by J. Thorn
“And I’m gonna kill Serafino.”
“Yeah, that, too,” Chuck said. “Who exactly is this Serafino? He some kind of general or some shit?”
“I’ll explain on the way. There are hundreds of those creatures below us, and I know that at least some of them can be out in the sunlight. I suggest that we walk and talk.”
“I don’t think we’ll be walking too far.”
Dax went to the edge of the building and looked down. He smiled as he saw his boat in the water below.
“We won’t have to. Come on.”
Chapter 40
Four hands caressed Serafino’s chest and stomach as he stared up at the ceiling.
“We finally have him,” Yvonne said. “You found him.”
“With the Seer captured, our faction can end the war,” Jonas said, lying on Serafino’s other side and running the tips of his fingers down the vampire’s chest. “The world shall be ours.”
Serafino closed his eyes. With Dax imprisoned, he’d decided to shut down signals from the legion. He had given the lowly soldiers permission to show him the landscape through their eyes when they were searching for the man, but now that Jackson had been captured, Serafino had suspended their ability to do so. He wanted to enjoy his victory by celebrating with Yvonne and Jonas—without interruption.
It would still be another couple of days before the other vampire factions arrived in the United States, and Serafino wanted to rest his body for the impending war that lay ahead. The North American faction would need his refined and ruthless fighting skills. He ran his hand through Jonas’ blonde hair.
“It is not ours yet. We still have a treacherous battle ahead of us.”
“But we have the weapon,” Yvonne said.
Serafino turned his head to Yvonne. He ran the back of his hand up her stomach and over her breast.
“And he will give us quite the advantage. But we still have to win the war under our Master’s command.”
Yvonne leaned in and whispered in Serafino’s ear. “There is nothing in the world that can stop us now.” She bit his ear, and the vampire moaned.
Footsteps sounded outside the door, followed by a knock. All three of them sat up. Serafino gritted his teeth. His soldiers knew not to disturb him when he was in his chamber.
“I’ll get it,” Jonas said.
“No,” Serafino replied. “Stay here. I will handle this.”
The vampire stood up, putting on a pair of black leather pants he’d found lying on a table at the former rock club which was now his compound, along with a black t-shirt he’d plucked from a bloated corpse in Harrah’s Casino. Serafino then opened the door.
Two vampires stood in the doorway. He sighed, deciding it was probably best to telepathically reconnect with his soldiers. Their verbal abilities were always so… well, limited.
Pardon, the vampire began, speaking directly into Serafino’s mind, but there is a—
Serafino grabbed the soldier by the throat. The orange in its eyes faded and it fought to breathe, slowly shifting back to human form.
How dare you interrupt me when I am in my chamber? What is the meaning of this?
There is a problem, the other vampire said.
Serafino looked at the other vampire and scanned his mind. He then dropped the soldier he had been holding, its eyes glowing orange again as it lay on the floor, gasping. The vampire shoved his minions aside and marched down the hallway.
Most of his army had already stood in formation even before he began stomping through them. When he arrived in the designated prison wing of the building where they had constructed a few cells, he saw that two guards stood in front of the door at the end of the hall.
Serafino raised his hand, and both the vampires came off the ground. He then motioned at the nearby wall, and the two soldiers slammed against it, clearing the way to the door. He marched forward and kicked it down.
The cages were empty.
Serafino walked all the way into the room, grabbing onto the bars of the cell Dax had occupied. A body lay on the floor inside, a puncture wound visible in the man’s chest as his dead human eyes stared up at the ceiling.
Footsteps sounded on the floor, and Serafino felt the presence of Yvonne and Jonas behind him.
“This can’t be,” Yvonne said.
Gripping the bars tighter, Serafino roared. He stormed around the room, smashing the steel bars with his fists until they turned bloody.
“Master?” Jonas asked when it went quiet.
But Serafino’s temper had not subsided.
He moved past his two lieutenants and into the hallway. With one hand, he used his magic to lift three vampires into the air, sucking the life out of them without touching them. With his other, he took a more aggressive approach. One of his soldiers stood against the wall, and Serafino drove the bottom of his fist into its face, exploding its head against the brick wall. The impact left a bloody splatter on the wall as the body fell to the floor.
The orange completely faded from the three vampires he had suspended in mid-air as they died, turning back into humans. Serafino drove his hand toward the wall, tossing them into it.
A vampire approached Serafino with his arms up. He grabbed the soldier by the temples and ripped its head from his neck. He then tossed the head against the wall as the vampire’s body toppled over.
“Serafino!”
Jonas stood in front of the open doors, his eyes on the angry vampire.
“Stop this! What you’re doing is not going to—”
From halfway down the hallway, Serafino lifted Jonas off the ground. Serafino approached his co-lieutenant. Jonas clutched his throat, his eyes wide and fading.
“How dare you speak to me in such a manner? Do you not know that this is your fault? These are your soldiers, Lieutenant. You are the one who was supposed to train them. How did they let two humans escape?”
“I—”
“Silence!” Serafino shouted. “You are a waste. Of no use to the faction.”
Jonas’ eyes faded to a dull orange now, turning back to their human color of blue.
