Dark Legion

by Rob Cornell

  The vampire king stood. “I’ve gathered you here because we stand on the precipice of a divine event.” He smiled when the other vampires’ all sneered. “Even us vampires can appreciate the holy, no matter how its symbols pain us.”

  A weird smell wafted off the king. A mix of dirt and ash. He smelled…old.

  That’s because he is one of the oldest living vampires on the mortal plane, Gabriel offered.

  How do you know all this?

  Hearing laughter in her head that wasn’t her own creeped the shit out of her. Gabriel fed on that fear and laughed harder. I set this all in motion years ago, sweetheart. This is our destiny.

  The king waved a hand over Jessie like a magician about to perform a trick. “Yora brought this beautiful young beast to us because she tasted something special in her blood. Something powerful.”

  That would be me, Gabriel said and snickered.

  “So I had our scryers peer beyond the veil to learn what we had here.”

  One of the other vampires curled a lip. “She doesn’t look so special.”

  The king pointed a finger at the vamp. “Good point. What better place to hide such an enormous magical force than in something so,” he licked his twisted lips, “delicate.”

  Again, Gabriel said, that’s me.

  You’ve got a seriously huge ego issue.

  “The scryers have seen her destiny,” the king said. He looked from vamp to vamp, building up his drama like a bad soap opera. “She is the one chosen to destroy us.”

  All the vampires gasped, though their version of gasp sounded more like hocking a loogie. Jessie’s chest felt like someone had punched a hole through it. Her pulse thumped in her ears.

  The king held out both hands in a calming gesture. “The wonderful thing about destiny is that it hasn’t happened yet. And destinies can be changed.”

  Oh yes, my fanged friend. Keep telling yourself that.

  What the hell is he talking about? Jessie was glad she didn’t need her real voice to talk to Gabriel. Her throat felt like a pinched straw. You want to kill all the vampires? It didn’t sound like the evil plan she expected.

  Not kill them, Gabriel answered. Enslave them, and every other supernatural being on this planet.

  Okay, that sounded more like an evil plot. Jesus, why her? How the hell did she get picked as Gabriel’s courier of evil? And why did everybody have some damn prophecy or plan for her. “I’m just a girl.”

  She didn’t realize she spoke out loud until the king looked down at her with that Joker smile. “You know that isn’t true. I can smell your denial.”

  Jessie jerked against her ropes. Kicked her heels against the table. “Let me go, you freaks, or my dad is going to come in here and turn you all into piles of goo.”

  The king threw his head back and chortled. “By the time your father arrives, if he’s foolish enough to try, I’m afraid he won’t want you anymore.”

  When she spoke next, she barely recognized her own voice. But it was hers. Not Gabriel’s, or any of the other souls swarming below her conscious mind. “Then you don’t know my dad.”

  The king patted Jessie’s head. “Do you know how vampires reproduce?”

  Here it comes, Gabriel said.

  “You turn other people into you.”

  “Yes, but do you know how we do that?”

  “Drink their blood, then make them drink yours?”

  He turned his head and spat, his saliva tinted red. “No mortal deserves the taste of our blood.” He pulled a handkerchief from his shirt pocket and wiped his mouth. “We make vampires by draining a creature such as yourself of every drop of blood. Then we vomit your own blood back into your mouth.”

  Jessie gagged and almost threw up herself.

  “Once your blood has been inside of us, it becomes the very thing that returns you to life. Essentially, we fertilize your blood and give it back to you the way blood was meant to flow. Down the throat.”

  She couldn’t stop shaking. Tears blurred her vision and turned the vampire king’s face into an even worse distortion. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because, my dear,” he stroked her cheek with long, cracked fingernails, “I want you to know what to expect.”

  Jessie screamed, and kept screaming. Couldn’t stop herself. Couldn’t breathe.

  Over her screams, the vampire king addressed the others around the table. “Tonight we will make that which was meant to destroy us…into one of us.”

