Blood Unleashed (Blood Stone)

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Rick followed him down into the basement, after closing the door behind him. The overhead lights illuminated the clean, painted concrete floor and the two long benches butted up against each other.

  Marcus went over to the still arrangement and flicked his fingernail against the thin neck where more of the liquid was oozing into the big glass balloon-shaped receiver. Rick prudently stayed three feet away from the bench and watched Marcus slide on a thick white lab coat. Chemical spills were just as damaging to vampire flesh, too.

  “Show me what you’re doing,” Rick said.

  Marcus looked at him from over his shoulder, his brows raised.

  “I know my way around a lab,” Rick assured him. He stepped closer. “You’ve got some powerful elements here, but I couldn’t figure it out. Show me.”

  “I can’t show you. Not without destroying the house.”

  “So, it is an explosive,” Rick surmised. “I couldn’t find any notes detailing your work.”

  Marcus turned and crossed his arms, leaning against the bench that didn’t have the still on it. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, but it was only now he had put on the coat, framing the expanse of bare chest, that Rick noticed properly. “It’s not just an explosive,” Marcus said. “Anything under a cupful is highly corrosive. Heat will ignite it and it burns with intense red flames. That’s from the strontium chloride.”

  “What does anything over a cupful do? Explode?”

  Marcus nodded. “Gram for gram, it’s three times more powerful that TNT.”

  Rick considered that. TNT was still considered the most powerful explosive in the world, although C-4 was more popular because it was as stable as hell, and could be molded into different shaped charges, changing the way it exploded. “If this…what do you call it?”

  “Pyrrhus,” Marcus said.

  The name was from ancient Greek mythology. Rick recognized the roots of the name; red fire. “Appropriate,” he murmured.

  “Here’s the thing,” Marcus added. “This stuff is highly stable. You could dump it from the top of a fifty floor building and it wouldn’t do much more than wet the pavement…but then it would start eating into the concrete.”

  Rick turned it over in his mind. A stable explosive, that was also corrosive… He frowned. “What holds it?”

  “Porcelain, bronze and glass and, oddly, stable plastics,” Marcus said instantly. He dropped his chin to look Rick in the eye. “It burns at nine hundred degrees.”

  Bronze. Fire. “Bullets,” he breathed.

  Marcus nodded.

  Rick reached out and touched the flask holding the pyrrhus. “Bullets that actually kill vampires,” he breathed. “My god…” He looked at Marcus. “This is a game changer.”

  “Somewhere in the haze of the last three days, I figured that out,” Marcus told him gravely.

  “How much of this can you make? How fast?” Ideas were blooming rapidly. Excitement touched him.

  Marcus walked over to a metal office cabinet, which stood as high as him. He opened both doors and swung them back. The shelves were jammed with big blue twenty liter water bottles. There were twelve or fifteen of them, and they were all full.

  “I’m limited by my set-up here,” Marcus said. “It takes ten hours to create a liter of pyrrhus, once the still is running. A commercial lab could crank out gallons of the stuff.”

  “But you can make bullets here?” Rick asked, eyeing a metal clamp bolted to the bench and other metalworking tools lined up neatly next to it.

  “I can adapt bullets. Making them from scratch is a waste of time. Hollow out the core of the bullet, pour in the pyrrhus, seal it off with a plastic shield, then crimp the bullet back into the shell.” He shrugged. “A dozen would probably take two hours.” He tilted his head. “What are you scheming?”

  Rick settled himself against the other bench, just as Marcus was leaning against his. “I spent the two days before I came to find you looking for Heru. I sifted through every scrap of information, any hint I’d heard over the last year. I still don’t know where Heru is, but I’m fairly certain that I’ve identified eighteen key locations where the League members live and meet.”

  “Members. You mean vampires or humans? Or both?”

  Rick scratched at the bench top with his thumb nail. “We can pick our targets to minimize the human casualties. If we’re using bullets, we can be selective.”

  “Except I can’t tell if what I’m looking at is human or vampire until I get close enough to feel body heat.”

