Tom stepped up and put a hand on my shoulder. “You know I’m your best bud, right? Well, I say this with all brotherly love, but have you gone fucking stupid?”
“So says the walking illusion,” I replied. “It was a long shot, but I had to try. Never know what weird-ass tricks people have up their sleeves.”
“Sounds like a stretch to me.”
“Save that for your dick,” Sally said before turning to me. “It was actually pretty clever that you thought of it. Moronic in practice, but impressive that you considered it. Who knows? Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”
Whoa, an actual compliment, and in front of witnesses, too. We were indeed living in the end days.
“Stranger things have happened, but enough of that. I’m not going to shed any tears for this place, and we still need to find a hospital.” I paused to cough the last of the smoke out of my lungs, taking a deep breath. At first, all I noticed was the scent of burnt buildings, dried blood, and assorted debris, but then I noticed another scent buried beneath it. I took another sniff and realized it was getting stronger.
Sally’s eyes opened wide. She’d noticed it, too.
“We need to move now.”
“And where will you go, Freewill?” Colin asked, stepping from an alleyway a few buildings down. He was dirty and disheveled, his expensive suit in tatters. It was the first time I’d seen him looking anything other than a poor excuse for dapper. “If indeed that is who you are.”
“What the fuck are you yammering about?”
I let the accusation go as I realized he wasn’t alone. More vamps, wearing riot gear and pointing guns our way, stepped out from their hiding spots. I counted at least a dozen before I stopped bothering.
“By order of Lord Alexander, First of the First,” Colin said, speaking as if he were wearing regal finery as opposed to rags, “I place you under arrest.”
THINNING THE HERD
We weren’t in much position to fight. No guns, no vamp blood, and only two of us in any shape to put up much resistance.
I didn’t doubt Colin’s men were packing silver bullets. Even if they weren’t, Sheila wouldn’t have lasted two seconds against mundane gunfire, much less anything else. Seeing our choices were limited, I lifted my hands into the air.
“We have wounded,” I said, hoping against hope.
“I am neither inclined nor in a position to care,” Colin replied. “As you can see behind you, I have more important matters to deal with.”
“The place has definitely seen better days,” Sally said. “Good job managing things while we were gone.”
Colin, normally unflappable, flashed his eyes black. Dude was definitely having a bad day. “One more word from you and we will skip the test and get straight to the execution.”
Hoping the threat against Sally didn’t hold true for me too, I asked, “Test? And here we are with no study guide.”
“Do you think this is a joke?”
Tom opened his mouth to reply, but I quickly shook my head. I still had, or used to anyway, some clout with the vampire nation. He, as a presumed human, had about as much leverage with these guys as a damp sponge.
I gritted my teeth and prepared to metaphorically bend over, swallowing a wave of anger that commanded me to feed him his teeth. “Sorry, Prefect Colin.”
“Better, Freewill,” he replied. “Although I am not certain whether your ability to prostrate yourself when it suits your need is a plus or minus in your favor.”
I glanced over at Sheila, still unconscious and far too pale. We didn’t have time for this shit. “Can we cut to the chase? We have no idea what happened here and no clue what this test is you’re talking about.”
“So much for your sense of propriety. You say you don’t know what happened, you who are known to consort with witches?”
“I’m pretty sure Bill hasn’t consorted with anyone recently,” Tom replied. “Dude’s dick is drier than the Sahara.”
Okay, maybe one or two bullets wouldn’t be such a bad thing for him.
“And you claim to not know the test I speak of,” Colin continued as if Tom hadn’t spoken. “Yet you yourself were the instrument of its design. So far, it is not looking good for you, Freewill.” He held up his fingers in a mockery of quotations. “I’m afraid that’s already two checks against you. One more and I may have to cast summary judgment. What a true shame that would be.”
One of the vamp guards at his side leaned in and whispered something. It was a bit too low to catch all of it, but I caught one word that I knew would damn us.
