“Vincent, I know you are tired and have been through a lot tonight, but—”
“I’m on it, boss,” I said. “But I’d rather not go it alone. Mind if I bring Gears along?”
“I think that is an excellent idea,” Galahad replied.
On my way upstairs, I stopped off in the armory. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in here; I’d been using the Urisk’s powers for so long that I hadn’t had need. I didn’t normally carry a gun because I’m not a great shot, but going armed with just my switchblade seemed like a bad idea. I found a 9mm like what Megan usually carried and fumbled its shoulder holster on. I grabbed some spare ammo, and a minute later, I was picking my way across the chaotic mess Gearstripper called a workshop.
“Gears,” I called. Around me, computers chirped and warbled. To my right, Gearstripper’s latest project, a life-sized robot of Billy from the movie Gremlins, was standing in a frame. The robot had come a long way; it looked like Gears had finished the face’s animatronics. From the neck down, Billy’s skin was unfinished metal, but otherwise looked complete. The gremlin came out from under one of the desks nearby. “Hey, Vinnie,” he said. “What can I do for you? Oh, is Petra back? Is it time for ice cream and Stranger Things?”
I shook my head. “Megan’s in trouble, Gears. You’re with me.” I gestured to the backpack I used to carry Gears around the city. “Hop in.”
Gears shook his head, his oversized ears flapping as he did so. “The backpack is so last week, Vinnie. Check this out.” He scrambled over to the frame where Billy was hooked up and began punching buttons.
“Gears, Megan may be in trouble,” I said. “We don’t have time for—” I cut off as Billy’s chest cavity popped open, revealing a tiny command chair and a bunch of control panels. Gears scampered up into the seat and the chest cavity closed. “Holy shit,” I breathed. “It’s a mech?”
“Yep,” Billy said with Gears’s voice. “Hang on while I put on some clothes.” A minute later, Billy was clad in blue jeans, a white T-shirt, and a denim jacket. “Okay,” he said, pulling on a pair of black leather gloves, “let’s go.”
We left the office, and I glanced at my phone for the coordinates; they were about three blocks away from the hospital. I Opened a portal, and we stepped through. I filled Gears in as we walked down the streets. I had to give his Billy-Mech credit, the thing didn’t make any noise, no whirring of motors, no clicking of gears, the robot moved just as smoothly as a person.
When we reached Megan’s last known coordinates, the Billy-Mech’s eyes flickered. “I don’t see any sign of Megan,” Gears said. “I’m scanning through several spectrums of light, no footprints or anything.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised Gears had souped Billy up like this. “You got x-ray vision in there, too?” I asked.
“No, shooting x-rays around is dangerous business. I know Superman does it all the time, but I’d hate to accidentally hurt someone with the radiation. You’d think he’d worry about that, too, being such a compassionate guy. What would happen if he was looking through a wall and accidentally x-rayed a pregnant woman? That’d be terrible for the baby.”
“Focus, Gears,” I said. I glanced around. We were standing in a flickering pool of yellow light coming from a failing streetlamp. One of Boston’s ubiquitous brick buildings was to my right, cars ambling along the street to my left. There was some pedestrian traffic, but most people were bustling along the snowbank-edged sidewalks, heading wherever they were going as quickly as possible to get out of the cold. “Keep watch. I’m going to try something.”
“You know, when I tell you I’m going to try something, you go all ‘Hey, Gears, should I get behind this lead-plated blast shield first?’”
I smiled and activated my Glimpse. A gift from my father, my Glimpse lets me look into the past. Until recently, it activated randomly and let me see formative moments in an object’s or a person’s life. Now, though, I had full control over it, and could look back into the past at will. I focused on the street corner where we were standing. The world around me jumped into reverse, and I watched people and cars travel backward along the street. Eventually, Megan stepped into the streetlamp’s flickering yellow light, her short blonde hair tucked under a blue wool cap, her matching blue jacket buttoned up against the cold. I let the Glimpse shift back into forward view, and followed her.
