Death Betrays

by J. C. Diem

  Igor stationed himself in front of the door and kicked it open. Startled scientists and soldiers gawped at him before he ducked back out of sight.

  “The vampires have escaped!” one bright spark shrieked and pandemonium broke out.

  A few of the scientists fumbled for their weapons clumsily. The soldiers were far quicker to react and opened fire. Thankfully they held pistols rather than the explosive prototypes. Diving through the door and kicking it shut again, I moved too fast for most of the bullets to hit me. The few that did were expelled and the wounds healed instantly. Popping up behind two soldiers, I bashed their heads together then leaped away as bullets plucked at my clothing. The men fell to the ground and I was confident neither of them would get up again. That might be a bit difficult with their brains leaking out of their cracked skulls to stain the carpet.

  Concentrating on the soldiers first, I dispatched them all then turned to find a terrified scientist pointing his gun at my face with a hand that was trembling badly. He pulled the trigger before I could react and a bullet zoomed towards me. I felt no pain and the projectile seemed to pass through me as if it hadn’t caused any damage at all. I assumed my healing abilities had reached new levels of power. Stunned amazement with a trace of consternation passed across the scientist’s face. Before he could pull the trigger again, I snatched the gun out of his hand.

  Pinning the rest of the armed men and women with my stare, they threw their guns at my feet and backed away. All were white faced and trembling as they huddled together against the wall. “What?” I snapped at the scientist who had tried to blow my face off. “Why are you all staring at me like that?”

  “Your head just…” his words petered to a stop.

  “Healed really quickly,” I finished for him.

  “No.” He shook his head in disagreement. “The bullet didn’t even hit you, it went right through you.”

  Baffled, I stared at him blankly. “What do you mean?”

  A brave female scientist ventured an explanation. “Your head split in half, leaving a gap just wide enough for the bullet to pass through.” If they hadn’t been scientists and used to vampires by now, they would have been screaming in terror. Some appeared to be on the verge of screaming anyway. I kind of felt like joining them.

  Hiding my unease that my body had once again taken matters into its own hands, I wondered how long I would be able to keep this a secret. I was confident that none of the humans would live to spread the word of my increasing strangeness.

  “It’s safe to come in now,” I called out to my friends. The door opened and screams began to ring out as my kin entered and converged on the helpless humans.

  Ishida was carefully carried inside and Kokoro followed closely behind. Her hand rested on the shoulder of one of the emperor’s bearers for guidance. Sorrow was carved into her features. I wondered if she knew that their home had been bombed to pieces. Glancing up, she caught my gaze and I knew that she was aware of the tragedy. She would have read the knowledge from the minds of her captors weeks ago. She and I alone knew of the devastation of their people. One of us was going to have to break the news to the others but it would have to wait until we were safe.

  Sitting their emperor down on the ground gently, one of the few remaining female scientists was chosen to be his first meal. Geordie made his way to my side and slipped his trembling hand into mine. His thin body was pressed against me, he was still shaking from his ordeal. Luc was on my other side, also pressed against me. I slid a hand around Luc’s waist and tightened my grip on Geordie’s hand as the human was forced to her knees.

  One of the female warriors positioned their victim over Ishida and another gently opened their emperor’s mouth. A knife that had been scrounged from one of the soldiers sliced through the scientist’s neck. Blood splattered Ishida’s shrivelled face, bathing it in red. At first nothing happened and he remained oblivious. Then the teen’s throat convulsed as he swallowed. His hands reached up blindly, found the human and pulled her down towards him.

  His warriors helped him to drain the human dry then gestured for another sacrifice to be brought forward. Moans and pleas for pity came from the few scientists that were left. Knowing their leader’s preference, another female was chosen. When she was also bloodless, Ishida opened his eyes. Kokoro dropped to her knees beside him. He stared at her in confusion then looked down at his once young and smooth and now aged and wizened body. He was either too weak or too shocked at his condition to speak.

