ONSET: My Enemy's Enemy

by Glynn Stewart

  #

  As soon as he was sure Ix was moving to protect Hellet from vampires trying to move on her, Michael unleashed his inner wolf and went after the shooters in the gallery. Power swirled around him as he let instinct take over, subsuming his human form and all of its weapons and armor into the immense black-and-gray wolf.

  The twelve-foot height of the balcony surrounding the hall was nothing to the wolf’s muscles as Michael leapt upward, landing with his forepaws on the closest vampire, claws out. Those claws were longer and sharper than a normal wolf’s and ripped the armored soldier to pieces in half a thought.

  On the floor below, Hellet was charging forward to guard the hostages while Ix laid down suppressing fire, keeping the vampires on the far side from getting a clean shot at her. Seven soldiers remained on Michael’s side of the gallery, and they now had far more immediate concerns than trying to shoot at the Mage below.

  A second soldier went down before he could turn, Michael’s claws tearing off the vampire’s head in a single blow. The rest managed to turn and open fire, silver rounds creasing his fur as he charged them.

  A younger, less experienced werewolf might have been brought down. Michael had first transformed before he’d gone to war in Vietnam. Making his skin bulletproof was an old trick for him, old enough that he could hold it for a time even in the face of silver bullets.

  The bullets bounced from his hide as he smashed another vampire aside, crushing the armored soldier underfoot as he charged down the balcony. More bullets slammed into him and even Michael’s practiced self-control slipped, undermined by the silver still trapped in his system from the injection round during the Incident.

  Fire seared along his flesh as he ripped two more vampires to pieces, but the last three triggered retractable bayonets and attacked as one. Well-trained and well-practiced as they were, there was no way he could evade or stop all three attacks.

  Except that their fear betrayed them, and the first vampire moved half a second too quickly. Massive claws punched through the soldier’s wrist, forcing him to drop the bayoneted rifle as Michael used the vampire’s entire body as a weapon, smashing one soldier off the balcony and crushing the other two against each other and the wall.

  Pain seared through Michael’s body as he collapsed against a balcony pillar, radiating from his right shoulder where a silver bullet had punched through. It had stayed intact but lodged against the bone, an impediment to anything he tried to do as a wolf—or to an attempt to transform back.

  Desperately, he dug a claw into his shoulder, cutting his own flesh as he tore the bullet out. A few fragments remained, but not enough to stop his flesh knitting itself back up and the flow of energy to be restored through his body.

  Then he looked back down into the main hall, in time to see David hit Hellet’s shield and bounce, the Empowered Commander crashing to the steps with a crunch Michael could hear from halfway down the hall.

  He could see the two Elders started to close and sprang into action, pushing past the pain as he tried to cross the room in time to intervene. The first Elder reached David, raising his clawed hands to rip out the Commander’s throat.

  Michael wasn’t going to make it—but Ix had already started moving.

  It was easy to forget that, like the name Ix, the body that Ixiltanequestelanaerith presented was a convenience, an easy short form conjured from ichor to make interacting with the humans the demon had decided to defend simpler.

  He was a mid-court demon, one of the Pure, a creature of magic and power—never of flesh and blood. The dark-skinned body that Ix preferred literally came apart in a blast of dark fire, a blur of smoke and shadow that crossed the room in a single heartbeat and wrapped itself around the two closer Elders.

  There were two soft popping sounds, quiet in the sudden silence of the grand hall, and then there was only Ix. Back in his usual red-skinned form, standing over David White and glaring at Ekaterina Romanov.

  Of the two vampire Elders, there was no sign at all.

  #

  For a moment, David thought the flash of shadow and fire had been a hallucination, a side effect of his injuries. The lack of stabbing claws complicating his healing process, however, suggested otherwise, and he saw Ix standing in front of him—instead of thirty or so feet behind him—as he struggled to his feet.

  “You brought a demon into my house,” the Romanov Elder snarled. “What dark bargains have you woven while you accuse me of being a monster?”