Megan moved to the end of the street we were standing on, then froze. The Glimpse conveyed all the sounds and hubbub of the street around us, yet she stopped like she’d just heard something out of the ordinary. Her head snapped up. I followed her gaze and saw a vampire stuck to the wall above her. An expression of surprise crossed its face, then it was lunging forward. Megan stepped back, her alien blaster appearing in her hand. “Don’t move,” she said. There was a coldness in her voice, a commanding edge that I’d never heard before. “That is an order.” I watched in amazement as the vampire complied. It had landed in a crouch on the sidewalk and squatted there, looking up at Megan like an obedient puppy.
The vamp was dressed in a brown suit and matching hat, and, despite the darkness, mirrored sunglasses covered his eyes. My best guess put him at least a foot taller than Megan, and he probably outweighed her by fifty pounds.
“You are not with the Midnight Clan,” Megan said. “Who do you belong to?”
“The upyr,” the vamp replied promptly. “I serve Lady Vasylna.” Megan’s blaster disappeared. What was she doing? More importantly, why wasn’t this guy attacking her? I stepped closer to the vamp, squinting into its face. It was hard to tell since I couldn’t see its eyes, but this had the look and feel of a compulsion. Megan was compelling a vampire? How was that possible?
I glanced back at Megan. Her brow was furrowed, and her teeth were clamped together, like it was taking everything she had to maintain her mental hold. Her hand started to drift up to her earpiece, and that minor break in concentration was enough for the vamp to surge forward and inject a syringe of clear fluid into her arm. Megan’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she dropped to the pavement. The vamp scooped her up and pulled her earpiece out, crushing it between two fingers. Then he slung Megan over his shoulder, skittered up the side of the building, and began darting across the rooftops. I followed, floating along like a ghost in the Glimpse, until they came to a boathouse on the bank of the Charles River, maybe a mile or so from where Gears and I were standing.
I shut the Glimpse off.
Gears was watching me anxiously. “Any luck?”
I nodded. “They’re over by the river. Come on.” We ducked down an alley, and when I was sure no one was watching, I Opened a portal just outside the boathouse I’d seen in my Glimpse. All the lights were off, except for a pair of floodlights that were pointed at a yacht that sat a little ways out in the river. From what I could see, the ship was empty. “You see anything?” I asked Gears.
Billy’s eyes flickered in response. “Thermal imaging shows two people,” he said, pointing. “They’re in those two boxes that are hanging over the water. There’s one in each box; one of them’s Megan.” I squinted and saw the boxes Gears indicated. There was one hanging off either side of the ship, as if for balance.
“How can you tell Megan’s in there?”
“Thermal imaging,” Gears repeated. “I can see Megan’s face. She looks like she’s asleep.”
“Who or what’s in the other box?”
“No one I recognize,” Gears said. “I can see it’s a humanoid girl, but that’s it.”
“Any sign of vampires?”
“Vamps don’t give off heat signatures, Vinnie,” Gears replied. “Not unless they’ve just fed.”
I rubbed at my chin. “Can you shift what you’re looking for? Rather than a heat source, maybe look for something that’s colder than its surroundings?”
“Oooh, I gotcha, Vinni
e,” Gears said. “Give me a sec.” Billy’s eyes flickered a few more times. “Yes. There’s a colder patch of something crouched in the cabin of the boat. From its posture, I’d say it’s lying in wait for us.”
I gave Uncle Dave a quick update and then returned my attention to the boat. I pointed at the cabin. “Think whoever’s inside knows we’re here?” I asked.
Gears shrugged. “I’m not—” He cut off, and the mech’s head tipped to one side. “Hang on. We need to get closer.”
“What’s wrong?” I whispered as we crept closer to the boat. The dock stretched out ahead of us, the boathouse to our left completely dark. Billy-Mech raised its left hand, palm out. “What are you doing?”
“Shhh.” While I couldn’t see the look on Gears’s face, dozens of staticky lines flickered across Billy’s eyes. It reminded me of the Urisk. He lowered his hand a moment later. “My hand has an ultrasonic sensor built into it. There are things in the water. Things other than the boats, I mean. Two of them. They’re humanoid.”