  “It will take time but you will be restored to your former youth again,” the seer promised him.

  Nodding, Ishida allowed her to take his hand. If they had been alone, he probably would have curled up into a ball on her lap and cried. Being surrounded by friends and allies, he put on a brave face and motioned for his warriors to help him to his feet. A white coat was slipped over his shoulders, hiding his wrinkled form. His old face hovered over his wasted body as he offered me a bow. “I knew you would save us, Mortis,” he croaked.

  “I haven’t saved us yet,” I reminded him after returning his bow. “We still have to get out of here.”

  “Where are we?” Gregor asked. “I know we are somewhere in America but not which state we were flown to.”

  “We’re in Colorado, near Denver.”

  Assimilating this information, Gregor started towards one of the female scientists. “If you will give me a few minutes, I might be able to work out an escape plan.”

  With Geordie clinging to me like a baby monkey that had just lost its mother, I didn’t like my chances of freeing myself from him long enough to kick down the restricted door. “There are five men in that room that are under my control,” I said to Luc. Nodding in understanding, he strode forward and sent the door crashing open.

  Finished with its task, my orb rolled off the console and plopped to the ground. Luc bent and picked it up, shaking his head in wonder that I’d managed to hypnotize five men with only a detached eye. After confirming that the men inside the room were in my thrall, he left the room and handed me back my eye.

  My orb reattached itself after I poked it back into its socket and Geordie gave me a grateful smile. “You know I love you, Natalie but the weird things you can do kind of give me the creeps sometimes.” Igor debated about smacking his apprentice up the back of the head then merely shrugged. Maybe I gave him the creeps, too. Why not when I often made myself shudder at the things I could do?

  Gregor took his chosen subject into the restricted room and chased out my five slaves. They stared at me worshipfully until I ordered them to join the other humans. At least my minions were quiet. The rest of the survivors were babbling prayers or pleading for their lives. It was common knowledge amongst us vampires that we weren’t leaving anyone alive. But the humans would continue to hope right up until the moment our hands tore their heads off their shoulders.

  After several minutes of questioning his bedazzled slave, Gregor ended her life with a swift blow to her neck. She sagged to the ground, lifeless and he walked away from her without a backward glance.

  “Do we need these anymore?” a Japanese warrior asked, pointing at the cringing humans.

  “No,” Gregor said with a negligent wave of one hand.

  Geordie buried his head in my shoulder as our kin waded in. The slaughter was quick but bloody as the Europeans and Japanese meted out vampire justice. It almost made me sick to watch the carnage. I thought I wouldn’t be able to feel any pity for the torturers but I was wrong. For once I felt no hint of battle lust lurking anywhere inside me. The light had faded from my eyes without me even realizing it, taking my rage with it. I’d been designed to kill monsters, not humans. After what they did to your friends, do you really think they aren’t monsters? My subconscious had me there, yet I still couldn’t enjoy watching the rending and tearing.

  When the screams petered out, we gathered around to listen to Gregor’s plan. The bullet wound in his chest was well on its way to closing but the hole in his bac
k was far larger and still sluggishly oozed blood. “We’re fifty-seven levels beneath the ground and there is only supposed to be one way up to the surface.” He turned to me with a quizzical look.

  “Technically, there are two,” I told him. “But none of you would be able to get out the way I came in.”

  Taking my word for it, Gregor continued. “We’ll have to use the elevators but they’re being monitored by soldiers up on the first level.” He waited for the murmurs to fade before stating his plan. “Two of us will have to dress in uniforms and take care of the soldiers.”

  “I’ll go,” I said immediately.

  Geordie frowned and looked me up and down pointedly. “You do not look very manly, chérie.”

  “I can dress as one of the scientists.”

  “I will accompany you,” Luc said and no one argued with him.