“Is that so?” Colin asked the trooper with mock surprise before addressing us again. “Well, it seems this good man is telling me that you were seen entering the city limits with one of the Grendel. I seem to recall a little something about them being our blood enemies, yet you were looking quite cozy with the creature.” I made to reply, but Colin wasn’t finished. “Perhaps it was one of the number who came to our doorstep allied with an army of Magi.” His voice took on a cold edge. “It was almost as if they knew we were weakened by the culling. As if they knew it was the perfect time to strike.”
His eyes locked upon me. “As if someone told them exactly how to hit us.”
* * *
“You’re probably not going to believe this, but that’s all just an unfortunate coincidence.”
“Culling? What do you mean by that?” Sally asked.
I took a slight step to the side, away from her. She noticed and rolled her eyes.
Thankfully, Colin didn’t seem inclined to follow through on his initial threat to her. Perhaps because it had been a serious question with no snarky subtext attached to it. “The Jahabich.”
“What about them?”
“Your friend there, as well as...” Colin paused, seemingly noticing Sheila on the litter for the first time. “Well well, is that supposed to be the Icon, lying there prone? Let me guess, some misfortune befell her and now she’s helpless as a baby? Convenient. Too convenient. I’m afraid it is looking very bad for you.”
Shit. No matter which way you looked at things, I’m sure our sudden appearance in the wake of the complex’s destruction looked suspicious. That our judge and jury happened to be someone known to go out of his way to fuck us over didn’t help our cause. As if to echo my thoughts, the vamps around us began to take aim.
“Let’s back up a sec,” I said, quickly trying to think of something. “You said the Jahabich. Did they attack again? Did they manage to infiltrate...”
Wait, infiltrate! That’s when I remembered how Starlight appeared to be an evolved form of Jahabich, one capable of blending in anywhere. I’d only told him that as a joke, a way to take the edge off his asshole smugness, but now it had come around to bite me in the ass.
Sally turned to me, and I could see in her eyes that she’d come to the same conclusion. “Good job, Bill.”
“Starlight,” I said aloud.
A grimace creased Colin’s face at the name. “Perhaps a point in your favor,” he grudgingly admitted.
“What happened?”
I didn’t know if it was a rare moment of humility, or because he knew he had us at his mercy, but he held up a hand and the troops around us relaxed their stances ... by maybe a millimeter.
“Unlike some,” he spat, “and that number seems to be growing every day, I am loyal to our cause and our leadership. I serve the First proudly.”
I glanced around and could see both Sally and Tom had a crack to make about that one. Hell, I did, too. Thankfully, we all seemed to sense that now was not the time for show and tell.
“Though you told me about the former Village Covener with your typical degree of flippancy,” Colin said, “the Icon’s words added weight to yours. I dutifully relayed this news to the First.”
Oh boy, I had a bad feeling about this.
“It was Alexander himself who ordered the purge. Any who may have been in contact with the Jahabich. Any who’d gone missing and returned. Any who he could
n’t be one hundred percent certain of.”
“Holy shit. Are you saying he declared open season on his own people?”
“Do not make light of this!” Colin snarled. “Many who had been recently assigned to this facility had come from a garrison charged with fending off a recent Grendel incursion. They had been in the woods to the north for days, operating independently. There was no way to ensure their loyalty. The Jahabich cannot be compelled and the beast that is Ib could easily insulate those who could.”
I shared a glance with Sally and she returned a knowing look. That’s how the witches were able to take this place. Even the most impregnable fortress needed an adequate number of defenders and, thanks to Alex pulling a Stalin on his followers, the Boston Complex didn’t have that. If the witches and the Feet had hit them fast and hard enough, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. Hindsight seemed to support this theory.
It also pointed toward why Gan hadn’t been able to find any trace of Drac agents watching our apartment. If they were busy either culling or being culled, then that would explain their absence.
Colin, of course, managed to make it through this all right. No surprise there. Dude probably had every backdoor exit tattooed onto his eyelids. Still, that opened the door to doubt.
