Wearing the Cape 6: Team-Ups and Crossovers

by Marion G. Harmon

“Well, at least it’ll be epic.”

  “Last stands usually are.”

  “Ha, ha. Let’s go, Spartacus.” She vanished, and as the van pulled away I followed suit, rising into mist.

  When you have to run, the key to making sure nobody chases you is to make sure you leave nobody behind able to chase you. Sure, sneaking out works, but then you’ll never know when they pick up your trail or from what direction they’ll come. So I’d told Gareth to tell them that he’d spilled his guts to me (he had), we knew they were coming (we did), and that we’d try and get Claire out of town (duh). I’d also told Gareth to tell them that Raphael wasn’t happy with his boss, and would tell anyone who paid him enough what the Big Plan was. That was sort of a lie, but the skeevy lawyer they’d paid to defend Garth delivered the message, and they got hold of Raphael not long after sundown.

  The Midnight Ballroom was now richer for one offshore bank account stuffed with several million dollars, and we had a tail.

  Several, probably.

  Not that I was looking for them; I trusted they’d be there as I rode the mist fifty feet above the road. I couldn’t float fast enough to keep up with a car on the open road, but the van drove through Marigny and Bywater before heading north on surface streets and this meant plenty of stop signs and lights. I got ahead to drop back into flesh at intervals so I could touch base with Shell, but she reported nothing exciting. Yet. I could feel the others around me as I flew through the night, their edges touching mine, and found myself humming Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain. We were demons riding on the night wind, bound for a very, very bloody sabbat.

  The hunters could have kicked off early, but distance from the center of town meant time; they didn’t want New Orleans’ own capes breaking up whatever they had planned too early, and in the wee hours they’d have fewer witnesses and an open road. Their own extraction plan would be safer.

  Besides, they knew where we were going. The airport.

  Lakefront Airport had been built in the mid-30s, on an artificial peninsula thrust out into Lake Pontchartrain on the north side of the city. It used to be the major airport, but with Louis Armstrong International Airport built further out to handle modern capacity, it was reduced to operating locally and serving private and business flights. Tonight, it made the perfect battleground.

  When I dropped into flesh about halfway there, Shell popped in. “Okay, night drones make five tails, up to eighteen unfriendlies. The faces I’ve been able to identify belong to a mercenary black-ops group, soldiers recruited out of a couple of failed states.”

  “Any sign of breakthroughs?”

  “Nope, but I couldn’t ID half of them, so assume they’re there.”

  “Damn right.” This was looking more and more chancy; sure we were vampires, fiends of the night, but a properly trained and equipped normal could handle your average vamp—and even our better-trained bloodsuckers trained mostly to fight other vampires. Eighteen. Shit. “You’re ready to clear the airport?”

  Not that there would be many civilians there at this time of night.

  “Yup—the second the balloon goes up I’m set to hit all the alarms. And I’ve disconnected the link to emergency dispatch so local fire and police won’t hear about it too soon. That should buy you some minutes.”

  “Thanks.” I went back into mist.

  The last stretch of road was long and uninterrupted, opening the distance between us and the van. Fortunately, it ran along the south side of the airport before turning in, letting us cut the angle and even arrive at the arranged spot before the van did.

  Two armed vamps dropped into flesh in their prearranged posts at the stairs to the waiting private jet. The rest of us hung back and above, letting the van pass beneath us. It came to a stop fifty feet from the jet, and Leróy handed Claire out, supporting her by her elbow as they headed for the stairs. The five following cars turned onto the runway before they’d gone twenty feet, fanning out to the right and left as their doors opened.

  “Run!” Leróy shouted, pushing Claire forward and turning back. She stumbled, recovered, and followed instructions. Three shots hit her in the back and head right in front of the stairs, throwing her to the foot of the tarmac as the two vamp sentries went to mist. At least a dozen black-clad shooters advanced on the jet as Leróy screamed and launched himself as well.

  And I and the others dropped into flesh behind them.