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Lockman drove by the old hotel a second time, slowing down just enough to let Vera get another feel of the place. “Are you sure?”

  “The building contains an enormous amount of paranormal energy,” Vera said. “Far more than the last location.”

  He had taken Vera on a cruise of the areas they had marked on the map as possible origins of vampire activity. Using her attuned sense of the paranormal, he managed to pinpoint the source at the northern location to a theme park wrecked by Hurricane Katrina and never rebuilt. Lockman felt certain that had to be the king’s lair. But Vera insisted that this gothic hotel east of the Quarter held more paranormal juice than the park. The assumption was that the stronger signal, so to speak, would signify which of the two locations housed the king. Still, Lockman liked the park for the lair. Crumbling roller coasters, a tilted Ferris wheel, the crisscrossed shadows cast by each ride’s scaffolding. It felt like the kind of place a vampire king would choose to reside.

  Vera braked herself, jerking Lockman in his seat.

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m sensing something very unusual. A concentrated mass of magical energy like nothing I’ve seen on this plane.”

  “What is it?”

  “Something very powerful. And dangerous.”

  Lockman rubbed the sweat off his upper lip. “Could it be the vampire king?”

  “Not likely. But I couldn’t say for sure.”

  A thought occurred to him. A wild thought, but he’d seen enough to believe it could be true. He patted Vera’s dashboard. “Better get moving before we attract attention.”

  She let up on the brake and gave Lockman back control of the vehicle. He drove to their designated command post, the parking lot of a closed gas station a few blocks away. Marty’s Lincoln and two SUVs with tinted windows sat parked in the lot. Each SUV carried five of Marty’s brothers. These ten were the only ones able to get to New Orleans on time. Four of them had come down with Marty in the first place—the ones that had watched over Marty while his arm healed, and who also had participated in the phony vampire attack at the cabin in Illinois. The rest of them had traveled here through the café. Handy little place.

  Marty got out of his car as Lockman pulled in. He came over to Vera.

  Lockman rolled down his window. “I think this is the place.”

  Marty raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

  “More paranormal energy at this one. And something else.”

  The ogre lifted his chin, looking down his nose at Lockman. “What?”

  “Vera described it as a concentrated mass of magic. Powerful.”

  Marty blanched. “The king?”

  Lockman shook his head. “I think it’s Jessie.”

  Vera piped in. “The odds of that kind of energy coming from a mortal is slim to none.”

  “She isn’t just any mortal,” Marty said. He stood straight. “You want to roll?”

  “Yes,” Lockman said as he put Vera into gear.

  Marty turned to the SUVs and made a twirling motion with a finger over his head. The SUVs’ engines started up and both vehicles curled around to take position on either side of Vera, headlights off. Teresa had climbed out of Marty’s Lincoln and watched over the roof. When the SUVs moved, she crossed the lot to meet them.

  “This is the place?” she asked.

  Lockman nodded.

  “Okay, what next? Equip and come back?”

  “We don’t need to equip.”

  Teresa
drew her pistol and held it up. “This little thing isn’t going to take down a vampire lair. Especially since I’m down to one mag.”

  Marty patted Vera’s roof. “You have met Vera, right? Open up, sweetheart.”

  Nothing happened.

  Lockman smirked. “She only listens to me now, remember? My own personal guardian angel.” He stroked the steering wheel. “Give us everything.”

  Compartments all over Vera, inside and out, snapped open all at once, revealing an arsenal of weapons, infrared goggles, plastic explosives, grenades packed with silver dust—the works.

  Teresa gaped wide-eyed at the display. “I get the AK-47.”

  Marty curled an arm around her shoulders. “Plenty of those to go around.”

  Marty and his brothers parked a block over from the hotel, but Lockman wanted Vera close by, so he pulled to the curb across the street, taking advantage of a live oak providing extra shadow in the night. Teresa rode shotgun. When he cut the engine, she studied the hotel through her window a moment, then turned to him.

