Last Ditch Effort

by Isobella Crowley

  The fairy bit hesitantly on a finger but agreed. “If you say so. Please be careful, though.” She turned to focus on the coffin. Silvery sparks erupted from the base of the oblong box and it shuddered slightly before it rose, slowly at first but with increasingly smooth momentum.

  He ducked when the other guard fired at him. At least one of the bullets pierced through the nearest crate and ricocheted off the floor. He couldn’t rely on cover to protect him for much longer.

  Meanwhile, Riley had brought the coffin almost fifteen feet above the floor. The remaining henchman, looking alarmed at their cargo literally floating away, aimed at her and fired. She managed to evade them in time, but the coffin rocked alarmingly.

  To draw attention away from her, Remy returned fire at the man, who tried to jump away but wasn’t fast enough. Blood spurted from his back and sides and he crumpled in a heap.

  The fairy took the coffin out of one of the warehouse’s high windows, which had already shattered in the explosion. He only hoped their car hadn’t rolled into the goddamn river. In a moment, she was gone from his sight.

  Chapter Twenty

  Riverside Boulevard, New York City Waterfront

  “Okay.” Remy breathed deeply “I’ll…uh, make my way back on foot.”

  He stood and walked across the warehouse floor. For the first time since he’d begun the assault, the place seemed quiet. Somehow, he didn’t think they’d killed all the guards, which meant either that the remaining ones had fled—possibly to fetch reinforcements—or that they waited in ambush.

  There was also their hulking, rebel-flag-waving leader to consider. Although there had been no sign of him since the attack had begun, it didn’t mean someone hadn’t called him back.

  Something stood out as he passed a large, undamaged crate and immediately caught his attention, but it was only a bunched-up tarp. He stood for a second and aimed his gun at it before he turned to the shattered main door.

  There was, he decided, a possibility that he might make it out of this alive. He broke into a jog with the exit only about twenty feet away.

  Three men appeared in front of him—two more sub-machine-gun-toting guards at the far left and right sides of the door and a third man who stepped casually from behind a metal girder in the center.

  “Hold,” the third man commanded. “I say, hold your fire. Don’t shoot him—yet.”

  Remy pointed his weapon at him. “Tucker. I can’t say I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t realize you were involved in black market coffin-trading, however.”

  The big man chortled and hooked his thumbs into his lapels. “Black market coffin-trading…that’s a good one, Remington. I’ll have to remember that later. But for now, I’m afraid I have to ask you to put that gun down or else this might get ugly.”

  He was fairly sure it already had gotten ugly, so rather than lay his gun down, he fired it. Two bullets erupted from the barrel and sank into the other man’s chest. The two henchmen, alarmed, raised their guns to fire in retaliation, but their boss raised a hand to stay them—again.

  The Southerner looked at his torso. The impact of the bullets had done little more than push him back about half a step and now, the ragged holes were already weaving themselves together.

  “Uh…” Remy gawked. “Well…I admire a man with resilience, I must say.”

  His adversary smirked but there was a savage gleam in his eye. “Who said I was a man?”

  Not quite sure what to make of that, he blinked and in the split second his eyes were closed, something changed. The heavy figure had begun to literally bristle with hair, the gleaming eyes had turned yellow, the ears had elongated, and claws sprouted from his fingers.

  He threw his head back and howled.

  Remy’s jaw dropped. “Shiiiiiiit!”

  Operating on some primitive instinct, he hurled himself aside toward a stack of boxes. A dark, furry blur careened through the space he’d vacated, snarling viciously.

  Tucker’s two bodyguards opened fire.

  He landed between two stacks of containers and scraped the sides of both, and pain flared through his body as he tried to go straight from collision with the floor to his feet. His tumble from the car might not have seriously injured him but it had bruised him in places and put unusual strain on muscles and tendons he didn’t normally use. He had worn through his adrenalin and pain now began to become a factor.

  Bullets streaked past or cracked through wood or chipped off concrete.

  His focus now on staying alive, he pulled himself behind the boxes. Between two more crates, stacked about head height, he could see Tucker. And, unfortunately, his adversary could see him.

  Instead of a big, beefy Southern gentleman, he was now a monstrosity. Most of his clothes had shredded and fallen away when he’d grown even taller and heavier. His entire body was covered with fur. It was a mixture of dark blackish-gray and dull brownish-red, matted and bristly. His eyes shone, reflecting the hanging lights of the warehouse, and yellowed nails protruded from his huge, grasping paws.

  Worst of all, his face had become a snout, and the mouth hung open to reveal a long, drooling red tongue and rows of jagged canine teeth.

  “You,” the werewolf literally growled, the sound inhumanly low and gravelly, “should have died at the derby. It would have been quicker and less painful.”

  Remy was not the type to panic easily, but hearing Tucker’s awful new voice and seeing the beast rear in preparation to pounce, his heart leapt into his throat. He scrambled over the box beside him.

  In the same moment, Tucker launched into the attack. The werewolf moved with such speed and force that the boxes and crates behind his quarry burst and the displaced air and kinetic force drove the human forward in his escape. He tumbled and rolled over the top of the next container before he landed flat on his back on the concrete.