  Bang-bang. Bang-bang. Bang-bang. They had to be using blessed rounds to drop a vampire like that—but since ours weren’t blessed a stray round of friendly fire would just slow one of us down. We didn’t need to worry about accidentally shooting our own. They were wearing helmets and body armor, but I still I dropped two before most of them turned to face us.

  Which didn’t do them much good; Leróy and his two came out of mist right into them and the fog of war descended. “Shell! Tell me what they’ve got!” I danced in and out of mist, taking shots and moving. Something burned a lava-hot trail across my thigh.

  “AR-15s, no full-autos!” I could hear that much, there being a big difference between staccato bangs and ripping zipper-sounds. “They’ve got grenades!” A whomp to my left and screams with a vapor-wave of water told me they’d brought high-tech water-bombs. Holy water, of course.

  Then a vamp lit up like a torch. They’d brought a pyrotechnic to the party and his victim screamed, flailing in agony until he managed to focus enough to flee into mist. A second lit up as I spun about wildly, desperate to locate the source.

  “There!” Shell screamed, lighting a soldier up with a bright red icon. I leaped back to mist and came down on him, driving a needle-stake into his neck. I heard fewer shots and screams already; it was a gun battle with no cover and total surprise and we were winning this.

  “They’re going for her!” Shell pointed and I turned again to see the furthest car, a suburban van, peel rubber to close on the jet. Claire hadn’t risen—we were out of time.

  “Now Shell, now!”

  The jet exploded into a fireball that ended the fight.

  Later examination would show that stray shots had hit the fuel tank, letting fuel out and air in. After that the first spark in the wrong place finished the job; the force of the fuel-air blast turned the jet into slivers of metal that vaporized both Claire and the pilot. Half of Spezielle Ressourcen’s still-standing soldiers lived through it because of their armor.

  Their rides turned out to be armored, too, saving the driver and passengers of the van that had gone for Claire, but the fight was gone from all of them as vengeful vamps took them down, not killing them on strict pre-fight orders from MC (though I couldn’t claim that one or two already injured weren’t helped to finish dying before the ambulances arrived). I didn’t see Kurt Leitner, but then I hadn’t expected him to lead his paid kidnappers—a good thing since Leróy would have killed him.

  I certainly wanted to.

  Only the coming dawn forced the NOPD to finish their questioning and let us go. There’d be more questions later of course, lots of them and we’d had to leave our weapons for the crime-scene analysts; they’d find every shell casing, match every bullet to a gun. That quite a few of the mercenary’s wounds were inflicted from behind wouldn’t help, but fire had been coming from everywhere and I was confident the scene would back up our story and the fact that Spezielle Ressourcen had been equipped to perpetrate a vampire massacre would close any possibility of a case against us; they’d come to snatch one of ours, we’d tried to get her out of town, they’d followed and attacked, and we’d won. Sort of. The DSA might learn about Claire from all this, but she’d been flash-burned and vaporized—an extreme enough final death even for a vampire.

  We dragged our own injured back to Lalaurie House before dawn, and between the pyrokinetic (who survived with extreme blood loss), the blessed bullets and holy water, and the fireball, we looked more like fresh-mangled zombies than vampires. MC met us there with a full staff of donors and a waiting “secure crypt” for everyone
. We waited until the rest of the team had taken him up on it, leaving the library to the three of us.

  MC poured four drinks, handing a tumbler to Leróy first, then to me, and the three of us sat.

  Leróy had taken five blessed bullets (and somebody’s stray), and if he hadn’t been a supervamp like me he’d have been carried back, too. The bullet hole through the meaty part of my thigh had leaked a bit, too, and one of the staff had thrown cloths over the chairs since neither of us had had time to clean up.

  He sipped his bourbon with a grimace. His mask was good; he’d been holding the rage behind it for hours, and now he let it out. “I want Leitner.”

  MC looked at me and I shook his head. “You won’t get him. He’s not even in the country. But Interpol might now, and the US government.” This disaster was too big for the mercenary businessman to distance himself from. Even if prosecution didn’t work he could easily find himself bleeding patrons and backers, and then there was Europe’s vamp-community. When they heard of this… I really didn’t have it in me to feel sorry for the man. I’m no bigot; some monsters are human, and I’d happily stake them all.

