Downbeat (Biting Love)

by Hughes, Mary

  I shouldered my backpack and followed.

  After picking up various guns, blades and stakes, and Logan had snatched a wad of something that looked like putty, we gathered my mother and Mr. Miyagi and trooped to the underground parking. Vampire strength smashed the cinder block wall between lot and sewer. After we climbed through, Logan attached the putty to the hole. As soon as we were far enough away, he triggered an explosion. “If the monster does manage to make it inside, that’ll keep him from following us.”

  At Julian’s we picked up the long limo. Mr. Miyagi drove. “Let’s go over the plan again,” Julian said.

  Mom was in the front seat with Mr. Miyagi, and he’d raised the soundproof glass between us, insuring she wouldn’t hear.

  “We’ve been over it five times,” Dragan said.

  “Humor me.”

  Dragan sighed dramatically. “Rocky lures the Soul Stealer to the basement of the church. When he shows, Bo takes her to safety while Dru shrieks the bone-rattling C#. Julian punches a stake through the vampire’s heart while Luke chops off his head.”

  “I have Rounin’s swords,” Luke said. “They’re silver-lined and sharp as hell. They’ll make quick work of even the megavamp’s neck once his bones are vulnerable.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t help,” Thorvald grumbled.

  “You are helping,” I said. “You and the other lieutenants will run interference in case Nosferatu or one of his henchvamps tries to help Gravloth.”

  “And what will he be doing?” Julian jerked a finger at Dragan.

  Dragan said, “Doing what conductors have done from time immemorial. Keeping the beat and watching out for train wrecks.”

  “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Luke agreed.

  I nodded sagely. “The military version of Murphy’s law.”

  We got to the little red church shortly before sunset. We planned to get everything set up, then phone Nosferatu at the number he’d used to call me and have him put the Soul Stealer on. I’d take it from there.

  As Logan picked the lock of the church, we piled out, all except my mom. Mr. Miyagi turned over the wheel of the limo to her, and she took off. I wondered where Miyagi sent her.

  We all trundled inside, clinking and clanking with our various gear. Bo was in the lead. Bo’s lieutenant, Thorvald, started singing a war song in a robust baritone as we started down the stairs.

  Bo stopped suddenly, holding up one hand. “Wait. I smell—”

  Vampires jumped him, three cramming into the closed space of the stairwell, at least a dozen fanged and armored faces bristling behind.

  Bo whipped up a wicked shark-like blade. Hard slashes took off two vampire heads. A stab took the third vampire in the heart, but not before that vampire had also gotten a stab to Bo’s belly. Bo flinched but it barely stopped him as he waded into the throng of vampires.

  The back of the vampire mob started bubbling, bodies flying into the air. Gravloth strode through, tossing vampires out of his way like rag dolls.

  “The Soul Stealer,” Bo shouted. “We’ve been betrayed!”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Julian slashed a look at Dragan. “You traitor!”

  “Not me.” Dragan’s arm wrapped around me. “Drusilla, Luke—with me. Emerson, bring Miyagi.”

  He picked me up and ran up the stairs.

  Only to plow into a line of vampires between us and the front door. Giuseppe anchored one end, barely recognizable in a brown wig, his cheeks plumped as if he was chewing cotton wads. Camille stood on the other end, though she didn’t look happy.

  Nosferatu grinned from the middle, waggling a finger at us. “Not betrayed, Emerson. Simply incredibly stupid.”

  Dragan’s hands tightened on me. “Gravloth heard us talking at Bo’s.”

  “The Soul Stealer has the strength of an ancient,” Nosferatu agreed. “He’s also got the hearing.”

  Behind us, Gravloth roared. It was followed by Bo shouting in pain.

  Dragan’s eyes flicked between Luke and Julian. He twitched his head to the right. Then he lifted his head and paused.

  When his head came down, he, Julian and Luke ran straight for the door to the balcony. Julian still held Miyagi and Luke grabbed Dru’s hand on the way.

  I caught Nosferatu’s stunned look as we broke through. Dragan flung open the door to the choir loft. We were pounding up the stairs before the first shout even went up.

