“No healing,” I murmured, mostly to myself.
I looked up to see her considering me with her head slightly on one side,
“It’s really messed you up knowing that you had two vamps right under your nose huh?”
She made the observation casually, but it made me scowl, and my gut churned with indecision. I flicked the safety back on my gun and sat it on the coffee table next to my tea, picking up the mug and taking a long drink, the tea having cooled enough now that it could be gulped without burning my throat.
“D’you want a drink?” I asked Lexi, my voice sounding rough even to my own ears.
“Coffee would be good if you’ve got it, thanks.” I grunted an acknowledgment and headed off to the kitchen, leaving her sticking a line of plasters along the length of the cut on her arm.
Lexi had taken her shoes off had tucked her feet up to one side, curling into the corner of the sofa. Clearly making herself at home. I handed her the coffee, which she took with a smile and a quiet thanks, placing it on the coffee table briefly so that she could open the whiskey again and tip a healthy measure into her mug. Once done, she settled back into the cushions and observed me over the rim of her drink.
“Are you even old enough to drink?” I asked dryly,
She huffed and glared at me,
“I’m twenty-four! So yes. Anyway, I’d have thought that in a world of bloodthirsty vampires wanting to munch on all our throats, under-age drinking would have been the least of your worries.”
She pouted at me in what I assumed was mock offence,
“Touché,” I smirked, “so might I ask why you’re here? Or more pertinently, how you’re here?”
“How?” she drew her eyebrows together in a puzzled frown,
“Well this is a secure base. How did you get past the guards?”
She shrugged nonchalantly, “I know people.”
My eyebrows drew into a frown of their own at her tacit response, seemingly confirming my suspicions of having a mole.
“Who?”
“Well now, that would be telling” she winked at me, infuriatingly, with a quick, easy grin.
I swallowed my annoyance for the moment and changed the subject, resolving to investigate later,
“So how do you know Beth and Ysabel? And why are you here if they didn’t send you?”
She sat up a little straighter in her corner, unconsciously adopting a more formal position,
“I’m a member of the IGS. The International Guild of Slayers, that is” she added, seeing my lack of comprehension at her use of the acronym,
“I was there when Beth and Ysabel came to pitch their idea about spreading out and convincing countries to put together special units like yours. They told me that they didn’t want me in the actual fighting, well, Beth did… so they asked me to arrange the logistical bits, like getting flights for people and doing bank transfers if needed. The boring stuff, you know. It’s to me that all the IGS people in other countries sent their reports to as well, and then I report their reports back to the Beth and Ysabel.” She paused for a moment to take a gulp of coffee, “anyhoo, about a week ago they just disappeared, phones off, not answering emails. The whole shebang, and they’ve never let us know where they live. Then when I found out that you’d booted them out it all made a little more sense, and I came here to see if I couldn’t convince you to give them a second shot.”
She finished, cocking her head slightly and smiling at me. I found myself lost for words for a moment as my brain caught up to the fact that she wasn’t talking anymore.
“Um –“
I didn’t get a chance to get any further before she was talking again,
“they’re good people, you know! They only hid what they were because they knew that you wouldn’t understand! I was born into the IGS, I’ve come across their kind before… they wouldn’t harm humans! It would be against everything they believe in and –“
“Woah!” I interrupted her, holding up a hand to halt her verbal haemorrhage, “I know all this… well, almost all. I’ve been trying to contact them as well… as much as I hate to admit it, they do have links and information that we could use. We may have been a little hasty in writing them off without thought.”
This seem to set her back a bit,
“Oh… um, well I suppose this was a pretty pointless trip then hey?” she grimaced apologetically and then fished about in her pocket, extracting a small, battered piece of paper.
“Here” she handed it to me, “I suppose I may as well give this to you, as I don’t where they are. I’m sure they’ll turn up somewhere.”
The piece of paper was blank except for an address which, going by the postcode was about half an hour or so outside of the city.
“There’s been masses of feral activity around that place. It’s just a house, but the street around it is deserted. The guys who found it thought that it might be a hideaway for a higher gen or two.”
“What makes them think that?” I queried, still inclined to be a little suspicious about any information provided by these amateur slayers.
Lexi shrugged,
“I told you. I’m not allowed out in the field, I just pass on the information and let other people do the fun parts.” She scowled bitterly.
“Why won’t Beth let you out in the field?”
She shrugged again, a slight, lazy hunching of one shoulder,
“She’s got a protective streak a mile wide, and I nearly died fighting the ferals the first time we met so… eh. I am just a pathetic mortal after all, I can’t blame her I suppose.”
She said this with such venom in her voice that I was quite taken aback.
“You sound like you’d actually rather be a vampire.” I raised an eyebrow at her,
“Course I would! Why the hell wouldn’t you?” she laughed wryly and stood up, tugging her hoody down straight. “Whatever, I’ll talk Beth into turning me when the war’s over. Until then, I will suffer humanity.”
She sighed exaggeratedly, and brought the back of hand up to her forehead in a melodramatic swoop, starting towards the door.