On instinct, I reached out for the Urisk’s faith. I could compel animals to do my bidding, look through their eyes. I’d never tried it with fish before, but hey, Aquaman did it all the time, right? And then I touched the cold, empty spot in my soul where the Urisk had been and recoiled. Right. Can’t do that anymore. I let out a quick breath and pushed the Urisk from my mind.
“Do you think vamps are in the water?” I asked.
Gears shrugged. “I know technically they don’t have to breathe, but I don’t think vampires like being submerged in water. We’ll have to be careful.” I nodded and pulled out my newly acquired gun.
“Whoa,” Gears said. “I haven’t seen you with one of those in forever.”
“Yeah,” I said, scanning the water fruitlessly. “Desperate times.”
“Um… Vinnie, no offense, but are you any better with guns since last time?” I shook my head. “Yeah, that’s what I thought. Here.” He shifted his weight, and the mech pulled at its right pant leg. There was the telltale ripping sound of Velcro coming undone, revealing the shiny metal skin beneath. A compartment popped open in the mech’s right thigh, Robocop style. From it, Gears withdrew something that looked like a cross between a sawed-off shotgun and Han Solo’s blaster.
“What is this?” I asked as he passed it to me.
“Wide-range stun blaster,” Gears replied as he closed the Velcro patch on his jeans. “It’s sort of like a Taser but without the need for those annoying little harpoons. You hit someone with that, alive or undead, and they’ll be out of it for a couple of hours. It’s got enough juice for five or six shots.”
“That doesn’t sound like a lot,” I said, holstering the 9mm.
“Vinnie, if you need more than that, then you’re in bigger trouble than a gun like this can get you out of.”
“Fair enough.”
“Safety’s here,” he said, pointing at a switch on the right side of the gun. “Just aim and pull the trigger. You’ll get everything in a ten-foot cone in front of you.”
“Do you always discuss targeting in terms of Dungeons & Dragons area effects?”
“No. But rule one is know your audience.” He pointed at me. “You don’t know guns. If I were having this conversation with Megan, it’d be completely different.”
“Got it, thanks.” I looked at the gun, then back at the mech. “What about you?”
In response, the teenage mech raised its right arm. The hand flopped over at the wrist, then slid and gripped onto the forearm. A narrow barrel emerged from the wrist stump, surrounded by concentric circles. “Similar weapon, just a bit more precise. I’ve got targeting systems in this thing that’ll let me hit a fly from sixty feet away.”
In my mind’s eye, I imagined heads-up targeting information flickering across Gearstripper’s face, kind of like what they do for Robert Downey Jr. in the Iron Man movies. “Cool,” I said. “Can you blast those chains holding the boxes?”
Billy pursed his lips. “I can, but the Taser isn’t designed for cutting metal if that’s what you’re after.”
“Nuts. It was worth a try.” I tapped my earpiece. “Uncle Dave, this is Vincent. Gearstripper and I have located Megan. She’s being held by hostiles. Mark my location. We’re going in now.”
“Good luck, Vinnie,” came the reply.
Gears and I moved as quietly as we could toward the boat. The sounds of the river moving past the boats and the cars on the road behind us were the only noises. I kept one eye on the water, scanning for whatever Gears had detected. He had his left-hand palm out, obviously doing the same. I knew this was a trap; why else would they have Megan hanging over the side of the boat in a box? I could tell this was going to turn out to be some overly complicated James Bond type of situation. And the great news about those situations was that it was usually pretty easy to get out of them, so long as you kept a clear head. In fact, I already had an idea of how to get Megan and whoever was in the other box to safety.
We moved up to the boat, unchallenged. As we approached its walkway, Gears dropped something into the water. If I hadn’t been so focused on listening to the water for signs of attack, I would’ve missed the tiny splashes. The mech just winked at me, and I had to give Gears credit, the animatronics on this thing were amazing. If it weren’t for the fact that his eyes tended to change whenever he used a different sort of scanner, I’d never suspect he wasn’t human. I looked at the gangplank leading up to the ship and stopped.