  “You have a strategy?”

  “Some ideas. What are your thoughts?”

  “No outside guards, but I’m betting the lobby has a large enough group of vamps to make it a challenge getting in.” She looked back at the building, screwing her lips together. “Maybe break open some windows and toss a few grenades in to shake ‘em up before we charge?”

  “What if the front door is locked?” He pointed past her. “And with the windows blacked out, we have no way of knowing what we’ll find when we break them.”

  “Did you ask for my thoughts just so you could shoot them down?”

  “I was hoping you had a better idea than mine.” He eyed the place, visualizing his strategy, trying to play out all possibilities. Vera had said every floor had paranormal activity, and the large mass of energy that he suspected was Jessie was on the top floor. Five stories of vamps to get through to reach his daughter. Even if they pulled this off, he knew some of them were going to die tonight.

  “You going to keep me in suspense?” Teresa asked.

  He sighed. Stalling and second-guessing wouldn’t save Jessie. Time to roll the dice. “We can’t afford to be delicate. We have to hit them hard and with everything we’ve got.”

  “And risk losing Jessie in the process?”

  “We risk losing her either way. Can’t treat this like a standard hostage situation. The only way we can get to Jess is to fight our way through.”

  Something caught Teresa’s attention through Lockman’s window. “Marty and his crew are here.”

  Lockman peered out and could barely see them in the dark. They all wore the same black-ops getups. They hung low and spread out, finding cover among the trees and shrubbery along the front of the Victorian mansion directly across from the hotel. For giant ogres, they hid damn well.

  Marty approached the car, dressed like his brothers, hefting a Minigun that looked like a small rifle in his large hands. A belt of silver-tipped rounds was draped over one shoulder and wrapped back over the opposite shoulder, down across his chest, and then fed into the gun. He had a bowie knife in a sheath strapped to his thigh. A automatic rifle hung from a strap across his back. On his other thigh and around his belt he had at least a dozen mags for the rifle. And he carried all of this gear as if it weighed nothing.

  Vera buzzed down the window.

  “You talk strat?” Marty asked

  “I don’t think we can bust our way in. They’ve got all the windows blacked out so we have no way to recon what’s inside. The second we charge through the door, they could kill us in a crossfire before any of us took a shot.”

  “Then what? Scale the walls and get in through the roof?”

  “Is there a back entrance?” Teresa asked.

  “Doesn’t matter. They’ll have that covered, too.”

  Marty shrugged. “Then what?”

  “We have to draw them out to us.”

  “You obviously have a plan.”

  “Have your brothers position themselves in an arc around the grounds out front. Teresa and I will get them to come out.”

  “We will?”

  Lockman nodded. “Have your guys stay low and out of sight. We want as many vamps outside before we unload on their asses.”

  Marty jerked his chin toward the motel. “Thin them out, tighten the circle, then charge the door.”

  “Gives us the advantage before they have it.”

  “That’s a fucked up plan, brother. Sloppy, dangerous, and pretty damn bad-ass.”

  “Can we get a testosterone check here?” Teresa said. “How do you expect to draw those vamps out? Ring the doorbell and run?”

  Lockman tapped a spot on Vera’s dashboard and a hidden compartment opened up. A brick of C-4 sat inside. “We have something louder than a doorbell.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Before I remake her,” the vampire king said, standing at the table and looking over the other vampires seated around him, “I want you all to taste the magic in her mortal blood. I don’t know what will happen to her spirit once she’s turned, and I would hate for my most loyal subjects to miss out on such a rare treat.”

  Jessie’s screaming had undone her voice. Only a ragged croak came out when she cried. Her face was sticky with tears and snot. Her heart beat so hard in her chest it felt bruised. But while she felt these pangs in her body, at the same time she felt as if she floated above herself, detached, halfway to death.

  If she had so much magic in her, why couldn’t she use it to save herself from these monsters?