“And now here you are, Freewill,” he continued, “miraculously showing up on our doorstep from the unnatural forest beyond with a Grendel, a wounded Icon, and a conveniently resurrected human following you.” I glanced Tom’s way and Colin added, “Of course we noticed. We have kept thorough tabs on you and your associates, even the more buffoonish ones. He was killed by The Destroyer. His body was recovered and subsequently burned, yet now he stands by your side again. What other power, save the Jahabich, could do such a thing?”
“Hold on. You fuckers burned my body?” Tom asked.
“Only after harvesting anything useful,” Colin replied. “Waste not.”
“Like my action figures? Because those things were worth...”
I stepped in front of my friend before he could say anything else stupid. “He’s not a Jahabich.”
“Oh?” Colin asked, as if he found that terribly interesting.
I was thinking of a way to explain his presence, but before I could, Colin waved a hand and one of the vamps at his side opened fire.
ASSASSINS IN ARMANI
It was only a single shot, but it echoed through the empty urban valley like thunder.
My first instinct, asshole that I am, was to make sure Sheila was okay, but Colin’s interest hadn’t been directed at her. I forced my eyes to turn my friend’s way, fearing the worst.
“Motherfucker,” Tom said with an air of indignation. He was looking down at a gash in his pants around mid-thigh, through which I could see the bullet hole in his glamoured flesh. “You almost shot my nuts off.”
Oddly enough, he sounded far more put out than in pain. As for the wound itself, there was no blood. After a few seconds, the area where the bullet had penetrated shimmered and then reappeared as whole, pants and all.
“Holy shit, Bill! Did you see that? I have a fucking healing factor, too!”
I seriously could have decked the moron.
“You see?” Colin remarked smugly. “And you dare insult my intelligence by claiming he’s not one of them.”
All around, I could sense fingers tensing on triggers. Shit!
“Wait!” I held up my hands. “There’s an explanation.” Thinking quickly, I extended the claws on one hand and slashed my wrist with them. Fuck me! I so hated having to do shit like this just to prove a point. “Look at this! I’m bleeding. What about that? And I can’t be compelled either.”
“True enough. Alas, your loyalty has been in question since day one, Freewill. You have proven time and again to be as reliable to our cause as, well...” He waved a hand in the direction where Sheila lay. “As for your other companion, I doubt she required much effort from Ib. Our dear Sally is more than susceptible to control. One might call it her natural state since she was but a child.”
What the...?
I dared a sidelong glance in her direction, expecting to see her glaring daggers of galvanized death. What I didn’t expect were tears in her eyes and a look of such hurt that I’d have thought she’d been shot instead. “Sally?”
She wiped one hand across her eyes, then her gaze hardened. “If I’m going to die today, it’s going to be with my hands around your throat.”
“Doubtful,” Colin replied. “Such wasted potential. You always did have a habit of choosing the wrong path. Now is no different. But at least it’s fitting that you die as you lived, on your knees. Take out her legs first.”
* * *
Fast as we were, there was no way we were going to dodge in time to make a fight of it. But we didn’t need to. A few of Colin’s lackeys had made the mistake of aiming at Sheila’s prone form.
“No hurt Silver Eyes!” A roar of primal rage sounded through the urban decay around us in the split second before we were cut down. The war cry seemed to be coming from all around us thanks, in part, to the acoustics of the surrounding buildings.
Nervous heads forgot about us for a second and looked around, trying to home in on the source. They needn’t have bothered. Grulg leapt from a nearby stairwell. One moment there was nothing but a pool of shadows, and in the next eight hundred pounds of angry ape knocked three vamps aside like bowling pins.
Thank goodness for his guilty conscience. Sure, he was technically violating the peace by helping us, but Colin and his goons didn’t know that. Ignorance truly was bliss at times.
Sally, never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, was already on the move, using Grulg’s distraction to launch herself at one of the gunmen and her claws to quite literally disarm him.