“You off now then?” I asked, “sure you don’t fancy telling me who let you in before you go?”
“Nope.” She grinned at me, “can’t be telling you the trade secrets! I’ll probably see you again anyway, particularly if the dynamic duo don’t turn up.”
“Yea, OK… hope so. You sound like a proper little fount of information” I commented wryly.
I walked her over to the door and waved her off as she disappeared down the corridor. Once she’d rounded the corner, I shut the door and went back over to my chair, flipping open my laptop and typing in the address that Lexi had given me. Just a house, like she’d said. I grabbed the phone and punched in Nathan’s number, hoping a late-night planning session was on the cards to distract me from thinking about how little we still knew about vampires.
Nathan and I, and our respective officers, ended up meeting the next day. It was a simple enough thing now to plan the raids on these vampire-infested houses, so we had a plan and a go-time within a few hours. Once our own patrols had confirmed that there indeed appear to be vampires in the house, we were set.
Early the next morning, we set out for the house with our troops. Snipers split off first, breaking into the houses opposite and setting up on the top floors, where they could easily pick off any escapees, and the rest of the squad split into another two units, each heading for one of the main entrances. I waited by the front of the house, lurking in the shadows across the street and waiting for Nathan’s signal. His unit was going to enter through the back door, so had to jump over the garden fence to get into position. My radio crackled quietly in my ear,
“Ready when you are.”
“Right, you know the drill. Move in on my signal, terminate all vampires on sight using extreme prejudice… go!”
As one, we all ran for the house, keeping low and quiet.
I placed myself in front of the door, tr
aining my gun on it, and nodded to Glen, who carefully tried the door handle. Finding it unlocked, we swept easily into the house, fanning out to cover the two doorways to our right. A vampire swung around to face us in the first room, knocked back by a hail of gunfire before it could lunge for us, and then we were moving onwards, up the stairs, while Nathan’s unit cleared the rest of the ground floor. Their gunshots sounded louder than usual in the enclosed space, mixing with the snarls of the vampires and breaking glass, as they shattered the blackened windows to let in the early morning sunlight. My unit charged quickly up the stairs, splitting up again when we reached the top to cover both ends of the hallway. The vampires, taken by surprise and disorientated by the sun as the windows were shot out, were fairly easily dispatched and we were soon gathering back on the landing.
“Nothing like a bit of nice, easy vampire slaying to start the day”, Glen grinned at me, shouldering his weapon. I grinned back at him, still feeling the effects of the adrenaline pumping through my system.
“Easy, huh? You can do it yourself next time then, give everyone a lie in.”
“Oh sure. You can sign off for me to have an RPG right?”
I chuckled at him,
“Hell would freeze over before I let you have an RPG in a built up area… I do actually value my job, you know.”
“Ah, you’re no fun” he mock scowled at me, “anyway, I --- did you hear that?”
Glen cut himself off and looked up sharply, immediately swinging his gun back into a firing position, pointing it at the ceiling.
“Hear what?” I muttered at him, signalling the rest of unit to get their guns back up too. A light scratching and a thud came from above us,
“That…” Glen said.
“Rats?”
He didn’t bothering answer me, just slanted a disbelieving look at me out of the corner of his eyes. I ran my gaze across the ceiling with everyone else, letting it come to a stop on the loft door at one end of the hallway. We crept over and formed a loose circle underneath the door just as Nathan’s unit came up the stairs,
“How’s it going, Michael?” Nathan asked, I pressed one finger against my lips then pointed up at the loft. One of my unit had found the long metal pole used to hook the door down and I motioned him forward,
“On my signal,” I muttered, as quietly as I could.
My radio crackled suddenly,
“Hold up, Michael. There’s two third gens and a second up there, as well as 5 regular ferals.” I started at Beth’s voice, and a thunderous look crossed Nathan’s face,
“Get the hell off of our channel, leech. You have no part in our operations anymore.”
Beth hissed down the radio, the sound creeping down my spine and making me shudder, and I saw many of the men around me doing the same,
“Watch your tongue, Nathanial, dear. Or I might have to cut it out.”
Nathan’s eyes popped wide and I shook my head hard as he opened his mouth to respond. He shut it with a snap of his teeth and glared at me. A soft laugh came over the radio,
“Good dog... anyway, I wouldn’t open that hatch if I were you. There’s no ladder for you to get up, and they’ll drop down on your heads before you can blink.”
“So what do you suggest?” I snapped, “Nathan was perfectly right when he said you have no part in our operations anymore.”
“Fine. Open the hatch and watch your men die.”
“Or?” I ground out.
“Or, Ysabel and I go in and clear them. Duh.”
I huffed a sigh and pinched the bridge of my nose,
“I knew this was way too easy. Thoughts?” I asked, directing my question to Glen. He was beaten to it by Nathan,
“No way! We let them do this and they’ll take it as an invitation.”
I ignored him, still focusing on Glen.
