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

by Jon F. Merz

  “Stoppage!” Talya called out and even as I brought my own gun up, the Silencer kicked Talya’s rifle away. It clattered across the catwalk and dangled off the edge. The Silencer moved just as fast as I remembered her being capable of moving. She scissored Talya’s legs out from under her and then clambered up atop her, already going for a chokehold. Talya bucked once and then reversed positions. That was good for Talya but bad for me. With the Silencer now underneath her, I didn’t have a clear shot.

  They grappled and twice I saw the Silencer strike up at Talya’s face. Talya deflected the blows and elbowed the Silencer across her neck, leaning into the strike with all her body weight. On a human being, that would have collapsed their trachea and pretty much killed them. But on a vampire, it was only a minor setback. The Silencer shot an elbow of her own deep into Talya’s stomach and I winced watching it.

  It occurred to me that Wei had vanished. I glanced around. Jack seemed to be looking for him as well, but the Chinese general had disappeared.

  Dammit.

  I waved Jack over to me. I wanted him close in case things went bad with Talya. Plus, I had a job for him.

  “Yeah?”

  I smiled. “Glad you’re alive pal.”

  “Me too.”

  “The roof needs to be opened for us to escape. Wei was having problems.”

  Jack nodded. “I can see what I can do.”

  “Do it. I’ve got to help Talya.”

  Jack headed for the terminal. I headed for Talya.

  She was still wrapped around the Silencer. I could hear them swearing at each other in Russian, which was a bad sign. The only time Talya swore in Russian was when she was seriously pissed off.

  The strikes came hard and fast and then Talya managed to get the upper hand. She wrapped her legs around the Silencer’s neck and yanked back on her arm in a vicious hold. She cranked back and I heard the Silencer’s arm break hard. Talya rose to her feet and gestured for me to throw her my gun. I tossed it, but as Talya went to grab it, the Silencer scrambled to her feet and rushed at Talya, going for a tackle around her waist.

  She slammed into Talya and the two of them went down hard, dangerously close to the edge of the catwalk. Their momentum carried them ever closer to the edge. Below, the spider moles were perhaps only twenty feet away now. With every one that scrambled up and fell, another took its place. They were like ants, fixated on getting to the catwalk and killing every one of us.

  Talya dangled from the edge now and the Silencer got to her feet.

  No time to lose I crashed into her and knocked her to the floor of the catwalk. Her head bounced off the steel grating and I thought she might have been knocked out cold.

  “Lawson!”

  I turned and saw that Talya had managed to get herself back up on the catwalk. She held the Silencer’s pistol in her hands. She waved me away from the Silencer. I scooted out of the way and Talya moved past me. She straddled the Silencer and leaned in close to her ear. Was she saying something to her?

  I heard two gunshots and saw the Silencer’s body convulse once before going still.

  Talya stayed there for another few seconds. Then slowly, she got to her feet. I saw tears in her eyes but she simply walked past me. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  37

  The situation with the spider moles was beginning to get serious. One of them jumped and its forelegs scraped the underside of the steel grating. I looked over at Jack who was still typing furiously on the terminal keyboard. “Jack, how ya doing?”

  He shook his head. “This would be a lot easier if I knew the password.”

  “I can help,” said Talya. She pushed past me again and headed over to where Jack stood. As she did so, she handed me her pistol. “Shoot any of those nasty things that get too close, would you? I don’t feel like being devoured after all the pain I just went through.”

  I shouldered my rifle and aimed down at the closest spider mole. I shot it three times in the middle of its eye row and it screeched and fell away. I hadn’t killed it, but if I could stop the lead spider moles from gaining much distance, I’d settle for that until we could fly out of here.

  Another spider mole leapt and latched itself onto the underside of the catwalk a few meters from where I stood. Immediately, its other legs tried to reach around and secure a footing right side up. I fired as I ran toward it and the rounds tore through the legs. It fell away and back toward the Abyss far below.

