by ST Branton
Alone now, I reached out and tried the door. It swung open into a room with another set of doors. Through the glass, I could see a lamp on in a back room. My brain spun into overdrive; I still hadn’t figured out what I wanted to say.
After a moment’s uncertain pause, I just whispered, “Whatever,” under my breath, raised my hand, and knocked.
Footsteps came toward the door. The lock disengaged. The knob turned.
Eve stood on the threshold, smiling. She wasn’t wearing the blood red ensemble from the gala, and her hair was down around her shoulders. I might have believed she was normal, except for those piercing eyes.
“Hello, Victoria,” she sang, seemingly unsurprised to see me. “Please come in.” She let the door shut behind me. “You look like you’ve been stuck out in the weather, poor thing. What can I do for you?”
I took a deep breath. “Well, I realized earlier that I never got a chance to talk directly with Mr. Monk, so I thought it couldn’t hurt to drop by and try again.”
“Oh, of course, sweetheart. I’m sorry. That’s probably all my fault. You’re just so interesting, I had to keep you all to myself.”
Just then, another door swung open in the back of the suite. “Eve?” Silas Monk emerged from what I assumed to be a bedroom. We looked at each other with equal bewilderment.
“Eve!” Monk said. “You can’t just let strangers into the room like this! This is my home right now. My private sanctuary!” He turned to me. “How did you get up here, anyway? I thought I had the elevator sealed to the public.”
I shrugged. “Sorry, sir.” It was all I could think to say. The awkward silence that descended was thick enough to be palpable.
“Be calm, Silas.” Eve focused her radiant blue eyes on him. “Everything is all right. There’s nothing to get upset about. She just wants to talk to you.”
As Eve spoke, the air in the room grew softer—I could feel it caressing my skin. Monk settled more or less immediately. He adjusted his shirt’s fit, brushing off the collar and cuffs. “I hope you’ll forgive me,” he said, sounding much more like his normal, easily confident self. “I’ve been under a lot of stress these past few days.” He examined me closer. “You were at last night’s reveal, weren’t you?”
I nodded. “It was an incredible honor to witness the unveiling of your latest masterpiece.” Laying it on a little thick, but I knew Monk’s type. Guys like him loved to have their egos stroked; craved it, even. He made a big show of waving away the compliment, even as his chest puffed out.
“Please, you’re too kind.” He made a grand, sweeping gesture toward the sitting room. “Why don’t we use the furniture like civilized people?” The coffee table had a full, untouched service on it. “Feel free to help yourself to anything you like.” Monk sat back on the couch cushions. “Really, it’s no trouble. I don’t think I caught your name, Miss…?”
“Vic. Just Vic is fine.”
Monk stroked his chin. “I like that. It suits you.” He scooted over to make room for Eve, who lowered herself elegantly down beside him. “And I have to say, I admire the ingenuity it must have taken to find a way up here.”
Eve chortled. “That’s why I let her in, love. I think you two would get along just perfectly.”
“You’re never wrong, my darling.” Monk leaned over and planted a kiss on the woman’s cheek. “So, what is it that you’re so keen to discuss with me?”
I had expected my nerves to get worse as the conversation went on, but I noticed, looking between the two of them, that I was perfectly at ease. Eve’s gentle smile and Monk’s laid-back demeanor dissolved all the pressure I had put on myself on the way up. “I’m interested in the LIGHT drill as a multifunctional device.” At least half that sentence had been completely bullshitted up, but Monk didn’t seem to mind.
“You mean as a weapon,” he said, cutting right to the heart of the matter. “I’ve never denied the possibility of LIGHT arms being developed, either right now or sometime in the future. And of course, it’s important to emphasize that I’m not what you’d call a warmonger. Not at all. But we need to be able to keep up with the advance of technology around the globe. We’re not the only country constantly seeking to innovate and improve. If we want to maintain our position as one of the tech industry’s global leaders, it’s important for us to explore all avenues, including those that may be viewed as controversial.”
