Vampires Don't Sparkle: Deathless Book 3

by Chris Fox

“Does anyone have a better plan?” Liz broke in. She reached down and took Blair’s hand, giving it a supportive squeeze.

  Silence, until Osiris finally spoke. “Blair’s plan is workable. Set has to die, that much is clear. None of us have the power to kill him, and even if we did he still has an army of demons to deal with. That army will be centered in or under The First Ark. Blow up the Ark, and you wipe out that army.”

  Chapter 63- Well and Truly Fucked

  “I bet you have a really small penis,” Jordan said. He kept his tone light, matter of fact. It had the desired effect.

  Set, the pompous ass wipe he was standing next to, turned toward Jordan. His expression was unreadable behind the dark, demonic helm. But Jordan liked to think he’d scored a point.

  A choking sound came from the freakish hag standing next to Set, and her all-black eyes blinked furiously as she stared at Set. She looked as if she wanted to run. Jordan guessed Set probably had some serious spousal abuse issues to effect that kind of reaction in his wife.

  Irakesh and Steve cowered in the corner. Jordan, Wepwawet, Set, and his haggish wife Nephthys stood near the control rod of the slipsail Blair had used to escape Ra. The room was spacious, but it suddenly felt cramped.

  “Can you give me a single reason why I shouldn’t incinerate you where you stand, whelp?” Set rumbled, taking a threatening step toward Jordan.

  “Because you’re a megalomaniac with a serious Napoleon complex. If you kill me, you’ll have to find another dog to whip—you know, since that’s the only way you can actually get hard.”

  “He’s right, you know,” Wepwawet said, surprising Jordan. It was the first time the wolf-headed god had spoken since he’d donned the armor. “You do have a small penis. Osiris spoke of it often, usually with a great deal of pity.”

  Set roared, grabbing Wepwawet and slamming his armored body to the deck. He rounded on Jordan, armor clinking as he trembled visibly. “I am not so foolish as you think. Death is a release, your only escape. I will make you suffer for a thousand lifetimes, each worse than the last. Your insolence will earn you nothing but pain. I’ll make you kill your family. I’ll make you—”

  “Blah, blah, fucking blah,” Jordan interrupted, grinning.

  A buzzing began in the back of Jordan’s mind, like a thousand cicada on a hot summer night. The buzzing intensified, growing louder until he could hear nothing else.

  Every fiber of his being screamed that he should run, and his bowels emptied themselves. Jordan finally collapsed into a fetal position, drawing his armored legs against his chest as he prayed for the terror to abate.

  “I can make the terror permanent,” Set said, eminently smug. Just like that, the fear vanished. “I can make you lust for corpses, or fill you with hatred until you will beg me to kill your closest companions. Tell me, whelp, do you have any further insults you wish to offer me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Excellent. You can learn, then,” Set said, leaning down next to Jordan. “See that you remember your place. If you speak again, for any reason, I will offer you a kind of torment far worse than anything you can possibly imagine. Do you understand?”

  Jordan almost said yes, but realized the trap that had just been laid. He nodded, rising slowly to his feet.

  “What of you, Wepwawet? Any further insults you wish to offer?” Set asked, shifting his attention to the wolf-headed god. Wepwawet rose slowly to his feet, shaking his head. “Wonderful. Ready yourselves for battle. In the morning, we invade the sanctum of your vaunted Osiris. Together we will kill him, his wife, and that awful bitch Ra.”

  Chapter 64- The Builders

  Set waved a hand, erecting a shadow sanctuary around himself and the control obelisk. Neither light nor sound could penetrate it from without, though he could still see the rest of the ship. It afforded him the privacy he needed for the task he was about to undertake. It was unpleasant at the best of times, but circumstances would make it far worse than usual.

  He took a deep breath. He was wrestling with an unfamiliar emotion, one he was far more used to causing than experiencing. Fear. In his hundreds of centuries he’d almost never run across a being that could give him pause, especially the last hundred. With Osiris withering outside the Arks, and the rest of Set’s contemporaries asleep, he’d had little to fear.

