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

by Jon F. Merz

  Death was always a risk; and we didn’t shy away from it.

  All of this ran through my head as Wei motioned for his troops to lead me into the Abyss. I gave Talya a kiss before they could stop me.

  “Hope that can hold you over until later,” I said with a wink.

  “It’s a poor substitute for mind-bending sex,” said Talya with a grin. “You’d better figure something out.”

  “Working on it,” I said as I was pulled away. I nodded at Jack. “Seeya soon, pal.”

  His eyes looked scared. He’d already faced death with more bravery than I thought possible, but now I was being led off to be a snack for some awful creature and I think it affected him worse than the thought of his own demise. I took a breath and tried to put a big smile on my face. I don’t think it worked.

  Wei stood before me and wore his maniacal grin. I really wanted to hit the guy.

  “Anything to say before I turn you over to the spider mole?”

  I shook my head. “You know this isn’t going to work. It’s never been done and you’re really taking an unnecessary risk here. Even the Silencer knows. You should listen to her.”

  Wei shook his head. “She said much the same thing when she found out this facility was powered by a small nuclear reactor. I’m starting to think she’s a bit of a paranoid.”

  I cocked an eyebrow. “You think? She’s been in the field for decades and hasn’t been killed yet. That kind of longevity would fry anyone’s skull.”

  Wei eyed me. “If that’s true, then what’s your excuse?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You seem remarkably well adjusted.”

  “I drink a lot. Great sex helps, too.”

  Wei chuckled. “I should try that.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, for you, I’d recommend a couple of rounds through the top of your head. Gun in mouth, pull trigger. Do the world a favor. Y’know?”

  Wei stared at me for another second and then jerked his head toward the Abyss. “Enjoy your fate, Lawson.”

  “Really? Just when we were getting along so well.” I sighed and let myself be steered into the pit. Behind me, I could hear Wei ordering his other soldiers to bring Jack and Talya further into the ring.

  “This starts now,” he said. “Prepare the creatures.”

  It was strange how the sound cut off as soon as we descended into the Abyss. All around us, the dirt and stone walls rose to block sound from the ring itself. I had no idea what Wei was saying now, but I could guess he was probably ordering Jack to prepare himself for the spirit trapping. Talya would no doubt be doing her best to survey the scene and see if there was any way she could take advantage of the situation to overpower the Silencer and rescue me. It warmed my heart to know I had friends up there doing their best for my welfare. But I had a feeling there wouldn’t be much they could do.

  The soldiers walking down the Abyss with me seemed thrilled about their assignments. Both of them kept chattering softly and their eyes kept moving from bits of dirt to mounds as if they expected the spider mole to burst forth from the depths of the Abyss and devour them at any second. They’d seen what it could do; they knew that if it suddenly appeared, they would have no chance to escape before it fell upon them.

  Unless, of course, the spider mole preferred handsome vampires named Lawson.

  Both of them kept their fingers on the triggers of their guns. That concerned me a little bit. I hate poor trigger discipline. The chances for a negligent discharge escalate when you have a guy walking with his finger already on the trigger. The last thing I needed was an accidental bullet in my body before I got devoured by some abominable creature. That would seriously suck.

  We kept descending further into the Abyss and I started wondering if we were going all the way to the bottom. The light grew dimmer the deeper we descended as the lights hadn’t been strung up down at this depth. I glanced up and saw the brighter lights of the ring far above us now. I estimated it would take me at least five minutes of hard climbing to get out of the pit in the event I got a chance to escape.

  If I got the chance.

  We finally stopped a few meters short of the very bottom of the Abyss. My feet sank into the soft earth and I spotted a few precious gems scattered among the detritus. Obviously, no one gave a shit that there were precious gems in the pit. Wei was apparently more focused on his creature harvesting and domestication program than on cornering the world market on topaz and amber.

  I sighed and looked at my guards. “You guys leaving?”

  They both looked at me and snickered. That was uncalled for. They could have simply left without rubbing it in.

  Bastards.

  As they turned and started walking back up the ramp, I shoved their heads together and they sank to the ground unconscious. I grabbed both of their assault rifles and the extra mags they wore. A quick estimate told me I had maybe a hundred and fifty rounds. How many bullets would it take to bring down a spider mole? I had no idea, but I was going to find out.

  It wasn’t really a plan. I knew that. And taking out the guards had just sort of popped into my head at the last minute. I still had to make it look like I was cooperating with Wei or he’d kill Talya and Jack.

  Still, he had to know I’d taken out his troops by now. He was probably losing his shit far above, but I couldn’t hear him deep in the Abyss.

  A moment later, however, the ground beneath my feet started to shake and rumble. I tried holding on to the side of the pit for support, but I fell to my knees and had to stay there until the earth finally stopped moving.

  I grabbed a breath amid the dirt-caked air.

  The creature had been summoned.

  I stood and made my way back up the path leading out of the pit. I put the bodies of the two soldiers between me and where I assumed the creature would make its appearance. If the spider mole ate them first, so much the better. Hell, I was hoping it would get full and leave me alone.

