Legally Undead

by Margo Bond Collins

  I spent all afternoon searching, but I didn’t find anything useful—or new, for that matter. John had pretty well covered the history of the Kingsbridge Armory, and that was just about all I found on the web. I hated the fact that I would have no information to offer to Nick and his team the next day, but I consoled myself with the knowledge that I was the one who had gotten the information for them in the first place. I tried not to think about the fact that Malcolm had done as much as I had to get that information. In fact, I tried not to think about Malcolm at all. I was busy pretending not to notice that he hadn’t called all day. I had sent him away, after all, so surely I didn’t expect him to call. Didn’t even want him to. Really.

  I went to bed that night both discouraged and excited about the next day. On the one hand, I was convinced that the armory was going to prove to be vampire-free, that no one could hide in that building while workers crawled over it all day. I was almost equally convinced that we would find the place swarming with vampires and get ourselves killed.

  I had thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all. I was wrong. I slept deeply and without dreaming. Classes were a breeze that day, too. Odd how impending death can make all one’s lesser worries evaporate.

  John was the first to show up at my place that afternoon. Apparently he had already been to “the shop” and spoken to Nick and the other guys about what he’d found. Then he’d gone to do a bit more searching. He had complete blueprints of the armory. He was just unrolling them to show me when Nick arrived with Tony and Dominick.

  Dominick was still in his surveillance clothing: baggy blue jeans, white muscle-T, baseball cap, sneakers. He strolled into my apartment with that same slouching swagger that so many of the younger men in the Bronx adopt. He looked like he belonged in a rap video.

  “I’m impressed,” I said. “You must have blended in perfectly.”

  “Hey, baby, I’m just keeping it real,” he said, then grinned at me and straightened up. “Actually, it was a little harder than I had expected,” he said, falling back into a more military-sounding speech pattern. “People in that neighborhood tend to know each other, so I had to keep moving around to keep from being spotted.”

  I grinned back, suddenly pleased to be part of this strange band of vampire hunters. “Did you find out anything?” I asked.

  “Yep. I don’t think the place is actually a den. You were right, Tony; it seems like some sort of meeting hall. I saw at least fifteen vampires go into the building last night. They were there for four or five hours. I couldn’t see exactly how they got in and out, but they were moving around the front entrance.”

  “Good work, Dom,” said Nick, tossing a black bag toward him. “Here’s your gear for tonight. I suggest you get some sleep between now and then.”

  “Mind if I use your couch?” Dominick asked me.

  “Go ahead, if you can sleep with all of us in the room.”

  “No problem. I can sleep anywhere.”

  “You might want to stay awake for this first,” John said, pointing at the blueprint he’d unrolled on my coffee table.

  We spent the next half hour perusing the layout of the building. It was fairly simple, really. The largest part of the armory was the open space in the middle. The towers surrounding the castle-like structure all had several rooms each, probably used as offices at one time. At one end of the armory was a large auditorium.

  “It could be that they’re using this auditorium for their meetings,” said John.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “One of the sources I found on the web quoted a woman saying that this auditorium is flooded. Apparently the water has been standing there for years. It’s probably pretty foul.”

  “Okay then,” said Nick. “We’re probably looking at either the central space or one of the towers. Any thoughts?”

  “I don’t know that they would use the central space,” said Tony. “It’s too open—too easy for someone to walk in on them unexpectedly. I’m guessing they’re using one of the towers. Easier to guard.”

  “Agreed.” Nick’s voice got more clipped the longer we talked, more military and commanding. “Unless anyone has any pertinent objection, we’ll go in tonight. I’ll take point. Elle, you come with me. And try to stay behind me this time. Tony, you’ll cover our backs. Dom and John, you two scout the perimeter. Once we’re in, John will guard the entrance. Dom and Tony will come in for the kill. Any questions?”

  “Nick,” I squeaked, “are you sure you want me to go in first with you?”