  He’d subjugated the underworld, killed any god who resisted, and pressed the remainder into service. He had spies and vassals all over the world; his demonic taint spread far and wide. He’d touched dozens of powerful beings, and each now bore a shard of his existence, in much the same way he still bore a shard of Ka’s.

  Yet all his power, all his control, had left him ill-equipped to deal with the progeny of the Builders. In them, he glimpsed the Builders themselves. Their power was vast and incomprehensible. It had created the Arks, shaped entire species, and ultimately carried them from this world to one somewhere at the fringes of space.

  All the vast power they’d discovered in the First Ark was merely the leavings of the Builders. Who knew what abilities they’d discovered in the millions of years since they’d departed? Their progeny were terrifyingly advanced, which was why Set was experiencing such a base emotion.

  He withdrew a small golden triangle as thick as a finger. It had seven gems arranged across the surface, and as he concentrated they began to glow. A moment later, a tiny translucent figure appeared. It looked much like Ka, its head too large, and eyes too black. Yet where Ka’s skin was green, this being had a pallid grey. He still found it alien, despite having adopted the same disturbing visage himself.

  “Greetings, exalted one,” he said, bowing his head. The need to do so galled him, yet there was little choice in it. If he served the Builders, there was a place for him. If he did not, then he’d be annihilated alongside all other sentient life.

  The creature’s mouth didn’t move, yet it emitted an odd chittering. Set hadn’t been able to learn their language, but images appeared in his mind. They showed the Nexus, crushed by the ocean. They showed vast numbers of humans morphing into grey men through the use of the chrysalis the progeny had provided.

  Set glanced at the corner of the slipsail where the device sat, a coffin-shaped block of stone just larger than a man. The idea that it could change a being into a grey man was in itself terrifying. It was by experimenting with it, and with the heart of the First Ark, that he’d effected such changes on himself.

  “Soon, master,” Set said, bowing his head again. “The Nexus is being supported by a single Ark. Tomorrow I will kill its lord, and kill all the elder gods who would oppose us. Once they are dead I can remove the conduit, and the Nexus will collapse.”

  More chittering. More images. Mostly emotion, or what passed for it in the mind of the grey men. They were deeply dispassionate, yet they could feel anger. As this one did now.

  “Colonization can begin soon,” Set said, aware that he was almost pleading. It wasn’t dignified, but it was smart. “Once the Nexus is destroyed, I will begin linking the vessels Vulcan has created to the First Ark. My slaves will convert night and day. Then we can begin conquering other Arks to speed the process.”

  The chittering sounded almost mollified, then the image broke into fragments and disappeared. Set shuddered. He’d met the grey men in person only once, but that had been enough to cow him. Their ships were incredible—smaller versions of the great Arks. Smaller versions that could fly through the vast emptiness of space. Their power was considerable.

  Yet that wasn’t truly what terrified him. It was the knowledge that the few hundred grey men were merely forerunners. Countless others would come, and when they arrived the war would begin in earnest.

  Chapter 65- Holding Action

  Trevor shifted his weight from foot to foot. The anticipation was killing him. They’d arrived in London two hours ago, and had hastily erected defenses throughout the facility. Trevor, Liz, and Blair had been assigned to guard something called Object 3—a teleporter, from the brief ex
planation The Director had provided.

  Their instructions were simple. Keep the enemy away until everyone could fall back, then use the teleporter to invade the First Ark. Only, Trevor doubted it would be simple. Heavy footfalls sounded in the distance. Far too heavy to be human, and the stampede was growing closer.

  “Incoming,” Trevor roared, sprinting down the tunnel back into the narrow hallway. He dove behind a stack of crates, rolling to his feet next to the machine gun emplacement. The woman manning the weapon wasn’t anyone he knew, which might be just as well. It was unlikely she’d survive the next few hours.

  “How many?” Blair asked, crouched in werewolf form across the hall, behind another stack of crates. There was no sign of Liz, but Trevor knew she was there somewhere, in the shadows.

  “At least a dozen, the big bruiser types,” Trevor answered, slipping into the shadows himself. “You want to fall back to Object 3?”