  “Out of my way!” A roar and crashing cymbals behind us meant the megavamp had won through Bo and the Alliance lieutenants, and was following.

  Dragan threw one-handed cues over his shoulder as he ran onto the balcony. Julian set Miyagi down as Luke and Dru ran through. Julian slammed the door shut and he and Luke barricaded it, Luke drawing Rounin’s ultra-sharp katanas, Julian swinging open a foot-long stiletto switchblade. The flood light illuminating the stained glass window came on at that moment, catching on a silver beading near the edge of one of the katanas. I guessed it was for extra vamp-cutting power.

  “Dru!” Dragan sang a C#, fifth octave. “Go.”

  Dru opened her mouth to screech the same note up two octaves.

  Gravloth crashed through the door. Splinters burst around him. He plowed into Luke and threw him off the balcony. Luke sailed flailing over the edge. The crash a moment later sounded bad. Gravloth then backhanded Miyagi into the bell tables.

  As the monster spun to deal with Julian, Julian stabbed him straight in the chest.

  The stiletto bent.

  Dru’s mouth hung open, no sound emerging. We all stared, horrified. The megavamp’s breastbone must have been tough as tempered steel.

  Gravloth shoved Julian, so strong it sent the lawyer sailing through the air into the back of the loft. Julian hit the wall with a crack.

  Dru swallowed hard. Determinedly she grabbed a breath.

  Gravloth attacked her so fast he flickered. He punched her throat. Her note cut off even before it started. She hacked, trying to breathe.

  The monster picked her up, spun her over his head and threw her crashing through the big stained glass window.

  My heart whooshed, spewing rivers of acid through my veins.

  Dragan was already moving. He flashed to the piano, set me down, threw back the keyboard cover and slammed a finger onto the seventh-octave C#.

  A sour plink was the only response. Dragan, face going white, hit it again. Another plink. The wires were dead.

  Only one instrument left. I spun to the organ and flipped it on. In the front, the wind chest wheezed open. I eyeballed up from middle C and stabbed the black bar of C# seven…

  Nothing happened.

  Damn it, no stops selected. I yanked one at random and hit the key again.

  Still nothing happened. Organs have two keyboards and I’d panicked and hit a stop for the swell but pushed the key on the great. I pulled my hand back to hit the right key…

  Dragan lifted me by the waist and dragged me back.

  Foul wind swished into my face, the megavamp’s hands sweeping the air where I had been.

  Julian staggered in from the back of the loft and stabbed the monster from behind with what looked like a pocket knife, jamming the blade into the megavamp’s kidney with both hands.

  The monster backhanded him, slapping him out of the balcony.

  Just as Luke climbed over the rail, swords in one hand, his face a mass of bruises.

  Gravloth was turned to pluck Julian’s blade from his back and didn’t see Luke. The monster tossed the blade away, ignoring a sudden fountain of blood. The blade embedded in the far chancel wall, vibrating from the impact. Before its quivers even wound down, the monster’s bleeding had stopped.

  Luke dove in, slicing with one of Rounin’s katanas. The silver must have helped—it bit deep into the megavamp’s arm. Gravloth howled.

  But without that C# we couldn’t chop through his bones. The highest I could sing was A six. Without the piano or organ, only a piccolo could get that high…
r />   Or a flute.

  I dragged my backpack off my shoulders. Dragan started to stop me, but I shook my head no. He spun to where Gravloth, arm nearly cut in two, had grabbed Luke one-handed by the neck. Julian was crawling over the balcony but from his bruised, bloody face and blurry eyes, he wasn’t going to be a lot of help.

  We didn’t have much time. A piece of junk was on top of my flute case. I tossed it onto the piano. I grabbed the case, popped it open on the top of the piano and pulled out my headjoint.

  Something big flew past my head. I jerked. A whump as it hit the wall behind me turned my head.

  Luke slid down the wall, smearing a trail of blood.

  “Mine,” Gravloth roared.

  And then our time was out. The monster came at me like a jumbo jet.

  Elias’s words came back. He will swallow you up. Possess you utterly, body and soul.

  Only Dragan stood between me and the Soul Stealer. Between me and utter annihilation if I should lose my concentration for one moment.