  “No. I want you to go in behind me. I want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you myself. That means that I go in first, and Tony watches our backs. You wanted in, Elle. You’re in. Or you’re out. Last chance to back out.”

  I took a deep breath. “I’m in.”

  “Okay. We’ll head out in two hours. I want everyone geared up and ready to go then.”

  *

  Getting “geared up” meant putting on an all-black outfit and strapping on a variety of weapons. Luckily, I had lots of black clothes—it’s sort of de rigueur in New York—so I was able to wear a pair of stretchy black pants (the better to move easily over chain link fences) and a long-sleeve black t-shirt. Black shoes were a problem, though. I had a variety of high-heel black pumps and sling-backs. I also had several pairs of black boots, all of them with varying degrees of heel heights and toe points. All of them either clacked or clumped as I walked. None of them were appropriate for sneaking up on bloodsucking fiends. All of the extra black sneakers in Nick’s bags were far too big—even a size nine woman’s foot is smaller than your average male’s. Finally I hit on the idea of using black shoe polish to paint an old pair of beige Keds, a pair of shoes I had last worn when Greg and I had painted our first apartment in New York.

  “What about our faces?” I asked. “Are we going to paint those, too?”

  “No,” said Nick. “That would make it too hard to move around in public.”

  “So we’re dressing in black to hide ourselves but letting our lovely white faces shine in the moonlight?” I knew I was being sarcastic, but I couldn’t help it; I was nervous.

  Tony, who was checking his email at my computer, snorted. “Nope,” he said without looking away from the monitor. “We’re going to put ski masks in our pockets. Then, once we’re ready to go in, we’ll pull them down over our faces. That way we’ll cover our hair and faces, but we won’t look too out of place walking through the Bronx.”

  “Don’t you think someone will notice a bunch of people dressed all in black strolling down Kingsbridge Avenue? Especially if we’re all sporting great big weapons?”

  “You talk too much when you’re scared,” said John from his seat on the floor by the coffee table. He was rubbing oil on some sort of medieval-looking crossbow thingy. It looked totally out of place in the middle of my apartment, but I suspected it would look perfect once we got to the gigantic Bronx castle.

  “No way, man,” said Dom, who until that moment had appeared to be asleep on the couch. “That’s not scared, that’s just agitated—she’s just getting that kick-ass energy up. You saw what she did to that vamp in her apartment. She totally trashed his bad self. And she took out those vamps in Morningside, too. That’s what she does when she’s scared.” He opened one eye and grinned at me.

  “I’m not sure that I was scared so much as pissed off,” I said. “I don’t think I had enough time to get scared either of those times. I just got angry.”

  “Then I’m hoping you get way angry tonight,” laughed Dominick.

  “Me, too,” I said. “Me, too.”

  Chapter 12

  Two hours later, Nick and I huddled in the shadows of the main entrance to the Kingsbridge Armory. We had scaled the chain-link fence without any problem, and now stood in the portico between the two guard towers. At least, they would have been guard towers if this had really been a medieval castle. There also would have been a drawbridge and a moat. Instead, concrete stairs led up to a large wooden door
secured with huge chains and an enormous padlock.

  The black ski mask over my face was hot and made it difficult to breathe. My hands were sweating, too, but I couldn’t wipe them off because they were encased in latex gloves.

  “Here,” Nick had said in the van as he handed the gloves to me. “Wear these.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Fingerprints. Dead vampire bodies look just like dead human bodies. If the police find them, we don’t want to leave behind any extra evidence. The last thing you want is to become a murder suspect.”

  “Great. What about hair, fibers, all that stuff? I’ve seen CSI on television. I know what they look for.”

  “Our best bet is to hope they don’t find the bodies. They do sometimes, of course. Look, we’re as careful as we can be, and hope for the best. And we’ve got some great lawyers,” he said, flashing a smile at me.

  Oh, dear. “Um. Nick?” I said, suddenly remembering what I’d forgotten to tell him in the rush of planning to get inside the armory.