  “Not yet,” Blair said, shaking his furry head. “We need to make this believable, or they’ll know something’s up. That means making them pay for every inch they take.”

  The first lumbering figure emerged from the room beyond, pausing to bellow a challenge as it entered the narrow hallway. It was a little over eight feet tall, and had to stoop to enter. Both broad horns carved furrows in the ceiling, dusting its shoulders with white plaster.

  The woman next to Trevor opened up with the machine gun, ringing Trevor’s ears like gongs. The vibrations shook the floor as a sea of spent cartridges clattered to the ground around them. The stream of rounds punched into the demon’s chest and face, driving it backward. Most of the rounds ricocheted off, which showed just how tough these things were. A few punched through, sending out gouts of black blood. The demon answered with an angry roar, and tried to force its way up the corridor.

  The machine gun kept firing, until the creature finally collapsed in a pool of its own black blood. There was a moment of blessed silence, then a second demon tried to crawl past the body of the first. The machine gun howled death again, and Trevor covered his ears. The floor was thick with spent shell casings now, and the room reeked of gunpowder.

  The second demon stopped moving. A third tried clawing its way past, but was having a hard time managing the bodies of its companions. Then the demon disappeared back the way it had come. Trevor waited for long moments, praying for the ringing in his ears to fade. Nothing. No further attempts by the demons to gain the corridor.

  “Where do you think they went?” Liz called from behind him, her deep voice confirming that she was in wolf form, despite the fact that Trevor couldn’t see her.

  “Regrouping, maybe?” Blair asked, peering over the crates on the other side of the all.

  “I doubt it,” Trevor said. “We only killed two of them, and they have a whole hell of a lot more fodder.”

  “Then why did they—” Blair began, but a wall of flame and shrapnel erupted up the hallway. Trevor blurred, ducking behind the machine gun emplacement. The soldier wasn’t quite fast enough to get her head down, and took a face full of flame and pain.

  The rapid staccato of automatic weapons fire came from the far end of the corridor, and the crates that had survived the missile blast crumbled under a withering hail of high caliber bullets. Blair crouched across from Trevor, his fur singed, but seemingly unharmed otherwise.

  “Fall back,” Trevor roared, unsure if anyone could hear him beneath the deafening weight of the gun fire.

  Either Blair heard him, or had the same idea. He blurred up the corridor, disappearing into the room beyond. Trevor did the same, rolling through the doorway and scrambling to one side of it. A moment later, Liz emerged from the shadows. She swung the heavy iron door shut, dropping the kind of crossbar he’d expect in a medieval dungeon.

  “That’s not going to hold them for long,” she roared, spinning to face Trevor. “Did you get a look at whatever was firing?”

  “No,” Trevor said, shaking his head. The muffled roar of bullets finally ceased, but they still had to shout to be heard over the ringing in their ears.

  I did. Blair’s voice echoed in Trevor’s head. Or I felt the person, anyway. It was Jordan. He wasn’t alone either. Steve is out there too.

  “That will mean Irakesh. Maybe Wepwawet too,” Trevor yelled back. “All working for Set, you think?”

  Definitely. It doesn’t surprise me about Steve or Irakesh, and we already knew Jordan was compromised. Blair’s voice rang through Trevor’s mind again. That means we’re outnumbered, and likely outgunned. That might change the plan.

  Trevor looked at the platform dominating the room. Object 3, Osiris had called it. A triangle of black stone sloped up to a golden disk about six feet across. “Should we use that thing, then?”

  “We can’t,” Liz called back, shaking her auburn-furred head. “Not yet, anyway. We have to wait for Isis. There’s no point in going to the Ark without her, Osiris, and Ra.”

  “How long will it take you to warm that thing up, Blair?”

  “I don’t know,” Blair said, turning to face Object 3. “Osiris says it works just like a light bridge, but it feels a little different.”

  “He said this thing was built by the progeny of the Builders, right?” Trevor said, eyeing the thing uneasily.