“I think...” he said slowly, frowning, “I think that we should let them do it. They lied to us, yes. But they’ve never done anything other than help us before.” He shrugged, “I trust Beth. She spent enough time with us that I don’t believe that everything she did and said was an act. And if there’s high generations up there like she claims, do we really want to risk losing men?”
“Ah you’ve got to be screwing with me?! You want to collaborate with the enemy?!” Nathan fumed.
“No. I want to utilise the tools that we have at our disposal in order to get the job done with the least loss of life.” Glen shot back, the sensible argument he presented not leaving Nathan with much choice but to concede.
“Fine” he said, “my very reluctant vote is to let them do it.”
“Fine. Beth... do it.”
“Your wish is my command.”
I shook my head at the heavy dose of sarcasm in her response, and went back to watching the ceiling cautiously.
There was a huge crash, and then it sounded like all hell broke loose in the loft. The shrieks of the vampires were deafening even through the ceiling, but they diminished quickly, cutting off into gurgles and the heavy, wet thuds of their bodies hitting the floor. In the space of a couple of minutes, the only sounds left were rapid footsteps and the occasional grunt, which I assumed meant that they were dealing with the second gen. There was a clash of metal and then a volley of vicious swearing filtered down,
“Loft’s clear,” Beth said “the second generation’s run off like a bitch though. We’re going after it.”
There was a final scuffle from the loft, and then silence, and we looked around at each other. Glen cocked an eyebrow at me.
“Get it open,” I gestured to the hatch, “and keep your guns up, just in case.”
The hatch was yanked open and we leapt back as the butchered corpse of a vampire slid out, landing with a crunch on its already caved in head.
“Glen, give me a boost.”
He crouched underneath the open door and held out his linked hands for my foot, hoisting me towards the opening. I grabbed the edge and hauled myself in, reflexively covering my nose as soon as my hands were free. Beth and Ysabel had certainly taken no chances with the vampires’ regenerative skills... most of the bodies were at least partially dismembered, and several had huge, gaping holes in their chests. I didn’t really want to think about how that had happened... there was also a massive hole ripped through the roof, obviously where Beth and Ysabel and come in, so the roof was full of tiles and chunks of insulation. Curiously, the floor was solid, not the usual network of planks, and at one end there was a desk littered with papers, with a map pinned to the wall above it. I leaned over the open hatch and instructed a few men to come up with me, and the rest to search the house, then headed towards the desk. It was stuffed with paper, far too much to sort through then, so I left it, trusting to my men to gather up everything of use, and radioed for the trucks to come down the road where we could easily load them up. I scowled at the gory mess left by Beth and Ysabel; the clean up for this was not going to be pleasant.
Chapter 26
Beth
Yzzy and I arrowed up out of the loft, following the feral as it struggled up into the low-lying clouds, obviously trying to lose us in them. A point of light glinted on its left wing as the knife I’d lodged there reflected the still-low sun. I grinned viciously as the rancid scent of its blood reached us on the wind; the barbed knife was stopping it healing.
“I gave you that knife as a gift” Ysabel grouched at me, “you weren’t supposed to give it away to a feral.”
I chuckled at her and sped up, beating my wings hard and closing the gap with the feral just as it reached the cloud. Reaching out, I grabbed its wing on the down stroke, sinking my talons into the muscle and yanking out my knife. It roared and twisted, lashing out at me with its own talons, but I threw myself backwards and folded my wings, letting my freefall pull it even further off balance. Snapping out one wing, I forced myself into a spin, using the momentum to launch the feral towards Ysabel. Tumbling, with one wing now nearly crippled, it was an easy enough thing for Yzzy to dart in and drive
her own knife between its scales and into its heart. It went limp, and Yzzy snatched at it before it could fall too far, heaving the corpse up so she could grip it properly.
“Just drop the damn thing” I told her, earning myself a glare.
“And risk it crushing someone? No. I’ll drop it over the sea.”
I rolled my eyes at her, “Fine, let’s go.”
Once we’d dismembered the corpse and scattered its parts over the sea, we headed back to our flat to remove the feral-stench. Yzzy wandered out of the bathroom, scrubbing her hands through damp hair with a sigh of contentment.
“Do I smell coffee?”, she sniffed the air exaggeratedly, and sighed again as I handed her a mug of it,
“Ah, you know I love you, right?”
“mmmhm,” I smiled at her, and she kissed my cheek before flopping on to the sofa.
“I feel like that went quite well, no?”
“I think so,” I frowned, “or at least I hope so. We did kind of back them into a corner.”
“Yes, but you didn’t lie to them. And we’ve proved our usefulness once again.”
“I suppose... I was thinking I might go to Michael’s this evening and see if he’ll talk to me. He’s going to be wondering how we knew where he was anyway... what do you think?”
Yzzy didn’t answer for a couple of minutes, sipping at her coffee as she ran the idea through that exquisite mind of hers, turning over the possible options.
“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to go and talk to him… he didn’t seem overly pissed off at us.”
“No, and Glen practically welcomed us back with open arms.”
The Guard Page 17