But I thought you loved me, Jonas said to Serafino through thoughts.
“I love nothing. I am a monster.”
Serafino dropped Jonas. The vampire landed upon the floor and rolled onto his side. Jonas’ eyes flared with an orange glow, and he gasped for air.
“No,” Jonas said. “Please, don’t.”
Using his mental powers, Serafino pushed Jonas into the cell without touching him. He then shut and locked the door using the same magic.
“Someone must suffer for this,” Serafino said. He looked to Yvonne. “With me, Lieutenant.”
Jonas screamed as Serafino slammed the door, leaving the Swede in the same position as a caged animal.
Chapter 41
The further they traveled from The Republic—the former rock club that was now the compound and prison of Serafino—the more Dax let off the throttle to preserve gas. He looked back every few seconds, though, worried that the Screamers would be following them.
“I think we’re clear, bro,” Chuck said.
“Can’t be too sure with these things.”
“You said they can’t really come out in the sun anyway. Right?”
“I’ve seen some of them do it. But they keep changing and adapting. Nothing surprises me anymore.”
They kept moving through the city, trying to find somewhere to hide. It seemed like nowhere was safe. Looking around at the buildings, Dax knew there could be Screamers in any of them. Serafino’s army had continued to grow, and Dax wondered how he was going to defeat the vampire.
“Bro, this is some shit.”
Dax glanced over to see Chuck looking out at the city. The rain came down steadily, and the water had risen a few more feet since the last time he’d been outside. Bodies floated on the surface of the water.
Chuck pointed at them as they drifted past. “Look at all these people.”
Dax had become nu
mb to the number of corpses in the city. As he steered the boat around them, he tried to remind himself that each obstacle represented a human life that had been lost.
“Where you gonna go when all this is done?” Chuck asked.
“All I can worry about is where we’re going now.”
“And where’s that?”
Dax shrugged. “A place with a lot of windows that’ll let the sunlight in.”
“I wish we could get back to my warehouse. It’s probably flooded by now, but I’d bet my guns are still there.”
“Guns wouldn’t be any good to us.”
“When these things had us trapped before, you didn’t know shit. Even burning the building down with them inside was a guess, right?”
“I met a man who knew a lot about them. But then they killed him. That was right before I saw you again.”
“Sorry, man.”
“It was my fault he died. And I can’t let the same thing happen to the kids.”
Chuck picked up the gas can. “Why don’t we go back there and burn their place down?”
“I have to be sure that Serafino’s dead. He could escape without me knowing. Besides, what if there are other humans in there? Surely we weren’t the only ones.”
“There’s going to be some sacrifices through all this.”
Dax shook his head. “Not on my watch. I’ve got enough blood on my hands. Plus, if Serafino is gone, some other vampire in their faction is going to step up and come after me. They need to use me to fight the other factions. So I might never be free.”
As Chuck looked back at him, Dax realized that Chuck had no idea what he was talking about. For all he knew, Serafino was one of dozens of high-ranking vampires serving a Master of the North American faction. The thought made Dax shiver.
Chuck pointed to a nearby building. “Hey, what about that place?”
The fifteen-story office building was skinned in glass. Several of the windows had been broken, but most were intact.
“There’s enough daylight left for us to at least hang in one of those exterior rooms for a while. Even if those things are in there, they won’t be able to get to us.”
“You ever going to start calling them what they are?”
Chuck paused. “I’m not totally sure I believe that yet.”
Dax didn’t respond. But he agreed with Chuck that the office building would be the perfect hideout. At least until the sun went down. He steered the boat toward it.
He pulled the boat up next to a broken window. Dax followed Chuck through the opening then, careful not to cut himself on the shards of glass still hanging in the frame. A phone sitting on a desk had a long cord leading to the wall. He unplugged it and tied the boat to the leg of the desk with the cable.
They walked out of the door and into the next room—an office. Both men agreed they would rather be inside a room with a window than one where the window had been broken.
Papers had been scattered on the floor and a chair lay on its side. But the desk remained upright, complete with a computer and all of the personal belongings of the person who’d worked there. Dax sat in a chair across the room while Chuck sat behind the desk.
Leaning his head back against the wall, Dax closed his eyes.
“Look at this shit,” Chuck said, laughing.
Chuck was holding a framed photograph in his hand. Leaning back in the chair, he was shaking his head. He turned the picture toward Dax.
“Lookin’ pretty fuckin’ happy, ain’t they?”
A man and a woman sat on the grass in a big, beautiful park. Their three children, ranging from ages of around four to ten, sat in front of them.
“You think they made it?” Chuck asked.
Dax frowned and stood up. He went to the window and looked outside, turning his back to Chuck. The picture made him think of the missing kids. Of Kevin.
“Come on, man,” Chuck said. “I’m just messing around.”
“Well, why don’t you quit fucking around and try to come up with a way to kill Serafino and the Screamers?”
Dax turned as something moved inside the building.
“You hear—”
Dax put his finger to his mouth, urging Chuck to be quiet. He drew the stake out and moved slowly toward the door. Dax looked both ways down the hall and saw nothing. He exited the room and went to his left.