  “No bargains,” Ix told her cheerfully. “I decided I like coffee and mattresses better than a cramped interdimensional closet and backstabbing politics.”

  He helped David to his feet, covering the Commander with his own body as David drew his sword. A moment later, O’Brien leapt from the second-floor gallery, sliding across the marble floor to stop in the middle of the landing.

  The werewolf was behind Romanov, cutting off her escape as David and Ix advanced up the stairs toward her.

  “Surrender, Ekaterina,” David urged her. “We are prepared to trade clemency for testimony on who you’ve been dealing with among the Elfin.”

  She laughed, a gloriously rich sound that echoed through the hall.

  “You know nothing,” she told them. “Your precious new allies play you for fools and you won’t even see it until the knife is in your back.

  “No, Commander. I have no more desire to end my immortality today than you do yours, but I will not meekly surrender. Bring your blade, your demon and your beast. I am not Marcus Dresden and I will not die to a mewling child!”

  Fire flashed out from her in a circular pulse, hammering into the shield of shadow Ix raised in front of himself and David. O’Brien was hammered back into the wall but landed on his feet, his fur singed but his teeth bared as he charged.

  David and Ix came at her from the other direction, Memoria in David’s hand and a pair of mageblades in Ix’s. Black fire whipped out from Ekaterina, wing-like flexible blades flashing into existence around her arms.

  Another blast of flame hammered Ix’s shield, and then her wing came slashing in at the pair of ONSET agents. David parried with Memoria, but the fire twisted around the demon-forged blade and slashed at Ix.

  A mageblade suspended in a grip of shadow cut into the fiery tendril as the demon was suddenly elsewhere, shifting half a dozen feet while the black wing dove for him.

  Memoria slashed through the vampire’s shadowy wing as Ix held it pinned, the blade’s power severing Ekaterina’s and collapsing the entire blade like a popped balloon.

  Meanwhile, O’Brien had simply ignored the wing she’d focused on him, regenerating the burns as he took them to close the distance with the vampire Elder.

  David charged to trap her between him and O’Brien, only to have her twist the blades of fire into actual wings and take to the air, swooping over his head as she attacked the hostages.

  Bolts of black fire arced across the room, hammering into the shield Hellet was holding over the civilians. Each bolt of flame sent inky blackness rippling across the invisible dome of force, but the Mage held the dome up under the assault.

  Then gunfire echoed through the chamber and Ekaterina spasmed in the air—as the grizzled hunter among the prisoners opened fire with the M4-Omicron carbine Hellet had dropped to shield the civilians The vampire dodged away, but one of her wings of fire flickered and failed, dumping her onto the ground.

  Twisting like a cat, she landed on her feet, her left arm hanging uselessly where the hunter’s bullets had hammered her shoulder, matching her shattered right hand where David had crippled her earlier.

  Despite her injuries, more fire flashed from her useless hands, hammering Hellet’s shield, and the dome flickered.

  “Do you trust me?” Ix demanded.

  “What?” David replied.

  “Do you trust me?” the demon repeated, his voice urgent as Hellet’s shield flickered and contracted under the vampire Elder’s assault.

  “Yes.” David didn’
t think about it. Didn’t think about the other demons he’d fought or the shadowy monster Ix had turned into a moment before. Ix had served in ONSET loyally for longer than David had, and he’d never seen a reason to trust the being less than anyone else he’d fought alongside.

  “Hold on.”

  A sudden unearthly chill subsumed David, wrapping around his body in an icy blanket that sank into his bones and veins—a chill he’d last felt when the demon Ekhmez had impaled him on Memoria. The world went black…

  And then reappeared, with warmth rushing back into his body as Ix released him from the strange other place he’d taken him and flung him directly at Ekaterina Romanov—blade first.

  Memoria plunged into the vampire Elder’s chest with over two hundred pounds of determined ONSET Commander behind it.

