Throat

by R. A. Nelson

  The nail gun was too clunky to hang on to, but I couldn’t just leave it for the vampires to use against me. I picked it up and hurled it over the side. Far below I could hear its firing mechanism burp twice as it hit the ground, then everything was still. I stepped over Bastien’s body and staggered toward the tower.

  “What about on top?” I said into the mike.

  “They’re not there anymore, but—”

  “Hang on. Don’t say anything for a little while. I want to go up and look.”

  I avoided the catwalks but instead took the stairways, favoring my sore foot, until I came to a little platform near the top that was a kind of balcony leading to nowhere.

  I listened intently. Nothing. I wiped my blood-sticky fingers on my jeans and spat, trying to shake off the feeling of sickness that was washing over me. I doused my face and rinsed my mouth from a little water bottle Sagan had insisted I keep in my tool belt.

  I swore.

  “What?” Sagan said.

  “I forgot to pick up the angle grinder!”

  “Can you go back and get it?”

  “No. I left it next to Bastien.… Stupid. Where are they now?”

  “There’s nobody.… Wait. The door to position eight—the hallway—it just opened and closed, but nobody came out!”

  “You’re sure? Maybe you didn’t see them.”

  “I don’t know. They’re so freaking fast.”

  “Which side?”

  “The side under the gantry.”

  I checked my tool belt. No weapons left on me except a small steel vial of hydrofluoric acid, a solvent so powerful, NASA used it to etch glass. Sagan said HF would eat through your skin and instantly go to work chelating the calcium in your bones until you were dead. I was pretty much terrified of using it.

  I ran out onto the nearest catwalk and felt beneath it for the double-bladed ax we had attached there with bungee cords. It would be kind of clumsy to carry around, but I felt safer holding it as I jumped up to the roof.

  There was no one there. The generator and my other things looked as if they hadn’t been touched. I slipped the ax’s long handle through my belt.

  “I’m at position one again,” I said into the headpiece.

  “Yeah, I see you.”

  “Where are they? What are they doing?”

  The headset made a clipped little chirping noise like a cornered bird. I gasped a little, feeling the sound in my heart.

  “Sagan? Sagan, are you there?”

  I waited for him to speak again, every nerve strained to the snapping point.

  “Sagan!”

  I ran across the top of the tower and leapt onto the big gantry. Ran toward the end of the long iron arm so that I could get a better look at the entrance to the bunker. I stopped and leaned over and could see pretty much everything: the low block walls protruding from the hill, the concrete face of the bunker, the blank doors and observation windows, and even a little ways inside. All was still. I touched the mike.

  “Sagan! Where are you? Sagan!”

  Something caught my attention out of the corner of my eye.

  I looked toward the end of the gantry. At the far end was a ladder-like web of steel that ran straight down all the way to the rocket engine exhaust pit below. It was the fastest way down, other than falling. I started toward it.

  Someone was there, standing at the other end in a cloud of lavender light.

  It was the giant baby-faced vampire. He was crouched and holding a length of pipe in his left hand. Like Bastien, his face was still white from the chlorine I had doused him with. When he noticed me looking, he swung the pipe, catching it with a loud smack in his right hand. Blood from his injured fingers was dripping on his shoe.

  I looked to my right, over the railing at the nylon rope that was knotted there.

  The Verloren started toward me. I grabbed the rope and pulled hard. The end of the rope flew up in the air and I caught it with my fingers. What?

  The rope had been cut.

  “Are you looking for something, Wespe?” a voice said from behind me.

  I whirled around. Standing on the opposite end of the gantry was the vampire I had sandblasted who had flung himself off the tower. His face was pitted and raw and his eyes looked as if they were full of blood. He was holding the smoking chain saw. I was trapped between them.

  * * *

  I slid the ax out of my belt, trying not to look afraid. I watched the Verloren with the chain saw. He nodded at the giant vampire.

  “Be ready to catch her, George,” he said. “I have taken her sting. She’s coming your way.”