  “We’ll give you ten minutes to kill the soldiers then we will begin making our way up to the surface,” Gregor told us. “There are two buildings on the ground level. The elevators are in one and transportation is in the other. There are a dozen men patrolling the area. We will have to neutralize all of them if we want to escape from the grounds without being followed.”

  “Sounds like a solid plan,” I said to Gregor then motioned at Luc. “We should get a move on before anyone figures out we’re making a break for it.” We split up while he went in search of a soldier’s uniform that wasn’t covered in blood. I didn’t have to go far, just into the control room where Gregor had left the female scientist. Her coat was a couple of sizes too big but it would have to do. A key card for the elevator was in one pocket and her ID was in the other. Geordie watched me anxiously with his arms wrapped around his chest. He gave me a tremulous smile that I returned before I left the room and went in search of Luc.

  I found him as he was exiting one of the cells. His borrowed uniform was an inch too short in the arms and legs but fit him well enough. If we kept our heads down, the soldiers watching the elevators wouldn’t know we were vampires. Unless they had other ways of monitoring the elevators, such as infrared vision. It would become obvious fairly quickly that we weren’t human if this was the case.

  We located the elevators on the far side of the cells after a quick search. Luc placed my arm through his after pushing the button to call the elevator to our level. “It might be strange for us to be leaving partway through our shifts,” he explained when I sent him an enquiring look. “If you pretend to be ill, it might make our exit seem more plausible.”

  “Good idea.” Any excuse to lean on Luc was a good one. He gave me frequent solicitous glances as we stepped inside and the elevator climbed up to the first floor. I clung to him, keeping my head down and pretending to be dizzy. We didn’t speak, just in case there were hidden microphones in the elevator. Luc’s European and my Australian accent would have been a dead giveaway that we weren’t U.S. citizens.

  As the elevator slowed then came to a stop at the first floor, we shared a brief glance then braced ourselves for battle.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A door halfway down the hallway to the right popped open when we stepped out of the elevators. A concerned soldier stuck his head out. “What’s wrong with her?” If I was working in a top secret underground facility, I’d have been scared of any sign of illness as well.

  “A nasty bout of gastro,” Luc replied in a credible American accent as he helped me down the hallway. “It’ll probably spread through the whole place by morning.” The soldier drew back at the warning. He either didn’t notice I was wearing snow gear beneath the coat or it wasn’t an unusual sight.

  Groaning, I hunched over. “I could really use some water.” My accent was terrible but the soldier didn’t seem to notice.

  Blocking the doorway, he looked up and down the hallway then gestured for us to enter. “I’m not supposed to let anyone in here so make this quick.”

  Luc shuffled me inside what turned out to be a much larger monitoring room than the one on the fifty-seventh floor. A gigantic screen with dozens of monitors flickered continually as the pictures changed from room to room and hallway to hallway. As I’d already guessed, the fifty-seventh floor wasn’t shown on any of the screens. We never would have made it up to the first floor otherwise. Every soldier in the complex would have come at a run to shoot us to pieces if our escape had been caught on the monitors.

  Two more soldiers swivelled around on their chairs when we entered. We didn’t give them time to ask questions. I darted forward to silence them while Luc took care of the man who had let us in. Contracting gastro was never going to be a concern for any of these men again.

  Piling their bodies off to the side, we studied the monitors. A large car park was half full of sedans and family cars that I assumed belonged to the civilian workers. Luc pointed to a large open area with a range of vehicles lined up neatly in rows. “That must be the second hangar that Gregor spoke of.”

  We spent a couple of minutes watching humans patrolling the surface. The hangar with the vehicles was deserted. All we had to do was kill all of the guards, steal one of the enclosed trucks and leave. The truck would no doubt be linked to their tracking systems so we would have to ditch it quickly and find another mode of transportation.