  I racked the slide on the first assault rifle and made sure I had a round ready. The selector switch was already off and switched to semi-auto. No sense going full auto just yet. Who knew? Maybe it would just take a well-placed shot to bring down the spider mole.

  I tried to think of where I should aim to kill the thing when it arrived. The eyes? That didn’t make sense since it couldn’t see that well. What about its nose or mouth? The heart area? Where was the heart area?

  The ground beneath my feet rumbled again, but this time it wasn’t because of Wei’s technicians far above. This time, it meant the spider mole was coming.

  I braced myself about twenty yards further up the path leading out of the pit and shouldered the assault rifle. I had the mags stashed down my shirt and the other rifle slung over my back. It was almost time to see what sort of damage I could do to Wei’s pet.

  Imagine my surprise when I saw it burst through the dirt at the bottom of the pit.

  And a few moments later, a second one burst through a few meters away from where I stood.

  It occurred to me then, that despite my love of threesomes, two is not always better than one.

  34

  I hadn’t realized that the spider moles were quite as big as they were. When I’d seen the one devour Xuan Xiang’s body, it had been from a distance. But up close, they were easily eight feet long and perhaps four feet across. Definitely more than large enough to be a serious problem.

  I just hoped I had enough bullets.

  The appearance of the second one was so shocking to me that I momentarily forgot about the assault rifle in my hands. I blinked and then jerked it up, flicking the selector switch to full auto and raked a burst across the row of opaque eyes that dotted the nearest spider mole’s head. The rounds smacked into the orbs and viscous liquid spilled from them, pouring across the dirt. The spider mole screeched and its fore legs speared the ground in front of it in desperation. I don’t know if it was searching for whoever had caused it such harm, but I was already moving back up the path. The last
thing I wanted to be was anywhere close to it. Again and again, its fore legs shot at the ground in all directions, but the pain it was feeling must have been intense.

  The second spider mole had withdrawn from the fray. It seemed to be regarding me with some sort of curiosity. That actually made me more nervous. If it was intelligent, I didn’t want it figuring out how to take me down. The sooner I could kill these things, the better.

  I let another burst of bullets stream forth from the rifle and peppered the first spider mole’s head again. This time, the round impacted across what I presumed was its forehead. I hoped I’d scored a good solid volley into the thing’s brain. I had no idea where their brain might be, but if I could mortally wound it, I’d be better off.

  The second spider mole continued to withdraw away from me. The first one continued to screech. Since it was closer, I hit it with another volley of bullets and watched them punch into its underside. I was trying for anything that would put it out of action. Eyes, brain, and heart were my goals. But the thing kept screeching and pounding the ground with its legs. Somewhere in the back of my brain, I had a hunch it might be some sort of distress call. And if that was the case and it was summoning other spider moles to help it, my day was gonna get a whole lot worse and fast.

  My internal calculator estimated I’d burned through most of the magazine, so I dropped it and popped another in before continuing to shoot at the first spider mole. This time, when the bullets smacked home, the screeching ceased and the creature’s legs buckled. It dropped to the dirt floor and lay motionless. The second spider mole had vanished, so I emptied the magazine into the first one - just to be sure - and then slapped home a fresh mag.

  Just in time, I felt the ground under my feet begin to spill away. I jumped to the left and then ran as the second spider mole reappeared, burrowing up from underneath me. I shot as I ran, hoping to score a hit as I did so. But the rounds were ineffective and now the second spider mole was coming at me hard and fast.

  I fell away just as one of its fore legs stabbed at me. It impacted the ground a meter to my right and I rolled underneath the beast, punching up with the barrel of the rifle and squeezing the trigger into its abdomen. Blood and entrails spilled out of it and coated me as I did so. I kept rolling, trying to use the dirt to absorb much of the foul-smelling goo. I was going to need a serious shower after this was all said and done. You know, if I lived to see the next day.

  The spider mole started pounding the dirt just as the first had done. I came to my feet and unleashed another burst, scoring deep wounds across its rear area. It wheeled around and tried to run me down, but the abdominal wounds it had sustained had made it impossible to move much. It sort of dragged itself toward me and I shot at it again. This time, I flipped the selector switch back to semi and picked my target: eyes, heart, eyes. Four more bullets streaked into the beast and each one caused its pain to increase.

  But still it pounded the floor of the cavern as it tried to move.

  I frowned and kept the fire pouring out of the rifle. It took seven more rounds before the second spider mole lurched one final time then fell to the ground and lay still, blood and other nasty bodily fluids still leaking from its underside.

  The air around me was silent. But it stunk to high heavens. The mix of cordite from the spent rounds and the stench of the spider moles entrails was enough to make me want to vomit. I choked back a wave of bile rushing up my throat and surveyed the scene.

  “Wei can’t be happy about this.” I glanced up toward the control area in the ring, but saw nothing to indicate that Wei was about to unleash some sort of payback on me for killing two of his prized creatures. I just hoped he wasn’t going to take his vengeance out on Jack and Talya before I could reach them.

