by P. N. Elrod
However much training I got, I’d never be able to design anything like that. I had talent, but it was journeyman, not genius.
We braked again at another gate and guardhouse fifty feet along. It marked the second boundary wall. If the outer gate was ever compromised, then this one would hold, the guards protected within the compound. If that sounds military, it is. A lot of the vamps had served through the ages, and the Company made use of their experience.
We passed through, and the witch on duty chanted the gate back into place. I relaxed internally now that we were home.
The parking lot was almost empty, which was unusual for this time of night.
“Think it’s the holiday?” I asked after pointing it out.
“Security measure. Ms. Vouros won’t want this generally known yet.”
She’d probably given everyone the night off, using the holiday as an excuse. The fewer people, the fewer witnesses. They’d have happily grabbed at the free time, no questions.
Whatever was in store for Kellie Ann would be in place by now, and perhaps had been within minutes of my phone call. She was in for close questioning soon. I decided to stay with her. I’d be a familiar face, and she’d need a friend in her corner.
I told Ellinghaus to take it easy on the turns and made my way to the back, glad of the grab bars. Kellie Ann was awake, looking more alert.
“Where are we?”
“Almost there.” I rummaged in a drawer and got a package of sweatpants in a small and tore it open. “Here, these will fit you better. I’ll help you sit up.”
“Um…” She glanced at the opening to the cab.
The lightproof privacy curtain was fastened to one side. I undid it and pulled it across. “Okay, it’s just us girls now.”
“I wanna call my momma,” she whispered.
“This first.” I pulled the oversized pants off her and shook out the replacements.
She lurched up, swinging her legs around, facing me. “I said I wanna call my momma.”
“I heard you, Kellie Ann, but we have to—”
She grabbed my hair strongly and made me look into her eyes. “Do you not hear me? Give me your phone.”
I fumbled it from a pocket and handed it over. Some freaked-out part of my mind panicked, but the rest accepted this as perfectly normal and reasonable.
“Sit down and keep quiet,” she ordered, still whispering.
This also happened though I wanted to do the opposite. The internal conflict between what I wanted and the blunt, powerful orders set my heart thumping fit to burst.
Kellie Ann smiled soothingly. “Relax, Marsha. I’m your friend. You like me and want to help me.”
Like hell, I thought, but felt my face smiling back. It hurt.
She broke eye contact and tapped a number into my phone. “I’m in. Get moving.”
The ambulance slowed. We’d be pulling into the guest-processing wing of the main building. Ellinghaus couldn’t have heard anything, not over the motor noise with the curtain in the way.
Kellie Ann pulled on the smaller pants, pushed back the long sleeves of her top, and eased open the tall locker with the hidden weapons. She’d had plenty of time to sneak a search during the long drive back when I’d napped. She went for two pistols with extra long magazines filled with mixed ammo. Whether she faced a human or a vamp, she could take out just about anyone she liked.
As soon as he cut the motor, she slammed the curtain back and shot Ellinghaus, pressing the muzzle into the top of his shoulder and firing three rounds angling down into his trunk. He jerked, grunted, and slumped, and inside I screamed and screamed and could not move a muscle.
She left the bus and hustled into the main building. I don’t know what she did next, but I imagined the worst and that she would be swift and efficient. First the receptionist, then whoever was manning the bullpen, then perhaps Vouros herself. Kellie Ann wouldn’t show up on internal cameras. Our security people would have no clue.
I’d not been spared out of kindness. She’d want me to take down the inner gate. Whoever she’d phoned would deal with Judy and hypnotize Rosa into doing the same, and HQ would be wide open to … what?
Just about anything. There were plenty of vamps who hated the Company. They’d be glad to see it gone, along with everyone in it.
The fear of that, the rage, the grief for Ellinghaus washed through me—negative emotions full of power. Some crafters trained to avoid them, but I saw them as another kind of survival mechanism and embraced their dizzy chill. I shut my eyes, remembering Kellie Ann’s face in front of me, her words burrowing into my brain like worms.