  “I can’t keep this up,” I said above the din of the chopper’s engines. Even though they hadn’t been cranked up to full, they were still producing a lot of noise. Worse, the fumes from its engines were starting to clog the air and make it hard to breathe. I didn’t know how much ammo I had left, but with each new assault by the spider moles, it appeared likely they would soon make it up here and we were as good as dead. After all the distance we’d come to get Talya, I didn’t want to die in this crazy place.

  “Two minutes,” said Talya. “Be ready to move!”

  “I’m ready now,” I said to myself. Another spider mole latched itself to the underside of the grate and then another quickly scampered up and over onto the catwalk. I aimed and fired as it landed, two rounds catching it on its underside. It dropped and sprayed goo and blood everywhere. I shot it again and then shot the spider mole still clinging to the underside of the catwalk. It fell back and away into the Abyss. The spider mole on the cat walk was trying to claw its way toward me. I aimed and fired but the assault rifle was empty. Dead man’s click.

  No time, I pulled Talya’s pistol and fired the entire magazine into the spider mole. It shuddered and lay still.

  “They’re getting too close,” I said. It was true. The spider moles were obviously intelligent enough to work together and ascend the walls of the pit to reach the cat walk. I needed the roof open and now.

  “Opening!” shouted Jack.

  I looked up and saw that the mountain roof above us had parted and a crack of sunlight had appeared. As it did so, an alarm started shrieking around the complex and a pleasant Chinese voice announced that the facility had been compromised and was due to self-destruct in two minutes.

  “What the hell?” Talya ran past me and climbed into the pilot seat. “Did you touch anything?”

  I shook my head. “I was busy killing those spider moles. You guys were on the terminal.”

  Jack climbed into the seats behind the pilot with me and we slid the door shut. Talya was already running her hands over the control panel, flipping switches and cranking things up. “Wei told you this place had a nuke reactor, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, we can probably bet the house that it’s rigged to explode in the event that things go bad. I don’t know about you guys but I don’t want to be sitting inside a mushroom cloud when this place blows.” She checked the fuel gauges and nodded to herself. “Let’s hope that roof opens quickly.”

  I peered out and saw that the crack had become much larger. I looked back underneath and saw that the sunlight had a positive effect on the spider moles: they couldn’t stand the bright light and were retreating back down toward the Abyss. “I hope this place blows them all up.”

  I’d expected some sort of response from Jack, but got none. I turned and looked and the expression on his face told me everything.

  Wei.

  I couldn’t see the Chinese General but I knew he was there. Jack gestured to his left. Wei had to be using the Cloak to turn himself invisible.

  “Tell the woman to fly the helicopter or else I will shoot your young friend here.”

  Hearing Wei’s disembodied voice was almost worse than seeing him say it. The edge in it told me he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Jack. I couldn’t see the gun, but I had to assume it was a legitimate threat.

  I nodded. “Don’t do anything stupid. I’ll tell her.” I leaned forward over the seats.

  Talya eyed me. “What’s up? I’m a little busy here.”

  “Wei’s got a gun on Jack.�
�

  She turned but I shook my head. “He’s using the Cloak to stay invisible. He wants you to fly us out of here.”

  There wasn’t anything Talya could do. She had to fly the chopper. Saving Jack was going to come down to me doing something. But that didn’t stop Talya from asking anyway.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Get us out of here,” I said. “Do what he wants.”

  She nodded and turned her attention back to the controls. The rotors had spun up nicely and we’d achieve lift-off soon.

  Outside the chopper, the Chinese woman again spoke up as the alarms continued to shriek around us.

  “Sixty seconds,” said Wei. “This entire facility will cease to exist.”

  “You rigged it all to blow?”

  “Of course,” he said. “I had to make sure I had myself covered in the event any word of my project leaked to the outside world. Or to those in Beijing who feel my boldness has a tendency to the extreme. Pioneers are never respected as much as we should be. The world prefers a safer, slower level of progress. Risk takers are always vilified.”