  “Yeah, that explains the difference. It’s a more modern version of the light bridges. Let’s just hope it works like we expect,” Blair said, trotting toward the disk at the top. “I’ll see if I can get a feel for how it works. Just keep them from getting through that doorway.”

  “Will do,” Trevor said. He put his back to the wall on one side of the door, while Liz did the same on the other. They had to hold, whatever it took.

  Chapter 66- Distraction

  Isis seized one of the bulkier demon shock troops by its leg, then blurred as she swung it toward a neighbor. Bodies crunched together, slamming into a pile of large, wooden crates in an explosion of wood. She flinched as she was drenched with black ichor.

  Something flashed by on her right, and she rolled into the shadows before realizing it was Sekhmet. The fiery-haired goddess bounced between a half dozen more brutes, her golden spear piercing an eye on each target. She vaulted off the last one, hooking a leg on the metal shelving that held an array of smaller crates. Sekhmet flipped up toward the warehouse’s high ceiling, then she too disappeared into the shadows, each of her victims collapsing bonelessly to the ground.

  “Show off,” Osiris yelled, striding through the warehouse with his blade held casually in one hand. The ancient sunsteel contrasted with the thoroughly modern high-tech communications device he wore hooked over one ear. “You could have left one for me.”

  “It’s not my fault you’re slow,” Sekhmet shot back, stepping from the shadows to join Osiris. She wore a familiar smile, one that warmed Isis. It was almost like a journey back in time, back to when they’d been a real tribe. A family that fought together, no matter what.

  “I’m just saving myself for the real fight,” Osiris said, clapping her on the shoulder. He turned to the shadows. “Isis?”

  “I’m here,” she said, stepping into the light. She shifted back to human form as she did so, wiping ichor from her face. “Those things stink abominably.”

  “Just another way for Set to make himself feel superior,” Osiris said, rolling his eyes. He turned to the far side of the warehouse. The wall had several demon-sized holes in it, and most of the dirty windows had been shattered during the assault. “They’ll come again soon, I’m sure. Set is nothing if not cautious. He’ll probe our defenses at every point, then mass and hit where he thinks we’re weakest.”

  “Not here, certainly. He must sense us,” Sekhmet said, frowning.

  “Likely,” Osiris replied. He tapped the mouthpiece he wore, whispering into it. “Mark, give us a status update.” He was silent for several moments, listening. Then Osiris turned to them. “Set’s forces have hit us from below, as we expected.”

  “How do the whelps fare?” Isis
asked, concern bubbling up. She hadn’t liked the plan. Leaving Trevor, Liz, and Blair on their own was dangerous.

  “They’re fine, for now,” Osiris said. Roars sounded in the distance, then perhaps two dozen demons rushed through the hole in the warehouse wall. “More fodder. Husband your strength. This is Set’s attempt to bleed us, so we’re weaker when he faces us himself.”

  Chapter 67- Sacrifice

  Mark wished, for the millionth time, that he was back in Syracuse. The London Ops center was cramped, understaffed, and under geared. Not the best place to orchestrate a battle, particularly one as violent as that about to take place.

  “Sir, falcon one and three are down,” one of the techs called. Mark watched the readout impassively, hands clasped behind his back.

  “We’ve lost warehouse six, sir. They’ve breached the perimeter on level two,” another tech called. Mark didn’t answer this one either. This was expected. Most of it had been his plan, in fact. They didn’t know that, of course. Didn’t know he’d agreed to sacrifice them all.

  “Benson,” he barked, glancing in her direction. She looked up, brushing her dark bangs from her face. “What’s the situation on level four?”

  “They’ve breached the loading dock,” Benson said, showing uncharacteristic concern. “Your, uh, team has fallen back to Object 3. If they breach the door, we lose the Object.”

  “Noted,” Mark said, fishing his smartphone out of his pocket. He tapped the button on the top of his ear piece, speaking in a low voice. “The situation has changed, sir. Object 3 is in trouble. If you don’t get down there in the next two minutes we’ve lost.”

  “Understood,” Osiris shot back. The words were clipped, as if he were distracted. In the background came the sounds of combat. Demons were dying noisily.