Not hard. The real difficulty was replacing the image with something else. Visualization training was basic to all spell-slingers. The better you see what you want in your head, the more success with the magic.
Sweat crept over me as I made that memory fade, the color seeping away until her face was gone, and I was surrounded by dense white fog. I could hold it only for a few seconds, being badly out of practice. Like others, I tended to rely too much on props and chanting.
But when I opened my eyes, I’d shaken off the worst of it. I could stand and did so, struggling on wobbly legs to get to Ellinghaus.
His white shirt was covered with blood, and he was utterly slack. I pushed up the sunglasses. His eyes were rolled into his skull, just the whites showing. With no vital signs, I couldn’t tell if he was truly dead or alive and just unable to respond.
Terror and grief for him had me moving past the panic, forcing my sluggish limbs to obey me, not some bitch vamp’s forced influence. I stumbled to the mini fridge and grabbed a drug-free drink bottle and got it to him. Tipping his head, I squeezed blood down his throat, not knowing if that would choke him or not. What if it went into his lungs?
You don’t have time for this.
She’d be back any minute, and I had to do something.
Fight a vampire? Who was I kidding? Even throwing down a holding spell to keep her out of the vehicle wouldn’t be enough, she could shoot through it. I wasn’t absolutely necessary to taking out the inner gate; she could use the hapless crafter on duty there after shooting her partner.
Screw that.
That bloodsucking bitch had shot my partner.
Rage tipped things, scattering logic and common sense. I went to the locker and hauled out the machine gun. The damned thing scared the hell out of me; maybe it would do the same for Kellie Ann.
Almost a yard long, with the fifty-round drum attached, it weighed a ton and was too awkward for the confines of the ambulance, but I’d have to deal. A long time ago, Ellinghaus had shown me how it worked. In a spectacularly noisy rush, he’d emptied the drum in seconds. I didn’t want to do that.
Just above the trigger on the left … okay, safety off, set it for single rounds. Keep the muzzle pointed away from me, aim for the thickest part of her body, and brace for the recoil.
Damn, the thing was heavy. I couldn’t charge out and go after her. Better to wait until she came back and attempt a bushwhacking. Get her to approach from a specific direction, and I’d have a chance.
I opened the back doors and slipped out, the gun’s leather strap looped over one shoulder, taking the weight. I steadied it with one hand; the other grasped my container of sea salt.
It was the fastest shield I’d ever done and crude, but it would keep her from coming in the front. I worked out from the right side, shaking the salt in a wide spray around the truck. The wall would be thick, brittle, and full of gaps, but would stop her, I hoped. I chanted the energy into place, finishing on the left side, having formed a giant C-shape around us, the walls of the back opening about ten feet thick and five wide, making a short passage to the doors.
That would be my kill box. I’d heard the term on a TV documentary.
What was happening at the front gate? Were her friends there? Had they breached it?
Ellinghaus groaned.
I was next to him just that quick. He looked bad, his
reddened eyes dazed and face showing pain. His fangs were out, but it was a good sign. The wooden slug had to have missed his heart. The others were still in him, preventing him from vanishing so he could heal, but he wasn’t lost yet. I got him to drink more blood. It’s the universal first aid for vamps.
“Radio?” he mumbled.
I clicked it on and tried to raise someone, anyone, but nothing. Next, I got his phone and punched the Company version of 911, but again, nothing. The battery was charged, what the—
“Jamming,” he said. “They’re organized.”
“Who?”
“Newbies, old Dracs with short memories, who knows. That dame is no rookie … oh, this hurts.”
It had to be perdition made solid to drag that out of him.
“Gotta hold on, Ell. I have a blocking up. I’m going to stop her.”
He squinted at me, alarm in his eyes when he noticed the Thompson dragging on my shoulder. “Mars, you gotta be kidding.”