  I knelt and took stock of my ammo situation. I’d wasted two full mags killing the two spider moles. I had five rounds left in a third magazine and a full mag left. Given the amount of troops Wei had at his disposal, I was going to run out of ammo before I could kill them all. But I’d be able to put a hurting on them before I did run out. And that might be enough to get Jack and Talya into the fight as well. If we could manage to turn the tables upstairs, we might just be able to make it out of the installation in one piece. We’d need the Cloak in order to completely get ourselves out of China intact, however. I sure as hell didn’t want to leave that in Wei’s hands. He’d have a field day with the thing. Plus, it was proof of magic and it belonged to the vampire race. Humans wouldn’t even know how to process that shit.

  I slapped home a full mag and then stood. The path leading up to the top of the Abyss lay before me, but something held me back. An ache in the pit of my stomach spasmed once and I recognized the warning signs that had so often saved my ass in the past. Something was wrong. Even if I couldn’t see it, the threat was out there.

  I scanned the area. Even in the dim light I could see pretty well thanks to the number of rods in my eyes being far greater than humans. But everything looked calm. That only made me more anxious.

  When the third spider mole erupted out of the earth inches away from my feet, it caused the entire ground to rise up. I fell ass-over-teakettle backwards, barely able to hold onto the rifle as I did so. I thanked the gods for having the discipline to grip the rifle tight as I tumbled back and down the slope.

  The spider mole roared and instantly began its attack. One of its fore legs stabbed down atop my right foot and I thought it might have crushed me, but as its weight came down, I jerked it back and away, saving it from the bulk of the impact. I rolled away and came to my feet firing wildly. It was a piss poor effort and the rounds went wide without striking any part of the spider mole. If I kept that sort of crap up, I’d have no bullets left before too long and any prospects for saving Jack and Talya would go right out of the window.

  Most likely with my dead body.

  The spider mole charged at me and I raked its underside with a fresh volley. The bullets impacted it but then it was upon me even as I threw myself backward. Another fore leg swiped at my head and I raised the rifle up to block the attack. It worked but then the fore leg ripped the rifle out of my hands and it shot across the pit and embedded itself into the wall opposite from where I was.

  Shit.

  The spider mole roared again, and despite being wounded, it seemed even fiercer now. It nearly ran me over but I forced myself to wait until the last possible second before I cartwheeled sideways and evaded the charge. Well, cartwheel might be too generous a term for what I did, but I managed to get out of the way, so I’ll use that to describe the action.

  The rifle lay twenty meters away and I ran right for it. If I could grab it and yank it free of the wall, I’d have enough time to turn and fire at the spider mole.

  But even as I did so, the third spider mole ran toward me and used its fore legs to sweep me off of my feet and send me flying into the wall even further away from where I’d been initially. I slammed into the wall and knocked my head off a rock. Stars and whistles exploded in my skull and I shook myself hard to try to regain my awareness. Already, I could see the spider mole streaming toward me with its legs raised for a fresh attack.

  I twisted and rolled away, skittering down the slope toward the bottom of the pit. I crashed to the floor and sucked wind. Then the spider mole fell over me. Looking up, I could see the razor sharp fangs that lined its mouth. It reared back and then dropped right at me.

  I kicked up and my feet slammed into the underside of its jaw. I didn’t wait for the effect and rolled out again, coming to my feet and rushing to reach the rifle. But again, the spider mole was too quick. Whatever damage my bullets had done must have been minimal because they hadn’t slowed the thing down one tiny bit. Despite leaking fluid from its underside, its mobility remained intact. If anything, the bullets had only succeeded in pissing it off even more than it must have already been when it made its first appearance.

  Lucky me.

  I circled around to the rear of the spider mole, thinking
that I might be able to keep it guessing where I was. It must have known that I’d go for the rifle. But if instead of doing that, I simply kept trying to confuse it, I might have a shot of working my way to the rifle without being obvious about it.

  At least, that was the incredibly sophisticated plan I’d come up with.

  Naturally, it didn’t even come close to working.

  Instead of being confused and moving its head to search for me, the spider mole simply backed up and pinned me against the wall of the pit. I felt its posterior start to crush me against the wall and the wind rushed out of my lungs. Another set of spider mole legs pinned me and the entire creature somehow turned itself around until I was face-to-face with the same deadly mouth full of teeth that I’d barely managed to avoid seconds earlier.

  The spider mole’s head reared back as the jaws opened even further, exposing the saliva-slicked teeth. And then the proboscis started to emerge like some giant erection.

  And it was headed right at my head.

  35

  Backed up against the rocks like I was, breaking free seemed impossible. The proboscis moved slow, growing longer and longer with each passing second. Its current trajectory would mean it would pierce my head right between my eyes. I had to guess that survival would be impossible - even for a vampire like me. Having your brains suctioned out by some giant subterranean creature probably wasn’t something I could endure. Maybe if I’d been a host on a cable news channel, I could still have a job since they always seemed short on brains. But a Fixer? No chance.

  Talya would probably dump me, too. She didn’t strike me as the type of woman who would enjoy having to clean up after my bodily functions. I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t sure if I could stomach that sort of stuff. I could handle a gunshot wound, decapitations, and the assorted other stuff that came along with the job. But for some reason the thought of dealing with a bowel movement seemed far worse to me. Oh well, we all have our hangups.