  The giant called George didn’t say anything, just stood there cradling his pipe. The other vampire looked at me again and licked his shredded lips. He took a couple of steps toward me, giving the chain saw trigger a growling burst. Choking clouds of bluish oil smoke filled the gantry.

  “I hear there is sunlight in your veins,” the Verloren said. “I think I will split you open and find out.”

  I felt as if I were inside an insane dream. I looked up. Nothing but cage all around, laced with big steel crossbeams. If they decided to rush me, I would be overwhelmed. I could try wriggling through the gap over the railing to climb on top of the gantry, but I was terrified that the vampire with the chain saw would get there before I could pull my legs all the way through. And then … The thought was too awful.

  I felt dizzy. No, not now, no! My head … I was terror-stricken by the possibility of a seizure. I took a deep breath. Both vampires advanced a couple of steps closer, taking their time, obviously wary.

  Wary. I had a flashback. This was a feeling I was used to. Where?

  Yes. Yes.

  Verloren were so big on respect, an honorable death. I stooped and laid the ax at my feet, as if it were a kind of offering.

  The vampires looked at each other, wondering where this was going. I fought my dizziness and battled to keep my voice steady.

  “What’s wrong?” I said. “I thought Verloren were supposed to be big-time warriors. Fighters. Afraid of nothing. And now you’re afraid of me? A Mädchen? A girl? Why don’t you go back down and find someone who isn’t so afraid.”

  Instead of waiting for them to run, I cried out myself and ran. Straight toward the big vampire called George. I heard the snarling roar of the chain saw flying at me from behind. I kept charging the huge Verloren. Now the giant ran at me, raising the steel pipe to crush my skull.

  At the very last moment, just as we were going to collide, I dropped down and threw my body into the nastiest slide tackle in the history of soccer, my butt scraping the steel floor of the gantry, leading with my feet.

  My trail boots caught George square in the ankles just as he was swinging the pipe, all his momentum carrying his huge body forward. The big vampire had his legs taken out from under him, was knocked headlong off his feet, and sailed over me as I slid beneath him.

  I twisted out of my slide just in time to see the Verloren with the chain saw, the one who had been chasing me.…

  He couldn’t stop.…

  George screamed. The whirling chain saw struck him on the side of the head, then skittered down his arm to the elbow. I felt the sound of the chain saw as much as heard it—the shrieking it made as the chain sank in deeply, through muscle and flesh and tendons. It jerked for a second against the bone, then the giant vampire’s forearm flopped on the gantry floor. The pipe he had been holding dropped from his dying fingers. The hand lay there, spasmodically curling and uncurling.

  Blood spouted from the stump of George’s arm, throwing a ragged red stripe across the other vampire’s face.

  Some of the blood splashed into the other Verloren’s mouth. A look instantly spread over his features that made me cold all the way to my shoes. The vampire yelled something unintelligible. Dropped the chain saw, lunging …

  I jumped to my feet … but the Verloren wasn’t lunging at me. He fell on George. Took the stump of the giant vampire’s arm … put it to his m
outh … and began to suck in each pulse of the hot blood.

  For a moment I stood there watching, paralyzed by something deeper than fear. George mewled like a wounded animal, kicking and writhing, head bleeding, trying to pull his arm away from the other Verloren’s mouth, and pleading in garbled German.

  Du bringst mich um. Du bringst mich um.

  I didn’t want to know what the words meant. The vampire who was drinking clung on like a shark with meat in its jaws.

  The ax was still lying where I had put it, not ten feet from where the two vampires were struggling together. I broke out of my trance and raced to pick it up.

  Do it. This is your chance. Kill them. Kill them both.

  I raised the ax. Clenched the handle so hard, it felt as if it might snap under my fingers. My hands shook. The vampire who was drinking didn’t even look up. He was gorging himself in a way that was so monstrous, so uncaring, I …

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. I lowered the ax and started to slip it through my tool belt, turning to go to the ladder.…

  Something slammed into me from behind. I fell to my stomach on the steel floor of the gantry and the ax flew out of my hands. The vampire was on top of me, the one who had been feeding on George. His face was a blood-soaked animal’s face. He pinned my wrists and twisted his head back and forth violently, trying to get at my throat. I pushed back as hard as I could, but it was all I could do to keep his teeth from tearing into me.