When Kristin and I had been in the Undercity earlier this week, I’d almost walked right into a trap when I’d tried to enter a shed that had been inhabited by some pukwudgies. This felt like the same thing. “Gears,” I whispered. “Any funky readings on this gangplank?”
A pause. “Yep. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not wood.”
I Opened a portal to our side, placing the exit up on the ship’s deck, which I could see from here. We stepped through and onto the ship. It was maybe fifteen or twenty feet across, and fifty or sixty feet long. The crude crane that had been rigged to hold the two boxes was sitting in the middle of the deck, just behind the ship’s bridge. A head popped up inside, visible as a shadow against the glass, staring at the spot where we’d just been. I Opened a second portal right behind the figure, reached through, and hauled him bodily back through, slamming him against the deck and kneeling atop him. I pressed the barrel of the sawed-off blaster against his head.
This was the same vampire I’d seen in the Glimpse; angular features, the mirrored sunglasses, brown suit. His expression was full of hate as he regarded me. “I’m going to make this simple,” I said. “You will release the hostages you have, you will tell me why you’re attacking Caulborn, and then, if I think you’ve told me the truth, I’ll let you continue to exist. Are we clear on this?” He nodded. “Good. Now, bring your pals in the water onto the deck where I can see them.”
He called out in a language that sounded like Russian. I glanced at Gears, who shrugged. “I don’t have translation software on this thing yet,” he said. His voice came through my earpiece. Clever, that at least let him communicate with me privately. I very purposefully did not think about how much I missed having telepathic powers. Now was not the time.
Two creatures clambered over the side of the ship. I was out of kobold faith, and thus without my night vision, but a pair of high intensity LEDs popped up from the mech’s shoulders and gave me a clear view of them. Two female forms, but not vampires. Their eyes were huge, easily two or three times the size of a normal human eye, and pearly white. Their pale gray skin reminded me of fish, and their fingers were slightly webbed. They wore no clothes, and their thick red hair was plastered to their heads and down their backs. They weren’t armed, but the claws protruding from the tips of their fingers told me I didn’t want to get up close and personal with them.
I glan
ced at the vamp I was pinning. The tips of his fangs barely showed as he spoke. “Now then, Vincent Corinthos,” he said, his voice giving just a hint of an Eastern European accent, “I believe you asked me to release my hostages. The controls to the boxes are in my pocket. I will make no move to attack you.” He slowly moved his hand into his coat and produced a small remote control, like a key fob.
He clicked one of the buttons, and the boxes behind me broke apart, their wood splashing into the water. Two iron cages now hung suspended over the river. I could just make out Megan’s crumpled form in one, but I didn’t recognize who was in the other. The vamp gave me a wicked grin. “And now I shall release them.” There was a spark, and the cages began to fall into the river.
Chapter 3
My consciousness snapped back into place mere moments after the shotgun blast shredded my body and my primary phylactery. I awoke in Hockomock swamp, where I’d hidden the secondary phylactery I’d obtained from Laras. It hadn’t worked as I’d expected. Rather than a phylactery, it acted more as a soul jar—restoring my essence into my body rather than retaining it. When I realized my powers had been stripped but my soul restored, I fled the swamp, abandoning the phylactery. Some day, I should retrieve it, but I can’t bring myself to go back there. I’m not ready to confront that part of my past.
— From the Journal of Albert Wallenby, Proprietor of Oddities
Time slowed down. It was something I was learning to do, accelerate myself to buy time to think, to plan. It was mentally demanding, and I couldn’t do it for long or I’d get tired. But I didn’t need to plan much right now; this was actually what I’d wanted to happen. See, I had no way of cutting the chains that were holding the cages. I was out of kobold faith, no longer had pyrokinesis, and while my switchblade could cut through metal, it would’ve taken too long. And like I said earlier, this thing had the feel of a bad Bond villain trap. Of course the guy was going to drop the hostages into the water. You didn’t go through the trouble of hanging people in cages like that if you weren’t going to go through with it. I’d have been a total moron if I couldn’t see that coming.
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