  “I can,” Rick assured him. “Would you like to hunt down the League, Marcus?”

  Marcus frowned. “The assholes that served Ilaria up to Heru? Does a bear shit in the woods?”

  * * * * *

  Twenty-four hours later, just as the sun was lowering over the Pacific in a pink haze, Marcus found himself lying on his belly, his elbows on a low parapet, studying the building across the way. Lights were already shining in most of the windows of the rundown commercial building.

  Rick had his hands lying flat, one on top of the other, and his chin resting on them, while he minutely studied the windows, only his eyes flicking in tiny movements as his gaze shifted from window to window.

  The sun had properly set and darkness was gathering around them when Rick finally spoke. “There,” he said. “Third window on the fourth floor. The one in the green coat.”

  “You recognize him?” Marcus pressed. There was no way he was going to go into the building with all guns blazing without absolute proof it was a League nest.

  “I recognize the son of a bitch,” Rick said, getting to his feet. He wore dark clothes and a long leather coat that hid most of them. “Aaron is his name. He had unusual tastes.”

  “I bet.” Marcus didn’t press for details. The disgust in Rick’s voice was enough description for him. “How do we get across there?” It was a twelve foot jump.

  “We jump,” Rick replied.

  “I can’t make that.” Marcus wouldn’t have made it on his best days and today wasn’t one of those days.

  “I can. I’ll carry you.”

  Marcus looked at the gap, which now seemed wider than the Grand Canyon.

  Rick walked back along the roof, about twelve yards from the edge. “Do you trust me?” he asked.

  Marcus rolled his eyes. “Impossible fucking question,” he muttered. “You kill me, I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Deal.” Rick held out his arm. “Stay where you are.”

  He took off, running so fast it was almost a blur to Marcus. Something slammed across his chest and it felt like he was thrown into the air, except the band around his chest stayed in place.

  Rick landed on the other roof neatly, thrusting out a foot to bring himself to a halt. Marcus fell backwards onto his ass. “Ow! Fuck!” He twisted to check the backpack over his shoulders. “You could have warned me!”

  “I did. I told you to stand still.” Rick reached under the coat and pulled out the pair of Glocks Marcus had loaned him. Rick had assured Marcus he was ambidextrous and a crack shot. Marcus didn’t bother wondering if he was boasting. Inflating his own abilities just wasn’t a part of Rick’s makeup.

  Marcus pulled out his own gun. The twenty-two round Glock 35 was his favorite weapon. He could dunk it in water, roll it in mud and it would still fire. He had three more clips in his pockets. “And can I say for the last time that we should have tested these before diving into a hole where people shoot back?”

  “How do we test one? A good result means a dead vampire. I couldn’t think of anyone I wanted to offer up as a test dummy. Besides, vampires don’t tend to shoot back.”

  Something flickered in the gathering darkness, just behind Rick. “Duck!” Marcus called, and fell onto his side to further his reach around Rick. The shadow was leaping from high, falling down upon Rick.

  Rick flattened himself instantly, falling to the ground so quickly that Marcus had a full range of fire. He squeezed off two shots and made himself stop. The
y didn’t have that many bullets. They couldn’t spare extras just because he’d been goosed into firing off the whole clip.

  The man—the vampire, Marcus assumed—fell to the ground and clutched at his stomach and chest. He looked young, but it was hard to tell in the dark, plus his face was screwed up in pain.

  Rick moved toward him and Marcus threw out his hand. “No, stand back.”

  Two bright red glowing dots had appeared under the vampires hands, rapidly expanding. His clothing was smoking. The vampire threw his head back and howled.

  “Fuck…” Marcus breathed.

  The vampire was writhing now and the dots had expanded to cover most of his torso. Guessing what would happen next, Marcus covered his face with his arm, leaving just enough room to peer beneath.

  The vampire burst into flames and the flames were neon red. Marcus could feel the heat from where he lay outstretched on the tarmac. He watched in awe. Even though he had predicted this, it was still astonishing and uncomfortable to watch.