  Dragan could snare me and run. But Gravloth knew our plan now, knew his own Achilles heel. We’d lose our only chance to defeat him.

  I had to assemble the flute.

  Only one way to do that—if Dragan grappled with the monster. If he hung on for as long as it took.

  No one survived the monster that long.

  Dragan would die.

  He made two quick motions. Then he turned to me. The knowledge of his own death was in his eyes.

  But Dragan…smiled. He mouthed, “I love you”.

  I love you too. I said it with my eyes.

  I felt forever lock into place.

  He spun and ran at Gravloth as fast as the monster ran at him.

  They hit with an audible boom.

  Dragan grabbed Gravloth’s neck with both arms. Gravloth seized Dragan’s right arm and twisted. It pulled out of its socket. The thuck-crack will haunt me for the rest of my days.

  With a groan, Dragan slid down the monster’s chest. Gravloth stepped forward.

  Last minute Dragan snared Gravloth’s waist, wrapping it with his left arm. He got his feet planted and jammed his dislocated shoulder into the monster’s breastbone as if he was a six-foot-five wedge.

  It slowed Gravloth’s push toward me. But didn’t stop him. Nearer the monster came, and nearer.

  As he came he tore Dragan’s fingers from him, one by one.

  Not just ripping them from his flank. The monster violently tore each finger from Dragan’s hand. Dragan’s beautiful, expressive hands.

  Gorge rising, horror filling my veins with mud, I could barely put my instrument together. My hands trembled twisting headpiece on body. I tried to match up the footjoint and missed.

  Dragan tossed me a look seared with fear. His fangs were extended and he was sweating red droplets. Even slowing Gravloth down was costing him heavily.

  His eyes met mine and he redoubled his efforts. His once-silver lock blazed purest white.

  The monster twisted another finger and tore it from its socket. Dragan gave a small, doomed groan.

  I jammed the footjoint on with sheer desperation.

  The Soul Stealer tore off Dragan’s last finger and threw it away.

  Still Dragan clung on, how, I don’t know. The monster stopped to peel Dragan’s arm from the back of his waist. Dragan had done something to fuse himself to the megavamp because he came away with a horrible ripping of cloth—and skin.

  The monster roared. Blood wept from his belly as he pulled Dragan off him. As the last tatter of flesh tore free, he hurled Dragan into the wall behind me. The crash as he hit was terrifyingly wet, like a bull’s carcass hitting concrete.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Blood spurted from raw meat of Dragan’s arm and chest. His left hand was a ruined stump. His eyes were shut and he wasn’t breathing. His lock of snow-white hair was dulled.

  Horror welled up in me, thickening my throat, prickling my nose, burning my eyes.

  But with the last of his life, he’d won me the time to get my flute together.

  I had no idea if it would even work with the flute. It might have been overtones in the violin or Dru’s voice that made the monster’s bones fragile. Even if it did make him vulnerable, I didn’t know if anyone was left to stake him and cut off his head.

  Gravloth, his belly healing, grinned and reached for me. Didn’t matter if it worked or not. I was out of time. I had to try.

  I fingered the note; grabbed a breath; prepared the sound as I had a hundred thousand times.

  No, not just prepared it, but called on it. I’d poured my eighth-grade pain into the crying sorrow of “Syrinx”; now I siphoned the heart-stopping anguish of Dragan laying dead behind me to prepare that note.

  When the C# resonated with the pain in my soul, I blew.

  I hit the note dead center. Crystalline pureness cut the air.

  The balcony grabbed the note and sang it back tenfold. The whole canopy burst with sound.

  The Soul Stealer staggered back as if struck. He clapped both hands to his ears and howled.

  I kept blowing.

  Gravloth gritted his teeth and stumbled toward me.

  I kept blowing.

  Mr. Miyagi rose behind the monster. He’d recovered from the crash into the bell tables and had found Rounin’s katanas, which he brandished now.

  Bleeding and broken, Julian staggered in behind Miyagi. He raised the wooden stake.

  Too late. The Soul Stealer was within striking distance of me. Neither Julian nor Miyagi would reach the monster in time.

  I had one defense left.

  High-high C# is played with the middle finger of the left hand and the first finger and pinky of the right. Normally I needed both hands to play the note.