Now was not the moment to notice his lapse into using my nickname for the first time. “Okay, I’m kidding, you get better right now and take over.”
He winced and looked past me, even more alarmed.
Kellie Ann strode from the building toward us, a pistol in each hand and blood spray on her oversized top. I dragged Ellinghaus from his seat, hoping the vehicle’s motor would shield him from fire. He couldn’t move much yet. I peered over the dash in time to see her smash right into my half-assed wall about ten feet out.
That pissed her off. When she recovered, she tried a single shot that put a star in the windshield. I ducked and crawled toward the back. Just had to cower for a bit until she circled around and into my trap, then shoot first.
Only she didn’t do that.
A running jump, a second of invisibility making her weightless, then she thudded down on the top of the bus. I’d been in too big a hurry to think of capping my wall with a roof.
I fell back and sent two wild shots straight up. Good thing I was already on the floor; the gun’s kick wasn’t as bad as I’d thought but would have still knocked me there. So that’s why you had to hold this monster on all three contact points and brace.
I sorted myself out and fired three more rounds through the aluminum skin, taking out the overhead light. Glass dropped, and the empty brass flew.
“Marsha!” Her voice … not above, she’d slipped away to the right side, perhaps feeling out the barrier for an opening as I’d hoped. “Marsha, listen to me. You have to listen to me.”
I’d seen the training vids. That was the favorite phrase of vamps the world over, the one that led into the hypnotic process. If they’d put you under once, you were more vulnerable to their voice. I fired through the wall, the crack and kick of the gun distracting me and cutting her off. Couldn’t keep this up all night, I’d run out of bullets. Why didn’t the bitch come around to the back?
Oh, hell, there she is.
I fired. The bullet passed harmlessly through her mostly transparent form. She smiled, a beautiful, winning, friendly smile, her eyes sparkling.
I made myself look away and shot again. Another wasted bullet.
She kept coming forward. Damn it, what a stupid, stupid trap. She’d hold herself in that state, get close, go solid, and put me under and—
Custom sound system cranked to max, the Peter Gunn Theme boomed through the air like a physical thing.
It hurt my ears, but Kellie Ann, with a vampire’s sensitive hearing, went straight into agony mode. She recoiled and vanished altogether.
Ellinghaus was still on the floor, sitting up just enough to reach the buttons on the dash. He had his iPod buds in his ears; they would mitigate the sound somewhat. He gave me a thumbs-up, settled his shades back into place, and swigged more blood.
The racket wouldn’t stop her forever, but it would keep her voice out of my head for the moment. I needed a Plan B.
I signed to Ellinghaus, making a spinning motion with one hand.
He got it and hit the siren.
Oh, yeah, that was good, annoyingly good. Combined with the shots I’d fired, the noise finally got the attention of the vamp guard at the inside gate. He came running at double speed around the main building.
Soon as he saw her—there’s a reason for the gray sweats on newbies—he concluded she needed to be disarmed and restrained. That was fairly impossible with an enemy who can go incorporeal and levitate, even filter through brick walls if need be.
She tried to take him out with pistol fire. He had the same advantage of being able to fade and return. While she might have gotten others by surprise, he was trained for just this kind of fight.
They went at each other like tigers in a tornado, much of it too fast to follow as they faded in and out, sweeping over the parking lot, trading shots and blows. She was no newbie, that was evident. He’d need an edge. We all did. I slipped off the machine gun and scrounged in the locker and seconds later left the relative safety of the bus.
Ellinghaus croaked something, but the music and siren blotted it out. Neither the guard nor Kellie Ann could hear me; I hoped they’d be too involved with each other until I got close enough.
I cut loose with the oversized toxic green water gun, soaking her (and the guard when I missed) with holy water. Neither reacted to it, except for some cursing from the spray. Their immunity didn’t matter, though. I dropped the empty gun and pulled out a Taser. I figured the salt in the holy water would add to the impact of its shock.