I needed to follow her lead, but I couldn’t leave Sheila lying in the middle of the street. One stray bullet. Hell, one not so stray bullet...
“Go,” Tom said, kneeling by her side. “I got this.”
“But...”
“Dude, I’m fucking bulletproof. Let them do their worst. I’ll keep her safe.”
His definition of bulletproof didn’t quite match mine. That and I still wasn’t sure what would happen if he got shot in the wrong place. Still, beggars couldn’t be choosers, and right then I was standing in the gutter with an empty change cup. I flashed him a grateful smile, but I needn’t have bothered. He knew. We both did.
“Try not to get shot in the balls,” I added to ensure the moment wasn’t too gooey, and then I was off to join the fray.
* * *
I had to give Colin’s vamps credit. With their base of operations destroyed and a newfound sense of paranoia invading the vampire nation, you’d have thought they’d be a twitchy bunch, especially being attacked by a monster gorilla. I expected panicky gunfire all around – not a great thing for us, but not exactly wonderful for our enemies either. Not so, though.
At least half of their forces formed ranks in front of Colin, weapons at the ready, while their comrades engaged Sally and Grulg in hand to hand combat. Still, I didn’t expect the stalemate to last long. Vampires were backstabbing motherfuckers as a whole. The moment it looked like one of their enemies might be getting the upper hand, they’d open fire and take out the whole lot – friend or foe.
We needed to increase our odds before that happened, and I could only think of one way.
I ran toward where Sally engaged three of the vamps. She’d gotten her pound of flesh, but it was easy to see she was outclassed. These were trained soldiers and older than her. It was only a matter of time.
My plan was simple – jump in, start biting, and get stronger.
Sadly, that was pretty much the only strategy in my playbook and Colin knew it. Several shots hit the dirt in front of me, stopping me in my tracks.
“I think not, Freewill.”
Shit! I looked his way to find almost a dozen guns aimed at me.
“Yeah, asshole?” I shouted back, knowing that any
moment I was going to be turned into Swiss cheese. “Well, what do you think is going to happen to all of you when this is done? You survived a massacre that others didn’t. You’ve been hiding here, out of sight from your superiors. You said it yourself. Anyone who Alex can’t be one-hundred percent certain of gets the axe.”
“That’s it?” he asked, sounding confused. “That’s the best you’ve got right now? Perhaps I was wrong and you are you after all.”
Pathetically enough, that actually was the best I had. I was out in the open, covered by vamps who knew how to shoot, and with no other edge in my favor. I glanced around. Grulg was being swarmed. Strong as he was, he was outnumbered and outgunned. Several shots were fired, which he took like a trooper, but it wouldn’t last. Sally was on her knees. The vamps she’d tried to fight were busy smacking her around with the butts of their guns.
One cracked her on the side of the head, sending her face first onto the asphalt. A fresh wave of anger surged through me at the sight. Weapons or not, I wanted to feed these assholes their own intestines.
“Uh uh, Freewill,” Colin chided. “No interfering.”
I turned back his way and hatred filled me. And that’s when I realized perhaps my wit wasn’t the only thing in my favor after all. No, I had something inside of me that was far sharper.
I’d been biting my lip for days now, forcing the anger back down, bottling it up. The impotence of not being able to help Ed, Dave, or James. Tom’s fate. Christy’s despair. Sheila’s helplessness. And now Sally. All that was inside me begged to come out and pay the universe back thrice-fold.
I didn’t know what it meant. Would I still be me like when Vehron died, or would I be letting the evilest of genies out of the bottle again? Did it matter so long as Colin got what was coming to him?
At some point, while I considered this, the greys of the dark city street had been replaced by red in my vision. Whatever was going to happen, it would be soon. I just needed to do one thing first – make sure my friends were safe.
I turned back and found Tom standing in front of where the litter lay – obscuring it from my view.
The Tome of Bill (Book 8): The Last Coven Page 22