  These fuckers are the ones that got Ilaria killed, he reminded himself.

  Rick stepped around the flaming body and hauled Marcus to his feet. Marcus glared at him. “I told you to stop doing that.”

  “I heard you all three times.” Rick glanced at the body. “It works.”

  “Almost too well,” Marcus muttered.

  “They are directly responsible for killing Ilaria,” Rick said flatly. “If it comforts you, consider that Ilaria is the least of their transgressions. They deserve everything they get.”

  “You think I’m getting cold feet?”

  “I think you’re starting to think like the civilized human you are.” Rick headed toward the stairwell door. “Coming?”

  * * * * *

  The building was owned by the League, Rick had discovered. That meant, he explained, that just about everyone in the building would be vampire, or associated with the League. Human servants, Marcus had interpreted for himself.

  They moved systematically through the building, checking every room. The building may have been classified for commercial business, but clearly, they were using the upper floors as housing. There were beds, rooms fitted out as make-do kitchens and bathrooms.

  Rick took point. “Guard my back,” he said. “Anyone who comes up behind us you can shoot. Humans won’t attack us.”

  He would kick in the door, while Marcus kept watch, and take a step into the room and check his targets. Vampires, he shot.

  They didn’t meet their first human until they reached the third floor. The thumping and screaming coming from the floor above had stirred the rest of the occupants. They were milling in the corridors, asking each other what was happening. Rick checked his targets and paused.

  The people in the corridor were staring at him, their eyes wide. There were women, too – some of them young enough to be called girls. Anger stirred in him as Marcus took in the tousled, fresh innocence of some of them. These were the League’s servants? He gripped his gun harder.

  Rick lifted both guns so they were pointing at the ceiling. “Run. All of you. Don’t come back here ever again, or you will pay the consequences.”

  They continued to stare at him, most of them wearing puzzled expressions.

  “Fucking run, you idiots!” Marcus shouted. “You’re free!”

  That stirred them. They all turned and began to push and scramble toward the stairs to the next floor.

  “You!” Rick shouted, bringing a gun down.

  Several of the humans looked over their shoulders, their eyes wide.

  Rick took slow and deliberate aim and fired. The bullet struck the back of one of them, and he fell onto the floor face forward. Almost instantly he began to howl in the same inhuman voice the others had, trying to reach around to his back. The red was spreading and his clothes smoked.

  Panic gripped the humans. They began to scream and pummel each other in their determination to get out as fast as possible. They tripped over each other.

  “You checked every single one?” Marcus asked. “There was just one among them?”

  The body was engulfed in flames now.

  “I might have missed one or two, but I don’t think so,” Rick said calmly, watching the body burn. “It’s better to miss a couple than to take one of those pitiful humans.”

  Marcus’ anger returned. “Some of them were just kids!”

  Rick nodded. “Let’s finish this.”

  Marcus couldn’t have agreed more.

  It took twenty minutes to quarter the entire building. On the second floor, they met their first resistance. Two vampires tried to set upon them from behind. Marcus calmly shot them in mid-air and watched them drop to the floorboards and begin to writhe. There were three others in the corridor, behind them. The back-up team, Marcus assumed. They watched their colleagues begin to squirm, as they slowly backed up the corridor. Marcus picked off one of them, then the other two turned and sprinted.

  It was the end of any organized defense. The ground floor was almost completely empty. “They’ve all run,” Rick surmised as they moved around the empty retail store, stepping around glass counters and cases.

  There was a peculiar groaning and cracking sounding above their heads. Rick looked up. “The building is collapsing,” he said. “Either fire, or corrosion eating at the supports.” He walked over to the doors, and put his right hand gun away. Then he straight armed the door, right next to the lock, the heel of his hand smashing against the wood. The doors gave way, swinging open slowly, shivering under the impact.

  They stepped out onto the pavement and looked up as they tucked their guns away. Smoke was pouring out of the upper windows. In the distance, sirens wailed.

  “Someone called it in. Time to leave,” Marcus declared.