  And that was the problem.

  But there was no time for me; Leróy wasn’t accepting it. “For Claire—”

  The study door to the library opened, and a white-haired man with a cane stepped through. “Ah, the fourth is for me?”

  “Jacob,” I said to MC, “I’d like you to meet my other boss. Blackstone, meet the Master of Ceremonies, the completely deniable godfather of New Orleans’ vampires.”

  “A pleasure.” Blackstone accepted his tumbler from MC’s hand, sat in the fourth chair. He’d been where we’d been, but he’d never left the van; his tuxedo wasn’t even creased although he did smell a bit of burning jet fuel.

  Leróy nodded to him. “Thank you, sir. Claire and I owe you an unpayable debt.”

  “All debts are payable, young man. But how was my performance?”

  Leróy shivered. “When I saw Claire fall—I knew it was your illusion and yet—I could have killed them all.”

  “You sold it, boss.” I saluted with my tumbler. “And Shell has already changed the records, so the DNA results from what little the crime scene guys recover will match hers and the poor pilot’s.” The pilot had been a John Doe body diverted in his trip from the city morgue to a medical research firm, and Shell had given him a brand new and ironclad history. “The illusion is complete.”

  “And the best kind,” Blackstone concluded. “An illusion that nobody will see through, because nobody suspects to even look. Mister Leitner’s own men will tell him, through their lawyers of course, that their hoped-for master vampire is so much ash.” He sipped his drink. “Jacob, this is excellent.”

  “Thank you. And thank you for convincing Marc here to let us attempt a diversion before moving Claire. Who may now continue to sleep in peace.”

  Blackstone set his drink down, resting both hands on his cane. “But not here. I am calling in your incalculable debt now, I’m afraid.”

  The self-congratulatory vibe of the room fled and I became hyper-aware of exactly where my guns were—which was not on me. I still had a needle stake up my left sleeve—the other one was also back at the airport—but I couldn’t draw it faster than MC or Leróy could act. Could I take them both? Could Blackstone teleport to safety quickly enough?

  “I assume you will explain?” MC’s voice didn’t change its pitch but I could feel his influence rising, not directed yet but a storm of cold anger.

  “To be perfectly blunt, I have been aware of the danger that Jacky colorfully calls a vampire apocalypse for some time, through the dealings of a…time traveler who left records of various potential futures as a warning. We had thought that Jacky here was the only progeny of a true master vampire, and that that one was unique. You can imagine my dismay when I was informed that my help was needed to secure the safety of another one.”

  He leaned forward, ignoring MC to address Marc in gentle tones. “Mister Leróy, you have done a commendable job of keeping your friend safe. And perhaps together we have succeeded completely. Perhaps. Nonetheless you remain her vulnerability. You cannot hide yourself easily, and should someone else follow the same trail, come to the same conclusions, the potential richness of the reward could inspire another attempt—if only to verify that she is, indeed, gone. And it would start with you, wherever you go. As I understand it, you were unbelievably fortunate to see this attempt coming. You are not likely to be so fortunate again.”

  Leróy could have been carved from ice. “Marc,” I whispered. “Don’t—” He held up a hand, eyes fixed on Blackstone. Someone living would have blinked. He didn’t for long seconds, and when he moved it was only to put his own tumbler down.

  “What would you do with her?”

  Blackstone stroked his elegantly short beard. “I have in mind a fallout shelter, long-forgotten and easily convertible into a nigh-impenetrable crypt accessible only by those with the appropriate codes and abilities. Maintained by the Sentinels, through enough layers and cutouts that God himself won’t know about it. I work with the DSA at times, but I am less its agent than Jacky here is. Of the Sentinels, only Jacky, myself, and one other would know of her existence. Sleeping Beauty will continue to sleep. Not a permanent solution, I’ll grant you, but in our adventures our team encounters all kinds of things and of course research is ongoing. Perhaps one day we will stumble upon a cure for vampirism—I know that Jacky would devoutly wish that, despite her rather special status among you.