The short hallway ended a couple of doors down and turned right. Dax glanced down the next hallway. He could see half of it from the light coming in through the open office doors, while the back half sat shrouded in darkness. Chuck came up behind him.
“I ain’t going down there where it’s dark,” Chuck said.
Dax stepped into the hallway.
“Did you not hear me?” Chuck asked.
“As long as we stay near the light, we’re fine. That sound came from down here. I want to scope it out.”
Dax stopped in front of the first door and poked his head inside. It was another office, with a set-up similar to the others they’d seen. He stopped in front of each room, seeing much of the same—office furniture in various states of disarray.
When he approached the middle of the hallway, Dax stopped at the line where the sunlight ended, and where the darkness began.
“We don’t need to go any further, bro,” Chuck said. “That noise was probably a rat or some shit.”
That’s a big rat.
A crash followed by a scream came from behind Dax. A woman had charged out of one of the offices with a knife over her head. She drove it into Chuck’s shoulder before he could even react.
Chuck screamed and fell against the nearby wall, clutching his shoulder. The woman snarled like a rabid animal. She lifted the knife over her head again, ready to finish the job. Dax grabbed her by the wrists, shaking her arms violently. The woman yelped and dropped the knife so that Dax was easily able to push her to the ground; he readied the stake to drive it through her heart. Then the woman looked up at him, and Dax cocked his head.
Normal eyes.
“You’re human.”
While Dax had been speaking, the woman had jumped to her feet and raced into one of the nearby offices. Dax followed her.
The desk and chairs in the middle of the room had been flipped. The wind whipped through the room, swirling hundreds of papers into the air and across the floor. At the far side of the room, the greasy-haired woman sat on the windowsill, staring back at Dax.
“It’s all right,” Dax said. He dropped the stake. “We aren’t here to hurt you. You’re scared. I don’t blame you for what you did to my friend.”
The woman breathed heavily. She didn’t respond to Dax.
“Are you here alone? How long have you been here?”
Still, the woman didn’t respond.
“I’m here to help you.”
The woman mumbled something in response, but Dax couldn’t understand her. He stepped into the center of the room and asked her to repeat herself.
“Nothing can help us,” the woman said.
She put one leg out the window. Then the other so that her back was to him.
“No!” Dax yelled, racing forward.
The woman pushed off the ledge and fell out of the window. Dax ran over and saw her splash into the floodwater. She didn’t swim or struggle. Her body disappeared beneath the black, sludgy water. He stood at the window, waiting for her head to pop up, but it didn’t. After a minute or two, the woman’s body floated to the surface, face down. Dax watched as the floodwaters slowly pulled her away and toward the sea.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head.
Chapter 42
In the hallway, Chuck sat with his back against the wall. He had his hand pressed against the wound to his shoulder while he grimaced in pain. Blood covered his hand.
“Keep pressure on it,” Dax said. “I’m going to find something to wrap it with.”
Dax checked two of the nearby offices before he found something. Someone had left their sport coat draped over the back
of a chair, and Dax snatched it and returned to the hallway. Kneeling down, Dax ripped Chuck’s shirt sleeve to bare the wound.
“Move your hand.”
The wound looked deep, and blood pulsed from it. But if they could keep pressure on it and stop the bleeding, it wouldn’t be life-threatening.
Dax ripped the sleeve off of the sport coat. He wrapped it around Chuck’s arm and over the wound, then tied it. He pulled tight, and Chuck grimaced.
“Sorry, bro,” Dax said. “Gotta get enough pressure to stop the bleeding.”
After double-knotting it and assuring the makeshift bandage was tight enough, Dax used the woman’s knife to trim off the extra fabric.
“What happened in there?” Chuck asked.
“She jumped. Drowned herself,” Dax said, leaving out what the woman had said to him.
“Crazy-ass bitch. You think she was here alone?”
“I don’t know. Hang here for a sec. And make sure the pressure stays on that.”
Dax went back into the room where the woman had been hiding. A sofa sat up against the far wall, with blankets draped across it. On the floor next to the sofa, Dax saw a single bag. From what he could see, the woman had been living here alone—it also appeared as if she had been here for days, maybe longer. Perhaps the Screamers hadn’t searched this building yet?
Dax kneeled and rummaged through the bag. The first thing he pulled out was a small bottle of ibuprofen. He shook it, and the pills rattled around inside. It felt about half-full. He pulled a piece of bread out next, covered in plastic wrap. Dax had already started to open it when he noticed the bluish-green growth on the bottom. He tossed it to the other side of the room. Next, he found a sealed freezer bag, a quarter-way filled with mixed nuts. Dax set it down next to the ibuprofen. He next opened up a zippered pouch and found a black soft-cover case. He set it down on the ground and unzipped it. The case spread wide, revealing its contents—a syringe, along with a spoon and a lighter.
Heroin addict.
Dax’s thoughts immediately went to his sister. He felt flushed as the image of her hanging in the closet came to mind. Standing up, he fought off a head rush before catching his balance. He looked to his left and spotted a nearby table. On top of it sat a belt and a small balloon with a few grams of heroin inside.
