His voice carried a vestigial Chicago accent beneath its New York patois when it echoed from behind the statue. “That was real clever, Taylor, very fuckin’ witty,” he said. “Turn my guys into chum and sell them to an aquarium.”
“Oh.” The vampire sheathed her sword, drew her pistol, and made sure the gauntlet was secure on her left hand. “They disobeyed me and did warn you, after all?”
“Nah,” Albert retorted. “The casino is bugged everywhere. You’d be amazed by what you can hear. Like this time. You’re wrong though, lady. You are the one who’s gonna be sleeping with the fishes. By dawn.”
His voice changed at that last word. Dawn. It was no longer a human being who spoke.
Taylor stepped out as the werewolf launched into his attack.
She was already firing her pistol but Albert was smarter than she’d expected. The beast hurtled through the air and held a riot shield in front of him, which he’d concealed behind the statue. The silver bullets either flattened against it or ricocheted off.
Her one advantage was that the riot shield slowed him down. She darted aside, evaded his sudden lunge by at least a yard, and aimed her pistol as he landed heavily.
Briefly, she studied her opponent. She vaguely recalled that Albert was a wiry, weaselly-looking man. As lycanthropes went, he was noticeably slender and his fur was a whitish-silver streaked with black. Although not as powerfully built as some she’d seen, there was a lithe agility to him that gave her pause. When he operated at his peak, he was potentially as fast as she was.
He whipped the shield around in time to intercept her next two shots and surprised her when he threw the object like a discus at her hands and face.
Defying gravity, she spun to raise her feet skyward but her hands were too slow. The edge of the shield dislodged the gun from them. As her feet touched the ceiling, she drew her sword.
Albert glared at her, his lupine eyes a venomous yellow-green. “Get back down here,” he snarled. He kicked her pistol toward one of the floor-length windows, shattered now by the gunfire and chaos, and it toppled out of the building. With her disarmed of her pistol, he leapt at her.
The vampire plummeted as her attacker vaulted up. She whipped her sword down, intending to simply skewer him in midair, but to her surprise, he managed to hurl himself aside, seize her by the wrist, and twist it sharply. Her forearm cracked and the force of the maneuver made her twist to land hard and painfully. The sword clattered away from her.
The werewolf landed next to her. He’d put himself in a corner but given that she was sprawled on the floor and the killing urge was upon him, he probably didn’t care.
Taylor gritted her teeth and allowed her fangs to show as she scrambled to her feet and cradled her right arm. It would only need a few seconds to heal. “You might be the fastest werewolf I’ve fought, Albert,” she conceded. He grinned and took a step toward her. “But you’re not the strongest. Or the brightest.”
Rather than lunge or jump, she simply walked toward him. He hesitated for a second in confusion before he raised his claws. She ducked under them and pounded him with a body-slamming bear hug, heedless of the pain it caused her right arm, and drove him back against the wall.
Faced with this kind of brute force, he reacted exactly as she thought he would. He tried to bite her head off. Her left hand, sheathed in its gauntlet, was ready.
Albert’s jaws closed around the hand. She growled in response to his, leaned back, and shoved her metal-clad fist deeper between them and down his throat. His jaws clamped down, but she was too well-positioned for him to break her other arm and his teeth were useless against the steel-and-titanium armor. He made a horrible gagging sound as her limb vanished up to the elbow in his mouth.
By now, her right arm was back in commission. She used it to hold the werewolf’s thrashing arms and braced herself as he tried to kick her in the stomach with his skinny hind legs. She shoved her left arm farther down his throat. By now, his teeth had begun to rake the flesh of her upper arm, but his jaws were too immobilized to do much damage.
Grunting with strain, she used the leverage she now had to hoist the entire beast up and bring the center of his back down on her knee. His howl of pain when his spine cracked was muffled by her fist.
She punched all the way down and her gauntleted hand burst through the flesh and bone of the back of his neck. When she ripped it to the side, his jaw came loose while the rest of his head rolled to the side and hung next to his shoulder as gore fountained from the wound.
The vampire pushed away to leave the ravaged lycanthrope whimpering in a heap while she retrieved her sword. He’d barely had the chance to start regenerating before she pounced and drove the blade through his heart.
A feeble howl escaped him. She twisted the sword and ripped it free, taking the heart with it. She pulled it off the blade and crushed it.
After a final, gurgling sigh, Albert fell still. The silver hairs faded from the body of a broken, half-decapitated, and otherwise mangled human.
“Prick,” she muttered and tossed the crushed organ aside. “I have an arrangement with the Family. Splinter factions like yours only fuck things up for everyone.”
Now, she needed to find Gabriel.
She heard something—faintly, distantly, the kind of thing mortal ears would not have picked up. It was someone, probably a security officer, speaking into a headset.
“Blow the floor,” he ordered.
Taylor bolted toward the window but didn’t quite make it.
Bright light and deafening noise filled the whole world in the same moment that her foot stood poised on the windowsill, ready to jump. An ancient and primal terror of the sun—the only other thing that was that bright—filled her.