Spoken like a true salesman. I smiled and got ready to burst his bubble.
“What’s the likelihood that the LIGHT drill might end up in the wrong hands?”
Be careful, Victoria.
Marcus’s warning barely registered over the gentle buzzing filling the room. Or was it filling my mind? I couldn’t be sure.
Briefly, Monk was shocked. He laughed as he recovered himself and said, “Right now, the drill is only equipped to be used as a gamechanger in the energy industry. It is also the only prototype to have successfully completed production, so we’re not treating weaponization as a primary concern. We don’t know of anyone who would want to use the drill for anything other than its specific, marketed purpose.”
I tilted my head to the side. “You don’t? Because I do.”
Victoria. Be mindful of your words.
Marcus’s voice was stronger this time, urgent. But I just didn’t care. Silas and Eve were there to listen to me, to understand my concerns. For some reason, I knew that with certainty. And as a creator of potential weapons himself, Silas deserved to know what darkness was lurking in the world.
“Please do enlighten me,” Monk said. His casual posture disappeared; he sat forward and ready, a spark of hungry intellect alight in his eye. Eve still reclined against the sofa, fondly stroking his shoulder.
“Vampires,” I said.
No!
“What was that?” he asked.
“You heard me,” I said.
He nodded, and the gears in Monk’s formidable brain began to turn. “But what do you mean by that?”
“Real ones. Created from the blood of a god. I’ve seen them being manufactured. Mass produced.” The words came out easily.
Victoria, stop! You don’t know what you’re saying!
Marcus’s voice was like a mosquito whining constantly in my ear. I pulled off the medallion and stuck it in my pocket. This was just one more thing he would never understand. If Monk knew everything, he could help us, and we would win the inevitable war.
Monk’s eyes narrowed. “Gods, you say? And you mean the kind I think you mean? Omniscient, all powerful, each governing separate domains? I’m going to need proof of that.”
“I have some.”
I reached into my bag and grasped the sword hilt. Eve’s eyes went wide enough that I knew she understood exactly what it was. Monk, on the other hand, was less impressed.
“How do I know that’s not just a weird, useless artifact?”
“Because.” I stood up and stepped away from the very flammable couch. “This is what it does.”
The astonishment etched on Silas Monk’s face upon beholding the Gladius Solis for the first time legitimately warmed my soul. I was proud to have shared something new with a man whose hands created so much. For a minute after I extinguished the blade, he stared speechless at the hilt.
“How did you…” He shook his head. “I feel like my entire world has just been shifted.”
“Darling.” Eve reached out a slender hand and took mine. “That sword is a sacred object with a myriad of undiscovered properties. Who knows what miracles are hiding within its golden blade? You must entrust it to us so that Silas may study it further and use its strength to better humankind.”
The medallion burned in my pocket. I looked between Eve and Kronin’s sword, and then between Silas Monk and the sword. Eve was right; if Monk applied his brand of genius to the power of the Gladius Solis, he could do incredible, revolutionary things. He was a far greater hero than I was, that was suddenly clear to me.
This was a gift I owed to th
e world and one I was willing to give to them.
“Take good care of it,” I said to Eve. “Please. It’s way more important than I have time to explain.” There was no denying her words.
I reached out my hand to give her the sword.
But before she could reach it, the room descended into chaos.
The window overlooking the city skyline shattered into thousands of tiny shards. A cool breeze filled the room, and I felt very strange. As if I was waking up from a dream. Eve shrieked and recoiled; the hilt dropped to the floor. A long, sharp object whistled through the gaping maw in the glass. I ducked to the side. “What the hell!”
Another shriek cracked the air. I noticed drops of crimson pooling on the floor, leading up to Eve hunched over with her hands on the knife in her side. I grabbed for the hilt and tried to scramble to her, but a massive weight came down in front of me, obscuring her from my view.
“Hey!” I cried. “Who the fuck are you?”