  This was an emergency. I leaned the flute A-key-first into the edge of the piano’s music rack, nearly bending the key. But it kept the left hand closed while I picked up my only hope.

  When I’d taken my flute case from the backpack, I’d first had to remove a piece of junk.

  My mother’s art was the most precious thing in the world right now.

  Still wailing the C#, I took the little ceramic dwarf and threw it as hard as I could into the megavamp’s skull.

  It hit between the monster’s eyes with a crack. Gravloth recoiled; the note had definitely weakened him.

  But more, it delayed him the instant Julian and Miyagi needed.

  Julian drove the stake with his whole body into the monster’s back. The point appeared in the megavamp’s chest, just as Miyagi spun a step-on-air tornado twist.

  He blendered Rounin’s wickedly sharp blades through the monster’s neck.

  The head sliced off. Surprise twisted its features. Blood fountained.

  An instant before I was splashed with hot blood Dragan swept me out of the way.

  We landed on the floor, Dragan on top. My flute fell from my hand to clatter onto the wood next to me, but I didn’t care.

  Dragan was alive.

  Tears filled my eyes. I smiled through them at him. “We did it.”

  “We have, indeed.” He smiled back. “We’ve won.”

  “You haven’t won anything,” a new voice rasped. “The Soul Stealer will rise again!”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  I raised my head to see Nosferatu step out onto the balcony. Camille and Giuseppe entered behind him, fanning out to flank him.

  “Camille,” Nosferatu said. “Get the head. Giuseppe, retrieve the body.” While they moved, the master Coterie vampire tsked. “Too bad you staked him. I would have enjoyed drinking the life force of an ancient. But the blood is only useful when pumped by a living heart.”

  Dragan leaped to his feet, shielding me as I rose. Julian palmed Mr. Miyagi behind him. Luke groaned from the wall. The only sign of Dru was the big hole in the window.

  The head had tumbled toward the door. In two steps Camille scooped it up. Nobody could have stopped her.

  But the body had dropped near us. T
hat was another story.

  As Giuseppe neared, Julian and Dragan shared a glance. In concert they slid forward, Julian pushing Giuseppe back while Dragan tugged the body one-handed behind the piano, then stood guard over it. His fingers were still gone but his chest and dislocated shoulder had healed.

  Camille, near the balcony rail, waved the head. “You have that, but I have this.”

  “Well done, Camille.” Nosferatu smiled. “Bring it here, and then both you and Giuseppe can wrest the Soul Stealer’s body from the Alliance vampires.”

  She turned.

  “Wait,” Dragan said. “After everything he’s done? The Alliance can make you a better deal.”

  She turned back. “Why should I listen to you?”

  “Why should you listen to him? You’ve seen what Nosferatu and Giuseppe think of you. They’ve been using you all these decades.”

  “That’s not true,” Nosferatu said. “I love you, Camille.”

  “He loves using you,” Dragan countered. “He’ll never make you first lieutenant.”

  “Camille, my dear. We can discuss the position of first lieutenant—after you bring me the head.”

  “Discuss.” She filled the word with the music of her contempt. “Meaning you’ll dangle the promotion in front of me, but once you’ve put this monster back together, you’ll give it to him? I don’t think so.”

  “Give me the head!” Nosferatu’s voice rang with compulsion.

  Grimacing, she took a step toward him.

  “Don’t,” I called. “He’s lying to you, compelling you.”

  “What?” She shook her head as if clearing it. Her expression hardened. “Nice try, boss.” She waved the head at Julian. “Does your side have a better offer?”

  Nosferatu snarled. “Damn it, Camille—”

  “We do.” Julian’s eyes glittered from bruised and puffy skin. “Join the Alliance and we’ll give you protection and access to the best training on the planet.”

  “Not good enough. I want to be first lieutenant.” She paused. “But I don’t want to go to Iowa. I want to stay near Chicago.”

  “Not happening,” Nosferatu said. “Your household and businesses here are forfeit.”

  “We’ll give you a place of your own,” Julian said. “A household in Meiers Corners. You could be your own master. Bo and I would give you one lieutenant each.”