And then she fell and all she could see was fire.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chappaqua, Westchester County, New York
The blast had scorched about a third of Taylor’s skin off and the fall had broken her shinbone and thrust it out of the flesh. She slid it into place and lay in the grass, making no sound. They might assume she was dead already and burnt to a crisp. Hopefully, the hesitation of their uncertainty would provide her with the time she needed to regenerate.
The pain was intense but she knew it wouldn’t kill her. They hadn’t managed that, not yet. Knowing she could recover in minutes made it far more bearable. She recalled, dimly, her past life as a human and the fear she’d had that any great pain was a harbinger of death. That kind of fear applied to very few things anymore.
She’d also learned something useful. Sacrificing the top floor of the house meant that Gabriel was not there. Either he was on the ground floor or, more likely, underground.
And with his lackeys trying to decide if they’d eliminated her, she had a window of opportunity to sneak in and finish the job.
Once the worst of the pain had subsided and her leg was mostly mended, she found her sword beside her and levitated slowly from the grass and toward the nearest tree. Once hidden within its branches, she surveyed the mansion.
The planted explosives had wrought massive havoc and the third floor effectively did not exist anymore. The second was also badly damaged, but whoever had placed them had been skilled since the first floor had barely been touched.
Most vampires, when threatened, sought refuge in the earth. Taylor peered through the shattered windows, her keen perception seeking out the fastest path that might lead to the basement.
There—beyond the window toward the left side was a hallway leading into the center of the house. That seemed like her best option.
By now, a few paramilitary guys were fanning out into the yard, searching the grass with the flashlights attached to their guns. There were two of them between her and the window she’d identified.
She waited until their attention was focused earthward before she leapt, silent and graceful, from one tree to another and cleared both of them before the first of the men was beneath her. He started to turn and look
ed upward.
Taylor snapped a heavy branch off and flung it at the guard. He saw it too late and tried to stumble back but it came down on his head and pinned him to the ground.
His teammate a few yards ahead heard the noise and saw what had happened immediately—although he did not see Taylor. “Wilkes!” he hissed into his headset. “Ramirez is down. A fuckin’ tree branch fell on him.”
The vampire drifted into the night sky as the man’s light panned the tree she’d recently occupied. Then, when she was directly above him, she allowed herself to plunge straight down.
He looked up, his face frozen in shock behind the glossy visor of his helmet, and she collided with a soft thump. Her feet came down on his shoulders, crushed the bones, and drove him into a crumpled heap. Other men—some of whom almost sounded like dwarves, she realized—exchanged fearful chatter over their headsets while she raced across the lawn and vaulted at her target window.
Fortunately, the explosion had already shattered the glass, even on the first floor. She soared through the aperture like a dolphin through a hoop, somersaulted and landed on her feet within. The house was dark but this was no impediment to her. She streaked into the central hallway.
Three creatures in paramilitary gear waited for her, guarding a doorway that gave off a slight whiff of subterranean air. The one on the left was definitely a dwarf, judging by his build.
“Kill her,” he ordered.
They opened fire with their automatic rifles and sprayed a fusillade of silver bullets. She vaulted up and ran along the wall, then the ceiling, and barreled into them. At least four of the bullets struck her. The two that caught her torso were absorbed by her Kevlar vest, but the two in her legs sank into her flesh.
She ignored the nauseating pain and hurtled forward with a massive sweeping hook-kick. The two humans catapulted away, crashed into the walls, and groaned with pain. The dwarf, however, merely lurched back a step or two.
Taylor bounced off him and turned the motion into a rear handspring. Her adversary aimed his weapon again and fired, this time discharging what looked like a short-range flamethrower blast. Her feet were singed but she dodged most of the flame.
When she stopped in a three-point crouch, he had already begun his advance. She flung the sword at him like a javelin.
He cursed and fell back as the blade sank into his chest. His arms fell and the flamethrower discharged another fiery blast at the floor before his legs gave out and he toppled.
The vampire hurdled the flames and dragged the sword free before she aimed another kick at his head to be sure he wouldn’t bother her any further. Finally, she turned to the basement door.
Her enemy was somewhere within. “It’s time to finish this.”
She breathed deeply and paused for a moment to wrestle the nausea under control. Already, her body was squeezing out the silver bullets and cleansing the residue from her bloodstream. Too much silver could have incapacitated her for entire minutes, but these guys hadn’t been good enough shots for that.
The door was sealed with a heavy mechanical lock. Taylor drew her fist back and punched the mechanism twice with her gauntlet. It shattered and the door creaked inward to reveal a concrete staircase leading down. She detected no sign of living things there, but she did sense electronics.
Quickly, she knelt and cut the thick bulletproof vest from one of the human troops she’d battered. She also took his rifle for good measure. The man started to stir, so she thumped his skull hard into the wall and knocked him out again. With the vest held in front of her as an extra layer of protection, she crept down the stairs.
At the second-to-last step, something whirred in the split-second before all hell broke loose.
A barrage of heavy gunfire pounded into the vest, which slowed the bullets but it quickly began to shred apart.
Drone gun, Taylor thought. She hurled the vest toward the weapon and flitted to the side, her sword already out, and slashed upward toward the muzzle flare. Metal sheared metal and the gun made an off-kilter whining sound as it faltered and died.