  “Yeah?”

  “My ex, you know, the vampire?”

  “Yes.” He drew the word out.

  “He’s still on Pearson’s payroll.”

  Nick’s head whipped around toward me. The other guys looked back and forth between us. I held Nick’s eyes with a steady gaze.

  Finally Nick nodded. “Tell me about it when we’re through here.”

  “Sure,” I said. If we get out alive. I kept that last thought to myself.

  We dropped off John and Dominick, now in all-black rap-boy gear, at the far end of the armory, then circled around it once. Nothing seemed out of place, but who was I to know? Tony got out of the van on Kingsbridge Avenue and sauntered away.

  Finally, Nick and I found a place to park the van on Jerome. Before we got out and headed back toward the armory, Nick double-checked all our gear. Underneath my light summer jacket I had deposited several stakes, courtesy of Nick.

  “Wouldn’t knives be easier to use?” I asked.

  “Not if you want to kill vampires,” Nick answered shortly, checking the small crossbow he had strapped under his own jacket. It made him look bulky, but he was a bulky guy anyway, so the additional lumps didn’t look all that odd. His black gym bag was full of arrows.

  “The thing about vamps,” he said, “is that you have to kill them with wood to the heart, fire, or decapitation. Nothing else really works. That’s why all our crossbow bolts are primarily wooden. And some of them have been soaked in alcohol to make them more flammable. Flaming wood to the heart is especially effective.”

  “So why do I just get stakes?”

  “Do you know how to shoot a crossbow?”

  “In theory.”

  “Theory doesn’t count tonight. You do know how to kill a vampire with a stake. In practice. I saw it. Twice. Anyway, I’m not planning for you to get too close to the action tonight. If Dom’s vamp count was right, the boys and I ought to be able to take them all out without your help.”

  “So why take me at all?”

  “Because plans don’t always work out, and it never hurts to have another fighter on our side.”

  “That’s not very comforting,” I said drily.

  “It wasn’t meant to be.”

  *

  We’d been standing in the doorway for about fifteen minutes when Nick suddenly crouched down in the shadows and became utterly still. I followed his lead, straining to see over his shoulder. The lights from the surrounding neighborhood left a glare in my eyes that ruined my night vision, so it took me a few moments to see what had caused Nick to freeze. But when I finally did, my breath caught in my throat.

  First one, then two, then three figures dressed all in black flowed across the top of the chain link fence surrounding the armory. I don’t think I would have noticed them if I hadn’t been watching so intently; they seemed to blend into the shadows, to draw the shadows around them in a way that made my eyes want to glide past them. I was reminded of the way Greg had slipped into the shadows behind the door at the law office. I had wondered how the vampires could get into the armory unseen. Now I knew. They just made themselves virtually invisible. Fabulous. Invisibility: another thing in their favor. I tried not to tally up all of the ways in which they had the advantage over us, but a list kept forming in my mind. Invisibility. Strength. Speed. The ability to hypnotize us with their eyes. Big pointy fangs, the better to suck your blood, my dear.

  Damn. I needed to pay attention.

  I turned my concentration back to the problem at hand. Okay. Three figures so far. All headed across the grass toward us.

  Every muscle in my body tensed. I tried to prepare myself to run if the figures made their way toward the main entrance. But when it comes down to it, I don’t think there’s really any way to prepare to run from the vampires headed your way. Slowly I snaked my hand up from its position on the ground, where it held me in a crouch, toward the stake I had slipped through a belt loop.

  Just as my fingers touched the top of the stake, the lead vampire stopped and held his hand up to halt the ones behind him. I froze as his head went up into the air, making that same sniffing motion Greg had made in the office.

  Arrgh. Smell. I had forgotten to include “keen sense of smell” in my List of Vampiric Advantages.