  Chapter 33

  For a long moment, David simply leaned on his sword where it had punched through Romanov and into the stone of the floor. There was no sound in the gorgeously decorated, thoroughly ruined underground hall except for the heavy breathing of the ONSET Agents and the hostages.

  Finally, he yanked Memoria out of the dead vampire and pulled out a cloth to clean it, crossing to the hostages as he did so. If the act made him more intimidating to the hostages, that wasn’t entirely a bad thing.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the grizzled old hunter still holding Hellet’s M4 in a practiced grip despite his uncertain stand.

  “Levinson,” the man replied slowly. “Harold Levinson.”

  “Well, Harold, you just made everyone here’s life a good bit easier with that shot,” David told him. “You served?”

  “Iraq. Both times, retired as a Sergeant in the Army,” Levinson replied. “Familiar with the old girl, though this one isn’t quite what I expected.”

  “Calibrated for a higher-velocity silver round,” David explained. “Not going to ask if you’re okay; I know the answer. Can you check on the girl?”

  Clearly grateful to have orders, Levinson handed the rifle back to Hellet and knelt by the injured young woman, gently checking for a pulse and to be sure her airways were clear.

  He judged the other survivors to be in various degrees of shock. They weren’t going to be much use.

  “Stay with them,” he told Hellet softly. “And thank you. You were the only one who could have kept them safe.”

  “It’s the job,” the Mage agreed. “I need a drink, a bed, and about twelve hours’ sleep. In that order.”

  “We’ll see what we can do,” David promised. “Ix, stick with Hellet and the civilians.”

  “And what about you and I?” O’Brien asked, the black-and-gray wolf having disappeared back into the man. Unlike David, whose torso armor was burnt away and was currently half-naked above the waist, O’Brien’s armor was undamaged. Despite the intensity of the fight, the other Commander still looked perfectly turned out.

  “Odds are Romanov brought her A game to this little ambush, but if there’s anything else in this complex, we need to find it and put it down. Up to some tunnel-crawling?”

  “If we also look for a shirt for you, I’m in.”

  “I’m more concerned about vampires and more prisoners than my clothing selection,” David pointed out. “Let’s go.”

  #

  Someone had spent a lot of both time and money turning a fifty-room underground complex into a near-perfect replica of a Napoleonic France mansion. While individual rooms were decorated in more modern tastes, the general décor clearly reflected the style that would have been held up as the ideal of wealth when Tatiana and Ekaterina Romanov were children.

  The extremely old-fashioned decorations only added to the creepiness of the empty underground mansion. The paintings and furniture were shaped to the tastes of a half-forgotten culture and two dead women. The complete lack of life—and windows—just helped drive home what a strange place the two ONSET Commanders had wandered into.

  “I think the furniture is originals,” O’Brien pointed out as they checked yet another empty room. “Millions in antiques.”

  “I guess if you’re going to live in a cave, you make it look like you wanted your home to when you were a kid,” David agreed. The corridor they were checking ended in a heavy hatch that swung open at the pull of a lever, revealing an earthen-floored tunnel that led up.

  “Cynthia, do you have our location?” he asked.

  “We’re reading your GPS transponders, yeah. What do you need?”

  “Are we close to one of your probable exits? I think we found the escape tunnel.”

  “Hold on a moment,” the analyst told him. “Yeah, you’re about sixty meters south-by-southwest of one of the exits. Any other exits?”

  “Just back through the compound,” David told her. “I think we’ll bring the hostages out through here,” he decided. “The last thing those poor people need is to walk through a battlefield.”

  “We have medevac standing by for them,” Leitz replied. “I’ll have them meet you there.”

  “Let’s go check that the surface is clear,” O’Brien suggested.

  Nodding, David started down the tunnel. The air was chilly on his bare skin and he grimaced as they walked toward the surface.

  “Hopefully, the medevac squad has a shirt you can borrow,” the werewolf said dryly as they moved down the dimly lit tunnel. Lights had been strung from the roof, long-lasting LEDs run along a single string back to the underground complex.