She inspected the sword. The blade was slightly warped and the edge had taken a few chips from all the punishment she’d put it through, but it was still functional. It would kill, and that was what mattered.
The cellar before her was immense and filled with all manner of useless junk—consumer technology, expensive trinkets, extra furniture, and the like. Her gaze slid over these items and instead, sought Gabriel’s refuge of last resort.
She found it soon enough in the center of the basement. Looming like a lost elevator car, a steel box formed a room-within-a-room. She strolled toward it.
“Stop,” a voice snapped, electronically magnified. It was thick with the imperative tone of her species but the power of command did not work on her. She stopped anyway, though. She wanted to hear what this son of a bitch had to say now that he was cornered.
The vampire looked toward a tiny glinting circle, which she assumed was the lens of a camera that watched her and transmitted the information to the safe room’s interior. Beside it was a speaker and a microphone.
“Yes, Gabriel?” she inquired.
“You might as well give it up at this point, Taylor,” he replied, and she had to admit he sounded smoother and more confident than she’d expected. “Even before I remind you of all the other forces arrayed against you. There are currently four inches of steel between us. Not even you can punch through that. Ha, ha…Taylor Steele. It’s fitting that you’d meet your demise as a result of it. Unless, of course, you take the hint and leave New York forever. You’re no longer wanted here.”
She frowned, unamused. “No,” she stated.
Gabriel started to say something else but she directed a spin-kick at the thick metal door. Her leg stung and the very bones vibrated but the steel was dented only slightly.
“See?” He sneered. “You’ve been skipping leg day, haven’t you? In the time it will take you to break through, my numerous allies will converge on you. For starters, Albert and his coterie of professional killers will be along at any moment, adding their strength to my own men.”
Taylor scoffed. “They were upstairs. I already disposed of them. And your own security personnel are currently all dead, disabled, or guilty of desertion now that they’ve seen what I’m capable of. Anything else?”
Before he could answer, she picked up a heavy oak table and threw it at the door with all her strength. It shattered and filled the air with brown splinters, but the steel caved a little more.
“Tucker,” her adversary continued, but a trace of agitation had crept into his tone now, “is also on his way with a highly impressive arsenal. Not even you can come back from simply being shredded to pieces, which is exactly what will happen once he and his men arrive.”
“Oh,” she retorted cheerfully. “Tucker once again underestimated my assistant. He won’t be a problem anymore—for either of us or anyone else. Ever.” She punched the door in frustration, inflicted far too little damage, and looked around for something else to use as a battering ram.
He pretended to laugh, and Taylor answered it immediately. “Didn’t you know that, Gabriel? That was hours ago. Have you been hiding in there all this time? Or was that merely an inept attempt to bluff me?”
“For your information,” he went on, “there was also an impromptu vote by several important local figures after I convened them to talk. Nine out of ten agreed that you need to get the hell out of town, Taylor. Continue with your rampage and you’ll soon have the entire preternatural community against you, along with half the humans.”
The vampire retrieved the severed half of the drone gun and charged the door with it. The weapon crumpled on impact, but the steel barrier dented further and even sprouted a tiny crack.
“Now,” she said toward the microphone, “you are flat-out lying. No such conference ever took place, and most of the influential people here still support me.”
“I would support you,” Gabriel coun
tered, his words hurried now, “if you would amend your policies only slightly. Think of it—I was able to arrange all this. That proves I’m capable of making things happen. Your organization could benefit greatly from my help. Ha, I could be your youth consultant. You are getting somewhat long in the tooth, even for a vampire.”
She saw a spare refrigerator in one corner of the basement, picked it up, whirled quickly, and launched it at the safe room as she came out of the spin. It struck the door head-on with an impact sound almost as loud as a gunshot. The top half broke into its component chunks while the rest buckled and clattered to the floor.
When she walked toward the chamber, she saw that the door was now distorted to the point that a sliver of air and light was visible around the edge.
“Your offer,” she told him, “is appreciated. Thank you for your interest in employment with Moonlight Detective Agency. However, at this time we are unable—”
“One day,” he interjected, his voice twice its previous volume, “you’ll step on the wrong dog turd and slip into an open manhole. Maybe not today. But no tyrant reigns forever.” A faint noise issued over the speaker which she recognized as the sound of knuckles cracking.
She thrust forward and kicked the door in. The thick steel slab detached itself from its bracings and crashed inwards. By then, she was already through, her automatic rifle raised.
Gabriel had flattened himself against the wall, as she suspected, and aimed a sub-machine gun, probably loaded with silver-tipped ammo. She fell into a somersault and avoided the first deafening shot as she aimed quickly and fired.
A stream of lead burst across the small space and perforated his bicep, armpit, and shoulder to spill blood across his black turtleneck. He stumbled and dropped the gun.
Taylor launched furiously into the attack, surged at her foe, and jump-kicked him in the stomach. He grunted and careened into the far wall. When she moved in, his left hand snaked out and caught her sword in mid-swing.
Last Ditch Effort Page 25