  “Only when they deserve it,” I said. Every time Wei spoke, I was keying in on his exact position better. If I could keep him talking.

  “I’ve done a great deal for my country,” said Wei. “And when I present the leadership in Beijing with this marvelous Cloak, then they will have no choice but to accept the fact that magic exists and that we share this planet with races previously unknown. It will be a marvelous day for China.”

  Talya lifted us off then and the chopper lurched toward Jack as she did so. I let myself fall into the exact spot I suspected Wei was in.

  We collided instantly and he grunted as my body weight came down upon him. We smashed into the door of the chopper and he let loose with a barrage of punches. Jack scrambled to the other side of the cabin as we fought.

  But Wei didn’t shoot.

  It could have been a ruse for all I knew, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. Wei pummeled me with a series of punches to the side of my head and each one of them rang my bell hard. I shook the impact off and elbowed him in the solar plexus. He gasped and wheezed as he tried to suck wind back into his lungs. I kept up the assault, scrambling for purchase in the helicopter cabin. I needed to get the Cloak off of him so I could see my targets, but he must have tied it on securely. Each time I grasped a piece of the fabric and thought I could tear it away, Wei yanked it free and continued to be invisible.

  He swore loudly in Chinese and that helped me pinpoint his location. I kept the attacks up, scoring glancing blows here and there. Wei was a better shot with his blows and I took a startling number of hits to my ribs, which were still feeling pretty soft from the episode with the spider mole in the Abyss.

  I fell back and Wei landed on top of me, using his knees to catch my crotch. I wanted to double over but his body weight kept me from doing so. It felt like my bowels were going to explode from the pain. I clapped Wei around the ears, hoping to shatter his ear drums and he grunted as the air pressure popped inside his head. He fell back and I followed, trying to tackle him around the waist against the door of the chopper.

  Which is when the door decided to open.

  Talya hadn’t brought us up too high yet, but we were close to the opening of the roof. Wei must have grabbed at the door frame of the chopper and kicked me in the underside of the chin. I fell back into the cabin and he landed back on top of me, driving his elbows hard into my ribs and neck. I felt several ribs break under the assault and I grunted. I looped my arms over his arms and jerked them down, breaking their hold on me as Wei attempted to get some sort of choke hold.

  Not this time.

  “Lawson! The roof is closing!”

  Talya’s proclamation did little to make me move any faster. I could hear the Chinese woman’s voice telling us we had thirty seconds until detonation. I knew what Talya would do; she’d get us out of the mountain even if it meant I still had Wei to deal with.

  I redoubled my efforts and brought my knees up hard into Wei’s body, driving them into his groin. The effect was immediate: Wei fell back away from me and the Cloak finally tore free in my hands. I threw it back to Jack and kept up my attack on Wei, kicking and punching at his body as he silhouetted the doorway of the chopper.

  We lifted free of the mountain top. I kept punching at Wei.

  He lost a handhold and then fell away from the door, just barely managing to grasp the skid of the chopper and hold on.

  I leaned outside of the chopper and stomped down on his hands as hard as I could. Wei screamed and looked up at me pleading for his life.

  “Please!”

  I shook my head. Not this time. Not ever. I stomped down again and Wei’s hands came free. With a final shriek, he plunged back through the dwindling gap in the mountain top, bouncing off of the catwalk and into the mouth of a spider mole. Then the opening slammed shut and Talya jerked us back and away from the mountain. I leaned back into the chopper and slammed the door shut.

  “We’re good! Go! Go! Go!”

  Talya punched the engine on the Z-9 and we accelerated and rapidly gained height. I turned away from the mountain; I didn’t know if the place would blow sky-high or if Wei had somehow managed to rig it to implode. But I wasn’t about to risk my eyes if it did explode in some brilliant mushroom cloud.