  “Shit.” He gasped and hauled himself up on a metal railing next to a yellow-marked walkway. “Shit, shit, shit, shit!”

  The two henchmen opened fire again. The guns’ reports echoed deafeningly, and sparks rose where the lead struck.

  While he bobbed and weaved between crates and sprinted toward the rear of the building, Tucker roared behind him.

  Remy raced across the floor, swung himself around the base of a crane-type device, and ducked behind it as he heard the sounds of an enraged werewolf moving closer.

  Air rushed and, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a hairy claw swipe at him. He scuttled forward to put the crane between him and it.

  Tucker growled again in frustration. He seized a crate and threw it.

  The man ducked, moved low to the floor, and tried to also keep count of the bullets as the two gunmen now took individual potshots at him. They were attempting to break his nerve to force him into doing something stupid, he assumed.

  He caught a glimpse of something moving near the warehouse’s ceiling and glanced up.

  Riley floated there and pointed emphatically toward a pile of crates in the northwest corner. She practically bounced up and down in midair in her enthusiasm. A faint silvery glow emanated from the area she indicated and seemed to encompass four different crates.

  Remy looked at her, nodded, and ran northwest.

  “Yes, run, human! There’s nothing I like better than catching my prey while it runs away.” The werewolf laughed, a horrible rabid-dog sound that contained enough human mirth to imbue it with evil. He cleared a third of the warehouse in one leap and crashed atop the elevated platform where Taylor’s coffin had stood.

  His prey, meanwhile, had torn off the lids of the first two crates, both of which contained more guns. He struggled to get the covering off the third and broke half of the wood as he heaved it off. Within were more standard magazines.

  “What the hell were you trying to tell me, Riley?” he said under his breath and gritted his teeth. His gaze swung upward but the fairy was gone. There was more gunfire outside, so she must have retreated to the coffin to defend it.

/>   A lupine growl sounded behind him now and it was far too close.

  “Hold still,” Tucker jeered. “Get ready to be dinner.”

  Remy reached the final crate and kicked the lid off. He stared at it for a moment, his mouth agape. In his adrenaline-charged haste, it took a moment for his brain to comprehend what he was looking at.

  Within the container was a long tray lined with red velvet that contained twelve individual bullets. They looked different from the other bullets he’d seen today. A piece of paper lay folded beside them.

  The lycanthrope made a gasping, gurgling sound. “What? What the fuck!”

  Unbelievably, the powerful hind claws retreated. Tucker was now backing away from him.

  Curious, he unfolded the piece of paper. It was a handwritten letter and even before he could read most of it, he recognized exactly what it was—a death threat. He’d received more than his fair share of those in his day. His various infidelities with other men’s girlfriends and wives and daughters, his snotty attitude, and his general misbehavior had all combined to make him familiar with written promises of doom.

  He cleared his throat and read the letter aloud.

  “My friend Tucker, you may have run your share of successful businesses, but you don’t belong here. Running a few errands for Mr G isn’t the same thing as running a family business with generations of history in both New York and Chicago. Please accept this as a parting gift for your trip back to South Carolina, or else accept it as payment for the funeral expenses incurred by your next of kin. Your one-time associate, Albert.’”

  The werewolf almost choked on his snarl of rage. “Shoot him.”

  Remy ducked behind the crates and snatched the velvet-lined tray along with an empty revolver. Quickly, he loaded the weapon.

  Anxious not to lose his opportunity, he stood hastily and aimed the weapon. Tucker had backed away across the floor toward the large metal containers on the west side of the warehouse, but he had caught him before he could reach cover.

  “Gosh,” he said to the werewolf, “it really is a shame when the people you thought were your friends turn out to be assholes because you screwed them over. Anyway, you’d best be going now.” He pulled the trigger.

  Tucker tensed and cringed but nothing happened.

  “Goddammit,” the man cursed. “I’m out of practice with revolvers. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to come closer?”

  The words had not even left his mouth when the werewolf bounded forward in one last desperate offensive.

  Remy stepped to the side, aimed the gun, and fanned the hammer like he’d seen in one of his grandfather’s Clint Eastwood movies to fire another three rounds.

  The charging mass of fur suddenly sprawled and uttered a high-pitched yelp like a dog that had been kicked in the ribs. While his adversary erupted in a long, sustained howl, he ran into cover behind the nearby crane-like equipment and peered around to examine his handiwork.

  Tucker, locked somewhere halfway between man and beast with tufts of wolf-fur sprouting from random places along his body, lay on his back with two bright red craters in his chest and stomach. His face grew pale.

  “Ha, ha,” he laughed through ragged breaths, although his voice and the crooked smile on his face were almost good-natured. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. “Your luck really is something, I must say. Mine, though”—he coughed and spat more blood up—“ain’t been so good lately…”

  His head lolled back and he became still and silent. The last of the fur had melted away.

  One of the two bodyguards had frozen in shock at the sight of the werewolf’s death. Remy aimed and fired the last silver bullet at him.

  The round did not strike the man but did catch the SMG magazine in his hand. It knocked it away from him and also made him reel back and lose his grip on the gun. As the man tried to regain his balance, the other guard finished reloading and aimed.