  * * * * *

  It was only eight p.m. when Marcus stepped into the house, which surprised him. He put his hands into the small of his back and stretched. “It feels like it should be midnight.”

  Rick dropped his two Glocks onto the dining table and shrugged out of the coat. “Subjective time dilation. Your range clock is out by three minutes, by the way.”

  Marcus looked at the clock, then at the carriage clock on the sideboard. “How do you know that?” he asked Rick.

  “I don’t experience time the same way you do. A minute is exactly a minute to me.”

  Marcus waved the subject away. “I’m too tired to wade through relativity right now.”

  Rick moved to his side. “Do you need to sleep? Your sleep has been irregular for four days.”

  “Sleep isn’t what I need.” Marcus grabbed his shirt. “That felt good, tonight. It shouldn’t. I should be appalled. But I’m not.”

  “You don’t know them like I did,” Rick replied. “I feel nothing but satisfaction.”

  “Yeah. Me, too.” Marcus grinned. “Let’s do it again.”

  “There are seventeen other possible locations,” Rick suggested.

  “Let’s do them all.”

  “Tomorrow. Once you’ve slept.”

  “I’ll sleep after,” Marcus growled, drawing him close enough to kiss.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Sebastian curled himself over the sleeping form of his wife and buried his nose in her hair. The fragrance was so utterly Winter that he would recognize it anywhere. Simple happiness settled over him.

  Outside, he could hear the dawn birds chittering. The sky was starting to lighten, heading for dawn.

  Sebastian smoothed his hand over Winter’s hip, his body stirring.

  The door opened and closed and Nial was abruptly in the room, standing next to the bed. Vampire speed.

  Sebastian sat up. Nial never used his enhanced abilities, unless the occasion warranted it. “What’s happening?” he demanded.

  “We have a visitor. Get dressed. Quickly. Winter, too.” Nial turned to leave.

  “Who?”

  “Kurshid,” he said over his shoulder.

  “Fuck,” Sebastian muttered and s
hook Winter’s shoulder.

  * * * * *

  Madam Kurshid Tabrizi Amirmoez settled herself on the big lounge chair and arranged her skirt around her knees. She was polished and poised elegance, from head to toe, her blonde hair gleaming in the sunlight just lifting over the window sill.

  Winter moved to the sideboard that they used as a bar, and started making a martini, without being asked.

  Sebastian sprawled on the end of the sofa, while Nial sat on the other arm.

  The woman that accompanied Kurshid planted herself next to the arm of Kurshid’s chair and crossed her arms. She was Amazonian in proportions – she was at least six feet tall, and her shoulders matched her height. She had short black hair and muddy brown eyes.

  Winter pulled up a side table next to Kurshid, on the other side from the Amazon, and placed the Martini on the table.

  “Thank you, child,” Kurshid told her and reached for the glass.

  Sebastian watched carefully as she drank nearly half the glass before putting it back on the table. It was still fascinating despite knowing how Kurshid was able to drink.

  Kurshid looked up at Winter. “I wonder…would you mind terribly much…?” She held out her hand.

  Winter smiled. “Of course not,” she said and took the woman’s hand. She held it for a moment and let it go. “You should have relief for several hours now.”

  Kurshid touched her temple. “It is most appreciated. I will be able to concentrate on the conversation now.” Winter had chilled off Kurshid’s empathic abilities for a while, so now she wouldn’t have to drink to dull the endless flow of feelings showering her from the people around her.

  “You honor us with your visit, Madam,” Nial said. “It is unexpected but most welcome.”

  “Is it?” Kurshid said shortly. “I am here because my presence was requested.”

  Sebastian could see Nial was surprised, but it was only because he knew him so well.

  “Will your requester be joining us?” Nial asked politely.

  Kurshid’s smile was dry. “You should be pleased they will not be joining us.”

  “I presume, then, you will not reveal their name?”

  Kurshid patted the arm of her chair impatiently. “Come, come, Nathanial. Your people are tearing up this town. They are rooting out every League-controlled location in the city, and you try to plead innocence?”