  “If not—” He sighed. “Undoubtedly, in the future we will be better able to deal with the dark possibility that Claire represents.”

  “I’ll go with her, Marc,” I interjected before he could say anything. “Do you trust me enough for that?”

  MC straightened in his chair. “Jacqueline—”

  “I’m leaving anyway, Jacob. You had enough bogeymen to keep the others in line before I came down here. And I can always return if I’m needed. But…” Now I sighed. “I can’t stay. It’s too much.”

  “This is about Gareth?”

  “No. Yes. The list of people I could kill without a second thought just keeps getting longer. It’s not good for me, it’s too easy for me to…get dark, doing this.” Well, get darker. I’d have to thank Shell for shocking me into realizing it. “I need something that isn’t here.”

  “And what about your responsibilities?”

  “Acacia? I’ll leave her Beantown, if she wants it. Marc? Could you take care of her? She really doesn’t belong in Lalaurie House—most other vamps give her the willies.”

  “Yes, I can do that.” The look on his face was…odd. He’d spent years being Clair’s protector. Now, what was he thinking? “I can do that,” he repeated.

  “Thank you. Blackstone, if you’ll go back and make arrangements, I can follow in a few weeks with—” My cell buzzed. It was Shell. “Excuse me.” I opened my phone. “Yes?”

  “You should keep that earbud in! I’m texting Blackstone, you two need to get your asses back up here now—Hope vanished in the middle of her DSA op!”

  Blackstone had read his own text, and now he stood. “Gentlemen, it was a pleasure. Now Jacky and I must go.”

  I beat him to the door.

  Velveteen vs. The Crossover

  by Marion G. Harmon (with permission of Seanan McGuire)

  “Superheroes are crisis-magnets. Yeah, sure, a lot of the time we get called or dispatched to deal with whatever mess some supervillain is making, but other times we’re just there when it hits the fan. On my road trip to Oregon I just happened to stop where an old teammate led a crustacean uprising against the Isley Crawfish Festival (really), and then got a temp-job at Andy’s Coffee Palace to fix my old beater of a car. Andy’s Coffee Palace’s perky manager Cyndi (yes, with an ‘i’) led the Midnight Bean Society, a cult powered by black coffee from the Sacred Bean cultivated in natural caverns beneath an Aztec temple and burial ground. Yeah, they tried to
use it to ascend to a higher plane and rule as gods, and yeah Andy’s got sucked into another dimension. My point is that superheroes go looking for trouble in self-defense; at least then we see it coming.”

  Velma “Velveteen” Martinez

  Velveteen heard the explosion from five blocks away and was down on the ground and skating her Tony Trains up the empty street in under a minute. She’d found the sturdy little anthropomorphized engines at the local Good Will on her last foray into the donated toys section; it was like riding two skateboards at once, but the game little trains cooperated to stay under her feet and sped her along fast enough that she beat anyone else to the scene. That it was the middle of the night helped.

  This part of Portland had been hit hard by the recession. A lot of the shops and warehouses were closed up, and the one that had exploded was a failed glass distributor. The small warehouse full of mirrors and window-glass and custom frames had been boarded up for months; now it looked like an air-bomb had exploded inside—no flames, but overpressure had blown out the boards and the windows behind them.

  Velveteen called it in just in case an ambulance was needed, hopped off the wheezing trains and crunched through glass to carefully climb inside. “Hello?” she called into the dim interior. Against all odds, some security lights had stayed intact and Vel made more light by pulling a Miner Joe from her utility belt. The action-figure ran ahead of her, helmet-lamp lighting up an impossibly wide field for his size. For good measure, she sent a handful of plastic doodlebugs scampering into the shattered spaces to look for injured.

  When nobody answered she shrugged and ducked her head so her bunny ears cleared the edges of drooping glass, and stepped over the window frame.

  Glass crackled in front of her, and she pulled up short. “Hello?”

  “Yes?” someone answered. The voice sounded shaky and young, but unhurt, which seemed impossible.

  “Where are you?” Velveteen peered around, waved Joe in what she thought was the right direction. “Don’t move, it’s not safe.”