was.” Wei didn’t know about how much fun Jack and I had had retrieving the Cloak, fighting spirits, or any of the other hijinks that had elapsed so far.

  “I suspect it was anything but easy,” said Wei. “How you managed to infiltrate the country and even reach this point amazes me, I don’t mind telling you. I am, to put it lightly, impressed with your skills and resolve.”

  “Thank you.”

  Wei waved his hand. “I have been told that you have been moving through this facility without us even knowing it. I would very much like to know how you accomplished that feat. My men have told me some rather remarkable things and I must confess that I am a bit confused as to what they have reported.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Oh, wild and crazy things. They tell me you va
nished right in front of their eyes.”

  “Maybe they’re not getting enough sleep.”

  Wei nodded. “No doubt. But these men here in this facility are troops I have groomed for several years. They are fanatically loyal to me. None would be here if they weren’t prepared to die for their leader. So I have no reason to doubt them. And when they tell me that they saw you vanish before their eyes, I am inclined to consider what they say to be truth. Surely, you understand that?”

  “Of course.”

  “Now, I could resort to threats and the like to coerce the truth from you, but that is such a silly waste of time. So why don’t you save us both the effort and simply tell me.”

  Wei was one cool cucumber. Nothing seemed to faze him and I was a bit awestruck at how he commanded the room. He knew he was in the power position and that I had nothing. But he didn’t overplay it. He let me have my one-liners and our little repartee. He did it because he could afford to. But I knew sooner or later, his patience would run thin. If I could get anything out of this exchange, I had to give him something back.

  “I have a special cloak that renders the wearer invisible.”

  Wei’s eyes narrowed. “Do you? Is it some sort of thermographic shield?”

  I shrugged. “I honestly don’t know a thing about how it works. I’m told it’s magic.”

  “Magic.” Wei frowned. “You’re not insulting me now, are you? Because I think we’ve both kept a certain degree of decorum in this conversation and I would hate to see that threatened by a rude comment.”

  “No insult intended. I’m telling you the truth.”

  Wei eyed Xuan Xiang. “Is it true?”

  Xuan Xiang nodded. “I’ve told you that some members of my race enjoy certain abilities. There were always rumors growing up, of course. I had never witnessed anything like this before myself, but the Cloak works. It does what it claims to do.”

  Wei smiled at me. “May I see it?”

  I held the Cloak aloft. “It’s here.”

  I saw greed in Wei’s eyes then. He wanted it, but he was also careful. “Show me how it works.”

  “You don’t want to try it on for yourself?”

  Wei’s smile vanished. “Put it on and then take it off. If you don’t reappear within ten seconds, I will have your friends shot.”