  We heard a muffled whoomp seconds later. Only then did I look back.

  The mountain that had stood there once was gone, sucked back into the earth and all that was left was a crumbling assortment of smoking rocks and debris. Remarkably, the railway racks still snaked through the pass, seemingly unscathed.

  Talya circled the area once, but we saw no movement.

  I grabbed a headset and slid it on. “We’d better get out of here.”

  She nodded. “I suspect the Chinese air force will have planes airborne in a minute or two. Where do you want to go?”

  “Head for Nepal,” I said. “Then we’re going home.”

  Talya banked the chopper and we shot toward the border.

  38

  The Harbin Z-9 took us deep into Nepal and Talya asked if I wanted us to touchdown at Kathmandu. I opted to have her put us down in a field outside of the city to avoid as much notice as possible. It was going on early evening when she shut the rotors down for the last time and we all hopped out of the chopper. In the distance, the Himalayas scraped the roof of the world with their snow dappled peaks. Streaks of orange and red bled across the sky into the coming indigo of night.

  “That’s a pretty amazing sunset,” said Jack.

  Talya snuck her arm through mine and we walked toward the road that led to Kathmandu. It wouldn’t be hard finding a lift. But even if we had to walk all night to reach the city, Talya and I knew enough places where we could find a room and food for the night before we planned our next move.

  I put an arm around Jack as we walked. “There’s a big part of me that thought I was never going to see you again.”

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “In the pit a spider mole had me dead to rights. I thought I was a goner.”

  Jack grinned. “You were dude. You were about three seconds away from getting your brains sucked out.”

  I stopped and looked at him. “That was you?”

  He shrugged. “Wei might have been a total nutjob, but he had some pretty original ideas. And it was apparently possible to insert a spirit into the spider moles. Just not in the way that he thought it would be possible.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning I switched places with the spider mole and briefly took it over using my mind.”

  I frowned. “How is that even possible?”

  Jack laughed. “I have no idea. But I tried it and it worked. I just…I don’t know…reached out with my mind and thought about taking it over. Before I knew what was going on, I was inside the spider mole’s head and I could see and sense everything that it could. I saw you standing in front of me and then I sim
ply made the spider mole climb up the pit and attack. Then I took myself out of the creature and I was back in my body.”

  I shook my head. “What if you’d gotten stuck or something?”

  Jack frowned. “Never really thought about it. Sometimes you just have to go for it. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?”

  “I guess I have,” I said.

  Talya came over to Jack and gave him a kiss on his cheek. He blushed and smiled. “What was that for?”

  “For being as brave as you were and for coming to my rescue,” said Talya.

  I raised my hand. “Uh, I just want to point out that I orchestrated the entire rescue op here. I mean, not for nothing, but the kid wouldn’t have had the first clue how to go about saving your ass.”

  Talya came over to me and stared me in the eyes. “Oh, and you think you should get some sort of reward. Is that it?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  She leaned in to kiss me and I closed my eyes.

  When I opened them a second later, she and Jack were laughing their asses off. My puckered lips were still waiting for contact but Talya had already backed away. “You are a cruel cruel woman.”

  She pointed at me. “And you are always easy to fool, Lawson.”

  “Women,” I said. “You know they’ve always been a weakness of mine.”

  Talya nodded. “Yeah, that’s what makes you so damned charming. Because even though I can manipulate you all I want, you’re still so incredibly irresistible. How do you do that?”

  “Just born with it, babe.”

  Talya turned away and we kept walking. As we did, I kept glancing down at my feet. “I gotta say, the thought of spider moles living underground sort of freaks me out.”

  “Like you think they’re going to burrow their way up through the surface and attack you at any moment?” Jack grinned. “You’re not the only one who’s feeling a little skittish.”

  “I’m not going caving anytime soon,” said Talya. “The last thing I’d ever want to do is run into one of them again.” She looked at me. “How you fought them off the way you did…I don’t know how you managed that.”