“Stay out of this.” The voice resonated deeper than any other I’d ever heard, underscored by a touch of gravel. A pixie dusting of glass was still raining down on everything, lending a glittering haze to the unknown figure. He hefted a vicious-looking hammer above Eve’s prone body. The voice sounded again.
“This is my fight.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
His fight?
“Like hell it is!”
I stumbled to my feet, still trying to figure out what the shit just went down. The newcomer stood with his heavy-ass hammer poised above Eve, looking down at her. “Reveal yourself, creature,” he said. “Your kind is nothing more than lies.”
“Marcus, who is this, and what the hell is he talking about?” Remembering myself, I put the medallion over my head.
Vic, you are out of your depth here. You need to leave, now.
“What? He’s gonna kill Eve!”
I very much doubt that he will.
Unconvinced, I started toward her body, which was now stained with blood. Two steps in, she twitched and rolled over, moaning. The knife dislodged from her slide and clattered onto the tiled floor. Eve took a slow, deep breath.
The blood stopped.
She rolled again, gathering her limbs beneath her and using them to push up onto her hands and knees. Her golden hair fell forward as she arched her neck down.
A sharp hissing began to come from somewhere, but it wasn’t until her head snapped back up that I realized the sound was coming from between her bared teeth. The shoulders of her blouse burst outward in a rain of shredded fabric, destroyed by the emergence of two giant wings.
“Okay, I need to ask a question,” I said. “What in seven hells is that?”
Eve was standing now, the tips of her wings almost dragging on the floor. The corpses of her blouse and skirt clung to her changed body, and when she looked at me now, it was with wide, burning, hate-filled eyes.
But I wasn’t the one with whom she had a bone to pick.
“You!” Eve brandished a skinny, almost skeletal finger, tipped with a long, sharp nail, in the direction of the hammer guy. “Intruder! The weapons are for our hands only, not for your kind of vermin!”
“My kind of vermin? Lady, have you seen yourself lately?” He lifted his hands and began to whip the hammer in lazy circles around his head. “You’re in no position to be throwing that term around.”
She flew at him, kicking up a storm of debris with her massive wings. “Get out! Go back to Hell and stay there!”
The man laughed. “I get that a lot. Never seems to take, though.”
“I don’t know whose side I’m supposed to be on,” I murmured.
It is safe to assume that neither is ideal at the moment. Choose the side of the living.
The hammer picked up speed, blurring into one oblong shape in the air. Its wielder maintained the same stoic expression.
“Come any closer, and I’ll roast you alive, you damn vulture.” He showed no signs of tiring or wanting to slow down, and the effective barrier created by his weapon only served to enrage Eve more. I could just glimpse Silas Monk crouching behind the relative safety of a solid wooden side runner at her back. His face seemed to have set permanently in a mask of confused shock and horror.
I was past the horror part, but confusion and shock still got me, especially since Marcus was in the same boat. We retreated farther into the sitting room where there were no windows to shatter on us.
“You really don’t know what’s going on?” I eyed the standoff between Hammer Guy and Eve, my rat’s nest of hair getting extra tangled by the drafts from her wings. “Like, are they gonna each land one major strike that cancel each other out and explode? I would rather not be here when that happens.”
I’m unsure of who he is, but it’s clear now what we’ve been dealing with. Eve is a harpy—and the red-headed female from the warehouse was probably one as well.
I made a face. “Well harpies look freaking gross.” It was like all her skin had simultaneously stretched and aged across her body. The teeth behind her faded red lips were needlelike and jagged, and when she opened her mouth all the way, her jaw gaped wide. To me, she was a child’s nightmare drawing come to life.
Not only are they formidable fighters, they have power over the mind.
“What, like they can make someone bark like a dog and roll over?”
Like she could make you ignore me—your loving and trusted advisor. But worse, she could make you give her the Gladius Solis. Kronin’s blade and the one weapon we have against the coming darkness.
“What? There’s no way she could…” But then I looked down at the hilt in my hand, and a sense of horror came over me as the realization hit of what I had almost done.