  But whatever the vampire had sensed, it clearly wasn’t us; he moved on after a moment. Of course, moving on meant that he was coming ever closer to us. I waited for Nick to do something, but he remained utterly still and watchful. The three figures moved toward the wall of the armory tower on the far side of the entrance Nick and I hid in.

  Then they were gone. I hadn’t seen them go into the building, but they were no longer on the grass. I cast about frantically, hoping to figure out what had happened to them. Nothing. Perhaps they had moved up to the other side of the tower, around to the wall where I couldn’t see them.

  After a moment, Nick stood up slowly and motioned for me to follow him. We stepped out of the portico and moved down the steps quickly but quietly. As soon as we could get close to it, Nick slid up against the wall of the tower, hugging it with his body. His movements were almost as fluid as those of the vampires. I followed him, though I wasn’t nearly so graceful about it. Still, I managed to be fairly silent. I think.

  As he slid along the wall and around the tower, Nick’s eyes and hands were constantly in motion. He didn’t exactly run his hands along every inch, but he did manage to cover a large portion of it. And then, almost as suddenly as the vampires, Nick was gone. I was only a foot or so behind him, but I had no idea where he’d gone.

  Until I stepped up to the point where he’d disappeared. There was a crack between the tower and the wall, a hidden entrance that you had to be right up against to find. It looked like the original crack had been an accident—part of the decaying process of an old building falling into disrepair. But someone had covered it up. It was simple, really. A few pieces of wood placed over the fissure, then plastered and painted to match the surrounding wall, hid the entrance from casual examination. Only if you stood up close to the place where the tower curved around and met the main wall could you tell that the tower itself wasn’t perfectly round; it had a strange lumpiness to it caused by the makeshift entrance.

  After only a moment’s hesitation, I followed Nick into the tower. He was standing just far enough inside the entrance to make room for me. After my eyes adjusted to the darkness inside the building, I saw that a short corridor, evidently formed from the same fissure that had cracked the wall, curved away to the right. A faint but steady blue light glowed from around the curve. Nick inched his way forward, again motioning that I should follow him.

  I heard a slight scraping from behind me, like a shoe scuffing along the ground. Without thinking, I whirled around and brought up the stake I hadn’t even realized I had in my hand.

  Tony stood behind me, leaning back with his hands up in the air in front of him as if to ward off a blow. I froze, then looked up at t
he stake I had unconsciously pointed directly at his heart. I slowly dropped my hand to my side. Tony smiled at me and gave me a thumbs-up. I almost kill the guy and he approves, I thought. What the hell have I gotten myself mixed up in?

  The entire exchange with Tony took only about two seconds, but by the time I turned back around Nick had flattened himself against the wall and was following the curve toward the blue light. I followed his lead, hugging the wall with my back as we peeked around into the room beyond.

  One part of my mind noted that we must look like a scene from an old Three Stooges episode, with all of our heads poking around the corner at different levels.

  The rest of my mind didn’t think anything at all; it was too busy gibbering in terror.

  The room itself was fairly small with high ceilings and small windows. The blue light emanated from a small battery-powered lamp against the far wall.

  But the space was full of vampires. I’d known coming in that we were going to fight vampires, so I was expecting it. But I think that anyone who came into the room would have instantly known what they were. Or at least what they weren’t: human. All of the vampires I had seen up to that point had moved more or less like humans. Granted, they’d hissed like animals and done some very un-human things, but they hadn’t looked completely alien.

  These things did. I don’t know quite how to describe the movement of preternatural creatures who are built exactly like humans—who used to be humans, in fact. But it’s kind of like what you’d get if you crossed a cat with a snake and made it walk on its hind legs. They slithered upright.

  Just looking at them made my skin crawl. I think it was trying to go back the way we had come in, and it was only by sheer force of will that I didn’t follow my skin’s suggestion and get out of there as quickly as possible. These creatures were so patently inhuman that it set off some primal instinct in me, a completely adrenalized “fight or flight” response. I shuddered and pulled back against the wall inside the entryway.