  Thankfully, Remington had the presence of mind to snatch a fresh weapon from one of the other opened crates and slap a magazine in. He aimed as the other guy fired. The first of the enemy barrage missed him again. His head swelled with crazy elation and he simply ran forward and yelled at the top of his lungs while he fired on full auto.

  The guard panicked and leapt aside to barely avoid the spray. Remy bolted past him, out the front door of the warehouse, and into the night.

  The Tesla—badly scratched and dinged but amazingly, not totaled—rolled down a slight incline and stopped in front of him.

  Riley appeared out of one of the windows. “I can’t drive this at all, but I made the wheels turn so it rolled back here.”

  “That’s good enough,” he said. A quick glance assured him that she’d managed to fit the coffin into the back once she’d worked out how to fold all the seats down except the driver’s. The box barely looked big enough to hold even Taylor’s petite frame, which was a good thing in this case.

  He opened the door and slid in as the remaining bodyguard jumped out from behind his cover and fired again. The bullets ricocheted off the driver’s side door.

  “It’s time to leave,” Remy announced, started the engine, and pressed the gas pedal. He drove back the way he’d come toward the damaged gate. Halfway there, another thug poked his head and shoulders out from behind a shipping container and fired a shotgun. The buckshot sparked off the windshield but left only a faint crack.

  Irritated, he flipped him off as he passed and they accelerated out onto the street.

  “What a rush. I basically owned all those guys. and even slew a goddamn werewolf. I knew I had it in me after how good I was at video games. They really can teach you a thing or two that ends up being useful in real life. In fact, I can’t wait for Taylor to hear about all this—”

  The fairy sighed. “About how you did all of this on your own, you mean. Without any help.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Harrison, Westchester County, New York

  When Taylor awoke, she knew at once that something was wrong. What it was, exactly, remained to be seen. But something in the air—the vibe and smell of it—was off.

  She refused to panic or to do anything hasty. That would be worse than doing nothing at all. Instead, she lay where she was and noted the subtle signs of her predicament with all five of the senses she had retained from her mortal life as well as the vaguely defined sixth sense she had gained in undeath.

  At first, when she’d come to live in the old house in one of the oldest parts of the New World, she had, with her own hands, dug out a neat rectangle of earth at the bottom of the spiraling caverns beneath the estate.

  In this sepulchral alcove within her natural tomb, she had slept. Not every day but often, and especially during times of trouble, for many, many years. She knew the cave inside and out—every detail, every nuance of the air quality and electromagnetic balance, and faint seismic activity.

  The vampire rested a moment, still and wide-eyed in the darkness, and her mind identified the disturbance at last. There were too little weight and pressure above her—above the ceiling of the cave.

  That, she knew, could mean at least two things.

  One, it might indicate a strange weather event—a powerful thunderstorm or a tornado or some such thing. But it was early autumn, not prime storm season, and tornados were exceedingly rare in this part of the country.

  The other possibility was that her coffin was missing. And if that were the case, there were many explanations. None of them were particularly encouraging.

  After a moment’s thought, she raised her arms from their folded position over her chest and curled her fingers over the edge of the open grave. When she pulled herself upward, she’d already begun to float and now drifted through the stale air and pitch-blackness toward the top of the cavern.

  Taylor extended a hand and felt the rock ceiling. Yes—her coffin was gone. She could not ascend to the cellar the quick or easy way.

  She wanted to curse but held her tongue. There was t
he chance, both frightening and infuriating in its implications, that her enemies had struck and that this was their doing. They might be waiting for her even now, keeping a close vigil over the basement, alert to the existence of the hidden vault beneath it.

  But more likely, her casket’s truancy was the result of some stupid fucking thing Remington had done.

  The thought brought with it a surge of irritation. She wafted down at an angle to the crude ramp-staircase hybrid she had carved into the rock walls of the cave. Her feet touched on the surface some ten feet above the cavern floor. From there, she walked softly and silently upward. The steps encircled the dark space and came to an end in a narrow gap which abutted the extreme rear corner of her wine cellar.

  There were no sounds—no noises of movement, no breathing, and no pulse. Unless others among the living dead awaited her, the cellar was empty.

  Satisfied that there was no immediate danger, she pushed the heavy stone trapdoor open and climbed into her basement, racks of wine casks to either side.

  After a quick glance assured her that nothing lay in ambush, she hurried around the corner and beyond the steps that led to the ground floor and examined the sarcophagus built into the floor.

  The space within was empty, as she’d expected. There was light scuffing on the stone of the enclosure and the clear outline of where her casket had rested on the lid. And footsteps, almost invisible to any but her, showed in the thin layer of dust on the floor and steps. It looked as though four or five pairs of feet had come through several hours before and another pair more recently than that.

  “Dammit,” she whispered and her small hands rolled into fists. “One way or another, someone will pay for this.”

  Careful to make no noise, she ascended the stairs and opened the door cautiously. Her senses did not warn her of anyone lurking nearby. The whole house was still and silent.

  Except for a single, faint heartbeat from somewhere in the kitchen.