“Oh, shit.”
Indeed. Now if you’re done flirting with the bird-woman, I suggest we depart. This room is about to become a warzone.
I looked up at Eve and saw her crouching, guarded before the large man. It was clear he knew how to handle himself, but beyond that I couldn’t get a read on him.
It was like he was determined not to look like anything or anyone. He made me think of Namiko in a way, with his thick, black glasses and gloves and trench coat that touched the floor. The antithesis to the harpy’s neurotic, constant movement in every way, he manipulated the hammer as though it weighed nothing, calmly waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
They sustained this terrible harmony for a couple of minutes longer until Eve’s wild impatience boiled over. With a head-splitting war cry, she fanned out her wings and rushed him again, aiming to claw out one or more of his vital organs.
The man in the shades didn’t flinch. He simply spun his hammer faster until fire erupted along the iron face. The flames were orange, then blue, then white in rapid succession. By the time Eve realized she was on a direct collision course with his controlled meteor, it was too late.
The impact made a horrible sizzle that awoke the last remaining dregs of my squeamishness and forced me to look away. Somewhere beneath her agonized screaming, I thought I picked out the sound of vomiting too, courtesy of Silas Monk.
Funny how quickly the glamor had been torn right out of his life.
But Eve was far from dead. The harpy’s haggard silhouette stood out against the flames from the hammer, one shaking limb jabbed toward the enemy.
“Look at what you’ve done!” she howled. “Look at my face! My beautiful, exquisite, precious face!”
“Trust me,” said the hammer man. “I’ve seen it, and it’s none of those things now.”
I braced myself for another wild rage, but she sank to the floor, clutching her face and sobbing with her whole body. Seizing the opportunity, I ran behind her and grabbed hold of her former lover.
“Come on, Monk. We have to go!” He was slow to regain his sense of motion, but he followed along without complaint once I’d gotten him to his feet. “Does the elevator work?”
“Huh? Yeah, for me.” He pulled a cardkey from his pocket.
; “Well, start that thing up before he decides to come after us.”
On cue, that deep voice roared, “Oh no you don’t. You’re not getting away, technician!”
The cardkey slid into the reader, and we both got a face-full of angry, charging hammer before the doors slammed shut just in time.
But the elevator didn’t move. The sides of the doors began to dimple. Hammer Man was holding it in place just to keep Monk from escaping. I reached down into my bag.
This was a scenario that called for the big guns.
The Gladius Solis stabbed straight through the elevator doors the same way it cut through everything else: as if it were paper. I heard the guy on the other side give a wary grunt, and the elevator car was released. Silas immediately reached for the button panel. I stopped him.
“Wait. I want to try something.” The car wavered back into place, waiting for an input, and I put my thumb to the Door Open button.
“What are you doing?! Are you crazy? He’s gonna come rushing at us as soon as he sees the doors start to go!” Silas’s face was pale and clammy. He had never looked less like a billionaire playboy.
“That’s what I want! As long as your reflexes are good enough.” The elevator opened to reveal our friend had backed up to the other side of the room, getting a good running start. Exactly as I’d expected. “Okay Monk, go when I say go.” I waited for four tense seconds, judging the distance as our adversary charged forward. “Go!”
We exploded from the elevator, and on my way out, I swung the Gladius Solis up to the farthest extent of its reach so that it just managed to slice through the elevator ceiling and fatally wound the car’s main support cable. Unable to slow his momentum in time, Hammer Guy smashed into the back of the open car, which rocked, wavered unsteadily, before the cables snapped.
Its passenger roared all the way down.
“Shit, that was the elevator!” Monk cried. “Now what do we do?”
I gave him a look. “Now we take the stairs.”
That was easier said than done. The door I chose happened to be rigged with an alarm, which blared so loudly I couldn’t hear myself think. Still, it was our only option, and after the elevator crashed down into the lobby, an alarm didn’t seem out of place.