  The vampire strained his neck, manically trying to lower his mouth. He was making a high-pitched shrieking noise, desperate not to kill me, but to consume. The blood on his teeth dripped on my face. Slowly he bent my arms back in his fury until I could feel his breath on me, could see the red scratches in his eyes. I turned my head sideways, but his mouth descended closer and closer.…

  I heard a shuddering thunk, then another one. A blow so terrible, I felt it as a vibration through my whole body. The Verloren’s eyes changed, lost focus; slick blood pooled on my chest and started down my shirt.

  The vampire slumped against me. Someone was standing over him, clutching the long-handled garden hoe.

  It was Donne.

  “You came, thank God,” I said. “Thank God.”

  I shoved the dead vampire off of me and staggered to my feet. Donne dropped the hoe, looking with horror at her hands.

  “What have I done … what have I done …,” she said, running back to the tower and collapsing into Lena and Anton’s arms.

  They stared at me without speaking. I realized what I must look like to them. Crouched over. Sweating, furious, chest heaving. My face, neck, and arms splattered, clothes soaked in blackening blood, fingers sticky with it.

  “What was I supposed to do?” I said, pleading with my bloody hands. “Stand there and let them kill me?”

  Anton started to speak, but Lena held up her hand.

  “You were supposed to run, Emma. Hide. That was what you were supposed to do. All of us have made sacrifices. We cannot change our lives. This is out of our hands. The Sonneneruption …”

  I growled deep in my throat. “I’m not waiting for some mystical solar flare while they butcher my family! I don’t have time for this. Sagan is down there—they might be after him right now!”

  “You are an Auge,” Lena said. “We answered your Call. We came to protect you.”

  “Then fight them with me!”

  “No, but we can take you away from here.”

  I wanted to grab her and shake her. “What’s happened to you? Don’t you care who they kill? If we don’t do something, people I love will be dead tonight! If you won’t help me … you’re just like them. No. You’re worse. You’re cowards—if that’s what it is to be a Sonnen … screw you.”

  I turned to run back to the gantry.

  Lena grabbed my arm, spinning me around. “Emma, stop!”

  I almost hit her.… Something in her eyes made me lower my hands.

  “It was me,” she said, starting to weep. “I was the one. The leader of the group that attacked die Esserin. I sent them … I sent them to their deaths. It was me. It was me.”

  I looked at her a moment, then hurled myself onto the gantry, running for the ladder.

  I jumped the last few feet into the iron exhaust chute at the bottom, gulping in pain because of my injured foot. Clambered out and slipped to the ground. Nothing moved. I threw myself behind a corner of the tower and listened. The only sounds I could hear were the chain saw idling far above and George’s mutilated cries.

  My impulse was to rush straight to the bunker, but I touched the headset; the mike was still on.

  “Sagan, can you hear me?”

  I repeated the words several times and waited, but the earpiece only buzzed and hissed.

  I ran in a wide arc toward the bunker, avoiding the entrance, and positioned myself behind the slope of the hill. Through one of the observation holes I could see where Sagan had been sitting on the other side of the metal screen. The boxes were still there, but nothing else. He had moved.

  I felt as if ants were crawling over my heart. My only choice was to go inside the screen and try to find him. I raised my head, looking at the trees, the top of the bunker, anywhere Wirtz could be lurking. Nobody.

  I threw myself flat on the grass and crawled where the little hill rolled down to the concrete blocks. I edged over the wall and crouched, listening. I could hear water dripping far away. I ran in to see if the padlock was still fastened.…

  I went blind.

  Whatever hit me, it felt as if a concrete wall had collapsed on my head. I don’t know how long I was unconscious. I only knew I was awake before my eyes were open.