  Because magic requires sacrifice, Gabriel said. And right now, you have nothing left to give but your own life.

  She had to die to defeat them?

  It didn’t make sense. The way Marty had talked about her, acting like she would save the world or something, didn’t include anything about her dying. This couldn’t be part of the prophecy.

  What the hell did she know about prophecies?

  The Vampire King gestured to the vamp on his left, a greasy-looking dude that looked like a member of Hell’s Angeles, right down to the leather and exposed hairy chest. It occurred to her that he must have been human once. He looked different from the others. Not so warped or scaly. Though he had crusty blotches on his face and chest like a demonic version of psoriasis. Would he look like the other’s one day?

  “Corig,” the King said. “Since Yora’s already had her taste, I’ll let you begin.”

  The biker vamp nodded to the King like a Catholic at communion would to a priest. “My liege.”

  Jessie began trembling all over again. Her cries barely rose above the biker vamp’s heavy breathing as he opened his mouth, pulled up her pant leg, and sunk his teeth into her calf. The pain ran all through her body like it had when the one the king had called Yora bit her. The actual puncture did not compare to the vibrating agony that went down to the core of her bones. She arched her back. The chains across her chest dug into her.

  The vampire sucked on her for only a few seconds. It felt like forever. When he pulled his fangs out of her, the body pain stopped instantly. But the bite wound now burned like acid.

  Biker Vamp, or Corig, licked the blood off his lips. His yellow eyes glowed. “Fucking unbelievable.”

  The king tipped his head, then signaled the next vamp to partake.

  They went round the table. They bit into her other calf, her thigh, her arm, and the opposite side of her neck from where Yora had bitten her. The last vamp at the table gazed over her body as if looking for the perfect spot to feed from.

  By now, Jessie’s body had gone numb, the repeated shock to her nerves finally short-circuiting them. All she could feel was the life draining out of her.

  Please, she begged in her mind. You know how magic works. Tell me how to make them stop.

  If you can’t control your own power, you don’t deserve it.

  They’re killing me.

  If they wanted you to die, you would have alrea
dy.

  Make them stop! Tell me how. Now!

  Gabriel’s voice turned livid. You don’t command me.

  A mix of fear and rage seeped through Jessie, but these emotions did not belong to her. Gabriel’s? Could she read him like he read her? He was in her fucking head. She had to have some control there.

  Don’t even try it, little girl. You’ll regret it.

  I will regret it, or you will regret it? She didn’t wait for a response. She closed her eyes and fell into herself, dug down to the darkest chamber of her mind. In the distance she felt fangs cut through the flesh of her left breast. The last vamp had found his perfect spot.

  Jessie ignored it. She had managed to dive below her physical consciousness to a deeper place. She wasn’t sure how. It came naturally, like a newborn’s instinct to swim. When she reached the bottom, she found Gabriel.

  He looked exactly like Craig, only much younger, and with a black hate in his eyes she had never seen in her father.

  I am your father, he said with poison on his breath.

  Yeah, right, Darth Vader. You were long gone when I was conceived.

  He crossed his arms, lip curled. You are of my seed.

  So fucking what? I’m Craig’s daughter. Get that in your fucking head or get out of mine.

  I suppose you’re right. I would have slapped the foul out of your mouth if you were any daughter of mine.

  For the first time, Jessie looked around her. They stood in total darkness, like starless space. She could feel a solid surface under her feet, but when she looked down an infinity of black stretched out below her. She lifted her gaze back to Gabriel. I can feel your fear you know?

  He stared at her, eyes simmering. Said nothing.

  And you know it.

  He kept silent.

  Which means I have access to other things. Other thoughts? Other memories? Knowledge?

  Jessie’s mental projection of Gabriel stood as still as a sculpture. He had gone dormant, hoping to keep her out of his mind. But his mind was part of her mind. She knew that now. All she had to do was learn how to access it.

  She focused on his image, tried to bore into his thoughts. Felt some give.