  Entering the elevator again, it was a short journey up to the ground floor. Separating, we spread out and hunted down the dozen soldiers wandering around on patrol. By the time we met back at the hangar, ten of our Japanese and European kin had joined us. All wore either flimsy hospital gowns or drawstring pants. None wore shoes. It was bitterly cold outside and I winced inwardly at the thought of running around in the snow in bare feet.

  Some of the Japanese warriors waited near the elevators while the rest of us exited the hangar through a side door. We raced across the snowy cement path to the second hangar. Choosing one of the trucks at the front of the convoy, Luc climbed inside. I expected him to have to hotwire it but instead he held the keys up with a smile.

  Stripping off the white coat, I offered it to a shivering European who was roughly my size. She smiled gratefully and tugged it on overtop of her thin hospital gown. Several of my allies eyed my snow gear enviously but I wasn’t about to hand any of it over when I still needed it myself.

  We only had to wait for a few minutes for the rest of our kin to join us but it felt more like eons. Ishida was carried inside the hangar and hustled into the back of the truck. Everyone climbed inside, except for Igor. He jogged over to operate the hangar door that would allow us to finally leave this hell hole. Luc started the engine and I was in the seat beside him when he drove through the doors and out into the open. More snow began to fall and tiny white flakes hit the windscreen. Sitting beside my beloved while watching the snow fall would have been magical under any other circumstances. Since we were on the run for our lives, we didn’t have time to appreciate the wonder of it.

  Igor pressed the button to shut the hangar door again once our vehicle was clear. He disappeared from view as he jumped into the back of the truck. A fist thumped on the wall that divided us from our friends and allies to indicate they were all settled and that it was time for us to leave.

  Displaying his usual calm, Luc drove back down the road through the path that had been cut through the forest. I ducked down out of sight before he reached the gate. “Turn left,” I told him as the gate swung open. He gave one of the soldiers a casual salute and eased the truck onto the road.

  Our getaway seemed anticlimactic after the slaughter we had just dispensed. I’d expected a grand car chase with hundreds of screaming humans firing at us from their vehicles and a chopper hovering overhead shining a blinding light on us.

  I waited until we were well out of sight before sitting up. “We need to ditch this truck asap and find other transportation,” I told Luc.

  “Is there a town nearby?”

  I nodded while fiddling with the heater. “Turn left at the intersection. There’s a small town a few minutes up the highway.”


  With warm air blowing on my face, my shivers quickly petered out. It was probably freezing in the back of the truck but our passengers would only have to endure the discomfort for a short time. I knew a place where all of our shopping needs could be met. I just hoped the shop wasn’t alarmed or that one of my kin would be able to disable the alarm if we set it off.

  Following my directions, Luc drove to the small town and parked near my rental car. Lights were on inside the ski shop again. The same clerk was there, performing another round of inventory. He was probably trying to figure out why he was missing a ski suit and the rest of the gear he’d given me. Thanks to my former job, I was very familiar with the task. He ambled over at my light knock and I recaptured him with a glance.

  Luc opened the back door of the truck and a small flood of shivering vampires crossed the snowy ground and entered the ski shop. Even beneath his hypnotism, my minion seemed flustered at having so many people to serve all at once.

  Gregor moved into the centre of the room and held up his hands for attention. “I suggest we all find something warm but not quite as warm as the clothing Natalie is wearing.”

  “But its freezing outside,” one of the Europeans complained.

  “We will not be in Denver for long,” Gregor said. “We should head to the airport and leave Colorado as quickly as possible.”

  “Where will we go?” asked one of the pair of female warriors who was supporting Ishida. Their leader was still too weak to show much interest in our fate. His head lolled forward, hiding his wrinkled face from view. I hoped the blood he had ingested would kick in soon and help him recover his strength.

  “Anywhere that is far away from here,” was Gregor’s suggestion.

  Everyone bustled around, finding clothes to fit their size. Modesty was left behind as we all changed. My slave watched on helplessly. Even deeply hypnotized, he wrung his hands as his merchandise was stripped from the shelves.