  “Hopefully,” David agreed as they reached the end of the tunnel, the cave seeming to just suddenly stop with no exit. Leaning into his Sight was surprisingly unhelpful—no one had used the tunnel recently enough to leave any trace of their aura on it.

  “Follow the wire,” he suggested, studying the roof where the lights were strung. “Someone’s been clever.”

  As he was speaking, however, O’Brien rammed his hand into the wall, plunging into the dirt and yanking a box with a large button and several cables attached out of the wall.

  “Not clever,” O’Brien disagreed. “Lazy. Wall had shifted and collapsed over the controls, and no one had been in here to check.”

  It took a few solid whacks to get the button to move, but then a motor screeched to life, lifting a pair of doors—also covered by fallen dirt on this side—up and out of the ground into the afternoon sunlight.

  Once the screeching faded, they could hear the sounds of the incoming helicopter and shouting from their perimeter team.

  “Looks like we’re clear,” O’Brien noted. “With the vampires dead, I guess it’s time to see what their paperwork and computers have in store.”

  #

  The helicopter had touched down and Sheriff Donnelly and Special Agent Freeman had joined them by the time Hellet led the rescued hostages out of the tunnel. Since the transport helicopter had been poached from AP Six, they had, thankfully, had a spare set of armor that mostly fit David.

  Not being half-naked made him feel much better at meeting with the assorted police officers they’d gathered around, but he also made a point of leaving them all behind to quietly meet with the hostages before they went on the helicopter.

  Levinson was carrying the girl. She was awake now but looking far the worse for wear.

  “You’re going to be okay,” David told her when her gaze settled on him. His words were for all of them, but the girl was the most vulnerable of them.

  “The helicopter flight will be several hours long,” he warned them. “You’re being taken to a classified facility where you will all be treated for potential infection with the Noctus virus. We’ve dealt with this before; we know how to handle the symptoms and prevent long-term issues.”

  “From vampire bites?” the girl breathed, her voice still high-pitched in panic.

  David stepped closer and turned his head, showing her the two marks on his own neck. For whatever reason, his body had never regenerated any of the scars he’d acquired before his regeneration had fully kicked in. No injury since then had left a mark, but he s
till had scars from half a dozen childhood injuries—and the vampire bite that had so rudely introduced him to the world of the supernatural.

  “I was bitten once,” he told them all. “None of what you’ve seen me do today is from that, if you were wondering,” he added. “I was treated and made a full recovery. So will all of you.”

  “How can we trust you?” one of the others, a young-looking black man who look utterly exhausted. “I’ve been down there for weeks. Most of the people down there when I arrived are dead. Those bastards ate them.”

  “And every single one of those bastards is dead,” David said flatly. “I can’t change the past, sir. We didn’t know there was a vampire nest here. We acted as quickly as we could and we saved all of you that we could.

  “We’re trying to help,” he continued. “There is no one else in America who can provide the treatment for what you’ve gone through. We have the medicine and we have the therapists who understand what’s happened to you and will believe you.”

  “No one’s going to believe us,” the girl in Levinson’s arms whispered.

  “He does,” Levinson told her, gesturing toward David with his chin. “If he believes us, and if he says others will, I think the folk who saved us have earned at least a little credit. Don’t you, Charlie?”

  The last was addressed at the black youth, who nodded slowly.

  “Sorry, man,” he told David. “Ain’t used to anybody helping. ’Specially not cops.”

  “I promise you, you are safe now,” David told them all. “As long as you’re in our care, no one will harm you. We’ll put you in touch with your families once you’re at the hospital.”

  They started to board the helicopter, seeming somewhat more reassured than before. David wasn’t sure if it was his words or Levinson’s that had convinced them, and he gave the ex-soldier a nod of thanks.

  “Get them to our people in one piece, and we’ll get them put back together,” he murmured to Levinson. “Body and soul. I promise you, Mr. Levinson. We know how bad it got.”