I’m too much of an optimist. It screws me over every time. Just as I made my range, Kellie Ann pulled a blurringly fast maneuver and caught the guard with a bullet the instant he went solid to attack. I couldn’t tell if it was wood, but he dropped and stopped moving.
Before I took another step, she was behind me, one strong arm around my neck, pulling me up and back. She slapped the Taser away; I’d had no chance from the start, just adrenaline and high hopes. I froze for an instant, feeling my ear tickle as she whispered into it to put me under again, but I couldn’t hear over the siren and Henry Mancini’s frenzied bass and horns. As she dragged me backward, heading toward the inside gate, I glimpsed Ellinghaus emerging unsteadily from the ambulance. With metal and wood in him, he’d never be able to vanish. The stuff short-circuited things. She’d kill him for sure.
Give him an edge, then.
She’d gotten the Taser, but missed the stun-gun flashlight in my pocket.
When I hit her with the business end, there was a hellish crack and zap as the voltage slammed through her. It couldn’t pass to me because of the limited distance between the contact poles, but she convulsed, muscles jumping, and fell forward.
Vamps are a lot heavier than you’d think. Something to do with changes to their muscle and bone density. She knocked the breath out of me as we slammed flat against the concrete.
It was a bitch, but worth it if it stopped her.
I lay helpless as her body bunched and twitched, her bare nails gouging the pavement like iron hooks.
Then she stubbornly pushed off, rolled to her feet, and staggered in an unsteady circle. If she tried to vanish, it didn’t work. The jolt was as good as a bullet for disrupting that ability.
She crouched and flipped me over, snarling. Her fangs were out. I was to be first-aid fodder.
Then Ellinghaus suddenly loomed over us, his prized machine gun cradled in his arms. Damn, he owned it. He lashed out with a sideways martial arts kick that knocked her clean off me. She landed yards away but managed to get upright, her feet under her for a sprint.
He cut loose, the gun in full-auto mode, firing in short, controlled bursts.
I couldn’t see much from my angle. Just as well.
Three rounds at a time he emptied the drum. The brass rained, and the smell of cordite and hot metal filled the air.
Out of bullets, but not out of fight, Ellinghaus lunged forward, and I missed whatever came next, for which I was grateful.
When he came back into view, there was a
lot more blood on him.
He rolled his head a little to work kinks from his neck and shoulders, then said, “That disagreeable person is no longer a problem, Miss Goldfarb.”
The ambulance siren wailed and whooped; Peter Gunn ended, and the next track began.
Aretha Franklin told the whole compound about R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
* * *
The rest of the bad guys had breached the outer gate after wounding Judy and forcing Rosa to take it down, but the inner gate stalled them. They couldn’t get Rosa to open it because it was a different spell sequence. She just didn’t know the right chant. They shoved her out of the way, forced to wait for Kellie Ann, their own special Trojan horse, to complete her part of the invasion.
Which did not go to plan.
Rosa, who was a lot better at visualizations than I, threw off their hypnotic influence faster and fled back to her guard shack. She wasn’t so terrified as to forget to put her part of the gate up again, trapping two SUVs full of pissed-off Dracs in the space between. Once they realized what had happened, some of them shifted into bats and attempted to fly free only to hit the outer dome head-on. Others tried vanishing, sinking into the earth, hoping to sieve down far enough to get under the barrier. That was an epic fail, too. The designer, anticipating such ploys, had put in a foundation barrier. They either didn’t know about it or had forgotten that detail.
A sense of entitlement does not guarantee brains, just the arrogance to think having one plan to get in and destroy HQ would be sufficient.
Once other members of Company security arrived—many were witches with specialist magic I could only dream about—the whole lot of Dracs was rendered neutral and taken away. I didn’t know where and had no mind to find out.
In the aftermath—and there was a hellish amount of paperwork—we figured out their plan.