  A vampire can see through her eyelids. Not clearly, but enough to make out shapes, lights and darks. That’s what I was seeing now. As if my head were crammed with wads of cotton soaked in gray and black paint.

  I opened my eyes; the world was blurry and slow. But this wasn’t the aftermath of a seizure. I could immediately tell where I was. Above me I could see the iron skeleton of the test tower on one side and the low cement walls of the bunker on the other.

  I was lying on my back and could feel a trickle of blood running down my temple. I raised my head unsteadily; it ached terribly. I tried to sit up and discovered my arms and feet were bound with heavy chains. The chains were anchored in the gravelly soil with four long iron spikes as big around as baseball bats.

  Someone stepped into my field of view.

  The vampire’s lavender glow shifted and flowed over his body like fog moving around a living statue. His expression was almost sad.

  “I must admit I am … disappointed,” Wirtz said. “You will never be a Kriegerin. You have no honor.” He gestured at the tower. “I gave them to you, those four … Verloren. They were yours to release … but you could not finish them in an honorable way, could you?”

  I started to twitch and jerk uncontrollably, pulling against the spikes, but my arms were spread out as far as they could reach like da Vinci’s famous drawing of the man inside a circle. I couldn’t get enough leverage to use my strength to pull them out.

  I had failed. Failed. Was dead, gone, finished. And Sagan with me.

  I wished I had enough liquid in my mouth to spit out the dryness. I didn’t know if I could speak. I felt as if I was about to start hyperventilating. My eyes flitted around the clearing frantically. It was over. Everything was over.

  No. Think, Emma.

  I forced myself to focus on the vampire’s long face, concentrating as hard as I could. Took several long, deep breaths. Willing everything to slow down.

  “Where is he?” I said, speaking softly so maybe he wouldn’t hear the terror there. “Tell me what you did with him. What did you—”

  Wirtz dropped something hard and metallic on my stomach.

  Sagan’s laptop.

  It was still warm. I closed my eyes, feeling tears on my cheeks. Wirtz took the laptop away. I heard him take in a long, resigned breath. In some weird way I
felt almost comforted. Ready for it all to be over. The dumbest little pictures came into my head. Walking through our apartment, nobody at home. Dishes in the sink. Manda’s little shoes with the flowers on them sitting on the kitchen counter …

  “It is truly too bad, all of this,” the vampire said. “If only—”

  I opened my eyes and cursed. “Shut up. I don’t have to listen to this. Just do it. If you’re not going to tell me where he is, what you did with him … just get it over with.”

  Wirtz didn’t seem to be listening. His eyes were focused on something else. My tool belt. He bent and touched the little metal vial containing the acid.

  “And what is this?”

  I couldn’t believe he thought he had the right to keep asking me questions. I was about to curse him again when an idea came to me.

  “It’s the drug I use to induce a seizure,” I said. “You asked about my secret; that’s the way I do it. I make myself have a seizure.”

  The vampire fumbled with my belt and slipped the vial out of its pouch. “Drug. Are you saying this is some kind of … Pharmazeutik?”

  “Yeah, it’s from a pharmacy. It’s a seizure medicine. But I discovered by accident, if I take too much, it induces a seizure instead. That’s what gives me my powers.”

  Wirtz’s eyes narrowed as he held it out in front of him. “A Vollmensch Droge?”

  “A human drug, yeah.”

  He unscrewed the cap, letting it fall at his feet. Put the vial beneath his nose and sniffed the acrid aroma, making a face.

  Take it. Take it.

  “Oh, you want me to take some?” Wirtz said. “Test it out on myself? Drink this acid? Perhaps I should just pour it on your face.”

  Oh no.

  The vampire held the open vial over my face, tipping it slightly. He tipped it farther and farther. I held my breath.

  “No, I think not,” Wirtz said.

  He put the vial to his lips and drank it down in one long gulp. I could see his Adam’s apple bobbing.

  The vampire grimaced horribly and made a sound like something was caught in his throat. He turned away from me, staggered a few steps toward the bunker, and doubled over and vomited. At last he straightened up, wiping his mouth, and flung the vial away.